Rainmaker Part One
It is a new day in Hive Primus. The luminen lights of the hive begin to glow, simulating a Terran morning. Manufactorum workers, day laborers, and others begin their day. The merchants count their coffers and the nobles scheme. The guardsmen of the cadres of the bonds involute begin drills, hold recruitment drives, and some are shipped off to some far away sector to war. The priests pray, the techpriests build, the scribes write and type volumes upon volumes of data, and the sanctionaries of the bonds involute patrol.
This is the acolytes new home. Shipped from within and without the Askellon sector, all were sent messages bearing the sigil of the Inquisition. You are all sent missives via servo-skull. The symbol of the inquisition lies within them, and a message reading, “You have been chosen to war in the Emperor’s name. You will be given transport and lodgings on your way to me. You are going to the Askellon sector, to planet Desoleum, to Hive Desoleum (Primus) and find me at the Galloping Aethexe. Bring equipment and weapons. You are about to embark on a hunt for heretics.” At the end of the page, a post scriptum is written. It says, “Thought for the day, ‘Carry the Emperor’s will as your torch, with it destroy the shadows.’”
Landing
The acolytes land on Desoleum Primus, the capital hive. The charter captains and rogue traders that brought them here on the Inquisition’s orders fill them in. They are allowed time to travel and rest on their way to their destination. After that, they are to proceed to the location mentioned. Desoleum proves to be a very large cumbersome city to travel about, and travelling vertically can take days. Finally, they find themselves in front of the Galloping Aethexe. The door’s handle has finally been fixed, but a sign for “renovations” is still up. Before they can open the door, a stormtrooper, clothed head to toe in carapace armor and a face concealing helmet, welcomes them in. Four more stormtroopers stand at the ready behind a man in a vanilla grox skin coat with dark brown hair and a colonial style ponytail. He introduces himself as Inquisitor Kaios of the ordo xenos. He states that he has brought them here today to become his acolytes, followers and assets of an inquisitor. He will go on to say that he has people everywhere, and to be here they must have seen something valuable in each of the acolytes there. He will explain his business, and tell the acolytes that he wants them looking for a cult named “Brothers of Var-nahesh.” They seem to be a conglomeration of older cults built out of military veterans and hive gangers. He doesn’t know much about them, but says that he has been hearing something troubling from a smuggler contact (Holthane). He says that some low-level gangers heard from someone that the cult and another group are dealing in heavy weaponry. He tells them the name of the leader of these gangers is “Cutter Titus”. They are nothing but two-bit punks, but they sometimes get work as muscle for the insurati, a powerful criminal syndicate. The acolytes find them, find the source of their information, find where the deal is, and then follow the cult to their lair. He lastly tells them that while he doesn’t know much about them, their name is unsettling for reasons he cannot say. Lastly, he gives them a frequency to reach him on vox comms. He then lets them go.
To summarize, they are to 1) Find the gangers 2) Find the source of the info 3) Get the location of the deal and oversee it 4) Follow the brotherhood to their lair 5) Investigate it 6) Help in the purge with stormtroopers and the inquisitor leading. The acolytes will find a great threat to Desoleum than just one cult in the lair of the brotherhood.
Cutter Titus
The acolytes are to search for Cutter and his gang of dumb muscle. They will find that Cutter’s gang has been around subdistrict Hroltz shaking down shop owners and mugging workers. As the commoners of Desoleum Primus use an oath-cog system for transactions and work, they do not find much scrip from them.
Challenging +0 Inquiry
1DoS: The gangers are found shaking down a series of shops in ward Thorpe of subdistrict Hroltz.
The coverall dispensary is found in a somewhat decent area. There are stores, dispensaries, and hab-blocks in the area. There is a rundown section at its edge where normal Emperor-fearing citizens do not venture. When the acolytes look around, they will find a clothes dispensary being shaken down. The dispensary is not very big, only about 20 by 20 meters large with a front room and an office in the back.
