So, as a GM there is a constant problem with coming up with enough terrible things to throw at acolytes. Certain themes tend to become stale if overused. Furthermore, if a player is playing DH in the first place s/he is probably pretty jaded to begin with. Hence I figured it would be a good idea to do a terrible compilation thread. Post all terrible grimdark stuff you have done to your PCs. Both general themes and specific instances are more than welcome.

Some things I have employed in the past couple games I ran:

• Cannibalism of rotting babies.
• Cannibalism in general.
• Necrophilia.
• Slannesh daemon with giant phallus (think flamer attack).

Some stuff I picked up off of this forum:

• Slannesh cultists that try to grapple PCs and... do things to them... (thanks to MKX)
• Forcing PCs to execute women and children due to extremely distant relationship with heresy. (Thanks to Graver)

Okay, I'll bite on this one. I can't think of too many examples, but this is probably one of the defining moments of "**** just got real" for one of our assassins. But first I'll need to flesh out the situation a little bit.

This story relates to one of our assassins, Nrvnqsr "Nero" Exxix, who is a member of the Sons of Dispater and heir to a noble estate on Malfi. He's serving the inquisiton to earn his heirloom bolt pistol, the symbol of office for the house, off our Inquisitor, since the last heir, a previous agent, went MIA it's his turn to claim it. On his homeworld, Nrvnqsr runs his house as an academy for orphans (he was one himself) to train them into his personal cadre of street ninjas, like his mentor Matthias did to him.

This hardened killer, willing to do anything for the right price, who has murdered innocents where necessary, sought daemonic artefacts for their power including a bloodthirsty daemonknife and at one time a shape-changing bolt pistol, assaulted chaos cruisers singlehandedly and survived a ritual of mutation, engaged in knife-fights with corrupted priests on top of towers in a whipping rainstorm of blood, evaded capture by the Inquisition and then gone back, at the behest of his Inquisitor, to rescue the rest of the party under the Tricorn Palace, has a soft spot for children, especially orphans, and does whatever necessary to save them where possible.

So the party is sent to our old Inquisitor's (captured and carbonised) homeworld of Zillman's Domain, to find the location of some powerful artefacts he hid away from an old witch buried deep in the swamplands, who passes her knowledge from generation to generation to preserve his secret. Once they find the witch (and her mute granddaughter) the BBEG of the campaign arrives and begins an orbital strike upon their location. The witch dies from the explosions raining down around them, but the child is safe. So Nrvnqsr takes the child, as he and the rest of the party figure she's the last source of information, and Nrvnqsr doesn't want to abandon this kid in the middle of her ruined shack in the swamps when they've been ambushed by Ad Mech patrols (long story) looking for her. So the party fends off numerous attacks trying to establish a way to reach their ship in orbit, resulting in flying up inside a missile to get into space.

Finally, they meet up with their (temporary, an ally of their old boss) inquisitor, who takes the child away for 'questioning'. Nrvnqsr tells her flat out to her face to 'be gentle' if at all possible. A few weeks later, after a meeting with Lord Sector Hax (this is a pretty big campaign, both time-wise and in-game) their inquisitor returns with results.

She says that they had trouble communicating verbally with the child due to her muteness and mental trauma resulting from the attack, so they had to resort to 'Brain Planing' , as she put it. They sliced open her head, used lasers to shave her brain into tiny sheets, and studied each layer under a microscope to calculate what was in her brain and find the important information.

The rest of the party has an awkwardly silent "oh.....****" aura over them. Nrvnqsr nearly explodes, getting right up to his Inquisitor and saying "You're the f**king Inquisition , and you couldn't even save a f**king child" before stalking off and leaving the rest of the party to stand around vacantly with their Inquisitor.

I felt that for once, I had truly done my job as a Dark Heresy GM that evening

I ran a short game where the players were joyboys working in a seedy brothel on Malfi. They were eventually sold to a Slaaneshi cult as 'virgins', caveat emptor, lol. The summoning didn't go to well, as the sacrifices weren't virgins. The summoned Daemonette after ****** and eating the cult, tricked them into a dark pact and let them on their way...

In my opinion, Hobo Hunter hit it right on the head. Eventually all shocking things become passe. It doesn't matter how horrific the description or graphic the nature of the crime. The characters will be become jaded of this sort of stuff quick unless you put a real human face on the equation.

I'll use your first example. The acolytes come upon a scene of some cultists cutting up and eating babies while they still scream and cry. Pretty horrific. Now if this is say the fifth time they've seen something like this they may just shoot the cultists try to save who they can then move on with really no more thought to it. Yes, initially, it would be disturbing but nothing that would really haunt them for very long.

