The All Guardsmen Party

[Mordar]

The just talking part was kind of dry... until we reached the announcements section. I think I know these characters well enough that I can tell what is going on for those announcements to be issued. It is a great interlude, quintessentially All Guardsmen Party if I may say so. Except for the part where they get some respect (from a superior no less). I mean it has happened before but still kind of odd.

No, it has to be a sucker play...they are going to get flattered into doing something stupid and it is going to cost them!

Oh wait. Of course they are getting suckered. They're Guardsmen!

Very sad that the end is so near.

- M

[Draken]

Quertus is too sensible to be a figure of authority in the 41st millennium.

[Mabn]

Quertus is too sensible to be a figure of authority in the 41st millennium.

seriously. I believed in a second that 5 random guardsmen could be competent inquisitors. I still fervently deny that any number of inquisitors could produce a sane and competent leader.

[Rockphed]

Hooo-eee. I just read up to when made an Eldar be nice. This is one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

I have a puzzlement however: These are records of a group's play session, so the various characters have various players. I presume that Nubby's player played Crisp while Nubby was getting new legs. I am fairly certain that Heavy's player transitioned to Cutter and then Tink. What I cannot figure out is who Doc's player played while Doc was laid up recovering from a gut-shot.

[Shoggy]

What I cannot figure out is who Doc's player played while Doc was laid up recovering from a gut-shot.

Aimy, but we liked her enough to be worth keeping around as more or less 2nd PC. Our group's playstyle has always been far more "drunks yelling advice in a movie theatre" than traditional RP, so it's pretty easy for our DM to hand us an extra friendly NPC to control outside of critical plot moments, though if they're around for a while usually one player will take over as their semi-permanent handler (Fumbles is most controlled by me for instance).

[Rockphed]

Aimy, but we liked her enough to be worth keeping around as more or less 2nd PC. Our group's playstyle has always been far more "drunks yelling advice in a movie theatre" than traditional RP, so it's pretty easy for our DM to hand us an extra friendly NPC to control outside of critical plot moments, though if they're around for a while usually one player will take over as their semi-permanent handler (Fumbles is most controlled by me for instance).

Considering that Fumbles has become Nubby's cohort in all sorts of extortion, blackmail, and other criminal enterprises, I am not surprised.

[Cluedrew]

Our group often has associated NPCs controlled by the party. Actually in one campaign one player might have spent more time controlling another player's second in command as opposed to their own PC. Their PC was much more important, but for various reasons did not get a lot of screen time.

Especially when you have an NPC who is already traveling with the party and is mostly loyal to it, then there isn't any conflict of interest.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Considering that Fumbles has become Nubby's cohort in all sorts of extortion, blackmail, and other criminal enterprises, I am not surprised.

I hadn't figured out yet who he played yet, good to know.

[Rockphed]

I hadn't figured out yet who he played yet, good to know.

It's in a spoiler at the top of page 2.

[Calthropstu]

Damnit! I have to take an arrow to the knee to participate.

[Shoggy]

No, it has to be a sucker play...they are going to get flattered into doing something stupid and it is going to cost them!

Quertus is too sensible to be a figure of authority in the 41st millennium.

I still fervently deny that any number of inquisitors could produce a sane and competent leader.

Poor Oak, even when he comes clean nobody believes him. He explains the entire plot, including how he got suckered into the whole school gig and why it has such a high percentage of incompetents, and what does he get? Suspicion and derision. Can't anyone accept that, just this once, everything is totally honest and aboveboard?

[Rockphed]

Poor Oak, even when he comes clean nobody believes him. He explains the entire plot, including how he got suckered into the whole school gig and why it has such a high percentage of incompetents, and what does he get? Suspicion and derision. Can't anyone accept that, just this once, everything is totally honest and aboveboard?

I thought the high rate of incompetence was because this is Warhammer 40,000, where everything is either Grim Darkness or abject stupidity.

