Hello!

I need help with a one-shot adventure i want to run for some peers. Since i own all Dark Heresy Sourcebooks i instantly thought of this.

The group is accustomed to cthulhuesque tones, impending Doom but not actually fearing to bekilled in physical combat. Constantly being threatened but not through mundane danger. Since we are gamemastering in turns and only for enjoying a good story, combat isn´t so important. They expect me to run an adventure of grisly dark tones, ending with destruction and madness. Allcharacters should end up dead or (preferrably) insane.

This is the premise, and its pretty hard to think of a small piece of masterworked horror since iam a bit out of practice ;-)

I don´t have a ready-to-play adventure, but a rough framework:

A group of four acolytes of pregenerated careers: Psyker, Guardsman, Tech-Priest, Assassin - should be a good average. They get hinted by their recruiting Inquisitorial agent that the group includes a convicted heretic that has been brainwashed. He needs to atone for his acts till hisdeath and his name is not revealed to protect him. Reason: He should die at the hands of the enemys of mankind, not because some overprotective zealot had an itchy trigger finger.

I´m going to take each player aside to introduce them into several character quirks, so they will assume that i tell the heretics player that he is the one. Which i won´t. They probably have a hardened psychopathic criminal in their midst, but they will not be able to pinpoint him because everyone seems to be a nice guy.

As to what the story actually entails...i had only the idea that the brainwashing was actually the idea of the heretic who faciliated a series of events that would culminate in an act of evil which he isn´t actually going to be able to enjoy because he isn´t himself anymore. Something in the style of the movie "Se7en", probably with a revealing of the identity at the end (which should surprise the heretics player as much as the rest). If this matches time with the players realizing the full extent of the plan/and or participating in it, the better.

Guess this is rather much bone but no meat, i am sorry. I will think more about this, but if someone could give ideas, even small ones, i would be glad.

The trouble is, while that's an interesting premise for a short story or movie, I don't know how well it will work as an rpg. The danger of railroading the PCs is high. In young days I did something vaguely similar... revealing to the PCs that one their number was actually an old villain in a new body, which was a big surprise to the player of said "new body" and generally angered the entire group of players. So, I am very wary of such concepts.

Just my $.02. Your millage may very...

The House of the Wyrm

The acolythes are send to investigate a rise of strange suicides within the higher ranks of the Administratum, Regional Government and even a few ranking members of the Ecclesiarchy on (World-of-your Choosing). The suicides are strange in both the timly coincidence (all of this started two weeks ago...so about a month til lthe pc arrive via warpship), all of them occuring among ranking members of society ...and the violent nature. All of them killed themselves in very violent and gruesome fashion (where those killing themselves normally do so in as quick and/or painless as possible).

What is going on?
The "Mastermind" (now a pc) took over control of a very high-class brothel One catering to the elite and thereby "procteted" by them. The "companions" got infected with a certain alien wyrm that know nests between neck and solders near the spine. The wyrm gives the "dames" small telepathic cabalities and changes their DNA so their "offspring" is wyrm and their salvia is a strongly hallucinating drug. Both is inteded to turn other species into "slave drones" for the wyrm and to allow the implementation of wyrm brood to new "nest queens" (have a look at "Sick Girl" from the "Masters of Horror", if you can!).

However, the Mastermind changed the mindwyrm: he employs a powerfull rogue psyker that controls the wyrm. The wyrm know do not "drone" the salvia-victims but rather keep their influence "dormant"... till they signal a "selfdestruct" (the "Wyrm Queen" must be within 30m to do so..standing near the house and so on). The "droning" still takes time, since the dominated wyrm do not enforce enough bodily change in their "queens" to make the salvia as potent as in wild life.

What will the pc have to do?
They´ll have to find the connection to the high class brothel (all of the household members of the lated vicitims will do EVERYTHING to keep this secret...they do not want the reputatiion of the swoon to be ruined) and then have to go up against the brothel.. their, they will be confront the hidden psyker who might recognize the "mastermind". Anyway, most of the girls kisses are highly hallocinatic and a lot of drug consume is going on their. Going under cover = kissing the girls = warp the pereception of the pc as much as you want.

Plus: a powerfull mindbending psyker that might edit the memories of the pc if they show up alone... or turn them against each other.

Oh! Do not forget the (un-)pleasures of the flesh!

Hope this was inspirational!

LuciusT said:

Most of the time, Lucius, I would wholeheartedly agree with you on this score. However, the circumstances here are somewhat unique, and make it, in my opinion, acceptable. The players are using pre-generated characters, not a PC some player lovingly crafted a backstory for, and they're playing a oneshot mission with the intention of leaving every single PC dead or insane. The players are singularly unattached to their characters in this situation.

If, as the OP mentioned, they are more interested in playing out a good story, I think a little railroading is exactly what is called for. They want a rich, detailed, well-rounded, thought out mission, which you can't have and still leave the story entirely open-ended.

...

As for the game: I don't have any thoughts at the moment as to the plot, but for the setting, I had a couple ideas to throw your way.

Dusk:

If you wanna go primitive, and dark, this is where you want to be. No question.

Sinophia:

Very grim, I could see the decaying husk of a world to be quite fitting for the kind of gritty game you want to run.

Metallica, Volg:

Both of these hive worlds embrace casual violence as a way of life, which could put an interesting twist on an investigation. In Metallica in particular, you could do something really interesting by setting it in the upper hive among the nobility.

