This is a follow-on to my other adventure, 'Bastion's Fall'. If you've not played that, don't worry – Inquisitor Haeth's emergency beacon is reason enough for the Ordos to come running, regardless of where it happens. The mission would only occur where 'Scorpion' enters the sector, so will need to be a fringe system, but one with at least a little orbital traffic and a size sufficient to rate a small Officio Planetia, and, of course, the party to be there on other unconnected business. Make no mistake, this is one of those missions where a stupid choice can get you killed; not so much by 'Scorpion', who's already left by the time you arrive, but by Inquisitor Haeth's supposed 'secret weapon' and eventual executioner.
Whilst playing Bastion's Fall before Edge of Darkness is possible, it is important that the party have encountered the logicians before For I Am Thy Apocalypse or the control implants will be meaningless (of course, you could just write them out of your version of the campaign)
Introduction: The party should ideally be winding down from another activity, much like the beginning of Bastion's Fall. The key requirement is that they be either near a landing pad or a balcony (the latter probably more impressive!). In the case of our campaign they were at a meal in a spire-side restaurant, having just met up for the first time after a significant period of medicae leave. Assuming something similar, one member of the party – the nominated leader, if there is one, will be called to the restaurant's public vox terminal, where there is 'a gentleman who wishes to speak to you urgently'. The screen shows a middle-aged man with a quite impressive selection of scars. His collar and shoulders are just visible, revealing scarlet carapace armour and inquisitorial emblems. It's difficult to make out anything behind him to suggest where he is. “Sir. My name is Lieutenant Tcheng of the Inquisitorial Guard. As of twelve hours ago, the warning beacon of an inquisitorial ship, the Infernus Sicarius, was activated in the fringes of the system. The beacon is transmitting an urgent, automated, request for assistance from an Inquisitor Haeth.” At this point an awareness test for any party member other than the one currently on the vox will pick out a distant roaring, howling noise. “It took some time to locate you, I'm afraid. We will be making a least-time transit to the outer system to investigate, and, according to the Officio Inquisitorus Planetia, you're coming with us.” Anyone who failed the awareness check the first time will now hear the roaring sound. It's getting steadily louder “We have diverted one of the System Defence Fleet's gunships to transport us. It will be crossing low planetary orbit in six minutes; we're going to rendezvous with it as it passes overhead under power.” The vox goes dead. This is of course – to anyone with any piloting skill, orbital mechanics background or frankly any common sense, ludicrous. The acolyte Tcheng talked to should have enough time to inform the others of what he's been told, and someone should just about have enough time to ask 'how are we supposed to get into orbit in six minutes?' as the howl becomes deafening, and the massive crimsonand-brass shape of a thunderhawk gunship lifts over the lip of the balcony, its nose ramp slamming open and an armoured figure (recognisable to the acoltye who took the vox message as Tcheng) is gesturing furiously for them to get on board. The party will have just enough time to get on board before the thunderhawk starts to lift clear, its ramp closing and its nose turning skywards. They may struggle to get themselves secured into one of the seats before the main plasma drives fire, throwing them spacewards with massive G-force (which may well cause some injury to the unprepared – the thunderhawk having been originally designed for Astartes, after all). Those acolytes in a shape to make useful observations will realize that Tcheng is far from alone there is a section of twenty-five inquisitorial stormtroopers strapped into the thunderhawk's seats along with them. The rendezvous with the gunship High Protector is likely to be equally violent – as Tcheng said, the gunship is accelerating out-system at maximum burn and it is not stopping for them. The landing is going to be rough, with the thunderhawk all but crashing in the gu nship's bay.
The Briefing: Tcheng will deliver a briefing once on board the High Protector. Note that he will always refer to the acolytes as 'sir' – an astute acolyte, or one with a suitable military or inquisitorial lore will realise that, as the only formally recognised inquisitorial acoltyes and without an explicator or interrogator along, they are the ranking officers on the mission. Tcheng will confirm this if asked but won't raise the subject himself unless he's waiting for them to make a decision – he assumes they know. He will still offer advice as required. “I'm afraid, sirs, that there is limited information to go on. We've been mobilized by the Officio on an emergency basis to investigate – not as part of a planned operation. Inquisitor Haeth is not a member of the Ordos Calixis, but from outside the sector. As a result the Officio Planetia doesn't have much information about what he's doing in the Calixis sector and the beacon doesn't give us much more.” Tcheng has no further information about Haeth. Questions about which sector or Ordo he's from will go unanswered. Which, given the truth (Ordo Sicarius) is probably better for the party's sanity. “What we do have to go on seems to have triggered a major alert. The Inquisitor had disabled a wanted ship called the Wanderlust, and moved in to board it.” Tcheng will be aware that the Wanderlust was involved in the Bastion incident but doesn't know any details. “It's my understanding that Inquisitor Haeth hunting for someone, and that the Wanderlust had rendezvoused with another ship from out-sector and taken them on board. We don't really know whom, though. That's......almost all I've been told, sirs. No doubt someone will want to know what 'almost' means... “We do have one thing; a threat warning. Hereticus Terminus Ultima, sirs.”
