okay, so that's not entirely true. I already know how to stop him from doing it, but I need help in finding different ways to rationalize and work with what the plot has given me. I'll explain.

Me and my group are presently playing a published Dark Heresy adventure, in which a conspiracy is unmasked in the Calixian ecclesiarchy, and we just finished the first book today, in which this revelation is thrust upon us.

From here on, it is obvious that the plot wants us to take this information we've found, that an inquisitor had hidden from the enemies of mankind for a long time, and from there, launch an investigation into the corrupt ecclesiarchy of the sector.

Problem is... I'm playing a cleric. And as I see it, I'd have a REALLY hard time not rationalizing that the information we've just uncovered the heretical words of a traitor-inquisitor, trying to spread strife and doom in the sector. I know the plot wants me to just accept it, but how do you play a brainwashed fanatic, who has just been told that the #1 guy, when it comes to piety in your sector, is actually a heathen working for the enemy, and NOT just instantly start pointing fingers at whomever is making the accusation??

The plot screams "INVESTIGATE THE ECCLESIARCHY!", but my character's mind screams "INVESTIGATE THE INQUISITION, BECAUSE THE ECCLESIARCHY IS INFALLIBLE!"

I'd appreciate angles, patterns of thought or rationalizations that could help me make a believable transition from "This is madness! This heresy must be deleted from history", to "This is troubling, we should investigate".

Thank you very much in advance.

-Nearyn

I recommend sitting down with your GM and talking about this. Some suggestions for the both of you:

Your Inquisitor could impress upon you the importance of truth- your Cleric is duty bound by the Inquisition, the very voice of the God-Emperor of Mankind, to take His light into the darkness. This shadow being cast upon the Ecclesiarchy must be dispelled- if your Cleric thinks it's all a flim-flam fabrication, then he should be willing to investigate until he uncovers both the truth behind this falsehood and the proof. Your Inquisitor will of course impress upon you the need for an objective and subtle investigation- if the claims about Cardinal Ignato are true there will be hell to pay, and if they are not true you will have cleared the Cardinal of these allegations and earned a powerful ally. Either way, if you are not objective and subtle, you may never know the truth, and doubt is the greatest weapon the Great Enemy possesses. Either way, if the allegations get out, true or not, the Cult Imperialis within Callxis will suffer for years to follow.

If you become too vocal a naysayer, your Inquisitor can easily silence and replace you.

Why not make your character have a more internal crisis of faith?

Rather than refusing to go along with the plot and playing the willfully ignorant zealot instead try to convey that these revalations have shattered your characters certainties and they are unsure possibly for the first time.

After all the ecclesiarchy is far from infallible, just look at the infamous apostate-cardinal Bucharis, on the other hand the inquisition (to the average imperial citizen) is the infallible right hand of the throne scrouging sin and vileness in the emperor`s name.

I imagine just learning the inquisition is a squabbling boys club of fallible humans beings would be enough to introuduce doubt into the mind of just about anyone.

I'm with Askil here.

You're not just playing any-ol' Cleric, you're playing a Cleric who has been chosen and recruited by the Inquisition. A Cleric who has chosen to dedicate his life to the service of rooting out heresies.

It is a well known fact that the various sects and variants of the Imperial Cult at times have spawned heresies, and few are more adamant in cleaning it up than the Ecclessiarcy itself. Some tension might arise from disagreements on who should be the ones to cleanse the church, as the Ecclessiarchy might call dibs on cleaning it's own house.

But few Clerics would consider the Inquisition more likely to commit heresies than an official of the Ecclessiarchy. Some might, the very zealous and fanatical ones maybe. But they're not the ones likely to be recruited by the Inquisition anyway.

I appreciate the input. The problem has resolved itself.

On the note of distrusting the inquisition or ecclesiarchy, I completely agree that a cleric should be able to accept and work against treachery in the ministorum, but we're talking about an arch-cardinal here. As opposed to a no-name inquisitor, allied to a rogue-trader with servants guilty of heresy, who used some rather iffy tech to pass on his message.

also here's a snippet from Blood of Martyrs:

"While the Inquisition often distrusts and works against the
Ministorum (as often as they work for it), the reverse can
also be said to be true. In the eyes of the Ministorum, the
Inquisition is a dangerously heretical organisation populated
by miscreants, rebels and free thinkers whose purposes are
often at odds with the purity and righteous edits of the church.
Inquisitors and their underlings are often seen as meddlers
and schemers, as likely to tear down the faith for their own
ends as shore it up. Worse still, the Inquisition knows far too
much for its own good, delving constantly into secrets meant
only for the mind of the God-Emperor himself. Inevitably
this leads down a dark path to corruption and warp taint, as
more and more members of the Inquisition succumb to the
lures of personal power and glory which result from such
blatant individualism and creative thought"

While that may be true of many narrow-minded, puritan Ministorum zealots, I doubt those would be the kind recruited by the Inquisition.

