The game I planned last year has come to fruition. They're working for the Ordo Sicarius, and took two weeks (six hours) to finish the 'Purge the Station's attackers- oh god, base's still alive- what do mean, we're being taken prisoners for murder?- Mysterious mindwiped stromtrooper who laughs a bit much? - Assassin PC in the vents breaks them out - kill the Commander and Astropath as they try to escape - get the original emergency message - Hollow-infested Stormtrooper manifests- fail to kill it and lock it in with the rest of the base's survivors. Then escape and an upcoming debrief. It was such a magnificent cock-up. Even my plans went to pieces.
The result was entertaining.
They got suitably freaked out by the daemon of Zuvassin, but none of them got possessed. I have to justify residual infestation for at least one of them. If I can't, I'll get them later.
I'm currently trying to think of a way of representing a Daemon slowly encroaching on someone's conciousness, cell-by-cell, in DH. How could I show, in terms of character stats and game effects, that the player is becoming a passenger in themselves and then finally nothing as they are totally infiltrated? The possessed further spreads the infection until they're triggered by some kind of signal. They either suicide bomb like a Heaven's Smile from killer7 or become fully fledged lesser daemons.
Notes of various kinds to disrupt and unsettle, blackouts, appearance changes, corruption and insanity points accruing... I have a bunch of ideas I've cogged or come up with.
First session on the planet of Anomie, get into Freelandia's mental institution. An NPC Doctor will spool the Hollow Corruption tex out when you visit, having described everything else in similar terms. He'll later be the one hypnotizing the Cleric into thinking he's about to achieve hypostatic union with the Emperor's guiding light before steering a fluorescent tube up his ass, then torturing the school shooter assassin by replaying his most humiliating statements in psychoanalysis under huge doses of LSD-25. Flavour text:
‘Let's take one of your brain cells and possess it with a daemonic replica. That part of your brain is dead, but continues to more or less function. Every day we'll possess another brain cell, a slow and gradual process. The living cells will have time to be accustomed to the daemonic cells and by working in unison they will be able to complete things just as they always did and your development will continue seemingly unaltered from the original plan. What happens when all your brain cells are daemonic? To your CONSCIOUSNESS, you dig? The body will still be able to hold a conversation and react to stimulus exactly as you would have while alive, but would your world slowly become dimmer and dimmer until finally you felt like you were just a passenger in your own body going along for the ride, then an observer, and finally nothing?
The boys from B Company were real tasty, no more feeling in their eyes than a crab’s on the end of a stalk, yet they went through the daily Imperial motions, even asking about wives and children. My ignorant rather unsavoury chap, what-ho old bean? collegues told me they were shell-shocked, that they had seen things from the Warp itself and survived thanks to the Emperor’s grace, but such people are no better than party poops. When B company began to take on smooth anonymous countenances and long tongues, my so-called colleagues showed their true colours. Had my baboon familiar, Violet, lobotomise them with a lasgun.
If the method of psychic control could be isolated, the Inquisition could eventually reduce any hesitant heretic to Automatic Obedience… any Dummkopf could become a sleeper agent. Seed Gue’la settlements, mutant populations… rogue psykers would turn on their followers, entire Hive worlds would find it impossible to even think about Chaos. A functioning police state needs no police… the thought of heresy would be impossible.
These daemons got it something special for terror and control.’
This triggers the Cleric, who interrogated another 'Cleric' in the base (actually an Inquistorial Agent here to spy on the Hollow Stormtrooper), to remember who the false Cleric worked for: Interzone Inc. Who runs this institution? Interzone Inc. Who else was in the cells with them? Headcases. Might be too strong a lead on- I don't want them to twig the central deceit too soon. The whole operation will turn out to be infested with the same daemons, and the assassin-Inquisitor they're working for will be aligned to the god of chaos destroying Chaos destroying chaos (destroying Chaos). Then it starts to get fun...
I can't let them know too soon. Once Interzone goes down, and all the Inquisitors attached and funding it, the Planet is on very shaky ground. Roll a d10, see how long it lasts...
Dark Heresy campaign image. They just finished the first mission for their assassin-inquisitor. He's the one pulling all the strings, but who's plucking his? The puppets in his right hand are the four assassin schools.
Resuming the Army. Nearly cured myself of the Virus.