Hi there,

Small problem.

In the most recent session of our campaign, our resident Priests (one Tech-, one standard), were engaging with a group of particularly tough Servitors. Another member of the group, an Arbite, decided he'd be clever and fire his Trantor Semi-Auto into combat with them. Now, before the mission had begun their Inquisitor (Inquisitor Quintus Dyne) had given command of the mission to the Tech-Priest, and the Tech-Priest had already ordered a weapons hold as not to get anyone injured.

But the Arbite fired anyway and managed to score two head hits - one on the Tech-Priest, the other on the Priest. The combat played out, eventually the good guys were victorious, but before they moved on the Tech-Priest wanted to take the Arbite to task for his actions. This wasn't the player yelling at the other player for being a **** - they were doing it in character.

So they started talking, and the Arbite made it pretty clear that he wasn't going to follow the Tech-Priest's orders (more on this in a sec). They actually offered to make opposed Willpower Tests to see if one would back down. The Arbite won. Then the Priest got involved and stormed over, and he went up against the Arbite in defence of the Tech-Priest (which was cool, as these two had never seen eye to eye on anything yet), and the Priest won, so the Arbite backed down. The player playing the Arbite was happy to move on from there, stating that his character had been effectively put in his place by the two Priests and would follow them from this point forward.

So as far as RP'ing goes - great, very happy. They created and resolved a conflict with a combination of in character talking and using their stats and skills.

The problem I have is what I should do the Arbite for creating this problem in the first place. I find it very odd that he chose to have his Arbite ignore the authority of the Tech-Priest. I understand his character does not respect the Tech-Priest, or the Adeptus Mechanicus (and they had just been put on trial and sentenced to death in a AdMech kangaroo court... so it is in context I suppose) but the part I can't get over is that the Tech-Priest was put in charge by Dyne, their Inquisitor, and I would have thought that as an Arbite he would at least respect the authority of his master.

So how should I deal with this? The group won't actually meet up with Inquisitor Dyne until halfway through the next Act of the Campaign, where he steps in personally to investigate a Space Station they found whilst they head off to extract a very important Astropath from the hands their new enemies, but in that brief window where they meet - what would Dyne do?

Part of me wants to line them all up (there are 5 of them, including a Guardsman and a Noble-Born Psyker), and then just take the Arbite's Trantor and shoot him in the leg with it, reminding him (and everyone watching) that had it been me/Dyne in charge, the Arbite's disrespect and disobedience would have resulted in him being shot in the head. But I'm sure there is a 'better' way, so if anyone has any ideas - just let me know.

BYE

We had something like this in one of my groups recently, a player (regardless of what he was playing) always shooting the cleric and the psyker.

His characters were balled out by the group leader (the psyker lol) and then they were sent to dangerous places after a mind wipe. player is no longer with us due to his unco-operative style of play.

basically he broke the rules he paid the price, very black & white for our groups inquisitor who put in clear lines of command.

You could also have the techpriest whisper to the arbites..

"presently your body is mine to command, you rebuke my commands, however i have filed for your body to be given to me apon either your death or vegetation of mental functions for conversion to servitorisation. I'm concerned for those mental functions right now, and i think i may have to lobotomise you sooner rather than later. Ask Dyne if you dont beleive me, and whilst you're doing that ask him to remind you who is in charge of this cell, oh wait, we cant contact him right now can we. Who's to know if i was to immobilise you and perform the lobotomisation on you, as is my right, i could always say that you was injured in the line of duty. we'll make it look like you done the right thing in duty, so that your corpse will be more of a man than you've shown yourself to be in life...."

Well, the TP was put in charge by the Inquisitor. Refusing to acknowledge this is disobeying the Inquisitor's authority, not the TP's. Moreover, the Arbitrator has shown gross incompetence by shooting members of his cell engaged in melee combat. Basically, as soon as the Inquisitor hears about this, the Arbitrator can pack his things and head for the door. Unless, of course, this little incident is never mentioned in the TP's report.

So, my take on this would be that the Arbitrator is now the TP's *****.

Kyorou said:

This more than anything else. As for suitable punishment my solution would be a combination of the following:

1) Relocation to other duties. Doing some routine gak work for some time might teach humility.

2) Public and/or private humiliation. A suitably angry speech about "how he has failed him" ( Darth Vader style minus the choke ) followed by some non-lethal corporal punishment. Pain glove Imperial Fist- style would be my take.

Straight forward execution of Acolytes is generally not something I do, unless they feth up on an epic scale.

First thing first: Do not make Inq. Dyne handle this in the ongoing mission. I do not see that anyone is raising the point before a standard mission-debriefing. IF they raise it (perhaps the priests decide that things are solve and "that´s it!").