[Draken]

Poor Oak, even when he comes clean nobody believes him. He explains the entire plot, including how he got suckered into the whole school gig and why it has such a high percentage of incompetents, and what does he get? Suspicion and derision. Can't anyone accept that, just this once, everything is totally honest and aboveboard?

I accept that this is totally honest and aboveboard. I am just saying Quertus is too good for 40k. He deserves better.

[Lord Torath]

Okay, so my question: What could you have done about the portal between the bottom of the shaft where the cogtain died and the psyker holding cells? Could you have done something to prevent the zoanthrope from becoming a daemonhost?

[Fable Wright]

So a friend of mine posed an interesting question really.

On reread of the saga, every time you've met a daemonthrope, he had the same description. Claws, wings, three horns. The three horns and wings aren't particularly common on demons, really—so he was wondering.

Were the demon who was first summoned by the cultists, the one who possessed the Cogtain, the one who possessed the Daemonthrope, and the one who wound up possessing John Bane at the end all the same entity?

[Shoggy]

Okay, so my question: What could you have done about the portal between the bottom of the shaft where the cogtain died and the psyker holding cells? Could you have done something to prevent the zoanthrope from becoming a daemonhost?

Yes, the story makes it seem sort of inevitable, but that was really sort of a massive screw-up on our end. The whole "this place has a residual portal hooking it to a constantly screaming warp-tainted cogtain crater" was a MASSIVE red flag, and we were expected to either go through a series of attempts to fix it, or just move everything out of the room into a separate holding area of our own making (which doubtless would've had its own problems, like Tyranid splinters or other Inquisitorial ships chasing us or something). Instead we were like "nah, it's probably fine, just ignore it"...

Failer gave the impression that the whole "transport" arc was built up on the fly (by his standards), when we blatantly ignored a plot-hook, but rolled pretty well with the punch as things went. Kept poker faced right up until we found out it was possessed.

So a friend of mine posed an interesting question really.

On reread of the saga, every time you've met a daemonthrope, he had the same description. Claws, wings, three horns. The three horns and wings aren't particularly common on demons, really—so he was wondering.

Were the demon who was first summoned by the cultists, the one who possessed the Cogtain, the one who possessed the Daemonthrope, and the one who wound up possessing John Bane at the end all the same entity?

Nah, entirely separate.

I migth've screwed up the description somewhere, but the distinctive characteristics of the psyker-kid/cogtain/knarloc/Daemonthrope daemon (or "Frank" as someone dubbed him), is two curly horns, glowing eyes, and wings made of smoke. Claws are just something you get for free when you're a daemonhost with hands. No cultists were ever really involved with him either, he just sort of snuck into the abandoned kid when the Gellar Field failed, if you mean the Cogtain and his minions, it was never really specified what the hell was wrong with them, but they wound up amalgamating with the Daemon sort of accidentally.

Bane Johns' daemon on the other hand was just some unspecified Tzeentchian thingy: blue aura, feathery blue/black wings, horror-summoning powers, and then generic unspecified Tzeentchy characteristics that I embellished entirely based on the reference picture I found. I can definitely see the confusion, I should go back and remove the reference to horns and add some extra eyeballs or something (it was really late, sorry).

[Lord Torath]

So how, mechanically, did your GM account for the hyper-reliable lasguns you guys brought to bear on Bane Johns? Did he give you a bonus to your "jam/misfire" checks with those guns to reward Tink's ingenuity? Or was there some other mechanic involved?

Also, which plot hook was Blatantly Ignored? The one for rescuing the marines on the Tyranid hive ship? Or something else?

[Shoggy]

So how, mechanically, did your GM account for the hyper-reliable lasguns you guys brought to bear on Bane Johns? Did he give you a bonus to your "jam/misfire" checks with those guns to reward Tink's ingenuity? Or was there some other mechanic involved?

Also, which plot hook was Blatantly Ignored? The one for rescuing the marines on the Tyranid hive ship? Or something else?

Basically the threshold for a Jam was bumped up to 110, so Bane had to spend at least 10 point to get that to be a possibility, and then some more to override the "Best-quality reliable weapons just miss, not jam". They had absolutely nothing going for them aside from being harder for him to mess with, forcing him to run through his "mana" faster. Worked out quite well for us, but then again, we had a long time to work on that plan.

