Emissary of the Imperator

Tobias Caine was hurt, and Warboss Snogritz was on fire. Neither of them looked like giving up on the fight. Snogritz, despite being on fire, was able to react first.

The Warboss picked Caine up off the ground and laughed as the fire from his skin began to ignite Caine’s elegant overcloak. With one hand on the scruff of Caine’s chestplating, Snogritz used his other hand to swing an axe at Caine’s head.

Caine pushed himself to ignore the heat and laughing Warboss, and focused instead on blocking the axe. His twin power swords gouged huge metal chunks out of the axe’s blade and deflected the weapon away from his head. Despite the damage, Snogritz could still use the axe as a weapon, or at least a very hefty club.

The blow had been powerful, and Caine had not been in a perfect blocking position, but he still came away from the parry in a better position to react next than Snogritz did.

With the huge, toothy grin of Snogritz in his face, Caine flipped one of his power swords around and thrust it up to its gold filigree-inlaid hilt into Snogritz’s gripping arm. The sword tore through flaming skin and gouged a deep cut through thick bone and pierced all the way to the other side of Snogritz’s arm. It also tore apart the tendons keeping Snogritz’s arm clamped around Caine’s chestplate.

Caine lost hold of the power sword embedded in Snogritz’s arm as he fell, but kept a firm grip on its twin. Wreathed in glowing electric blue, Caine tore into Snogritz’s lower torso with a follow-up that cut even more muscle off of the Warboss’s frame from between the crudely matched plates of thick armor protecting him.

Snogritz was now dripping vile green blood onto the broken deck of Caine’s warship, and breathing heavily through a mouth that contained tusks big enough to gut Caine on their own. The Warboss did not look happy.

Caine realized he had broken his leg in the fall.

He was now standing there, half-crippled, with a still-standing Warboss in front of him. Around him in the open expanse of his collapsing macrocannon deck, las fire ripped back and forth from shrinking positions and roaring Ork shot rang off the armored plating of the ship and her armored crew. Above, the Pack was doing what they could to hold back rampaging mobs of Orks with pinpoint Hellgun fire, but there were too many Greenskins to hold all of them back at once.

In the midst of his realization, Caine began praying to the God-Emperor for help.

Gilt statues of the Emperor stood at every major crossroads in his ship, and the massive cathedral to the Emperor Ascendent in the heart of the Emissary represented Caine’s devotion to the Cult. In front his bridge, the sixty meter tall replica of the Emperor slaying a serpent was a perfect replica of a piece by the Artisan-Saint Leopold housed in the Imperator’s Basillica on Terra.

If there was a person and a ship that the Emperor should look down on now, it was Caine and his Emissary .

The Emperor Protects.

Like a bolt of divine justice, Wolfe’s Lascannon struck Snogritz in the upper thigh. With the crack of a lightning bolt, the shot pierced Snogritz’s still flaming skin and shattered the bone beneath into tiny shards of shrapnel that caused even more destruction to the Warboss’s leg.

Without something to stand on, the Warboss toppled backwards onto the hard deck plating. A few Orks in the circle around the fight stepped back in fear as Caine stood higher on his own broken leg and raised his power sword in an incantation against Xenos.

Snogritz was in shock as Caine limped over. The Warboss tried to swing the remains of his axe at Caine’s head one last time, but Caine refused the strike with a textbook parry. The axe embedded itself in the deck plating at Caine’s feet as he stepped over Snogrtiz’s arm.

There was defiance in the Warboss’s eye, but even Orks suffered from shock and blood loss if the scale was significant enough. With his wounds still bleeding, and his leg pouring green ooze, Snogritz was losing the fight to stay conscious.

Caine wouldn’t let him feel that release.

Instead, he took the power sword that Wolfe had given him and lopped Snogritz’s head from the Warboss’s body.

Caine wasn’t sure if the head lived long enough to regret its decision to attack Damaris, but he knew that he would reap vengeance from those Orks that were left on his ship. Around him, the greenskins seemed to realize that the fight had turned.

In a wave of shock, the Ork fighting loosened and a wail of fear swept through their ranks. Bolstered by this turn, the armsmen of the Emissary redoubled their efforts and started pushing the Ork invaders back.

Caine, shattered and exhausted from his wounds, collapsed on the floor where he stood.

