Okay, so I've been running a Dark Heresy campaign for the last 6 months or so with spotty attendance (most folks have kids, etc) and I've been trolling about a few ideas here and there. Pretty sure none of my players read the forums here, so I'm going to roll out a few plot twists I'm trying to mulling about to and house rules to see what you guys think before I spring it at them. I'll add more detail to what's here or past events if requested.

The party as it stands:

Psyker - Almost killed the party and herself a few times rolling 9s. Almost afraid to use her powers as of the last game, due to repeated 9s the whole night.. She was introduced in the first session to the rest of the party as they "stole" her from a covertly shipped cryotube bearing marks of the inquisition and the Adeptus Terra. Marked motherly attachment to the young NPC (listed below) who recently joined the party.

Arbites #1 - focusing primarily on ranged attacks, Sent by the inquisitor as get-away driver for Psyker-stealing party members; showed up as they fled the warehouse. Previously worked for the inquisitor.

Arbites #2 - focusing primarily on melee attacks, introduced second session as a mole working for the inquisitor in the local AdArbites precinct. Cover blown in 3rd session, joined the party permanently.

Assassin #1 - part of the initial party who owed money to a gambling house. Paid a favor to the owner to get the debt forgiven. That debt turned out to be stealing the Psyker. Had no prior knowledge -- Player eventually decided he'd rather play Seneschal #1 semi-NPCed, makes a cameo every now and then, even when his player is playing his current character, usually for comedic effect or because they really needed an assassin. Player thinks its funny I could kill him twice if I killed the whole party.

Guardsman #1 - Hasn't really made it to enough games to really establish much of a in-game character, part of the initial party who owed money to a gambling house. Paid a favor to the owner to get the debt forgiven. That debt turned out to be stealing the Psyker. Had no prior knowledge

Guardman #2 - part of the initial party who owed money to a gambling house. Paid a favor to the owner to get the debt forgiven. That debt turned out to be stealing the Psyker. Had no prior knowledge

Tech-priest #1 - Recent addition to the party, Arbites #1's younger brother - Focusing knowledge based skills, totes a heavy stubber

Tech-priest #2 - Has only made it to one session, much like guardsman #1

Seneschal #1 - Played by Assassin #1's character, was 'in-charge' for a fair amount of time, executed by Arbites #1 while attempting to sell out their Inquisitor to the 'boss' of the corporation they were investigating for heresy. Bolt pistol to the head for great effect. Thought it was hilarious the first party casualty to be himself, even moreso due for role-play reasons.

Seneschal #2 - Assassin's #1's third character - Significantly less greedy this time. Paternal/brother figure for the young NPC below. Unknown to other party members, suffered grievious amounts of insanity points during event that resulted in Nieccole being found. Mysteriously healed of these insanity points, but suffers from visions regardless. Has finally convinced himself of the truth after blundering about a few sessions as to the meaning of what he saw.

Young NPC (Nieccole) - Initially 12-year old girl (Now almost 15) recovered from a heretical underground lab experimenting on Psykers (where Psyker #1 was being sent before being stolen by the party) Inquisitor kept her around due to her unusual characteristics (ie. easier to grow them the way you want them instead of finding them in the wild.) Low wounds, learns rediculously fast, building character sheet every session. Party actions/reasoning affects her growth/skills as she has no memory of anything before the lab. Psi rating is insanely strong for her age, Psi Rating 4 when discovered (though without any powers) Psi rating 6 currently, pyromancer/telekinetic. Found by Seneschal #2 in the aftermath of the Psi-Reactor where Psykers were being fed golden-throne style to a daemonhost, only surviving psyker of that installation.

Nieccole's secrets: Killed enthroned daemonhost previously referenced. Has potential to be a Saint, depending on party interaction, could also go Chaos. Doesn't know she's been chosen for 'bigger/better things' First kill was against a custom-built creature, will post template sooner or later, but think something vaguely related to a genestealer, but not part of the hive-mind anymore. First human kill was last session, used Party-Inquisitor's force sword to kill enemy-inquisitor while party was dealing with his entourage, legitimately no less as she crit twice with the force sword.