The Wanderlust
The Wanderlust is still drifting through space, disabled when the High Protector intercepts it. Despite auspex surveys, the SDF gunship can't tell much. • • • • •
The ship is not reacting in any way to the High Protector's presence. The ship's drives are still radiating energy, but many areas seem powered down. The ship's atmosphere seems intact. There is very little sign of external damage, aside from a possible lightweight torpedo strike near the engines. The Infernus is docked internally at the forward airgates. The ship is significantly smaller than the High Protector, much less the Wanderlust, and is all but invisible against the larger ship's hull. The vessel is a sleek, stealthy black pinnace.
Tcheng will recommend a hostile breaching action using the thunderhawk's assault capabilities rather than arriving via the existing airgates – not knowing the situation he would rather deploy into the defensible cargo holds and get as good an idea as possible of the status on the Wanderlust than walk into an unknown ambush. Anyone with enough sense to ask how the miniscule Infernus could 'disable' a ship of Wanderlust's size – especially one known to be more heavily armed than it appeared (as the Bastion found out to its cost) – with a single shot should be in line for a post-mission xp award. Assuming they survive finding out, of course.
What happens aboard the Wanderlust will be largely a result of the player's actions. Tcheng will try to make sure some sense is maintained – splitting his men into five five-man sections, and trying to maintain a logical deployment; if the thunderhawk remains docked, team five will remain behind to secure it. Things that may happen in the cargo decks: •
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The troops will deploy into the empty hold. The hold is dark, the deck largely powereddown, but all doors, etc. are operational. The thunderhawk has some close-ranged auspex which will warn of movement in the adjacent few sections. The outer cargo decks are empty, but entering the inner cargo holds, the party or the stormtroopers on point will locate some of the crew's corpses. There are nearly a dozen bodies, and appear to have been killed by multiple laceration wounds. One or two have drawn sidearms, and there are a couple of las-burns on nearby walls, but no indication that they have hit anything. An awareness test will notice that one of the corpses has no obvious wounds, but has bled profusely from the nose and mouth (although not enough to cause death simply by blood loss). One of the cargo decks is not empty, but contains several crates. Investigating them will reveal high-quality but fairly generic laboratorium equipment, and (curiously) a few nullboxes – stasis chests used for transporting valuable perishables. The party will come under attack by a large group of the crew (enough to get both stormtroopers and crew involved in the fight), armed with whatever weapons they could secure from arms lockers. They think nothing of attacking the stormtroopers, despite the latter's advantage in weaponry, but they will attempt to fight past them, to reach the thunderhawk and a hope of escape, not to fight to the death. A few of them will not, but will stolidly continue to support them, even in the face of certain death. There will be something rather blank about their expressions. If any of the strangely fearless enemies are killed in a way so as to make a significant portion of their innards...ah...open to inspection, an awareness test will notice a logician control implant threaded around what remains of their spine.
Once the party reach the main corridors of the Wanderlust: • •
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Tcheng will establish a perimeter of stormtroopers on a continuous patrol around the entrance to the holds. The obvious destinations are; the Bridge, the Engineerium, and the airgate where the Infernus is docked. Intelligent acolytes realizing the Logician connection may ask where the medicae bay will be, otherwise it may be encountered en route to one of the above. As the party emerge into the ship, the thunderhawk will detect another large group heading to the party on the edge of its auspex range. Before they make contact, though, they will cease heading directly towards the party, instead dispersing in numerous different directions at speed. As they do so, the thunderhawk will start to lose the auspex contacts, and within a half a minute they have all disappeared – interesting as they were still within maximum range. Investigation will find another dozen or so very recently slaughtered crew, killed with a mix of lacerating claw-marks, and single, larger cuts.
