[This thread will contain Spoilers on the Haarlock trilogy]

I’m starting a new campaign and I’m planning on using the released adventures and then have them tackle the Haarlock trilogy. I’ve read a lot of the threads here so I have a pretty good grasp of what I’ll need to do with it (start with damned city for example). But I’m a bit undecided on having one of the acolytes be a scion of Haarlock or not.

Knowing my players and our play style (we rarely play more than once every 3 month, and we grow very attached to our characters), I know that they will never even consider killing one of their own in the House of Dust and Ashes. In this case, I’ll need to have at least one other NPC scion or else my players will assume that there is another way out.

But what I’m looking for is input on the advantages and disadvantages of having one player as a scion of Haarlock. How did it help/hinder the other scenario of the trilogy? How did your player react to the revelation? How did it impact the character post trilogy? And so on...

And how did you choose witch player was the scion? One of my player is a mind cleansed, so I was considering the possibility of using him, Inquisitor Marr could have figured it out and ordered the cleansing... and it would explain why Marr sends them to the auction... How did you handle it?

Thanx in advance for the input.

Note there is a way out of the auction in dust and ash. Personally I just let the players come up with ever more inventive and desperate methods to escape. they never hit upon the "right" way in the book, but I kinda of liked their solution better. Also there was the epic race for the airship follwed by a few thousand children of the kingdom. End with the airship swooping down to a rescue (the PCs had managed to contact them telepathicly) and the PC climbing ropes up to the airship. With an unlucky PC spending a few rounds the subject of a tug of war with the children....

I have a player who is Schola Progenium who I made the scion. I hinted at it with a prophecy the players picked up from Aristarchus' effects (Illuminations adventure in Core Book).

To handle it I made the following changes.

• The players had a choice that they managed to work out (with enough subtle hints). Either drain the scion of blood or try to deactivate the void shield at the control room in the tomb.
• With the draining of the blood the players were told it would require medical aid & a fate point for the scion to survive the process. (I would have gave the scion the fate point back though at the end of the adventure).
• The other people at the auction eventually in the final hours found out who the scion was so where after them as well!

So the players had a choice. Risk the Children of the Kingdom and the difficulty of working with the control room or brave the other bidders and try to save the scion after they where drained.

BTW they picked the control room..

I know someone running a DH campaign that turned into a RT campaign. He had an acolyte party enter the House of Dust and Ash and then find out they were all scions of Haarlock. They escaped pretty handily, finding the amulet on Greer (?). Inquisitor Marr offered to support their claim for the Haarlock Warrant in exchange for future favours. Being Haarlocks has pros and cons. They tried to pull political weight on Quaddis - while still dressed in rags from the red cages. That didn't go so well. Damned Cities they own the folly, but throwing the Arbites out is hardly an option. Oh and a certain heavily armed group from that book came after them early on Sinophia, so they have they reason to stick around and investigate.

GoodCat said:

I think the adventures benefit greatly from having one of the acolytes be a Haarlock scion. It personally affects them, and ties them up nicely with something much larger, and older, and sinister than themselves, and it strengthens the theme of the inevitability of bloodlines and a certain future waiting for you, which is an important theme in the Haarlock storyline.

Mind you, they don't have to kill the acolyte. Perhaps they can drain enough of his blood to do whatever they need to do. But they will have to protect him once the likes of Heron Mask, the Widower and even ol' Erasmus himself find out there is another scion left.

I went with the Acolyte = scion option. My players aren't the sort that would gut a fellow PC, but the possiblity led to some hilarious roleplaying.

I think this makes the events of the rest of the campaign more plausible, as the shadowy Inquisitor Marr manipulates events behind the scenes to make sure thar Haarlock's blood is always in the right place at the right time.

I have also gone with the acolyte as a scion of the blood, in two linked campaigns for a couple of reasons. It gives the players a tie to the plot, in a real and tangible way, not merely chasing at its tail.

Beyond that, lets be honest, no matter how good that Erasmus was at hunting down his kin, what are the chances that he hunted down every single bastard that would have been sired since the founding of the Dynasty? I am willing to give that he killed all those who claimed blood ties to the line, and even many of the prominent bastards, but what about the ones that did not even know, and were generations, if not millenia removed. In my opinion, given the dark reputation of the line, there are probably a multitude of scions out there.

I'm our regular game, we used one of the players being the Scion of Haarlock as a transition from Dark Heresy to Rogue Trader as the end of Dead Stars gives them access to an RT warrant and a starship.

