Last night in our game, my character as squad leader rather impetuously threw a grenade into a room that had been described as 'foul smelling'. I don't usually do this, but I just *assumed* there were more cultists, since we'd just killed about 300 of them. Turns out, there were two teenagers that I'd killed. Confirming whether or not they were cultists, I..er...nibbled one to see if I could determine this. They were, in fact, completely innocent. I kind of felt bad about this since a) they were innocent civilians and b) it was a waste of a grenade.

What do you think I should do (or what should the DM do...he's not sure either)?

Kinda depends on your character.

If you're a Fleshtearer, Firehawk, or Iron Hand then you'll not actually give a s***, whereas if you're a Salamander, you'll probably be pretty annoyed with yourself and genuinely upset!

I'd treat myself to the relevant amount of angst (or not!), and get on with the job (You're a soldier after all). If the character feels guilty, perhaps perform some penitent action back at Erioch and talk to a Chaplain. "Do 10 'Hail Emperors' and crawl back to quaters on your hands and knees, and you'll be forgiven"

If it causes party conflict, and friction, then the GM might reduce Cohesion by a point to represent that friction and mis-trust creeping in to the team, until the end of the mission.

If the character had done it deliberately, or semi-deliberately, or was enjoying it, then I'd give them some Corruption points for starting to fall to Chaos by glorying in the death of innocents.

Perhaps an insanity point? Just the one, mind. It's a pretty minor thing in the greater scale of things, but it's the kind of thing that does start to eat away at the sanity of people. Although again, this wouldn't be appropriate for some Chapters, as they frankly don't care! It would seem appropriate to me at first glance, as it's not a major penalty, and your character obviously cared enough to see if they were innocient, so obviously feels some degree of guilt.

My character's an Ultramarine devastator, and as I said, I'd just killed about 250 people (well, heretics) so even though it was 'bad', it was more of a 'hmm...I probably should check before I lob grenades around'. The rest of the squad were kinda freaked out that I didn't care that much, but I did eventually take the bodies to a temple and tell them to bury them.

I'd probably -as an Ultramarine- be a bit annoyed at myself for failing to do things 'properly' in some way, and -as they are fairly humanist- slightly guilty but fairly realistic about it. Better a thousand innocents die than allow a heretic to live and all that.

As the GM I'd toss you an insanity point. I wouldn't do it every time that stuff like this happened, but the first time: Certainly.

The way I see it, there's 3 actual point of contention.

1 - Improper use of Weaponry - Simply put, tossing a Grenade without knowing if there is actually a target is not something someone who is drilled by the Codex Astartes and is a 'by the book, by the doctrine' guy should do. Not to mention that you were lucky - what if instead of teenagers, the room would have been occupied by a kidnapped Planetery Governor or something. This was an impulsive and - dare I say - stupid action taken in the heat of the moment. Pretty much the exact opposite of what Ultramarine combat doctrine that has been drilled into you for over a hundred year has been telling you. You are not a Scout anymore, this is the kind of thing that is supposed to have been trained out of you long before you even were considered for the Deathwatch.

What should happen? Well, your character should feel pretty dumb. Kill-Team members may also be like 'What the hell man?' and if your Watch Captain hears about it (and he should, you guys will debriefed), depending on how closely he values the Codex Astartes and martial effectivness (over say, being a blood thirsty assault marine), you may even take a small renown hit (After all, the next time you requisition a set of missile, the Watch Captain has to be wondering if you intend to check if there's civilian in the building you intend to shoot it at).... or at the very least, a stern talking too.

2 - Killing Innocent - This isn't that big of a deal in and out of itself. Marines kill innocents all the time... collateral damage, because he looked at me funny, because escorting him back to safety would jeopardize the mission, etc. This is more of a personal thing (for you and your allies) and we can't really tell you how to react to it. The callousness you showed isn't typical of Ultramarine, but not all Ultramarine need be the same.

The 'problem' here is that it re-enforce point 1: If the room been filled with Heretics, you would have looked good. If the room had been empty, you would have looked a bit silly and paranoid, but so what... however, Marine don't deal in if, but in facts. Life may be cheap in the Imperium, but it is the Emperor's currency, not yours.

What Should Happen? I don't think they'd be any official sanction because you killed innocents... really this is just an addendum to point 1 from an official point of view. However, gaining 1 or 2 point of insanity may be fitting depending on how your character reacts to it. You did go out of your way to honor their death, so I'd be cool with that.

