Hello fellow Inquisitorial Agents!
I am in a bit of a pickle, and am in need of some cool "fleshing out" tips. But in order to do that you will probably need some bakground story of our cell of Acolytes. First of all, we have already decided that our Acolytes are to be promoted to Inquisitors after this adventure (because they have grown a little to strong. Were talking 12.000+ experience points on all of them). The cell consist of one Tech-Priest (thats me, Varnias Tybalt), one Cleric (Black Priest of Maccabeus under the name Vergilius Rexx), One Assasin (a Moritat Reaper who goes by the name Nehekaro) and one Scum (snobby Charlatan type scum and a Tyrantine Shadow agent to boot named Ralthus Cha'Kane). Our current Inquisitor is the ambivalent and mischiveous Vownus Kaede (who I envisioned being a pretty flexible Inquisitor to use when we first started playing DH, since he is not too much of a puritan, yet not too much of a radical either).
This adventure is meant to be a follow-up to events that occured in The House of Dust and Ash (expect spoilers from now on). I was not the GM during Dust and Ash, and so my Tech-Priest did a GRIVEOUS mistake. He put on the copper gorget from the Onyx statue (at the time i just thought it was a pretty and harmless trinket), long story short, it turned out to be a frakking Halo Device! He has since accumulated some strange physical powers (for instance, surviving being shot in the head by a Las-Cannon, without having to burn fate points!) and a nice number of insanity points. And this is serving as the plot starter for the adventure, since I am the GM now, my PC just serves as an NPC.
Now, you must understand that when I envision an aventure idea, my train of thought is pretty incoherent. I usually envision the cool, epic high-light events of the adventure (like im watching a movie), but get a fair share of problems when trying to flesh out the events in between the highlights. : /
The adventure kicked off (yes it has already started, because the intro was fairly easy to come up with, and the other players enjoyed it imensly
) with Vownus Kaede calling us to a hasty meeting where he informed us that the infamous heretek Magos Vathek (see Disciples of the Dark Gods) had been seen on the walking city of Ambulon, and that Vownus had merely stumbled upon the information of Vathek's whereabouts by accident (the heretic was in a surveillance pict during a pretty mundane ore theft from one of Ambulons ore traders). Vownus knowing that both the Inquisition and The Adeptus Mechanicus wants this particular heretic badly. The Inquisition wants Vathek destroyed, but the Adeptus wants to capture him and transport him to Sheol 17 for extensive (and uncomfortale) interrogation, before executing him. Vownus has in our previous adventures had an interest in gathering trusted allies within the Adeptus Mechanicus (for mysterious reasons only Vownus knows). Therefore our PCs were ordered to travel to Ambulon incognito, and capture the abomination ALIVE.
We followed the leads of the ore theft (a particularly rare ore called "Logicyte", which is used in construction of high storage data-memory crystals), and we found out eventually that Vatheks plan was to construct a memory crystal of alien design, and in turn use it to forcefuly download an unknown amount of information from The Oracle Ocular on Ambulon (see the adventre Rejoice for You are True in Purge the Unclean). When we arrived at the Magnopticon university Vathek had already stagd his attack. He had done his deed and then killed the Oracle Ocular to cover his tracks, but we arrived just in time to give pursiut. The chase was a neckbreaking affair (Vathek being hard to catch because he employed heretical technosorcery he had aquired from the Logicians), stretching from Ambulons rooftops, down to Ambulons underbelly, proceeding through an Ore dumping ramp, on to a high speed ore-train on the ground with Gunmetal City as its destination. The train was in turn assaulted by Metallican Raiders when it arrived at Gunmetal City, so a chaotic run and gun firefight ensued, involving a small army of raiders, Vathek, and even a rouge psyker going warp crazy and accidentaly summoning three bloodletters (which our Black priest of Maccabeus almost single handedly dispatched with righteous powers). Although a certain NPC (among the raiders) proved to be an Untouchable who also helped destroy the damons (this particular NPC is to be my future PC, and i thought to include him in this aventure for novelty's sake).
