Sounds nice! It sure is an interesting group composition - the combination of Sororitas and Cleric is something the two players should definitively build upon (given that the Sisterhood is the military wing of the Ministorum), and providing the Cleric with a "right hand girl" could be a good way of softly guiding the new player into RP. The Sister should also get along well with the Arbitrator, as both would share the Schola Progenium upbringing.

[...]

As far as I know, far from all Adeptus Arbites are Progena. This makes sense considering that the Adeptus Arbites supposedly never serve on their home planet (why would this be an issue if they were all Progena?) and doubly so if we consider the sheer mass of Adeptus Arbites in service throughout the Imperium; a full fortress-precinct with a complete regiment on every single tithed world in the Imperium.

No doubt a large amount of the command personnel are Progena, however, but that goes for many other Imperial institutions as well.

But if I'm wrong, I'm sure you'll correct me.

Hmm, no, I think you make a very good point there! I've probably jumped to conclusions just because I have never read about Arbites being recruited from anywhere else, yet at the same time I cannot recall this option being excluded. My mind may have subconsciously assumed that Arbites are treated the same as Storm Troopers and Commissars just because they were named in the same sentence, even though I am aware of the majority of Schola graduates ending up in rather common professions (like ... clerks!).

That being said, most progena are probably inducted at a later age than Sisters (iirc, only the Sororitas ever had the "raised from infancy" part in their description), thus possibly risking "contamination by local affiliation"? Even when the orphan is just ~8 years of age...

I can check in the Codex Imperialis to make sure what it says at least in GW's material, though - it had a chapter on Arbites.

Not that such information should be treated as gospel, anyways. For better or worse, due to the franchise's low opinion on internal consistency, all we have are merely suggestions.

I don't have the Dark Heresy Book of Judgement, so I don't know what the homeworld restrictions for Arbites are in FFG's interpretation, but in the core rulebook the Schola background wasn't even included yet.

One curious thing I noted that whilst IH allowed Sororitas to hail both from the Schola as well as Feudal Worlds (huh?), Blood of Martyrs only allowed the Schola background - a rare case of Blood of Martyrs actually being closer to the original material than the Inquisitor's Handbook.

[...]

I don't have the Dark Heresy Book of Judgement, so I don't know what the homeworld restrictions for Arbites are in FFG's interpretation, but in the core rulebook the Schola background wasn't even included yet.

One curious thing I noted that whilst IH allowed Sororitas to hail both from the Schola as well as Feudal Worlds (huh?), Blood of Martyrs only allowed the Schola background - a rare case of Blood of Martyrs actually being closer to the original material than the Inquisitor's Handbook.

There are no homeworld restrictions for the Arbites at all, but some of the fluff is contradictory.

First, there's no restrictions whatsoever, and then, it says at one place that "Adeptus Arbites are recruited from exceptional members of the Schola Progenium from all over the Imperium. This organisation fosters the orphaned children of high-ranking Imperial servants (whether they are scholars, scribes, or soldiers) and grooms them for their own life of dedicated service" , under "Recruitment and Promotion".

Then it points out that Verispex Adepts are taken specifically form the Schola Progenium and that a Verispex Adept is very different from that of a regular Adept. The Verispex Adept, being part of or attached to the Arbites, why is this relevant to point out, if all Arbites is already settled to come from Schola Progenium? Also, despite the fluff-text of the Verispex Adept being very clear, there is no restrictions whatsoever, other than it being an alternate rank for Adepts specifically, and taken at Rank 1 or higher.

And then , there's the Enforcer background that is available to Adepts, Arbites , Assassins and Scums. This background gives you the benefits of "Granted Authority" , which allows you to reroll a Fellowship roll per session on a planet similar to your homeworld , referring to the faction(s) you serve. Additionally, it gives the benefit of "Homeworld Enforcer" ; the benefit of which is homeworld-specific , giving you the Talented Talent in a skill granted or made into a basic skill by your choice of homeworld.

All in all, while I realize that there are several sources that now imply or directly state that the members of the Adeptus Arbites comes from the Schola Progenium, when it comes to "my personal canon", I'm sticking to the idea that higher-ups, important members, select personnel and quite a few regulars of the Adeptus Arbites are Progena, but that the bulk of members and enforcers of the Arbites are recruited much like the soldiers of the Imperial Guard, or pulled directly from similar pools of tithes if necessary, primarily aimed at pulling recruits from planetary law-enforcement agencies.

Otherwise I just can't straighten all of this out in my head.

"Headcanon" is likely the best solution to such issues.

Hmm, could they have perhaps meant local security when they talk of Enforcers?

http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m2350900a_m1330051_Nec_Enforcers.pdf

But then it wouldn't make much sense to have their authority be valid on any planet other than their own, would it?

On the other hand, wouldn't a proper Arbites' authority be valid anywhere ?

Curiouser and curiouser ...

"Headcanon" is likely the best solution to such issues.

Hmm, could they have perhaps meant local security when they talk of Enforcers?

http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m2350900a_m1330051_Nec_Enforcers.pdf

But then it wouldn't make much sense to have their authority be valid on any planet other than their own, would it?

