Hello!

I have recently made a PC (Guardsman) that has the Nascent Psyker elite advance described in the Inquisitors Handbook. Well, in fact he had the misfortune of rolling 01 on the divination table "mutation without, corruption within" which made him roll a mutation on the minor mutation table. However something interesting resulted from this because he got the "Wyrdling" result on the mutation table, effectively making him a psyker.

I spoke with my GM about this, and we both disliked the lack of supporting rules for this freak result (just handing out a Psy Rating 1 to a character didn't seem to extrapolate on the matter to much). So we made the PC into a Nascent Psyker instead, which in turn made him into a pretty interesting character to play (especially since his Inquisitor is an outspoken witch hater ). But I digress. The wierd part was discovered on the table over which skills and talents a Nascent Psyker can buy from the elite advance. Psyniscience is pretty logical, but then something called "Deceit" for 100 xp was listed.

Is this a spelling error for the "Deceive" skill or is there actually something listed called "Deceit"? (because we could certainly not find it in any book)

I'd say it probably meant Decieve, since you'd need to be good at lying to make sure no one found out you were now a psyker

Yeah, it's what we've been thinking as well. In any case, this info might be good for a future errata.

And we don't have to worry about my character having to lie about it, because he doesn't really know that he is a psyker at all. He's a native from Dusk and he is a firm believer of the Dusk folklore at the side of the Imperial Creed, and he isn't at all surprised if he actually becomes invisible when he mutter the right prayers to the right forest spirits for protection. Nothing important to bother his boss or his co-workers about.

You can't lie about something about yourself if you don't even know it, can you?

Varnias Tybalt said:

OK, since the simple question has been quickly answered, i'll follow this rather interesting digression instead.

While the situation you describe here is of course roleplaying gold, the problematic question occurs...

Why has this Inquisitor, who is a rabid psyker-hater, brought into his organisation a psyker? Surely this PC would just have become another crispy victim to the Inquisitor's flamer?

Given the utter power the Inquisitor holds over the psyker PC, and the supremely better investigative skills of either the Inquisitor or his higher status henchmen who manage the PCs on his behalf...

How is this nascent psyker going to remain hidden (no matter how good is deceit / decieve skill is)?

When found out, why on Terra wouldn't the Inquisitor simply descend from on high and fry this PC for being a hated psyker?

Other than, of course, the trite and unsatisfactory 'well the psyker's a PC and therefore has plot immunity, even from this apparently rabid witchhunter of an Inquisitor...'

Luddite said:

Well, first off no one of the Acolytes has met their Inquisitor yet, only recieved orders through messengers and lower ranking agents of the Inquisition. Second, no one of our acolyte's cell has been exposed to any screening for psychic ability (neither through meeting another sanctioned psyker nor through any technological way). Third, the acolyte in question doesn't even know about psychic abilities and such. His knowledge about it is mostly comprised of feral superstition about "sorcery and witchcraft" and such, and the fact that his beliefs state that if you pay your respects and prayers to the "spiritworld" then you will be aided/protected by them (meaning that he wouldn't find it strange if he gained "super vision" or becoming invisible), meaning he is unlikely to report any such phenomena (probaby thinking that the holy Inquisition find it to be just as mundane as my PC does).

Fourth, he is really old (pushing 80), and although latent abilities can surface at any age it is most common for it to show the telltale signs in younger years (which they probably already have, but the Inquisition wasn't around to persecute it at the time). Fifth, he was probably inducted as a muscle/specialist role because he is an experienced sniper and survivalist (his supernatural abilities partly responsible for him surviving as long as he have). And let's face it, The Inquisition isn't known to be all that picky about which "hired guns" they use, nor what past they have.

Many small reasons, but combined they provide a situation where his powers might be accidentaly overlooked. Stranger things have happened I suppose.

And there you have him. An old, tired Guardsman sniper with hidden supernatural abilities and native of Dusk.

i like it i had an assassin with much the same thing happening to him, though he got exposed to warp radiation that caussed all of us to become nausceant psykers

Today proved to be the demise of my Dusk Sniper/Nascent psyker. Mostly because his Inquisitor simply refused to cave and simply decided to assassinate him once he learned of what he really was.

Which was kind of unthankful really, since the very actions that revealed him to be a psyker was what inevitably saved a world from damnation along with the lives of his fellow acolytes.

