My group are currently playing through Damned Cities and up until this point I have been heavily playing up the issue of forces within the Inquistion moving against the Acolytes and their own Inquisitor.
Silas Marr has left them cryptic notes warning them of the Tenebrae Collegium. The Acolytes still only have vague awareness of who they are but in TF I replaced Karkalla with their own Inquisitor and his last blood soaked burblings was that he had been 'betrayed by men I had once called brethren'.
The acolytes survved TF and fled to Solomon and they now work directly to Marr.
Anyway for Damned Cities I knew immediately that I wanted to use Spectre Cell 17 so out of game I e-mailed the guy who plays the Scum character and asked how he would feel becoming a double agent. I said he had been contacted by an anonymous source and offered 15 000 thrones for passing information through an encrptic vox channel, a further 1000 would be desposited in an account per piece of intel passed on. The offer was signed off by 'loyal servants of the emperor. He agreed.
Anyway this played out really well with both of us using our HTC smart phones to pass information between us. The other players just thought we were texting our wives!
Anyway I am very aware that through this I could easily instigate a party wipe, which is not my intention, I just think it is a very interesting plot mechanism and adds to the paranoia and internal Inquisition war.
After a whole day of passing information regarding their investigation the Scum character received a message saying 'midday, bring team to Celestine Wharf, take no part in what transpires'. He did so and Spectre Cell 17 executed a perfect ambush which played out brilliantly and almost resulted in a party wipe. However I was slightly generous in some of my rolls and the psyker performed some absolute heroics to ensure that they scraped through by the skin of their teeth.
However after the game the assassin player (who is known for being a bit moany) started complaining that the attack came from out of no where and seemed a bit too hard. I pointed out that they survived and cryptically said 'all will be revealed'.
Throughout the day none of them picked up on the Scum's strange behaviour. The guy who has gone mad whose friend had the shard was accompanying them for protection and saw the Scum leave the Folly at 2AM for a secret rendesvouz. However before he could tell any of the others the Scum player killed him and covered it up as another murder (however they have noted the difference in MO). They also failed to spot that not a single hostile act was performed against the Scum player in the ambush.
However, having a double agent is obviously a very powerful tool so I am now going to ease off and make the arrangement one where the Sum just passes information on. This will be justification for the Tenebrae showing up on Mara in Dead Stars. I'll leave the final show down and revelation of the betrayal for the decision on whether Haarlock steps through the door in Dead Stars, could be quite a climatic finale.
