After my disastrous affair with the online RP group that met in college and had some interesting ideas cut short by what appeared to be no more than a simple contest of popularity, I decided that I might just want to move on and try, try again. Life's full of these little moments of deciding that failure isn't absolute and that trying, while uncomfortable at times, isn't the worst thing a person can do for themselves. Now, there were plenty, and I do mean plenty of game groups meeting at the local college, more groups even than the local gaming stores. You see, the gaming stores were pretty much ninety five to ninety seven percent given over to Warhammer, fantasy and 40k, Warmachine and other things similar. I can understand why, having a bunch of people sitting around buying nothing while pretending to be dwarves can't exactly be prime for business. However, even as these games are fun to play, and I do admire their universes, I didn't have the money then to invest large sums into little plastic men and 40 dollar tanks.

Now, at this point I may have to go on a slight tangent. This was a bit more than a two years ago, I realized that yesterday I had the timing off. Much like how you get used to saying "oh, just a year ago or so" in the preamble of a story and long enough time passes for you to realize that the "year or so ago" is already approaching five years in the past. My apologies in that regard. So, if you'll forgive me that error I suppose I'll get to the main point after rambling some.

There were five DMs (or storytellers if you prefer that term) who ran a campaign co-operatively. It didn't start off as this large cooperative process but rather out of circumstance. You see, the school I was attending had this really large library that some very kindly family donated. It had six floors full of every book or resource you might ever need on any topic you might fathom. On the third floor there were these half-dozen rather impressive study rooms all grouped together. These study rooms were on the newer side of things and impressively furnished to say the least. I was told that six months prior to my scholastic endeavors there some nice people gave the library some money to spend on 'necessary improvements', and seeing that they had everything anybody might ever need, they spent it on something extra nice: study rooms for students who had study groups.

Now I'm not going to say that student's are likely to twist anything away from its intentional purpose on a whim, but certainly we got more out of the rooms in recreational behavior than actual study. You see, nobody ever used these study rooms, all the study groups meet in more communal areas of the library, they met in the atrium and the coffee bar and other nice places where someone might have ready access to coffee, snacks and even go outside to indulge in nicotine should the need present itself. This left these study rooms nearly completely unused, and the library was thinking of turning them into storage space for 'visting collections' of books when the DMs happened upon them.
The Library had this policy that one had to reserve the room to use it, nothing really special in those regards. You didn't have to exactly tell the librarians what you were working on, but only that you needed the space to work on something and reserve it with your signature along with some estimation of the time required to have the space. The first DM, whose name I must sadly admit I forget, decided that one of these rooms would solve his problem of never being able to find a good place for all of his players to meet. And they were fine rooms, one and all. Each room was spacious enough, nearly soundproof but not 'stuffy' as some soundproof places tend to be. There was a large conference table made of some sort of resin or plastic and an overhead projector. There were many large, comfortable black leather chairs, the kind with rollers that would sink into the carpet had it not been that corporate sort of pseudo-carpet that's more concrete than fiber.

The First DM set up shop there far before my time and was joined, in time, by another who used the adjacent conference room. By the time I got involved in this little group, which was by no means small in terms of attendance, there were five DMs using five of the six provided conference rooms, every Tuesday from four-thirty PM to Nine-thirty PM. Now, as to why they were using the rooms at nearly the same time, you see, they eventually started talking to each other and sharing ideas. They started telling each other stories about their players, they started sharing notes on how they resolved this problem or that problem, how they handled this character or that, they spoke to each other over treasure and dragons and dungeons and all that general talk DMs will talk about quietly in the corner. Eventually one of them came up with the idea of running something the likes of which, individually none of them had tried previously.

A concurrent game wherein they were all DMing in the same setting.

Now, to avoid the complications inherent in this sort of thing, they divided the task evenly amongst themselves to prevent anyone from having to shoulder the majority of the work and not get to have the same amount of fun. Each DM invented a nation in this sprawling world they all shared, their players would be free to travel to each realm by simply walking to one of the other rooms, where they would be welcomed, pending prior approval of that group and that group's DM. There were some concerns though as to certain DMs getting "all the players" and others not having so many, so they each set to provide something 'unique' in order to appeal to as many different people as possible. It was some three months into this grand campaign when I decided I would try a hand at playing.

My friend Teddy, well hell, I haven't said much about the man yet. Then again I probably shouldn't as he's one of those individuals that really does like to not be the center of attention, he was wrapping school up at this point and I was only beginning. He was and Is a rather funny person, possessing a very sharp wit when he needs to have one. We had become acquainted by sharing some of the same elective courses during the previous semester. We both hated said courses and spent most of our time in the back planning to spend what little free time we had in pursuit of fun, what we could find of fun on a budget that was. He taught me to play 40k, and we spent many afternoons doing that, he allowing me graciously to borrow his army whenever I needed it in my few, and very sad attempts to best others in the local gaming store. I never did quite have a head for tactics.

Well, Teddy and I, we scouted a few of the gaming sessions, audited being more the correct term. We sat in the back and took notes on what DM was telling what sort of story, the players, the realms, and gathered what we could before trying to make the wisest decision concerning which game we were going to join. Here is the breakdown as I remember it:

DMs:

A - Game set in island nations peppered around the hemisphere, a long chain of volcanic islands that neatly bisects the planet, called the "kraken's spine". There are many pirates and ne'er do wells here that pretty much spend all day trying to organize the best way to loot and/or pillage each other and the mainland. This place is pretty much nothing but rogue central, and allows players to have some pirate themed games. The DM was a bit off, dresses with some similarity to what he assumed a 'modern pirate' would wear (which is in contrast to what I thought a modern pirate had, which is a t-shirt and an RPG). He makes sure that people who join his game have, and I am quoting the man directly here, "The Right Pirattitude".

B - Game set in the southern Hemisphere, a large, continent sized sprawling salt-desert that's pretty much hell on earth. There are trees that shoot spines at you like some sort of claymore mine and the denizens are nasty people that live underground. There are a few settlements in the desert and a few port trading cities. This place is dedicated to a very evil and somewhat unpleasant Sun god, one that gives his people cancer and withers crops. I suppose I might make a joke that this same god is probably the same one visiting Oklahoma six months out of the year, but then again, this was only a game. The civilized population rode on sand-skimmers which are yachts with outriggers that race across the salt-pan, and they tend to enslave anything that they come across. The entire civilized population of this place was pretty much lawful evil, also, there is apparently a large quantity of gold here, buried by some long-dead emperor of this place in a giant series of catacombs and adventurers brave this pretty unpleasant place to get closer to the 'motherlode'. DM was notorious for killing people, and had a very antagonistic view of the DM/Player relationship. Once presented a player with a chest, which was trapped with poison darts. Once that chest was opened and the trap sprung, there was a smaller and far more ornate chest made of Jade. It contained a smaller trap. Inside that chest was a chest the size of a bar of soap. It contained far more bees than should have been able to fit in a place that size.

C - Game also set in the Southern Hemisphere, set on a large mountainous island whose people have defended themselves time and time again from the predations of not only pirates but the slavers across the ocean. The people here live by the sword and die by the sword. Live is very cheap. The entire place seems to be largely inspired by Howard's Conan stories, which I loved so dearly as a child. There was little magic, but plenty nasty fighters that had learned in a hostile environment how to brutally remove all opposition with the pointy end of a sword. DM was welcoming to a point, but no wizards or sorcerers or anyone who used any form of magic in this setting, mainly because the superstitious locals thought you were bringing with you that evil sun god and promptly would try their hand at removing your head.