The bridge: • The bridge is accessible only across a large, open chamber intended to form a defensible killing ground before a pair of massive doors. If Tcheng and his men are present, they will advance by leapfrog, hellguns leveled at the hatch. • One door is closed, but the other has seemingly been ripped clear of its frame by two massive discharges of energy against the hinges. The area around it is shredded with las and projectile fire. • The inside of the bridge is a charnel house, and well worth a fear test to enter. There are (if anyone has the stomach to count) upwards of twenty bodies, and a similar number of guns – many damaged – and a large quantity of ejected cartridges mixed in with the gore and torn uniforms. • Some of the bodies appear to have been killed explosively, with heads and torsos pulped, whilst others are dismembered or disemboweled by small blades. Again, one or two seem to be unwounded, but have bled heavily. • The bridge's systems are shattered by gunfire which seems to have gone in just about every direction. A tech-use test may be able to resurrect a few key systems. • Some of the captain's records are encrypted but can be downloaded into a data-crystal, if not read. • The security pict captures of the massacre are not functional. • The vox captures are functional. There are a number of panicked voices, cries of alarm, two Whumpf sounds followed by the deafening Clang of the hatch collapsing and the report of massed small arms fire of every calibre from the crew. The sound of gunfire is quickly joined by screaming, which quickly overtakes and replaces the shooting. The entire recording is fourteen seconds long. • A torn-open maintenance grating suggests the exit route taken by the attacker. The Engineerium: • The engineerium is as full of dead as the bridge, but there wasn't even a token resistance here – most of the dead don't even have drawn weapons, or seem to be fleeing in panic. • There appears to be no structural damage to the engines within the ship, although several control systems are destroyed. • An inspection of the vast space of the plasma drive chamber, stretched out beneath the engineerium deck, will reveal an area of serious damage to the outer wall just visible – presumably corresponding to the torpedo impact. There is no indication of an explosion of any size. The Medicae Bay: • There is a small group of guards outside the bay – all dead, and the deck is awash with blood. The apparent leader of the group was armed with a pair of exceptionally well crafted mono-bladed swords, at least one of which has actually drawn blood before it was broken in half. It is still clutched in a hand by rigor mortis. The other has been used to pin his disemboweled corpse to the door of the medicae bay, presumably whilst he was still alive since his free hand is gripping the hilt, trying to dislodge it. • A spattered trail of blood-drops runs between the door and a single, heavily stained patch about seven inches across in the centre of the chamber. • Investigating the chamber will locate several biologica sample vessels containing Logician control implants.
What has happened to the Wanderlust? The initial clue is Inquisitor Haeth's ship (which the GM is advised not to draw attention to by referring to it most of the time simply as the Infernus). Haeth was an Inquisitor of the Ordo Sicarius, and his ship delivered a single shot to the Wanderlust's stern – but not a simple antiship torpedo; the shot had a payload significantly more deadly than mere explosive. The boarding torpedo contained a rapidly-awakening Eversor Assassin, who, having slaughtered most of the crew, is now hunting down the survivors. He does not appear on the motion sensors (hence the crew seemingly 'disappearing'), and has expended the ammunition of his executioner pistol – the bolt rounds and the toxin needles into engineerium and bridge crew – after meltabombing the hatch and some of his earlier 'kills' of loose crew. Subsequent kills will be made with the neurogauntlet and powered blade. The weapons availible to the assassinorium are of unique design – the bolt rounds, for example, are equivalent to Astartes calibre but are caseless and fragment far more completely than normal, so even an ardent weapons expert is unlikely to identify them. The order of events and final outcome will be largely dependent on the order in which the party visit various areas, which they delegate to the stormtroopers, if they split up, etc, etc. Any stormtroopers which head off on their own in a single five-man team should be slaughtered without getting a chance to report back. Most important will be at what point the party figure out what they are sharing the ship with and what the fastest way off the ship at the time is. Anyone who tries to face down the Eversor is going to die – this is not even a career-path end assassin; the creature is a living weapon and can match eldar for agility, purestrain genestealers for combat potential, and space marines for the firepower and weaponry carried. It will be an especially impressive death, but it would be death nontheless. Also bear in mind that with the sophisticated auspex systems in the sentinel array, and the assassin's intelligent – if quite, quite psychotic – mind, cunning traps are not going to work either. Some clues that you might drop from events above if you decide you want people to figure it out (personally I'd wait for a reveal on the Infernus) • The Wanderlust's crew were fleeing • They were fleeing something that terrified them more than armed Inquisition stormtroopers • Whatever it was was fast enough to kill over twenty people in fourteen seconds • Whatever it was was able to hold a sword and is capable of deliberately inflicting a painful death. • Some of the kills were with blades of varying size, others with detonating explosives, others with something that left no external mark but caused catastrophic internal bleeding – a poison? • Whatever it was does not show up on a motion sensor auspex • Inquisitor Haeth fired a single torpedo into the Wanderlust's hull, which did not appear to detonate. He felt this rendered the ship 'disabled' to the point that he was prepared to board the much larger ship.