I'm running short on time (yay sleep + crappy work schedule) so I'll crank out my immediate storyline question:

Given the results of the Council of Nikea... and the fluff I've seen relating that there were quite a few Thousand Sons ships that hadn't arrived on Prospero when it was attacked... potential plot twist in a few months once the party has finished off the Rogue Trader they've been following (which will result in a Warrant of Trade for a party member, details worked out on that one, ready to improvise depending on who gets it) I've thought of having them find either a several battle barges / assault cruisers (or larger, haven't made up my mind) dead in space, containing pre-Heresy Thousand Sons in stasis. Likely explanation will be that they were ordered to return to Prospero under guard. Each ship had a space marine escort while the Thousand Sons were placed in stasis pods. While underway, they hit a massive warp storm that knocked out the gellar fields on the ship(s) (this works better with smaller numbers / bigger size) which killed the crews, but left the slumbering Thousand Sons in their stasis pods for the party to find later.

How rediculous do you think this idea is? It's got potential to go all over the place, depending. One idea that came to me, depending on how the party does between now and then, could end up with Nieccole becoming the Saint and shock-cleansing the Thousand Sons, removing what taint may have entered them and stunting their gene-seed corruption.

Anyways, more thoughts on this later, out of time

Well its an out there idea.......

I wouldn't have then find per heresy battle barges....that gives them the chance to gain a lot of power really fast.....also giving them a warrent of trade... what is to keep them working for the ][ ? With that they could go anywhere that they wanted.... But back to "saving" thousand sons. Even with them in "frozen in time" as soon as they wake up the mass spell that was cast will effect them turning them into living armor...aside from Thousand son psykers.

So the idea of finding the i'd say strike vessel since there aren't that many brothers that should be on board...maybe 2 squads so 10 to 12 ....and even then that could turn into party death when they awaken.......

Best outcome the team Id's what the ship is and blast it from the stars...praise the Emperor!!

RedSkull said:

Side note/disclaimer: By now, I generally like throwing things at the party that are slightly 'out-of-canon' but believable, seeing as I've actually managed to get *all* of them hooked on W40K to the point they're buying fluff books like candy where, at the start of this, only one other person was really interested in the game universe. That 'slightly-out-of-canon-but-believable' bit is mostly what I'm trolling for comments on, especially to pick apart my logic for doing stuff, though anything mentioned in general is fair game. I enjoy the conversation and sometimes it sparks new ideas for things to throw at my unsuspecting victims... er party members. Overall, the story is the most important thing, as I'm trying to weave a in-depth storyline that will leave the players feeling like they actually accomplished something, or at the very least, that their gory, painful deaths weren't completely in vain.

See, that's the interesting thing about the situation... if they did find a number of pre-heresy battle barges, number of smaller support vessels, strike cruisers, or even a lone ship, I have a number of ways to keep them from actually being able to claim them.

For one, they might not necessarily have the crew necessary to split and prize-crew the pre-heresy ships. I say that because we haven't gotten to the point where I'm planning on forking out a warrant, and it's pretty likely they'd be in a frigate/destroyer sized ship, factor in the fact that the pre-heresy ship is likely to be far more high tech and far larger than their own, and they only have so many tech experts to go around... that's one complication.

Also, add in the recent chaos (see circumstances outlined at the bottom) and the fact that there is a new Inquisitor helping the party until someone makes Inquisitor (and that's more an 'if' not when... see below) This new inquisitor might confiscate the ship(s), destroy them, or otherwise make them unavailable to the party.

One of the big things at that point is how much pull does the party have with the new Inquisitor? Can they get him to hold fire when the cogitators finally identify the IFF (if there is one) as Thousand Sons, seeing as the ship(s) in question are adrift? Can they get him to hold his hand when they find the space marines alive in stasis, as the tech-priest in the party is pretty likely to have the required forbidden knowledge skills to notice that the current Thousand Sons are all animated armor and the guys in the pods are clearly made out of meat, not armor. There's a ton of questions and story points to consider, and that's just from the party/inquisitor side of things... but let's say they manage to dock and somehow wake one up.

