Recently, my long-time favourite character died. It was definitely a memorable death, although I am hesitant to call it the best one I've had so far. The character in question was an Untouchable assassin who had a relic of the Dark Age of Technology - an intact artifical intelligence which he developed a friendship with. After gaining a few corruption points which damaged the artificial intelligence, I opted to burn all of my fate points as part of a deal with my game master in order to purify my character and have the chance to reboot that artifical intelligence through role-playing and some tech-heresy. It made a lot of sense in character to do it; as it was my character's only real friend. A few missions lately, after barely surviving a few times by the skin of my teeth, the game master game to the decision to kill off my character since he had botched a few rolls to continue on with my character, despite the lack of fate points. So, the death-mission started…

We were on our way to our next mission and while making a stop in a warp route, we were raided. My character went outside in a void-suit and fought off those trying to board the ship. At this stage, an emergency warp jump began by the captain… with my character unable to make it back through the air lock. Being outside the ship, my character was exposed to a direct view of the warp - being pulled behind the ship after hooking his grappling hook to part of the ship to remain secure - like a water skiier behind a boat. While not exactly clear on what was going to happen to my character (the Untouchable and the Profane states a protection from warp energies) - the artificial intelligence that was attached to my character was not. Surviving the warp jump and trying to get back into the ship, my character was highly changed - having become a shambling corpse animated by the corrupted artificial intelligence's systems. Confused, I attempted to get help only to be met with increasing attacks before a priest came and used holy powers to slay me (once again an oddity considering the Untouchable and the Profane) - but it's hard to say what truly happened in terms of the dynamics of it since I'm not the game master.

And that's that, dead character. Still not entirely sure how I feel about it, as I would have liked to know that my character was going to die ahead of him so I could at least work with the game master to come up with an appropriate death, but it was definitely one of the more memorable character deaths.

Meridien said:

Sentence correction: *the game master decided to kill off my character

It's a long, complicated story but I think the best character death I've had so far is in Dark Heresy, though I've seen some great ones in Deathwatch as well.

Our newly minted Inquisitor killed himself when he realized that he'd been lured into a Tzeenchian plot to fight his old master. They were unwitting champions of a chaos power and if one of them died by the other's hand, the daemon would be released. The only way he could be sure to rob the daemon of victory was killing himself. Or at least that was his ultimate conclusion. No pun intended.

It was heartbreaking to see the realization dawn on my player's face, but he never hesitated. He was a true servant of the God-emperor.

My first Dark Heresy group reached rank 6-7 and I decided to send them after Arkades Thrum, a notorious pyrokine who had recently evaded then incinerated an Inquisitorial Stormtrooper assault squad. They spent three sessions hunting him and his leads down, systematically interrogating his contacts before handing them over for official Inquisition interrogation. Eventually they hunted him down to an agri-world where he had been hiding with a den of Psyker sympathisers, which was a bad idea…

Now my group despise psykers after their own psyker turned on them in an earlier mission and they basically reduced him to component atoms by venting him from an airlock into the engine wash of a passing cargo ship. So when they found out thier target was hiding and who were involved, so they called in and requested reinforcements and re-equipping but aid was unavailable so they re-equipped at a local PDF garrison. Now my assassin, 2 guardsmen, an arbitrator, a tech preist and my cleric all exited the PDF armoury with the best equipment they could get thier grubby mitts upon. So they borrow a PDF chimera, ram straight through the shop acting as a front for the psyker hiding business, instantly flattening three of the sympathisers to a fine goo and alerting the rest of the mostly subterranean compound to thier presence. After another session of fighting through the building and clearing it out, they made thier way to sub basement C-3. Having seen the power a psyker can wield, especially at close range, they slowly progressed through the cavernous sub-basement only to find Thrum trying in vain to start a Valkyrie. Nothing they have is anywhere near powerful enough to scratch the Valkyrie, and the acolytes began panicking until the tech-preist happily notes that the Valkyrie is completely unable to even begin takeoff procedures as a vital part of the engine is laying on a work bench just feet from the access hatch. Emboldened by this development, the acolytes began to shout to Thrum that they have him surrounded and he should give up quickly, to which he replies something along the lines of "faff off!".

Taking this as a personal insult, the younger and more impetuous of my guardsman howls a war cry, charges at the Valkyrie and runs slap bang into… A 9 foot tall, 16 foot wide Wall of Fire, instantly atomising him, all his gear, and a good chunk of the evidence they gathered while clearing the compound they were in. The rest of my Acolytes obviously didn't take this well and proceeded to lay a whole wagon of whup-ass on this guy, and let's just say, they made him wish the Inquisition would hurry up and rescue him from the acolytes!

(sorry for poor storytelling, I ran a 7 3/4 hour session yesterday and am currently half way through a 9 hour work shift :/

One of my favourite NPC death's so far has to be when the groups Guardsman character (Deadhead) was trying to sneakinto a warehouse. He disguised himself as an electro-Technomat (read electrician) and had a security guard show him around after the Techpriest caused a blackout in the whole area.

So the Guardsmen finds a way into the warehouse through a side door but needs to get rid of the security guard. He grabs the secruity guard in a headlong and stabs him through the eye with a screwdriver. The Guardsman had a SB of 5 and crushing Blow and he rolled a series of 10's for damage. The critical result effectively said that the blow removed the top of the security guards head….with a screw driver!.

The other PCs hear a strange commotion over the vox feed which results in this covnersation

Tech Priest: What's your status Deadhead?

Guardsman: I'm in the warehouse

Tech priest: What about the security guard?

Guardsman: He's uh…screwed.