the liegekiller said:

In the real grimdark game there's not supposed to be any trust between acolytes to begin with. They are just a motley crew assembled by an uncaring Inquisitor. Sure, some Inquisitor might be diplomatic enough to make their acolytes feel like they had a choice in being inducted into Inquisitorial service, the truth of the matter is that most Inquisitors don't give a **** about the acolytes' personal feelings nor if they actually want to serve or not.

While my character might have certainly reported the actions of the coward scum to "the boss", there really is no telling what the Inquisitor might do (since it all depends on said Inquisitors disposition). But any character I play in a game with a scum wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the scum runs away when things start to look ugly. In fact, my character might very well run along with him. (or better yet, catch up with him, trip him and run away and just hope that whatever monstrosity is chasing us will eat him and not bother chasing me down )

Trust between acolytes should be something that takes years if not decades of in-game time to take form. If all acolytes are just standup and decent from the get go, I wouldn't find the mood to be "grimdark" enough. These guys are supposed to be worse than any "cold war spy" ******* you can dig up, with their eyes completely fixed on rising to power and getting rid of their enemies while doing so without getting caught as a potential liar or incompetent by their boss the Inquisitor. THAT's grimdark.

Your "we're the stand up heroes of the Inquisition who loves puppies and would never betray our friends and allies!"-version of it is just a huge turn-off for me.

Varnias Tybalt said:

it might be a huge turn off for you and others, but, respectfully, you are all very much missing the point.

the Inquisition performs extremely sensitive operations that are deemed vital to state security. these operations are lethal and have a very real chance of death..or worse. it won't take years or decades to build a true 'working' trust. the key word is 'working'. i don't believe that they have to like each other, they don't have to be friends, but there should be a healthy respect of what they each bring to the table in terms of operational capabilities. any Inquisitor worth his salt will not bring together components that cannot do this. why you ask? very very simple. it jeopardizes any operations due to infighting. if you keep having to scrub assignments and taskings because your Acolytes have succumbed to mistrust, what you have may all be nice and 'grimdark' but in the end - OPERATIONAL FAILURE. running from a firefight and leaving your fellows out in the cold is a sure way to breed distrust and disrupt unit integrity. why would you even trust vital operations of such sensitivity to ppl that can't even act professional, calm and relatively level headed when under fire? the operational circumstances that you suggest would end more in failure than success. if you are in dispute of this ..ask any federal agent, military man or gangbanger that has seen combat.

if any of you have ever served either in the military or the police force, or even your high school football team. you will get this. you don't have to like everyone on your team. but you learn to either respect their capability and what they add, albeit grudgingly or you keep your mouth shut and do your job. the minute that somethings is done to disrupt the integrity of the team, things start to breakdown very rapidly.

the other aspect i will touch on is even more simple and more human. the Acolytes face something most citizens will never face, constant death, risk of serious injury and all manners of other vile fates. they will find themselves in the worst of the worst scenarios, fighting alongside each other. they will have to live with, bleed with and care for one another. this will produce very serious bonding in a very short span of time..they have very little choice but to try and trust each other. a kind of pack dynamic. it becomes a solid us vs. them mentality. this behaviour has been common for all of the history of mankind thus far, i see no reason why it should change to live up to this 'grimdark' notion.

there is no doubt there will be those that are through and through...everyman for himself, even under these circumstances but these will become the rarity. i like a betrayal as much as the next dark and seedy person on this forum. betrayal for a cause and just BEcause...make it count for something...that in my mind is good story telling and character building.

and you have me pegged very wrong. i am no Trekkie Prime Dirctive lets all get along type. the Acolytes are not stand up heroes of the Inquisition. they are men and women given a tasking to do where the price of failure is extremely grave. whether from their adversaries or from those that have hired them. that alone will form a different kind of mentality very quickly.

and puppies become big dogs. and dogs are mans best friend. or so i'm told.

the liegekiller said:

If the Inquisitor was really so concerned over the possible faliure of any operation he or she would have attended to that operation in person, or at the very least send a more trusted agent or Interrogator to oversee said operation, not just a bunch of small fry acolytes that have yet to prove themselves.

You could consider it "agent grooming", they toss the acolytes at situations and see how they pull through or who survives, and clean up their eventual mistakes with more capable agents afterwards. A sort of darwinian education process if you will, where the acolytes are expected to fight tooth and nail to pull through and come out on top. If this breeds competative rivalism within the group then that's even better, it just shows that the individual acolyte will be more than capable of handling a rival Inquisitor in the future once they have "grown up" to become Inquisitors themselves.

