Who's Got the Vibe
Table of Contents
Introduction
Zeke’s Last Call
6 Our friend Marty
7 Terra Bella Shake
8 Papa Ruckus
9 Mummer’s Rest
1 White Snake
Introduction
The underworld of Desoleum is made up of hundreds of gangs, and one of these have risen to the top as kingpins. This group is the Insuratti. They have fingers in a million pies all over Desoleum, reaching into its airspace and shaking hands with the grand cartel conspiracy known as the Faceless Trade. They are thorns in the sides of ruling nobles and merchants. They are secret friends of the same groups. The Insuratti are a constant in Desoleum. Until recently.
One of their number, a younger captain of the group, Sirgev Gach has upset the enshrined balance of power. Gach is ambitious, sly, charming, and extremely dangerous. He was an upstart from his early days, but now he has new friends that supply him with the resources necessary to conquer the underworld. The resources also include those of a foul blasphemous nature. His seditious branch of the Insuratti is called the Gach Clique, and includes numerous other gangs along with fixers, suppliers, and contacts all under his thumb.
The Insuratti wants an edge against the clique and wants to remind the underworld of the good thing they had. The original meaning of nostalgia means the “pain from an old wound” in an ancient Terran language. The Insuratti wants to put everyone back in their place like the old days. They have found new ways to bring pain.
The Inquisition does not care about local planetary crime. It does not care about gangers dying in some speak-easy. However, the nature of this crime falls under the purview of the Ordo Xenos. Their interest is flared by the weapons used in this underworld execution.
Zeke’s Last Call
The acolytes begin the story driving to Zeke’s, a speak-easy in district Straten, a hab center. They have been told that a gang hit took place the night before. Their inquisitor’s overseer, Harkonn Straussheim, want the acolytes to investigate due to the Gach clique’s involvement. Zeke Ludwig was one of Gach’s men, and the owner of the restaurant. Gach’s activities have been placed under watch since acolytes have witnessed the malefic power he possesses and his connections to the Tarot, a grand conspiracy and alliance of different Chaos groups.
The district is owned by house Rhomana, one of the great families of Desoleum. They have sent investigators from their sanctionary forces to the crime scene and will have shown up before the acolytes get there. Sure enough, as the acolytes near Zeke’s, sanctionaries with a chalice crest upon their armour are seen surrounding the crime scene. Crime tape has been put up. Two sanctionary autocarriages are parked outside. The sanctionaries are turning away citizens with morbid curiosity about the restaurant.
The sanctionaries can be persuaded immediately with the flashing of a rosette. They can be persuaded to allow the acolytes in if they have any history with the houses. They can be lied to and told they were sent by house Rhomana, the Rosa Initiative Enforcer Department (a special enforcer group), or any other excuse to get them away from the scene. They can also be simply bribed. There can be more ways to get by.
The speak-easy is set on a corner with surrounding businesses. One of these is a laundry. It has a door that passes into an office that has a door covered by furniture that leads into the kitchen of the speak-easy. Behind the speak-easy is part of a hab-block with no entrances or exits to the speak-easy. The other side of the speak-easy is a boxing gym called “Avon’s Golden Gloves” with no connection to the speak-easy either.
The acolytes may also just wait until the sanctionaries leave, as they do not care about Insuratti getting gunned down. Sanctionaries don’t generally care about gang crime. They’re mainly enforcers for the great houses’ wills, keeping the oaths of Desoleum’s citizens in line and cracking down on oathbreakers. They will have to wait until around midnight for this, however.
Inside the speak-easy would be a cozy place with warm lighting and cold booze if it weren’t for the two dozen bodies. Two inspectors, really officers of house Rhomana’s security forces, are investigating the scene and trying to make sense of it. These are Kellam Neadham and Halloway Rackham. They wear three piece suits with badges carrying the house Rhomana chalice. Hal is a large man with a permanent scowl, a wide nose, and thinned black hair with a widow’s peak. Kel is a skinny man with brown hair and a well-groomed mustache.
They will be non-plussed to allow the acolytes to investigate away. They’ve lost interest in the case after they didn’t find what they wanted. The most interesting things they have found are the strange blast marks and impacts on the walls. The wounds of the dead are also strange, not being the same as standard las or solid projectile damage.
