It has finally happened. For over a year i managed to steer my players on a relatively steady path, but a handful sessions short of the Grand Finale, they´ve finally managed to take the campaign out of my hands..in a totally awesome way!

Prepared for the absolutely worst and armed to the teeth the three Players, (A Psyker, An Arbites, the nominal Group Leader, and an Assasin) infiltrated the bowels of Hive Tantalus on Solomon, intent on catching the Chief Heretek, Magos Scholtheiß, of their Nemesis the supposedly Renegade Inquisitor Gelt. In all their previous encounters they never got the Magos himself, only his allies, subordinates and whatelse.

After a long and ardous chase through the haunted belly of the Hive, a Hive-Hab with horrible secrets, twisted Mutants with warp powers created by the Magos and battling through his Adamantite Fortress, they finally stand before the Magos in his enormous, treaded, heavily armed battle-body..who trys to persuade them to change sides, with reasonable arguments, fostering the doubts they have about their Inquisitor, pointing that only his "New Men" can stand against the Tyrant Star, etcetera, etcetara..

The Arbites decides he´s right. Already mentally unhinged she turns on her comrades and it goes rapidly downhill from there.

First the Psyker puts her under Mind Control with Dominate while the Asassin and the few Guardsmen they picked up face the giant Magos, which proceeds to obliterate the Guardsmen and ignoring anything up to Plasma-Gun shots.

The dominated Arbites is send to fetch the two Warp Artifacts which are hovering in the room (remnants from earlier missions of the Acolytes) and does so while the Magos continues to tear through his opposition. The still dominated Arbites throws the Artifacts to the psyker, whose player is already grinning like a maniac (NEVER a good sign!), and gets finally released of the Domination since the Magos lights the Psyker up with his Flamer.

Already in his dying breath, the Psyker announces he wants to draw every shred of power he can muster through the Artifacts, which where already established to be able to boost Warppowers to enormous levels..and that he wants to summon a Demon in his body, since he believes only such a sacrifice can stop the Magos and his terrible New Men. (At this point everyone around the table just broke out in incredulous laughter)

Cue to the Psyker being posessed by a Demon Prince of terrible power who sends every surviving Guardsmen into horrible insanity and begins to tear apart the Magos with ease. Everyone still alive sides with the Magos and begins pouring fire into the Demon Lord. Finally both Daemon and Magos perish in an Warp Implosion as the Magos overloads his internal Psy-Nullifiers, saving probably the World they stand on and destabilizing the reactors of the facility.

After a hasty escape, the bloodied, heavily injured Assasin and the Arbites face off each other...the Arbites dead set on joining the "Renegade" Felt, with the data he could recover, the Assasin still utterly loyal to their original Inquisitor. Arbites shoots first and pumps the Asassin full of Hot Lead, nearly killing him. The Asassin chugs the Combat Drugs and they square of one last time in Melee, which ends with the Asassin getting both his legs cut off by a Power Maul. (And him burning a Fate Point).

The Arbites leaves the Hive Underground, dragging the barely alive body of the Asassin behind him, on the way to his new Master and what is to be the final confrontation about the Tyrant Star and the bid of grasping its power...

Leaving me, the GM quite speechless. On the one hand, i found this utterly hilarious, on the other hand i´m now in trouble. Original plan was that they defeat the Magos and then face the might of the Black Star together with their Inquisitor and all the Allys they made in the sessions this year. Now i have one dead character (Whose player has already announced to be okay with playing one of Gelts Prime Acolytes), one nearly insane Traitor Arbitrator, and one character who will probably either face heavy reindoctrination, or death. (Which will depend on the player). All in just one session.

So now i have to reconsider many things, not the least of it how i can still get them ascended after the Dust has settled. Has anything comparable happend in your campaigns, and what? Share your thoughts

wow, you have a lot of work to do, i reccomend just starting from scratch.....wow, thats awesome and yet horrifying at the same time. i like that the psyker decides to summon a deamon...

I don't see that you have too much of a problem unless you have two players that are happy to side with Gelt and one that really isn't (whether it is with the original assassin or with a new character). Yes they are not going down the path that you intended but surely the game can continue as long as all three players are happy (and you are as well!). I guess it all hinges on their reasons for switching sides and whether Gelt is truly 'rogue' or just radical.

If he is truly rogue and the PCs are not then they can gradually start to see the issues with his philosophy/methods as he sends them out to do questionable things.

If he is truly rogue and the PCs are as well then they will follow a different path to the final confrontation.

If he is radical then you can get deeper into the radical-puritan conflict within the Inquisition.

Regardless it sounds like their immediate opposition is going to be acolytes sent by their old inquisitor rather than heretics.

If you do have two players on one side and one on the other then it will be difficult to keep everyone happy. I'm not sure what you can do about that though.

It does sound like you had a totally EPIC session :-D.

My response to that situation:

Have the Psyker and Arbities make new characters, you claim the Arbities character as NPC.

They along with a few other npc's rescue the assassin.

Jump several months or more.

The assassin is rehabilitated and ready to go for vengence with his new team, and legs.

The Arbites character is now running or part of the top tier of the bad guys organization and the players have to hunt down their former friend.

Be ruthless.

It sounds like an awesome game! I would let the player with the psyker make a new character, let the Arbitares still be left and let the assassin's player decide if he wants to make a new character or keep the assassin and keep playing. But I think that this has already been mentioned so no news here.

I would play a session more, where the inqusitor comes with his ascension throne agents, or full navy or arbites soldier from the planet. And then i show the corruptet arbite what happens when you leave the emporers graces. Oh and i prolly take away his fate points, the emporer aint with him anymore.

You should make him understand what terrible mistakes he have done by leaving the emporers faith. Maybe he can beg forgiveness and the inqusitor if he have served well for many years, a looong holy pilgrimage or a good mindwipe, could be what needed to make him a good tool for the empire again.

Mindwipe is soo very fun.