D - In the Northern continent there is a traditional high fantasy kingdom sprawled across a large, temperate climate. There are trees, there are forests, and mountains and dragons and keeps with princesses in them. The kingdom is ruled by a noble king that has no major beef with anyone in particular. There is magic, there are taverns and in them are wenches. The DM here is relatively new and decided that if nobody else was going to run something generic high-fantasy, he certainly would.

E - Another Northern Continent, this one was in ruins however. There was on one half the remains of a large, industrialized kingdom that had lost a war to the elves, who inhabited the other part, living in what was essentially described to be a tree the size of five or so Sears Towers. The DM here was very much in favor of magic in the traditional argument of tech vs magic. You were welcome to play here, but if you weren't an elf and you didn't happen to read the hundred-thousand-years of cyclical history he had written for the elves having nurtured humanity in the best interests of humanity, been shocked by humanity developing tools to destroy themselves and the natural world, and then having to cull humanity . . over and over again . . well, you were not so welcome in the group. Everyone here played something in 'tune with nature'.

So, we decided to join group D at first, because I didn't really have any want to die horribly or have my head cut off or be an elf. Not that I equate being an elf with being raped, but it certainly isn't my cup of tea. Now, to get one last thing out of the way before I begin the story 'proper', and I do apologize for having taken so long to lay out the ground-work here, but this part does somewhat come into play later.

There were rules common to all of the groups, and they were:
1 - Firearms, airships, and other technology does exist in this world but is rare, expensive, and likely to provoke reactions amongst certain populations.

2 - Magic, both Divine and otherwise does exist in this world, but in certain kingdoms it may provoke a negative reaction, or if in direct opposition to an existing deity (sand-castle continent setting) you are likely to end up being murdered.

3 - Character sheets must be approved before joining any group.

4 - You must meet with the DM of a particular group before attempting to transfer from one realm to another, so that that particular DM can do their best to interface with your previous DM so that he knows what storyline you're involved in.

5 - If you die, resurrections are possible, with the normal penalties unless otherwise specified by the DM.

6 - The Ruleset to be used by all is 3.5 Edition, D&D with some houseruling changes allowed.

7 - New characters are level 1 with 500 gold pieces to start.

9 - Level-Adjusted races are fine, within reason. (Up to the DM)

10 - What happens in one game will carry over to the next.

For those of you who have had the patience to read thus far, I thank you, and I will attempt to reward you with the story of what happened next.

Teddy and I joined this high fantasy kingdom in hope of finding some adventure and a way to get through a Tuesday afternoon with as much enjoyment as one might. Now, I had nothing special in mind when I made my character. I decided on Chaotic-Neutral human fighter who was employed as a caravan guard. He was tall, broad, and carried a rather imposing Greatsword. My goal was, in time, to have this fellow be the sort to be able to fight a whole room at once, cleaving through them in a few swipes before rescuing the princess or what have you. Pardon me for not remembering the precise layout of the character sheet but he was very, very strong, and very tough, but not particularly bright, charismatic, opinionated or anything else really. He was perfect for 'big friend with sword' material, which is what I played him as. My friend Teddy came up with a gnome bard that played an accordion and sung songs about live, love, and that road less traveled. Our DM informed us that "The Elves killed all the gnomes for giving humans the curse of industry." We found that a tad bleak, but the DM informed us that the DM of the Elf group said that the genocide of the gnomes was essential to his setting. Also, coincidentally, the elves are True-Good. I'm not certain how that works itself out and won't trouble anyone by asking for them to explain it to me, but it just didn't sit right with me. I don't think you can kill everybody that causes you the slightest bit of pain and then call yourself the good guy. Kind of why I don't agree with the war going on right now, but I'll save you the politics.

Teddy was troubled by a race having been obliterated for the purpose of back-story, but he let things go as he was apt to do. He created instead a Lute Playing human bard that played political tunes, his character was also designed to be a social monster, the sort of man that might ask "would you kindly choke yourself to death" and you would only be right set on doing just that. He had virtually no combat skills whatsoever, but he seemed alright with that. And so, we began our game.

Teddy and myself were in a tavern, where we met the other party members. One was an elf bard, which joined forces with Teddy and proceeded to rock the house. There were songs and jokes and performances one after another all in the name of good fun, fortune, and a few pieces of gold in our pockets. I spent my time drinking at the bar (something I've never really had the notion for in real life) and talking to the other character in the group, a half-orc barbarian. The barbarian's character proceeds to tell me his whole back story without preamble. I'm not sure if that's how barbarians are, or if that's how half-orcs are, or, if that's how this fellow develops a character. But, I listened, and politely. The story went like this: Elves on the giant-tree continent almost murdered all of the orcs, which are a hundredth their original population and in fear of the elves finishing the job.

At this point I looked to the DM, who nodded slowly from behind his DM screen and signed, saying "yes, that's part of the Elf history." I was going to ask who the elves hadn't killed in their attempts to make the world a more pointy-eared place when Teddy's character walks up to the bar, sits down, orders a round for everyone and then says to me in character "I think I know a way for us to become rich." Now, whereas I am not very keen on 'get rich quick' schemes in life, my character was neatly the opposite. Get rich quick appealed to the simple mercenary, who couldn't fathom a life without whores, and ale and those sorts of things. "How are you on starting wars?" the bard asks.

Now personally, I can't think of a much more horrible thing to do. However, in pursuit of coin and cleavage and all the things that go with fame and fortune, War is pretty profitable. Teddy's bard introduces the elf bard, a lady of some considerable experience in the world. She lets on that she's an expatriate of the Elf-Kingdom because she disagrees with their totalitarian government's view on 'lesser races', and 'things that disrupt natural harmony'. Basically the DM of the elf island was very peculiar and she joined this group as a way to play in a "more normal game", and that was fine. So, two bards, a Fighter and a Barbarian tromp around for a while and things are good.

After a month of playing every Tuesday for several hours, we had accomplished the following:

1 - Cleared out all bandits on a part of the King's highway, and killed their leader. I wish I could say the fight was spectacular, but I was more or less rolling exceptionally well and tended to cut people in half every time I tried, which was often.

2 - In reward for our good service (which was motivated largely because these bandits kept jumping out at us as we traveled, saying "NOT SO FAST, ADVENTURERS!" and not out of the kindness of anyone's heart) the local baron more or less used us as his 'go to' people to sort out what he needed doing.

3 - We went to war with another Baron's Army, this other guy having been a considerable pain in the royalty's side for not only having withheld taxes but greatly exaggerated the poor economic condition of his territory to escape the tax burden. This guy was a cheap-skate and his army was a hundred men wearing tattered leather armor and carrying rusted weapons. We picked them apart and then threw the Baron off the roof, pockets loaded with as much gold as he could carry. Teddy made a mint off the tune "The Flying Baron of Hurleytown" (the DM's name for that Barony. The original tune he sang in game was "free Falling", followed by "pennies from heaven" and so on, but I digress...) and things were pretty good.

4 - We were all now level three, and enjoying the advancement.

5 - We were beginning to be known as people who could get things done, and properly.

Now, the Baron was all too delighted to have helped the kingdom out a bit, as it did nothing but make his political station all the better, and was even more pleased to find that he had inherited the other baron's land and titles. There was a snag though, you see, there was a family member of the old barony that might come back into play and make things rather unpleasant, so we might have to go track this person down and more or less take them out of the picture. The good bard objected to assassination, but the person we were going after was a pretty nasty person all things considered. A crazy witch who used living sacrifices to stay young, raised armies of the dead and so on.