On the other hand, wouldn't a proper Arbites' authority be valid anywhere ?

Curiouser and curiouser ...

Yeah, "Enforcers" specifically refer to planetary peacekeepers/local law-enforcement, the oddity is that it's an available Background for Arbites, suggesting that the Arbites do recruit from civilized planets, in the same book it says that the Arbites pulls it's members from the Schola.

So I'm going to go with both . Both sounds good.

And the idea that they call pull on authority for a Fellowship reroll is rationalized with situational awareness and occupational familiarity. They use more words, but that's what it comes down to. If you're from a Hive World, you know the kind of people that lives there, and you know how to push their buttons all law-enforcer-like, etc.

I guess.

Yeah, "Enforcers" specifically refer to planetary peacekeepers/local law-enforcement, the oddity is that it's an available Background for Arbites, suggesting that the Arbites do recruit from civilized planets, in the same book it says that the Arbites pulls it's members from the Schola.

Oh. Couldn't this be confusion just be a result of the misleadingly rigid class structure in Dark Heresy? Just like you can play the "Guardsman" as a merc or bounty hunter, maybe not every Arbites is an Arbites , if you get my drift. One of the few good changes in DH2 is probably that they made the classes sound more generic...

And the idea that they call pull on authority for a Fellowship reroll is rationalized with situational awareness and occupational familiarity. They use more words, but that's what it comes down to. If you're from a Hive World, you know the kind of people that lives there, and you know how to push their buttons all law-enforcer-like, etc.

I guess.

Okay, so it's more like Used to Authority rather than Granted Authority ...

Still, it's kind of like saying "I grew up in New York, why should I have trouble in Tokyo?"

Yeah, "Enforcers" specifically refer to planetary peacekeepers/local law-enforcement, the oddity is that it's an available Background for Arbites, suggesting that the Arbites do recruit from civilized planets, in the same book it says that the Arbites pulls it's members from the Schola.

Oh. Couldn't this be confusion just be a result of the misleadingly rigid class structure in Dark Heresy? Just like you can play the "Guardsman" as a merc or bounty hunter, maybe not every Arbites is an Arbites , if you get my drift. One of the few good changes in DH2 is probably that they made the classes sound more generic...

Possible, I guess. But everything around the character building always seems to assume that you are what it says on the label. /shrug

I've always preferred the term "Archetype" that they used in Black Crusade. I have no idea why they abandoned that. If they just made all the Careers with the assumption that they are Archetypes and a note on the end saying "This archetype can also be used to portray... yadda yadda.. and this may be appropriate here.. yadda..", everything would be peachy.

That's how I intend to do it for my own homebrew.

And the idea that they call pull on authority for a Fellowship reroll is rationalized with situational awareness and occupational familiarity. They use more words, but that's what it comes down to. If you're from a Hive World, you know the kind of people that lives there, and you know how to push their buttons all law-enforcer-like, etc.

I guess.

Okay, so it's more like Used to Authority rather than Granted Authority ...

Still, it's kind of like saying "I grew up in New York, why should I have trouble in Tokyo?"

More like.. "Used to using authority" , I guess. Note that several careers can pick this Background, and given the covert nature of the setting, I wonder what Scintillan Scum with the Enforcer background would refer to in terms of authority while on Malfi, but hey, I never said it was a good rationale.

I am typing up the character sheets for all my players into a more user-friendly format. I just noticed that three of them took the Gunmetal City homeworld option. In case anyone is not familiar with the background, you get a trait called packing Iron. If for any reason they are without a usable gun, they take -5 to all tests. I spent five minutes in maniacal laughter at the thought of the beginning of The Red Cages!

I am typing up the character sheets for all my players into a more user-friendly format. I just noticed that three of them took the Gunmetal City homeworld option. In case anyone is not familiar with the background, you get a trait called packing Iron. If for any reason they are without a usable gun, they take -5 to all tests. I spent five minutes in maniacal laughter at the thought of the beginning of The Red Cages!

The other thing I noticed was one of my characters used an online character generator to make his character ahead of time. He kept re-rolling his stats until he got ones he liked, then chose his divination instead of rolling for it. As a result, he has a BS of 52. The rest of his stats are in the low to mid 30s. I'm not going to make him redo it, since he was then able to help me assist the rest of the players in making their characters. However, if he thinks he is just going to sit back and plink at targets from range, he is sadly mistaken. I've perused through the campaign books some, and he is going to find out melee is very much in his future.

Ow... was there some misunderstanding as to how character generation would go? Such a minmaxing attitude probably doesn't bode well - he might as well have not rolled at all with such an approach but simply picked numbers he liked. But maybe he mistakenly thought this is how it's done?

Generally, for the future, I'd suggest clarifying chargen beforehand - there are multiple methods on how to come up with characteristics (roll up everything as it comes, roll up in order but switch two stats, roll up numbers and assign at will, complete "pointbuy", etc), but this should be talked about with the group. As long as everyone is happy it probably doesn't matter too much which of the systems would be used (and indeed, complete randomness may negatively influence concepts whose background relies on the character being particularly good at something - "why is he a sniper when his BS sucks?"), but I'd deem it important that there is a sense of fairness amongst all members of the group in regards to attribute distribution.