Caine's Private Study

Tobias Caine, Lord-Captain of the Emissary, was sitting in a plush chair under the grand viewing dome of his primary palatial suite. The sapphire and diamond-plas dome looked out into the stars of an uncharted star system at the edge of the God-Emperor’s scourge. Caine was admiring the view and its swirling essence, like a draping mist of milky tendrils drifting over a warm lake.

The Rogue Traders he’d met were torn on what they believed the Scourge meant: whether it was an admonishment of terror and something to be avoided, or whether it was the Emperor’s presence in the Expanse and the symbol of his wrath on the Heretic, Xenos, and Demon. Tobias believed in the latter.

It was the perfect backdrop for his sitting room and its four stories of hand crafted accouterments Gargoyle-carved columns topped by intricately chiseled flower wreaths framed lines of fine paintings and spirits from across the Calixis sector and the Koronus Expanse. He had a wide seating circle of unique chairs, all either over-stuffed with suede leather or sporting more esoteric methods of comfortably cradling a human form.

This room was also his private library, which was why he enjoyed beginning his day here every morning. Tomes, both interesting and rare and both, were stacked in shelves that nestled in between the large windows supporting his observation dome. Poetry from the Mad Priest Holbraum, Astromantic research notes from the Explorator Magos Litcog, and Religious Treatises from Saint Illoneuova were just a few of the works that he’d collected.

Above Caine, a chandelier the size of a landspeeder provided light for his daily briefing. Wolfe had handed it to Caine when he’d walked into Caine’s quarters for morning rounds. Wolfe was still cleaning weapons and talking counter-boarding tactics with Rhea.

She favored sacrificing territory and Tenebro fortresses to lure boarders into traps. Wolfe wanted to hold every fortress possible, and only withdraw if the local parties were overwhelmed by surprise forces. Both their tactics had worked in the past. It was what made the debate so lively.

Sebastian had shown up briefly to the morning meeting, then left as soon as it was appropriate. He’d said there was a personal project that he was working on. Caine had heard the word Melta-gun in the same sentence.

The Emissary’s Master-at-Arms, Caine’s defacto second in command on the ship, was sitting across from Tobias waiting for him to finish the report. It was mostly typical day-to-day minutia.

One item did catch Caine’s interest though: a report about a raft of disappearances of shipboard pets and local hall mascots. The most recent was the loss of Captain Boots from Gundeck 42. Captain Boots had been with the Emissary for nearly a decade, and the Gundeck had adopted the cat as their own. It wouldn’t have been unusual for an animal to die aboard ship, but with the loss of two dozen others in the last week and a half, it started to stand out.

Caine decided he would investigate.

He pulled Wolfe and Rhea, then headed to Gundeck 42. It was amidships, and served as an anchor point and a pre-loading facility for the first Macrocannon turret on the ship’s dorsal line. 42 had an excellent record, and the Guncaptain on the deck was the third generation of his family aboard.

They took Caine to see Captain Boots bunk. It was a small alcove that used to hold some small cogitator array that was long-since gone. A small bed had been set up, along with a bowl and furred critter toy. Caine thought it looked like a Moskovian Furry Flea, but the Emissary hadn’t been to Moskov II in twenty years. If so, it had held up well for its age.

The scene around the nest was much less well kept. There were hints of blood in the deck plating, and gouge marks dug into the hardened material. Wolfe and Rhea started trailing the marks and hints of blood down the corridor and into the ventilation system of the Emissary . Caine took a look himself at the evidence, and agreed that the cat had been killed while it was sleeping.

While the Gundeck crew was disheartened to hear their Captain say so, it was pretty obvious what had happened. The disappointment didn’t mask how impressed they were that Caine was taking a personal interest in the case.

What worried Caine was that whatever this thing was, it was in the air vents.

He pulled his plasma pistol out from under his cloak, and motioned for Wolfe and Rhea to do the same. Nearby there was a vox station serving the Gundeck. Caine had forgotten his microbead, but used the vox station to get in contact with his Master-At-Arms.

Caine wanted the Pack fully kitted and armed, and down here as quickly as possible. He also wanted the rest of his combat kit. He would wait at the Gundeck until the Pack arrived.

In twenty minutes, the Pack was ready and assembled in front of him. The Gundeck crew had been telling Caine about Captain Boots and the Gundeck’s history. They were proud to serve the Caine dynasty, and Caine promised to get them a new mascot as soon as they arrived at an Imperial port.