The Infernus Sicarius Airgate: Arriving in the docking airgates below the prow, the party will find yet more dead crew. However they will also find something unexpected in the airgate's reception chamber – Inquisitor Haeth and his bodyguards. The inquisitor is a tall, dark-haired man with regal features and a scar running from eye to lip. He is dressed in jet-black segmented armour trimmed in gold, with a crimson cloak over one shoulder and the sigil of the Inquisition proudly displayed on his breastplate. At his side is sheathed an elegant powered sword, the guard formed into the image of a winged skull transfixed from crown to jaw by the blade. In all, he is the perfect image of the inquisitor as a noble guardian of humanity. It is an effect only slightly spoiled by the expression of shock on his face, and the fact that his throat has been torn out, drenching the front of his armour in gore. Any player who really knows their obscure imperial heraldry may recognise the symbol of a winged skull with a dagger through the top of it as the emblem of the Officio Assassinorium. There are also two dead bodyguards – inquisitorial stormtroopers, but in a black uniform significantly different to Tcheng's men. He cannot identify them. Anyone investigating their corpses will find them armed with heavy-calibre autoguns, loaded with tranquiliser rounds of an unknown pattern. A solitary expended casing can be found next to one of the bodies, the round lodged in the opposite wall.
The Infernus Sicarius: The Infernus Sicarius is small, and much of its internal volume is taken up by engines, sensors, and its blind field generator (a stealth system sometimes used by smaller ships). The ship's crew is small and consists of various high-level acolytes and bodyguards, who have put up quite a fight – the Infernus' single command deck is shattered and most of the systems totally inoperable. At the centre of the bridge is a vast, frost-coated area drenched in now-frozen blood where a body bearing both the insignia of an interrogator and a Scholastica Psykana sanctionate has been brutally dismembered. There are a few functional cogitators; the following items may be obtained given tech-use tests and time •
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There is a code-ident for the individual Haeth was pursuing – 'Scorpion'. It means nothing to Tcheng or the party, and nothing is on file about them on file at the Officio Planetia, but Scintilla may have more. The logistics cogitator identifies the expenditure of a lightweight boarding torpedo and notes that 'stasis chamber' is now offline. There are a large number of encrypted files relating to 'Scorpion' from Haeth's journals. They can be downloaded but not opened Anyone finding these will be surprised as they shouldn't be accessible from the main system; Godrich unlocked them before he died fighting the Eversor in case anyone from the inquisition found them. Accessing Godrich's files will trigger an auto-recorded pict capture:
“The Warchild code was ineffective. We can't control it. Ship's engines crippled, saviour pods crippled, both by someone on board the Infernus Sicarius. Scorpion planned this; seeking to kill his pursuers. I don't know how he did it, but – but the code didn't work! We can't control it! Whoever you are, you have to get these files to the Inquisition before it catches you. My name is Interrogator Godrych of the Ordo Sicarius Terra, and I am ordering you to get out. Get out NOW.” Anyone still unclear as to what's going on should have the Ordo Sicarius' particular area of responsibilty (overseeing the Officio Assassinorium) quietly explained. I recommend making sure they are not drinking anything at the time. At this point, 'run away and warn someone' is the entire mission. The Sicarius is wrecked and not going anywhere, so the acolytes need to get back to the thunderhawk – or try and flee to somewhere it can come to them (it's an assault boat, remember, any thin hull will do if it's already undocked). The stormtroopers will do their best and their best will be nowhere near good enough. A single, through-the-explosions-and-death view of the leering skull mask looking directly at them should be enough for most parties...
Debriefing: The acolytes will be grilled at length, in person, by Inquisitor Varaak himself. Every item or scrap of data recovered from the Wanderlust will be taken for analysis (no, you can't keep Haeth's mastercrafted power sword if you thought to take it!) There isn't much to tell them in response – the Ordos are grateful to know the Logicians may have been involved in the loss of the Bastion as it gives them somewhere to focus their hunt, but otherwise they still don't have much to go on. Acolytes are encouraged to speculate and try to recreate what happened, especially why Warchild (presumably the Eversor's stand-down code) didn't work. The more outlandish and innaccurate the theory the better – there's no need to correct mistakes. Of course the real reason will depend very much on who or what 'Scorpion' is...and that's up to you! Some possible ideas to get their brains aching: •
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The arch-psyker: Could the assassin have been tampered with, either psychically or organically? A logician implant might work, but how in the Throne's name could it have been implanted – especially in the time available? The hidden heretic: One obvious possibility – Haeth was given the wrong 'stand-down' code for the assassin. Of course that could be accidental, but would you believe that for one moment? War within the Ordo: One that the players might not think of – if a key doesn't work, you might have been trying it in the wrong lock! Is it possible, however unlikely, that there were TWO assassins aboard the ship – and what does it mean if there were?
