Tonight's session, which my group's second session into desolation of the dead derailed quite significantly from what I had planned. It's not too bad, in fact it's more than salvageable but I thought I'd share the story as it we found quite entertaining and it highlights how an investigation which is progressing well can go wrong so quickly. Warning- a wall of text follows but hopefully you'll find it as funny as we did!
My group (which consists of a female arbitrator seeker, a male outcast assassin pariah, a male Imperial Guard medic and a fiery male priest) had made surprisingly good progress. After visiting the murder scene at Charnel House 17 and scouring it from top to bottom, visiting Cog Lostok who managed to identify the oath cog of the body with the pendant as Darnis Fayne, they found themselves in the scrap market looking for people to question on the Faynes. Other than working out that the illegal body trade going on in the Gallowsway is definitely related to what happened at Charnel House 17 (they've not picked up the hints I've given them thus far that this body trade needs investigating), they've got a good idea of what's going on. In fact in their idle musing, the imperial guard medic pretty much correctly guessed exactly what happened, that Darnis Fayne was trying to reanimate the dead and that it went badly wrong although as of yet they can't prove it. Whilst they haven't visited the other Charnel Houses yet, I thought now was a good time for the Blessed Flesh to make their move to try and retrieve the pendant.
The group decided to listen in on the locals and ask a few innocent questions. Unfortunately one of the locals mentioned how no one liked the Faynes. In my best yokel accent to try and make it sound like peasant superstition, I had the peasant say how 'a lot of us don't trust them Faynes, why I hear their mother consorted with daemons!' Someone else in the crowd piped up that was just superstition and that people were jealous of the Fayne family's success... Anyway, you can probably see where this is going. The priest overhead this and was like 'DAEMONS!? THE GUILTY MUST BE PURIFIED WITH FIRE!' and started whipping the crowd up into a frenzy. This is when two members of the Blessed Flesh make their move. Dressed up as enforcers they approach the group (other than the priest with his rabble-rousing) and ask them how the investigation is going and that Oath-Captain Nils had managed to find an expert who could identify the source of the pendant, if the group were to give the two 'enforcers' the pendant they'd return it to the captain and and let the players (who I should say, were posing as members of the Arbites) continue the wider investigation. The players' reactions were quite correctly one of mistrust but told the enforcers they need to calm the growing crowd of civilians before things got out of hand.
Staying in character as sanctionaries, the fake enforcers agree and start to disperse the crowd with violence. At this point, the priest yelled out 'LOOK, THE DAEMONS ATTACK US!' and all hell breaks lose. The mob start surrounding the 'enforcers' and lay into them whilst the priest watches on, the medic and the assassin leap to the aid of the 'sanctionaries' whilst the seeker gets on the radio and requests reinforcements from Nils...who promptly agrees but tells the seeker that none of her men are in the area...
Combat continues, a few civilians have their skulls cracked open but precede to mob the first 'sanctionary' and beat him into a bloody pulp. The warband (other than the priest who continues his holy oration which I rule gives the mob bonuses to their weapon skills) decide they need to question this second enforcer and find out who he really is, but he manages to make a break for it. Excellent I thought, this is the perfect time to run the chase encounter and lead the players to the Fayne Mortuarius... This doesn't happen, the assassin had positioned himself so that even with negative modifiers it was easy for him to grab the sanctionary and put manacles on him. It soon becomes clear their new prisoner is not going to talk so they radio Nils and inform her they have a prisoner to interrogate at Purity Gate.
It's about 3am by the time they arrive at Purity Gate (i had the investigation kick off at 10pm). The seeker and assasin follow Nils to the interrogation chamber so they can begin getting answers. The medic and the priest decide they need to pray and then sleep, I informed them their was a small prayer altar in the barracks a few free bunks. This was when things started to go bad.
