Being the GM for a group of five, I recently got the Game Master's Kit to upgrade from the old Dark Heresy screen. Having to prepare a new adventure, though, after a successful run of Into the Maw, I read through the pre-made adventure that came with the kit, Whispers on the Storm. Although I intended to come up with something entirely original, this adventured unexpectedly caught my attention with its potential, and I find myself wishing to run it next. Unlike the barren, straightforward Magoros System of Into the Maw, there's plenty of stuff in the Svard System for the Explorers to get caught up in, each location having the potential to take up an entire session. I also find the adversary to be a unique and interesting threat with a truly imposing 'final boss' in the form of the battleship-sized Whisperer. The format of the adventure even seems to be generalized enough, along with plenty of additional side hooks, to implement original content.

With that said, what I'm looking for here are reviews, reports, and advice on running Whispers on the Storm, whether you've just read it or actually played through it. I wish to make the experience the best it can be for my players, so discussing the adventure with fellow GMs and experienced players ought to help with that. I know there hasn't been much time for groups to actually play through the whole thing yet, but hopefully, content here will grow over time. Anyone got any input?

I haven't run it or played it, but I've read it rather thoroughly, and used the Void Wasps in other adventures. A few thoughts:

The adventure itself is really, really good, with two minor flaws. One is that the Promethium refinery, worth +3 profit, is pretty much doomed. The Whisperer's stated initial agenda is to destroy it. Any critical will blow it up, and those potentially shield ignoring lances on the Whisperer? Crit Rating 2....

The other is that the Whisperer is ungodly powerful, the sort of thing I would bet heavily on to face a 100 SP or more of enemy vessels and come out having blown them all to tiny bits. Having the NPC cruiser will help, but with some of its power and space wasted by empty torpedo tubes, and the Whisperer's support from traitor system ships and Void Wasps, your players are likely to get steamrolled in the final battle.

There are easy solutions to both of these. One of them is to have the Whisperer ignore the refinery unless your players manage to turn it against the beast, and by turn it against, i mean actual open fire with its weapons.* The other is to provide some hulked ships the players can fix up over the course of the adventure. The Whisperer will probably wreck half of them, and you can just say the repairs for the rest would cut into Profit earned for the Endeavoror you could reward them with an extra ship, as they'll have earned it.

*If they use a can of highly explosive and valuable promethium to fight this thing, they deserve to lose the +3 Profit.

I ran the adventure last night for my group.

I'm happy to report that it did feel well balanced, but I should add that my group (of two) had a light cruiser and I ruled that they had the lances of the star station up and running before the final scene. I also had the Whisper focus on the Hand, given that it was the biggest immediate threat, and it had plans for the Players involve their possession and use a means of further inflitrating the Imperium.

It was annoying that they didn't provide any rules for Installation 23 and the approach the adventure took with endevours is in my view completely broken. The players went straight for the throat and as they had effectively cleansed the system before attempting to complete the minor and side-quest major endevours, these became essentially trival. As a result, I would argue that in such situations, it would have been more appropriate for the adventure to present to GMs a base value to add to the party's profit factor for successful completion of the key mission, with a series of modifiers.

So, Light Cruiser, full Cruiser, and lance-armed space station beat the Whisperer? Sounds about what I was expecting. Were any other vessels involved?

While I'm aware that the Whisperer can easily obliterate Installation 23, I consider the related awards for keeping the refinery intact to be a bonus for an unlikely success, not a virtually guaranteed prize. With that said, I don't find it to be a big deal if the refinery is destroyed, especially if the Explorers aren't made aware of the ridiculous amount of XP and Profit they would've received, otherwise. In fact, I don't necessarily expect the Whisperer and its escorts to even be defeated in the first engagement, perhaps destroying the Hand of Redemption and forcing the Explorers to retreat and muster a fleet of system ships, providing they're in working order, before fighting back. While they're away, the Whisperer could be slowly making its move to systematically bombard each moon, starting with Silence, then Cog, and finally Svard. The adventure text even implies that the battle may not be won in a single space combat encounter. My only real concern is whether or not the Explorers would have the sense to flee if they're clearly on the losing end of the first engagement.

And while the lack of solid stats for Installation 23 is annoying, I don't think they're really all that necessary. I would consider its weapons to have been put indefinitely out of commission by loyalists before it fell to the hands of the Whisperers, hence why they're not used when the Explorers attack and why they can't use be used in the subsequent battle against the Whisperer.