Challenging (+0) Medical Tests
1DoS: The wounds look like they were caused by plasma.
3DoS: The plasma wounds are in an almost rectangular shape, and not caused by a glob of plasma like standard plasma weaponry.
Challenging (+0) Awareness Tests
1DoS: The blast marks are consistent with plasma.
3DoS: The plasma penetrated through the wood and rockcrete inside fairly strongly. The marks are rectangular shaped and not rounded.
Challenging (+0) Scrutiny Tests
1DoS: The gangers were taken by surprise. Most of them have their autostubbers, autopistols, and las pistols still in their holsters. Those that died with their gun in their hands may have gotten one or two shots off before being taken down. The gangers all have a somewhat similar dress of cheap facsimiles of three-piece suits.
3DoS: The bartender pressed a secret alarm button before he died. It is found underneath the bar next to the cash register. A group of shooters took these men down. Judging from the number of shots and the overall carnage, plus the lack of wounded on the attacker’s side, it might have been around six to ten shooters.
The inspectors quietly confide amongst themselves.
Challenging (+0) Awareness
Quietly they will ask if the Rook, an alleged terrorist known for bombing clinics and gunning down medical personnel and criminals, is part of this. Neadham tells him that the wounds and witnesses don’t really follow. He prefers hot-shot weaponry when he uses energy weapons, and the damage caused doesn’t follow that. This is the real reason why they were sent here. Lord Rhomana sent the orders specifically. His clinics are the majority which have been bombed.
If the acolytes look through the bodies, then among the wallets, guns, jewelry, lighters, and lho sticks among the dead is a match book to a club named “Ruckus”. It has a silhouette of a dancing woman pressed on it. Inside the match book are twenty-two matches left, and a note on the inner top flap. “Martin Leinz’s shop. Make him bow or slot him!”
A vox-phone book is on the counter of the bar. A Challenging (+0) Scrutinizing for Leinz will come up to an autoshop a district away. The same test will show a local gentleman’s club called “Ruckus”.
Our Friend Marty
Marty’s Quick Fix is a mechanic shop owned by one Marty Leinz. Leinz is under a protection racket of the Insuratti for a percent of his profits but is not an officer or really a grunt in the gang. The inside of the Quick Fix is a garage with autocarriages being worked upon by mechanics in coveralls. The autocarriages themselves look decent, like the types merchants would drive, rather than the rusty gang modified types common to lower hive habways. The front door leads to a small office that receives customers. It is covered by large windows with blinds. There is a desk with a cogitator on it. There is a chair behind it and two chairs in front of it. Behind the desk are filing cabinets full of receipts, folders, and papers. Inside the desk is a stub revolver, eighteen bullets, a bottle of amasec, and a paper note with a vox-number on it.
Calling the number leads to a secretary answering from a spa called “Terra Bella”. The secretary is just a worker at the spa, but her boss is Hezekiah Steiner, an Insuratti captain and “legitimate businessman”. She will tell the acolytes that Mr. Steiner is out at the moment and if they ask if Martin called she will diplomatically tell them that she can’t tell them that.
Martin is on the floor right now. He is smoking a lho sick and looks somewhat agitated. With a challenging (+0) awareness test, one can find that he’s hiding a stub automatic in his jacket. With a challenging (+0) scrutiny test, one can find that he’s scared of something and is ready to run at the first sign of danger. They can calm him down by charm, intimidation, or deception. They can convince him that they’re not there to hurt him and under the inquisition’s purview he doesn’t really have anything especially heretical to be purged for (unless you’re a puritan like that). They can also deceive him by saying they’re Insuratti or someone who wants to help. There are other ways to make sure he doesn’t run.
If the acolytes openly question Marty about anything to do with gangers or the Insuratti without convincing him it might be a better idea to talk, he will start running toward the back of the garage. The back leads to a scrap yard the size of a small landfill and behind that is a market bazaar. The scrap yard is difficult to cross and Marty has to climb a fence at the back. If the acolytes use acrobatics to deftly get across the yard or athletics to outrun Marty and tackle him to the ground. If he gets to the bazaar, he will try to blend into the crowd of people and the acolytes can attempt to use awareness to find him in the middle of the crowd. If he gets away, the acolytes can be set on the right track by getting to the Ruckus club or following up on the vox phone note.
