Right, I need help quickly guys!

Our players are investigating a secctor spanning crime organisation, and there investigations have left them to Pry 41. Now, they're standing in a meat Vendor, the guardsman has uncovered a trap door, with dried blood around it. He can't see the bottom and, without further ado, has jumped down the hole. Now...As you can tell, I'm rather....shocked.

So yeah, the reason I've not simply said:
"He's dead, roll up a new one." Is because the guardsman is....incredibly likeable, mind of a child in the shell of a hulking brute. Also, our Inquisitor is MIA, so I can't really reassign a new Acolyte to them. Also, they're in deep cover....

Please help me FFG!

Does he have any fate points?

Nope Otherwise his harness would have caught on a protruding pole and he'd survive with broken limbs :S

Has anyone else looked into or examined the hole? If not then the only person who "knows" what's in it is you as the GM. Just come up with a sutiable description of the dark, dirty stinking cold store that the guard finds himself in - then let the players work out how to get him back out again.

Have him burn a fate point to have the machinery have a sudden glitch where is stops working, and he can climb his way out, but loses an arm or leg in the process maybe?

Now reading the reply that he has no fate points. Maybe have the one time of plot armour and give him a freebie as above. Or simply kill him.

Maybe it was all a nightmare or he has a flashback, bringing him back to the point of before jumping in, saying it wouldn't be a good idea?

Maybe the meat grinder wasn't on in the first place?

Etc. etc.

Just because he can't see the bottom doesn't mean it's bottom-less. If there's no source of light he won't be able to see far into it.

Aye, but I don't want the player to feel y'know...singled out for special treatment. He's running 2 characters, the feral guardsman and a Telepath Psyker. He's the best RPer in the group but, his guardsman has raced through his FPs, due to his mindset and his big sword. So yeah, I don't want him to feel singeld out, part of me is screaming "Kill him!" but the other part, the fun-loving part is saying "keep him alive, his harness got caught on something, he's handing above the grinder with a few broken bones..."

No Fate Points? Want to keep him alive anyway? Mangle him. The machine, clearly, was part disassembled for maintenance and so it didn't reduce him to a delicious pile of meat and ground bone. He will, however, have broken some bones on the way down, lacerated his flesh and generally been brutalised horribly. Give him a few long term disabilities (missing eye, horrific scars, etc) and a warning. It's up to the GM to make sure the PCs don't die like chumps, but you can't go saving the guy if he does something equally stupid again. Even a child knows to look through blood-stained portal before jumping through it.

Snidesworth said:

Very true, though he does have the mind of a child pretty much

I think I'll go with this solution, it's not like he survived intact after all

Is it running?

If not give him an agility check to avoid injury.

If it is running…..punish him for not listening to the grinding, gnashing teeth.

Let him have an agility check to only loose a couple toes, or a foot, or leg up to the knee before he crams his weapon of choice down into the grinder to stop the mechanical beast from eating him whole. Then drop is weapon or whatever he uses to stop the gears two grades of quality.

Every guardsman should know you never jump down a blind hole without dropping a frag grenade first.

ItsUncertainWho said:

How very true Yeah, I think I'll keep him alive. The Psyker will punish him enough, he's the guardsmans mentor

If they don't know what's down there there's nothing stopping yo from having him land in something like a pile of corpses, bodyparts, waste and other horrible stuff.

Down there are broken bones (on him), fear tests (pile of corpses), warp taint (it's full of handwavium) and/or a horrible disease (corpses) that costs a lot of thrones to cure and gives permanent effects like lower toughness or something.

I understand that it's a likeable character, but that shouldn't take away from the realism. Especually since the bloke is running the telepath thats an excellent chance to show the PC's "Think before you do". Did you even talk to the PC? Maybe he wants the guy to die so he can focus on one character. Remember if you single him out the PCs might not know, but you may fall into the game of playing favorates, and seeing that the blokes got two characters whats the harm in killing one off?

If you want it to be a running meat grinder down the hole (if you told them they hear heavy machinery etc) then roll a crit (allocate a crit) and have some of his armour / equiptment jam the machine commence a tense timed rescue.

If its not on have a fight start at the top with the enemies trying to push to ON switch.

Would this guardsman perhaps go by the name: "Private Michael J. Caboose"?

Cause if that's the case, he isn't "childlike"... He's retarded.

//Varnias Tybalt - just coming back from a Red vs Blue marathon

Warhammer 40k is dark and quite abusive. Your players should keep that in mind and the posted situation is prime for it.

Machinery Off:

If he survives a 1d10 (tearing damage) crit to his body (no armor, allow toughness, rending table, whatever armor was on his body is now shredded and useless) as he bounces around blades and machinery designed to turn a Grox into paste then he has sufficiently held up his end of the misery stick. Toss in some superficial damage to his extremities to make him sufficiently bloody (40k makes Quentin Tarantino look shy about blood after all).

-or-

If you just can't bring yourself to do that then I think the above advice of taking away his favorite limb. So either his "handedness" arm or his favorite leg just above the knee.

Machinery On:

Well he gets to do what guardsmen do best. Die screaming (albeit a very childlike and likeable scream). No fate points means bye-bye rain man. There's really no explanation for how he could otherwise survive (to me). You'll get yourself into a situation where the next person to do something rash and foolish will feel like you singled them out by not saving their character.

Some of the better stories to come out of roleplaying involve the sudden and sometimes ignoble deaths of the protagonists. Besides if the player can make you love one imperial guardsman then his replacement character will rock just as hard. As far as a replacemnet character you can try to work in an NPC until a new character can be created or work in a new pc from drawing on the local populace.

It's done now The players had split up into 2 teams, my GMPC and the guardsman on team Alpha, the Adept and the Psyker on team Beta (Note that the player had 2 characters, 1 on each team). I ended the first session with Lek jumping down the pit. Then I ran back in time to do Team Betas mission. They came out 2 levels beneath the floor Team Alpha were on, and could see the chute Lek would fall down. It led into a fully functioning meat grinder.

A "mysterious" assailant had beat Team Beta to the control panel for the grinder and had it runing fully, with a 50/50 chance of it shorting out before Lek jumped. We had to end the session before the combat, so there's a chance Lek can still be saved. He'll be hurt either way. 1 way being death

Kill him off. The player charged into it without taking adequate time to assess the situation and lept feet first into a nasty hole. Just let the machine grind him into a slurry of blood and ground bone. If he complains, he brought it on himself.

Torque2100 said: