Last night I ran a session for my group just heading into the beginning of Dead Stars. They've ended up approaching it from a but of a random angle but I won't go into that. This session I finally revealed their Inquisitor to them, previously they have been handled by three throne agents who wouldn't reveal the identity of their master. I had decided that their Inquisitor is actually dead but passed on responsibility to his throne agents to continue his work (leading towards the PCs in Ascension) but that he had the ability as a member of the Ordo Chronos to travel forward to advise/direct some cells at crucial moments to ensure his work goes well. This he did appearing to them to give them a little bit of crucial info and to impress upon them that their work was really important to his plans.

One of my PCs has taken as a madness pure paranoia that large protions of the Inquisition are out to get them or are working against them after getting quite frustrated by all the secrecy and schemes they glimpse as part of the Haarlock Trilogy and this twist really seemed to hit home. So much so that she was actually rendered speechless for a few minutes (her own words I just thought her character was actually angry!). This was really enjoyable for me and so I wondered - anyone want to share stories of twists/sessions/events in their games that went really well?

I'd love to hear about them if you did - let's celebrate some times that people enjoyed!

I had once this very puritannical Inquisitor (Mathiel) set on killing another Inquisitor (Alexel, the background character of all my campaings) because he was accused of heresy. During the course of this hard mission, he fell on allies of the said Inquisitor, which was a Night Cult, fighting off Dark Eldars on the planet. The Inquisitor didn't know what to do about this; fighting off the death cult would bring the Dark Eldars on the world and he couldn't hope for reinforcements since there was a warp storm in the region.

The Mathiel had dealing with a daemon that had the same will of seeing Alexel dead and once pactised with Mathiel, even if he didn't use his powers and denied having such dealings (falling on the way of radicalism). Well, during that intense moment where he didn't know what to do, after killing the incompetent planetary governor, he told his throne agents to wait for him, went in his room, and called the daemon for help.

Every player didn't know what he was doing when he quit to be alone. And when we all heard the player finishing his ritual and calling forth the surname of the daemon, we were all flabergasted to see this. Well, it went to nuts, the throne agents abandoned their inquisitor, allied themselves with the deathcult and fought the Dark Eldars invasion.

Their Inquisitor, because of sorcery, went outside, finding reinforcments, and destroyed the planet with an Exterminatus, the players fleeing by a portal created by the night cult and leaving the place. It was the end of that arc of the campaign, after what the team's Judge decided to kill his own family, a jaded and warp corrupted noble family of Malfi (investigation and fight that brought back a keeper of secrets and and khorne Bloodthirster, leaving a part of the capital city of Malfi under a daemonic war between the two entities…well the player had their somewhat radical ways of buying themselves support)

My group have killed their first Inquisitor when he tried to summon a deamon on a desert planet. In ther trial the gathered Inquisitors of the Tyrantine Cabal decided to give the Emperor's Mercy tHo the characters. At that moment an Astroapathic message blurts out: :

-Lord Inquisitor Zerbe, I call on favours owed. Spare these agents and return them to the field.

Inquisitor Silas Marr

So the Characters are dispatced to a junior Inquisitor who blatantly tells them he has no need of their services and that he is sending them on a "holyday" to get them out of his way. The groups Leader is told to pay special attention to the Psycker. Of course they are being watched…

So after a couple near disasters the Acolytes are picked up by their Inquisitor and handed over to Silas Marr. They are sent to the House of Dust and Ash to "observe and report". And when the group's Psycker faceis reflected on the Unknown Portrait the pieces come together. Hermes the Sanctionite is Hermes Haarlock, Heir to that Name and can interface with the Machinery in the House and control it.

It was an awesome session…

I've had a number of twists and sessions go right in my day- a couple of my favorites, and the players favorite though had to have been on Dusk, Orbell Quill and Sinophia Magna.

Starting off with the first:

The game on Dusk had them being manipulated by eldars, sorcerers and daemons. By the time they reached the end, all hell had broken loose: Three acolytes were dead, the adept sorcerer was casting openly n order to survive, the others were crawling to the end location in the midst of chaos and madness. When they managed to slay the daemon, only to have a dream-like vision of "God-avatar" of Slaanesh show up to mate with it... then grant them a boon... they had no idea if they'd helped the eldar, the daemons, the Interrogator turned rogue- or if someone played them like a bunch of saps. They still talk about this session to this day- even though it was over a yea rago!

The two next moments happened on Orbell Quill- I was running "Blood Red Rains", and the coming of the Blood Thirster was just EPIC. Before that, the players fought a couple of Blood-letters, and due to the Chaos-number houserule, Tzeentch's influence turned one of the Blood God's daemons to WOOD [saving the players!!]. The rain of gore and general chaos of the final confrontation was so epic and horrifying, that one of the players (Who had accepted the Slaaneshi's boon from the Dusk Session) burned a fate point to Summon up the Avatar and had it fight off the Blood Thirster as it entered the material universe.

