Damned Cities

Hello, bozos!

I'm half considering buying Dark Cities tomorrow, the second part of the Haarlock Legacy campaign.

Now, the trouble with that is that I'm keen to run it myself. But I'm also keen for it to continue on from Tattered Fates (so including the likes of Chandrya, Mae, Fuzzy, Neit, Narl & Erica).


Considering the Players

However, looking at the players:
- Chandrya's trapped in a man's body. (She's eminently playable, but nonetheless...!)
- Mae. She's basically an NPC for now as its a bit unfair of me to be RPing her when I've such foresight/hand-of-god! (Mae-ry Sue? More like Mae-ry mother of Christ!)
- Fuzzy is on the cusp of becoming a Rogue Trader character which means, depending on the many possible ways the GR adventure could go, it's possible that the party might end up split into two very different campaigns/destinations based on the choices of the characters
- Neit & Erica, they're on death's door, but assuming they survive...
- Narl's pretty playable still.

Then there's the curious ones:
- Keira (who's on the verge of going completely insane. It's a good thing she stayed behind on the bridge, if she found the library...you'd have to subdue her to get her out!)
- Daphne. Deathwish?

And even still, there's the 'ones who went before'. You remember? Mae was there, she was on Accreage. Remember? With Obsidiah Pearl, Scarlet, XKD (spits) and everyone? She knows what happened to them, of course. She was there.


Xisor, what the hell are you talking about?

Well, to put it simply, I'm considering another RP. It's set at roughly the same time as the Glorious Retribution, so you're not allowed to play the same characters then as you are now.

However, I'm thinking the characters in Dark Cities could well be peers of characters we've met before, or who've met us before. Or even, like Mae, 'levelled up' ones from way back when we played Maggots in the Meat with Gildan.

To that end, I think we've an opportunity here for a 'fresh start' but one which keeps a degree of familiar flavour.

Consider the Inquisitors we know and are involved with. Kaede (who sent us to Accreage), Marr (who's Fuzzy & Chandrya's boss), Wroth (who's playing merry hell with us at the moment), Rykehuss (Mae, Narl, Neit & Erica's Puritan sponsor) and we met Karkalla (that bloke in the Red Cages).

So, with that sort of thinking in mind, I propose another Roleplay to start at...some distant point in the future. I want to tie up some of the loose ends in Glorious Retribution and we can begin to make headway in Flickering Lights/Pursuit, but they're fairly slow burners at the moment. Glorious Retribution was CM's 'big mess' which, you could say, 'got away from us'. It's back on track now, I think, but it's still a bit...grand. It's not very personal. I like the idea of getting Mae, Fuzzy, Erica, Neit, Narl and Chandrya back onto 'Terra Firma', but first things first: old friends long gone!

For instance, if I were creating a character for Dark Cities, I might say the newb once served alongside Mae prior to her appearance on Accreage. Or perhaps she met Trantia after the events of the Beast That Lurks? Perhaps a person who was there on Kenov III 'in the beginning'. Perhaps another relation of the Wintermann sisters?


A question then!

Who's interested in playing Dark Cities if I get it. I'm 'wildly speculating' that ~5000EXP is a reasonable level for us, with the opportunity for a few Elite Advances/Alternate Careers. (Or even including Rogue Trader Characters as business-like 'investigators' rather than your standard Acolytes?)

Suffice to say, anyone who's interested, do shout and we can all discuss some ideas!

I'd definitely be interested in playing this. A character which ties in somehow with our already existing characters? Shouldn't be a problem... I've a couple of ideas.

What Inquistor(s) would we be affiliated with, then?

Had a sensible post, but lost it. Was a bit wordy.

With the Inquisitors, I'm inclined to steer away from Rykehuss as his super-puritan outlook seems a little odd to be bringing to Sinophia and still make a game in concord with the campaign material! If it is a new or 'other' Inquisitor (not Kaede, Marr, Wroth or Rykehuss) then I'd happily go along with that and introduce 'links' to them through previous encounteres, shared case histories, nearby offices, multiple-valence contacts and so forth.