Inside one can find coveralls and other uniforms hanging from racks. A desk near the middle contains a stack of paper that are forms for obtaining uniforms. A ganger, one of Cutter’s boys, sits with his legs on the desk and tells anyone that comes close that the store is closed. Cutter and four others are in the back beating on one of the poor workers of the dispensary, trying to get him to open a safe in an office that they think contains scrip. There is a safe, a cogitator, and a desk in this office. The safe, if opened, contains deed papers of the owner of the dispensary. The acolytes can interrogate one of the gangers, but they are dumb muscle and prone to fight. There is a back alley to the building with a ladder to the roof and a vent on top. The vent goes to the office.
If the acolytes get a chance to interrogate the gangers,
Interrogation +0 vs WP +0
1DoS: The gangers heard the news from a low level insuratti leader named Jaspar Bones, and that his headquarters is a bar at the lower part of ward Mikhail in sub-Hroltz called “Crossbones”.
2S: It has a big vent for a refrigeration in the kitchen and stock rooms that a man could stand in. 3S: Bones has a girlfriend from the Painted Throngs named “Hela Herzog”. After the acolytes leave, sanctionary sirens can be heard and Rosa Initiate sanctionaries show up on the scene.
If the acolytes kill all of them before interrogating them, then they will have to pass an inquiry test at -10 to find Crossbones. If they do this, they will lose subtlety (1d5), and Bones has a chance (based on a subtlety roll) to hear that people are looking for him and, already in a paranoid state, will put the bar on lockdown and kill anyone trying to force their way in. Everyone would get a -10 to interact with the gangers and Bones.
Crossbones
The bar “Crossbones” is located in manufactorum bloc Dufaux. Crossbones is a sizeable bar (50x70 meters), and has a big sign with the name “Crossbones” on top of it with a skull and crossbones logo. There is a guard in front of the door, checking people who come in. He takes away weapons and other tools (like microbeads) and places them in a big box. Another guard smokes a lho stick while leaning on the right side of the front of the building. A third guard is found in an alleyway to the left of the building, guarding a Kotrohman 3000, a fashionable domestic autocarriage. He stands next to a door located near the rear of the building, the autocarriage found between him and the front of the building. Past the alleyway behind the building there is refuse and broken glass lying around, and another street can be seen.
The people going in are mostly gangers. Muffled music becomes loud when the door is opened. Inside the main room one can see pirate themed decorations and surroundings. A big poster of the pict serial “Captain Korkov’s Privateer Adventures” can be seen near the back of the bar. A man with wild dark brown hair, heterochrome eyes, and a captain’s uniform and hat holds a pistol up and wirily smiles. Next to him is a clothed Elquon Manhound with a cutlass and wearing a bandanna on top of its head. The tables, chairs, and bar are made from wood and look like the inside of a waterborne ship (The serial’s depiction of a roguetrader is not perfectly authentic). Near the back-left corner of the room is a stage and a band of performancers performing loud heavy metal music (Like Alestorm). The patrons all look like rough and tough men and women. Several gangs and criminal cliques are seen here, yet if the acolytes look there are no cloudboys, painted throngs, death masks, or fleshcutters here. Most of the criminals (Awareness) look to be general hive gangers or Insurati muscle. The patrons play cards, drink, smoke, talk, and listen to the music. A bartender in waiter’s clothing (Vest, tie, white undershirt) serves drinks, and servers go back and forth from a kitchen. Bones has sixteen guards around in the main room.
There is a stock room with liqueurs, food stuffs, and other things one needs for a bar. There is a decent kitchen with a couple of workers and a chef making food like soup, cooked meats, sandwiches, and other food like that. There is a hallway between the stock room and kitchen, and it goes to a VIP room. Before the VIP room are four guards standing around keeping watch. They allow servers to go in without fuss. Inside the VIP room the surroundings are nice. Velvet drapes, tapestries, a nice table and set of chairs, couches, and liquor cabinet are seen. Four of Bones’s officers are in there playing cards. They are better dressed than the gangers and guards in the front room. While playing cards, they mention how swell it is that Cutter somehow got them a chance to buy Godwyn-De’az model bolters, and one will actually hold up his pistol by its top and marvel at the thing.
