Just a quick question; Anyone had an Explorer or whole party take up a Dark pact (as in Dark Heresy - can't recall if the rules are in the RT rule book too and don't have my books to hand) with the Chaos Powers?

I mention it as one of the Arch-Militants in my group seems to be heading that way. I'm fine with it as a GM and think that it could add some intriguing plot lines but I wondered if anyone has had expreience of it in play?

I don't know about Dark Pacts in DH, but maybe the Reaver Alternative Rank (Hostile Acquisitions) can be useful for your player (to represent how his character starts becoming more and more alien).

Had one character take up a pact for immortality. Since he was already pretty damned near unkillable already I thought it something of a moot point, had the pact require that he build an army, and continued on my merry way. Since I use a continual canon storyline, this fact has come back to bite them in the ass quite severely in the form of an eight foot tall lizardman wearing terminator armour, with unnatural toughness x3 and the ability to simply spend fate points to not be dead.

Realistically, there's no particular issue with PCs using Pacts. Just remember that even the most binding of contracts will have a downside for the player eventually...

Errant said:

Oh indeed, one of the largest downsides may potentially be the other player characters reactions if they ever find out. They are happy to entertain Xenos on their ship but I don't think that they are *quite* heretical enough to be comfortable with Chaos on the Command deck....

Nerd King said:

As a wise man once told me: "The engine room is forbidden to all non-essential personnel" .

My players were basically forced into a dark pact and are currently looking for a way out of it.

I think that would require learning the demons true name. Any other ideas?

ieatdeadpeople said:

ieatdeadpeople said:

Your going to have to give us a better sense of how they came to be involved in the dark pact before I can make a guess.

lurkeroutthere said:

They were forced into it. They were jetisonned out an airlock and had to burn fate points to survive. I let them stumble across a haunted astroid mining colony and decided to make things interesting.

The demon is obviously quite powerful, he was able to alter reality enough to hurl them light years across the expanse and set up events so that they got their ship back and a chance to kill their archnemesis (the guy who jettisonned them out the airlock).

He's some sort of greater demon of nurgle. Not a great Unclean one though.

Errr yea, by WH40K standards then they wern't really forced into it. They knowingly colluded with a demon for revenge agaisnt their enemies, the only other option they had (and it's a "good one" by imperial standards) is the emperor's benediction, AKA suicide.

I mean I presume they took that option as an alternative to character/campaign end but once ruinous powers of that level have your collusion in their schemes you are likely enver getting out from under them. The only entities that could help them get free arn't going to want to because of the way they got themselves into that mess.

If you wanted to go the hackneyed route though they might find the demons true name, force it to take a "mortal" form and then physically destroy it banishing it to the warp for a thousand years. But in all likelyhood even if they pull that their souls are still it's when they die.

Another option is they get the demons true name, prepare to destroy it and then extract a binding pledge of non interference from both parties. The demon gives up the hold it has on the original pact in exchange for the players giving up it's true name. They'll have to live with the knowledge that they let a very powerful very dangerous demon continue to tool around the material realm when they could have stopped it.

lurkeroutthere said:

As long as it pisses off, and leaves them alone I'm sure they'll be perfectly happy.