My players are about halfway through The House of Ash and Dust.

I was wondering if anyone had any experience with this scenario, either as players or GMs.

Are there any particular parts that you enjoyed? Anything you've had trouble with?

I know some folks have complained about the initial hook for the Adventure and I can see their point. Some of the Auction goers, one in particular, seem pretty dangerous. Has anyone survived this adventure?

Eh?

I have not GMed it yet, but since you ask about it let me present an idea I have for a long-term NPC supervillain from that scenario: let Master Nonesuch, the slaugth overseer, get hold of the halo device in the Onyx Statue and use it on himself/itself

This way, what exactly do you get to throw against the PCs in the future? Well, a guy with 40 wounds, Fear Rating 3, Unnatural Agility (x2), Unnatural Strength (x2), Unnatural Intelligence (x2) and last but not least, Unnatural Toughness (x3). Did I already mention total immunity to Psychic powers, From Beyond trait and 2d5 Regeneration? And in later years he/it gets Potential Resurrection in case the PCs get lucky sometime... + he has enormous secret organisation to back him/it up and uber Xenos tech weapons & gear.

If/when the PCs annoy this guy enough he might just start playing with them and come to see them once every year, to leisurely tear off one arm/leg/nose from one of them and promise to return in one years time for another snack, and there will be very little they could do about it... It would drive the players crazy

My group got through this module just recently. Most of the group were below the described "recommended level" for the scenario, but I kept them alive by following the motivations of the NPCs as described in the book rather than trying to force them in to confrontations. Master Nonesuch (the Overseer) is very dangerous yes, but his reason for being there in the book was simply to ensure that Haarlock was dead. When the Widow made her pronouncement, he had his answer, so his group quickly made an exit, casting off their shells once they were out of sight of everyone else. I also had one of the other buyers assassinate another during the course of events, to imply that not all of the machinations were directed at the player characters.

The hardest confrontation in the game was between the PCs and Tamas the Abbot. The group was already convinced that he was bad news, but initially one PC tried to follow him, and the Abbot saw that as a good opportunity to strike against the group (since my players had previously played Illumination). By the time the rest of the group caught up, the character that had followed the Abbot was almost dead.

All up though, the group only had one person having to burn a fate point, and that was in the conflict against Grell and the Sorrowful Guild (Grell's Power Scythe is really quite dangerous). But at the end of the day it didn't feel like a combat heavy module, the group spent most of their time working in and out of the intrigues of the other buyers.

The two things I did that really seemed to help, were first off making it so that voxes/microbeads didn't work inside the House of Dust and Ash, as this made the group apprehensive about splitting up. And secondly, I pointed out to the group that pretty much everyone at the event was a heretic, if only for the fact that they were here looking at buying proscribed goods... this meant that if the characters suddenly pulled out Inquisitorial credentials and tried to prosecute people, they would quickly find all the other auction attendees (and probably the gun servitors) against them. This meant the group relied on guile and subterfuge rather than combat and interrogation.

ozorion said:

Excellent, excellent advice Consider it borrowed.

I am in the process of deciding how I am going to work this scenario into my campaign. It looks like a lot of fun and I am really excited about it. (Unfortunately I've decided it will probably have to go in the latter half of the campaign for story revelation reasons, as I want to include a couple important campaign NPC's in the attendee list.)

Has anyone tried/thought of/ planning to:

• Make one of the PC's the scion
• Change the threat/bloodline behind the whole affair to something other than the Haarlocks?

I am toying with the idea of doing the latter so that I can do the former. I love the adventure, but using the Haarlock line just leaves a lot of dangling hooks I would feel obligated to follow up on (and we only play 4 hours a week).

My players have just arrived at the House of Dust and Ash itself. During the voyage Octavia Nile poisoned our Assassin, and he very nearly died. Our Assassin is posing as the primary representative of Elias Shadrack (the fake Rogue Trader), and he's also the one responsible for defeating the demon Tsyiak in Illumination--so as you can imagine he's a big target.

While our Assassin was passed out and recuperating from his poisoning, Abbot Tamas summoned an Unclean Spirit that almost possessed him. If not for the timely intervention of our Templar PC, I think the adventure would have taken a turn for the worse. As of last session, Tamas has been keeping a low profile, waiting for the right time to strike.

My PCs handled the Wreckers well enough, too well even. Octavia Nile hung back the whole time just watching the Acolytes at work and while she doesn't suspect them of being Inquisition, she does find them too interesting to let go.

Upon arrival my PCs met up with their contact and upon slapping him back into lucidity they got his status report. Vox transmissions only work intermittently in the House of Dust and Ash, but my players have already split up.