Past the VIP rooms is Bones’s office, and it looks better than the VIP room. A large desk of imported wood and a cogitator stands in the corner. Another big poster of Captain Korkov’s Privateer Adventures lies in a corner. Bones can be found in the office making calls from a voxline and writing on paper. He will be dealing with bills, taxes, messages, and other things when the acolytes walk in. He knows where the Brotherhood’s deal is going down. He won’t give it up for free. He will either need to be charmed, intimidated, bribed, or do a job for him. He needs them to get rid of a painted throng leader named “Hela Herzog”. She runs her own Painted Throng group named the “Ink Spots”. She and Bones are having a lover spat, in that she wants to kill him for complementing another painted throng member’s designs. He is quite scared of her and has refused to leave Crossbones, choosing to sleep on one of the couches here. He has been wearing the same clothes for a week. For their efforts, he will give them the information, and give him a +10 Requisition bonus (The equivalent of 10,000 scrip) for taking the job and another +10 for doing it. If they take it, he gives him directions to her hideout called the needle and wire, found in Three Stake's Rest.
Needle and Wire
True to Jaspar’s words, this section of hab bloc Wissen is in decay. Located near the hive’s edge, this region used to contain a large working manufactorum, and hab blocks. After an accident that claimed the lives of thousands, the section was abandoned, and the citizens’ oaths were moved elsewhere. Now it is the home of gangers, mutants, and dregs. One can sometimes hear gunshots in the distance. None of the buildings are maintained, and some are blown out husks of their original selves. The whole place smells of some type of acrid chemical, all that remains of the manufactorums.
Needle and Wire looks built into a blown-out hab block. The windows are broken, and on one corner the walls have been broken down to the ground. The center of the block has also crumbled into a pile of rockcrete and refuse, and the livable spaces are near the remaining walls and edges of the place. The four corners of this place do not look stable, and some explosives could potentially bring it all down. Four painted throngs members will be patrolling around the block, on the ground.
Inside a meeting of about fifty members can be seen. A woman, whose body from abdomen to her face has been tattooed with complex beautiful designs, stands on a higher floor than her followers and riles them up to go kill Jaspar. The rest of the gangers have similar designs of similar magnitude. One of the gangers will ask if Hela thinks this is the best idea and she will shoot them to intimidate anyone else who would say anything. They will be there for a while, first listening to the speech, then loading up on weapons and ammo. Hela will retreat to a personal room and do similarly. This room is on the fourth floor of the building and has an open window to it.
Bones tells him that he personally knows the other party of the Brotherhood’s deal. He is a man named “Smiler” Siggi, an off-worlder and lieutenant of the style killer offshoot gang called the Joy Troupe. They are ostensibly a group of acrobatic perfomancers, but in the criminal underworld they are known for conducting several deals and assassinations. They are supported by an unknown patron that arms and outfits them very well. They came into possession of many Godwyn-De’az pattern bolters, and are selling them to the Brotherhood (Knowledge Ecclesiarchy to know that those are used by the Sisters of Battle). Jaspar Bones tells them that the deal is happening at a location near the edge of the hive called “Three Stake’s Rest”, an unstable abandoned portion of the hive that criminals like to do business in. The deal ill be done in four days at a place called St. Arnett.
Three Stake’s Rest is in manufactorum bloc Sturnn and is connected to a series of magrail tunnels. St. Arnett’s bridge lies here. These tunnels run underneath port Eckhart, a lower commercial port. It will take the acolytes a few days to make it to sub-Sturnn, giving them enough time to see the deal.
The Deal
At Three Stake’s Rest, they will find the Joy Troupe, a gang of style killers dressed like harlequins led by a man named “’Smiler’ Siggi”, and the Brothers, dressed in hive leathers and flak armor, trading a set of soul stones for two crates of boltguns and a crate of bolts. The Joy Troupe is armed with bolt pistols and chainswords and the Brothers are armed with chain axes, chainswords, and autoguns, autopistols, and stub revolvers.
