There is a game called Cold City which some of you have played. It’s a game about trust and alliances as a team formed of disparate and competing national factions try to work together while they pursue private and organisational agendas over the official mission, while not being caught. Its all about trust and betrayal, secrets and revelation.

I don’t need Cold City.

I have Dark Heresy.

And the most spectacular episode of Inquisitorial minions suspecting each other of selling out the Inquisition to pursuse their original factions. Guns were pointed at each others heads. Accusations of disloyalty, tech-theft, dereliction of duty and defiance of orders were hurled around. Tech Priests were suspected of possession by machine-plagues. Assassins were suspected of going rogue with Forbidden Atomics. The Sister suspected there was something scuttling in the vents. The Arbites suspected everyone, even his own dreams. The psyker was so astounded that no one was suspecting him for the first time in his life that he almost put a lasround through his temple in shock.

It was such an easy mission. Find the Heretic. He was drinking at the end of the bar and easily captured by a Webber shot. That’s all the Inquisition wanted.

But then it turned out he had a nuke (that he didn’t want to use). But no one could find it after the Assassin got there first. Then the Tech Priest visited the AdMech excavation and much use of "Secret Tongue- Tech" was made. And when the Assassin went out of contact for too long with the Forbidden Atomic, the rest of the group came within an inch of hunting him down across the blasted surface of Terminus Beta.

Of course the Ad Mech claimed their facility had an intrusion and Forbidden pre-Imperial samples of technology had been removed from the sacred confines of their dig. Outside of the santified mechadendrites of the Adeptus Mechanicus, they warned the items could be terribly dangerous.

That such items turned up in the heretics confiscated possesions (though he claimed to have never seen them) lead to accusations of Mechanicus cover ups, Assassins going rogue and the very betrayal of the Inquisition by two of the team.

Then the Magos died, the ancient silver sphere disappeared and the Sister is convinced there is something in the walls.

Yes….

Who needs Cold City. biggrin

The entire setting reminds me a lot of the first Alien movie. Which is a compliment in a way, as that is a good setup for intense horror action.

Either way, to lend this a bit of my own twisted ideas, here are a few ideas I d pitch in (and use, if I ever used a necron. It wouldnt fit my current campaign so that may be a while still)

Weapons to destroy it: One of the things that worked well in Alien, and may work well here, is the lack of real weaponry, esp. lack of military grade weaponry. What if the bigger guns, as in power weapons ,plasma, melta etc., were locked up and sealed securely in a readily accessible armory? You can entice your players with free reloads for their cells if they dont want to go for it, or just have it as a rule. Of course, once freed, our necron localizes and shuts down the most obvious energy sources first, which happens to be exactly that collection of high-powered weaponry.

That way, you dont have to come up with ways to make these weapons useless, as the players suddenly will have to rely on their wits, and on something else: improvised weaponry.

If the crew or a team of the crew of that ship excavated the sarcophagus, there ll be heavy duty digging equipment somewhere. Laser Cutters, power drills, Breachers, Fusion cutters, plasma lances.... stuff like that. Very blue collar stuff too, and just barely useful as a weapon ,and would require a good plan to get the necron near the guy lugging around 100 pounds of mining equipment, but very effective I am sure. Also I dont think Weapon Jinx is going to work on a necron, as "mechanical" in my opinion means moving parts and physics, not electrity, power fields or whatever else it is that drives necrons. Just my interpretation really, but I would say it just hinders movement by physically impairing joints etc. for a moment, and would probably not hinder him at least shooting in their general direction (maybe a -20 or so). Enough to not make this a permanent solution, but rather a good way for an eventual psyker to chip in.

In general, I think this is a perfect opportunity to have your players be without their optimized, deadly weaponry and remind them that especially extremely specialized characters are pretty vulnerable if their toys are not around.

SJE, I love the idea, but then I am a little partisan, having a Necron TT army - thought you might want to check out the Dark Reign site, as I remember it having stats for a Necron warrior and scarabs a short time ago that might give you some more ideas for how combat might work.