So your comparison with modern day military or police forces wouldn't really apply. This is The Inquisition not the Imperial Guard or the Adeptus Arbites. Also remember the fact that individual Inquisitors are divided by a common goal, not united in it. They would only cooperate with eachother if an impending threat seems large and threatening enough for them to consider cooperation. It would only be natural for individual Inquisitors to teach the same mindset to their own agents and possible successors.

If the Inquisition could be compared to the institutions you're refering to, you'd think that they would be more united and cooperating with eachother, instead of constantly backstabbing and keeping secrets from eachother, right?

Quite simply: Acolytes aren't "part of the team" until they have proven themselves. And you can be sure that if they are sent to conduct an operation where neither the Inquisitor or any of his or her senior agents will even bother to show up and lead it, then it is considered a "test" of some sort.

If you think of the Inquisition as a "police force" or a cohesive military unit you wouldn't be seeing the bigger picture. It's more like a faceless organisation filled to the brim with treacherous spies and double agents, divided by a common goal. "Divided we stand, united we fall" and all that. Not very effective in any standard sense, I agree. But the institution in question was based on paranoia after all. And somehow it seems to function, regardless of everyones unwillingness to cooperate as a whole cohesive unit.

the liegekiller said:

Are you sure we're reading the same source material? Most citizens face constant death and the risk of serious injury all the time. Heck any standard hive world is just one food shortage away from outright riot, and you know how the arbites tend to supress riots right? They don't even hesitate to use lethal force.

Even in such "civilized" areas as the Goldenhand in Hive Tarsus (the Scintillan equivalent of Wall Street) is an area where assassination is considered a perfectly legal and viable tactic in trade negotiations. Even the nobles are constantly out to poison, betray or have someone assassinated. And when we get to the Underworld aspect of Imperial society it gets even better!

Ruthless gangers, trade wars, underground cults, dangerous machinery in factories, the risk of starvation, extremely inhospitable living conditions, mutant beasts etc. I mean just take a look at the description of Hive Volg on Fenksworld. The heretic group called the Logicians once released a deadly plague on Fenksworld called "The Fenksworld gene atrocity" and it killed whole swathes of people on all the three major hives. It struck against hive Volg as well, but when they checked the deathcount it barely even rose above the standard daily deathcount in that hellhole of a hive city.

So I have to ask you: what do you mean by "most imperial citizens will never face, constant death, risk of serious injury and all manners of other vile fates"? From pretty much all descriptions of Imperial society that stuff is pretty standard in every aspect of said society. I'd say that only a lucky minority of Imperial citizens won't have to face these things (perhaps if they were born on a tranquil pleasure world or a low populated agri-world or something where there's only farmlands as long as the eye can see).

That's grimdark for ya!

the liegekiller said:

Good for you. But I disagree with your view about instant teamwork and work-trust between acolytes. If not even the Inquisition as an organisation can stick to such virtues then I really don't see why acolytes would. I'd rather see their initial relationship as a "use and abuse"-kind where every acolyte will look after his or her own hide first and foremost, but still see a use for sticking with the group. For instance a Cleric won't know much about tech-stuff, and while he'd probably hate the guts of the arrogant and heretical tech-priest (remember, the AdMech are, after all, an allowed form of heresy), the techpriest in the group might be very useful because he's got knowledge that the Cleric lack.

If you look at the dynamic between the different classes you'll see that they aren't designed to be "trusting teammates" at all. I mean in the same group you could play an Arbitrator and a Scum. Basically sticking the authoritive policeman in the same group as a thieving, drugdealing murderer. That doesn't really scream: "Yeah! Teammate buddy buddy!" to anyone.

The same can be said about Cleric's vs Psykers and Techpriests

Assassins vs... Well everyone (being either a misanthropic douchebag, backstabbing smoothtalker/liar or just a plain unhinged killer they don't tend to make very good friends or even being very trustworthy)

In fact, the only class that would really know something about genuine teamwork and bonding under fire is the Guardsman, and he or she would most likely just miss his/her armybuddies rather than wanting to trust and bond with these civilian douchebags who haven't even seen a real battlefield in their lifetime.

The Adept? Well we all know what adepts are like. The others might do good as meatshields if the group comes under fire, but in truth the adept is the arrogant smartypants who knows everything and is usually not the most sociable guy or gal.