Also recall the somewhat more trite/conceited options such as 'evil twin' or 'long lost sister'. More than that, of course, you could have parents, or children of our own characters! Or ressurect/reincarnate old ones (e.g. from Gildan's defunct Maggots campaign).

It'll largely depend on the material in the book, but I'm quite open on the point. Good to hear you're quite interested though!

Well, sounds interesting and I'm curious about joining. Wanna redo my Dark Heresy playing, as the last time I played I was off for about a month.

Early Thoughts Regarding Character Creation

Players begin play with 5000 EXP of which may be spent (or bargained) on Background Packages and Elite Advances. Characters may be Rogue Trader or Dark Heresy characters, but will be playing by Dark Heresy rules for the purposes of the game, so RPing a blind-rich RT is possible, but there'd be some startling (for the character) restrictions on his abilitiy!

Points
Instead of the 2D10 stats, each player is given 100 'Points'. These are then allocated in addition to the base for the players homeworlds in place of the standard 2D10. No statistic may be allocated more than 20 of these points. (A typically dispersal might be 20, 20, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 5, 5.)

Divination
Divination will be generated independently prior to the commencement of play.

An Impression
The immediate background of the characters is more important than their strict history. So basically where they live, what they experience, what their work is. In that sense, I'm looking at characters 'midstep', not with their origin stories intact and boxed ready to go. (If you have an origin story, excellent, but keep it quiet aside from the anecdotes needed to gain initial experience.)

To that end it is expected that the campaign will rest much more strongly on style, flair and consistent characterisation rather than memorising and rigidly applying each detail of their origin. It should also permit characters to be quickly workable for the player, with little stress involved in an highly detailed background.

Suggestion: Present some 'noteable records' for your character; what is actually known about them. What they've done, their apparent age and what they do. Who do they know and what resources can they tap? Who do they hate?

Once this is done, present four 'words' to describe 'em, then present a fairly brief quotation as would have been said by:
- Their closest intimate relation (E.g. "He was a good boy, before that nonsense with the Malfi...")
- Their most recent 'boss' (E.g. "Never on time, did a good day's work when he showed...")
- A (wo)man on the street (E.g. "Looked a bit haphazard, slightly distracted. Wavy hair, not unpleasant girth.")
- A local acquaintence (E.g. a shopkeeper, barkeep, housekeeper etc "Always bought his groxmilk prompt at 0730, never saw him drink anything else...")
- A snippet from their Arbites/Enforcer entry (E.g. "Mostly harmless")

Hopefully this'll make the characters reasonably distinctive and easy for both the owning player, the GM and everyone else to get a good 'handle' on who they are.

Money
Haven't thought on this in detail yet. Will soon!

Hmm... TEch-priest permanently assigned to the Skitarii and therfore has a combat oriented cogigator(sp) inplanted... Adyen hydrargyrum, reborn as a combat techpriest!

Looking at what you described, X-man, and wondering how to work it. Mind giving us a 'mock' character for us to learn from?

I certainly shall, off to the opera this evening, but I might get one up beforehand!

On your In Region section, what's it mean? Like... What the person did before getting taken in by the Inquisition?

Hope the Opera's good. I'll make a character soonish, but I was wondering about kit - should we leave it as is, or play merry hell with it to reflect what we think they should have? (Although not the the extent of a RT character).

Also, I have cunning plan. I say that, I mean a request, there we go. Would it be possible for me to make a character using the unique home world template of Gunmetal City, but instead of "Packing Iron" I have "Packing Steel", and instead of "Way of the Gun" I have "Way of the Blade".

Basically, knives instead of pistols, WS instead of BS.

Question: Do all our characters directly work for the Inquisition, or can we have things like senior local Arbites, etc.?

EDIT: Apologies, read Test#2, which pretty much answers that question for me!

Hello folks,

First up: Damned Cities, not Dark Cities!