LuciusT said:

As Crow already mentioned: In a normal game (normal=a series of evenings played) the whole idea would be like a frontal crash between bad gamesmastering and frustrated players. In my special case, my players would be rather disappointed if the story had a positive ending. They really expect it to end horribly IF (and this is important) the story is really immersive. But i will watch the railroading piece, thats totally correct and also a dead giveaway that i will try to circumvent.

The Boy Named Crow said:

I wouldn´t call it that. We love our one-shot guys that end up insane ;-)

The Boy Named Crow said:

Thanks for the ideas...a hive seems to be an ideal place to get different encounters together without having to travel a lot. Keeps the adventure flowing and a lot of flexibility.

(have a look at "Sick Girl" from the "Masters of Horror", if you can!).

I will ;-)

If it is a one-shot, there is really no reason you even need to go the Inquisition route. Check out some survival/mystery movies like Pandorum for plenty of inspiration. Or maybe since you want a PC to be a "secret bad-guy" you could go with some sort of hypno-indoctrination sleeper agent angles: When a Psyker sends a particular "key-thought" to the character their imbedded programming kicks in and they suddenly "remember" that they are a loyal enemy agent. Perhaps they don't remember anything that they did while "activated" so they can be re-used as a Manchurian Candidate if necissary. If I was a blighted Schola criminal mastermind, I would do something like this.

I would say in a one shot you can do it. In a campaign it could be fun if the player starts to realise the problem first. Am I going to tell the others?

In another game I had the evil enemy switch with one of the players. He assumed his identity. The player of the character would be playing the evil mastermind. The player of the character and I had a lot of fun thinking about how the evil mastermind could subvert all the carefully laid out plans of the group. It was fun but I was shocked on how easy the evil mastermind could kill the others in the group. The player and I had to restrain ourselves.

I started thinking about giving the pregenerated character a single quirk to make things interesting. They can add stuff to their characters as long as they want, so i scribbled some joins in between:

Person 1 is reverse to Person 2.
Person 3 is reverse to Person 4.
Person 1 can relate to Person 3.
Person 2 can relate to Person 4.

The Results...open for critical remarks.

Jorel Doson, Psyker

Insanity Points: 45. The minor Disorder is a permanent Headache.

Twist:
Jorel had some problems effecting his sanctioning process. He would not have been able to cope with the stress that disciplined use of psyker powers would have exerted on his brain. Therefore the adeptus astra telepathica surgeons decided to fit him with a cortex implant, and given his potential, chose an implant of good quality and - of course - of experimental nature. This implant visibly enlarges the back of his head and looks like someone mounted a shoebox sized gadget with lots of wires and small lights to his skull. This grants him unnatural intelligence (x1) and enables him to do standard cogitator functions. Since it isn´t a bug-free system the intelligence bonus sometimes drops to zero and it´s giving him constant headaches.

Twist Effect:
Aside from how you roleplay "your" Jorel, remind yourself that he´s a psyker, a genius (compared to 99% of all other people) and has horrible headaches.

Alex Sharp, Guardsman

Insanity Points: 30

Twist:
Alex is a really nice guy. Overly nice. He always tries to accomodate people, and always smiles.

Twist effect:
Aside from how you roleplay "your" Alex, be nice to your peers. Smile a lot.

Adok Severin, Tech-Priest

Insanity Points: 40. Treat the erratic malfunctioning of the cogitator as a minor Disorder.

Twist:
Adok has chosen the rite of pure thought, a measure that most of his admech peers consider extreme. His emotional, illogical right hemisphere has been replaced with a cogitator that is directly linked into the left hemisphere. This frees him of any irrationality and illogic. The machine spirit of the cogitator is disturbed at the moment, malfunctioning sometimes. This is severe when Adok experiences stress. He tries to minimize stressful situations to avoid having his skull opened anytime soon, which would affect his research. He keeps this fact hidden, other mechanicus would consider the reluctance to repair the cogitator a weakness.

Twist effect:
The implant will malfunction on a 25% chance in a stress situation. If if malfunctions Adoks intelligence reduces temporarily and will also result in uncontrollable emotions. If the implant doesn´t malfunction, play out a hint of a sudden emotional surge - be creative.

River Angelos, Assassin

Insanity:
Starts with 69 Insanity Points, the obsessive note taking is a minor Disorder, the split personality a severe disorder. Upon Reaching 80 points, River Two kills River One.

Twist:
River has a split personality. This normally won´t affect him, as both personalities are more than able to do the emperors work and share the same skills. River (and River, since the alternate personality also reacts to this name) share the same body, but are subtly different. As River One is a nice, almost laid back personality (as far as an assassin can be a sociable person), River Two kicks in when combat is possible or imminent. River Two developed unseen by Rivers superiors, which took his emotional undetachedness to his work as an advantage. As soon as the gruelties of his path take form, River Two takes over and presents River as a cold hearted killer, able to do what needs to be done and what the situation calls for. Both Rivers don´t know each other and feel no effect of swapping places. Only River One has access to River Twos memory, and is able to recount the actions that have taken place when the killing started. Any other information is carried over to River Two in form of small notes River One permanently makes, gaining him the reputation of a snitch.

Twist effect:
As soon as combat is very possible or imminent, the emotionless personality takes over. Handle situations practically, not emotionally. Use a notepad to take notes about everything and try to hide what you write from the other players.

Whille those are all **** good characters, which without even looking at their stats I'd be more than happy to have in my game...thats a lot of insanity points. A lot.

That might not be a good thing for what appears to be a group new to DH. I understand that Cthulu and insanity go hand in hand, but these guys are already starting out really messed up. I have no idea what rank they are, but those two factors are going to set the tone for what they think of the game.