With a full assault team of thirty, plus himself, Wolfe, and Rhea, Caine took a look at the local ship layout to see where to start tracking this under-deck hunter.

The Vitae system in this area of the ship was a tangled mess of input and output ventilators and the furnaces and filters serving the ship’s crew. But, and Caine noted with interest, several major air pathways met in a clustered concentration around Cargo Compartment 7 about twenty decks below his feet.

The ship was about a month out of Port Wander, and had taken on a large complement of supplies.

Caine was already forming conspiracy theories in his head.

Caine will take 'Little Blue Xenos' for 1000

The Strith Dynasty wanted Caine’s holdings, he’d stolen ancient tithes and promises from another Rogue Trader for Adeptus Mechanicus support, and the Eldar had nearly killed him very recently. Any number of people might have set a trap for him. And that was if this whole thing wasn’t just some dangerous bilge predator that had decided to occupy the bowels of his ship.

All Caine had to go off of was a small tuft of iridescent blue fur and a cat who had died serving him. That situation had to be remedied.

The loss of Captain Boots broke his heart.

With a rising vengeance in his chest and the Imperious look of Divine Right on his face, Caine sent a servo skull into the Vitae system to follow it towards Cargo Vault 7. He wasn’t about to go climbing through the vents. He started leading his team down the conventional way. Traditional meant his gilded servitor lift system.

Helpfully, the servo skull popped out of the wall just as Caine arrived at Cargo Vault 7. It was twittering slightly, its baleful eye pulsing slowly as it indicated that its mission was complete. Caine would have to remember to tell Sebastian that these servo skulls needed a happier mode. A small mechanical appendage held more of the blue fur, but nothing more substantial. From what Caine could tell, the trail the servo skull had followed continued into the Vault itself.

It took less than five minutes for Supply crew to arrive under Caine’s direction and open the sealed access doors to Vault 7. Caine still did not want to dirty his hands with minor details. A check of paperwork, and a call up to the senior supply scribes, confirmed that no supplies had been accessed from 7 yet. These were long-storage provisions, and meant for the last dregs of a voyage or for spare parts that were rarely needed.

Caine led the way into the Vault, sweeping his cape behind him with the arm holding his plasma pistol, with hellgun armed Pack soldiers, Wolfe, and Rhea closely behind.

The lighting was off inside the Vault, or in mere patches across its expansive ceiling. Towering stacks of crates were held down by thick bundles of chains and well-secured knots of rope. Everything looked as it should as the team danced torch-lights from stack to stack looking for any anomalies.

Caine, with a giant Vault to search and quickly tiring of the darkness, split the group in two. Rhea led half the Pack soldiers to begin searching for any more clues to the blue fur, while Caine and Wolfe took the other half to begin searching for any signs of sabotage. Row upon row of huge supply crates stretched into the distance as Caine searched through their mass, until one of the towers caught his attention.

It was a pile of massed metal, with chains on the floor and several of the crates’ contents spilled. Inside most of the crates had been simple grains, starchy rations, and well preserved protein. But one of the crates was different.

Standard Imperial in make and model, and about thirty paces long, the crate had broken apart at a badly welded seam.

Inside, and now out on the floor, was a series of well-used stasis containers. Each one could hold a small animal, and about nine of them had broken open upon hitting the floor. If the stasis pods had been occupied before the accident, they weren’t now.

In the darkness of Supply Vault 7, Caine heard an angry hiss.

Medical Attention

The sound of plasma pistol discharge echoed through the Vault.

For a moment, a furry blue face had been sitting above a tall stack of shipping crates. Caine’s plasma pistol replaced it with a deep crater in the metal enclosure of the crate. Molten metal scattered from the shot, and the dripping edges of the hole fell onto the ropes holding the crates secure.

A furry object tumbled down the back of the pile of crates, betrayed by the sound of bouncing and gurgling from whatever was left of its body. The crates started falling in the other direction. The crates fell on the already broken pile of stasis containers.

Caine realized quickly that this was a bad thing.

He shouted for everyone to start running, and for the Supply masters to seal off the entire Vault. There was more hissing in the background all around Caine as he rapidly gave orders through his microbead, and the sounds of hellgun fire in the distance of the Vault. The sounds were coming from the direction Rhea and her squad had gone.