Marty is no hardened criminal and once caught will open up about anything the acolytes want. Marty will attempt to hide his criminal contact if questioned without duress. Marty was visited by a Gach Clique tough guy named Jan Kreel and his boys three days ago. Kreel gave Mary the same offer many gangs and anyone connected to the Underworld have been getting. Join the Clique and prosper or be buried. Marty was already paying protection to Mr. Hesh, an Insuratti big shot who owns a number of laundering businesses around Desoleum. He called Mr. Hesh out of fear. Two days later, a Clique speak-easy gets shot up. Someone in a black car in a cheap black suit and hat shows up earlier today and tells him his worries are over.
Terra Bella Shake
Terra Bella looks like an ordinary massage parlor. It is all above board of course. The proper oaths are in place. The workers are all legal. It contains a front reception area, ten private massage rooms, three saunas, two bathrooms, and a back office. It is a laundering business by the Insuratti in the local district. It is run by one Hezekiah Steiner, an officer in the Insurrati.
“Hesh” is an old dog. Pushing seventy, he is a respected institution of the cartel. He is cautious and calculated. He controls a number of rackets in the surrounding section of the hive that he has set up with trusted men and fall guys. He also has taken on himself to groom his shining star of a protégé, Drusus Hohlstein.
Drusus is a young top earner. He is ruthless, cunning, charming, and dangerous. He is the obvious choice to take the helm of the Insurrati. Drusus is also the one bringing in Tau Pulse Rifles to use in the gang war between the Gach Clique and the Insuratti. He is also one key to Gach’s betrayal, the fellow gangster always feeling snubbed by “Prince Dru”.
Hesh does not keep arm guards within Terra Bella. He finds it invites too much attention. Rather, he has a group of guards (now armed with pulse rifles) in a local butcher shop’s backroom. He can call them over with the touch of a button that turns on a klaxon.
What Hesh does know is that Drusus is the one bringing in the guns. What Dru tells him is that he worked out a deal with a smuggler. Dru goes to a tavern called the Mummer’s Rest and asks for the VIP room. Dru goes to sleep in that room and wakes up in another. He gets to speak to his dealer and is sent back with a crate of guns. He sends his guys to distribute them across the hive. Dru is vague on the details, but he turns up with results.
Hesh will not give up what Drusus is doing easily. Anyone asking about the weapons could be someone from the Gach clique, another rival, a sanctionary, an arbitrator, or worse, the Inquisition. A subtle approach would be to try to approach Hesh as a potential customer looking for the guns, a member of the Insuratti, or another approach that would get Hesh talking openly. The unsubtle way would be to interrogate the information out of him, preferably somewhere away from the eyes of his goons. Furthermore, Hesh does not know that the guns are Tau. They could be Selvanus Binarian pulse rifles for all he knows.
If Hesh is kidnapped or otherwise harmed, a hit will be placed upon those who did it. This hit takes the form of six hitmen (use bounty hunter profile) whose mission are to rescue Hesh and kill anyone who harms him. Hesh may call them off. Killing Hesh gives the acolytes the Enemy (Insuratti) talent and will lead to progressive strikes against them and the people and places they associate with.
The Insuratti’s influence is vast. They will be able to track the movement of those who would mean harm to their bosses.
Papa Ruckus
Ruckus is a strip club downhive. The outside is hidden inside an alleyway between a Mechanicus shrine and a glass foundry owned by a merchant family. The pulsing music beats against the hearts of the acolytes as they near the front door. The same lady silhouette dons the top of the door along with the name of the place. An ape of a doorman stands at the front of a line along with four other men in blue cheap suits hiding guns. The doorman is maintaining a proper class of occupancy and clientele. Those with merchant clothes or higher are allowed in. Those who disagree are kicked, literally, to the curb by most of the guards. Those with bribes, charm, or proper lies can also be allowed in. Those of stern will or enough muscle mass to cow the doorman can also find their own way in. The guard will not give his name, but his name is Mercer Renzo.
The inside contains a dazzling array of colored lights pulsing over the floor. A bar lies at the far side of the floor, as the middle is made up of pole dancing stages with a number of smile girls going through their routines. A good number of customers occupies the space. Around a dozen gangers in cheap suits are spread out over the club. Near the corner of the room is a door to what looks to be dressing rooms, a backroom with a dozen more gangers and the office of “Papa Ruckus” Lucio Andreis.
