The vignette in "Enemies Within" featured the acolytes recruiting a member of a cold trade gang into their ranks. They did say the Big I would have to approve it but they pretty cleary felt the 'recruit' was skilled enough to be useful and that she was redeemable.

When I read thru "dark pursuits” I could imagine some players I knew, or even myself as a player, probing out the guard who's employer died to see if he might be useful and willing to join the players. Having an employer die on him could look bad on his record even if he were blameless. He might be willing to help the players pursue the killers to redeem his record. Or the players might offer him some short term employment.

So how would you do recruiting NPCs into the band? I am pretty sure they would at worst have to be criminal scum who were not willing heretics or traitors. Perhaps lower level criminals who may not have known their leaders were chaos cultists or traitors and maybe taken back a bit when they discover the truth. I suppose an inquisitor might tolerate this as long as the players took responsibility for the recruit.

How would you use them? As redshirted monsterbait to serve as ablative armor for the players? A ready source of new PCs in event of an unfortunate turn?

On 10/22/2017 at 5:47 PM, Techpriest support said:

When I read thru "dark pursuits” I could imagine some players I knew, or even myself as a player, probing out the guard who's employer died to see if he might be useful and willing to join the players.

My players did just that. Strenwell helped them throughout Dark Pursuits. Afterwards they gave him money to establish a new mercenary band at the Void Port. Since then, my warband went into the habit of recruiting the toughest survivors into this mercenary band and use them as redshirts. Some of them are now dear to my PCs and I sometimes use them for subplots and nice role-playing opportunities.

Sounds a little like something I do. I created "contacts" for players. Contacts are people who know a little about the inquisition. They've had some connection to an inquisitorial operation or two and are believed to be of good character to some degree in some ways, and may have some useful knowledge or other useful traits. They may not be suitable for the role of an acolyte for various reasons but still able and willing to be of use.

Sounds like you made this guy a contact. He might provide useful info to players or even lend them some muscle now and then. Possibly he could slip them a few weapons at times.