Sorry, man, the dice gods have not smiled on you. Willpower 84 vs 41: 4 degrees of failure.

HA! That is awesome! Well if ya would be so kind, a re-roll using a fate point would be nice from the next player to read this?

Better, but still no joy: Willpower 57 vs 41, 1 degree of failure. Guess good ol' Lucius isn't sticking his flesh anywhere near that blade.

As a third option Lucius can through desire not to appear weak in front of his crew go through it anyway. You'll just take some sanity damage.

OOOooo I like that option, going insane I always see as a trademark of a potentially great rogue trader. Really, all the sane ones (re:the merchant guy whos name I can't remember) are rather boring and never that famous.

how many d5s or d10s?

A couple d5's, don't want you going kookoo for cocopuffs just yet.

8! 2d5=8

Oh Lucius is going to be full blown insane by the time he is famous.

well, cornelius is not going to look at the paper printout unless the captain is going to share it with him. So he's oblivious of that, he's still finishing the baptism and blessings. Plus, he'll soon start offering it to anybody else in the hangar area.

@agustaaquila

Just out of curiosity, why did you bother making a roll to determine whether Mordechai managed to read the pictscreen message? The rule of thumb that I've always taken as read is that dice are only necessary when there's a chance of failure.

Well, I was 1) moving in robes down a slope while 2) trying to keep the better part of my face concealed and 3) read smallish text from a distance. When you combine these, I thought that something could go wrong. So I made the roll.

Looking more and more like we're down to just the three, i'm fine with that i'm just wanting to let you guys know so if it seems i'm waiting sometimes it's likely to let you guys have a conversation. I'll post the next big push forward tomorrow night barring something coming up in conversation or RL interruptions.

Game over?

Sorry, had a recent hospital trip with the fiance. Will have time to post tomorrow.

Well, I would like to see some combat before, but if everyone leaves then there is not much we can do.

I'm still here, ready to head up to the bridge.

I'm here, ready and waiting.

As mentioned to Lurker in PM, I had some RL things come up then my son got sick. I had hoped to get back to things this weekend but he's still been recovering. He should be back to school tomorrow, hopefully I can get caught up then.

The transition to night shift has been a little hard on me and I don't have access to dumpshock from there so I've dropped a little behind on my posting. I will catch up tomorrow morning before hitting the sack.

Hey folks school and work have been monopolizing my time expect the next gm post including moving to the bridge tomorow afternoon.

No worries, RL has priorities over gaming.

Please forgive the intrusion into your game but I really liked reading what you guys have been doing so far, I'm not familiar with the GW rpg games myself but I might have a look now

I'm glad your enjoying so far and hey we seem to have a few openings if you decide your interested.

I'll also take this moment to briefly note:

The stance the divine inspiration represents and the things it asks of you guys are my somewhat ham handed attempt at giving your characters an outlet for their beliefs and where they fall in the 40k universe. They are not an obligation to follow any particular path. If you decide that your character is an ultratraditionalist and will react accordingly that's groovy. But the concept that the empire has gone way far from the Emperor's vision has always been soemthign that fascinated me about the setting and something I couldn't help but explore.

See, the only people in the entire Imperium who don't revere the Emperor as a living (or at least, quasi-living) deity are the Space Marines. The Adeptus Astartes are the only people who even know that the Emperor didn't want to be worshipped. From a canon perspective, what the Divine Inspiration is saying is heresy of the highest order, sufficient to get the ship melted down and recast into several million urinals. The whole Imperial bureaucracy, but especially the Ecclesiarchy, is devoted to upholding the religious worship of the emperor; if the PCs were to show any sign whatsoever that they agree with or are even willing to tolerate the ship's views, they are basically holding up a giant sign saying, "Attention Inquisitors! Torture and kill us ASAP!"

If you want to make a radical departure from 40k canon and say that the Emperor's original intent is more-or-less common knowledge, that's fine, as long as you're aware of it. If not, the Divine Inspiration is basically asking us to commit suicide by pitting ourselves against the combined might of the entire Imperium.

Well to be fair part of the reason the DI needs your intervention is it is fully aware to go on it's stated course would lead to it's own destruction. At the same time while the information is not common knowledge it out there and is even held (in secret) by some factions within the Inquisition. But yes other then the space marines, some of which don't even concern themselves with the finer points of the Emperor's original beliefs the population is well and truely cowed.

But the simple fact is a lot of stuff does slip by the inquisition, for every but of success they have rooting out cults and other activities thousands more go unnoticed so it's not like ascribing to these beliefs is an instant death sentence. Professing them loudly and publicly will be a problem sure, but there's so much Rogue Traders do that skirts imperial law this isn't inherantly worse then most of that. That is after all the problem with a society where the punishment for almost all crimes is death and worse.