What exactly do you do with several hundred/thousand space marines who've been on ice for 10k+ years, who don't know the heresy has happened at all? After all Nikea / Prospero extreminatus took place a year before Horus turned to Team Bad Guy . Would these 'new' Thousand Sons not be affected by the Rubric? (Personally, I'd say no, as they wouldn'tve been valid targets at the time it was cast, and they'd also be a rediculous distance away at the time too, but it's still something for me to consider) ... no doubt most of these Thousand Sons are loyal to the Emperor on waking, but how would they take the news of what had happened to Prospero? Would they consider the exterminatus betrayal by the Imperium? Even if they don't, wouldn't they still technically be chaos tainted by Magnus's deal with Tzench? How would you fix that? Heck, how would they take the Codex Astartes demanding they get sliced into chapters if you have more than 1000 of them? What were they doing before they disappeared anyway, aside from returning to Prospero under orders/armed guard? If they're pre-heresy, doesn't that mean their gene-seed is (overall) less corrupted, aside from the psyker/tzench-deal induced mutation? Would the average Thousand Sons SM be slightly better all around due to not having 10k years of seed degredation?

The last questions that come to mind are pretty straight forward, assuming the party navigates all these hazards and somehow ends up liberating these guys instead of spacing or otherwise incinerating them, what do you do with them now? How the heck are you going to convince anyone in power that these guys aren't Chaos worshippers? That they should be allowed to live, knowing so much as they do? That the party itself shouldn't be executed for treason/heresy for consorting with these guys? Personally, if the party managed to talk their way this far, I'd like to see someone try to find a way to attach them to the Inquisition, Ordos Hereticus, as I'm pretty sure they'd do one hell of a job hunting down heretics, like the Grey Knights do demons, and the Deathwatch does Xenos. Hell, I wish I could actually write all this out into a non-suck story and get it published

And really, while that seems like a whole lot for the party to consider, it's stuff like that that makes the party think they've accomplished something... I mean, how would you like to be known as the Inquisitor who brought back at least one new chapter of space marines out of nowhere, whose gene-seed is less time-decayed, and whose effective power is much higher than their numbers suggest? Storyline potential is pretty vast. I'd think there is a good probability that they would attempt to launch their own crusade to take out the largest known concentration of Chaos Thousand Sons as revenge for the Chaos 1kS's betrayal. Suicide? Maybe! Gives me the perfect out when one has to consider just how the existence of say, several chapters of new 1KS would be unbalancing to the game universe.

- Lastly, to outline the dire straits the party finds itself in as of last session: Inquisitor A (party's boss, who never got a name, she was just 'the inquisitor') during the first session had the party steal the party psyker from cold-storage. Inquisitor Z (also unnamed, referred to as 'that guy we stole the psyker from') "owned" that psyker and has been hunting for them ever since. Z caught up with the party last session, boarded the space station they were on with no small amount of stormtroopers, and denounced A for the theft amongst a laundry list of other charges, where reading the list took about 2 minutes and ended with one of the players protesting out-of-character "Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Yep, I did that. Twice even. No shame. That one? No contest, I'm sure they could prove it... okay, we did most of that... What? heresy? No way did I do that!" . A, having uncovered enough info through the party of what this guy has really been up to, pulls her inferno pistol and 'objects' to the proceedings, resulting in a pretty sizable butt-kicking contest. The end result was 3/4 of the party heavily wounded in some form or fashion, A dead, and the NPC Nieccole in negative HP from the sword-fight with Z. Nieccole is currently resting comfortably in the med-bay enjoying her new coma.

Needless to say, having their inquisitor receive a bolter-round to the face wasn't the start of a good day for the party. Thankfully, there was a second inquisitor on the ship. who, as plot-twists demand, was an NPC most of the consistent players remember. This NPC, for the lack of a name at the time, was referred to by the party as Magos Steve when I couldn't spit out a name fast enough for them at the time. Shortly after his introduction, they raided the underground science lab previously mentioned, and his skills/gadgets came to be rediculously valuable, but also made the more canon-aware folks uncomfortable as they were pretty sure this guy wasn't who he said he was. Which was true. He wasn't Magos Steve, he was Magos-Inquisitor Steve.

Now, there were a protest or two about having a member of the Mechanicus as an Inquisitor, primarily focusing on the fact that no one had ever heard of a tech-priest inquisitor... I couldn't really refute that logic, but I did make the case that the Cogboys were **** good at keeping secrets, rediculous with information gathering, and as such, a mechanicus inquisitor would keep their rosette to themselves unless was absolutely necessary... especially considering that, as high ranking Mechanicus, they could 'watch the watchers' and keep tabs on other inquisitors without raising a large amount of alarm.