I agree with all the comments about and comparisons with 'Alien,' and with the premise from Khaunshar that low powered weaponry would make the encounter more deadly and challenging for the PCs, especially if they had to use a heretic to help them outwit the Necrontyr systems. I would also agree that psychic powers might damage a Necron, but agree it would be no simple matter of weapon jinx against such advanced systems - if a Necron can play havoc with the internal systems of a massive ship's systems, it's unlikely to be phased by such a low cost psychic power. The Gellar fields would also, naturally, have an influence. I much prefer the idea that Xenos tech would have to be used to destroy the Necron once and for all, especially if this creates a moral dilemma for the PCs.

Just on the subject of the Necron itself - it would be good, I think, to make the creature a little bit more 'special.' For that reason I would either go with the Flayed One idea previously mentioned, or perhaps either a Pariah or an Immortal. The Pariah, quite aside from its terrifying resistance to Psychic powers is described in the TT rules as being an 'abomination' that scares entire units of enemy troops. Coupled with this is its ability to use Warp phase weaponry which could cut through armour, power fields, bulkheads etc... with frightening ease. It would palpably affect the entire crew of the ship, and there might be a host of related incidents with the crew themselves (like 'Event Horizon' perhaps) going insane or becoming corrupted by the indomitable will of the foe - a Pariah would make a better high power villain, for a PC group with more experience, than a normal Warrior perhaps.

An Immortal would simply be another more high powered choice, with even more antique but powerful dark tech at its disposal. Last of all, have you considered the possibility that the Logicians may have another agent on board the vessel? This agent may have several objectives to further hinder the Acolytes and also cloud their fight with the Necron. Firstly, the agent will want to silence Otto, and in so doing remove any secrets he might harbour, which will likely come out when he's excruciated. Secondly, the agent may want to get hold of some of this Xenos tech, possibly a scarab or maybe part of the Necrontyr machine itself. The agent may have to be a member of the crew who could perhaps be trusted by the PCs - a senior armsman perhaps, or even an Archeo tech expert from the planetary survey team perhaps.

In any case, your scenario idea is a winner - I can see myself running it, if I could keep my gaming group together long enough!

One thing I may not have mentioned. Since the adventure is set mostly on a starship traversing the Warp, I've had to decide how the Gellar field and Psychic powers interact. I've decided for my game that on most of the ship, the Threshhold of psychic powers is raised by 1 to represent the field intentionally keeping the warp away. If the pysker is in the near vicinity of the Gellar Field generators (same room) then the Threshold may be a lot higher (5 or more).

And while none of my players have read Disciples of the Dark Gods, I was astounded to see them perfectly play out the internal Imperium faction feuds and conflicts of Chapter V (and its missing section on the Adeptus Mechanicus). Having the Tech Priest sell out the mission to the Magos right at the beginning and become the tool of Mars was interesting. No one can prove it yet, but I do wonder how to punish the Tech priest if his Inquisitor ever gets word that his first loyalty is to the Machine cult and not the Inquisition.

if the assassin (who broke into the dig site, and stole a metal sphere and a knife like shard of the silver metal) is ever proven to have done so, then I think Globus Varak may have punish him by having his lungs removed and replaced by inferior cybernetic ones that need recharching by a Tech Priest every 24 hours....

SJE

Khaunsahr & Redmike- I was definately going for a mix of Alien intially (small things scuttling about in ducts) and then it'll morph into Terminator as they have more contacts with the Necron.

The most powerful weapons the party have is the Sisters meltagun and the Arbites Heavy Webber. The Sister has been told that firing a Melta in a starship is contra-indicated and must be stowed in the armoury. If she does insist on using it, then it'll go through the hull on any miss and the rest of the party will need void suits to escape immediate de-pressurisation. I'm also tempted to say the webbing material wont find any purchase on the Necrons nanite infused metal body.