Papa Ruckus’s office is an opulent space with high quality furnishings, art, liquor, and a cogitator. Ruckus spends his time in here in a high-backed leather chair smoking a lho cigar and keeping track of the club’s workings. Ruckus is a rude, caustic, portly, tall beast of a man. He is bald and his jowls vibrate when he shouts. His heft hides a great strength.
Ruckus was the one that sent Kreel to the Quick Fix as part of Gach’s gradual takeover of the district. Ruckus also knows that the weapons are of xenos-make but he does not know what type. He does know that a dealer has been talking to the Insuratti old guard. He sent a skulker to spy on Drusus Hohlstein, a lieutenant to one of the top chiefs of the Insuratti. Drusus was seen going to port Morn and disappeared for two days after entering a place called the Mummer’s Rest. He came back with a crate dropped off at an Insuratti racket near the port.
When the acolytes are done with their interview with Ruckus, or when they have been turned away, four cars of men in black three-piece-suits of Insurrati gangers will show up in front of the club. They are toting pulse rifles and are there to kill all of the Gach clique soldiers inside. Use the thug profiles from the core rulebook of Dark Heresy 2E with pulse rifles from the Enemies Without expansion book. They do not care about collateral damage to the dancers and other customers inside. If the acolytes are armed or show any sort hostility to the men, they will open fire on them assuming them to be part of the Gach Clique or its allied gangs.
If the acolytes decide to run, Ruckus will also try to run and will beg the acolytes to help him leave if they cross paths. If they help him, he will be open about where the Insuratti have been getting the pulse rifles.
If the acolytes decide to fight back, Ruckus will tell them about the pulse rifles. If any of the gangers get away and live, they will gain the enemy (Insuratti) talent and have their subtlety changed by 1d5.
Mummer’s Rest
The Mummer’s Rest is an unassuming inn found within Port Morn. It is a three-story building with a common room, ten standard rooms, and a suite. It contains a front room with a receptionist. It contains no food or drink and is not a tavern. Its prices for rooms are fair. Most of the place is a rather plain pre-fab rockcrete structure. The common room contains bunk beds lined in rows with simple cots on them. The suite is a decent place with a queen sized bed, a wardrobe, a desk, a shower, and a couch.
Drusus Hohlstein is returning to this place. He comes in a green Hectin autocarriage with four of his guys. They’re there to make sure no one followed him and as personal protection. He will walk in, ask the owner for the VIP room, and be let in. Inside the suite there will be an amasec bottle and a glass. He has instructions to drink it then lie on the bed. He will and lies on it. He will pass out due to the tranquilizer in the drink. During this time, a black imported autocarriage will pull up. Out of it comes two robed and hooded individuals that look like pilgrims. Their heads are shrouded, and they wear bodygloves underneath with a face concealing wrap. Their movements are unnaturally graceful, to the point that the robes almost look like they are floating if it was not for the soft footsteps one can hear in the silence of the upper floors. These are Dark Eldar of the Serrata Kabal, and they have struck a deal with Drusus, people he trusts, and smugglers to take them to their secret hold amongst the stars to do business with them and other xenos. They enter the suite and carry the sleeping Drusus into their autocarriage. They take him away to a public landing pad and park the car inside of an arvus lighter. This lighter will fly away.
The players have a couple of ways to follow this. They can try to talk Drusus in taking them with him. They might be able to do this by convincing him they’re oilers (see the Core Rulebook NPC description) sent by other Insuratti bosses to partake in the deal. They can make a deal with the owner, who is a one of the survivors of the Rosethorn cult. The Rosethorn was a BDSM club that served as the headquarters of Dark Eldar worshipping cultists. It was raided by the Rosa Initiative (a newer special enforcer institution) a few months ago. The cultist set up the inn at the behest of his alien masters to continue smuggling operations. The deal mentioned before can be the same one that Drusus and the Insuratti oilers he has set up with a room set up that they take a sedative in and be transported to where the Dark Eldar have been taking the smugglers. They can follow the robed Dark Eldar to their ship and attempt to sneak on it. The two of them would be busy flying the flyer for most of the trip. They could use their own ship to try to follow it, although this will be fairly difficult due to the paths and skill of the Drukhari pilots and the generally unknown path they would be taking. They could attempt to come back later to avoid Drusus. The main point is they need to find a way to get to the asteroid base
If for some reason they were to try to uncover the inn to arbitrators, enforcers, or other forces of the inquisition or attempt to kill the Dark Eldar, Drusus, or the cultist owner then the other inns doing this smuggling operation would still continue to exist. The PCs can try again at one of them but they may have their faces known. If the players were to leave the first situation, news of more gang killings would occur. The gang war would start to spread collateral damage to the citizens of the hive and the merchants and nobles that rule it. Arbitrators and possibly a puritan inquisitor would begin to look into the situation. If they have drawn the ire of anyone involved with the pulse rifles, then a hit squad using the weapons would be sent after them.