Magos-Inquisitor Steve, not exactly the most puritan guy around, outlined a few things. He'd worked closely with Inquisitor A for some time and only revealed his rosette to her when he wanted in on the lab raid. A had a fairly decent amount of trust in Steve (as Inquisitors go anyway) and, knowing that Z would likely catch up with her at some point, had made preparations.

The party is withholding the fact that A is dead by claiming she was in a coma (like the NPC girl) ... which was true for a few weeks before she succumbed. By doing this, they're hoping to eke out enough time to finish the case they're pursuing because, while Steve is more than happy to help the party, he is unwilling to reveal what he actually is to the Inquisition-at-large. Therefore, the party is put in a really crappy situation where they have only the contacts they've made or that A left info on and the cash-flow that the seneschal has managed to set up since joining the party (and he rarely passes up the opportunity to find some sort of profit) ...

Ah, I forgot to explain a bit why I didn't have much of an issue with the existence of a Warrant in a DH party but the first thing I'd mention in regards to the 'they could go anywhere, why stick with the inquisition?' is pretty straightforward. Put that way, they wouldn't have to. The way I look at it, life is a constantly evolving story; given the fact that their Inquisitor just got offed, if they were going to bail, now would be the time to do it before they got too rolled up in the aftermath, and the players discussed that fact and many more.

With the death of their original Inquisitor, the party had a collective "WTF do we do?!" meeting with Magos Inquisitor Steve present, though he hadn't whipped out the rosette to them yet at that time. Sure, some of the party is just along for the ride, but they're not all just bumps on a log.

The psyker's main motivation in staying with Inquisitor A was primarily out of gratitude for being saved, but she quickly realized that Inquisitor Z was still out there and would probably try to stuff her back in a box... and like Rand in the Wheel of Time series, she was *not* going back in the box. Now, she has to consider why she's there as she has one reason she's keeping secret that explains why she doesn't plan on leaving. That's part of character development.

For the two arbitors, this job was perfect; they got to enforce laws with as heavy or light a hand as they thought they could get away with, without answering to a towering chain of command. Both players really digged the 'We're out to save the world from heretics, witches, demons, etc" schtick.

The seneschal's initial motivation was pretty simple, he'd been hired to do a job and got hooked on what he did because of the money and the information. By the end of the WTF meeting, the player had articulated very believably that by that point in the game, his character had bought into the fact their job was necessary. I'm sure that being locked into a psy-reactor with a demonhost and witnessing the true horrors of the warp as it drained the sacrificial psykers had a little impact on this decision. Being saved by Nieccole, whom he honestly believes to be a Saint, is another factor and he's fairly protective of her. Thanks to the amount of insanity points he suffered in the psy-reactor, he's developed a few tics that most other party members haven't caught onto yet., one being the fact that whenever someone says "The Emperor protects" he compulsively utters "The Emperor prevails" which just so happens to be the first thing Nieccole-as-adult-Saint said to him in his vision as she killed the demon. Either way, Magos Inquisitor Steve is training him as an Interrogator at this point with the hope that if the party impresses the inquisition enough by finishing off the Inquisitor's last case and can defend their actions, that Interrogator training will help put the seneschal in a position to join the Inquisition.

Similarly, the Psyker was saved by Nieccole as well in a separate adventure when she rolled a modified 120 on Perils of the Warp, only to have the child-saint who was standing next to her pull her back through the rift saying, "It isn't your time yet, the Emperor Prevails." (Agi check to grab was rolled ) The Psyker and the seneschal are the only party members who have the remotest idea of who/what this child is, and they're not talking if she isn't. In fact, the psyker was pretty shocked, as she knew what 95+ on the perils table meant, but the Seneschal hadn't even muttered a peep as to the truth of the child and she was caught completely unprepared to be saved by the Emperor's grace. Much fun was had by all that night, as that particular fight was pretty nasty and nearly killed the entire party.

The party tech-priest is, unbeknownst to him, being groomed to join the Mechanicus Inquisition and joined the party a few sessions back when the party first encountered the 6-armed critters I haven't named yet. Those things are pretty **** bad news as a handful by themselves are capable of depopulating small starships if the threat isn't dealt with swiftly. I'll have to explain the meat-forest at some point, as it's something the dark-eldar versions of this species has been witnessed creating for reasons unknown to the party. The actual description of this made one player look like they were starting to turn a bit green at the gills, as I didn't pull any punches and described to them pretty much exactly how the meat forest was created. The rest of the party was happy they hadn't eaten recently.