3 - Eating them - Not really a problem here... you kinda had to do it in order to find out if they were innocent. Using your Emperor Given gift isn't a problem.

Innocents proofs nothing! Better to bring 100 Innocents before the wrath of the Emperor than to let one kneel befor the demon!

Kill them all, the Emperor will know his own!

....is of course a differing point of view....

I came here to crush heretics and munch some brains. And I'm all outta heretics...

^The last thing you ever want to hear a Space Marine say.

Brand said:

LOL...that made me spit half my breakfast out. But seriously...you make some good points guys. I think some of the players are too humanist for space marines (even if the emperor was pretty much a secular humanist...) and try to enforce our values on the marines as a whole. MY character's main problem with it was the waste of resources and the stupid impulsiveness of it. I guess I could say I was still 'on a killing high' from gunning down close to 300 heretics...but that's a cop out.

I think you're seeing it the right way.

If your Watch Captain gives you flak, it should be along the line of 'What kind of idiot throw a grenade blindly?' rather than 'What kind of monster kills teenagers'. Marines are not US soldier after all, they don't get put on probation for beating up prisoners either .

Personally, my Black Templar who has a bit of an odd sense of humor would start calling your guy 'Blind Grenade'.

I agree with the general sentiment. Most Space Marines would be more upset about the mistake than the fact a few humans died. It all depends on the Chapter, of course. A Space Wolf would be more likely to be upset over killing innocents than, say, a Blood Angel.

To be fair, throwing a grenade into a suspcious room isnt exactly a bad idea if you've brought enough grenades with you.....

If i makes you feel any better, my group has violently murdered an entire pro-imperial rebel group because they believed a corrupt xenos loving planetary governor (although they did appoint the only rebel survivor as the new governor....)

jacktheinedible said:

Except when it is .

Like I said, if the room had been filled with heretic, he woulda look good... if it had been empty, he woulda look a bit silly. But the room had nothing but imperial citizen in it... that makes it a blunder. How big of a blunder really, depends on the personality of all involved however. Wouldn't exactly call it a big deal either way.

In situations when the player wants to do something their character would know better than to do, I make a roll to see if I should tell them it's a bad idea. In D&D, I tend to roll Wisdom. In the 40k RPGs, I'll be rolling against their Intelligence.

So, with that particular situation, I'd be rolling to see if the Ultramarine's brain actually kicked in before he primed the grenade. For a Marine from a more reckless, or heartless, Chapter, like Flesh Tearers (BLOOD FOR THE EMPEROR!) or Iron Hands (If they were weak enough that the grenade killed them, they deserved to die), I might not make that roll.

I've made it my policy to make rolls like that after one of the players in a D&D group I was in ended up destroying about a third of a town through player stupidity, despite the DM repeatedly asking if he was sure he wanted to do that, and the other players stating that their characters were taking cover.

I would have just assumed the teenagers were heretics, I mean they were in a heretical facility, the fact that you could have "nom nommed" a heretic in iteslef fills my chaplain with disgust (i guess thats what its for though). On that note, being on a heretics base of operations and innocent is still grounds for death, Death is better than corruption.

Who cares anyway?

You might not even mention this in the debriefing, and if someone else does, the captain's answer would probably be like "don't ** ck my brain, it's irrelevant". Space Marines spend bolter rounds in their thousands in every firefight, what's a single grenade to them? It wasn't a vortex grenade, rare and coveted, right? The entire building didn't collapsed either? And if the building did collapse, let it be the problem of a planetary governor, the space marines have a war to win, they can't be bothered preserving the architecture of some Emperor-forsaken town.

So - essentially - it's only a minor incident inconsequential to the mission. Get over it and fight on.

As the others said it depends on the chapter. That said, War is not a clean cut business. Even in modern day war, these types of things happen. I have never understood why someone in modern day war would be charged and convicted. Most of the time they are not, especialy in the circumstances warrent caution. For instance, I for one would either throw a grenade in or flame the room first if no one answered my call.

"Identify yourselves?"

No reply back.

Pull pin and toss grenade or stick flamer in the door way and roast whatever is in it.

"Room is clear on towards the next."

A space wolf may be upset, but he may see them as weak willed fools who did not do their emperor given job against Heretics and oathbreakers.

It's absolutely NOT an improper use of weaponry to my mind. The proper weapon for use in urban combat and room clearing is the hand grenade (and giving marines only three is laughable...). If you're in an area where you expect there to be 'innocents', then the proper weapon becomes the flash-bang grenade. Of all the things to bawl a marine out for, tossing in a grenade to clear a room doesn't even feature on my list. If it's empty: So what... that's what grenades are for: Clearing dangerous areas so you don't have to stick your nose in and risk getting shot needlessly.