If im to be honest, I'd say that the "cooperation and bonding"-game is Rogue Trader, not Dark Heresy. Dark Heresy is more like the "cloak and dagger/secret double agents of the Illuminati"-game. The career paths avaliable and the way the Inquisition works just drop way too many hints to this in my opinion.

@ Varnias

your stance does not surprise me, it wholly reflects your fundamental lack of understanding of operational cooperation. regardless of what year you live in, where you come from, and what xenos breed you may be. it is operational cooperation that gets things done. i used the concept of the military or law enforcement to put this across to you. it is not a matter of devout trust nor friendship as much as unit cohesivity and operational integrity. the very same principals are in play. even as rabblish as the orks may be, when they go to war..they are a force to be reckoned with, until they implode from potential in-fighting. the Dark Eldar are totally selfish but even they understand on some level the means of cooperation for protection and profits through raids. human beings are no different. the Acolytes unite for common purpose or implode.

of course you will most likely disagree with this, i would submit to you however that most Acolytes (players) would much rather have a unified cohesive team, than one severely fractured by constant and serious breaches of trust and operational protocols. one can note the times we have seen those that engage in your ideal of the grimdark., the posters refer to these players as 'problems' with some dismay. competitive rivalism is fine and can even be healthy but when it leads down dangerous corridors, threatening operations. it becomes useless.

from my understanding of an Inquisitional team, few of the Acolytes will be Interrogators or even slotted as being such. most of them will either be agents, dead or retired. DH sells that concept that all can become an Interrogators and potentially this is so, but goes against the fluff. It is a mere RPG aspect of being able to transcend ones postion. nothing more. i don't dispute the idea of agent grooming to an extent, but the only ppl one cares to groom are the Interrogators to be, those that have defined themselves, shown to have 'the right stuff'. this will not be ALL of his or her acolytes. this is further compounded by the consideration that an Inquisitor may have numerous teams of Acolytes running simultaneously.

and throw away operations? i wasn't aware that an Inquisitor would waste his/her time with operations that any local enforcer or Arbite can handle. they are sent for the sole purpose of 'investigating allegations of heresy and other charges of deviant behaviour'. they are also 'exceptional individuals from other paths, whose unique personal attributes have brought them to the attention of a member of the Inquisition'. whether or not the Inquisitor views them as fodder one can pointlessly debate. what is at issue is your idea of 'throw away' operations. you seem to be looking at all things in a very isolated vacuum.

an investigation starts with something of interest. the Inq sends the new guys. it is a minor affair and could be nothing. but he'll run with it and see what shakes free but not worthy of his attentions. however, the Inq usually has no idea of what will turn up. when a minor matter becomes something of import, something on a scale unforeseen. maybe i'm mistaken, but isn't this how most GMs run early operations? if you happen to run yours in such a manner that the Acolytes go to investigate suspected heresy and it turns out to be a wild goose chase regularly until they 'prove' themselves, then so be it. I reckon this is not very common though.

you asked 'If the Inquisition could be compared to the institutions you're refering to, you'd think that they would be more united and cooperating with eachother, instead of constantly backstabbing and keeping secrets from eachother, right? '

actually no. on a larger organizational level. there is always divergent views on what the mandate should be. on what sorts of missions should be carried out on, how they should be carried out. the looseness of the organization will determine how these factors will be affected. again, this is another factor that works regardless of modern organizations or DH ones. the Inquisition runs a loose ship. the Arbites run a lock tight one. the very nature of the Inquisition allows this to be so. that does not mean however, that the microcosm of the organization...the Inq and his Acolytes will run the same way. the Acolytes are given a certain amount of free reign. a CERTAIN amount. but even acting on his authority, they cannot do as they please. they cannot cause a cockup and there be no repercussions.

yeah i am reading the same source material that you are. your just buying the grimdark concept hook, line and sinker. considering the trillions of human beings the Imperium is comprised of..not every planet is besieged by war, not every planet has problems of rampant heresy, not every citizen in a hiveworld will be afflicted by crime, not every world is a deathworld. most citizens will live and die out of sheer mindless boredom and worked to death. ultimately, the avg imperial citizen will not be as exposed to danger as the Acolytes will be. now if you are to say to me that the masses of citizens are exposed to such threats on a constant basis, then hell any joe shmo can become a derring do Acolyte. having seen all the terrors the universe can throw at them.

and nowhere in my text did i say anything about 'instant teamwork and trust'. there would be a very quick realization, that they have no choice but to work together or retire from the Inquisitors service.

and i don't know how many RPGs you have played but they all more or less offer these basic archetypical character classes. the fighter, the thief, the cleric, the assassin, arcane power user..etc...ur point is rather moot. at the end, the reason why you have a team put together is FOR the sake of common goal and cooperation for whatever reasons. competitive rivalry sure. outright fostering of distrust for no other reason than just because, definetly not. not unless the story arc was about to take a serious turn.

