I have always liked this particular piece of the lore (Calixian Pattern Killings), starting from the first time I saw it in the timeline, and carrying through to the background package in the Inquisitor's Handbook.

I have about 3/4'ths of how I want to incorporate it into my game figured out, but keep getting stumped for a cool idea on what is actually doing the killing. I keep getting stuck in traditional ruts: "It's Jack the Ripper living forever, it's a cult, it's a summoned daemon."

I was wondering if anyone had come up with a really novel twist on what is going on with this bit of background that I might borrow from?

Nothing specific, but rather than use a "Jack the Ripper" character I'd recommend going with "Spring Heeled Jack" - that guy always scared the hell out of me. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Heeled_Jack )

Perhaps he is a rogue servitor - or even some kind of transferable "servitor disease"; one knows they would typically go unoticed or suspected.

Or perhaps a cursed suit which compels each new wearer to commit the murders. Or an inherrited mental disorder which only manifests on rare occasions within a powerful and influential family.

If it is a person, making it someone influential is always fun - especially if it is not in the interests of those in power to imprison or harm said individual.

Off the top of my head, how about a possession, but not a normal one?

The victim of the slaying is actually the one getting possessed. The pattern killings are perpetrated by a pair of souls, powerful astral specters which are, for some reason, locked in a never ending dismal loop, doomed to play out the last 13 hours of a tragic life ended in a most terrible (and some how cosmicly important) fashion. Now and until someone can find a way to break the cycle, they will roam the stars, the victim possessing certain individuals which are important or symbolically linked to him or her. Once possessed, they will reenact the last 13 hours of their life before the killer shows up (in spirit form and invisible to all whitenesses) and kills his victim yet again. Who these two were in life, why one killed thew other, and what has doomed them to repeat this act for all eternity is the mystery and the key to breaking their cycle.

I had come up with something very similar - though it ultimately involved the person gruesomely killing him/her self - but ultimately rejected it as not being horrendous enough. Maybe I'm too desensitized - I never know what might frighten a person because vertially nothing scares me - makes for watching or reading 99% of horror very disappointing.

Who does the killing?

Members of the Inquisition.

Why?

It is necessary.

Horribly, horribly, necessary.

aethel said:

Hmm ideas...

Xenos off the top of the head. You could create all kinds of funky xenos that fit that bill.

The physical description also fits somewhat a vampire.

Finally, and I kind of like this one best, the "eyewitness" description is... a psyker power. I'm reminded of a story in a vastly different setting wherein a magic user had a spell that shielded her from scrying. Whenever anyone looked towards her, or scryed towards her, the spell simply put the words "nothing there" into the offender's mind. That's all. A simple trick. Whomever is doing this might be using a similar trick, projecting the eyes, the fluidity, even the sound of the tapping of a cane, which would be particularly memorable. The real details would pale in comparison to this iconic, chilling "memory", which is simply a single set of suggestions planted via a person's internal monologue.

Now here's where things get fun. 90% of us think in words. We have an internal monologue going. 10% of us think in symbols or pictures, symbols being the least common. Now let's say that this mental trick doesn't quite work all the time on someone who thinks in symbols. It works great on people who think in pictures, and it works just as well on the internal monologue people. What happens if your acolytes stumble on someone who thinks in symbols, and thus the trick didn't precisely take hold as strongly as it could have, leading to... a clue that you've come up with.

Maybe the psyker power itself turns out, on VERY deep and VERY exotic research, to actually be an officially sanctioned and documented power going back centuries or even thousands of years. And only one psyker has ever exhibited this power. Or maybe this power is teachable?

I dunno. It's hard to figure out a really good twist. I'd avoid dumping everything on Chaos though. I feel like, in this setting, humanity is going to collapse on it's own sooner or later. The xenos and chaos threats just are accellerants.

My take?

It's an assassin from the Bastion Psykana- an imperfect application of See Me Not (or possibly just Forget Me), a few pieces of climbing gear (or Wall Walk, Space Slip, or other 'movement' type power), and something like a mono-sword, or possibly Psychic Blade, and it becomes easy enough to replicate the killings themselves.

Why? A diviner has been getting glimpses ('something dark and terrible is coming' sort of thing) of an ancient evil, and has identified people who will contribute to its' emergence. Those people aren't some grand over-arching cult, they simply create (completely inadvertently, as a result of actions taken for their own benefit, in seemingly unrelated matters) the conditions for whatever ancient evil to arise. Whether the Diviner in question is long-dead and predicted all of them, leaving instructions in time-locked messages (Hari Seldon style) or is a small coven dedicated to finding the next 'threat' is up to individual GMs, as is whether or not the prophecy is accurate (or even if it has been mucked about with, so the people they have killed are supposed to be protected, although I personally wouldn't use that one)

The killings are important re: their location, which is occurring in a very specific pattern. The murders in specific locations form a ridiculously complex web, though the victims themselves are unimportant. The murderer is a person under the influence of a warp-enchanced alien race (think of something like a halo device, only seemingly more directed and driven). The murders will create a "blood gate", allowing an alien warship/weapon/device to come through into the material realm, which the creatures would otherwise have serious trouble reaching. Think of a high-tech lovecraftian race seeking to enter the material world. The murderer is their chosen vessel, perhaps even being motivated by the knowledge that when the end comes, he won't suffer as much as everyone else. He stumbled across one of their number or some way of contacting them in the halo stars, and now they're using him to facilitate their arrival.

