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storytelleratheart · 7 years

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I said I would do this, so I will

Dramatis Personae from this tale of Heresy in the Dark:

Red: Red is a no nonsense redhead veteran of the Imperial Guard (the Army to which ‘casualties in the billions’ on a daily basis is… trivial) who was born on a forge world (i.e. A planet that is basically just one massive factory). Suffice to say she’s seen some shit, done some shit and been neck deep in all that shit. It’s a bit surprising that she’s only somewhat jaded. Interestingly she comes from a long line of characters made by her Player who all have names to do with the colour red. And out of all of them she may be the least promiscuous, but she’s the only one to succeed in getting laid. So good for her.

Red is notable for her skill at stabbing things to death with all manner of implements and the ability to operate a ten thousand year old weapon of mass destruction without: A, having read the manual and B, not being able to read any of the old worn buttons on the device (in an age where people don’t know the big red button means explosions).

Jebediah: Jebediah is a Witch Doctor from a ‘Feral World’, this walking, breathing stereotype has a collection of scattering bones to tell the future and is apparently a Psyker, people who are able to draw on the powers of the Immaterium to not only see the future, but warp reality to some extent through magical abilities, detect magical and daemonic entities and a variety of other powerful and undoubtedly useful skills. (In other words he’s a wizard of some kind)

Unfortunately he had an incredible streak of failing to detect psychic presences. For some time his squad mates wondered whether or not he was actually a Psyker or not. He was somewhat skilled at telling the future, but this came to everyone’s attention after he acquired some new scattering bones from the corpse of a powerful Psyker and fortune teller. Jebediah is best known for his poor luck, and the ability to barely scrape by whenever the going got tough. Also the inability to notice that the party had been transported into the warp. His rolls to detect Psychic and daemonic energy (Psyniscience).

Seriously by the time this ‘little’ adventure is done with him, there’s not a lot of this poor guy left. (Spoilers).

Dwayne ‘The Rok’ Johnston: An Arbitrator, the closest thing the Warhammer 40,000 universe has to a Police Force. (Think of Judge Dredd, that’s the Police in the 40K universe) with a very… unique name. Dwayne IS. THE. LAW. He lives it, he breathes it and he cannot, under any circumstances tolerate Heresy, Law Breaking, Mutants, Demons or Aliens. Of all these the only one he hasn’t brutally executed in the name of mankind are aliens, because they are probably wise enough to avoid this hulking enforcer. As you can probably tell, Dwayne is very dedicated to his job, when he isn’t bringing justice to the galaxy, he’s constantly writing down case notes in one of his many notepads.

Dwayne could in many ways be described as the protagonist, especially if this was a big expensive Hollywood film, he’s the big tough guy who tends to lead from the front, and he rarely suffers as much as a scratch, coupled with his godly dice rolls and ability to move around silently in what is essentially plate armour, on top of all this he’s one potent fighter. Plus he dual wields a pair of shotguns, which were eventually modified heavily by his friendly neighbourhood Techpriest (IT guy/Mechanic) into a personalised, silenced pair of death dealing machines that carried enough rounds in an extended magazine that Dwayne only had to reload once after he had them modified. These shotguns proved to be surprisingly useful for silently dispatching heretics, somehow.

If this isn’t enough the guy is so tough he found a whip that’s essentially made of razor wire and he keeps it wrapped around his gauntlet, and isn’t worried about cutting himself on the damn thing. He also doesn’t eat on campaign, instead consisting off Cigars and a Flask of nondescript alcohol. Presumably when he isn’t on campaign he eats nails, without milk.

Author’s note: Dwayne was not my character in this campaign. Do you honestly think I could come up with such an original name as Dwayne Johnston?

Malice: Malice, like Jebediah was born on a Feral world and on this small, unassuming planet she was raised until a neighbouring planet decided to enslave their ‘lesser; neighbours. Malice’s life from that point onwards was as a slave until, at the age of seventeen she managed to escape. From there Malice went on a bloody revenge filled bender, favouring murdering people affiliated with the torment of her people in back alleys and wherever she could get her hands on them.

Malice was eventually recruited into the Inquisition by chance, and has since been used as a bloody, yet elegant tool.

It is important to note that she cannot in fact read. This will come up a few times.

Eventually however, Malice’s mental state and faith deteriorated as, after a fateful encounter with a Daemon, she fell into a state of being ‘murder crazy’, and the Inquisition decided her… enthusiasm would be best used elsewhere. Enter Gaius.

