Recently something very odd happened to one of my players.

He ran into the middle of a psychic duel being conducted by two very powerful Daemons, and earned a "favor" from the winner.

One of them has been plaguing them since the first session. I have mentioned him on these forums before, He of Rags and Tatters. So far it has hinted at deals made with someone in the party, and has saved them from certain death on at least one occasion. Overall it revels in the confusion and backstabbing it causes, but has not yet attempted to kill anybody important. What the players don't know is that the Rogue Traders ancestor, the first member of his line, made a pact with It back in M31, and it is now upholding it's part of the bargain.

The other is as of yet unnamed, and is the more powerful of the two, if the less intelligent. It is sealed deep within the bowels of their ship. Locked behind a massive adamantium door five meters tall, thick and wide that is bound in brass chains a meter thick. It was prophesied that this Daemon would end his line, so the first Rogue trader had it summoned and bound, to be trapped for all time.

The more powerful Daemon is normally dormant and mostly harmless, but during a space combat there was a Warp Drive explosion in the same void unit as the Explorers vessel. This massive spike of warp energy woke it up, and bad things began to happen. Daemonic laughter rang out across the ship and most of the low decks went mad. Things prowled the halls and riot suppression was ineffective. So the Explorers headed down to the lower deck to sort things out. As they got lower and fought back the mad hordes of former crewmen, the Arch-militant felt a rhythmic vibration in the floor. As they followed him towards the source, a noise could be heard along with the vibration. Eventually they came to the Door.

It was halfway open and straining against the chains. Warp energy and random light were pouring out from inside it. He of Rags and Tatters was standing in front of it, and was trying to close the door with its psychic might. Every time the door was close to closing it would shoot open again. The players could see that He was losing the fight, and didn't want to tangle with whatever was behind the door. Before they could plan anything, the Arch-militant rushed forward and tried to push the door closed. With his Unnatural Strength totaling at 105, he rolls a 5. Next round a 1. He manages to help the Daemon close the door, and suffers around 30 Corruption from the rampant Warp energy and Daemonic proximity.

At this point the party beats a hasty retreat and the session ends. After this I send him an email detailing He of Rags and Tatters giving him an item that can call Him once, and the threat to tell none of this affair.

So, anybody have any thoughts on this? Is this a normal amount of crazy, or is this a little over the top?

The only thing I could mention is that daemonic pacts are usually not so... benevolent for the people involved. Daemons know nothing of loyalty or honour; any attempt to bind their will to a mere human's desires tends to meet with rather furious railing at the chains that bind it. Perhaps use the gift to goad the Arch-militant into accepting a pact of his own?

This is good stuff. The arch militant should experience that warp related things are easier on him/her, perhaps seen as "one of them" occasionally. Perhaps because his/her aura has been marked with the sign of the Daemon in question? A poisoned chalice indeed =)

Johan B said:

Why should other demons treat him nicer just because he was marked by another deamon? Demons are nasty creatures that will probably not care too much that the archmilitant is another demon plaything.

thor2006 said:

Only the ones affiliated with, or dominated by the demon-faction would do this. Others would, like you say, simply ignore or even get MORE pissed off at the character (due to bein affiliated with an enemy demon faction).

My demon "world" works off groups of daemons working with each other for mutual gain in loose alliances. I reject the notion of 1-man army demons with no allies or contacts. There is some intelligence in those skulls, be they demonic or otherwise =). That's my premise.

My view on deamons is that they ONLY time they work together is when one is dominate and the others waiting for a shot to back stab or when somebody has pulled a LOT of binding spells. I plan on have them be a rare but **** SCARY part of my adventures. As for the topic at hand I think this is just about right for how deamons act when they are not in "crazy kill everything" mode they can be tricky and sly and just do stuff for the shear hell of it. Having the PC's either fall to chaos or kill each other out of Paranoia seem just the short of thing a deamon might do to while away a decade or 2