Second of all: LoI, the 'In Region' bit is a slightly misleading heading, but it reflects what the character's actually doing in the viscinity of the original story (Sinophia Magna, capital of Sinophia is as best we can get just now).

Third of all: Betty, the opera was terrible. Ireland owes me a drink. (Though I did go to a Japanese restaurant/bar, have a chat to the barstaff, leave, get a nice chicken kebab and such instead of sitting through the second half!) Because we left later than I'd expected fo the opera, didn't have time to pick up the book. Still, hopefully later in the week

Fourth of all: I've not really figured out the monies yet (I doubt we'll be as rich as we were starting out on Fedrid with CM), but I'm considering writing up a 'random previous experience' generator in which we get an idea for a couple of the investigations the character've been on previously, not free skills/equipment, but should guide your hand. As for way of the blade; I'm quite content with that. Might take a bit of fudging at later stages, but it shouldn't be much more difficult than Elite Advancing analogues to the gun-skills if need be.

Fifth of all: It'd be good for them to be 'in the Inquisition', but as I've said, we don't really have enough information to thrash that out. With a couple of random generators, it might be possible to treat our characters as if they'd been through something.

Sixth of all: Regarding equipment, I'm a bit vague at the moment. As we'll be in the city, you'll probably want to think about having the standard investigation/combat dual format. Trucking about in full armour mightn't be that much help! As mentioned, still need to figure out the monies!

Suggestions

Thinking back through all the other characters' previous experiences:
- Maggots involved hunting the Slaugth on Accreage (Feral Worlders, 'Maccabean Quintan' characters who helped carry out the final pursuit with Mae?)
- Beasts involved ferreting out Tyranids on Fedrid (Feral Worlders?)
- --- involved trucking about on Tranch hunting Acolytes! (Guardsman, Chaliced Commissar, Legate-Investigators?)
- Resupply involved negotiating deals on Scintila (other acolytes of Rykehuss prior to our kidnap, Bonded-Emissaries from the Fanes?)
- Tattered Fates: Red Cages involved escaping from fighting the Beast House on Qaddis, serving with Karkalla? (Former acolytes of his? Folks who once worked for the BH on Qaddis?)
- Tattered Fates:--- saw us trucking about Qaddis' capital mingling with all manner of scum. (The chirurgeon who dealt with Narl's bionics? Some 'Sinophian' [Qaddis] scum from the casinos?)
- Tattered Fates:Thirteenth Hour saw us fight the Gabriel Chase manse, daemony-monsters and also the Tyrant Star. (Tyrantine Cabal agents, Legate-Investigators chasing us up [more of Rykehuss/Kaede/Karkalla/Marr's?], Radical careers?)
- Glorious Retribution Where relevant, last we were seen was in a big showdown on a space station en-route to Tanis. (Legate-Investigator, Chaliced Commissariat, Inquisity-folks involved on the station or with the guardsmen there?)

Hopefully that's another few hooks!

Hmm... My girl's from an agri-world, so could my adept have been loaned/sent to the Inquisitor in charge to help with information and such?

Certainly. If she's on an agri-world, she'd presumably have <something> in her past which happened there which brought her into the Inquisition. If you want to leave the Inquisitor nameless, it can always be added in when I know a bit more about what's happening!

Could be the Inquisitor that'll be running our group of Acolytes! *Shifty eyes.*

Double post, but with reason! How is my character sheet, X-man? Roughly what you want?

Looks good so far, LoI!

If I can bring back XKD I will go for it.

NO XKD! or at least make him less... annoying... a lot less...

What? What's so bad about XKD?

he's overly annoying... I seriously though about shooting hime on several occasions... an I might have a boltgun this time...

Don't worry, the in-universe canon is that Mae and Scarlett (I think) murdered executed him. The trouble, of course, was that his main use was to be a dick to Gildan.

but he showed up in the mansion...

Won't lie CM, XKD turned me off of the Dark Heresy RP for a while. You could bring someone that XKD was associated with, but as devilishly annoying.

LESS ANNOYING, he can be a horny little fucker but not that extreme...