I forgot to update the unwashed, heretical masses as to the results of last week’s Dark Heresy game.
When we last left our Inquisitors, they had failed to chase a renegade Space Marine (dedicated to Nurgle), and his companion/slave creature – some sort of mutant who looked like a large dog with too many joints. The Marine had stolen about 60 Gene Seeds, a hyper-valuable commodity (the things that make Space Marines go).
They were tasked with recovering the gene seeds by Markus, an Apothecary of the Space Marine chapter the traitor hailed from. Markus was. . . significantly injured.
In the process of this chase, about 100,000 civilians were killed after the Chaos Marine let loose a plague and the area was firebombed from orbit.
Last week’s session was spent persuing various levels of investigation. The players went about trying to locate possible Nurgle cults. They believed, also, that the Nurglites were planning to implant the gene-seeds, which would require access to a well-equipped lab.
After some really good investigation rolls, they had multiple “close encounters” with the cultists, all of which ended. . . poorly. As in, they made contact, and set up an ambush, but the ambush was seen, and the bad guys made off. And then purged their warren.
However, it was during the forensic evaluation of the purged warren that they made thier first big break: they discovered the dog boy creature spying on the forensic investigation, wearing a chameleon cloak.
So they killed it. Mostly by accident (KBK’s character being very vicious with a sword). They then discovered three things:
1) This was not the same “dog boy” they had seen. It was smaller, less mature.
2) It wasn’t actually any sort of “living” creature that we normally think of as being “alive”. The dog boys are closer to being . . . servitor. . . creatures, and it was pretty much a large, dog-shaped disease.
3) It was also some sort of incubator. Inside of the dog boy’s chest there was a small, growing fetus. . . like. . . thing. With a full beard that was all matted and gross from the disease-gore.
That’s when they realized that the dog boys were incubators for the gene-seeds: the fetus-thing was actually a growing Space Marine clone. And that there wasn’t going to be a lab to be found, because the dogboys were the lab.
Good times.
Also, they’re now about 90% certain that the first Space Marine, Markus, is also a traitor.
The answer to that question, however, remains in the future.
Gripping stuff – your GM certainly seems to know his material!
Oh, this is my story. I’m running this one. We switch off GMing duties.
Oh right – well serious kudos to you then! Have you read any of the latest fiction? There’s some really good Inquisition based books by Dan Abnett I’d recommend if you ever get writers block.
I love all the 40k fluff, hopefully I’ll be running a game of Dark Heresy myself this year if my friend ever remembers to bring over his copy of the books (they’re like gold-dust over here, thanks to GW deciding to drop it’s support so I’ve not been able to track down a reasonably priced copy of my own)
Multiple traitor marines…? And a whole host more being incubated?
DOOMED. THEY ARE DOOOOOOOMED.
Their current theory is that Jeremiah is a Nurgle cultist (which evidence bears out) and that Markus is dedicated to Tzeentch.
However, part of this is based on discrepancies in the way that Markus is acting versus standard Space Marine procedure. Only, the Space Wolves don’t follow the Codex Astartes: they do what they want based on the required tactics of the field.
So maybe he’s not a traitor!