We were playing Tattered Fates, so watch out for spoiler's here:

The giant clock had just chimed and the eclipse was upon the world. The person in the Heron mask had initiated combat against the creature we knew as "The Widower", while crazed Pilgrims of Hayte had a run and gun battle against us acolytes and all the other people present. We decided to focus in trying to kill the man in the Heron mask first, which eventually succeeded. Right then The Widower decided to come after us since we killed his primary foe in the room. He would've closed with us in close combat in two rounds. We really wouldn't stand a chance against it (our weapons seemed quite useless against it). My character's fate points had run dry due to previous confrontations (which also involved protecting a fellow acolyte from harm), so he decided to make a stand against The Widower. His one random power from being a Nascent Psyker was Holocaust from the Pyromancy Discipline, so he ran towards it and activated the power, in broad view of his comerades, I managed to roll several consecutive righteous furies when the power dealt damage to The Widower, and as you all know, neither armour nor Toughness bonus can protect someone being burned by Holocaust.

It was slaughtered, and my Guardsman had barely survived the encounter, but still lived and hadn't suffered any permanent injuries. Quite simply he saved the day, but what happens. Well the adept witnessing the freak incident feel the need to report what happened to their psyker hater Inquisitor, and my Guardsman get's assassinated by the Inquisitor in person as a reward.

Oh and also, we hadn't uncovered any clues at all in how to stop the widower in any other way then by violent force. So if it weren't for my nascent psyker guardsman, every acolyte would've been slaughtered and Quaddis would've been left to it's fate.

One would think that an Inquisitor should at least have some doubts about simply putting down an acolyte that saved the day in such an epic manner. But my GM didn't feel that flexible today, so I guess I simply had to taste the harshness of the Imperium of Man instead. But I don't feel bitter (although a little cheated out of future situations since I think he was a really interesting character), he was an old man that had served the Imperial Guard for more than fifty years (joined up between the age of 18-20, and was 74 years old when he got executed, and he hadn't had any rejuve treatments) and survived all manner of nightmarish battles and seen all his comerades die. He accepted his beheading peacefully, thinking that he was really too old for all this run and gun business anyway.

A toast for the silenced hero Konrad Nagant! Son of Dusk and a **** good survivor, even if you can't cheat death forever!

By the way, I noticed something else about the Nacent Psyker advance. It says that every session the PC gain's 1d10 minus his willpower powers chosen randomly from the disciplines and minor powers.

Our group were under the assumption that these powers vanished after the end of each session and that you rolled up a new amount of random powers next session. But you could interprate it so that you keep all the powers rolled. So which is it? Do the powers disappear after the session and you roll up new ones, or do you get to keep all the new powers you get (and not gaining any powers if you randomly roll up a power you previously had)?

I can't be sure myself, since both choices seem valid, because it isn't that overpowered to keep the powers since a Nascent psyker still suffer from warp phenomena each time he or she use a power (other than the first fixed minor power of course), and he or she will naturally only be at a psy rating of 1 and never be able to increase it (unless due to some unnatural consequence like getting the Sorcerer talent described in DotDG), which makes any usage of these powers extremely risky for everyone involved.

What do you say?

On the Nascent, I've interpreted it as the powers vanish and new ones come in showing the highly fluctuating untrained and chaotic nature of the nascent. It seems to fit better since they use their powers more out of instinct and emotional response then calculated and controlled exertions of will along certain learned routs (the powers and schools). That's just my interpretation, however, since, as usual, the wording is vague on the point.

As your psyker's Inquisitor goes, some have more reason (though not necessarily better) then the standard party line of hatred for the witch to hate the witch. Your inquisitor very well could have a lot more going on under the hood unseen which resulted in his quick death, hero and successful mission or not. Let this be a lesson, the best kept secret is the one only you know... and never let the adept (any adept) know anything, it'll byte you in the ass.

Graver said:

Oh well it was a do or die situation anyway. My main gripe with it is that it was such an unsatisfactory ending for my PC, who was a really interesting piece of work. It's not that I mind that he died as part of the story, it's just that so many avenues of character development and interaction were lost due to my GM not wanting to bother being flexible about it.

Anti-climacitc to say the least.

But I have a new PC in the works for that group. A mind cleansed, cybernetticaly resurrected assassin. My lowest Fellowship character so far (he ended up with a Fel of 12). Im sure that he/it will put the scare into the rest of the group.