Hi all

A distress call for ideas: give some reasonable, or great, or fun ideas for introducing characters into 'TF'. As we know it starts with the PCs imprisoned, with nothing but a vague texts. My players are after 'The house of dust and ash'. Taking away all their stuff and 'catching' them off screen is going to be a traumatic experience, and I'd like to give them a bit more than 'you have been caught'.

No, I don't want to run a prologue adventure, as it will probably go horribly wrong (I know my players - they would all die), or I'd have to hit them with pointlessly tough opponents. Now, as I said, they've just finished 'the house' - they're leaving the island on the skyship. When and how can they be caught?

Maybe they imbibe drugged food or drink and all pass out unconscious, ready to be collected by the Beast House and be launched into Tattered Fates. You may need to fudge a few Toughness rolls though.

Maybe they are sent on a diplomatic mission and need to surrender their weapons before meeting with some important aristrocrats and are then overpowered. But this still can lead to a vicious combat.

Maybe they are knocked out by some psychic talent, or even a warp storm, and awake only to find themselves inside the Red Cages.

But my point is: it will always be traumatic, brutal, and a very cheap form of deus ex machina to have to round them up to be able to start captured and stripped of all equipment in Tattered Fates. Maybe you should run a prologue adventure and allow them to go down with a good fight. Players will except this better than an easy plot hook such as "you are all captured".

Yes, but going down in a good fight might mean burning fate points, and some of the PCs have 0. But the warp storm idea is worth considering, thanks. Warp travel is dangerous, and in my games it's usually fairly safe (ie. skipped / briefly narrated)

The simple solution: ask the players how their characters got caught.

After all, it's a forgone conclusion that they will get caught else there'd be no TF. Explain this to them and, if you're feeling nice, give them a choice.

"For the next chapter of the story, we can either delve deeper into the dark mysteries of the Haarlocks and the growing danger hidden there or you guys can check out some rumours that seem to disturbingly point to the potential for a full scale Genesteeler infestation of Port Galvanus. If we go with the Haarlock option, it will be dangerous, though not as dangerous as the second option. We will also have to start that part of the story off after your characters are captured by a shadowy masked man and his agents, and your characters might lose a lot of the equipment that they they had on them when they were captured but you guys will almost definitely come out of it with an additional Fate Point if you do well and another piece to the Haarlock puzzle. If we go with the second option, you'll definitely get to keep everything you've managed to accumulate, and trust me, you'll need it all and then some, you'll probably spend a lot of time running and screaming like little girls or dying in horribly messy fashions if you're too manly to run and scream like a little girl, but it will be one hell of a thrill ride, I can grantee you that. So, if we go with the Haarlock angle, I will need you to decide how and under what circumstances your character was most likely captured under by this masked man and his agents but if we go with the Horror at Galvanus Station chapter, all I'll need is for you to show up next game, though you guys with 0 Fate Points will need to bring a back-up character 'cause, you know..."

I personally ran a "transition" mission for my group, since they are already well established and they are notoriously stubborn about yielding or giving up in the face of opposition. The Prime is a Cadian IG Officer and the other "old timers" are a Scintillan Assassin and a Navy Techpriest: They simply do NOT stop! My team serves Inquisitor Skane, so for Dust and Ash they were "loaned" to Inquisitor Marr because none of his agents were in position to arrive in time or were already tied up in important investigations, so when they finished with Dust and Ash I had Marr call them in again after a brief rest and recovery session (many of them were battered and bloody) and ask them a personal favour. As it turned out, Marr had a team of his own on Solomon the whole time, but they were busy working undercover investigating a pleasure cult... And now all but one of them have turned up missing! My team is pretty predisposed to lending assistance to fellow Imperial agents when possible, especially imperiled Inquisition agents, as it could easily be them the next time and having friends and allies is a good thing; Naturally, they agreed to look into the case of Marr's missing agents. The sole survivor (an aged Adept maintaining cover as a pastry chef) did not know exactly what led to her team's disappearance (she was recovering from gunshot wounds suffered earlier in their investigation) but did have some bits of useful information to point them in the right direction. After poking around in the underworld of Solomon for a while, the team managed to make contact with members of the suspected cult and due to some interesting RP interactions managed to land an invite to an upcoming event. The team was blindfolded and led in a roundabout way to the cult's "event", a private orgy of food, sex and lewd displays leading up to the "main event": A low-grade psyker had been fitted with a strange bone-like crown (Eldar Wraithbone) wired into her skull-plugs and telepathically broadcast the sensations to everyone in the room as cult members made sexual contact with her. The cult leader decided to not make an appearance during the main act (as was originally planned) due to the team's Psyker unexpectedly joining in on the act (she is a Telepath and pulled the same trick). As the team was wraped up in all this weirdness a "hunter team" from the Beasthouse broke into the building and started taking everyone down. The team leader had a heavy webber, a dart pistol loaded with tranquilizer and an Eldar haywire grenade, and all had shock mauls in addition to their usual wargear. They open by webbing the room and darting the PC Psyker. Most of the people in the room (including PCs) were stuck to the floor in skimpy to non-existant outfits and little to no armaments. The Assassin managed to wriggle free of the webs and the Techpriest simply tore himself free, but the rest were stuck fast. They made a **** good showing for themselves before being forced to yield when the hunter team's reinforcements arrived. Then they were ready for Tattered Fates complete with a story to go with how they were captured and an already simmering hate for the Beasthouse.