So, we set off to find this witch, who was coincidentally living in the pirate isles as a soothsayer and spiritual leader to one of the greater pirate nations.

Now, we have to transfer games which is all fine and well because this had been arranged prior and the pirate group was coming to our DM to pillage some coastal town and have some adventures there. We settled in and the Pirate DM, a rather jovial fellow with what I must admit is probably the second most incredible beard I have ever seen, begins to tell us of our journey. The ship we were chartered on sailed through several rough squalls, all of us failing our constitution checks (even the half-orc) to spill our guts over the side more than once. It is about three weeks into our journey when we spot land, a pirate encampment, and make for the dock. Our ship was nice, but not nice enough to target for piracy, as there was some local law about not robbing people on their first visit, just in the event that they might have something profitable to say or a kind proposal to make.

On the pirate island we quickly find the witch, or rather she finds us. She's sitting there on the dock, wailing, gnashing her teeth, frothing at the mouth and calling us dogs. She has this big, nasty pirate fellow behind her, and he has about twenty guys with muskets and cutlasses and eye-patches and peg legs behind him. I almost made a face at the reference to peg-legs but I let it slide. You get used to this sort of thing. Now, apparently the Pirate DM had this large campaign set up wherein we would have to use one faction to fight another and enjoy a large amount of politicking by proving ourselves to the pirates and then leading them against the lady's faction, which was considerable concerning her patron. Instead, the half-orc got mad and charged up the dock.

I followed. Teddy followed me and the elf rolled her eyes, then got out her crossbow. Now, the half orc was almost on the lady when he was obliterated by a fusillade of musket fire. I've seen people go out in worse ways than that, but as it turns out the half-orc player was largely tired of playing the silly barbarian and wanted to try something else out. This seemed a fitting enough end for him. The Half-Orc was retired and the pirates were reloading. My comrade had bought me the time I needed, so I basically ran the lady through, and with her still on the blade I ran the pirate king through, and then just kept swinging. The two bards at my back were peppering people with crossbow bolts as I managed this rather spectacular charge up the dock. See, it was too narrow to do anything other than jump off the side or run from the back. Everyone in the middle was waiting their turn and everyone in front was engaged by a bull rush that just didn't seem to want to stop. I swung and chopped and soon enough the dock was clear. We decided it would be best to restock the ship and return home. The pirate DM clapped his hands, saying we "had the right Pirattitude after all" and said we were welcome back any time.

After the session we asked our lady companion if she might elaborate on the peculiarities we'd been made aware of concerning the ELF-ISLAND DM, whom I shall call larry. She colored and said that "It's not worth bringing up." We assumed the worst.

The next session we were returned to our normal game group. Apparently the pirates had been successful and stole some princess off to ransom from one of the coastal baronies. Nothing that really did concern us in the slightest, though we were introduced to two new people in our group. Apparently the last of the elf's original group had left, leaving him temporarily bereft of players. They wouldn't say exactly why they decided to leave but it was assumed that it would be best if we didn't bring the subject up. We had two more elves to the party, another fighter with a name I couldn't pronounce and a female wizardess of some power. Now, they were both level five and we were now level 4, close enough to embark on some grand adventures.

While we had done the baron's work, he introduced us to two elves he had acquired the services of after they had fled their homeland of (unpronounceable gibberish from Tolkein). We paired up with them and were then given the mission to guard the baron as he made his way to the capital to see the King. There were troubles stirring and this Baron had the king's favor in solving problems. We escorted the Baron and halfway to the destination, there was a roadblock. A damn sight impressive roadblock it was too, about thirty trees blocking the road with just one fellow standing on a tree trunk, wearing all black robes and seemingly surrounded in shadow. Now, Teddy started humming a few lines of that Johnny Cash Song "The man in black" but we kept focused and approached this stranger that had seemingly blocked our path. The man said something to the tune of "may the sun burn your soul" and then began to unleash rays of light upon us that was more or less orbital bombardment. I found myself at half hit points rather swiftly and this fellow with the robes chanted while gesturing this way and that. Horses burst into flames, carriages went up in smoke, the grass blackened, and Teddy, bless his heart sang the "fuck you, pal" song and rolled a critical hit in the use of a crossbow. So, imagine this. Super evil cleric of the evil sun god begins raining down fiery wrath and suddenly finds himself troubled by a bolt sticking out of his sternum. This rallied the group and we soundly cut him into little pieces, buried them separately to prevent anyone from finding it, made sure our employer was okay (which he was, but slightly singed) and continued to the capital.

The king gave us a task, to set out to the continent of desert, and to try to recover a lost gem that might help his wizards do something wizardly. It would pay well, though we were cautioned to not reveal ourselves to be agents of the kingdom because a war wasn't exactly what the King had in mind. We told the king about the man who shot fire and light, and the King admitted that he knew of that and other incidents wherein people from this Southern hell-hole of a kingdom were beginning to venture north to attempt to convert the 'goodly peoples' to the sun god of shake-n-bake. We armed and equipped ourselves and the next week we were under the care (or lack thereof) of a very sinister DM.

We soon learned that the desert was hot, full of traps, dangerous fauna and flora, that the locals were all cheats, crazy stereotypical salespeople. Teddy tested the dangers of the city by walking up to a man and bluffing the crowd into thinking that man was quite important, a celebrity of sorts. The crowd quickly murdered the man and stole everything. We knew then that this place was not certainly anywhere near 'home', nor likely were we to find help. And it didn't help that the local religion was more or less made to be a poke at radical, extreme Islam. Having fought radical, extreme Islam first hand I found the whole thing to be both offensive, and pretty funny at the same time. I'll say this, the man knew how to effect a good parody. The clerics would stand up on these towers, towers made of copper to reflect the bright sun and remind people to cast their eyes down in submission. These fellows would then bring 'light' to the people by burning folks they considered not particularly devout. For example, some kid who keeps playing instead of praying, boom, light from the sky and fire. Some lady showing too much skin, fire. Some merchant with too many crazy camels, fire. We managed to procure supplies and a guide, and set off to crack open some ancient tomb that was, I shit you not nothing but traps. It must have been at one point the national trap museum because everything was more or less out to kill us. There was a chair that exploded, a rug that tried to eat me and enough swinging pendulums of death, pitfalls, darts from keyholes and other such nonsense that we eventually stopped trying to go into the damn place. Teddy said he had an idea and that he would return. He wrote a furious note to the DM, who read it, laughed, and rolled some dice.

As we rested back at base camp trying to work the trap poison and everything else out of our system, here comes Teddy from the nearby town with a few hundred slaves, which he had purchased with his Bard savings. He tells them all that he will, on pain of death, free them if they can make it to the end of the dungeon and back. The slaves, believe him because he's a charismatic bastard with one of those fancy prussian moustaches, what with the wax on the tips.

The slaves pour in, talking happily amongst themselves about no longer having to work in the salt mines for a living and being able to raise a family. The DM really poured it on that these people were genuinely hopeful. We are told that three hours later, a single elderly woman comes out riddled with crossbow bolts, she's holding a gem in her outstretched hand, which she clutches tightly as she dies in the burning sand. There's a moment of silence as the group realizes the cost of what they've done, all of us being glad that there are no paladins. Teddy pries the gem free and pockets it, before saying "c'mon, lets go before somebody shows up." This, made us all laugh. The Dm was laughing and we were having a good time talking about how roguish our characters had become despite our earlier intentions of having characters of dynamically different alignments. Survival makes monsters in small ways out of all of us, I do suppose.