Author’s Note: Malice and Gaius were the characters I played during this campaign. I’ll try my best to be impartial whenever my murder-hobo children are mentioned.

Gaius: Gaius does not feature in the very first act of the merry bands grand adventure, instead he is brought on to replace Malice who was going a bit murder loopy in the interlude. (In actual fact it was decided that we needed someone with medical and technological expertise, and could preferably read. After all we had two very potent fighters and Jebediah’s supporting role was purely centred on warpcraft.)

Gaius is, in short a very, very salty medic who hates his job and wishes he was a mechanic working on the best and greatest machines devised by man instead of patching up men and women.

Gaius is a Techpriest, which means he is one of the few people that understand how machinery works within the Imperium, albeit mostly through various hymns and religious rites that occasionally include vast quantities of incense. Gaius was born on a frontier world and despite how gifted he was, he would have been confined to that backwater planet litterally building kettles for the rest of his days if a request from a nearby warzone for a Techpriest to service military vehicles hadn’t come through his factory. Overjoyed Gaius volunteered, wanting to see the stars, instead he arrived to find he was too late and plenty of replacement Techpriests had arrived. Being the lowest ranking Tech Adept he was instead put to work in the field hospital.

Techpriests are known for their antisocial, eccentric ways. And he wasn’t trained in medicine. Naturally this arrangement didn’t go down so well at first. His bedside manners never got better but eventually he managed to reconcile with his faith by reminding himself organics were, to a degree simply inefficient (compared to the Machine God’s creations) machines.

Now Gaius can put almost anything back together, be it man, woman or machine with surprising efficiency.

And he’s not so bad at disassembling them with a sniper rifle or his kick-ass robotic prosthetic arm. Plus the Inquisition needed someone to take records of all the shit this group got up to, because so far 99% of it was too hard to believe if the evidence hadn’t obliterated half a city. So Gaius was given what was basically small camera mounted on a slender metal appendage sticking out of his back, he can control it at will and record whatever needs to be recorded, which is pretty handy. And no, he does not use it as a selfie stick, as much as his team mates would want him to.

THE GREAT RALI: THE GREAT RALI was a circus strongman who unfortunately only appears for a short portion of the campaign as a whole. But Goddam (Emperor damn?) did this guy make an impression!

Humanity does not deserve such a great and noble champion.

Sally: Sally is, to be blunt a Maid that the party half rescued, half kidnapped before they dragged her across the galaxy. Due to the circumstances surrounding her meeting the party, Sally turned to alcoholism and experimented with drugs, which was quite sad. We tried to make it feel better but with fellowship stats like ours, that never really worked out, instead she became increasingly distant over time. It was pretty tragic.

However Sally was not some helpless damsel, oh no, Dwayne was polite enough to give her a shotgun (but forgot to teach her how to use it) but that was no matter, for Sally never missed a shot. (In game terms, she has a Ballistic/Shooting skill of 20. Being untrained in the use of firearms she suffers a -20 to hit (in other words giving her a 0% chance to hit), but would always fire at point blank like the suicidal, drunken woman being dragged around the galaxy by a group of insane weirdos she was. Being Point Blank gave her a +30 and with that, she would always manage to hit her target, and usually do some seriously devastating damage too.

Inquisitor Furion: No he isn’t related to Furiosa from Mad Max, in fact he’s a surprisingly average looking old guy, in a suit of baroque power armour and with the authority to destroy entire planets because he thinks there might be one illegal Psyker in the slums. Unsurprisingly Furion doesn’t take centre stage very often, he’s more concerned with the bigger picture and as great as the deeds committed by his faithful acolytes were, he only meets them in person once, to interrogate their prisoner they brought in.

He’s a top bloke by the way.

He gave us all a job at least.

Throne Agent Vincentus: You know that guy who co-ordinates all the branches of the armed forces when they need/ are forced to co-operate? (Or in this case do whatever the Inquisition tells them to). Well that’s Vincentus. This guy is not amused, if you flawlessly rescue the governor of an entire planet, Vincentus will complain you didn’t rescue a second one while you’re at it. Prone to sighing over the radio while marking down whatever crazed story Dwayne feeds him about the mission’s current status. Vincentus was also responsible for organising all the transport and support the party received over the course of their campaign. So in a way, without Vincentus none of this would have been possible. So good on you Vincentus, you asshole.

#Storyteller's Storytime #Ofdiceandscrubs #Dark Heresy #Characters #RP #Roleplaying #Crazy RP Stories

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