The how and why: Since TF has the Beasthouse capturing "people of interest" (including the PCs) as secret pawns of the Pilgrims of Hayte, the Pilgrims have decided to take care of two problems with one move. They have an enthusiastic but less-than-discreet cell that has recently formed on Solomon. Most of the cell members are completely ignorant of the true nature of what they have joined, thinking it to merely be a source of pleasure and joy in their otherwise bleak lives, and are actively recruiting new members. The Pilgrims decide to sacrifice this indiscreet cell as bait in a trap, then tip off the Beasthouse (who have a strong presence on Solomon) to the presence of several people "on the list" and provide the location. All of this is basically story and window dressing for the need to get my team out of their body armour and leave behind most of their weapons so that I could use non-lethal weapons on them. The Haywire Grenade was for the team's Techpriest, since he has implanted Dragonscale powerarmour, craploads of implants and a TB7, so tranq-darts and shock mauls were just NOT going to work on him.... As it is, he made an amazing reaction-shot with his plasma-dendrite to shoot down the grenade so he managed to ride out the backwash with only minor systems damage and even managed to resist a tranq-dart to the EYE (rules courtesy of Illumination); he ultimately had to be forced to surrender by holding the other team members and a kid (webbed to the floor) at gunpoint. I even mixed in some of the surviving cult members as prisoners in the Red Cages portion of TF to add a little extra flavour to the weirdness.

Also, since the cult leader managed to escape with his pet Psyker I even have a potential villain remaining for future plots.

How about something they cannot fight? They are back on a skyship from the Island of "Dust and Ash".

Let´s say the pilgrims have forseen that someone of "The Blood" would be there. They simply hoped that they could catch him after leaving. For this reason, they brought one or three Daemonhosts to the planet (warp portals, perhaps). The pc will be intercepted by what will lock licke another pirate ship... but accompanied by flying daemon host(s). Allow the pc opening up fire and everything else. Then, start using a strange, song-like whaling from one of the hosts while the other slaughter crew. Ask for difficutl willpower checks. Allow the pc to use Fate points (they will start with fresh points at the beginning of the adventure). If they BURN points simply tell them that over the board while passing out...and give them the point back later!

That is, if you WANT to play it with your players. Otherwise, just describe this assault. Instead of HOSTS (which are permanent) you could use mighty Daemons of Slaanesh... this will explain why they aren´t under the back-and-call of the "Beloved" afterwards (summoned for the task, and this was it!).

...as I think about it, capturing them with Slaaneshi Sirens makes the most sense...at least to me!

Don't give them any explanation. Their minds have been tampered with, their memories distorted. They can try to solve how they ended there... if they have time for that. You can always give them some insights, but of course those could be planted memories... or real ones... or traps...

Personally, since I'm going to be the one GM'ing TTF, I'll keep my techpriest out of the adventure (also that gives me less headaches about his implants... actually my characters tend to have a way of being extremely experts in being in the plot's way when I'm the master...) and give both players a second sheet (so they'll play with two characters each... mostly because a Psyker and a Guardsmen only would force me to adapt too much the adventure. Also my techpriest is the Medicae expert also XD). This could lead to "did Argus betrayed us? Is he dead? He managed to escape?" If not for the idea I had of playing a pre-adventure: when the dissapeared characters vanished, their companions start looking for them (I have a whole frigate with a young Inquisitor to take characters from), so the "precuel" to TTF will be the adventure of finding Tanis and the characters. It will also be fun because I won't be the one mastering it, and it will end the moment the ship enters the Tanis system, so they won't know when exactly the ship reached... if it reached in time at all ^^.