The next session, we're back with our original DM. So we manage to get our gem and get back to the King. There aren't really any major obstructions other than a few stops to replenish our money after Teddy spend the majority of his funds on 'that slave army which saved us considerable trouble'. Bards being bards, he immortalized the slave's struggle in the burning lands, willing to do anything to free themselves from the oppression of their gods and the wicked society of that place. He sung a song about how the people all sought a gem that would grand one wish, the last slave alive, by this time in the epic ballad, an escaped slave trying to save her family, made the wish of 'being free of this place' which resulted in her prompt death on the dry, hot sand.

The song was a tear-jerker, at least in game terms because high rolls resulted in the song having spread rather quickly through the kingdom, a top-20 hit if there was such a thing in this setting. It made Teddy wealthy and the rest of us roll our eyes. We didn't precisely want to let the truth get in the way of us being wealthy, so we kept our mouths shut. When we returned to the king he took our gem and told us that it was an instrumental piece in a plot of his which he could now make us aware of because we had proven ourselves.

Also, because we were of the sixth level now and capable of handling the nonsense that followed. See, there were some problems behind the scenes and they were coming to a front.

At this point, we'd been playing for months and some of the DMs had changed. The low-fantasy Conan fellow got a full time job as an intern in order to pursue his career and pretty much had to pack up and leave. His players filtered to a few other games but largely left, going their separate ways after having their fun in a country where stabbing was as common as breathing. Not much ever really got accomplished in their campaign but everyone had a good time. Now, you might have picked up on the eccentricities of the Elf-homeland DM fellow, whom the other DMs had taken to calling "Howard Hughes" due to the man's rather disgusting personal appearance and awkward habits. I'm not one to try to judge most people, as that tends to backfire. However, this man was insistent that the culling of humanity AND the genocide of the gnomes still allowed his people to remain good aligned. This same fellow would, I'm told, later see AVATAR in the theaters a few dozen times, and start a LARP at the university where people wore blue paint, tails, and 'saw' each other as much as possible. But, that's just a rumor for as much I know.

>F5 F5 F5 F5

Dave, you are a god-king among men. Please continue.

>Once presented a player with a chest, which was trapped with poison darts. Once that chest was opened and the trap sprung, there was a smaller and far more ornate chest made of Jade. It contained a smaller trap. Inside that chest was a chest the size of a bar of soap. It contained far more bees than should have been able to fit in a place that size.

I'm so stealing this.

You're awesome, bro. Keep going.

Well, this elf-DM had run his original players off and scared many others out of the gaming community on campus completely. He wasn't exactly friendly, but what made it so bad is that you had to adopt his mindset or you were pretty much not going to live very long in his game world. You see, his elf god was the sort that expected you to walk around, walk tall and proud and carry a huge-ass glaive. He would try to describe the idyllic elf community in 'supertree' but all he ended up doing was describing this society wherein the King was this brilliant, millennia old effeminate man-child and all the women were "Amply blessed in beauty", although he tended to describe them in far greater detail on that aspect, so much as that female gamers would promptly leave and the fellows felt uncomfortable as this man went on a tangent about breasts for fifteen uninterrupted minutes. Now, the games that this man had run were largely centered around either going into the ravaged human lands on the continent to stop some gun-toting band of 'industrialized humans" from "meddling with the forces of nature" or exploring old dungeons adapted from the dozen or so adventure books he kept in a travel suitcase at his side.

Having run off polite company in his world, he put out flyers for his campaign world of 'man vs nature' and inevitably attracted the wrong sort of people. See, game stores tend to have certain people that are persona-non-grata in status because they're weird, dangerous, mean or just unpleasant. Some of these unwelcome people eventually just get their act together and decide to be rejoin dork society with a different outlook. Others, well, they find the internet and get worse. He attracted the latter group. His new group was a trio, a woman that wore cat-ears clipped in her hair and a fox-tail clipped to her overall bottoms, a young Caucasian man who wore Karate Robes everywhere, addressed people in Japanese he'd supposedly taught himself through reading comics of some sort, and this other lady who didn't say that much out of character. She wore sweaters and had her hair cut like Dirty Harry's in those Magnum force movies. She played a 'catfolk'. I have no idea what a 'catfolk' is but I assume its your standard fantasy race put-animal-head-on-human-torso faire so I let it be. The other two folks played a centaur and a elf dual wielding katanas, respectively. This group was coming to our group as a "Diplomatic mission" escorting this powerful Elf Wizard who wanted to speak with "the King of Man".

We were there as an escort for our Baron, who was in attendance with the king as a consultant along with the other Barons. These people walk in, the catfolk talking about how beautiful her character's fur is, constantly reminding people that she has a baby cheetah in her satchel that she plays with, and which meows to get attention. The Centaur kept a wary eye on everyone, expecting treason from humans apparently. Her player, which Teddy described to me looking like "Dyke John Goodman" kept her arms folded defensively the whole time we played, only moving them from that position to roll dice. The fellow with the robes on kept making a point to bow with everyone, and drank tea, from a small cup, while 'staring us down'. Now, we were naturally expecting all hell to break loose, which is more or less what happened.

The elf "Ambassador" opened a box that magically transported the king to the Elf homeland to 'answer for crimes against elves' because he had supported to some extent industry in this fantasy kingdom. The rest of the players killed a few members of the royal family before setting a blaze to cover their path and disappearing, leaving Teddy, myself, and the elf bard. The other players of our group had long ago decided to go join the pirate game or strike their claim in the desert grim-sand setting. Well, if we weren't in trouble I don't know what, but the Barons called an emergency session of government and charged us adventurers with sorting things out. You see, our kindly benefactor, the Baron, was slain in the attack and as his last act he gave us his title and lands as we were "as kind as the family I never had." I turned to Teddy, and in character asked what should our course of action be, mainly because my character was a follower, not a leader.

It was then, that Teddy said "Well, I think it's about time for a change of pace." So we laid out a plan for revenge purposes. The barons didn't have the power to really do terribly much and without a singular purpose, such as revenge, they didn't have much of a chance at staying in power as a civil war was likely soon without proper leadership. There was an oratory performance, a set of high rolls helped only by his character's build to be a social-monster, wherein he said that "for too long have we stood silent and allowed these elves to destroy kingdoms, destroy races, and destroy futures. For too long have we, humanity, stood apart and allowed our neighbor to commit heinous crimes . . " so on and so forth. It wasn't exceptionally poetic but with the right rolls it moved the barony, who appointed a temporary "Custodian" of the kingdom until things improved and then set about organizing an army. With Teddy in tow and the elf following along because, well, we had to do what we had to do, we went through the whole kingdom and brewed a searing hatred for the elf kingdom. We told stories, we re-told the history of the elves and how they had burned all who opposed them, for humanity had dared to better itself with machines. Hell, the elf bard got up and told stories about the wickedness of her people and that pleased us just fine. Things were working out well, so we took our political ambitions to the pirates. The pirate players were getting bored with 'random wars against each other' and had already ascended to being pirate kings themselves, each and every one of them. We promised them an endless supply of loot and booty and all that fine stuff if only they unified and joined us in our war against the elves, which thanks to the combined song, dance and diplomacy rolls of our two bards, we accomplished.

We then traveled to the burning desert landscape wherein we met with the leaders of the craziest, nastiest, most dangerous cult we could, lead by one of the player character's who was a D&D cleric of ridiculous power. We told him that there was a land that spat on his god, and that spat on humanity, and that would never accept the 'one true sun'. This didn't work even with diplomacy jacked in our favor, so we bought some weapons and armor on the black market that were of elf manufacture and had our bard/elf kill a few lowly clerics of the evil cult in order to show that yes, indeed there was something to fear from the Elf Kingdom. Our false flag operation worked, and soon there was a crazy cult on our side.

Well, there was at this point a DM conclave called concerning what was going to happen. Now, the elf-kingdom-DM, a guy we'll refer to as Larry from here on out, was upset to learn that everyone was unified against him. But, he was kind enough to put his players vs us, in a winner-take-all conquer-the-world style game. Maps were drawn up, we got a few free levels (taking us to roughly tenth) and the campaign began the following week. Now, to make things fair, a new DM was brought in to serve as "over-DM" in adjudicate scenario outcomes due to both sides clearly believing the other would be less than fair. This over-DM we scooped up from the Local Gamestore and was highly entertained at the shenanigans of our story thus far.

It was determined we would play the strategic portion of the game out using Risk.

The war vs the elves went well in our favor. Humanity landed its massive navy, pirates storming the beaches and doing battle with druids, leaving most of the ports and coastal cities in ruins. The army of the burning desert land was nearly obliterated in open-combat with the main forces of the druidy-elves, and was forced into temporary retreat to try to salvage what they could after losing 90% of their army. The high-fantasy kingdom joined forces with what was left of industrialized humanity thanks to Teddy quoting some of the Communist manifesto coupled with some Andrew Ryan-isms actually working on them. They swept in behind the pirates and the retreating desert dwellers and commenced a siege on the capital-tree.

Now, there were two problems. One, was that mainly Larry was rather upset that his forces didn't have significant defensive capabilities. We did give him a 2:1 handicap in terms of resolving combat due to him being on the defensive but he kept arguing that his people had a 'history of x or y' that would have allowed them to easily destroy the invaders. Over-DM said no, and that he had enough of a chance to win, but needed to deal with the fact he didn't.

The other problem was, how do you siege a tree the size of, well, Manhattan?

Trying to burn it down would be like sticking a redwood with a lit match, and shooting it with siege equipment would be the equivalent of throwing pebbles at a brick wall. We were stumped, and then we got a plan. See, the Industrialized human people had an airship and we piled as many of us as we could onto it for a daring raid into the branches while the Army prevented anyone from escaping. Our goal: Kill the elf king, try to rescue ours and burn the tree down. Along the way out, steal everything of value. Even though the elves had let us know that if we attacked, they would slay our benevolent ruler, we realized that we had to end this no matter what the cost. Or at least so we could start playing traveller as most of us had wanted to do.

The airship contained a hundred people, some crazy clerics from the evil sun god, a handful of knights from the high fantasy kingdom, twenty or so from the industrialized humans (who were welcome with their repeating firearms), the pirate players, the evil-sun god players, and us. The airship goes up. The airship crashes into the side of the tree, and we begin the final fight of this campaign that has gone on for quite a time.

Now, we all separate out and try to find the king. Or rather, we try to find the king and the pirates try to loot, the industrialist nation tries to shoot all the elves they can, the sun god people just burn folks, torturing them to confess their sins between taking the occasional slave and my group, The epic Greatsword fighter, Teddy the bard and this elf lady (who had to wear a headband to cover her ears, she wasn't exactly welcome in most places now thanks to our propaganda drive) are stalking the hallways and trying to effect a rescue. It is then we come across the other party. Catfolk (Druid, level 10), Centaur (Fighter, level 10) and Japanese style samurai elf (Rogue/Fighter/other crap, level 10). The catfolk had this speech written out on notebook legal paper and bless her heart if she didn't try to read the whole thing. It was mainly about how nature would retake the world and how we were all going to die in the name of something greater, that our bodies would be fertilizer and . . . well, it just didn't sound very good for us. Teddy being himself, well, he just interrupted her with a "Time to die, Missus Whiskers!" and initiative was rolled.

Order of combat as I remember it was:
Teddy, Me, Catfolk, Centaur, Our elf, their elf.

And here's what happened as I remember it and I must apologize if some of the things here seem out of order, but it has been a time and these events were rather specific:

Teddy casts shout and basically screams into the druid's face, doing quite a bit of damage and deafening her. My fellow grabs his greatsword and charges toward the centaur but not getting close enough to do anything, the Catfolk tried to cast something but it failed due to being deafened. The Centaur charged me and knocked me down. Our elf shot their elf in the face with a crossbow and their elf drew his swords in a ceremonial display that was described for the better half of two minutes, standing his ground and threatening all who came close. Now, Teddy comes around again and decides that he's going to try something stupid and unleashes Otto's irresistible dance, something that he used only once before on a random NPC to see it in action. The catfolk quickly became caught up in the tune and danced, happily to herself in the middle of this furious combat. I managed to get up and get off an attack on the centaur but didn't do jack for damage, she was wearing full plate. Our elf managed to shoot another arrow into their elf, who in turn charged our elf and managed to critically fumble the attack.

Now, at some point I managed to get off a series of stunning attacks against the centaur, who only used her hooves as weapons for some damn reason, which did very little against my plate. In time, I drove my sword through the middle of her face and twisted it, kicking her off and cutting the cat-woman down the next turn, who merrily danced until the very end. Teddy was beat up some by their elf, who was a melee monster, and Teddy was not. Our elf was murdered by this same fellow, but managed to take him down a few points before being beheaded 'out of honor' by their elf. I ended up having to save Teddy and brutally murder their elf by introducing him to a real sword, that is, one that has proper reach, which is essentially what a sword should do in my reckoning, put something dangerous between you and a would-be assailant.

Now, we get told by the DM at this point that the tree is beginning to fill with smoke, thanks to the pirates having found a large stock of lamp oil, upended it into a large gallery of tapestries and had begun to essentially burn the place from the inside out. The elf army was swarming out the base of the trunk only to be cut down by the human forces surrounding the tree. We moved upward to try to find our way back to the airship, when we were cut off by the Elf-King, that feminine-boy thing, who had our king, knocked out, and a huge sword the size of a early 70's Cadillac bumper. The elf king looked at us and slit the throat of our king, before running off. We tried to save the king with potions but it was a DM decision that he was dead. So, instead of being saviors we set off in pursuit for the purposes of revenge.

The elf king, Larry's DMPC, was trying to get away in our semi-crashed airship when we attacked, leaping the distance between the tree and the ship and barely making it. The tree was burning well down, pirates having escaped to the bottom with most of the jewels and gold worth having. The dark-sun-ish setting people made it out by divine intervention for all of their 'good work' they had done up to that point. Now it was us, the elf king, and a broken airship. We reckoned between us that there was no likelihood for us to survive, being that we were high up and the captain was now this psychotic elf with lord knows what magical doomsday jewelry on him. Teddy's bard lamented that there would be nobody left to sing our song, but the both of us walked up to the command deck to try to end this campaign.

So there was the elf king, waiting for us. He said he knew it would come to this. Teddy replied with "really? You knew that you'd be flying an airship stolen from your enemies, sailing away from your burning home to be killed by a songwriter and a bastard with a sword?" Larry was quiet, but everyone else had a decent laugh. Larry, as his DMPC, began to try to use some magical DM nonsense powers to bring forth a elemental to kill us but the over DM asked to see the DMPC's character sheet.

Turns out that larry, even though he had been allowed to make whatever he wanted as a DMPC, had never expected anything to get to 'that point', and had essentially made a level 1 commoner to save time, expecting people to follow orders and not question him because he was the king, also, he was the DMPC.

His players were somewhat amused to learn he was a level 1 commoner, asking "well how then, but how did you, but what about . . " Turns out, that level 1 commoner had the grace of the gods on his side, who always intervened to help him. And who were strangely quiet this day. Now I know what you're thinking, that we did something awful, and we did. I assure you, but let me fill you in on one other thing.

See, the reason Larry ran his players off is because he pretty much filled his game with radical sexual fantasies about how the feminine men of the culture 'bred, publicly, frequently, and at-will' with the females, as was the 'will of nature' and any who questioned this sort of arrangement would be put to death. Some of the lady players had not enjoyed that so much. Some of the guys, well, they enjoyed it too much.

So, I disarmed the King by cutting his hands off and asked the bard what to do. We had been expecting to die and soon, but now that we weren't in so much danger (as we didn't use the knowledge that the king was a level 1 commoner, however the Over-DM made it readily apparent that the king had no idea of how to hold the sword and wasn't in the least bit intimidating) we could be creative.

As I recall we hung the elf king by his entrails from the stern of the ship and paraded him about the Capital of each nation who joined us in the war effort, charging money for children to throw stones at it.

And that about wraps it up.


-Dave-

This should be archived.It was an excellent tale.

>>15484066
>As I recall we hung the elf king by his entrails from the stern of the ship and paraded him about the Capital of each nation who joined us in the war effort, charging money for children to throw stones at it.

Yesssssssssssss.

>Charging children money to throw rocks at a dead elf
Awesome.

>>15483779
How about an aftermath?

Sounds like an awesome game. At least Larry was gracious enough to actually allow you guys to do something like that without throwing a hissy fit and upending the game table.

You and Teddy were a couple of right bastards and I salute you.

I suppose I aught to offer an Epilogue:

The DMs somewhat split after that, each deciding to pursue what they wanted. Sand-hell DM ran a series of Call of Cthlulu games that are still celebrated at the school this day. Conan DM was never heard from again, DM Larry runs Iron Claw to this day, with many custom house-rules. He is not allowed to play at any of the local gaming stores after an incident, the specifics of which have not been told to me but I can only assume the worst in that man's character. Pirate DM actually got a raise at his job, and doesn't play so much anymore. However, he does run seventh sea on occasion and I'm told he's wonderful at it.

Teddy has a blog and writes for a living, his blog ramblings are fairly amusing and he wrote an article on shipping a sandwich through the mail that got him some attention on the internet, briefly, it can be read here http://www.zug.com/live/87782/Can-You-Mail-a-Sandwich.html

And me? Well, I lurk and play some games now and then.

Sometimes I share stories though

Me, I got to play Traveller.

>>15484176

He went down like a blade of grass, though he did sit around in the parking lot and listen to techno at full volume, shaking the windows of his hyundei. That catfolk player was in there with him, though what they were doing was anyone's guess and not mine to hazard.

This shit is now archived. Go vote it up!

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/15483779/

Well, if you gentlemen don't mind, I do have some things that need tending to, but don't worry. I will return some day to share with you another story. Perhaps some of my dark heresy shenanigans, or the terrible things I've had happen to me and mine during a game of Rogue Trader.

Even with the Elf DM's dickery, this sounds like a great multi DM super campaign.

I have got to try this sometime

>>15484285

Please do, I've enjoyed the stuff you've brought here so far.

With all respect to your condition, Dave, please tell me you have a cane. A gentleman such as you deserves to display his dapperness.

>>15484285

>>15484285
I'd love to hear DH stories.

I'm gonna run a campaign soon and might steal something.

Awesome story

Dave, you're alright with me.

I lost an hour of sleep because of this story,

So worth it :)

>>15484285
I'm going to be playing a DH game pretty soon, and any stories of what I might be getting myself into would be great.

Always a pleasure when you stop by Dave.

Dave, from one vet to another, good on you.

Well, it appears I am back for a time. Pardon my schedule but it is more or less at the whim of others at the moment. A dark heresy story then?

When I heard, long ago that there was a Role Playing game for Warhammer 40k I was skeptical to say the least. Now, for those of you with ten second memories, I will say that for every project they've committed themselves to there are projects that counter it neatly. For every space hulk there is a Gorkamorka. For every Terminator there is dread-knight. Now I can't say I'm the be-all end-all when it comes to being a critic and certainly you won't see my name on any gaming products, but I can say that Games Workshop has been hit and miss in equal measure. The game, gentlemen, was called Inquisitor.

Now, I was skeptical on the scale of things, mainly the models being quite large, expensive and rather difficult to procure. In addition, the game was without any leveling or power scale system, simply a list of weapons, a list of abilities, and suggestions for gameplay. It seemed that someone tried to make a combat miniatures wargame for small-unit tactics and then was shoehorned into making it a role-playing game. This worked poorly, as is natural. One cannot expect success under such circumstances.

The DM whom volunteered to run the game was our local game store's "DM who will run anything exactly Once before returning to 2.0 and trying to convert people to its glory", at least in his own mind that is. Three of us played that day, all of us antagonistic toward the other and all of us with a similar goal, recover 'X' (a piece of advanced xenotech) and escape alive. I decided to play a right scoundrel of a rogue psyker and I was set against a rather cruel inquisitor and an unscrupulous gunslinger. Now, naturally you would expect there would be some role-playing, nay nay. The entire scenario lasted the better part of nine minutes. Allow me to paint the scene as vividly as I see it now.

We had set our 'encounter' to be more or less a 40k equivalent of an Imperial city square, the xenotech having been hidden within the reliquary of some temple to the God Emperor recently closed for renovation. We positioned our minis, one fellow using the quite handsome looking Eisenhorn to represent his Inquisitor, the other gentleman had the 'Slick" devlan model, which is again, a very fine piece of sculpture. Myself? Well, I was poor then and am poor now, so I was a can of R/C cola. The inquisitor describes himself, coat flapping in the breeze of the dirty city streets when, suddenly, he is beset from behind by none other than . . well, I forget his name but it was something amusing and impressive, and roguish. There was a description of the man standing in the street as well, and soon, gunshots rang out.

Unfortunately for Inquisitor, the game is rather high on the lethality scale, at least from what I witnessed. Bang bang, Inquisitor dead, now it is between I and that scoundrel armed with two pistols when I have not even one.

Now, there were many interesting psychic powers in Inquisitor and most, if not all carried over to Dark heresy if I remember correctly. I was armed with a particularly nasty sort of quasi-thaumaturgy named 'blood boil' that does rather unpleasant things to your insides. Soon as I spot the gunslinger I decide to just let him have it, and have it he does. He lay there, spurting blood and leaving me the sole survivor and de-factor victor in this exercise. I never went back to Interrogator, nor did many people bemoan its loss when it finally went away, quietly, to hide with the other bastard children of Games Workshop.

>>15485913
>Well, I was poor then and am poor now, so I was a can of R/C cola.

What made me laugh the hardest was not the fact that it was a soda can, but a can of RC Cola of all things. The Pabst Blue Ribbon of soda.

Please continue, I want to see how this showdow turns out.

Due to my having promised another gentleman that I would watch the new episode of Top Gear with him, I will try to cut this off here if you will allow me to return tomorrow and tell a fuller story. I have the story of a Tech-Priest I played for quite an enjoyable campaign, though I found out in the end it was one of those games of the party and I having completely different agendas.

>>15485952
In a moment of pure recursion, PBR is the RC Cola of beers.

>>15485969

You take it easy now!

And thanks for the stories! Awesome, one and all

>>15484285
>>15485969
I eagerly await your return. I am a big fan of your story telling style already.

I don't care if these stories are total BS or not. They're damn entertaining and fun to read.

>So, I disarmed the King
>by cutting his hands off

I do this at every opportunity in games. I love you

>Game set in island nations peppered around the hemisphere, a long chain of volcanic islands that neatly bisects the planet, called the "kraken's spine". There are many pirates and ne'er do wells here

So... the Grand Line basically

>>15484852
I don't want to steal any of Dave's glory, but because you asked and because I firmly believe you should definitely play Dark Heresy because I think it's great, I'll give you this brief scenario.

My character was (and still is, actually... we've been running the same group for about a year and a half) a mostly quiet psyker, a dual-disciple in telepathy and biomancy. I described him as an "engineer in the psyker field" on my character sheet, and he looks down upon those who squander their psychic talents on such childish nonsense as throwing fireballs when you could easily solve the problem with more versatile powers such as Compel.

Or, in this case, Toxic Siphon.

We had found out that our Inquisitorial contact for missions, Interrogator Sand, had a direct superior named Inquisitor Lazarus.
Soon after that, we found out that he had ulterior motives. And, of course, they were heretical. We only had this knowledge to ourselves, of course.

Our cell unofficial leader, a social monster of a cleric who also has a wondrous talent for striding into battle with a Vanaheim-pattern assault shotgun and blowing shit into chunky salsa while deflecting anything harmful with Fate points (did I mention he was Void-Born? roll a 9, get fate back, HAHA LOL), decided that we should definitely make him die for this, which was unsurprising and we were all totally in agreement.
I should also mention that the cleric lived on a space hulk for most of his life, and always wears a void suit, with a mechanical winch amongst other cool gadgets on it. That will be important later, you'll see.

>>15487229

Let me take this moment to go over the rest of the cell before I continue. There was me, a psyker who at this time had no force staff, so if someone got in my face I just emptied an autopistol at them and hoped for the best, but I specialized in trying to avert combat before it would actually happen.
There's a guardsman with an Armageddon-pattern autogun who is pretty talented at going head-to-head with shit in any form of combat. At one point, he actually kept a lesser daemon busy in a fucking KNIFE FIGHT while I banished it by manifesting Psychic Shriek, while taking no damage.
An arbitrator who later died to a swarm of what basically amounted to headcrabs because he couldn't make our sessions anymore. It was a chase scene, and he fell behind.
And finally, a Moritat assassin who is uncannily fast, both on his feet and in melee. Not much to say here - Lightning Attack tends to kill shit dead. He's also good at stealth, because he's an assassin.

>>15487236

ow, naturally, we're snooping in a heretical inquisitor's business. This shit doesn't end well for most people, and we were no exception. We got captured, and put in a temporary holding cell. Except for the assasin, he hid by a rock outside of the complex, and planned on helping us exfiltrate.
I asked the GM, "Do I have anything inhibiting my psychic powers?" "No."
I think to myself, wow, these guys are fucking morons. Lazarus is pacing in front of the door, talking at us about whatever. Our cleric is still wearing his void suit because his body is so ill-conditioned, he can't survive without it.
So I do what anybody would do. I manifest Compel on Lazarus, forcing him to open the cell door. The cleric immediately jumps him, succeeding on his grapple. He then wraps the winch line around Lazarus's neck, makes a slipknot with the hook, and turns on the motor.
The funny part is, I recognized that he was wielding a force staff. So I thought to myself, "Fuck, he's a psyker! He's probably going to manifest Holocaust or something really stupid right before he dies!"
I went over my powers, seeing if I could somehow disable him further while he choked to death rapidly, but not rapidly enough.

>>15487246
Then I realized that Toxic Siphon, a power which removes all drugs, poisons, and other foreign influences from the body, causes the recipient to lose a full turn as you manifest it on them. They remove the toxins naturally, through vomiting or what have you.
So I walked over and laid a hand on this schemer's face, causing him to immediately vomit. Of course, his neck was constricted completely, so he just convulsed like a spastic while he died. The end.

Later, he was revived in a way we still don't know to this day (not because the GM's a faggot, he's not) and had us all mind-wiped, except for the guardsman, who was out serving the Guard on the front lines somewhere.
And we were also thrown into a beast pit, naked save for rags, and expected to die.
I got my memory back through possibly-heretical means from some kind of horrible spider-queen. Everyone else was leery of her methods, but my psyker values knowledge too much not to take up the offer.

As the social monster cleric, and a guy who's played a pile of table top, I can say that Dark Heresy is a superb time, although the system can be wonky at times, and our dice roller tends to lend its own botty sense of humor to our games. As a void born, you regain spent fate on a roll of 9 on a d10. You can spend a fate to soak 1d5 damage.

Cue Magister Drusus striding across a landing platform on a flying prison complex high above a gas giant under heavy machine gun fire. Every time I got hit I spent fate to negate the damage, and each time rolled exactly what I needed to take 0 damage. I did this three times in a row, regaining fate with a 9 on my d10 each time.

And on the hand-removing note, cue the assassin from earlier grabbing a daemonic sword. The sword, of course, began to corrupt him immediately. That was, of course, until Drusus fired up the chain bayonet on his shotgun and removed the hand.. well... handily.

And this wasn't a "group discusses options and comes to the conclusion to try and dehand him" situation. As soon as the GM said "You feel a pressure in your mind" I said "I cut his hand off with my chain bayonet." Good times were had by all.

>>15483779
Just got here.
There's a part two?
Yesssssss

>>15486507
Exactly.
I want this guy to write a book.
I would read the fuck out of that book.

Thread has been archived at suptg. Please, go on.

>>15487229
>Inquisitor Lazarus

Interesting. I had an Inquisitor Lazarus in my DH game. Guy wound up being a Fire Daemon or something, so we brought down a castle on him with our Lance Batteries.

>I almost made a face at the reference to peg-legs but I let it slide. You get used to this sort of thing.
I'm sorry, but I have to ask... do you actually have a peg-leg?

I love a good story. I tip my hats to you, sir.

>>15487978
Alright, samefag as the other DH story above. That one was really "streamlined," because I wanted to be brief, but since nobody else has contributed since I last checked on this thread, I guess I'll tell you our cleric's "Pure Faith" story.

Pure Faith is a talent (think Feats in D&D) that was originally intended to be taken only by an Adepta Sororitas character, but our cleric asked our GM about it and he decided it makes sense for a well-ranked cleric to take it.

>>15489033
Cue a mission we undertook on a gas giant, Eos IV. The arbitrator I mentioned has been long dead. We now have a techpriest in our party whose player has the amazing ability to talk OOC and still sound like a techpriest in terms of personality.
We also picked up another assassin, but this one is a sniper-type. Once again, not much to be said. Oh, and I have a force staff now.
Our objective was to obtain a book, some sort of journal that belonged to the Harlock family. We know from a previous mission that the Harlock name belongs to a noble family, and we also know that anything associated with them is quite heretical.

>>15489041
Forgot to paste this: Pure Faith gives you the ability to use your Fate points to avoid Daemonic and psychic attacks, and a few other things. The description states that the character has absolutely no doubt that the Emperor favors him and watches over him as a protector.
The only problem was that the cleric needed some kind of true, in character sign from the God-Emperor himself to obtain this talent, or at least something that he preceived as a sign.

Continuing...

>>15489047
Somehow, Interrogator Sand found out that this book had made its way to Eos IV. He didn't know how or why, just that we needed to find it.
This may sound like a virtually impossible task, but Eos IV is a gas giant, remember. It doesn't have anyone living on the surface. Rather, it has one hovering prison facility / labor camp with less than 10,000 prisoners (I think it was around 5,000).
The prison is laid out like a cross - there are five buildings, one on each end and one in the middle, connected by walkways. The center building is the Panopticon, basically the security center for the entire prison.

>>15489049
There's also what is basically a giant tech maintenance facility with a bunch of techpriests, an administration building, and two others that I can't for the life of me remember, but they weren't important.
After we went through what records the staff let us go through, and asked most of them personally, we weren't any closer. Our cleric set up a plan, which the staff agreed with. He would host a big religious ceremony, over the course of a week or so.
I would use psyniscience to see if I detected any psychic potential amongst the mob of prisoners gathered for the service. Then, our cleric would sing, distracting the mob. Our assassin would then sneak off to their empty cells to see if he could find any contraband.
We found a few guys with contraband, nobody with psy rating. One guy had anal beads. Nobody knew anything about a book, although each of the prisoners seemed to get their contraband from one prisoner in common: Tundrish.

>>15489057
So this Tundrish guy was nonthreatening, but he was in prison for life. Somehow he had worked a deal out with the staff saying that he could have almost anything he wanted, because the stuff he gives to prisoners makes them happy. Happiness makes order.
Our cleric was obviously not at all pleased with this concept, so we wrecked all the shit in his cell when we got to it. No journal, though. He said someone had come to him at night and asked for it through the window slit.
He claimed it was prisoner one, but prisoner one didn't exist, and Tundrish didn't know why. Frustrated, we went to the Panopticon and the techpriest hacked into the archives there. He found out that prisoner one had been shipped out for sanctioning due to psychic talents.
At that same time, we met another acolyte cell: a techpriest, and two other fags. One carried a combat shotgun. They wouldn't tell us their objective.

>>15489069
Their credentials didn't actually have their primary contact for Inquisitorial missions on it, but before we could come to blows over this, our techpriest found something else.
Turns out that the camera feeds were linked to somebody's implant. He queried it, and the prison went on lockdown. We had to dispatch a couple of gun servitors that went active in the room.
Now, Eos IV has an atmosphere - just not a breatheable one. So at each door to each walkway, there's a rack with some oxygen masks and tanks. I had a rebreather, and our cleric had his trademark void suit.
However, there was a problem: nobody could use the masks because they'd been sabotaged. Our techpriest managed to fix enough for us to leave.

>>15489076
Of course, our plan was to get to our ship, first and foremost. We had our own sublight shuttle, basically a modified cargo ship with a couple of M-M-M-MULTILASERS on it. And inside that, a Chimera.
As we're walking towards our ship which is parked on a dock at the administration building, we make out some red-robed figures hanging out by it. A little closer, we realize it's Skitarii, soldiers of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Great.
I think our cleric put the dots together: between the camera feeds leading to an implant and now this, he knew a techpriest was responsible. He told us to open fire.
I believe we managed to dispatch three of the five there before we turn around and realize that there's a Praetorian flanked by two more Skitarii coming up the walkway behind us.
A Praetorian, for those who don't know, is a giant fucking combat servitor with heavy machineguns and tons of durability.

>>15489081
Naturally, we sprint to the administratum airlock as fast as fucking possible. The techpriest tries to open the airlock... and fails. A couple of Fate points later, we're securely behind an airlock chamber.
Inside are a bunch of confused Arbites who are at a lack for breathing equipment. We tell them to chill, and that Ad Mech are assholes.
We go back into the airlock chamber, and our guardsman readies a grenade launcher with a krak grenade. He tells the techpriest to open the door just wide enough for him to shoot out of. He shoots the Praetorian right in the fucking face from about fifty meters.
It didn't do jack shit. Guardsman keeps firing anyway to draw their attention. The cleric gets another idea. He tells the techpriest to open the door wider, and strides out to the left, where our ship is, as our sniper kills one of the Skitarii.

>>15489089
Now, picture this. A giant walking cyborg with two .50 machineguns is shooting at our cleric, who is now sprinting with all of his 2 Ag Bonus might (that's horrible, if you've never played DH) to a ship about 30 meters away.
He gets shot four fucking times. And every single time, he spends a Fate point to heal d5 damage, and rolls high enough to put him at 0 net damage. AND rolls a 9 on his Charmed roll to regain his Fate.
Then, he gets close enough to the ship to blast one of the Skitarii in the face with a fully automatic shotgun. Did I mention he has a drum magazine that cycles between shot, slugs, and Dragon's Breath?
We added a rule for slugs - they do 1d10+4 damage, have no scatter, and you have to roll Toughness or get knocked down. So at once, this faggot is getting peppered, knocked down, and he's screaming because he's on fire.
The last Skitarii was trying to cut into our hatch with a lascutter. The cleric walks up behind him and turns him into a fucking smear. Then he gets into the ship, which he can pilot because he's Void Born, and uses the multilasers to anniihilate the Praetorian. Oh, and he vaporizes the last Skitarii too.
And on that fucking day, Magister Drusus Galerius knew that the God-Emperor liked him. A whole fucking lot.

>>15489098
As for what happened next, well, it turned out that the Techpriest Magos in charge of the tech division was a heretical asshole studying xeno tech a little too much. He had a portal to a foreign world which had no breatheable air set up in a vacuumed tech room.
Naturally, we went inside, not knowing what in the possible fuck could be on the otherside. Actually, my character stayed behind, ready to smash the machinery and collapse the portal in case everyone had to come running out at full speed.
Long story short, he was studying Necrons, and the Moritat assassin had to grab the Harlock journal off his dead metal corpse while the guardsman distracted two Pariahs. Then everyone ran from a swarm of Scarabs and almost got obliterated. (Not the same swarm that killed the arbitrator, obviously)
The best part is that when we got back, that other acolyte cell had betrayed us and hijacked our ship. They positioned it just outside the tech building's doors so that the multilasers were pointing at us when we came out, and one of them was standing there.
He demanded the journal. What he didn't know though, is that we had brought all those confused Arbites into the tech building with us using the Chimera, which was airtight. The cleric and I distracted him, when suddenly a Chimera full of fucking Arbites burst out of the airlock.

>>15489102
I ran up under the cockpit of the ship and manifested Psychic Shriek repeatedly, trying to knock out the hijackers, since the sniper confirmed they were at the helm. Luckily, I knocked out the one gunning. We blew the negotiator's brains out.
After our Moritat assassin tripped a bunch of booby traps on each doorway and reflex saved just about all of them with no damage, we came into the cockpit to find the dickhead with the shotgun and a knocked out techpriest.
I compelled him to drop the shotgun and we captured both of them. When we tried to interrogate the unaugmented human, he basically spat in our faces and killed himself with some kind of internal bomb.
The techpriest did reveal to us a dead drop on a space station we had visited earlier, though, so we planned to check that for information. And that was that.

>>15489107
Actually, I misremembered that. Our sniper shot the shotgun out of the dickhead's hands. Sorry.

Bump for mega wins!

Really looking forward to tomorrow's story time!

Keep it alive.

Live damn you. LIVE!!!

I, too, would like to hear more from Dave.

Some of the best story threads are DH threads. Not that Dave's epic story wasnt any good though lol

Thread resuscitation imminent.

bump

Peg-Leg Dave I summon thee!

Bump mo tron.

>>15492888
Use your beard!

It's not the beard on the outside, but tue beard on the inside that counts.

Beard Comparative Thread?

bump

Did Peg-Leg Dave ever come back?

keepen her alive

sleep now

>>15503442

>>15503666
Thank you anon.