Well, Lynata, the plan was to do character creation after we had dinner on game night. I admit I was not happy when I heard what he did, but I didn't feel it important enough at the time to take issue with it. And with five other people making characters, having a second person to share to load with was a major help.

We are going to do Eve of Destruction first so people will get a feel for their characters. I figure it will take two or three sessions for us to get through it, spread over a couple months (we rotate weekly game sessions between five GMs). If by that time I hear a lot of grumbling over his character, I'll put it up to a table vote. If the other players make a big fuss over his character being better than theirs, I'll let them decide what to do. His chosen Divination granted him a +5 BS. I may just have him reroll his divination and leave it at that. Worst case they will ask him to remake his character the same way they did. This player isn't unreasonable, and if the majority vote if for a new character, he will accept that decision.

The arbitrator career does indeed include local enforcers who aren't technically arbites.

That said, the Arbites aren't all progenii, but one firm and fast rule is that none of them serve on their world of birth (to prevent conflicts of interest). They sit above the planetary law enforcement as an INTERPOL/FBI type entity, and there are several examples in the fiction and rulebooks of them recruiting from the academies of their subordinate organisations.

The best sources for Arbites background, by a mile, are the Inquisitor .pdf The Long Arm Of The Emperor's Law, and the Enforcer series (AKA Shiria Calpurnia series), which is an excellent trilogy; it matches the background of the Arbites to a tee but still has time to cover other organisations and still put them in their place from time to time - the limit of their jurisdiction around the mechanicus, for example.

And still one of the best scenes is the sangunalia carnival at the start of the first book. The Sanguinalia is an (oft forgotten) imperial religious festival. If Candlemass/Feast Of Ascension replaces christmas, this replaces Lent/Easter, with fasting and church services plus (on some worlds) by a huge street party/carnival. In this case, a costume party. Where several drunk nobles assumed the attractive young lady they didn't know was wearing an arbites "outfit" to the party. It was, in fact, entirely real. As was the shock maul.

I'm not sure if it's in the Dark Heresy rulebook - it's been in the subsequent ones - but if people want to make sure they're 'good at something' without rerolling a million times, consider the alternate approach.

Essentially, each player gets the starting stats as normal but instead of rolling 2D10, has 100 'points' to divvy up across their stats. No one stat can have more than 20 point put into it, and all of them must have at least 2 points put into them.

P.S. If she likes the idea of brass knuckles, I'm pretty sure I've seen 'Shock Knuckles' in a supplement somewhere. Might be Rogue Trader, though.

Well, had the first session last night. Our Assassin could not make it, so it was a four-person party. In all, it went very well. There was some confusion with Dodge and compounding the penalties and bonuses from shooting into melee while being at point-blank range. Also, I had to explain that "treating a skill as a basic skill" doesn't mean you have that skill, unless you purchase it with XP. The two hive-borns were upset they didn't actually have Tech Use. We'll iron most of those bugs out in the next session or two before we start the main campaign.

The psyker learned to use Flash Bang with care. He stunned half the party and only got one of the enemies. They also learned about fear tests, and the Sororitas was miffed she failed by three orders of magnitude. Chalk up her first insanity point! Fortunately not being able to approach the enemy didn't keep her from shooting it. The Tech Priest failed the fear test and lost a half-action, but since he got stunned by the flash bang I figured it was overridden.

The Sororitas got smacked around by the baddies pretty badly. She took about 8 wounds, and the Psyker offered to heal her ("Would you like to accept the power of the Warp into you life?"), but she adamantly refused.

Some very good roleplaying between the Psyker, the Sororitas and the Techpriest. While visiting the local Templum, the Sororitas lead the congregation in hymnals, and with a massive overkill on her willpoer test, the Aquilla on the altar burst into light and she lead the locals into that good ole hymnal "Burn the Heretic and the Xeno". The Techpriest almost failed a Willpower roll, but started reciting multiplication tables in his head to clear out the "meat-bag god drivel" (a 02 on his Forge World background had me make him from Mars).The psyker (with Unlovely Memories) Started twitching and joined the Techpriest outside while the Arbitor hummed along to the tune.

The over-powered Arbitor still managed to miss on half his shots, so I'm not too concerned right now. The Psyker got to use hit Unnatural Aiming (think that's the name) and managed to take out baddy with a max-damage shot.

In all, not a bad first session. I don't think I will have to nerf the Arbitor, but we'll see how the rest of this first module goes. Thanks to everyone for their help and input!

They also learned about fear tests, and the Sororitas was miffed she failed by three orders of magnitude.

Welcome to Dark Heresy. You may now commence going insane.

The Sororitas got smacked around by the baddies pretty badly. She took about 8 wounds, and the Psyker offered to heal her ("Would you like to accept the power of the Warp into you life?"), but she adamantly refused.

Some very good roleplaying between the Psyker, the Sororitas and the Techpriest.

Glad to hear it. Hope it continues to be fun!