Hi, I was just trying to get people's thoughts on what exactly the Living Nightmare background package is supposed to mean (other than your mind can't be read) for RPing purposes. Also, how would the Black Ships ensure that your mind is strong enough without being able to see your thoughts?

I determined, at least for the Living Nightmare psyker in my group, that his oddities were artificial in nature. He didn't know why he was like that, and when first discovered (though he doesn't remember anything about it before his Sanctioning) he didn't have those abilities, but the Inquisition - the Tyrantine Cabal, in particular - had been looking into manufacturing psychic operatives who would be extremely capable of keeping secrets. Just one part of a larger conspiracy...

It's probably a good idea to come up with a similarly mysterious origin for any individual use of the Living Nightmare background...

I was thinking more along the lines of interpretations of the description in the IH.

"...there are ancient and terrible things unguessed at which predate man's first crawling steps...some emergent psykers can attest to this dark truth, having passed through unearthly horrors dwarfing that of the Black Ships they later endure. None speak of the strange devices humming with unearthly notes wielded by towering men in stark white rooms lying at the end of unending corridors."

I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on what that referenced. Also, how would the Black Ships test you, assuming your mind can't be read.

Ansef Pyreaus said:

I would think that a telepath being unable to read their mind might be a bit of a clue as to the strength of their mind, don't you? ;-)

Their mind might be strong but it has to be incorruptible. Having high willpower doesnt stop one from making deals with daemons

Also, how would the Black Ships test you, assuming your mind can't be read.

The background package stops psyker mind-reading. It doesn't help you against a few days of sleep deprivation, hypnodoctrination and assorted forms of torture, which would probably be sufficient to grant your interrogator enough insight into your mind to determine its breaking point even without using any psy powers at all.

Cifer said:

That is the most wonderful point on that topic I've ever seen.

On a related note, this package has always annoyed me, much like the moritat package does (assuming you have a melee concept). Not that there is anything wrong with it, but that it is SO good statistically for the class compared to the other packages. It just seems to incent players to take that background over others, and leads to a recurrence of that character type. (And force players whose concepts it doesn't fit out to miss out on some good statistical stuff there is no other way to accomplish.)

So when, as in the case of Living Nightmare, it is for an effect with no (that I can tell) explained tie in to the Calixis sector story, it really frustrates me. It's one of those things where if I ran a different type of game with more character turnover, I'd be tempted to make some other background packages to make some equally appealing statistical choices that tie better to the campaign.

Sorry.. off my soapbox now!

Ansef Pyreaus said:

Well, reading someone's mind won't tell you that either. You can find out if they already are and what they might be thinking or feeling at any given moment, but other tests would be needed and when it comes to those tests, it doesn't take a telepath to know what someone feels or thinks about something. I'm sure that behavioral science is alive and well in the dark halls of power within the Imperium ;-)

That is the most wonderful point on that topic I've ever seen.

Thank you, although I'm not quite sure how describing methods of breaking a mind make up a "wonderful point".

On a related note, this package has always annoyed me, much like the moritat package does (assuming you have a melee concept). Not that there is anything wrong with it, but that it is SO good statistically for the class compared to the other packages. It just seems to incent players to take that background over others, and leads to a recurrence of that character type. (And force players whose concepts it doesn't fit out to miss out on some good statistical stuff there is no other way to accomplish.)

For the Moritat, I disagree. Taking the Moritat package shoehorns a character so far into a single direction (using melee and a few primitive ranged weapons only) that it does become a question of how much the crippling overspecialization is worth. It will certainly be taken by the vast majority of assassins who completely leave out ranged combat, but anyone who does want to be at least a little balanced will think rather hard upon that one - and the assassin career allows for both types after all.

The Living Nightmare, on the other hand, seems too strong indeed, especially when you compare it to the other packages. Psykers are a very SAD (Single Attribute Dependant) career and a background package that offers a +5 raise nearly without drawbacks is too much of a no-brainer.

I think the quote for Living Nightmare is an homage to H.P. Lovecraft, but I can't place it.

I get a C'tan-vibe from it. I felt immediatetly reminded of a short story from the current Necron Codex. In this story an Eldar Farseer desribes the galaxy after the final victory of the Necrons/C'tan and much of these horror visions are somewhat similar, at least I felt so.

Phantasm, that's all I'm sayin'

from france

funny, the farseer was looking at a culexus assassin. so yes their is a link but part of the horrors of the eldars is that they do not have untouchable while the humans have both.

for the moritat yes the stats are good very good but yes it's a over specialisation. i have a arbitrator but in ravenloft i have played a assassin and he didn't wear black nor did he fight at close or at range. he wasn't good at both etheir anyway he had just what was needed to get out of trouble. he used poison, bomb, cords, fake suicide, pushing someone to suicide, pushing someone to kill his victim and arrange for the killer to get caught just to have two victim instead of one and so on. his philosphy was that if you have been caught but could not prevent to be caught well that life. however if you have been caught because you acted like a fool than you deserve it. this is how i see an assassin

what i mean by that is that is the moritat is for me much more a martial artist than an assassin. good at his job but bad at the other.

so back at living nightmare yes it is mentioned in chtullu like some other name of dh and now as it was demonstrated before not unbalanced again it useful to escape a mind prob on the fly but not a "muscular negociation in the purpose of courteously exchange of information" also called torture.

As an interesting side-note, none of the assassins in my games (total of 4 written, and 3 played, one player changed over to arbitrator before play started) have taken Moritat.

The solution I've found for the "Background Problem", has been to simply have the players give me their backstory, and then I generate some additional options for them to choose from. About half my players still went with book-backgrounds, but that was mainly because they got character ideas from reading them. The packages I generate are generally on par with "Living Nightmare" and "Moritat", following the same general formulas that those are built from. A good range of examples are below:

Adept - Assessor
Background: Any
100 xp

The tithes of every planet are carefully maintained and monitored, and one of the greatest sins a noble or organization can commit is theft from the Emperor... more commonly referred to as "tax evasion". Thus the Administratum trains large cadres of assessors to ensure that this act of treason is reliably detected and corrected. Of course, the corruption such a position is open to is well known, and half of the assessors job is to subtly check up on their fellow adepts to ensure no one has been bought off. Thus paranoia, backstabbing, and spying are common practices, and more than one assessor has found themselves framed for the sins of their peers.

Characteristics: -3 Str, T, or Will
Skills: Logic (Int), Scholastic Lore: Bureaucracy (Int), Common Lore: Administratum (Int)
Talents: Paranoia

Fear and Loathing: The constant strain of watching one's back, along with the fear of execution for another's act of treason and the constant temptation to break the rules despite the staggering consequences, tends to leave assessors in a less than ideal mental condition. Some cope better than others, resulting in 1d5 insanity points.

Assassin - Companion Slave
Background: Hive, Imperial, Void Born, and Mind-Cleansed
200 xp

Tobias Bellasco was, until recently at least, the most well known producer of the companion slave, though a few decades after they became well-known a number of other slaver organizations began to copy the practice. These slaves are probably the most sought after in all the galaxy, and certainly within the Calixis sector. Children are taken at a very young age, generally younger than 8, and implanted with equipment similar to a very specialized MIU augmetic. This implant, along with an extended process of hypno-indoctrination and a varient of engram-conditioning, makes the poor victim a completely compliant and enthusiastic servant of whoever they are attached to (easily changed via a rewrite of the encrypted implant). The subject will be willing to undergo any degree of inhuman treatment and remain completely loyal (though they do not enjoy whatever they experiance, otherwise their owners would not enjoy abusing them so much). Not only are they made (almost) perfectly loyal, the companion slaves are also trained and programmed with a variety of skills to make them perfect bodyguards, spies, entertainers, and assassins for their owners. They kill without remorse and protect their owners with inhuman vigilance, their natural conditioning making it very difficult to detect any sort of threat from them, especially when they are still young (they are generally brought to market between the ages of 12-14, though sometimes even younger if they were captured early and took to their conditioning quickly). Needless to say, such a creation requires unbelievable resources for a black-market industry, and each companion slave is a significant investment. The price to actually purchase one is generally astronomical, and is usually paid for in significant favors as much as in currency.

