Desolation of the Dead Act III {Spoilers}

By gorthano, in Dark Heresy Gamemasters

{spoilers} How did you or your GM run the final confrontation in the old STC shell?


The book suggests seven encounters with seven cultists each but this sounds a little combat heavy and it doesn't really give much of an idea of how to frame the encounters so as to make them exciting and not repetitious. It also doesn't give much insight as to why the cultists wouldn't group up more heavily.


Any insight or tips would be great.


I swear this was posted somewhere else... o.o

I'm actually about to begin Desolation of the Dead after finishing Dark Pursuits with my party. Do you have any advice or clarification that you can offer for anything in DotD?

Yeah, I asked in a few different forums.

If your players are being subtle, you might need to give them a nudge in order for them to have much of a relationship with Oath Captain Nils.

{spoilers} How did you or your GM run the final confrontation in the old STC shell?

Hi there!

STC-shell? Oh, that old machinery that was meant to lay there, right? I exchange it for something else completely :)

I installed a little "Methan Gas Refinery Station" that was used to provide auxillary energy in times of need but has fallen into disuse for several reasons. Image something akin to a small oil rig next to a large sewage basin. I even had BOUGHT a map for it, I simply cannot find the link. Well, it was not a map but a picture from the side and one from above, which I edited, but it helped.

The thing had a kind of "central tower" for working rooms and coordination, two different platform levels with tanks and lots and lots of pipes (arranged around the centre) and high up and away from the main body was an old hovercraft platform where the actual ritual took place. I placed the following obstacles in the form of locations manned with enemies to bother my characters [or: at least planned it that way]

[Ground level stairs up into the structure] was guarded by perhaps five cultists behind a barricade. The stairs would lead up into the pipe work and to a loading bay on level one.

[Loading bay level one] had three futher armed cultists with a line of sight to those at the barricades below, a loading crane,

and HEAPS of dead bodies plus some zombies stumbling about. Those were slowly re-animiating and provided me with additional fodder. In this level there was an entrance to the central tower and of course a runway that lead to stairs going up into the pipe works and further up to the next level

[stairs and runaways through the pipeworks] had a patrol of further cultists, some with better armor and chain knives

[The tower] contained some more cultists at the read and of course, their quarters. But none were asleep, the ritual was about to happen! They head guys with (bad) las rifles up in the top of the tower, the old control center with lots of windows.

These gave them line of side to the main ritual and to the guys of the first level (but not into the runways, as the piples blocked it)

[The ritual place aka former antigrav-hover-landing-pad]

Here, I had the main antagonist, 14 cultists.. and the final battle where cultists would reanimiate and you-know-what would happen.

That were my plans and design, in a nutshell.

If you wonder what happened: my sniper climbed up the pipework, got himself in position and opend fired while my Arbitrator and sister of battle charged. The zombies on level 1 delayed them, but in the end it was the sniper up in the tower and my others on the anti-grav-land-pad fighting it out close. I sadlyfailed to deliver a climatic end, although my set-up was kinda okay for it :)