My party of 4 arrived at the sky-mill, and faced ONE slaught. After a long (and boring) fight, 3 pf them were "dead" (they burned Fate points), and one escaped.

How do you kill that creature? Toughness bonus 5 (unnatural) and armor 3 gives it a soak of 13. And this should be a scenario for ranks 1-2.

Also, how do i get them out of there now? I was thinking, maybe due to a mistake the Inquisition sent a yeam of Adeptae Sororitas to the same place, and the escaped PC could meet them by chance….

Delazar78 said:

"welcome to the world of badly written DH adventure moduls". Magots in the Meat (or MitM) is not at all suited for Rank 1 or 2 characters. The author of this modul really really screwed up at this point.

How to go on from here? (Suggestion) :
The PC that escaped is followed and confronted…by another Acolyth of another Inquisitor. He was the sole survivor of his team (who at leat came in better equipped but was wiped as well). He knows that they need more firepower and knows about an illegal armsdealer in town who sells off-world weaponary. But he does not have the coin (price are outrageous) and he himself can neither sneak or storm into the dealers house to secure the weapons (he has some guards) [The Prince of Olrankan does not know about this weapons. The City of Olrankan was merely a transportation hub for the armsdealer who does not "**** where he sleeps".

What abojut the other PC?
While it is "cheese royal", make them wake up as part of the huge pile of dead inside. All of them have little wounds left (perhaps 0, but not critical to death; Cinematic but handy). Hopefully, the will wait for a moment where the Slaught are not down here or occupied to sneak out. Make them wake up at night.

How to kill the Slaught?
Since your chars ARE Rank 1 or 2 (I guess) you will need some basic weapons (Projektil, Laser or Flamer*) that have a Penetration of 3+ and a damage score of at least 1d10+3 (better 4 or higher). Remeber that Flamers do not have a "to hit"-role and are thereby ideal weapons for the untrained. The target of such an attack gets a better dodge under this circumstances, but I would suggest a "house rule" for flamers here: the Dodge test gets a "reversed modifier" to the dodge test based on the range modifier. A Flamer fire on a little close then 3m (core shot) would thereby imply a -30 modifier (which I think is realistic: you do not simply dodge a gout of flames that close!)
Oh! And think about reducing the numbers of Slaught DRASTICALLY. Perhaps it is just this one, or just this one and another.

Potential Weapons to kill a Slaught (Rank 1 or 2 Player, obtainable by an illegal armsdealer)

A non-munitorum standard heavy calibre assault rifle. Like "Assault Rifle" but reduce clip size by 5; Damage = 1d10+4 and unreliable (idea based on the Armageddon Assault Rifle from IH) with manstopper rounds

An illegally modified Las-Rifle (use Las Rifle but single shot only; it can be switched to "overcharge" in which case damage is 1d10+4, Penetration is 3 and the weapon gains unreliable, overheat and recharge.

'Assault Shotguns feed with manstopper solid projectiles

A blackpowder canon from the city defenses (one would need to talk to military personal here)

Powderkegs and a way of luring the Slaught into a trap.

Yeah, MitM is better suited for parties of Rank 4+. How to keep your campaign moving foward? Call 'finding the Bad Guys' hideout' a victory in itself, and have the PCs call in an orbital strike on the location based on their coordinates. If you want to give the party more to do than that, you can say that there are no armed ships currently in orbit, and have the PCs try to convince/cajol/coerce the local government to have their military set up a cordon around the windmill to keep the Slaught from escaping, while waiting for the ship that is picking up the party (an Imperial Navy frigate) to arrive and do the bombardment.

The Slaugth are horribly tough indeed, but actually this is about the most interesting feature of the whole adventure in my opinion. Compared to a Slaugth the Skae-Thing in Illumination is a blind grot, so the PCs must learn that a direct approach not always leads to success and that the 40K galaxy is a dangerous place where vile xeno creatures kill you with a glimpse.

In the beginning of the encounter my players mostly had luck in the sense that they all dodged the deadly ripper rays even though the groups rather tough and macho Guardsman got his a** handed in only two rounds of close combat against a single Infiltrator. The Slaught fled upstairs in high speed and the part of the party in the mill fled to the outside (the Arbitrator dragging the Guardsman who just lost a fate point). When the whole party later came back to the mill with the support of half a dozen of the local Plumes the real massacre began. On the way upstairs each shot of ripper ray killed a Plume (the Lieutenant indeed lost his helmet plume before losing his head altogether…) and again a withdrawal was made. In the end the PCs set fire to the mill and fled the city…

As I said, the badassness of the Slaugth is the interesting part of an otherwise bland adventure. It again gave me the impression that most DH adventures have different persons responsible for writing the adventure, then for writing the stats of the NPC and of course drawing the NPC portraits. In Baron Hopes from PtU it is stated Thorgell opens fire with his gun, but the NPC Thorgell does not have any gun let alone is able to use one. In Illumination the Skae-Thing is described in the adventure as if it is almost unkillable without targeting its eyes, but its stats (and primitive attacks) are far from impressive for a whole group. I am sure the writer of Maggots in the Meat originally also did not had such tough creatures in mind. Best sentence in the adventure is the first one on page 18: 'If there are any Slaugth alive after a few vicious rounds of fighting, they flee out of one of the rooms windows….' I just thought 'Who? The PCs?'