Afterwards, still on Orbell Quill, the players were exploring an old Eldar Temple and found a set of 13 mirrors, two of them where missing [Taken to Sinophia Magna by Haarlock]. The Psyker rolls the perils that breaks all mirrors in an area, but the Eldars, having foreseen this, have prepared protective runes that reverse the damage onto him. Luckily for him, the Slaaneshi daemon sealed into the mirrors saves him, accelerating his Boon (he also accepted the Snake-god's boon on Dusk) and turning him into a fully-fledged serpent man with a mission: kill the Harlequin guardian of the mirror and take his soul-stone into the mirrors. Shoulda see the rest of the party's faces when the psyker walked into the glass and Daemonettes began to pour out

On Sinophia Magna, one of our biggest moments wasn't actually a fight, but complete words play. The players managed to catch me in a lie- a Rogue Trader had hired them to recover one of the mirror shards, a pendant, using some sort of excuse. The players, during a raid of the crypts, find a mirror shard pendant with the Slaught and bring it back to the rogue trader. But before they give it to her, they manage to find out that this pendant is part of a set of TWO, and the ones that they had recovered wasn't the rogue trader was asking for... but actually the one that she had, and was hired by the slaught themselves to recover the second one. It was very cool- managed to avoid getting screwed over there

I think, generally speaking, we've had other good games (and a few bad ones)- but luckily, I've got a very cool group that seems to be enjoying the ride- so far, the Pale Sepulcher game I've been running, is going VERY well and though it is filled with memorable moments, I believe that the most memorable thing about it is the (Arbitrator) Cyber-mastiff handler's Cyber-falcon. That thing is DESTROYING EVERYTHING, has saved the day on more than one occasion, and has survived a monster that One shot every other party member with a single hit [but managed to roll 1 & 2 when it hit the godamned bird ]. Its owner has dubbed it "the red baron" and is going to start painting it red (likely with the blood of his enemies )

During a rather long mission on a Feudal World, the cell met with the assassin's former master (now working for a Rogue Trader), tracking him down, allying themselves with Orks Kommando/Freebootas that said Master hired, tracking him down in his hidden estate in the country, defeating him in combat..only to see that he was basically a mechanical construct (Think a life model decoy like in the Marvel comics), but hey at least they saved their Inquisitor.

After returning to the Tricorn, they got news that one of their leads, the name 'Galland', was actually the name of a transport vessel that docked around Scintilla. another cell has been tracking a local underworld boss who deals in the Cold Trade, and all signs points to the boss meeting with the Master for some deal involving Xeno objects.

By that time, we have the assassin and Tech-priest part of the original band (as the others dropped off due to XYZ reasons) so they got the help of a guardswoman (part of the =I=) and an Arbitrator (who is not part of the =I=, merely acting as liaison).

So they legwork with a underhive contact they made in an earlier mission to figure out where the meet could be help, and managed to pin-point it to a small underhive community where the local gang mysteriously began to have nice toys to play with, courtesy of the underworld boss (that info in double checked by the Arbites shaking his own contacts)

They go in discreetly, disguises and all, they manage to take out the look-outs without too much problems..then suddenly Gloom Haunts falls from the sky by the dozens..they stormed the building, only to see the underworld boss and the Master being killed by a large humanoid Gloom Haunt, causing mass fear in the cell, only fueled by an hallucinogenic grenade (the guardswoman ends up shooting at her leg with her trusty plasmagun)

The Inquisitor is pissed, those two were wanted alive and the cell gets the crap thrown at them and must now track down the giant Gloom Haunt..they analyze the grenade, find out it's an extract of some plant form a Koronus Expanse planet in Winterscale's Realm nowhere near from the Galland's last known position...heard about a bunch of deaths in some hidden fighting pit belonging to the Beasts House, the Giant Gloom Haunt is again the culprit...and analyzing the cameras and a newly discovered gloom haunt shaped throwing disk, they came to the conclusion that they're not fighting some large, controlled critter or some horrible Beast House construct gone rogue..

But a costumed vigilante.

I felt their faces go long when that fact came out.

Loving these guys.

First time I ran The Haarlock Heresy my group never for a second considered letting him return so the second time I decided to work really hard to at least make them think. So through the campaign I've been seeding them thoughts and possibilities of things they could change in their character's lives if they had the power to go back in time and fix something. So they go through the tesseract and Haarlock shows them some possible futures where really bad things happen if they don't let him come back (Xenos attacking Terra and winning) and really good things if they do (Emperor out of Golden Throne leading the Great Crusade still). This leads them to have a full 3 hour debate about the situtation complete with awesome RP about just about everything in each character's backstory.

Then when they meet the Dusk Hag they decide to ask a whole load of questions and pay the appropriate prices - one guy that has been straight down the line puritan paying his faith for example. They conclude that they have to let him come back because if they can learn what he has learned they can do great things! I was so happy, mostly with the awesome debates they had wrestling with the situation as a group.