White Snake
There are two general ways to follow the smuggler’s tracks. Either sneak onto the arvus shuttle the xenos are using to transport the unconscious smugglers or attempt to follow them with a stellar-capable vehicle. Sneaking onto the arvus is facillitated by the nooks and crannies of the flighter being made to legally carry things in compartments or have special smugglers holds that could hide would-be stowaways. Trying to commandeer the flighter is also a possibility but depending on the experience of the party a poor idea. The flighter is flown by two kabalites (see the Enemies Without expansion book). Attempting to subdue them and forcing them to fly to their destination will also be trouble. As Dark Eldar, they see all other life forms as beneath them. This will make interrogation tests and intimidation tests harder (by a -10 to -20 penalty depending on the context of the tests) to succeed at. One could look through their nav-cogitators and try to find the base that way. It would take either a tech-use test to narrow down where they were going or a scrutiny test to look through the logs and find their location. If hiding acolytes or imprisoned acolytes are discovered by the Drukhari, they will be questioned by Kaevana Serrata. Serrata is the true-born daughter of an archon working in Askellon. The interrogation will not be pleasant and they are likely to be killed.
The other method, following the xenos as they fly has its own difficulties. The base the xenos are flying to is hidden within an asteroid floating in a belt. The operator of the stellar vehicle will have to avoid their gaze, fly through dangerous space, and be able to keep track of them. These will all require challenging tests to do. If your acolyte party are not exceptional pilots, then having an NPC either being hired or given to fly can help them.
Either way, the route to the base starts around Desoleum’s outer atmosphere. The xenos have forged clearances with the local ports and starbases. They will advance past the moon and enter the general vacuum. After an hour of travel, they will find themselves flying near astral bodies that generally keep orbit to the system’s sun. Past those is a large asteroid belt that orbits a red dwarf. The asteroid belt moves quickly that a deft pilot is needed to traverse and navigate through it yet generally keeps to a pattern of space debris that one who recognizes it can more easily fly through it (with a +20 bonus after either a challenging [+0] awareness, navigation [stellar], or scrutiny test). Entering the belt is harder than leaving the belt. The base is found on one of the larger asteroid bodies that looks like its is a compacted fragment of a moon. The base itself is about the size of a small Terran or Civilized World city, and is found nestled within a deep crevice. The location along with radiation interference from the astral phenomena along with cloaking by the Drukhari themselves keeps it hidden.
The lighter docks in a cloaked base inside a large asteroid’s surface. This is a Dark Eldar outpost and xenos black market. It is known as Munla Vaul, or Vaul’s Mold after the dead smith god of the Eldar. The Dark Eldar of the Seratta Kabal own the place and enforce their wills upon it. Numerous alien species, outcasts, and mutants can be found here including the Vespid, Greet, G’nosh, Rashan, Hrud, beastmen, pirates of every shape and size, orks, mercenaries, and more. The base is more similar to a human starbase’s than the labyrnthine domicile of Commoragh, the Drukhari’s home. The layout is shaped like an Eldar symbol where the symbol makes up halls that then spill out into concourses, domiciles, and other locations. The Drukhari have the place split up per race and affiliation as to keep hostilities to a minimum. This of course separates the high and mighty Dark Eldar from the rest of the refuse of the galaxy. The main marketplace and where the majority of deals are done by the Drukhari and those inside Munla Vaul lies at the center where a confluence of passages is. This is where a tribe called The Far Kindred, a kroot kindred, does their deals with the Dark Eldar. The end of the tail is one star port out of Munla Vaul.