Either way, I'll post more later. I encourage any/all feedback and/or discussion as it'll no doubt make my campaign better just as I hope my ideas give you something to ponder as well.

Ok well that does help to clear up a few questions that I was having...I do like your approach to the idea and really give your players a unique feel for your own game. *cheers*

With that being said you are still running into a major road block with the "meat" thousand sons .....The reason that all of them feel and were turned into living armor is b/c of the actions of their primarch. When the spell was created it allowed chaos into the unique DNA that is passed on to all battle brothers of the Thousand sons thanks to their primarch. No matter where they were all were transformed...In large thanks to the actions of the warp and that the warp can be everywhere.......Also take into account that Tzeentch personally takes an interest in the thousand sons chapter.

RedSkull said:

Figuring out how the Rubric would function is definitely important, as what you've had to say is pretty vital... if the rubric functions as an an on-going pulse it would have the potential to force-change the human Thousand Sons, if just the initial warp wave of the Rubric carried the transformative effects then these guys would be safe.

How hokey would it be to explain things, say.. When Ahriman cast the Rubric, he was unaware of the fact that not every Thousand Son was a legal target of the spell, especially seeing as at that point he wasn't exactly Magnus. Magnus would have foreseen such an oversight, but given his reasons for turning to Chaos in the first place, and his horror at what the Rubric actually did... I highly doubt he would've corrected Ahriman.

As for the meat-version Sons not being legal targets, I would imagine that, given the way they were ordered to return, it wouldn't be much of a stretch that if the captain/admiral was paranoid enough, they would have been kept in warded stasis pods to prevent them from using their powers per the Council of Nikea, etc. The stasis field itself should prevent them from being legal targets at the time, and if that wouldn't be enough, I'd figure the hexagrammatic wards would do the job as well. Also,I figure that Tzeench is kind of a ****** when it comes to giving his power out, and it really would fit for him to give Ahriman exactly what he asked for, as using phrases like "All Sons breathing", "All Damned Sons", "All Sons in the Eye of Terror", "All Sons in the Universe" all have different targeting effects, each with the own loopholes. People in stasis don't breath, Damned Sons wouldn't apply to them as they'd never turned to Chaos, they're not in the eye of terror, and technically if their ships were still drifting in the warp currents, they're not in the universe either. Clearly, depending on the activating/targeting phrase used, there's some rules lawyering that could be done Pretty sure Tzeench would approve of that kinda thing.

Also, throw in the fact that the Saint would likely be present when the meat-Sons are revived, I could also make the case that her presence could interfere with the Rubric, or cloud awareness of them when the stasis field drops... heck, one of the paths I'd considered to 'cleanse their taint' would be for the Saint to unleash the power of the Emperor and burn out the corruption with it. Fairly certain that this would be something the Emperor would do, given that if you accepted the story contained in Thousand Sons / Prospero Burns, the Emperor was manipulated into his decision at Nikea and sending the Space Wolves to Prospero. Pretty certain that he would rejoice at the idea of making amends to his children and protect them.

Musings on one of the ongoing current story arcs: (Rogue Trader Stephanos de Palme)

The players are currently hunting down a rogue trader who previously had fairly vast holdings (~90 profit factor.) The Rogue Trader in question was wanted for questioning by PC's Inquisitor (before his agents assassinated her very recently) due to his involvement in an event dealing with daemonic influence, warpspawn critters, and psyker smuggling that eventually ended in the exterminatus of the planet the party started on. The trader in question had built his trade empire in a remarkably diverse manner, owning a variety of mines, smelting plants, leasing high-value space to the Mechanicum and other Adeptus for use, weapons/ammunition manufacturing, ship building, weapons smuggling (and selling to the Munitorium), and the like. These were the (semi-)legitimate means he used to disguise his most profitable ventures: trade in xenos tech, archeotech, cooperation with heretics and tech-heretics.

Unfortunately, the Rogue Trader was nowhere to be found, having clearly gotten word that at least one Inquisitor was after him. Instead of spending the next months/years hunting the void for the scurvy Dog, the party pitched the idea to their Inquisitor that it would be much easier to get him to come to them by staying hidden and sabotaging his operations to the point he was forced to return and deal with things personally. Through a variety of means, they've wreaked havoc on the Trader's financial empire. They started small, spiking ore shipments to his refining stations with various chemicals to weaken the resulting metals and bribing the foundry workers to look the other way, and eventually kidnapped the seneschal said trader had left to manage operations in his home sub-sector... making it look like a random home-invasion, thanks to the PC Arbitor's aid in setting up the scene and sweet-talking the responding Law enforcement.