The whole point of the Acolyte system is to forge that operational competency, its not going to happen overnight or even between ranks 1 and 5

Artaxerxes said:

its not a matter of operational competency. it is a matter of building operational cooperation and unit cohesivity. lets take our posters example, of the Scum running from the engagement leaving his comrades there and not responding to comms. how could you seek to allow this individual back into the team after such a thing. even if you didn't trust the Scum to begin with. that distrust is further enhanced. you will always have to worry if he's going to do a runner again..or worse...maybe sell you and the rest of the team out to your enemies for a nice sum. again a matter of operational cooperation.

and what Inquisitor has a need of any man or woman of the Emperor that doesn't have the mettle to give his/her very life for a righteous cause?

An Inquisitor looks for people able to use there heads, someone able to judge the odds and make a decision to retreat to live and fight another day and report back what they find is useful, a corpse is not. The Imperium is filled with fanatics willing to die for there cause, its not filled with people willing to use there heads for something other than hitting people

True this is going to cause problems for the other players if they are foolish enough to fight to the last man and yet somehow survive but the Scum did the right thing, he knew dying would be pointless so retreated

“The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.”

Pretty much what Atarxerxes said: At the point where it became apparent that a drug dealer and his entourage had refractor fields, power swords and a frigging Praetorian, turning tail and running was the only correct option as this meant getting the news across to the characters' superiors.

I will agree as i have stated previously that there is no doubt a tactical withdrawal would have been the very wise choice. i wonder how much they committed themselves to entring the room, through the one doorway.

psyker enters. other 2 are outside. arbite enters. leaving scum. servitor opens up at some point...why they didn't beat it then and there. who knows? how they managed to get trapped by the drug lord and his henchmen. who knows? when the scum ran they should have all hightailed it and regrouped. know when to run. know when to fight.

but these are telling of tactical ineptitude. not cowardice.

the problem lies in this part of the posters explanation:

'Now, I don't mind him escaping to help us later - but he never did... And no response over the vox is the worst thing... Imagine yelling for help, knowing he can hear you, and getting no response... This seems like a treason to me...'

note. he did NOT escape to help later. a non-responsive comm where nothing untoward had happened to him. just dead silence. how any of you can justify such a thing is completely beyond me. the problem is not him legging it. its legging it for reason other than sheer cowardice. he afftected no responsible post run action. nothing so lofty as a report to Inquisitor X. just legged it.

i agree with both of you. had the scum high tailed and filed a hasty report to his master. i would have agreed with everybody else here to a large extent. but the man didn't even fire a shot. no suppressive fire to attempt a GET THE F@% # OUTTA HERE!

From what i read the point was not that the Scum ran, the problem was that he left without getting his mates out. If there was a dispute after the enemy strength has been discovered, and the others decided to still go on and the scum stated that hes not going to do this and then legged it, its understandable and maybe tolerable. But from what i read he initiated the plan and then just hoofed it, which is in my understanding not acceptable, not even if the other Acolytes have a Mother Theresa complex.

Liegekiller is right on the Wolfpack Mentality in RL (but most ppl can not understand it i guess.I dont mean it as insult, its just how and where you grow up and get trained), but this is a game so everyone can play it how he and his group like it.

In the end it comes down to as if you as players are fine with it or not, cause its your game and you do it for fun not work or as a simulation, and its not worth to break the group because of such stuff.

I wonder if things could be dealt with by explictly handling a mechanic for abandonment.

Like "you can flee from a fight and leave you buddies to die, but you loose 1 or all fate points and they gain yours"

Would make acting in character an interesting RP strategy choice.

the liegekiller said:

I justify it in the following way:

1)He is a scum.

2)The rest of you were stupid for doing anything other than running like hell.

3)Suppressive fire doesn't work on servitors. Nor on a lot of high rank foes with good will or the right talents.

4)It seems unlikely that he would have been any help or changed the end result. On the other hand if you had been captured he could have summoned help.