I'm also strongly thinking of protecting the Necron with Plotinium. I'll record the damage that they do to it with bolters and meltas and grenade, but I'll keep describing how it keeps healing up and keeps coming- unstoppable, implacable, never, ever resting till its dead, Terminator-style. Simply shooting it will never do enough damage to kill it- they'll need to get creative to stop it, with some of the ideas I've described before or their own inspiration. But yes, desperation is what I'll need to see in their eyes before they can actually kill it. Since its the feel I'm going for, and there are no official Necron stats to contradict me (not that that'd be a probably anyway) even a simple Necron warrior can be as unstoppable in this RPG environment as a far more powerful Necron might be in the wargame. Plus the scarabs communicating with him and controlling the ship systems will also through in other scares.

SJE

In the third week of my Silver Dawn adventure, the PC’s at last confronted their true enemy. They are on a ship in the Warp having returned from the frontier planet Terminus Beta. There they had captured a Logician heretic, one of them had stolen a silver knife and orb from an Adeptus Mechanicus archaeological dig and the Magos from that dig had hitched a lift with them back to civilisation. The group had been rent by accusations of treachery, heresy and betrayal as the groups Tech Priest was believed to have shown his true colours by selling the Inquisition out to his real Mechanicus masters. He in turned accused the ever-elusive Assassin of stealing from the dig and removing dangerous technology from the proper safekeeping of Mars. Then the Magos was found dead in his room, a great silver sacophagus apparently opened.

They now faced their true enemy (no, not the Assassin who hadn’t actually murdered the Ad Mech Magos).

Instead the Tech Priest communed with the machine spirit of the mighty ship ‘Imperial Dawn’ and located within its electrical system a persistent power drain- one moving towards the fusion heart of the machine.

Not sure what it is, they determine to hold the line and prevent it from reaching Engineering. Tech Priest Severus calculates its current course through the ducts and tells the others (an Arbites, Psyker, Sister and Assassin)

They get to a deserted old commissary dining hall with kitchens behind them. They open up the overhead duct and ready weapons. The sister hears that familiar scuttling and lobs a frag grenade down the pipe. Whump! The arbites tries to follow on with a stun grenade but misthrows and he dives out the way as it lands at his feet.

The psyker floats up to the duct and crawls forward, followed by the assassin. Amongst burning wires and sparking power circuits, the psyker sees a mess of silver shards and fragments. Which melt like mercury and start running into each other. Reforming. Recreating itself as a floating, horseshoe-shaped silver beetle. That’s coming for him!

Meanwhile the Arbites has attempted to outflank the creature by going out of the commissary and down the corridor to open a duct entrance from behind it. As he does, he notices that the doors at the end of the corridor are opening and the ones at the commissary are shutting. He just has time to race back to the commissary doors and catches a glimpse of silver metal hand and skull as the door seals shut. Warning the others that something bigger approaches, he desperately tries to brace the submarine style door.

Meanwhile the psyker and assassin are backtracking quickly to escape the oncoming thing in the duct, the psykers one duelling pistol shot missing. The assassins out, but the psyker is stuck as the silver beetle monster springs towards it, wicked clawed legs extended!

The Arbites and Sister Innocenta hold the door as they try to raise the Tech priest on comms, but all they hear is static. And despite their mighty efforts, the door seal continues to rotate open and they step back to unleash death.

Instead it is death that steps through. A tall, 6’ silver metal skeleton holding a Xenos weapon, burning red eyes sweeping across them with merciless judgement. The Arbites shotgun blast rebounds from its inhuman metal body, leaving it untouched. The sister’s bolter barks off 2 rounds which dent and twist one its ribs. To her horror, she sees the silver metal rib flex and bend back into place, as if it had never been damaged! The Arbites sees Death approaching and turns and flees, while even the sister’s hands shake a little. Green energy fires from the xenos weapon, just missing the Throne agents but flaying through the metal ceiling as if it were not there.

Behind them comes a yelp as the psyker falls out of the duct, desperately ducking under the leaping silver scarab. Invoking White Noise the psyker freezes in fear, utterly still as the humming green glowing eye of the silver scarab scans back and forth. The green light nears, touches and passes over, his psychic power making him invisible to machine senses!