My position is that as this Cleric of yours already has joined the Inquisition, this defines (at least partly) his political loyalties. There are some positions that are mutually exclusive, and you cannot both be an extreme puritan who considers the Inquisition as radicals and heretics AND still join the Inquisition.

And as for Arch-cardinals, well. That is nothing to an Inquisitor

When it comes to heresy nobody is beyond reproach cardinal or not, for was not the arch-traitor Horus the favoured son of the god emperor himself?

Humans make mistakes, and in the Imperium most of them are grounds for a quick trip to prison or the pyre.

After all the Inquisition tends not to hire agents who are strongly anti-inquisition, in fact these is a whole ordo just for killing those people.

Guess I'm late to chime in, but...

I'm playing a cleric. And as I see it, I'd have a REALLY hard time not rationalizing that the information we've just uncovered the heretical words of a traitor-inquisitor, trying to spread strife and doom in the sector. I know the plot wants me to just accept it, but how do you play a brainwashed fanatic, who has just been told that the #1 guy, when it comes to piety in your sector, is actually a heathen working for the enemy, and NOT just instantly start pointing fingers at whomever is making the accusation??

I'd start with fanatical denial and an equally fanatical effort to uncover, isolate and purge every last hint of the obvious falsehoods. It seems like a golden opportunity to play out the resolution of what must eventually become a pretty extreme case of cognitive dissonance of facts vs. faith.

I wound up quitting the campaign. Not because I could not get my character to fit in the following story, god(-emperor) knows I could, especially with your inputs, but because I found the story to be quite horrible. Despite my GMs excellent moodsetting and portrayal of the world, I find the writing and story to be utter garbage, and I realized I was not the least bit excited for the coming adventures, outside of portraying the split between church and inquisition in my own character. So I talked it over with my GM, and we agreed that I'd be best if I quit the campaign, and waited for them to either TPK or start another campaign.

Thanks for your input mates

Ouch.

Yeah...I loved the ideas in that story, but never liked the execution. I used the Black sepulchre set-up as my closing mission in my Deathwatch campaign, though - the chapel was being overrun by tyranids, two of the kill-team were trapped in the chapel undervaults and then a set of mechadendrites essentially started assimilating one of them (a techmarine).

They were in serious trouble when the chapel started falling off the cliff into the sea, then both the falling and the trouble suddenly stopped.

I've not seen them as happy in a while as when they realised what was going on....

I dunno, it seems to be a thing with the 40k RPGs - the world setups are nothing short of brilliant, but the pre-written adventures often aren't. I still think Edge of Darkness is the best one they've done.

SPOILERS FOR BLACK SEPULCHRE.... also opinionated ranting:

For me, the best part of the story, by far, was the very first mission. My GM decided to set it up so it did not start in medias res, but instead gave us a great lead-in and time to converse and understand what we were doing, before crashing through the chapel roof.

The very first mission is excellent, and it fits great with the theme of the game. Rich, decadent noble buys something the inquisition has blacklisted, they find out, gather intel on his home and then send in a strike-team to clean house, and an acolyte-cell to secure heretical objects, Its a really good setup, and by far the strongest part of the book, despite being really short. It fits with the investigative horror-theme that I've always believed is DH's strongest point. And it's a very Ordo Hereticus-esque mission

And from there it just completely collapses in on itself, loses any semblance of interesting storytelling or player agency. You're just getting yanked around on a chain, by a plot too weak to give any semblance of variance or choice. You get dragged to Kephistron Altis, but the book does not give the players time or option to explore, nor does it do anything interesting with the location. It just serves as the weakest of weak setups for the most pisspoor payoff. Then you get a few badly written handouts of no interest whatsoever, that so transparently tells you where to go, the plot might as well just have flippin' teleported you there for all the semblance of choice you're given. Then there's a generic haunted house sequence, and a dummy-investigation that just takes up time, since it is -COMPLETELY.FU***NG.POINTLESS-, and just serves as a thin cover for what is essentially 3 badly designed boss-fights to gather 3 parts of a key (the goofyest of bad plot-mechanics in the book), and then: suddenly Titan! and then a daemon appears(fanfare). No lead-in. No pacing. No attempt to account for player action. Just the worst kind of storytelling. The story wants to be epic, but its introduction of elements it think will be epic, becomes epic-fail. It does not even account for the fact that the players might think outside the box. My character actually figured out that the abbot, our contact in the gilded cathedral, was working against us, though I could not figure out why. Having quit the campaign now, I'm free to read the book, and see that I was completely right, he was working for the maledictor's hand. But there is NO mention of what to do if the players figure out he's betrayed them. Not a single line of text that even gives them the possibility to investigate, or do ANYTHING other than follow the stupid plot-railroad, despite the fact that the characters might figure out their mission has been compromised.

I really, really didn't like it. I actually found it quite horribad. And I'm considering making a review of the 3 books, once I've read the last 2, since I won't be playing them now.

-Nearyn

I'm a little sad to see you say that since I looked around a bit before deciding to run this adventure. Supposedly it's one of the better pre-written modules. I'm running The Black Sepulchre for both my IRL group and on another forum.

