Howdy,

I'm about ready to start up my DH group again and was interested in using the Murder Room from Disciples. My idea was to have this running as a side story arch centering around one of the characters. During a time where this character is knocked unconcious (from some thing or another), they'll wake up in the Murder Room and kill this and that until eventually waking up, not knowing if it was real or a dream. This I'm already fairly sure of.

What I'd like some input on is what the Murder Room will be. I was thinking its a place where the subconcious goes, if they are marked out by Khorne, hence all the murdering and killing going on it there. However, I'm not sure if this is something that would actually be particularly Khornesque. Would he mark various killers and have them pulled into a pocket in the warp to kill eachother and prove their worth? Is this more something Slaanesh may do for sport? Or do you think it'd be better to have this a different daemon entirely, one similar in strength to...Baelasomething...the daemon in the core rulebook who is worshipped by many power hungry nobles.

Any thoughts to making this work?

Thanks!

Hi Goodwin,

Talking about the nature of daemons:
What you have in mind seems valid to me. In general I advise not tho worry to much about "the trueness of a concept" regarding one of the four or daemons in general. This only tends to hinder once own creativity. As long as one is not very blatantly contradicting any material (and I mean BLATANTLY) it should be fine.

That said, I would not opt for "the Horned Darkness". This one ws established as something dealt with in dark ceremonies for power. One could for sure turn the MurderRoom into part of his deals. But I simply won´t. As far as I see it, the Horned Darkness is seeked out by his cultists, while the Murder Room comes for his ...cultists.

Talking about your realization of it:
I see one flaw in the "the place lies in the subconciousness" approach: the other pc can not help. You **** there players into inactivity and watching another one being in the lime light, unless you are very careful and clever with this approach.

Suggestion: Entering the Murder Room
Start as you planned with the one player being inserted into the MurderRoom after s/he was knocked out. But make sure this is under some condition where his comrades might loose sight contact to him. Make him literally disappear and transfer him into the murder room.

At the end of this sequence, make the pc suddenly leave the Room. The pc walks through a door and steps on the streets somewhere. If s/he turns round, the room behind her is not the one she left in the Murder Room. But it is fore sure griesely enough: a scene of murder and bloodshed.

The next time the Murder Room calls, a door in the room the group actually is in now leads somehwere else. Perhaps the group does not know thise because they have never been there before. Perhaps the know but this is the only way to leave the area.

Suggestions: What is the Murder Room?
A place a major servant of Khorne opens up to those who have killed time and time again and feel a savage joy about it. A place to spill Blood, a perverted arena and killing field. Killers sometimes just happen to stumble into it. Cultists generated ceremonies whose condition allow them to step into it. In both cases, it can be used as an escape route... if one is willing to take a shortcurt through hell. A shortcut home to BloodDaemons thirsting to enter the real world in the flesh of a mortal killer, quench there thirsts for blood and terror.

Wow, thanks Gregorius!

That really helps! To clarify, I wasn't going to have the realm be of the Horned Darkness, I was using it as an example. In that case, instead of it being a Khorne realm it would be a daemon of similar power to the Horned Darkness, but something I'd come up with myself. You did an awesome job of clarifying some things for me! I do understand it'd be tying the hands of the other PCs, so yes, I was only going to initiate it at certain times, and always when the target PC is seperated in some way from the group.

Thanks again!

HI Goodwin,

I am glad that I was helpful. Regarding your idea (thanks for helping me out of my mistake) I greatly encourage you to come up with some powerfull daemon entity with alliance to Khorne instead of Khorne directly. If pc go "toe to toe" with gods and survive, they begin to get cooky

Talking the Murder Room: Do you already have encounters in mind? And what is more important then that, what is your plan on how the pc will be able to "solve" the Murder Room Episode? Will it simply fade after they confronted a certain daemon? Will it leave them alone if enough mayhem occured? Is a cult around performing blood rituals which attract the Murder Room? Will the Room stop interjecting with realspace as the cult is destroyed? Is it about destroying a daemon? Or about refraining to spill blood? Or about not getting possessed as s/he fihgts for survival?

Hello there!

What might be quite a nice twist is if the Murder Room is handled exactly like a dream sequence - the character is pulled in, let's say for argument's sake by a Bloodthirster, or Daemon Prince of Khorne - there to slaughter to survive - the dream can begin outside of the environment, and a door, as Gregorius suggests could be the entrance. First up, the other characters could also feature, but in this warped dimension, may be opponents as well as trying to assist. Everyone will be forced to role-play conflict and desperate battle together, but there will be clues that it is going on in the subconcious of one character only - perhaps areas taken from his / her experience, former enemies returned to do bloody battle, or objects / icons that are recognisable, even things seen from wherever the characters really are at the present time.

At some point the character wakes up, possibly after being killed, or having killed a friend, for example, to discover that this was a dream after all. No corruption accrues at this point - but imagine how you could twist this further - in the course of an investigation, possibly even of a more mundane nature, signs begin appearing from the dream that hint at an awakening reality - symbols that ae recognisable from the walls of one of the Murder Room areas seen emblazoned on the wall of a murdered contact, half seen, but recognisable shapes passing through a hive crowd, and then eventually a re-creation of a murder room in the spire manse of a jaded noble - precise to the details of objects in the space, the walls, doors - everything.

Obviously, the PCs are being pulled into a terrifying trap here - but have the opportunity to defy the powers of chaos by finding the sorceror who is bargaining with this Bloodthirster / Daemon Prince and ending him before the bargain is completed.