Sometimes, the after-market tinkering done by the slave's owner, or a simple failure of the implants and/or conditioning to take properly, causes the slave to retain some or all of their free will. Given the young age at which they are taken, it can take years for the slave to actually realize what's going on, and even the most "fortunate" (as much as the idea of good fortune can apply to someone subject to such a horrific life can) of such children still have years of hypno-indoctrination to break out of, which is made unfortunately easier by the horrors they are generally (though not always) subjected to. Once the slave does become fully self-determined and aware of the reality of their situation however, the results are usually some sort of large scale violence against anyone they believe to have hurt them in any way. Given their entrained lack of value for human life, these violent outbursts tend towards a great deal of collateral damage, and many such slaves do not survive the aftermath if they don't understand the forces that begin moving against them (such as the Arbites or the Inquisition). Those that are savvy enough to use the authorities to their advantage however, are almost universally snatched up by the Inquisition or similar power. When possible the Inquisitors arrange for therapy and reindoctrination when the slaves are slavageable, otherwise they are kept carefully contained and studied for insight into the slaver's techniques and equipment, along with the information retained by the slave. After this, the one's that can not be salvaged are mind-wiped in the hope of restoring their sanity, and bring them back into the light and service of the Emperor.

You are one of the dubiously "lucky" ones. Having survived, escaped, taken your revenge, and avoided retribution without losing your mind completely. Thanks to both your own strength, or simple "good-fortune", you were able to recover with the help of the Inquisition, without having to lose your hard won identity in the process. You were given time to heal and adapt, while being put into a carefully selected Collegium Assassinorum curriculum to round out and "normalize" your skills, which had been degraded by the processes used to clean up the damage and effects of your pre-existing conditioning. The environment at the Collegium was foreign, but provided a sense of safety, respect, and "place" that you hadn't felt since the flickers of memory left from your childhood... which is admittedly ironic given that they were teaching you how to be a ruthless, if divine, killer all over again. You were taught the meaning of the Emperor's mercy, for yourself and for your victims. A measure of faith lies within you now, though how much and of what kind varies from subject to subject, the only constant being a knowledge that their actions are righteous, their purpose is pure, and that they are protected by something greater than themselves. This, along with their blase attitude towards the mundane horrors of the world (having personally survived worse than anything a remotely sane world could hope to throw at them), makes them relentless and frighteningly effective agents of the Holy Ordos of the Inquisition.

Skills: Charm (Fel), Decieve (Fel), Concealment (Ag), Scrutiny (Per), Perform: "Exotic" (Fel).
Talents: Jaded, Hatred (Slavers)

Damaged Goods: The process of living as a slave and near-mindless killer has left you badly damaged, even after the Inquisition's work to restore you to functionality. You thus begin with 2d5 insanity points.

Hypno-Indoctrination: While you were freed from, or never fully under, the hypno-indoctrination intended to make you an obediant and compliant slave, certain triggers are still buried in your mind. When these triggers are tripped, you must make a difficult (-10) Willpower test to fight off the effects without evident distress. Failure results in becoming clearly distressed and disturbed, along with a -10 penalty to any actions for the round (plus seriously confusing anyone in a social exchange at the time). Failure by 2 degrees of success leaves you crying out, barely able to keep your identity intact and thus stunned for 1 round. Failure by four degrees or more means you briefly follow your old conditioning for 1 round, plus an additional round for every degree of failure beyind the fourth. While you will not do anything directly dangerous or counter to your nature (and in combat you will simply "go blank" and attempt to disengage quickly before moving into a position of stealth, lining up an unseen kill of your target, or bugging out if outclassed), your behavior will appear incredibly bizarre or even disturbing to anyone looking on in a non-combat situation, and in combat you will cease to care about the safety of anyone but yourself, or about the death of anyone but your target at the time you were triggered.

GMs Note: This trigger should be used sparingly to evolve the development of the story, or to make a dull combat more interesting, don't abuse the poor assassin, their lives have sucked hard enough up to this point. At most once per scenario/mission should be the limit, even if they shrug the trigger off completely. If the PC is also of the Mind Cleansed background, the cleansing would have been performed by the slavers before the indoctrination, not after as that would invalidate the background. Shards of Memory should be altered in this case to taunt the character with happy or safe memories that are frusteratingly out of context, leaving the cleansed assassin just beyond the reach of claiming the scrap of peace and sanity for themselves.

Guardsman - Military Acadamecian
Origin: Noble Born, Forge World, Schola Progenium, Hive World, or Imperial World
200 xp

You were never intended to be a grunt, and were fortunate enough to be inducted into one of the prestigious military academies of the Imperial Guard. While you endured the same basic indoctrination as every guardsman, afterwards you received the training necessary to lead and direct the line soldiers that would be under your command.