Argue: To my mind comes a memorable line from "Eisenhorn", where INq. Eisenhorn and Arbitrator Fishing first meet. Fishing is reluctant on following orders. (No 100% accurate quote; I only read it in german)

Eisenhorn: "Whom do you serve?"
Fishing: "The god-emporer of mankind!"
Eisenhorn: "While he is not around, you can consider me to be in his place"

After debriefing, make Inq. Dyne call upon the Arbitrator. Ask him who he serves, reinforce the point that Inquisitor Dyne is the actual an embodiement of imperial law&order and that it was this embodiment that told him to follow the instructions of the Tech-Priest. If the Arb tries to argue, cut him short with asking that infact he ignored order from a superior imperial instance with imperial law giving him reason to do so. This should hit home with an Arbitraitor.

Punishment: I think it is reasonalbe to assume that Inq. Dyne will have enough scrutiny to know that the offender in question will follow orders from know on. Thereby, he knows that all he has to do is to make an example. He did not crossed a direct order of the inquisition. Only "sort of".

Some "public, humiliating and disgracing" should do it. If your next mission is not involing undercover-work, an explosive collar could do the trick. No-one will push the button (your players them to be to mature for such stuff) but it will carry the message.

An official entrance of displeasure by an Inquisitor in the personal file of the Arb (reducing his rank for "payment purpose" by 3 permanently & giving him -30 with anyone in the know about his record & caring for such stuff) could be fine as well.

You could get him "suspended from the Arbites" as well (no payment, no Arbitrator anymore). This last thing will SURELY hurt the pc... and will make him think about. After all, Arbitrators are living for their job.

I agree with Gregorius, if it is to be addressed, it should only be addressed if it is actually brought up before the Inquisitor. How it's dealt with would depend a lot on the Inquisitor, his personality, and how he tends to conduct himself.

If it were my groups Inquisitor, who's fairly hands off and a touch pragmatic, she would do nothing at all. After all, the Tech-Priest was placed in charge, he dealt with the situation as he saw fit, and the mission continued. If anything was/is to be done about/with him, then it would be the Tech-Priests call. Anything more would be too much micro-managing for her -managing that cell and that mission was up to the Tech-Priest. In fact, the Tech-Priest would be the only acolyte she would even deal with or talk to, praise for a mission success, or punish for a failure. The TP was in charge and, as such, he/she is the only one she would care about or even think much about. I think the only way she would get personally involved with the Arbiter is if he had openly made a pact with Khorne, went all daemon crazy, and killed half a city and 2 PCs -but then that would be after executing the Tech-Priest for heresy (the heresy of Incompetence and dereliction of duty-he allowed such to happen on his watch and in his team).

That's just her and how she conducts business. How your Inquisitor would handle it depends a lot on his personality, philosophy, temperament, and outlook.

If the inquisitor hears about it, the punishment ought to be severe, as he disobeyed a direct order from a superior.

In the Imperial Guard, the comissar would have already shot him.

However, it absolutely depends on if the inquisitor hears about this now. Your Head-Tech-Priest can omit this incident in his report and have anyone else forget about it. Should the Arbites now be cooperative and useful (and owing a big favor to the Tech-Priest), he may chose to 'let him go'...

Have the inquisitor cut off an arm or two (had to do this to my psyker, put him in line real quick.) And when he decides he wants new limbs, have the inquisiotr put the tech priest in charge of it. Who knows maybe these new installed arms will have a twitch or something(random times in combat, or it flails and hits him in the face.). Once he has had enough the tech priest can fix said problem.

Flay the Arbities alive for disobeying orders.

Have the Tech Priest stripped of his true flesh and turned into a Servitor for being weak and not dealing with the situation himself.

Flog the Priest for getting involved.

Anyone else in the party should endure several hours/day of thorough interrogation for witnessing the event and gain several IP's.

I'd leave it as-is, really. Fluffwise, the Inquisitor isn't there to molly-coddle and micromanage the cell. They can do that themselves, like big grownup acolytes.

Out-of-Character-wise, you've set up an awesome sense of rivalry and loathing between the characters in your party. They'll stare daggers ate each other between briefings, set each other up with insulting banter, and have all sorts of shenanigans. Take it from a player/GM in an equally-fractured cell, it's great fun and adds another dimension to the game.

Let the characters sort it out themselves. The drama's interesting and develops characters well, and the Inquisitor isn't likely to be the sort of person who would care too much in most cases.

ItsUncertainWho said:

I know this is all grimdark and such, but if everything ended with all involved being killed you'd find very quickly that most of your group would want to stop roleplaying just out of the fear of making their 20th character in the past few weeks. The group I'm in would have all been killed off about 10 times over if we were getting killed every time one of us was involved in some in-party conflict.

Yes, make punishment harsh, but don't punish roleplaying with forcing them to make new characters.

Graver said:

Absolutely. Agree 110% with Gregorius and Graver. If your Inquisitor is hands-off, no harm no foul, unless it's brought to his/her attention by the TP or Priest. If your Inquisitor is more a micro-manager, then there could be issues, per Gregorius' excellent examples.

EDIT: Also, I agree with Filadan. If it was handled through RP'ing in-game, and no harm was done, it might be best to let things go at that, since you obviously have a group of relatively mature RP'ers in your group. If, however, the same problem persists, then it might be time to take some kind of action.