The kindred The Far Kindred generally do things similarly to many Kroot kindreds. They are a group of around a hundred led by a shaper named Ku’tep and generally seek to consume different species to gain a variety of strong traits. They are rather far flung from the Tau Empire and their lower numbers are due to attrition over years of fighting and hunting. They are often hired as mercenaries where their main rewards are the ability to gain more genetic material to advance themselves. This is where the Drukhari come in. They trade different species for slaves and weapons from the Kroot. They have no need for the weapons but their find slaves valuable for their agony-based culture that keeps the eye of Slaanesh away. Also personal amusement. The Far Kindred roams Askellon raiding ships and relatively isolated worlds. Their main source of slaves are humans from frontier worlds like Havarth among others. Their lack of protection from the Imperial navy and their primitive defenses makes them easy to gather. The weapons The Far Kindred gives to the Drukhari they pass on to smugglers to engage in their proxy war against a grand Chaotic conspiracy known as the Tarot. The Tarot was allied to them in the past but betrayed them once their use was done. The Tarot also have a vested interest in the criminal underworld of Desoleum among other planets as one facet of their grand plan. The Gach Clique is a breakaway from the strongest cartel on Desoleum, the Insurrati. The Insurrati needed extra firepower to deal with the Gach Clique’s resources that are provided by the Tarot including sorcerous means. The Drukhari supply pulse weaponry in an attempt to dash the Tarot’s attempt to control the underworld out of spite and to keep them off balance without using Drukhari resources.
The Far Kindred has Munla Vaul as a secondary base away from their ships, which are also their source of pulse weapons from the Tau Empire, hidden away from prying eyes; Drukhari, human, or otherwise. The Far Kindred has a profitable relationship with the Drukhari as they have access to many species in the materium along with possibly never before seen creatures within the webways. However, shaper Ku’tep is not naïve. He knows the perfidious reputation of the Dark Eldar. He also cares deeply for his kindred. He does not harbor any ill will towards humans or the slaves he gathers but sees them as a means to an end. Ku’tep can be convinced to stop dealing with the Drukhari although it will be difficult to simply talk him out of a profitable deal for him and his kindred. A similar deal where another could take the place of the Drukhari such a radical inquisitor or tolerant rogue trader from the acolytes’ past would help make his decision and make persuasion easier. They want genetic material. It does not matter who gives it to them (unless they are corrupted genetically like the tyranids or genestealers or spiritually like Chaos).
Alternatively, the kindred could be ejected from Munla Vaul or wiped out. It would take a silver-tongued acolyte, but the master of the place, Kaevena Serrata, could be convinced that the Kroot are more trouble then they’re worth. She could alternatively be convinced that the proxy war is inefficient, or that the Kroot are conspiring against her. She is a shrewd mistress and will not be led easily. Killing Kaevana will draw the ire of her father Furemahr. It will also be rather hard with the sslyth, mandrakes, and incubi protecting her.
The kindred could also be gotten rid of more directly. Killing the shaper will not solve anything, as one of the hundred kroot will step up to his place and have the acolytes hunted down. A challenge with the condition to leave Munla Vaul and stop dealing with the Dark Eldar can be given by the acolytes. The shaper will not accept one on one duels but will accept an even combat challenge in a setting of his choosing. This can be facillitated by the Dark Eldar having a complete virtual reality training chamber or take place on a local unmarked jungle planet. An even number of combatants will start a kilometer apart and have to kill eachother. The Kroot being cunning hunters will use traps, stealth, and pack tactics to destroy their enemies. All the kroot must be killed and a piece of their body returned to the kindred to convince them to follow the conditions set by the combat.
The Drukhari will allow the acolytes to roam free as long as they do not know that they are inquisitorial agents. If they are, they will be hunted down by warriors of the Drukari and the beasts subjugated by the Drukari including ssylths and mandrakes.
Calling the navy or some other fleet on Munla Vaul will result in casualties due to the asteroid belt. The Drukhari will also leave the place and continue their dealing with the Kroot as Munla Vaul was a place of convenience to trade and not the lynchpin the trade was set on. Furthermore, it would mark the acolytes as targeted enemies of both the Dark Eldar and Kroot.
REWARDS2 Influence Gain
1000 XP
A piece of the Tau or Kroot armoury if radically inclined
A free arvus lighter or aquila lander if puritanically inclined.
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