Marshalling her courage, the Adepta Sororitas hurls a krak grenade straight and true. It lodges in shoulder joint of the alien horror and explodes with deadly force, blowing off the arm and gun of the terrifying Xenos. Yet the creature seems to feel no pain, and instead smoothly moves to pick up its arm. Re-attaching it at the joint the silver metal flows together as it literally rearms. (“Oh ****- I just did 20 pts of damage with a krak grenade and all it did was lose its action” mutters the Sisters player)

As the psyker continues to play hide and seek with the scarab (and then shoots it a few times with a hellpistol), the Tech Priest and Assassin comes running at the silver skeleton. The deep data cores that he once assimilated on the Malygrisian Tech Heresy chime as they identify the creature as a Necron or Necrontyr- an ancient, extinct race who once ruled the galaxy back in the Dawn Times, back when the universe was new. Masters of material science, they warred then with their archenemies, the psyker Old Ones who shaped the Ork and Eldar to war against the Necrontyr… What weapons might harm it? “Powerful ones” the GM says. (memories start to flash in the players thoughts. Forbidden Atomics. Eldar Shuriken pistols. Locked away meltaguns. The silver metal knife from the dig).

The Necrons gauss flayer seems unstoppable- burning through the armour of the Sister and Tech Priest as if it were not there. The return fire from a host of bolters and flamers is ineffective as the creature keeps moving forward- ancient, unstoppable, implacable. Even the Assassins brave rush and attack with dual wielded mono-blades is like hitting a brick wall- the blades chipping and ringing from the impact, but doing no harm to the silver metal armour of the Necron Warrior.

The Arbites recovers from his fear and grabbing his Heavy Webber he glops the Scarab to the floor and then orders the psyker to keep the Necron busy. Forehead creasing, the psyker attempts to jam the Necrons lethal Flayer and is delighted to see the machinery freezing effect of his power also affects the highly complex machinery inside the Necron, freezing it for a few seconds! (and also depowering the Sisters power armour and the Tech Priests mechandrites. (going with the pre-erratta Weapon Jinx rules here).

Seeing their chance, the Arbites and Assassin race through the ship, heading for the Armoury where the weapons they need are stored. The sister keeps making strength checks to keep firing her holy bolter at the xenos abomination in front of her. The Tech Priest unleashes a fusillade of krak grenades at the frozen silver statue, boasting “Don’t worry, I never miss!”. Until of course his launcher jams and the krak grenade explodes in his chest! (“What happens to me when I have no wounds left?”

But the real tension lies with the psyker. Sweat drips from his forehead as he must make a constant succession of Weapon Jam rolls to freeze the ten million year old Necron killing machine in place (similar to Lyta in B5 freezing the Shadow ship). On a 1 he doesn’t have enough power to fuel the effect. On a 9 he invites the possibility of his brain exploding Scanners-style or some other Peril of the Warp manifesting. He starts making rolls. 5 rolls. 8 rolls. On the 10th, he gets a 1 and the Necron violently swings its flayer-axehead at the now ambulatory Tech Priest, smashing through his chest with such violence that Severus must burn a Fate Point to avoid the death result where his blood and oil sprays around so much that people within 4m will have to make agility rolls to stay on their feet!

Now the Assassin and Arbites reach the Armoury and start heading back. The Tech Priest is down and out, the sister trapped in her power(less) armour, out of grenades and every weapon jammed. Its all down to the Psyker… can he keep the Necron frozen by sheer force of will for another 10 rounds?

He begins to roll. We all crane over to watch. 3-4 more rolls. No 9’s. I even swap out his dice with one of mine since his clearly doesn’t have a 9 inscribed on it. He rolls again and again. 8s. 5’s. a few 10’s, no 9’s. The last roll…. a 4! Somehow he’s made over 20 psychic rolls and never once rolled a 9. Hes done! And no ones brain has exploded!

