Essentially the Lord-Captain had a drunken scheme to recover a Mechanicus Lathe class cruiser, The Emperor's Bounty from the sprawling wastes of wreckage known as the Battleground. To this end he had, through shadowy means, discovered the ship's location and negotiated salvage rights, with the caveat that a Baccahrus be the first one to step aboard the wreck. Obviously actually leaving the comfort of the Majestic Labour and confronting any potential risk is not to our Captain's liking so he charges his heir, young Darien to take a group aboard the wreck.
Thus Darien, his trusted confident Theata, the "muscle" in the form of Vyn & Dungoof and a few expendable Ratings venture forth.
Darien pilots their Guncutter through the debris field to the wreck, sustaining some minor damage en route, and with much faux pomp and ceremony eventually boards the vessel.
(Something you will come to learn about our Darien is that he is, well frankly, a bit of a fop and very very theatrical and flambouyant - even as he turns a shade darker in character...)
The party board and begin their efforts to re-establish power, heading to the bridge....Now although the scenario is freely available for download I think I ought to slap SPOILER ALERT over the following....
SPOILER ALERT
There. Carry on reading at your peril.
Anyhow they make their way through the ship, finding that the previous crew appears to have been suddenly and completely wiped out at their stations, until they enter the bridge itself and discover evidence of a skirmish. It appears that the Captain laid down his life in protection of the ship and that the Navigator's corpse is sat upon the ship's control throne. But then, Emperor save us, the Navigator rears up, alive and somehow bonded to an alien device which is covering his third (Warp) eye. Shocking eh?
Our valient heroes, and the Ork, discover that they cannot pepentrate the force field he is projecting and soon decide discretion is the better part of valour, especially as he starts using unholy Warp power to animate a load of the crew memeber corpses to attack our players.
Once the Explorers our able to catch their breath they theorise, correctly, that if they can get the ship's Gellar field back online then they can cut off some of the Navigator's power. They head back through the ship to do just that, encountering repeated resistance from the Warp puppet zombies on the way.
They also discover an enclave on still living crew who are not Warp tainted and who go on to explain what occured aboard the ship (I'll leave you to read up on that on the official .pdf - can't spoil everything...consider it homework) and the noble Darien charms them on side, supported by some fearsome intimidation from the Bo'sun,,,
With the assistance of the crew remnant the Explorers are able to locate the core cogitator and convince it to initialise the Gellar field. This was mostly done by Theata feeding lines to Darien - a "maneouvre" which we have since seem time and again, often with quite amusing results.
The Gellar field engaged the players started the trek back to the bridge and a final confrontation with the corrupt Navigator. Zombies hampered their progress and they lost some of their ratings in skirmishes but they finally returned to the bridge, bursting in from a side access panel.
Dungoof rushed at the Navigator whilst Darien, Theata and Vyn engaged the swarms of Warp Puppets defending him.
The Ork traded blows and was holding good account of himself but was suffering under the Warp powered attacks of the villain. Darien could see the greenskin faltering and lept to his side, slicing his powersword down in an arc to immolate the possessed navigator. The flailing, burning body lashed out, setting Darien alight, who paniced and ran around shouting "This is real Xeno hide! Father will kill me!" Dungoof was beside himself, having had his "kill stolen", Theata was finding the entire scene extremely amusing and Vyn was left to try to put him out.
The Navigator defeated, the Warp puppets collapsed, lifeless corpses once more. The interference that had cut the Explorers off from the Majestic Labourr was lifted and salvage work could commence.
However, Darien and Theata guessed (Theata had Forbbiden Lore: Xenos +10 at this point) that the "thing" attached to the Navigator's head (which had fallen from his corpse) was a fabled Halo Device - exactly the sort of Xeno tech that the Lord-Captain would love to get his hands on. They therefore agreed that this was the last thing they wanted to happen and so Darien arranged that in all the hubbub of the salvage mission he would personally place the device in a shuttle craft and send it into the nearest star.