Eventually we caught up with Vathek and managed to subdue the heretek monster with a well-placed Eldar haywire grenade (which Vownus Kaede gave to us in the beginning of the adventure to provide us with an edge). Suffice to say that Vatheks many augmetic parts didnt like to be asaulted by the EMP wave the grenade generated, so he found himself extremely encoumbered by all the "dead-weight" his many implants consisted of. Effectively subduing him, we disarmed him and cast him in irons. After that the gaming session ended. (a very adrenaline pumping gaming session according to one of the players in my group
)
Now, what I have imagined as a "conclusion" is that the PCs succesfully transports Vathek to Vownus Kaede, and he in turn explains his peculiar order to capture the heretek alive. They proceed to smuggling the heretic to a covert Mechanicus Secutor controlled ship waiting in Orbit, and begin the journey to Sheol 17. Sometime during the adventure my Tech-Priest has learned exactly what is happening to him (from the Halo Device's influence) and he is terrified. He can't rip the device of himself (because by now it is so intigrated in his own body), and he knows that it would be an effective death sentence to reveal to his colleagues exactly what he's going through. He also discovers what Vathek wanted to learn from the Oracle Ocular (namely information about Halo Devices and other forbidden life-restoring lore). So sometime during the adventure he decides boldly to approach the heretic, break him free (of course taking the other PCs and their Inquisitor totally by surprise, since no one suspects a **** thing about what the Tech-Priest is thinking. They seldom do
) and offering Vathek a deal that if Vathek agrees to surgically remove the Halo Device from my Tech-priest, and also put him through a full cybernetic resurrection (in order to purge the taint from himself completely) he will let Vathek go, and even give him the Halo Device (which Vathek covets, as it is an important piece in his heretical research).
I certainly know that it seems that my Tech-Priest is going heretic right about now >
But thats not the case. He has no intention of letting Vathek go or do something as stupid as letting him have the Halo Device. He intends to save his own soul from the Halo Device through the cybernetic resurrection, and kill Vathek after that.
My intentions are to let the PCs how up just in time before the cybernetic resurrection can commence (by then they will also have figured out my Tech-priests plans). They will probably feel an intense amount of animosity towards my Tech-priest (which they do already, because of several theological differences, but thats just what makes our group fun to play), and just as they have a justified reason to kill him, he will litterarly ask them to kill him so the resurrection can begin (pleading to them to save his soul from the horrible Halo Device).
Of course I cant really predict what the other PCs will do, but my vision of the campaign conclusion is that my tech-priest gets resurrected and is freed from the Halo Device (though he still retains his insanity points, and gains even more from the resurrection procedure), Vathek however manages to escape (but without the Halo Device). And just as the PCs is about to arrest (or kill) my Tech-priest, a small taskforce of Deathwatch Space Marines arrive, with a certain Inquisitor from Ordo Xenos, who orders the PCs to hand my tech-priest over to him. The reason for this is that my Tech-priest has had a contact within the Ordo Xenos, and would inofficially be excused of his bold endavour in exchange for the Halo Device, and that he surrenders completely to the Ordo Xenos Inquisitor (which in turn leads to him serving as the new Inquisitors interrogator). Serving as an explaination how my PC got to be an Inquisitor within the Ordo Xenos.
I kind of like the ambivalent nature of the ending, proving to be bitter for the other PCs, and further disillusion them of exactly how "holy" and "righteous" the Inquisition really is, when someone who preforms such selfish transgressions as my PC do in the adventure can be "excused" and even promoted. (although in defence of my PC, he doesn't do it because he aspires to be a radical or a heretic, he does it to save his soul from an evil alien influence, that would enact far worse actions against mankind were it to completely gain control of his mind). Reasoning (quite Inquisitorialy if I may say so) that "the ends always justify the means" (and that very reasoning also explains exactly why he gets promoted, adding the fact that he proved to be resourceful and ruthless pursuing his scheme >
)
Soooo, now that you know the story (i tried my best to keep it short but still interesting to read), I need a little help. In form of critisism, but most importantly i need inspiration to flesh out the adventure. For instance, events that will transpire during the journey to Sheol 17 (downtime during warp travel is boring to just skip ahead of in my opinion). Events that could transpire on Sheol 17 (being an Adeptus Mechanicus prison for hereteks i want to convey the very uniqueness and coolness of the place in some way other than my Tech-priests jailbreak move). Where should the final showdown happen? (some generic secret lab probably, but where should this secret lab be located? And how do the other PCs manage to track their prey to it?). Should Vathek really preform the "standard" cybernetic resurrection on my Tech-priest, or will he be a mean bastard and revive my tech-priest with the heretical Sarcossan Wave generator instead? And if so, could my tech-priest plausibly keep that a secret from the Ordo Xenos and rise to Inquisitor-rank without anyone knowing that he really is an undead abomination with a severe grudge against Magos Vathek?
Any help would be appriciated (of course, if someone feels like praising me for my insane adventure ideas, feel free to do so but dont forget to help me a little also ;D). I just need some other train of thought than my own, after all this adventure is supposed to serve as the epic conclusion of our cell of Acolytes, before they rise to Inquisitorial rank. So it must be something special and well planned.
Thank you on beforehand. And the Emperor protects!