The deal occurs on a crossbridge that leads from the ruins of an old neighborhood of hab blocks to what looks like an abandoned manufactorum near the edge of the hive that leads to the tunnels of the Deeps beneath Port Gyre, and a road that leads away from this place. There is an eighteen-wheeler on the manufactorum side of the bridge where the Joy Troupe stands, and a series of autocarriages with the Brotherhood on the other side. There are 20 troupers and 40 Brotherhood cultists. Everyone is tense, except for the man leading the Joy Troupe.
“Smiler” Siggi (Siggivere Du Bornei) is a man in a very expensive patterned coat and dreadlocks. What draws the eye is a metal bionic replacement jaw that goes up past his ears to the back of his head. The bionic jaw has a pattern that gives the man a large unsettling Cheshire Cat smile. When he speaks it is with an accent unheard of on Desoleum. He speaks with a slight modulation to his voice. It adds to his playful but sinister nature. He steps toward the middle of the bridge to meet with another man walking up.
A beast of a man walks up. He is seven feet tall, has large muscles, and wears a combat vest over a flak vest and with short cropped blond hair. He has a replacement bionic left eye that glows red and a large scar over his face. He has a heavy stubber slung over his back. His name is Darial Eizen, and he is the leader of the Brotherhood. He has a gruff (think Michael Ironside) voice. He is impatient to get the deal done. His mind seems to be on other things.
Smiler and Eizen will exchange banter, and then Smiler will ask one of his men to bring up a crate from the truck. The trouper opens the crate and inside are sets of disassembled bolters. Eizen picks the pieces of one up, puts it together, and inspects it, seeing that it is genuine. The assembly will take ten minutes. He will notice that there is no ammo, and Smiler will explain he knows how people like Eizen work, and says when they leave the bolts will be left behind in their respective crates. He then requests for Eizen’s part of the deal to be held up. Eizen will nod to one of his men, and one comes up with a briefcase. Siggi opens the suitcase and a warm red glow appears on his face. He is satisfied. He tells his men to bring up the rest of the cases, and if nothing happens they and the brotherhood leave with their hauls.
(Awareness +0)
1DoS: You notice that red glow appears to be some type of gem inlaid to a bone white interface.
(Forbidden Knowledge: Eldar +0)
1DoS: You know this is a soul stone. The eldar use this device to trap away their souls after death. If it is glowing, then the stone is filled.
The Troupe loads up into the truck and drives away, kicking out a couple of crates of ammunition as they go. The brotherhood loads up the crates onto their autocarriages, and then go off into the night separately. One of the autocarriages can be followed back to their lair, but it will be a shadowing special use of Stealth +0 vs Awareness +0. The whole journey will take 30 minutes, so the tests may have to be redone according to the special use shadowing rules. If the cultists catch the acolytes trying to follow them, they will try to run or confront them.
If the acolytes try to interrupt the deal, then the two sides will think the situation is a set up and start firing at each other. The troupe will actively try to get away from the fight. The cultists will scatter in separate autocarriages. One will try to take whatever goods had been presented at the time.
Hideout
After following the cultists or interrogating one, the acolytes find that the hideout is hidden in a complex of shut down magrail tunnels in trade bloc Clastus The entrance via the magrail tunnel is not guarded, but the inside is. The hide out is a mix of maintenance tunnel, bomb shelter, and a large cavern mined inside the hive that may have once been a monastery. If they have been discovered to be following the cult, then the cult be will armed and ready to ambush the acolytes and anyone else they bring to them. traps, weapons emplacements, and sand bags will be set up to stop the acolytes’ party. If they have not been discovered, then they will find a complex containing about fifty cultists inside unaware that they are about to be attacked. The cultists now show their true faces, wearing scavenged and saved military gear and openly wearing symbols of Khorne. There will be large marks of Khorne on the wall, pools of blood, and idols to Khornate daemons.