That's not very good, but with some tweaking, it'd be fun for your players, I'll bet. Especially if you combine it with some of the other great ideas in this thread, perhaps the victims being killed are those who would be important in defeating the new threat, and the creatures have forseen this?

It could be one of my PC's doing the deed. He's a serial killer (Assassin) who goes by the monicker of "The Blood Red Sandman" (his real name being Cristobal Nihilius). He was an orphan being inducted into a cell of moritat reapers on Sinophia where he learned the arts of murder. But eventually he learned that the cell mistress was the one behind the killings of his parents and he snapped, killing every single member of his cell in their sleep. After that was done he continued his bloody murder spree, picking off members of the Imperial society that didnt seem to form a special pattern (he murdered people from every social class, in what seems to outsiders being a totally random pattern).

The truth is that he's still driven by the Imperial Creed and only kills people guilty of heresy or chaos worship (most of the time the victims are guilty, but sometimes murders happen due to his severe paranoia).

He was discovered and caught eventually by the Inquisition, but the somewhat radical Inquisitor couldn't find him guilty of any heresy (he was targeting heretics an chaos worshippers after all) so the Inquisitor thought there might be some use for him. However "The Blood Red Sandman" is still somewhat of a "loose cannon" as an acolyte of the Inquisition. Still he stalks his victims, gathering all the evidence of their heresy he feels is needed before killing them in their sleep in a most gory manner.

The monicker comes from the very few sightings of witnesses where they hade seen a man masked in a medicae facemask and clad in a red body glove, fashioned to look like a skinned human body and a dirty bloodstained butchers apron (the bloodstains being very much genuine as he, for ritualistic reasons never cleans his equipment of blood).

But then again, maybe im the wrong person to provide suggestions?

Would even a Puritan Inquisitor really be that concerned about this? If even 80% of his victims are actual enemies of the Imperium would he care how they were killed - so long as the murderer isn't using demonism or other threats to the empire to occomplish it? Eisenhorn let thousands of people die in pursuit of one terrible heretic, this guy is mostly right with just the occasional misunderstanding.

The Inquisition does employ assassins of its own, after all. I should think the only real snag - not really even a problem - is the fact that he isn't making it clearer that this is a fate all heretics should expect. How many citizens die from less faithful murderers every day?

Jack of Tears said:

The thing is, the guy is a pure psycopath (not so loosely based on Dexter Morgan). No one knows if he really believes in his quest for scourging heretics or if he's just enacting his own twisted desires. Also the way he kills his victims is not very puritan (meaning he has no scruples against slashing them open and spreading their entrails around the room, nailing ears, fingers and hands to the doorpost etc. etc. In fact he considers such atrocities to be entertainment). Basically he hunts heretics because it is what he has been taught to do, not necessarily because he believes that it is the right thing to do, which brings some problems to the matter.

The reason is of course to give the other PC's a moral dilemma. Sure heretics and chaos are bad, but how "bad" can a supposed agent of the Inquisition be allowed to become? What is worse? The heretics or the sick and twisted people the Inquisition send after them?

Also who can predict what this sort of behaviour might result in? (Chaos have appealed to crazy murderers before). What would happen if one day this person were to start questioning the Imperial Creed? Perhaps he would devolve inte a pure serial killer that targets anyone regardless of their guilt?

And most importantly, what would other PC's think of such a person?

It is both fun and severely disturing to play psycho-killers. Anthony Hopkins must have had a gas during the filming of the Silence of the Lambs films.

In my game I've connected the Calixian Pattern Killings to the Murder Room from Disciples of the Dark Gods.

It has worked well enough so far.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Are you volunteering YOUR PC? *sighs* Ah the problems of players who are active forum participants. Stop reading this thread! Shoo!

(Okay I am going to pretend he is not still reading.. but we all know he is..)

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. This gives me some nice brain fuel to work with. I'm unlikely to use the xenos-related suggestions because it doesn't fit the nature of my campaign, but Graver, T.S., and Alasseo's suggestions all might work nicely. I actually have a fair bit in my game with Inquisition secrets and backstabbing, as well as people relying (perhaps too heavily) on diviners to guide them, so it certainly fits the themes. Much appreciated!

aethel said:

Well, yes. I mean he's from another campaign, but that shouldn't stop anyone from using him as an NPC if they wish.

Also, I dont like to spoil things for myself, so I haven't read much of this thread (you know, in case you decide to use any of the suggestions). All I've read so far is the threadstart, my own posts and of course the questions that arose about my character concept.

But, if you insist, I'll scurry away.

Jack of Tears said:

The Puritan knows that a rival of his a member of a Radical group is after the Killer for his own purposes; so your group has to find him not so much out of any sense of duty but more your master trying to deny a rival of his somthing useful.

Locque said:

mines kinda like that only i use it for a Logis Daemonia (i think thats what its called) it unleashes a demon...a very big and mean demon only this time the pattern will engulf the entire Calaxis Sector...