Back at last, the Arbites thrusts the knife like shard of silver metal he’d recovered from the armoury into the Necron warrior. And like mercury its instantly absorbed into the nano-tech rich surface of its silver metal body- merely adding mass!

So, plan B- the Sisters Meltagun is brought forward and shot straight at the Necrons skull! A blast of bright actinic light leaves everyone seeing stars and blinking. As the white hot light vanishes, they can make out though the lens-flares that their immortal and invulnerable enemy has been thoroughly decapitated! A second blast also sees to the Scarab still trapped in the webbing.

While their initial temptation is to order the Imperial Dawns captain to fire the xenos remains into the nearest sun, the stricken Tech Priest makes a synthetic vox plea from the Medicae deck (while being fitted for cybernetic lungs) that such technology should be kept so its weaknesses be uncovered and the Imperium be armed against any future Necron awakenings. Grudgingly the rest concur but all privately recommend in their reports that the Adeptus Mechanicus dig site on Terminus Beta be destroyed by orbital lance strike.

They return to the fold of the Harkonnen-like Inquisitor Globus Vaarak and promptly blame each other in their reports. After assessing the situation, the crippled and corpulent Inquisitor thanks them for their good work but reminds them that the Mechanicus are like the lungs of the Imperium- without their work the Imperium could not survive- no ships, or power or rejuvenat treatments. There must be trust between the team. No disloyalty can be tolerated. No member of the Inquisition can serve an outside master. And even as they remember how not to offend the Mechanicus, neither should the Tech Priest believe himself beyond the reach of the Inquisition. For what good are lungs without a holy purpose and soul to direct the body of the Imperium towards victory. And now his new iron lungs must be blessed by one of the other Acolytes every 24 hours or they will fail him…. Mwu ha haha!

I'm thinking that holding off a Necron for 20 rounds through sheer force of will (and balls of adamantium) probably merits a Fate Point award to the Psyker. The only thing I'm not sure of is whether to give any of the rest of the party one as well. Thoughts?

SJE said:

definetely give the psyker a fate point. He earned 3 times over. Ummm...notsure about the others tho, maybe give the Sister one because she stayed and faced it to protect teh Psyker, even tho they dont like Psykers. dont give one to the Techie because he sold his mates out to the Ad-Mech. totally up to you really

So basically the Techie has to rely on another player to survive. You're just asking for gried there as one player or all them might get it into their thick skulls to piss off old Techie and not bless his lungs. Personally I would just give him a threat by the Inquisitor that he'll reveal how the Techie is so well learned on Xenos to the AdMech. That should tell him where his loyalties need be.

Yes, the Techie needs the others to survive. Just like the Imperium needs the Mechanicum to survive. Its all inter-dependent.

And now instead of running off and cutting side deals with Magi, the Tech Priest will have to keep on the good side of the others.

But the way the group works (with the Psyker being despised and the rest of the party keeping a list of suspicious things the Psyker does such as "looking at us oddly, whilst being a Psyker" and "Breathing the Emperors good air- whilst being a psyker!" and so on) with a fairly Puritan/Monodominant leaning. Thats why the psyker saving the party and being commended by the Arbites is such a turn around- normally they dont allow him even a las pistol and keep trying to fit him for explosive collars. Just in case.

SJE

I once had a player execute another player's psychic just because he was acting strangely. Their Inquisitor quickly made a point of executing the offending player's character and saying that if he had wanted a bunch of mindless zealots he would have requisitioned a mob of redemptionist. My point is that once you start allowing other players screw each other over, you start an endless cycle of "I blast him with by plasma pistol in the name of the Emperor". By making the Techie dependent on the other players for survival, you make him a slave to their will and humor. If all he did was recommend a different course of action I don't see why he should even be punished for "selling out his friends". Hell I'd just flush my character out the airlock rather than be tied up in this web of suspicion.

We'll have to see how things work out, but I'm confident our group is mature enough that players value each others enjoyment of the game as much as their own. Conflict then becomes a source of drama and comedy if people understand the implicit limits rather than doing silly things like killing each other over minor stuff.

SJE