I ran illumination with all your advice from the trouble with PC's threads, and I beleive it worked. I was alot more strict and some of the acolytes lost fate points for mocking the inquisitor. What they did do that I didnt like was when they were in the heat of battle they all agreed to stop what they were doing and lay down, they all thought the inquisitor would take care of all of it. And thats where we ended, What should I do?

Oh crap.. your pc really-really-really like to play "who-is-smarter" with your, right?

They found out that "this guy is powerfull enough to lay us all to waste..so leth HIM waste this enemey"

Okay...


!!!!HEAVY SPOILER WARNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Which is the fight you are in?

Is it the "Voicers attack!" fight or is it the "Final fight" with the Skae-Thing?

If it is the first, simply describe them how your Inquisitor throws himself into battle...how the voicers swarm him...and how some of them recognize the pc and go for them! (problem solved!)

If it is the secound...well, this Inquisitor was weak to start with, wasn´t he? He allowed your pc to go along with all the heresy... time for him to die!

Describe a heroic scene of battle, where he and the Skae-Thing go for each other. Describe it as a fight of titans,....but also describe that while the blows of the Skae-Thing start to show effect, the same is not true for the =I=. The =I= might spruet lines like "THRONE! Lend me more might!" with the Skae-Thing replying "All the might of your god-corpse will not save you, human! You haven´t learned the way of things, so you silly mortal will never defeat me!" Simply, the Inquisitor will not managed it. ...and he will die. If the pc flee, they hopefully flee back to Leidhaven. Let them come back with a small army. They HAVE to hold of the Daemon for the Sister to prepare thrice-blessed weapons for the attack. Otherwise, everyone will be doomed! No flight from planet, a warpstorm has risen.

As they go back, the Skae-Thing will have raised an army of zombies and mutants. All of them without eyes / eyes torn out / etc. perhaps the words of Esha Rain will ring through there had again ("what he does to others is the thing he fears most!") If they start to shout it to so other can do there work, a GIGANTIC WARP SCREAM from the Skae-Thing will draw out all sound and deafen everyone. They can do it themselves... or be doomed! Oh, and get sure that this time the Skae thing will be after THEM...he know has more power...and he now knows that they are the only one who found out to destroy him right now...so they have to die...but make him kill Esha Rain first! *muahahahaha*

Of course... if the pc start to "shout" the info to the =I= in during his battle with the Skae-Thing...use the same warp scream. Do not forget to describe blood dripping from everyones ears... the pc can do it themselves... or die

You've really got to get them away from their Inquisitor, standing or falling on their own feet.

Or get a new gaming group. This lot are just taking the mick.

If they wanna lay down have the enemys go after the "dead bodies" they wont deal with a living thing that has guns.

Let me get this straight? They all played dead and expected their Inquisitor to fight the boss one on one. An Inquisitor is a man who expects the unquestioned obedience and loyalty of armies, planetary governors, and the like. He has the power to doom entire worlds. And the PCs, who are a bunch of insignificant peons, are expecting to get away with rank cowardice in front of him. Do some thing like that in any military unit that has ever existed and the best you could hope is life in prison. (Execution, and life of hard labor is most common.)

The fight you are describing is a fight for the sake of an entire planet!!! Why would the =][= ever trust them again with any task? They'd be executed for treason, or condemed to a hell world penal colony. The PCs are early in their career expendable. At best I'd let all the PCs burn a fate point to reverse their decision and fight like men. Other wise they'd need to roll up new characters. (This sort of thing is why my inquisitor alway spaces someone during the 1st debrief. To bring their status home.)

Seriously Robro get to the end of Illumination then end it. This combined with everything else theyve done comes across as disruptive and disrespectful of you. Are you actually enjoying this? Take a break, then make one of them GM something.

I'll play devils advocate for a minute.