Is that too far away from what you might want to do? I may have got a little carried away!

Those ideas are awesome!

I think my problem is I haven't quite decided why its there. I've gotten how it'll occur and what may happen inside, but I don't know why its happening or how to stop it, bah! I like your ideas though and may snag 'em to give some more life to the Murder Room. I was going to start this off immediately when the campaign does, but I think it could use some time to further plan it out and leave some real clues for the PC involved before the blood hits the fan.

I was planning on having this happen to a PC that is particularly battle hardened or ready, its surely not going to be happening to a melee combatant. So the Murder Room combat will be dirty, up close and brutal with whatever they can find laying around. Perhaps the entity goes around looking for those peaceful folk that just need that little push to become savage killers themselves? This draws on the subconcious of people whom in these dreams are driven to do all these horrible things and eventually maybe some of it leaks out, so that office worker who's been really on edge as of late just drove his pencil into his co-workers hand for correcting a mistake!

Later on the PCs may stumble upon the hive noble's cult which is where the rituals are being cast. Defeating them (which will occur between the real world and slipping into the Murder Room and back) will stop the dreams, for now!

Whatcha think?

I think you've hit on a good idea here - that the occupants of the room, those perpetrating these murders within their subconcious are the mundane functionaries, overlooked workers and drones who normally get overlooked.

The ritualistic slaying performed by the Spire Noble, who may or may not know what he / she is doing in terms of links with the Ruinous Powers - perhaps serial killing down and outs as an outlet for ennui - all directed by a 'real' factotum or cultist who urges the noble on, and knows that when the authorities eventually catch up, they can slip away into anonymity. These ritual killings have a resonance in the warp, and this is what is pulling in others, so that the Murder Room is entered on this subconcious level.

There needs to be some way of hooking the PC into this. Perhaps they harbor a secret grudge; perhaps a guilty secret / killing an innocent that they have never been able to wash from their conscience. This creates a lure, an invite to the soul to come to the murder room. But it is also from here that the PC, with the assistance of the other PCs can unwravel the mystery. Within the Murder Room, sadistic fantasies come true, and those entering play both victim and tormentor alike. Recognising others from within this violent fantasy can provide early leads in the waking world.

However, after a while, the dreams become seemingly as real as waking, and the PC can find themselves physically imprisoned in the manse of the spire noble, awaiting a gruesome fate, after literally sleep-walking there. It will be up to the other PCs to trace their whereabouts, or for the PC to escape the cell and find a way out. The final conflict could easily involve a Daemon of Khorne, possibly not as powerful as a Daemon Prince, but maybe hinting maddeningly at the involvment of such a powerful being behind the scenes.

The terrors in this scenario could be extended in numerous ways:

• Seemingly normal citizens could turn berserk when faced with 'evidence' of their involvment in the Murder Room, even if that is as simple as an accusation, or remembering something that happened.
• Start small - after the first dream, events like bloody handprints on a mirror, or gore-slicked gutters after a nearby abbatoir sluices out its offal can keep the theme in the mind of the PCs. Seemingly unrelated events can begin to come together.
• The dreams themselves may begin in a neutral environment, or one surrounded by darkness - the dreamer may 'realise' they are in a dream, but the trauma of being tied down or hanging suspended from a meathook, or even performing a dissection of a still living human - these are all nasty experiences waiting for the player. Later, more of the scenery becomes apparent, more of the other occupants, and episodes of dreaming the Murder Room could happen more frequently, along with episodes of sleep-walking and so forth in the real world.
• At the same time, the PCs need to feel they can succeed in investigating - leads should eventually direct them towards the noble household.
• But the feeling of failing sanity is always a horrifying concept for a player - are you mad, or sane? Can you trust those around you?

There is quite a lot in this - and the idea of the Murder Room itself is deeply disturbing - if you can imagine the inhuman agencies enjoying the show.

I had considered the idea of making it a physical location that is reachable by a ritualized puzzle, along the line of the Hellraiser movies, but the puzzle being a specified path of twists and turns, steps and doors, that would unlock the door to the Murder Room.

Once in the room it would shift from a morgue/operating room to room of doors. Any of the doors could be opened to reveal any room where a murder took place or will take place, or the body slab doors in the morgue could be opened to reveal the bodies of the murdered or future victims.

The idea being that the Murder Room can be used to a similar effect as the motel room in The Lost Room . With grave corruption and Insanity penalties for extended use.

Ultimately the Murder Room could be controllable, at a price.

I had the idea that the murder room is a place beyond the real world that could appear anywhere, being summoned by all manner of reasons (ritual summoning, a specially gruesome death, a very strong feeling of hatred/vengeance).

So in my game a vidow husband was accused of murdering his loved wife. He began searching and found someone else did it, His hatred for them summoned the murder room to his house and it possessed him via an unclean spirit (or some other daemon that could get out).

These daemons kept getting out occasionally and kills other people.

Eventually they will get to the murder room itself. In my game it was a collection of murder victims memories of their murders. So when you enter the room you have to relive some of these memories. I had the dead wife being at the center of all this being a returning factor in all the memories if the players could spot this they would get on to the next memory. In the end they will get to the wifes memory and granted they can kill her of somehow (she is no longer a human more like a daemon host of sorts) they could banish the room until it emerges again at some other time.

Of course this has nothing to do with the players as it is, by im sure you could make something out of it.

Hi Goodwin,

perhaps you might find some inspiration here

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=101&efcid=3&efidt=453139