5)He survived unhurt, while the rest of the group was captured and could have been killed. It hardly seems like a good result if he was in the same boat as you.

6)It seems like you are upset for him not whole heartedly wanting to be a bullet shield for your mistakes.

the liegekiller said:

Hey, whoawhoawhoa! Getting a bit personal now are we? With all due respect, you don't know me nor do you have any real insight to whatever I might lack in any fundamental nor even a superficial sense. So if we want to keep this sensible, let's not assume stuff about our respective personalities or any information or understanding we might have as private persons, shall we?

My stance in this is based on what I expect from a grimdark setting (which im very familiar with, not only in 40K but from a variety of sources), and from what I've read in the fluff. Im not the one trying to apply real world tactics or lines of thinking to a fictional setting that is fundamentally lacking these things here, you are.

the liegekiller said:

This is what im talking about, you're trying too hard to make sense of a setting that doesn't make much sense to begin with. You are applying modern day thinking in a setting so alien and so distant from our own and simply disregard aspects of that setting which have been described as integral to it.

I take a different approach. I try to find viable excuses for why certain things within that setting does work, even when these aspects don't make sense or could be done "better" if you simply applied modern reasoning and thinking to it.

And im telling you know that I think you're confusing exploitation with cooperation in the examples you give here. Whether it be dark eldar, orks or humans, they frequently exploit, manipulate and use eachother to further their own ends. Orks do it for the simple reason to get stuck in as fast as possible, dark eldar do it because their society promotes it, and partly because they delight in doing it (twisted creatures as they are). And humans do it because in their minds it is the only viable alternative. You could say that arrogance is very much promoted in Imperial society, as long as that arrogance do not lead you astray to the path of damnation (which of course it actually does and qite often).

So to be honest, I think you're confusing arrogance and manipulation/exploitation with trust and cooperation. An acolyte or an Inquisitor is onl as likely to cooperate with other people as long as it furthers their own interests. Because in their mind, they are the only people capable of being righteous and competent, and all others are beneath their righteous nature and skill. Just read one of the many platitudes from the Inquisition like "trust in your suspicion" and "divided we stand, united we fall" and others like them and you should see my point.

They don't breed teamplayers in the Inquisition, they breed independent dominators. People who are versatile enough to get things done on their own, and if they don't they are certainl capable of making other people with more specialized skills or insights to do their bidding when necessary.

the liegekiller said:

That's their prerogative, but it is a little irrelevant to this discussion between you and me, since we are discussing the nature of the Inquisition and the social dynamics between acolytes. Unless you're hoping to get some sort of "majority" backing to your arguments which wouldn't really win you anything nor prove a point.

The thing is, they are mostly destroying the fun for themselves when they view players and scenarios like the ones you mention as "problems". Which is why I tend to give good advice about focusing on the story and not taing in-game stuf too personal. When you do that, you can appriciate betrayal or cowardice preformed by your "fellow acolytes" in game simply because it adds interesting spice to the campaign. It's basically something with a huge potential of making the story truly spectacular, and if you achieve that, who cares whether some PC's go the traitor route or if one's own PC die or is horribly injured because of it?

the liegekiller said:

Yeah but the thing is that Inquisitors can often go to pretty sadistic and manpulative extremes in making sure that fresh acolytes are pushed to their limits, just in order to bring some clarity to which of them are of Interrogator material and which of them aren't. So during their "freshman period" all acolytes are most likely put to the test, if only to weed out the weak. Because in the Inquisition, if you're not a leader then you are a follower, and followers are generaly considered as disposable tools. Some tools are more useful than others of course, but still just tools. Hence a process is needed to separate the leaders from the tools.

the liegekiller said:

Where have I stated that an Inquisitor sends them on a wild goose chase? It's a gamble on the Inquisitor's part, sure. But the fact remains that if the Inquisitor genuinely believed that any suspect situation was really a matter of grave importance, then h wouldn't send rank 1 acolytes to check it out.

The stuff that they are tasked at investigating are just those unknown unknowns, where true danger could lurk but the Inquisitor doesn't have sufficient evidence to commit too much time or resources to it himself, so he sends some acolytes to check it out. But even an Inquisitor would know from sheer experience that even the most minute suspicions can turn out to be sector shattering heresies at work, but it's a chance he'll take (he'll pretty much have to take it because he can't be everywhere at once).