As for the potential problem of the Explorers going to clear out Installation 23 first, and therefore starting the endgame of the adventure prematurely, I believe that it can easily be remedied by holding off the appearance of the Whisperer until the Explorers liberate more of the system. The location of the envoy can even be changed if that proves to be more convenient, as I'm pretty sure there isn't any solid reasoning to restrict him to being on Installation 23.

I must admit that one annoying thing about the adventure is the whole deal about the Whisperer and Whisperers being two different things. It's pretty confusing, and a better distinction in the naming could've definitely been made. Perhaps the followers could've been called Whisperees, instead?

Also, one problem that I'm going to have to deal with for my own group of Explorers is that the Rogue Trader's family history of roguish trading only goes back a couple of generations, having been in the business of planetary governing previously. Perhaps the backstory of Svard will just have to involve some other dynasty, instead.

My thoughts

1)Encourage the PCs to fully repair and recrew at the main moon.

2)While the xenos ships can't be boarded. The system ships can. If the PCs are smart they will recapture a number of system ships.

3)There are a number of system ships at the main moon. If they manage to retake the admech moon they could get a few repaired and refitted. They might need to refuel the system ship with their own fuel stock however....

4)Have Whisper surface a good distance away from the refinery. Let the PCs know the general area where it will surface and place their ship around the station.

With 2&3 you can limit the number of system ships by limiting.

-How many ships can be repaired at once.

-Availiblity of crew, and fuel

-Have the excess suffer sabotage by Whisperers, or switch sides at the worst possible time.

The final encounter with the Whisperer is probably the one part of the adventure that might give problems. The rest of the adventure can be run for any party without modification. With the Whisperer, though, you'll have to review what class of ship your players are using, how experienced the party is, and how good the players themselves are at tactics and planning. A group that knows the system and setting well, has characters with all the skills at good levels, and is flying a powerful combat-focused ship can probably handle the Whisperer encounter as written as long as the dice don't turn against them. For any less able party,or one flying a merchant starship, the Whisperer encounter will probably result in Total Party Kill even with the Naval Cruiser aiding them.

You'll have to consider your party and work out how capable it is, then consider amending the battle.

Apart from the Whisperer, the part of the adventure that I have a problem with is at the very beginning. And Imperial Naval Cruiser appears alongside the PCs ship and demands they prepare to be boarded, regardless of the fact the Imperial Navy probably doesn't have any legal jurisdication over wherever the encounter takes place. There's also a question o0f how the Cruiser knew they were going to be there anyway, the PCs ship emerges from the Warp and there it is, a Cruiser that was searching for that specific ship. The PCs then have their Bridge occupied by Naval Armsmen and are herded over to the other ship at gunpoint to meet the NPC Captain.

The adventure then states that the GM should discourage any idea the players might have that this is a bad thing or a confrontational situation because "this is not an encounter between two rival Hive gangs, but rather a meeting of immensely powerful and influential individuals, and as such should be conducted with civility and respect."

Am I the only GM whose jaw dropped at reading this? I can't think of a faster way to make a group of players put an NPC at the top of their hit list of hated enemies. And that's assuming that the players don't immediately go into combat mode and try to evade capture. Railroading the party by having an NPC capture them and aim them in the direction of the action at gunpoint is absolutely the worst way to start most adventures, let alone one that is supposedly a freeform sandbox environment.

Personally, I'm planning to have the encounter being one of "civility and respect" between two peers of the Imperium by having the Captain approach the party when their ship is berthed in Port Wander.

My plan for the initial encounter will be as their ship approaches footfall. With the hailing and prepare to be boarded part the same, but then have the view screen on with the cruiser's captain laughing at the joke he has just played on his old friend. No armsmen on the PC's bridge.

PS- In my game the Navyl always has it's orders for ship's traveling into the Expanse counter signed by their allied Rogue Traders. Thus PCs can't easily order around Naval ships. Still a Naval ship can't directly order them around either.

I'd have to agree that the default opening for the adventure is really, really bad. On top of everything else, if the party has their own Cruiser or even a cleverly-constructed Light Cruiser, they could quite possibly begin the adventure by destoying a hostile Imperial Navy vessel which launched an ill-advised and illegal attack on an innocent Rogue Trader vessel with no orders to do so.

Unless the Inquisitors involved wish to show their hands, which would be tatamount to shouting "I'm an incompetent moron" to the entire sector at the top of their lungs.