Now say you took the time to introduce a family that needed help or had information on this cultist activity and the acolytes had to, more or less, interact with this family often. They came to know the mother and father and little girl. The little girl was very curious and would always hang around and pester the acolytes, somewhat enduring herself to them (if possible). Then later the acolytes come upon the same baby eating scene except this time that little girl is a part of it. Then it becomes something that truly stays with them.

The difference between simple shock and true horror. Simple shock is going to one of those nasty websites and seeing pictures of dead people. Horror is going to one of those shock websites and recognizing one of those dead people as a family member or a good friend.

The key to good drama, suspense and occasional horror is to MAKE IT PERSONAL! Sure, the mundane and even noteworthy "****** up ****" that Accolytes will encounter in the course of their jobs will harden and jade them over time. That is natural. But set scenes and events in place that have a deep personal connection to something one or more of the characters consider to be important and the fur can really fly!

In House of Dust and Ash our Adept developed such a strong personal hatred for one of the NPCs that she vowed to "piss on her corpse". A few sessions later when the final confrontation with said NPC was concluded she literally hiked up her robe, peeled out of the bodyglove worn underneath and urinated on the corpse. This was quite entertaining for the whole group, obviously, especially since the two had been spitting and hissing like alleycats at each other for the entire adventure.

In Rejoyce our Cadian Guardsman took such mortal offense to the inept (in her eyes) mercenaries using "silenced" lasguns that she maintained a running rant (colourful as only a Cadian mouth can be) about these sorry excuses for humanity for the entire scene. She would punctuate her sentences with bolt pistol fire and brutal sword swings. Even the Techpriest could not compare in his distaste for what they had inflicted on the poor unfortunate weapons.

Our team's Assassin is very attatched to his hat. VERY! Fairly early on he picked up a good quality mesh fedora and it rapidly became one of his trademark items. He values this hat more than even his guns (well, except the Nomad...) for sentimental reasons. At this point he is probably willing to kill over this item of clothing. Except for this one barmaid back on Scintilla he knows; She can touch it.

In an adventure of my own the team is investigating the disappearance of a different Inquisitor's accolyte team. In the course of their investigation they learned that the missing agents had discovered a local pleasure cult (on Solomon, a world in much need of pleasurable things..) with some rather obvious (even to non-Malleus) references to <expunged>. Our Psyker is very young (16 now, 14 at intro, story reasons why) and until joining up with the team she was developmentally stunted (Tyrant Star....Black Ships...Early Sanctioning...puberty delayed, amongst other issues). The team managed to make contact with a few suspected cult members and figured out that they might be looking to recruit. Several of the team members had dressed provocatively for the occasion to act as bait, and ultimately the Adept and our little Psyker managed to get "bites". The Adept had the attention of a female cultist, so she decided a little "nightclub lesbian" session might lead to an undercover opportunity. The kid Psyker had the attention of a male cultist and made **** certain that she kept his attention with lots of shameless flirting and other far less subtle hints. She lured the guy into a curtained booth and told him she was a virgin... Then showed him the proof... Then offered him the chance to change that status. The little brat deliberately requested and partook in several activities more expected from shady websites than virgin girls to make her cover more believable! The girl has developed a super-powerful "mom/big sister" thing with the Cadian over the course of the game and so she decided to open up a telepathic link with "mom" during her escapades and shared.... (Sending potential intelligence to the team leader, along with all the emotional and tactile sensations of her first, second and third times...). Needless to say, the team now has an invitation to the next "special event". The team's new Sororitas poured herself a very strong drink the moment that the scene was concluded safely. This game is in progress, but I suspect it will get weirder before it is done. This is not a typical plot (to say nothing of the players' surprises) for one of my adventures, but I wanted to toss a cookie to the more social and brainy characters since the last several missions had really piled on with heavy combat scenes. Even knowing that I had prepared an investigation with "mature themes" it was still very surprising to myself and my players the direction that things have gone. Regardless of what surprises they throw at me next, this will be one of those "memorable moments" for the whole group.

Several other "dark and memorable moments" in the game, but for space reasons this should suffice. I was deliberately vague in that last passage to avoid dropping clues since that investigation is still underway.