The Explorers were eventually welcomed back aboard the Majestic Labour with all pomp and ceremony (you can see where Darien get's it from...) including a rousing rendition of the Emperor's March by "Jonas" the captains favourite music servitor (it was one of a set of three but the other two were destroyed in various fits of temper by the Captain).
All in all that took three sessions to play out and served to help us establish the groundwork for the tone of the game moving forwards. Early on there was a feeling of dark humour threaded through the grim darkness and horror, a tone which has continued throughout the campaign. The game was starting to find it's voice, but there were a few changes to come first...
Anyhow they make their way through the ship, finding that the previous crew appears to have been suddenly and completely wiped out at their stations, until they enter the bridge itself and discover evidence of a skirmish. It appears that the Captain laid down his life in protection of the ship and that the Navigator's corpse is sat upon the ship's control throne. But then, Emperor save us, the Navigator rears up, alive and somehow bonded to an alien device which is covering his third (Warp) eye. Shocking eh?
Our valient heroes, and the Ork, discover that they cannot pepentrate the force field he is projecting and soon decide discretion is the better part of valour, especially as he starts using unholy Warp power to animate a load of the crew memeber corpses to attack our players.
Once the Explorers our able to catch their breath they theorise, correctly, that if they can get the ship's Gellar field back online then they can cut off some of the Navigator's power. They head back through the ship to do just that, encountering repeated resistance from the Warp puppet zombies on the way.
They also discover an enclave on still living crew who are not Warp tainted and who go on to explain what occured aboard the ship (I'll leave you to read up on that on the official .pdf - can't spoil everything...consider it homework) and the noble Darien charms them on side, supported by some fearsome intimidation from the Bo'sun,,,
With the assistance of the crew remnant the Explorers are able to locate the core cogitator and convince it to initialise the Gellar field. This was mostly done by Theata feeding lines to Darien - a "maneouvre" which we have since seem time and again, often with quite amusing results.
The Gellar field engaged the players started the trek back to the bridge and a final confrontation with the corrupt Navigator. Zombies hampered their progress and they lost some of their ratings in skirmishes but they finally returned to the bridge, bursting in from a side access panel.
Dungoof rushed at the Navigator whilst Darien, Theata and Vyn engaged the swarms of Warp Puppets defending him.
The Ork traded blows and was holding good account of himself but was suffering under the Warp powered attacks of the villain. Darien could see the greenskin faltering and lept to his side, slicing his powersword down in an arc to immolate the possessed navigator. The flailing, burning body lashed out, setting Darien alight, who paniced and ran around shouting "This is real Xeno hide! Father will kill me!" Dungoof was beside himself, having had his "kill stolen", Theata was finding the entire scene extremely amusing and Vyn was left to try to put him out.
The Navigator defeated, the Warp puppets collapsed, lifeless corpses once more. The interference that had cut the Explorers off from the Majestic Labourr was lifted and salvage work could commence.
However, Darien and Theata guessed (Theata had Forbbiden Lore: Xenos +10 at this point) that the "thing" attached to the Navigator's head (which had fallen from his corpse) was a fabled Halo Device - exactly the sort of Xeno tech that the Lord-Captain would love to get his hands on. They therefore agreed that this was the last thing they wanted to happen and so Darien arranged that in all the hubbub of the salvage mission he would personally place the device in a shuttle craft and send it into the nearest star.
The Explorers were eventually welcomed back aboard the Majestic Labour with all pomp and ceremony (you can see where Darien get's it from...) including a rousing rendition of the Emperor's March by "Jonas" the captains favourite music servitor (it was one of a set of three but the other two were destroyed in various fits of temper by the Captain).
All in all that took three sessions to play out and served to help us establish the groundwork for the tone of the game moving forwards. Early on there was a feeling of dark humour threaded through the grim darkness and horror, a tone which has continued throughout the campaign. The game was starting to find it's voice, but there were a few changes to come first...
Sounds like your players liked this adventure more than mine.
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