To cut a long story short, what you have to keep in mind is, that these xenos are ‘Infiltrators’ and after their presence is revealed, they will try to flee instead of attacking like a horde of Orks.

Killing them should be possible (and was possible for my rank 3 PCs), just use either Accurate Basic Weapons (Hunting Rifle with Man-stopper rounds or Long-Las with Hot-Shot charge), Mono Great Weapons or even Heavy Weapons and Grenade Launchers. A soak of 13 is nothing, if a well placed shot of a Hunting Rifle results in an average of about 20 damage (incl. Pen) and a Hot-Shot Long-Las even above that.

I would not let the surviving PC run into a squad of Sororitas or another inquisitorial Acolyte. That does sound too much like deus ex machine in my view. Getting help from the local militia (as I did) or citizens might fit better. Those PCs, who burned a Fate Point, could indeed regain consciousness while lying in a mound of corpses. I doubt the Slaught Infiltrators know enough of human physique to know (or care…) whether one is really dead or only unconscious.

Dude. I'm embarrassed to say, but I totally just Nerfed them. I looked it over and realized there was no way they wouldn't get slaughtered. Also, they had no luck at all working with the locals and they were really trying to play it low key so working with them was unlikely. I plan on bringing some of the Slaugth back because I really like them, and I made it really clear that these guys were just the tip of iceberg so I can ramp them up later as the Cell gets tough enough to take them on.

Like I said, I'm not proud of it, but in another game as a player (we switch off) I had my party wiped and we basically just stopped that campaign. It felt punitive and I didn't want to derail this campaign as well. They maybe could have taken on one at full strength but I dunno. I try to balance things to an extent.

Yea, my first campaign I ran I just threw joe smoe cultists at the PC's. And when I looked over this quest and ran a mock up of it, the PC's would die if they didn't resort to burning the place down, using cannons from the plume guys, or setting booby traps with grenades they acquired. Ended up not running this campaign after my PC's got rank 5 on me. It's just like I do with RT though. I have a mock up battle with the opposition and a random opponent, and see how it plays out. Lets you get used to the rules if you haven't played in a while, and it allows you to get a firm grip on the enemies capabilities/weaknesses and how best / or not best to utilize them.

Also allows you to give the players hints on how to beat the opposition. Like maybe a quick scene of the plumes surrounding some badguys in a house, and they just set fire to it instead of storming the home. Hopefully your PC's get ideas from NPC's actions too. If not, you tried.

Nameless2all said:

That's a pretty good idea. I struggle with how to give them hints because sometimes they feel a little exasperated if they don't know what to do or feel like I only have one thing I want them to do and they have to guess at it.

I've always considered it a poorly balanced module. If I had to run it, I would lowball the damage the Slaugth can deal. I would ensure that if a party member suffered fear, the effect they get would be that they run away. I would limit it to about 2 Slaugth, and have them both be seriously injured (below 1/2 health), and I would take away their regeneration trait.

I would use the fact that they're injured as a plot hook for what I run them against next. Hopefully they're scary enough to make the party crap their pants when considering what hurt the Slaugth.

KommissarK said:

That's not a bad idea. How would you convey that, though? I mean, how would newbs even know a hurt Slaugth by appearance? They already look pretty messed up… It didn't occur to me to try that with them.

First, its been a while since I read Slaugth physiology, but whatever happens, let the bodies not turn into a pile of worms when they die, but rather maintain some form. Have that form obviously have taken a nasty hit/have it leaking disgusting fluids, that sorta thing. Maybe have the worms from a certain region show distinctly different signs of infection. Perhaps a blood trail of something else leaving the windmill. Honestly, its hard to say, I'd have to give it more thought.

For something like that I'd make it a simple scrutiny check to notice the obvious. The discern what it means would take a harder medicae, or even forbidden lore(xenos) test. If the party missed that as well, it might get picked up by whatever inquisitorial clean up team is inevitably sent to the location (unless they burn it down). If they burn it down, well then they lose the lead, sure. Although if I really want to play it up, perhaps they find a trail of blood (although thats a bit too much railroading).

Perhaps whatever it is they went up against disabled their regenerative properties. Maybe have the worms be calcified, and its the result of some other xenos weapon. Really I'd have to reread MitM to really get a sense of what the Slaugth were doing there in the first place (gathering "food" mostly, right?).

Really this example would be a case of trying to provide even further background to the case. It would probably require more extensive modification to MitM than I would really want to make (might as well make my own game at that point).

KommissarK said:

Agreed. I kind of wish I had not run that one at all… I wish I would have read these forums first, as this seems to be a common sentiment. I should have just written my own Slaugth intro story…

You hear that, people thinking about running it?