If the acolytes have interrogated someone to bring them there, then they will need to keep them alive for directions or use navigate surface -10 to find the hideout.
At this point, the acolytes will want to call their handler and tell them the location of the hideout. Eisenach in full inquisitorial regalia and armor will show up with the four storm troopers after the acolytes get there. They could go alone, but earlier on in the adventure they would have been advised to bring the inquisitor.
Near the entrance of the lair, a screamer will alert the cultists if tripped (+0 Awareness). Not far from the screamer is a grenade trap (+0 Awareness) that the acolytes will have to jump over or disarm. Security +0 is used to disarm both, or +20 athletics to jump the screamer’s sensory laser and the grenade trap’s trip wire.
They will either find ganger cultists ready to attack them in a side room, or ganger cultists finishing up the sacrifice of a sanctionary. The cultists have set up a bowl to collect the sanctionaries blood and forced him to fight the cultists with a knife. If the acolyte’s party shoots first they can stop the sacrifice. If not, the gangers become frenzied with ethereal energies that fill the room with blood red light and set upon the cultists.
There will be two paths after this. One in a stock room that hides corrupted guardsmen within it, and another that splits up into the main chamber and another room that looks like an elevator. If even one acolyte steps on the elevator, it is revealed to be a false floor. Awareness +0 to spot it Athletics/Acrobatics +0 to catch oneself from falling.
In the main chamber, along with gangers and corrupted guardsmen, a bound navigator on a raised stone table can be found. A cultist leader chants beside him while the navigator begs for his life. The leader stabs into the navigator eight times. The navigator’s eyes glows red and red energy swirls around him, and he floats upward. The navigator explodes in a torrent of blood, and from him comes a fleshound from the warp. With blood red skin and fierce hungry eyes, they see the acolytes, drool and growl before pouncing on the party.
Behind the dais lies a glowing idol of a blood red daemon. This is of the eponymous Var-Nahesh, the harvester. Until it is destroyed, the idol causes everyone in the main chamber to frenzy, either willingly or for failing a +0 WP test. Insidious screams tell victims to rend flesh and bleed foes. Unlike a normal frenzy, this one can be broken out of as a warp-induced effect.
After six turns, a new squad from the north made up of two heavies and four cultists come in. Once ten turns pass, a new squad of the same make comes from a hallway from the west. After twelve turns, a man carrying a heavy bolter on a standing tripod sets up and will shoot the party.
Down a set of stairs north east from the chamber leads to a barracks. Simple cots and sleeping bags are set here. There are a few personal effects around. Lho sticks, cards, liquor, pictures, and erotica on data-slate can be found. Ammo and weapons are not kept here, except for a hand cannon marked with eight tally-marks upon it and four reloads.
There is a hallway lying southwest to the main chamber. There is a messhall and stockroom at the end of the hall. There are four side rooms a kitchen, a small dining room, and a room for keeping amasec. In the stockroom and messhall there appears equipment for making bombs, and the cultists’ armaments and ammunition. Boxes of autoguns, autopistols, shotguns, grenades, flame bombs, and flak armor lie here. Rations, bread, meat, and other food stuffs lie uneaten on the table and stocked in pantries. Past the stock room lies Eizen’s personal room. It is very spartan, with a cot and a chest the only things inside.
The acolytes will not find Eizen there but will find a message written by someone named “Rainmaker” on top of the chest. The note invites the brotherhood to “ascend”. By helping them in a grand endeavor, the brotherhood will earn their place among the “Tarot”. The note says that lady Killian will die with house Kotrohman’s patronage.
At the end of the hideout, they find a grand staircase that leads to a maintenance tunnel. This was a secret entrance that the cultists would have escaped to in case of them needing to retreat or their normal entrance being blocked off. It would take them thirty minutes by foot to get to the entrance to fight the party. The flesh hounds would be summoned regardless, however this way they can fight them one vs the party rather than have them and the cultists versus the party and the “Inquisitor’s” retinue.
Part 1 Rewards
+2 Influence
+400 xp
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