Most Inquisitors simply don't have the time to spare worrying about what "might" happen, so they put it off as: "Either the problem is small enough for the acolytes to handle OR in case they discover something too big, the report back to me OR... they die investigating the matter."

The last of the alternatives is of course the one that the Inquisitor least hopes for. Though some of the really evil bastards might just see it as a good form of darwinian selection where the weak die out.

the liegekiller said:

And if that were true, there wouldn't be an Inquisition, because all acolytes eventually promoted to Inquisitors themselves would just be naive and lollygagging buffoons who would be outsmarted by the plotting heretics in no time.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the Inquisition promotes independence and suspicion. Not only against normal Imperial citizens but against your colleagues as well. We have numeous Inquisitorial platitudes to support this. The difference between us and acolytes of the fortyfirst millenium is hat thy actually take these platitudes to heart.

And I still claim that you're trying to hard to apply modern day thinking to an alien setting. This in turn will most of the time contradict the fluff.

the liegekiller said:

I didn't say that joe shmo have seen "all" the terrors of the universe, what im saying is that the majority of Imperial citizens don't live under such civilized conditions as you and me, and they are very much aware of the fact that death is everywhere. Quite frankly, I think you're wrong when you say that "most" imperial citizens aren't subjected to this. Just your standard run-o-the-mill hive is a barely contained powderkeg of crime and heresy and brutal authoritarian institutions. And hiveworld are the most common Imperial worlds where the majority of Imperial citizens are gathered.

But the thing is that being subjected to matters of deadly risk every day isn't considered "special" in the Imperium, nor would the Inquisition consider it to make a person into "acolyte material". It's their innate abilities to rise above the drudging masses and their honed edge that makes them viable candidates. Something that sets them apart from their fellow man, whether it be a natural killer instinct, extreme intelligence, priviliged upbringing, extraordinary ability to adapt and be versatile, ways of making important social connections etc. etc.

the liegekiller said:

There is no retirement plan from the Inquisition. At least not for fresh acolytes, since they are expected to either rise in the ranks or die in their service. Only a few have been able to recieve a decent retirement from the Inquisition, and these are people who are often extremely close with their patron Inquisitor, not fresh acolytes.

the liegekiller said:

No my point would have been moot if the ascribed traits and personality of the DH classes were as "free" and came with so much choice as they do in other RPG's. But in the WH40K setting that's either very unlikely or in some cases outright impossible, making my point very viable.

Also, outright fostering of distrust is just means to actually making the stor arc take a serious turn. It makes it more fun and unpredictable when everyone has their own agenda

Dalnor Surloc said:

Well put.

And also, even if some Inquisitors might be idealistic and have an extreme sense of courage, honour and all that bull, there's always gonna be some Inquisitors who are stone-cold pragmatics who would actually promote that sort of behaviour in one of their acolytes.

Varnias Tybalt said:

my apologies Varnius. that was not meant to be a personal attack. and my apologies once again if it was construed that way.

You are totally right. I AM trying to apply real world tactics and lines of thinking to this setting.

regardless of the age, the era, the culture, the tradition the same bonds of cooperation whether for matters of altruism, duty, greed and exploitation have always remained the same. I have travelled all over this planet. large cities to small remote villages. The same factors hold true. if we were arguing any race, the factors would still be the same. no man nor xenos is an island. to be able to build a temple you need cooperation. to be able to go on a military venture, you need cooperation. to be able to bea Rogue Trader, you need cooperation. to be a team of Acolytes in the field, you need to cooperate. the reasons are largely irrelevant. it is the operational cooperation that matters not trust.

even in a DH setting, I'm sure someone on an Acolyte team is going to be more than a lil displeased that their partner turned tail and ran during a planned operation. again, I don't see them as alien as you think. everything i have read in DH shows just how alike we are. organizations that rarely talk to each other, the right hand has no idea what the left is doing, ppl going rogue, criminals, heretics, the faceless masses, greed and avarice, traitors, profiteers, the holy and righteous, the bold and dutiful etc etc. none of this is alien to me. it seems rather business as usual. all of these things have spawned from very real human qualities not a vacuum of alieness. humans having their own agenda is nothing new. human suspicion and mistrust is nothing new.

this was where my comment on operational cooperation came from. not a designated personal attack on your person. again my apologies.

while I will agree that the 40K genre is decidedly dark and very cool i can't say i buy all the fluff...hook, line and sinker. i'm not one to to try and fit a square peg into a very round hole. we shall agree to disagree as to how we percieve the DH genre.