A blue blur leapt from a pile of crates and onto the faceplate of a Pack soldier in the middle of Caine’s group. Two more of the little creatures jumped from other piles in an ambush position. Only the scared awareness of the Pack allowed them to dodge.

Mid jump, Caine caught one of the creatures in his sight. It was round and fluffy, streaks of yellow in its blue fur, and with large claws on all six of its feet. The hisses were coming from a crescent shaped mouth that had a row of very sharp teeth.

Caine shot it out of the air with a well placed plasma shot.

He was still having trouble figuring out how it was tracking them. The creature didn’t have eyes in the normal sense, merely black patches across what he assumed was their forehead that blended into its blue fur.

The dark shadows hid where the blue creature’s body ended up, but Caine had bigger worries. More blue creatures were crawling out of the shadows. The Pack was reacting. So was Wolfe. Caine found himself staring at one of the little six-limbed furballs.

What should have been a simple shot instead badly scalded Caine’s hand as his plasma pistol overheated. He dropped the weapon instinctively, and was already pulling his power sword out when the xenos creature leapt at him.

Teeth and claw met sword and armor. Caine kicked, the small xenos bit, and both circled each other like predators.

The stare-off broke when another of the xenos creatures flew between Caine and his mark. Mouth open in an attempt at biting something and arms wide to try and catch a secure footing, the flying xenos landed on a stack of crates beside Caine.

Caine turned to face this new threat, and the first creature took advantage of it by leaping forward and biting into Caine’s leg. Howling in pain and angry at the infernal creatures invading his ship, Caine hacked the blue xenos clinging to the crates apart in a bout of fury. His first opponent let go of his leg long enough for him to slash out at it too.

The xenos dodged, then tried a flying leap of his own at Caine’s face. Caine dodged.

Slashing again and again, Caine tried to hack the little creature into tiny pieces. The creature’s black eye patches stayed locked on Caine’s face throughout the whole ordeal, dodging one slash after another. Around Caine, the Pack was having similar trouble. He got really angry just as the xenos dodged one more slash, and decided to finish the fight.

Stepping back, Caine looked the little xenos square in the eye. The creature stopped, looking at Caine to try and figure out what he was going to do next.

Caine raised his hand, palm out, and twitched a well practiced muscle.

The little xenos creature melted and vaporized. It’s six arms exploded out in all directions, and scattered fragments of blue hair filled the air…

###

Caine awoke in the Medicae deck of the Emissary . Stark white walls surrounded him, with hand-scribed prayers to the Emperor and to the various saints of healing etched on every column and bulkhead seal of the hall. Harsh lighting overhead threw everything into sharp relief.

He was wearing simple healing gowns as white as the hallways. They’d been secured across his shoulder with his family crest, which was the only source of color in the whole scene.

There was a voidsman at Caine’s feet with a smoking hole in his chest.

Caine was holding his plasma pistol.

Beside Caine, a medicae servitor chattered in its own simple language as it kept the nutrients and chemicals keeping Caine awake flowing into his arm. A Senior Churigen was running down the hall with a look of sheer disbelief on his face...

​This was one of the more bizarre sidebars we played through. It was technically a horror sub-episode. As soon as Tobias realized that, he pulled this out as the theme music for the session: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkvI4NoUX6E and decided that his crew were the animals, and he was the driver.

He also managed to kill four Medicae crew on the first playthrough before he realized what I was doing. I let him go back, and he still killed one of them. I think he did it to spite me. We both thought it was hilarious and definitely something Caine would do.

Snogritz is Dead

The Orks in the Damaris system were finished. With their Warboss dead, their ground forces broken, and their void ships lacking leadership, the Rogue Trader led force quickly dismantled their ability to wage war against Damaris. Several vessels with long range weapons took great pleasure in bombarding the Ork base from afar until its central reactors gave out. Roks, Onslaught ships, and raiders were similarly hunted down and eliminated one by one.

Only one enemy ship survived Elizabeth Orleans’ wrath: the Chaos marauder ship.

It had taken off as soon as the battle swung in Caine’s favor, and exited the system with two Imperial raiders chasing it. The only clues to its identity or purpose lay in a transcription found on Snogritz’s dead body. They were emissaries of Karrad Vall, and had convinced Snogritz to turn his force away from an attack on Chorda’s domain and attack Damaris instead. What Vall wanted around Damaris wasn’t mentioned.