The killing of an innocent is something that most marines aren't going to loose a second of sleep over. The fact that he was concerned and wasted time checking by chowing down might be cause for a bawling out by -say- an Iron Hands or Flesh Tearer team leader or watch captain. On the other hand, killing an innocent itself would be grounds for a Salamander team leader or captain to have you doing 20,000 press ups!

I'll have to agree that killing two innocents would probably be brushed over by Space Marines as collatoral damage. More informed minds have already discussed this point in some length so I'll leave it at that. I may be wrong of course, but I don't see why it would be anything but a "oh, well" moment for most others who were not there. If anything you'll probably have done pentinence by taking the bodies to a temple for burial.

On the one hand, life is cheap in the Imperium. On the other hand, everything in the Imperium- including its citizens- is the property of the Emperor. Thus, I'm thinking that unnecessary destruction of the Emperor's property- even low-value property- should require some minor penance. Confess your error to your Chaplain and do a couple "Hail Emperor"s and you should be good. IMO...

As someone who plays in this game, although apparently in a "too humanist" way, alow me to offer a slightly different interpretation of the events being discussed.

1st. The scenario was not so much that the party had "just" killed 300 cultists. Rather, the GM had described a walk of "more than a kilometer". Using the real world warfare analogy, this is not people in the next room, so much as the next suburb. This is not "colateral damage"

2nd None of the other players had the slightest problem with the outcome. Yes, it is the darkgrim future and everything is grim and dark. This did not stop us laughing our asses off, and saying that the Space Marine in question was a horrible person. I don't believe any of us were saying that a space marine should be anything but.

3rd to the extent that anyone did have a problem with the actions, it was patently NOT because of the innocents becoming killed, any head shaking was very much done after the mission was obviously over, and for characterisation purposes . The other players were a bit concerned by the whimsical nature of the "after a walk of more than a kilometer you come to a large door, there are foul smells and voices coming from the other side..." Librian:"Assault marine, kick open the door" Assault marine (in a sissy, whiney, pacifist voice) "ok." Devestator/leader "I throw a grenade into the room."

The problem we had was was that we had NO idea what was on the other side of this door, some possibilities

a) A refinery full of prometheum

b) Inocents

c) Cultists talking to a demon prince

d) The Inquisitor we were actually looking for (the actual mission objective) being interogated by having foul smelling chaos ungents smeared on him.

Not saying that option b was likely or obvious, just that the action was taken without any thought about the carrious possibilities, some of which a grenade was the right response to, some of which not. Pretty sure the Codex Astartes does not say "throw ye your grenades with wild abandon, and care not for the mission objectives, for verily are explosions their own reward"

Like I said in my first post: He was lucky.

It could have been something/someone important in there.

That's why I just have to disagree with Siranui on the proper use of grenade - this was a dumb thing to do.

And this was before I knew that the primary objective was a search and rescue mission! Now that this fact has come to light, the blunder is an even bigger one.

Search and rescue.....then fair enough: Should have been a flash-bang, or no grenade at all. But the reality is that you don't stick your head into rooms that you're clearing to see if it's ok to put in a grenade. You toss in the grenade, and then after it goes off, shoot anything that still moves, and put a few rounds into anywhere where someone might be hiding (wardrobes, etc).

I seem to remember US SF killing a hostage in exactly this manner not very many months ago.

Siranui said:

The mission of the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan is something along the lines of sorta-maybe-getting the locals on our side.

The mission of the Imperial military is kill all heretics, and to always remember that human life is worth more than a corpse starch ration but less than a lasgun magazine. "Not killing innocents" ranks somewhere below "not wasting bolt rounds and grenades," which is still almost entirely irrelevant.

In the modern day, people of both the theistic and non-theistic persuasion have some belief system that suggests human life is super precious. You grow up having authority figures say "don't murder people, kay?" In the Imperium... humanity is of value, but human life on an individual basis is considered of trivial value, even by religious institutions. Of course, humans still have intrinsic compassion, but are probably half-confused by it.

I don't know if astartes in general still do, but they'd probably rationalize any guilt as just having lost face by wasting a grenade.

Kinda my point: In today's military, grenades are blindly used to clear rooms, and special forces were raiding a site to rescue a hostage and used live grenades. So Marines aren't going to be shy about doing so either.