My last session ended with our groups Prime noticing that some of the statuary looks alot like Whent, Lanus Cisten's assistant...

aethel said:

Well as it happens one player in our group is playing a Noble Scum who is the youngest son of a Rogue Trader (the 7th or 8th son, so no inheritance to await for). I am thinking that linking him to the Haarlocks is too good an opportunity to pass up. First I planned that the noble PC's mother had had an affair with Erasmus Haarlock without her husband's, the character's father's, knowledge and that the PC is the fruit of that relationship. But then it occurred to me that since Erasmus seems such a bastard, it will be better if he raped the PC's mother during a society ball when she got a bit too drunk in the garden. The PC's mother then stayed quiet about the **** due to shame, guilt and fear of her husband (if he found out) turning against the powerful Haarlock clan and being then destroyed by them for his troubles.

If/When the PC later questions/confronts her mother about his blood relation to the Haarlocks, she breaks down in front of him after decades of silence and tells him about his true origins. This should give the PC a great motivation to hunt after Erasmus Haarlock in the upcoming adventures about the Haarlock Legacy, to have a man-to-man chat with his true Daddy. If the PC is stupid enough to inform his father about the ****, he will first thank the PC for the info. Then he divorces from the PC's mother (her own family will disown her for being unfaithful to her husband and she ends up a penniless pauper) and disinherits the PC since he is not his true son -> the PC loses his Noble Income... To complicate matters a bit further, I will make Captain Rubio of the Ozmandius a member of the clan the PC's family has a Vendetta against (the Vendetta has not been defined yet). If he lets Rubio get out of the House of Dust and Ash alive, word will slowly start to spread about the PC being the Haarlocks' bastard scion... Let's see if the PC is smart enough to commit outright murder before that happens.

Abbot Tamas will be easy to include since the PCs have done Illumination. He will probably ambush the PC who killed the Skae-Thing at night during the trip in the airship. I am not yet sure how to use best the two Malfian Bloodsworn. Since the PCs also played through Edge Of Darkness, one of Octavia Nile's bodyguards will be Moran, the Logician agent who escaped them in EoD. Moran will strike up a conversation in the bar of the airship and will carelessly identify himself with his old false name ("Moran") that he used a few years back in Coscarla. The players only heard Moran's name a few times during the EoD, so I am not sure whether they will recognise it anymore, but I am hoping so. If it does not work I don't know yet what I am going to do with the Logicians.

The end SUCKS! Well it did for my character at least. I am now the proud owner of a brand new character. It was fun as hell, but incredibally deadly. Your characters start out unarmed, then pretty much thrust into a life or death situation right away that lasts for ever. Limited ammo, limited weapons, and you don't own a single one of them at the beginning. We managed to live for a while, save the scion, open the tomb, fight off the xenos, open the door, and our GM in one last bit of assery tosses a road block between us and the now open door, so we had to either give up the scion to the group, run a different route (and hope we live and get to the door on time) or fight (and hope we live and get to the door on time). Add in that the roadblock was the bounty hunter and her group (who didn't believe us when we said the door was open) and we had to make a quick choice.

So I being the psychic (and having the most fate points left) stayed behind to do a running delaying action on the bounty hunters, while the group ran off a different direction with the scion towards the door. I ALMOST made it too, the door was closing I was running, a few bounty hunters were still following (running now that they saw the door really WAS open), I'm almost at the door... and one of the bounty hunters gets lucky with a shot. Out of fate points, I drop like a rock about two inches from the door.

This... is typical though of my GM though.

I'm going to be running it with a group of Rank 5 players shortly. I have some pretty skilled gamers, with a sound sense of build capabilities, tactics, setting knowledge, and even role-playing skills.

So, to up the ante, I added an Alpha Legionnaire travelling incognite. He's in monk's robes (secretly of flak material) instead of power armor, but has his Astartes issue bolter hidden in the folds . My additional cast is fairly expansive, and a lot of them can be recruited as allies, or at least turned agains the other bidders/victims of the estate. I'm expecting an....interesting result.

Jan Solo said:

Very nice.. do tell us how it all goes.

Xathess Wolfe said:

( If you have seen "Last Samurai", the following line mind sound familiar to you)

This is EXCELLENT! I would really appreciate it if my pc would die such a heroic and dramatic death. One to be memorable for a long time.

I salute you and envy you! In the games I played, my pc normaly died through (my own) stupidity, bad luck or at the hand of a faceless thug in a meaningless encounter.

Xathess Wolfe said:

You and your GM might want to have a conversation about how fate points work.

Unless you "died" several times during your running delay, it's not possible to have a bunch of fate points and then a few minutes later be out and die.

You spend fate points for re-rolls. You burn fate points to avoid dying. Spent fate points can still be burnt to avoid dying.

Yeah, but being trapped behind the door with four pissed of logicans on your tail, the "Children of the kingdom" running around slaughtering everything that bleeds, and the entire house slowly imploding around you is hard to work out how you live. Especually if you already are a psyker. If you wernt I would have made you a nausicant psyker on the spot, with the teleport ability (i believe it goes by a different name in DotDG). But I cant come up with something to save your sorry arse.

Not to mention, a myrter character is great rollplaying for the rest.