Running it online and copy/pasting some of the text has really highlighted just how bad FFG is at editing. They spell Thrungg's name several different ways (the noble you're there to kill in act 1) and misspell words to a depressing degree. My favorite is the word 'faemonic' in one of the player handouts. Really just piss-poor editing.

I'm at the end of act 1 in both groups so we'll see how it goes. I haven't actually read the book all the way through yet but have a general idea of the plot.

Naeryn if your group is looking for pre-fab adventures, you might want to look at CoC and old WFRP modules. Both should be reasonably easy to convert to DH.

As far as DH modules go, I'm with Magnus Grendel: Edge of Darkness is the only one I'd consider running as-is.

@ Simsum: What does CoC stand for? Any particular WFRP modules you can recommend?

@cps: I genuinely, sincerely hope you and your players have fun with this story.

I warn you before you read on, after I had talked for 30 minutes or so, with my GM, about book 1, he requested I not mention it, or the other books again before he'd finished running them, since he feared what I was gonna say would spoil his enjoyment of the path, and make him wanna rework parts of the story he simply didn't have time to rework. So think about that before you read on:

In my opinion your players are at the peak of the adventure. The best part. The following chapter is a complete no-zone(that is, an area that might as well not be there), where they will perform an investigation (I cannot put enough quotation marks around the word 'investigation', so I won't try). There is a grand total of 0 relevant skill checks in this chapter. Nothing your players do can advance the plot in any way except that which is predetermined by the narrative. Your players do not need to do anything but trudge from room to room, over and over again, to get means to autosucceed in progressing. There will be 3 boss battles in this dungeon, only one of which can be won without resorting to combat, but that DOES require succesful skill-checks. Either that or some really, really high-brow A-grade roleplay, since you're supposed to roleplay a conversation with a 40k madman and scientist, which may be a bit much for certain GMs or players who have yet to get their Masters in astrology and biology.

Once your players have collected the 3 parts of the McGuffin, the plot may move on, and not a second before. Then they descend into the basement and then suddenly daemons. Then suddenly Titan. Then suddenly Greater daemon! And since your players cannot possibly hope to beat such a foe, the plot tells them what to do. If they don't follow the railroad, they die. Just like that. No creative thought or workaround, just directly into a failure-state, party wipes gg cya next sunday. Then, once the aboslutely, monstrously, important villain creature, whose very pressence in ANY campaign, should be something utterly memorable and important to the story, and the characters, and be completely engrossing and involving, has been damaged by the plot-device, then they may take out the tattered remains of the creature in a fight. Maybe they will feel a small sense of victory? (if that sense is not tarnished by the plot handing them the victory, as I felt). Then the blind railroading reaches critical mass, assumes direct control of the campaign and ends it, without further player involvement.

The second and third chapter are BARELY competent as a video-game raid-dungeon, and, in my opinion at least, is completely unfit to be in a pen and paper game, where you should assume creative thought and player initiative.

I'm not exaggrating when I say this book is the single worst adventure path I have read in my entire life. I have not read many, but I have read enough for that to not be a point in the story's favor.

-Nearyn

CoC = Call of Cthulhu

Aah, of course, Call. I thought CoC was something warhammer specific, so I could not figure it out.

Yes! Call of Cthulhu, I completely agree, would fit very well with Dark Heresy, which might as well just have been called Call of Warhammer 40kthulhu anyway.

-Nearyn

Turning this thread into The Black Sepulchre thread. Deal with it.

I finished reading chapter 2 of the adventure and ran the tail end of chapter 1 and first part of chapter 2 for my IRL group last night. We've got a fairly puritanical cleric and an assassin/guardsman pair who are easy on bending the rules. The two of them saw the museum of apostasy in Thrungg's chapel as a goodie bag of free, powerful weapons. I gave them pretty much everything the book lists and stressed that they were all pretty infamous weapons who had slain Imperial heroes over the years but weren't warp-tainted otherwise. The cleric was pretty outraged about this and reported it to their inquisitor who basically just shrugged and said, "Come back to me when they're worshiping chaos."

My biggest complaint is the opening of chapter 2, which has the acolytes going to the Gilded Cathedral on Baraspine apparently to use their library and get a sneak peek at the title macguffin.That's it. The adventure isn't real clear on what information is for the DM to set the mood and what information is for the players to know about the Haemetite Cathedral (which is referred to in the book as a church, house, manse, and cathedral). Here's this big impressive building with an NPC secretly working against you. Ten minutes later you find out you need to be in a different cathedral. Get going.

Anyway, they get ambushed by crazy bird cultists on the steps of the Gilded Cathedral and generally cause a scene. None of them have any forbidden lore skills so it's just a weird nonsensical occurrence. They get to the Haemetite Cathedral, find the bodies in the waterfall and bust a window into the trophy room, where we ended for the night. Next session and possibly the one after will have them exploring the place. From what I read it seemed like I could make it a spooky Scooby-Doo investigation. A little rail-roady until they get a map of the place and can choose where to go, but I think I'll be able to keep the players interested.