Dalnor Surloc said:

1) i don't think it would matter if he was an arbitrator or a guardsman. its either he made the right decsion in your eyes or he didn't. the Scum career path doesn't reflect coward in my readings.

2) it was badly played tactically i will agree.

3) this is a tough call which requires you to stand on in game actions or what you know of game mechanics. your character, unless he has encountered on previously, would have no idea that suppressive fire would not work. are you role playing or rule manipulating?

4) your prolly right but he didn't even attempt with a plan that he initiated. he COULD have summoned help. he didn't.

5) of course he survived unhurt. man turned tailed and skedaddled. Acolytes are killed in the line of service.

6) i made no mistakes here. not my game.

did the player have the right to have his Scum character turn tail and run. sure. he controls his character. on the opposite side, and fairly so. the other players have the right to have their players murderously angry. role playing is an intersection.

Guys, I appreciate your input and great thoughts you've put up on this topic. the liegekiller, Varnias Tybalt, I believe BOTH of you have a point. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Cooperation is an essential part of any Acolyte's job, because of their very specialized nature. The Inquisitors can afford to "stand divided" only because of the multitude of tools they have at their disposal. Nevertheless, Acolytes are a very rare breed of humans. They are thrust into a such varying and difficult situations, that surviving them may spawn an illusion of grandeur in anyone's heart. Which may lead both to greatness and doom.

There is also a way of suppressing your personality in favor of the Greater Good (no pun intended). This way is a lot less common and a lot harder to master...

As for my decision... Your humble servant, Initiate of Scholastica Psykana, Crimson Aeon N will act as if nothing happened. It is not his job to judge his mates. Killing the Scum would only cast darker shadow on a failed operation, and hiding a murder from debriefing interrogators would be terribly hard.

N would probably go even further - doing everything in his power to protect the traitor - either to inspire faith into his heart, or to be there, when the traitor fails dishonorably - to put him out of his misery.

N has got bigger problems on his hands now - a mission with nearly all the leads destroyed, a chaos mark carved into his skull, a debt of 150 000 Thrones, that he took from Inquisitor's coffers and now has very little chance to pay (due to failing the raid on a drug-dealer's den) and responsibility for throwing a party, which ended in a bloody pit fight between nobles, drugged with Ghostfire pollen, for a prize of a virgin girl, chained to an Aquila.

And guess who won the fight, by tearing out a jaw of house Krynn's young noble sire? And then failed to suppress his primal instincts before a naked prize, strapped to a holy icon of God-Emperor?

The same person, who won a similar fight on Iocanthos and was initiated into deeper mystery of life and death cycle of the planet.

Noble Regulator Cain, of course. Arbitrator who fought by my side against unbeatable odds. Arbitrator who detonated a frag grenade under his own feet to avoid being captured.

This world is anything but black and white.

I really have no right to judge any of these poor wretches. Except for myself. Which I will commence to do immediately. *Sound of a gas-torch igniting*

the liegekiller said:

To be fair though, most Imperial citizens have dealt with or seen servitors before (I base this on hive worlds and that they are the most populated worlds and one of the most common types of worlds in the setting), most people would probably know that servitors don't really have any survival instincts and they would probably not "duck and cover" if someone was shooting at them. I think it would be pretty common knowledge for pretty much any imperial citizen in the service of the =][ =

@Varnias

To be fair though, most Imperial citizens have dealt with or seen servitors before (I base this on hive worlds and that they are the most populated worlds and one of the most common types of worlds in the setting), most people would probably know that servitors don't really have any survival instincts and they would probably not "duck and cover" if someone was shooting at them. I think it would be pretty common knowledge for pretty much any imperial citizen in the service of the =][ =

Same here. Knowing that Spray&Pray may not keep enemies down depending on their professionalism, fanaticism or outright inhumanity should be common knowledge.

@Liegekiller

note. he did NOT escape to help later. a non-responsive comm where nothing untoward had happened to him. just dead silence. how any of you can justify such a thing is completely beyond me.

How about "vox discipline"? Responding to such a call for help when you know your enemy has some high-tech available likely means broadcasting your position, which is precisely what the scum should have avoided.

Cifer said:

You really think that a rank 3 Scum would know something about "vox-discipline"? I think his silence was a sign of failing to come up with any plan to help us.