Bleed the acolyte. It's simple. The Bride wants blood, but only a chaliceful. If any of your players have Medicae, it'd be stupidly easy. A few wounds inflicted (I think I did D5 for a successful Medicae test, D10+Degrees of Failure if unsuccessful), but ultimately they get the blood. My players figured it out almost immediately. Even without Medicae, I'd just got for roughly the same ruling. Risky, but not impossible and when pushed to it; the most sensible solution overall.

Aside from all that, being the Scion of Haarlock has come to dominate the character. Everywhere, everything always seems to end with most people trying to kill him for one reason: Haarlock. He *hates* Haarlock. It's beautiful to watch. Beautiful. Being from Orbell Quill and having been away for a while...he can't go home. He's too old. The curse'll get him. Why? Haarlock.

It's great. Wonderful. How did I pick which one to make the Scion? The one with noted family (kids), of course...

How did I break it to them? The portrait scene in "House of Dust and Ash" is utterly glorious. Wonderful, in fact. Simply pushing through the crowd, getting a look, looking directly at yourself. Tremendous.

I strongly recommend one of them. Not a techpriest or psyker; dunno why. Don't seem to fit. Someone with connections but someone who can't afford to 'brush it off'.

Xisor said:

A voidborn character is often the easiest fit; in my last group, the voidborn assassin claimed from the start to be the son of a Rogue Trader, so I could hardly pass up such a golden opportunity that had been handed to me.

Xisor said:

We recently finished HoDA and the scion had to spend 2 litres of his blood, which brought him down to 0 wounds (1 wound per 0,25 litres) and he had to take a T-test to remain conscious but with -20 on all characteristic tests. Chalices can be rather big and this was a huge one (at least in our game)…

In our game the scion is the groups Assassin who normally has some kind of detached and ignorant attitude. It was a great opportunity to get him (i.e. the player) more involved into the setting and the campaign as such. Apart from that, his character grew up in the very deepest hive areas (he rolled that result on the Hive Born table) of Landunder and his parents died (i.e. were killed) when he was a child. He was always more talented (i.e. always seemed to be of ‘higher breeding’) than the scum and dregs in the lower hive, and his parents always made the impression they were actually hiding in the lower hive and not living there by ‘choice’.

I also used the “Unknown Portrait” from the auction and I still remember the shocked and slightly unbelieving look on the face of the Assassin’s player’s face, when the mayhem started after the revelation of the Gilded Widow and he suddenly saw his face, while people were butchered all around him. Later (in his panic) he even tried to destroy the crystal block it is encased in with little success. The groups Psyker (the prime), the Arbitrator as well as the Tech-Priest wanted to bleed him into the chalice right from the beginning, while the Assassin with some support from the Guardsman was very reluctant to say the least…

As already established, you do not need to kill the Scion outright. On the other hand, is to be life threatening . Otherwise, the scion (if an npc) would simply accept the bloodletting and everyone would be able to escape (if they are able to fight off the Mourners) before anything bad happens.

I have two groups which I plan to run through at "Damned Cities", "Dust & Ash" and "Dead Stars" (perhaps in this line of appearance), always placing one of them as a scion of Haarlock.

My approach to the bloodletting is simply ruling that the person in questions has to check for "bleeding to death". Without naming any quantity, I will make sure that it will need three checks ... and the whole time the pc will not know when the amount of blood in the chalice is enough. Always asking the players ifs they want to go on with it and explaining that if the chalice has to be filled up to the rim, the pc will die for sure.

Edit: Talking wounds, I will follow count the wounds to be "zero" the time the roles start (no further negative damage)

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Everyone from a "Schola"-Background is a good choice as well since they do not know their parents for real. Noble born could in truth be the offspring of an affair under nobles, void born are an obvious choice as well.

Talking classes, I only would ommit Tech-Priest since I do not know if they can bleed into the chalice (if the chalice would accept nutrient fluid etc.). On the other hand, this would be a fine way to produce a dilemma:

1) The picture at the auction will reveal the face of the scion..but no-one but the Tech-Priest pc recognizes it since it is his face.. or what it would look like if he hadn´t had all this implants install in it!

2) If they decided to bleed him, he will have to tell them that he is lacking any real blood (a fact even Haarlock would have been unable to forsee) so that they have to look for another way out. Of course, the rest of the people will want to try it anyway onless the pc manage to reason with desperate people (difficult or hard social skill test).

Gregorius21778 said:

Well, most 'low ranking' Tech-Priests do have a rather normal physiology and are not that heavily augmented in my opinion. So, they would have normal blood with the notable exception of those having the Autosanguine or Prosanguine talent.