Caine learned of Lady Orleans’ mop-up operations when he regained consciousness and was brought up to speed. After the defeat of Snogritz, she had taken command of the flotilla and made sure that Caine’s sacrifice wasn’t wasted. Tobias was very grateful. He’d sacrificed much.

Damaris was devastated, Caine had nearly died at Snogritz’s hand, and the Emissary was essentially a floating hulk.

Huge claw marks were still healing under Lady Orleans’ and the Starweaver’s most senior churigins. Snogritz hadn’t just lifted Caine off the ground, the Ork had punctured one of Caine’s lungs and fractured an arm. Caine’s leg was broken in at least two places, and he was going to need weeks of medicae attention before he was fit to move around like anything resembling normal.

The Emissary’s starboard flank had been crushed by the Ork Krooza’s ramming. With the crew lost to the Bulwark’s fire, and the voidsmen killed by marauding Orks, there wasn’t even enough servants left to fit basic patches to the ship’s major systems. Without plasma drives, weapons, or even sensors, the Emissary had to be towed back to Damaris orbit.

Around Damaris, the populace was still trying to sort out the events of the last month.

The Bulwark was slowly being returned to loyal Imperial hands, but the civil war inside and the damage caused by rioting and infighting had left it unable to function at anywhere close to its full capacity. There was barely enough crew and support that was still coherent to operate the docks providing supplies to the void fleet. Repairs and complex resupply of crews and munitoriums was out of the question.

On the ground brief food shortages had hurt morale, but the outlying cities had been spared the worst of the rampaging Orks, and were beginning to come together to support the Capitol. Ministorum ships were already beginning to arrive after hearing Bishop Arint’s call. With them they brought pilgrims, colony supplies, and the vast cult organizations that would be needed to rebuild Imperial control on Damaris.

Shard’s Forge was a wasteland. Rampaging Orks had destroyed whatever they couldn’t carry off, and the huge plasma reactor at the Forge’s heart was now a gutted wreck. Every Adeptus Mechanicus representative on the island was either dead or missing. For now, power was being supplied from other cities, but the Forge would need to be rebuilt if the Capitol wanted to fully recover.

Outside the Capitol’s walls, the industrial and outhabs of the city were likewise leveled. The Orks had destroyed Levy bunkers with the same glee as sprawling industrial complexes. Whether it was for clothing, food, or basic goods, all the factories to the South and East of the city were ransacked.

As dire as the Capitol’s situation was though, offers of support and reconstruction were already pouring in from the Chorda, Strith, and a dozen other dynasties willing to help Damaris for a fee. Most of the planet’s mining and food production was unharmed, and would be used to pay off the reconstruction debt.

A dozen more Rogue Traders had died protecting Damaris. While sad for their dynasties, it was a major windfall for Caine.

Because of his role in both the defense and in securing Bishop Arint as the new leader of Damaris, the government gave Caine the first pick of now-vacant contracts. Caine was now a central source of grain shipments, import quotas, and dozens of other more minor sources of assured income.

Many were more difficult to oversee than his severely deplenished holdings could handle. Caine immediately started bidding those contracts out to the Rogue Traders in orbit, willing to give them a cut of his profits so that he could actually monetize his paper holdings.

He was also placed first in line for the Bulwark as it came back online. It would still take months to repair the damage to his ship and train new crew from Damaris’ populace, but it would be done at the planet’s expense.

Bishop Arint also asked Caine to donate the Emissary’s hull to Damaris as a shrine to the Emperor and as a monument to this victory.

Caine politely declined.

Profit

Over the last few months, Caine had solidified his influence over the new government of Damaris. Bishop Arint was thankful for the help, and Caine made numerous public speeches across the planet to shore up public support for the Imperium. That the speeches also helped his own profile among the citizenry was a delightful bonus.

Up at the Bulwark, the mighty bridge of the Emissary had been the last thing completed during repairs. Caine now proudly stepped up the large dais in the center of its sweeping view to survey operations as the ship began pulling out of the Bulwark.

His chair was waiting for him, and it was a work of sublime craftsmanship. An out of work craftsman, after his workshop had been destroyed by Orks, had gladly taken up Caine’s commission. The master craftsman had spent the last month turning Snogritz’s body into a throne worthy of the savior of Damaris.