I have one special NPC I'm using in the recent setting of my campaign to bring some personal horror into the game:

Ziapatra is a native of Fenksworld and a highly paid escort-service professional. Due to the nature of her work someone (players are yet not sure if it was her own choice or something her "owners" forced on her earlier in her life) she has undergone a radical form of prefrontal lobotomy which has left her completely unable to actually feel fear, nausea, disgust or affection. As per her occupation she is however horribly good at faking affection, love or lust. All in all this makes her a pretty lovable and easily befriended NPC for the Acolytes and since she is a non-combatant and likely to get into trouble several of the Acolytes probably would want to protect her and shield her from harm.

Unfortunately all of her peculiarities also make her a prime candidate for Inquisitorial infiltration duties and Inquisitor is using her for increasingly dangerous operations. Last time the Acolytes had to rescue her from Hive Volg security troops (a sort of mercenary cops) who had apparently kidnapped and severely tortured her. Now, on intellectual level they know she does not feel it the same way as a normal human would (she feels the pain, but it doesn't feel bad, just slightly uncomfortable), but then again on emotional level they must be wondering if their Inquisitor knew this would happen? And if he did, does he care? Okay, on intellectual level their Inquisitor probably knows he can use her for some really nasty **** which would be really dangerous to anyone elses mental health... but then again what kind of person can do it to this vulnerable teenage girl?

A slightly more humorous event, but still pretty 'terrible' by modern tastes, again involves our hero Nrvnqsr. It was a modified adventure tied into our epic campaign based off a one-shot I found on DarkReign (I believe it may have been Luddite who made it), based around the party tracking down psychic disturbances resulting from an enemy acolyte cell failing (as only acolytes seem to be able to) at activating a form of psychic antenna designed to attract orks en masse to the sector. The enemy cell consists of their Prime, who spends more time high on drugs than doing his job, a tough-as-nails volgborn arbite who thinks they're committing heresy (and took out our moritat in melee too at one point), a midget voidborn smuggler who desperately wants to 'put her in her place', and a jaded priest who sees them all as dirty heretics but doesn't particularly know what to do anymore.

While the rest of the party catch and interrogate the Prime, Nrvnqsr finds his way to their hideout and confronts the priest, persuading him to betray his party and stop their objectives. After sabotaging their plans (which involved killing the Wyrdboy used as a 'focus), the two are confronted by the other two members of the party (the arbitrator and scum), and they surrender rather than try and fight their way out. They get shockmauled into unconsciousness in return.

Nrvnqsr wakes up in a cellar somewhere, strapped to a metal chair and dressed in only his underwear. Behind him, the priest is in the same position, back-to-back. Before them stands the smuggler, dressed only in a black thong and gripping his knife maniacally. I'd like to point out now that he suffered the malignancy "Fell Obsession (sexual violence)". I kid you not, that's what the adventure told me so I ran with it. He's smothering himself with a large bucket of promethium as he slowly advances towards the pair, sloshing some on the two prisoners as he goes.

Everything's looking like a scene from Pulp Fiction, and the priest, who's mind's snapped by now, begins to build up a fevered chanting. Nrvnqsr uses Contortionist and passes, slipping out of his bonds and readying to fight. He wrenches the single oil-lit lamp from the ceiling and hurls it at the midget, missing but sending hot splashes of oil across the floor. During the scuffle, Nrvnqsr maneuvres his enemy into the hot fragments of the lamp and he ignites, leaping forward with a primal roar but missing and landing straight into the priest...who also goes up in flames screaming devotions to the Emperor. As the two of them burn to death, Nrvnqsr stumbles off, barely making it to the door before he drops from fatigue and lost blood.

The arbite enters a short while later, spits on the midget's blackened corpse (they'd had a long running enmity and this was her chance), and goes back upstrais to steal Nrvnqsr's plasmagun and his daemonic bolt pistol (it had been whispering to her while the others had their fun downstairs, and Willpower wasn't exactly her top point...), and heading out the door cradling her newfound toys. The other PCs rock up so she shoots one down with the boltpistol even as he blows her arm off, and by the time he comes to (bolt pistols to the face do that, apparently) she's long gone.

Strange session, that one.

Yes yesss

ZillaPrime, my acolytes will try to infiltrate a Slannesh cult very soon. Unfortunately, I doubt that they will engage in the same way yours did. They are wise to the ways of 40k and tend to avoid reading books, looking at things, interrogating cultists, or doing anything that might advance their plot or lead to character development if it gives them corruption points.

One worth pinching:

On a battlefield, women ****** mortally wounded guardsmen, causing them to ejaculate as they expire. A few months later ... babies. Now just how innocent are these brats and what are the Acolytes prepared to do?