Skills: Command (Fel), Common Lore: War (Int), Scholastic Lore (Tactica Imperialis)
Talents: Pistol Training (SP)
Note: If you take this background package your starting talents must be as follows - Melee (Primitive), Pistol (Las), Basic (Las), Basic (SP)

Fresh Meat: Thanks to Imperial military propaganda, cadets taken straight from the acadamies and put into the front lines (or worse yet, Inquisitorial service) are never properly prepared for the realities of war. Consequently, the first time insanity points are acquired due to extreme violence or supernatural horrors the PC gains an additional 1d5 insanity, and must make a roll to resist "Mental Trauma", as their illusions are shattered (if they still have less than 10 IP, then the Will check is at +10).

Ansef Pyreaus said:

I understood it that the psyker's mind must be strong enough not to become a conduit for the warp and blow yourself up into a full blown portal for Chaos to pour out of in order to become sanctioned.

My GM let me take it for my psyker, but only if I wrote up a fabulous backstory for it. I ended up with the idea that the white giants had taken him completely apart, tweaked him here and there, and then put him back together. Then they "released him back into the wild." On his return he was picked up by the black ships. He now lives in fear of meeting the third evil, because evils always come in threes, right? So there was the white giants, the black ships, and now (he believes) the unseen evil.

Unfortunately, the inquisition is keeping a very close eye on him. The GM threw in that there had only been one other person who had survived both the white giants and the black ships in the last two hundred years. That guy stole a black ship and dissappeared with it. The inquisition thinks that he might have a homing switch in his mind, that when triggered will make him do everything possible to return to the white giants. They want to "meet" these beings...

Oregwath said:

Possibly a dumb question, but who are the white giants?

Very cool background by the way.

-Thulis

In the living nightmare background fluff they mention that the beings that abducted you were large white giant types.

When I read it, I got the distinct impression that they were describing how an insane asylum would appear to a lunatic suffering under the delusion that he was a psyker living 40,000 years in the future.

That is, I thought it was a bit of an inside joke. Men in white coats, long corridors leading to places of pain and all that.

Ive taken to barring my players from using background packages (and unique homeworlds) unless they actually have good reasons and background already; ive noticed the two tend to be used more out of lazyness and powergaming than good roleplay. Taking one of the more unusual packages is a lot easier than taking ones like Moritat, Living Nightmare and Calixian Pattern.

I personally don't see what's wrong with Calixian Pattern. You spend 200xp, get Talented (Inquiry) and a Intelligence increase at the Intelligencer level.

But on the subject of Moritat and Living Nightmare however. I've tried to re-arrange and re-do some of the packages in order to make them look better and/or more appealing in the eyes of gamers. I've probably over-done them and need outside review, but, it'd be much better to not see the sixth Moritat Assassin in my group come to be. It's almost like Crack dealers have simply switched to Moritat Assassins due to abundance and popularity for Inquisitors.

Fideru said:

There's nothing WRONG with any of them.. it's just a case of them being so much better statistically than the other backgrounds for 90% of the character builds someone is likely to put together in that class. Arbitrators are the Inquiry power houses of the game. Why wouldn't they want to be able to bump it up another +10?

I don't blame players for taking them, just we the GM's, if we want to see more variety without imposing limitations on our players, need to do what you're doing and make the other options equally statistically appealing.

aethel said:

Well, I was under the impression at the time Arbitrators are only really good at Inquiry and being a defensive class, thus why I took it. As well, specifically to you, I thought you had stuff written for the Calixian Pattern Killings already from the email you sent me when I told you I was interested in it. *shrug* I'm sorry? I would've changed it if you wanted me to.

For removing the possibility of those simple Living Nightmare psykers and Moritat Assassins, the quickest things I thought of were the following.

Living Nightmare does not give you +5 willpower and Moritat Assassins have a (-20) willpower check for using any ranged weaponry or non-rending melee weapon.

Fideru said:

I agree in a sense. I don't think nerfing background packages is the way to go about it since the background packages in general seem to be lacking. I find each class has the one package which is dominant, Callixian Pattern Killings, Moritat, Living Nightmare, Tranch War Veteran or Mara Landing Massacre, and the Malygrisian Tech Heresy etc. all seem on some level statistically superior to the other packages. At that, I don't think nerfing existing packages is the way to go about it, raising the benefits of other packages to be in line with the others is more beneficial because it gives the players options. If you start nerfing things, players will likely move away from using such packages. On the other hand, if you give them options, it gives you as a GM more to work with.

By the way, rather enjoying your campaign diaries and updates Aethel. I'm one of Fideru's players.