A smaller duplicate sat on a secondary dais to Caine’s right, where Wolfe was lounging and directing a counter-boarding drill on the port-side decks. That smaller warboss’ body made a perfect matched set for the bridge, and had almost miraculously survived Snogritz’s boarding action.

Caine saw it as a symbol of his victory here on Damaris. Though the Orks had nearly destroyed the Capitol and the functioning government of Damaris, Caine had finally come out on top and won over huge profit at the same time.

Through barter, trade, and aquisitions, he now owned most of the futures for a vast swath of Damaris commodities.

Now, he had his eyes set on the future.

In front of Caine was a daily briefing with the messages that had arrived for him. One, from the Adeptus Mechanicus of Shipyard Orbital 626 around the Lathe Worlds, told him in glorious script that the Righteous Fury was complete and waiting his inspection. The Grand Cruiser just needed final checks, crew, and a shakedown cruise. The Shipyard would be busy for the next few months on those items, and Caine was cordially invited to tour his ship.

Below that listing, he could see that his mansion in the Rubicon II system was awaiting his inspection. Their dry stores were awaiting his attention. It was a code, indicating that an Inquisitor had been sniffing around his large stock of cold trade artifacts. If the mansion crew was smart, and that was the only type of people Caine hired, they would have stopped selling as soon as the Inquisitor appeared.

He also had messages from his Seneschal informing him that several deals were awaiting his final signature on the surface of Damaris. Holt was still working hard on the dynastic acquisition of the two largest trade houses on the planet. Caine would be required for the final negotiations at each house.

One item that was not on his briefing was too sensitive for any written records. Locked in a stasis vault in his private palatial quarters aboard the Emissary was the stone Caine had been given by the Eldar. It still contained an encoded message and a location. Caine hadn’t yet opened the message, and wasn’t quite willing to risk his astropathic choir on it, but he was curious about what it contained.

There was much work to be done around Damaris still too. Despite Caine’s dislike of them, the Strith dynasty was beginning to rebuild the industry around the Capitol. Caine would need to position his trade contracts to take advantage of the influx of supplies and the outflow of new goods. Shards Forge still needed rebuilding, and despite the recent progress the Bulwark was still in dire need of trained crew.

Sitting on the stuffed remains of Snogritz’s dread bones, Caine smiled and thought of profit.

Thanks for reading everyone!

The Frozen Reaches was well worth running for us, despite my relatively newness in a GM chair. I hope my writing at least somewhat gave the impression of the bizarre lengths and bombastic boasting Caine was willing to employ to get what he wanted. I apologize for what was probably spotty spelling, inconsistent capitalization, and probably confusing timing.

And I sorely hope that I didn’t drop any big sideplots along the way.

If I did, ask!

There’s details that I’m pretty sure I completely forgot about as I went along. Examples: Blitz’s ship getting dismantled and turned into a Krooza hull during week 2; the steadfast dedication of General Davros on the Western Wall; and the overly verbose and frighteningly friendly General of the mercenaries Caine hired to take over the city.

From here, I’m still trying to decide if I want to add any more. If I do, it will be in short bursts detailing small side quests that I thought were excellent. (How do you anger the entire Furibundus system? Caine knows!)

Thanks Again~

Captain Remi Vandigrath

A superbly written-up account and a pleasure to read. Thanks!

*applauds CaptainRemiVandigrath *

I couldn't of said it better Magnus Grendel.

I know I'm necroposting but...

I liked it. How long did it take to play through?

I know I'm necroposting but...

I liked it. How long did it take to play through?

Thanks!

It ended up being quite a few sessions over the course of a couple months. I think it helped that we weren't bound by needing to get a larger group of people together regularly.

Yeah I regularly play with 3 other people on roll20 (we switch off who DM's) and it's much easier to schedule with just the 4 of us than if we had a larger group.

I just bought stars of Inequity and Koronus bestiary and I'm having trouble figuring something out. Now that I've read this I might just buy Frozen reaches and give that a try, Still have a little more Christmas money

None of my players are very familiar with the 40k universe which makes things easier in some ways because I can prep whatever I feel like (and go outside canon without them caring) but it's harder because they don't have specific things that they want to happen. Or maybe it's just easier I'm not sure since I'm not a very experienced GM yet.