The plot hook I was talking about was "fix the cells before you shove a Zoanthrope in it", I gathered that doing that and the little Warp Fungus mini mission were supposed to take up our first night, but we actually got through all the mission prep and to start of the first combat encounter instead, so he was definitely slightly on the back foot, and had to cook something more appropriate up for the Zoanthrope transport sequence. He's good at that sort of stuff though, probably because we do that sort of thing a lot.

[Rockphed]

I (finally) finished reading this. It's hilarious. I do have to ask: how did the sequence of notices on the laundry room door come to be? Also, did Carrot Ironfounderson get transported into the Arbites and then get assigned to be a traffic cop, or did he found the Arbites? I get that there is an element of Judge Dredd in this to, but surely you guys were pulling from the worlds funniest far-too-literal policeman.

[CantigThimble]

I recently discovered these through a Youtube Channel called Cloak and Dagger where there are effectively audiobook versions of all of these. They're absolutely fantastic, thanks for writing them.

[Shoggy]

I (finally) finished reading this. It's hilarious. I do have to ask: how did the sequence of notices on the laundry room door come to be? Also, did Carrot Ironfounderson get transported into the Arbites and then get assigned to be a traffic cop, or did he found the Arbites? I get that there is an element of Judge Dredd in this to, but surely you guys were pulling from the worlds funniest far-too-literal policeman.

The notices were just some mostly-freeform RPing to fill the timeskip, so us all just sitting around speculating on what would be fitting (or amusing) activities for the party to get up to during transit. The tone was already pretty much set when the DM kicked off with a Futurama reference and explained that the Arbite was being an overly-literal **** to Sciscitat too. So then we hypothesized on just how much trouble we could cause, there was a "roll to see if you blow up the laundry room" moment, and then Twitch's player pointed out just how critical a laundry room is and how much important/valuable stuff goes through it, which led to the classic rpg "how can we MONETIZE this?" moment. So mostly just fun freeform screwing around, but things did get a bit weird (from our perspective) when the DM let us have a high-level ID card without fuss, and let us plan out an escape attempt without more than a handful of checks, so we were fully expecting SOMETHING plot-related to stop us from escaping, we just didn't expect to get so far, or to run into Oak at the exit.

Given that we skipped over the whole plot-hook involving the Arbite, I can't really comment too much on his Carrot-ness, but it does sort of fit (I can say that our own IG version was one of the many prologue deaths). Honestly, to us he came off as far more of a lawful-angry terminator than misguided idealist. We filed him away as the DM wanting to put in a super-powered low-level cop to screw with us, as opposed to an actual real character, which is why we used him as a sort of speedbump for Bane instead of really interacting with him. Apparently there was this whole sub-plot we could've gone down with us partnering up with him (in place of Ivana I guess?) and helping him arrest more or less the entire planetary government.

I recently discovered these through a Youtube Channel called Cloak and Dagger where there are effectively audiobook versions of all of these. They're absolutely fantastic, thanks for writing them.

Glad you enjoy the stories! I really like Cloak's readings too, hopefully he keeps going with them, but I'm also hoping I can get to the end before he does.

[Cluedrew]

Apparently there was this whole sub-plot we could've gone down with us partnering up with [the Arbite] (in place of Ivana I guess?) and helping him arrest more or less the entire planetary government.

That honestly doesn't surprise me for two reasons. One, although I doubt he would ever agree with their methods I feel he would sympathise with the guardsmen on some level. There is this... "we do the actual work and no one thanks us for it" feel both he and the guardsmen have. Such as in their reactions to Sciscitat.

The other is that after reading this story, I don't feel like any character is safe from being pulled to the foreground and being given a subplot. Well I can think of some that you could tell wouldn't last long. But there are a similar number that I feel like could have been much more significant characters if they plot had gone a slightly different direction. (If they hadn't died, as an example.)