Not being completely familiar with the original thread, I'll paraphrase what I've picked up here:

The players were not taking the game seriously and having their characters make fun of their inquisitor, who for whatever reason is with them. After the Inquisitor brings them to heel (through lost fate points and/or threats of violence), you are surprised that the players are want to frag their commander (which you have made clear is impossible for them to do on their own).

What I am seeing here is the GM playing the game and expecting the players to listen rather than participate. Now as a GM you are stuck with an uber-character that the players & characters resent for stealing the spotlight and railroading the storyline. At this point the players probably feel that they have no control over the outcome of the story. If the creature wins, fine they can fight the creature, if =][= wins, whatever, the battle had a predetermined outcome anyway and their characters were just along for the ride.

+++++++++++++

I think the only way out of this is to have the =][= defeated, or better yet, have him become possessed. This is about the only way you can draw you players back into a story and give them some emotional investment in their characters . Once the characters defeat the Inquisitor/Daemon he's gone (period), this is going to send a message to your players that they do have some say over the direction of the storyline, and that the NPCs are not there to outshine them.

After there success, they should have the option of reporting back to the inquisition (telling whatever story they choose), or going independent. If they go independant it is up to you as GM to decide if you want to script a campaign around a group of mercs, without =][= ties, or wrap up the game (although I'd at least make an attempt, maybe they need to hire/hijack a ship to leave, or maybe some planet-side adventures). Ideally though they would return to the =][= with tales of their previous inquisitors corruption/possession, at which time they would be assigned to a more "hands-off" inquisitor. The characters , instead of working directly with their inquisitor would work through agents when necessary, perhaps one of them would be promoted to senior agent. This should help with the players (out-of-character) joking around at your expense, and prevent NPCs from stealing the spotlight.

Just a couple of ideas about what appears to be a very adversarial game.

RoBro, from your previous threads you heavily implied that Aristarches was the Inquisitor, if so then what happened to him as he is being used by the Daemon. Your main mistake was putting an Inquisitor in the scenario in the first place, he has complicated things massively.

If they dont want to fight then you can always make them. Have the Skae-Thing make a beeline for one of the prone targets for the easy kill.

Its seems that this game is going to be an abort though, things have just gone too wrong, you could take it to the extreme and have warp effects blow through and have the players witness wierd stuff happening before dieing, treat is as a prelude game and then start afreash with a mystery that is related to the events in the Cathedral but not immediately obvious.

A new cell with a proper begining, introduce the new Inquisitor very briefly and make them feel needed (small but useful gifts perhaps) before sending them out to do a job on thier that ends up relating to what had happened previously but make it not immediately obvious. First major clue would probably be one of thier old dead characters turning up in some way acting normal and preferably helpful in a minor way, not obstructive so that the players dont know whats going on. Make sure the old characters have no memory or recolection of Iconothos or working for the Inquisition (and very alarmed if the conversation goes that way). Slowly turn it into a horror scenario, maybe even involve the Murder room from DotDG.

Only bother if your group is worth playing with though, if they are just going to try and break the game at every opertunity then just drop it and maybe try and find a group who will take it seriously enough. Sometimes a game can be fun even if the character try and break it (and the GM) but it doesn't work in Dark Heresy and it will just leaves everyone frustrated, it might even work in Rogue Trader when that comes out so maybe that will be a better system for your players.

What I dont get is that your PC's got to rank 6 before restarting which implies that they have quite a bit of DH experiance, so what are they doing messing around like this. It sounds like they might be bored with the system and if that is the case a lengthy break from it is probably a good idea, come back to it when they want to play it. I am always worried about pushing my Dark Heresy games as I know that everyone does not want to play it as much as I do and they have games that they want to play. They all basically started RP'ing with White Wolf games and so often want to run them, I dont like the way White Wolf characters work but will play them so that everyone gets a chance to play a game they enjoy. The number of time I have heard "Vampires/Werewolves/Mages dont think like that" is crazy, I feel like the game system has decided how my character thinks and reacts to NPC's rather than making those player choices.

Kaihlik