The interrogation of the prisoner isn't massively successful but they managed to pry out of him the name of cult he belongs to and that Ferrue Fayne is his master before he passes out. Back in the barracks however, the priest begins praying really loudly (please note that everything that happens from this point is completely in character, so I allowed it but ****, I was not expecting this). There are 5 others in the room, all sanctionaries trying to get some sleep. I off handly say that most are too exhausted from witnessing the horror of the mass killing earlier so don't wake up, one however grumbles in his sleep and turns over, so his back is towards you. The priest takes this as a HUGE insult, takes out his shock maul and brings it down with a hard crack on the enforcer's skull. This wakes up the other enforcers who in their sleepy state don't realise who the priest and the medic character are. All they know is they're being attacked in the night and immediately rush the players causing a fist fight to break out (the medic was doing his best to calm everyone down). One enforcer doesn't get involved but instead pulls an alarm which causes a siren to ring throughout the facility, immediately bringing a hault to the discussion the other players were having with Nils as they rush to find out what the hell is going on.
Needles to say Nils is incensed that after offering the players lodgings for the night, the first thing they do is attack her men in their sleep. Not caring that she believes the players are arbitrators, she isn't convinced by the apologies of the players and their complete lack of respect and is shocked by their behavior and orders them to leave Purity Gate with stern promises that she'll be contacting their Marshall at the start of the day cycle. She mutters something under her breath that she can't believe the Arbitrators, a group she's in awe of would act in such a manner. So the players find themselves out in the freezing cold, being rained on at about 3.30am with nowhere to rest. I award them all a point of fatigue for their efforts.
They decide the best thing to do was find shelter and get some rest. Good move I think. They decide on Charnel House 17 where the mass killing took place because 'the local enforcers have probably cleared up the bodies by now'. Well, the players had instructed the enforcers to do this at the start of the campaign so I thought fair, the bodies would be gone by now although the place would be still pretty bloody but whatever, "you start marking your way back to the Charnel House" I inform them. The medic storms off, annoyed beyond reason at the priests actions. The assassin follows him and the seeker asks the priest just what the hell he thought he was doing (note, the players were angry at the character for making their lives difficult but not the player playing the priest and were in fact really impressed: he played his character really well even though he knew it would result in bad things happening to him).
The players arrive at the charnel house, pick the lock to get inside and decide to settle for the night. By this time it's 4 in the morning and I inform them at most, they'll be able to get an hour's sleep because the morning shift start at 5. The medic offers to keep watch. The others fall asleep except for the priest says his character can't sleep, he just lies there looking up, contemplating the day's events. Okay I say, the seeker and the assassin can recover a point of fatigue for the hour's nap they..."Sorry GM", says the medic, "I don't want to do this but you know my character's back story, it's what he would do...". I sigh inwardly knowing what's coming up..."procede" I say.
"I draw my sword and attack the priest whilst yelling 'you're a danger to the mission and everyone around you!' " replies the medic player. The sword comes down sharply on the priests left leg, causing it to partially come off at the knee causing massive blood loss. I inform the seeker and the assassin that they regain their point of fatigue, they got barely 5 minutes sleep before they were woken by this. The assassin immediately leaps into action and grapples the medic to stop him from continuing his attack. The seeker desperately tries to staunch the flow of blood from the priests leg but lacks the medical know how, only the medic can but he refuses to help! As the priest lies there bleeding out, without anyone to help him he announces, "I'm probably dead anyway, I'm going to try and cauterize the wound!" and promptly takes his hand flamer out and ignites his leg. The player rolls incredibly highly for damage and precedes to set himself on fire, taking him to 10 critical wounds, incinerating the rest of the leg, killing him (hilarious as the last time he died, it was also by being set on fire). The character burns a fate point and the seeker drags him outside into the rain and puts out the flames, noting how as she drags the priest's body away, the lower half of his left leg doesn't come with him.
That is where we ended the session...everyone was in fits of laughter and a great time was had. My job now is to workout what we're going to do with the priest (they have some ideas but even if taken into medical care it will be weeks before the priest is capable of field duty again) and I've somehow got to get my players to head into the underhive and towards gantry. Either way, this has been a great campaign so far!