]N[ said:

Well, if they can learn Ciphers (Acolyte) as early as rank 2, it wouldn't be a far fetch to assume that they might pick up a few tricks about vox discipline.

Also, have the gamemaster actually told you that the Scum just refused to answer and simply ran away not looking back, or are you just assuming he did? I mean, you were in a location sporting a high-tech battleservitor after all, who knows if they had vox-dampeners or some similar equipment active in the vicinity? Also you do know that a micro-bead only works within roughly a kilometre's range right? And that range is even further shortened depending on how many obstacles in the way of the signals path.

Let's just say that a micro-bead can lose connection quite quickly in places like a standard hive (lot's of rock and steel and other electronic interference for such a weak signal to travel through).

Oh no, the connection was ok, I'm sure about that. We could hear him breathe

I think your being insensitive, he had to listen to your girlish screams as you were captured and tortured. He's going to be scarred for life

To bludgeon the diceased equine further:

I think we can generally agree that this particular Op can be chalked-up as a complete cluster-fornication. You have a relatively inexperienced team of an Arbitrator, Sanctionite and a scummer crashing into a (presumably) unscouted warehouse belonging to a drug lord under investigation, not by the Magistrates, but by the Holy Ordos... They are wearing flak and are armed with small arms. They encounter a battle-servitor armed with a heavy bolter and someone coming at them with a power sword and wearing a personal force field. Just restating this to be sure I have the setting correct.

If I have the scene correctly then the Scum made the wise decision. He did so in a selfish manner, but that does not remove the wisdom. My team is larger and is blessed with three abject killing machines in addition to the usual array of specialists, and most of them are not pushovers either. I mention this only because when they realize that they are in over their heads (and it DOES happen sometimes!) they are prone to execute a fighting withdrawal or hunker down behind the heaviest piece of cover they can find and call for backup. If they lack backup for whatever reason, they would probably haul-ass out of there. Dead agents do NOT file reports, and the next team sent in would not know about the suspiciously well equipped drug lord (possibly a Logician agent, given his vulgarly overgeared status); All they would likely know is that one of their Inquisitor's field teams has failed to report in for the last 9 days and could they please look into why? It of course gets worse: Since two Inquisitorial agents were captured by the criminal (and likely Heretic) it is only natural that he would do everything in his (aparently considerable) power to erase all traces of his dealings. Can never be too careful when dealing with the Inquisition after all, those bastards are SCARY!

The one thing that was not made clear in the thread: Did they have access to any sort of backup? The boss on speed-dial (unlikely)? A team of Magistratum Enforcers or an Arbites squad standing by a few blocks away? An Interrogator and his own team playing nursemaid to the rookies? If the team lacked resources of this nature or were under strict orders to maintain their undercover roles then making a vox-call for help would be rather pointless. If they DID have something and the channel remained clear then this is a failure of duty.

And speaking of failure, once the scum ran for it and the ill-advised fear-bomb backfired our effectively-solo psyker could and should have grabbed the retching Arbitrator by his combat harness and dragged him out the door. So now assuming the scummer makes it back to the team's Inquisitor and the missing agents are located they will have the fun task of explaining how they managed to get branded (internally no less!) with the mark of one of the Ruinous Powers in such a way that they don't spend the rest of their (short) lives being tortured in ways that would make a Dark Eldar disturbed.

Thought for the Day: Duty trumps dignity.

Have these Acolytes not reported in for a while? I mean, no offence, each individual's game is sacred and if you're having fun then what seems 'correct' to others can go to hell and all that.

However, it would appear to me that the Inquisitor in question falls somewhat upon on the "batsh*t insane" side of Radicalism, if he is allowing all this to go on. Obviously I lack most of the details here, and perhaps you are in deep cover or in some other way too important to be rightously slaughtered for your sacrilige at this time.

Moving on to other matters, ones in which I may provide assistance rather than hasty judgement. You and another in your cell have heretical carvings on your skull? Far from a little matter, but an option has been generated by this one's blessed cogitator. And while it is somewhat more complicated than simply shearing off the piece of skull in question, slapping a metal plate on top and, *ahem*, "giving it a quick bless", the basic mechanics of it are sound, and would provide an acceptable iterim solution in any case.

EDIT ; Holy crap, I've found the edit button. This is awesome . Ahem, I mean..... Some food for thought, DH style.

"Understanding is overrated." Stormtrooper Sergeant Havlock.

"Fear is the begining of Wisdom." An inversion of the actual quote, but I disagree.