Once their investigations had proceeded far enough and they had extracted enough information from the seneschal (before sending him to get servitor-ized), they began a much wider campaign of Profit Factor destruction: They'd 'leaked' flight schedules complete with preliminary load details of several high-profit transport lines to several pirate groups through the one RT character (Seneschal/Acquisitionist) in the party, resulting in fairly frequent piracy actions against the Trader's interests there, they raided a warehouse complex containing countless archeotech/xenos artifacts that they confiscated, which resulted in charges of tech-heresy amongst the Mechanicum, who were instrumental in shutting down almost every remaining business concern the trader had in the subsector.

With the disappearance of his business manager, the sudden work stoppage, the piracy, and the raid on one of several storage points for his high-value objects, the Trader is likely already on his return path to deal with the party. I'm not intending to grant his warrant, as I'm fairly certain it might get destroyed... but I have been entertaining the idea that the last leg of the trader's trip found the Trader recovering a large number of security boxes from another vessel (probably one adrift in space) and I'm toying with the idea of having one of the most secure containers have a stasis-shielded false floor, containing another warrant.

Interesting development on the pick-up game tonight.

The party present (Psyker and Tech Priest) elected to visit the remote fueling depot used by the Rogue Trader they've been attempting to flush.

They discussed a variety of ways to sabotage the station in a manner that would disable any starship attempting to tank up there. Their initial idea was to find a way to a variety of intrusion spirit into the vox ident system so when the RT showed up and voxed in the command to begin fueling ops, the comms system would reply with a scrapcode burst containing the spirit. This was beyond their technical capabilities, but it was an entertaining thought. The second idea was to conceal limpet mines on the surface of the station so that when a ship docked, the mines would attach themselves and activate, waiting a preset time (calculated on how long it would likely take a ship to fuel up) before detonating. The third involved a fairly direct idea of planting krak grenades or similar high explosives in the fueling umbilical itself, attached to the interior of the tube. The idea being that without thorough inspection, when the tube was mated to the ship, the in-rush of fuel would dislodge the explosives from the tube wall, activating them, and carry the explosives much deeper into the ship before they detonated.

All in all, this appeared pretty in-depth, and I decided to make a little GM-magic happen. They contacted the Magos-Inquisitor that was sheparding them and informed him of their idea with the intrusion spirit, hoping to obtain some assistance on the matter. Of course, he was fairly non-plussed at this idea, being a tech-priest and all. However, like most radical inquisitorial types, Magos Steve had a solution to this.

Enter a new NPC, introduced as "My favorite tech heretic" by Magos Steve. Psyker girl introduced herself to this young man, who gave her a rather rakish grin and introduced himself as Edward Alan Turing, Enginseer extraordinaire. Magos Steve warned the party that they should keep an eye on Mr. Turing, as, according to the Mechanicum, his particular brand of tech heresy was to deny the existence of machine spirits... that, and he had a loose sense of morality where alcohol and women were involved. Additionally, under no circumstances, were they to allow Mr. Turing access to any cogitators or similar systems under their control, nor access to any personal or electronic information they wanted kept private.

Ashe, the party tech-priest, was somewhat taken aback by this development, and was only marginally soothed by Magos Steve's explanation of why this heretic had not been executed: While he may claim to not believe in the machine spirit, he was capable of assuaging even the most obtuse machine spirits into functioning as intended, given time. The man had such remarkable insight into the functioning of cogitator arrays, mechanical engineering, other technological items that research projects that normally would be expected to last years or decades instead got solved in months at the longest. Simply put, he was too useful to the Omnissiah, despite being a Tech-heathen, to be put to death.

Over the course of the night, the party infiltrated the fueling station, finding it minimally manned with a small contingent of servitors, and enacted their sabotage as planned. They elected to station a small courier ship at the edge of the system running on minimal systems to monitor for activity, hoping that the resulting damage would cripple the RT's vessel long enough for the party to arrive on-scene.

Whether or not their ploy succeeds remains to be seen