So in truth I'm fine if you decide to blow up or otherwise disable the ships cogitator resolving it's a blasphemy you don't want to deal with. In all likelyhood you'll loose some cool toys ( I wouldn't be very good at seducing you to the hard path if i didn't offer benefits) as well as the question of what does a loyal servant fo the Emperor do when they find out his true will. I was trying to avoid being too heavy handed at it but the DI can prove what it's speaking (for certain degrees of prove) if asked.

So yea, I am aware what level i'm talking about and I know what the normal reaction would be, I'm giving you the chance to make that reaction, rather then just assuming. If i get the potential to give my players the opportunity to enter into a matter of treachery and high conspiracy and yet still be the GOOD GUYS in the grim dark future, how could I pass that up.

Good guys? When did we start being good guys? I thought we were only marginally better than the soul stealing, city raizing, civilian slaughtering forces out there

And I don't think it was until a few thousand years before 41st M that the imperial creed existed. From what I remember (Not at home with books, but on a bus, so can't check for sure) I think it was just before the reign of blood or whatever it was called in the early 30's (30k-34k) that it even became a full blown religion supported by the gov't. Before that it was a faith that was here and there, and before that a cult that was stamped out nearly in it's entirity.

And hey, I am all for slippery slopes and running down them headlong. I'll just try to put up a fight when it comes to demons and the ruinous powers. Try.

Aswell from what Dark heresy describes in several tomes (I think originally when talking about the redicivist group that has the black scythe as their symbol) the majority of non-puritan hardliner inquisitors know that the Emperor was none-divine. Whether they think he is now or not isn't mentioned, but it states that in the inquisition they learn that most machines don't have true machine spirits, the emperor's divinity is a new event/belief etc.

As for Lucius, he is just fine with whatever the machine is saying, as long as he gets his profits to show the matriarch and upper echelon of Voorhes he couldn't give a crap, and just claim ignorance and blame Hakkonen for not telling him that the inane techno-babble he said about the cogitator was unusual and meant it was an AI. Safer path the more people you can throw under a bus and all.

So what do you all think about the mercenaries and how we deal with them? Should we try to coerce them, hire them, or take out all the leaders and take it over completely?

I think we should implement our own commisar like independent officers (but not as bloodyminded and violent) into their command structure, while keeping Omoi around, since he is the one with all the contracts and has been running them pretty well from the look of it. Maybe overtime have our own men take it over and recruit when we are in the expanse and have the DI flying again.

I'm fine with recruiting them. I definitely second the idea of attaching something like a cadre of commissars to their command structure, though. I wonder if Ciaphas Cain needs work?

Well, I don't want them around at all, but it looks like the group wants to try and recruit them. I think that we need our own group of officers to attach to them, and we also need to make Omoi feel important to the new ship command structure. Letting him feel like he is an important part of the new order is very important to getting them on our side.

Hmmm... talk to them, if we don't like them, blow the charges and space them. Bah, forget it, space first, ask questions later.

It seems the grudging consensus is to summon Omoi to the bridge so that is what I will take care of with my next post either tonight or tommorow morning. If there are any preparations you want to do before that please get them in now. Further I will advise you that the plan to take the blades and make them part of your organization is ambitious and workable but will present difficulty in accordance with it's value. It will require both good rolls and good arguments. One thing I want to stress is that while I'm normally a fan of characters persuasive ability being somewhat limited by the actual dice rolls (i've had players who felt they could dump their social stats in favor of their actual role-playing ability, causing no shortage of frustration for those who actually had the social abilities as a character but not a player.) Because of the medium and time delay I don't want folks sitting idle. Therefore if you want to make an argument so long as somone on your side has the rolls to back it up when all is said and done we're good.

Spent the day doing eastery stuff next update tomorrow.

Now i have a problem, I can't quote direct figures to the captain's questions as the RPG is too abstract. To put it in general terms the blades serve astroop compliment to fill out the barracks and a storm trooper regiment. Their quality will depend on how well you do on a commerce check. I could just make something up but i might very well be wrong and those of you more familiar with the game world would quickly see that. Thoughts?

i'll be posting more next week. my power adapter for my laptop is kaput so I'm waiting for the replacement to ship in, that and at work, they're starting to be more stringent with the internet usage so I'm not even gonna touch dumpshock on there. they're considering urban dictionary website as an adult website, so well, dumpshock topics can range a bit.

Thanks for the update.

Editing the post to include the 2nd used fate point

Ok here's the deal at this point we're down to four players who have posted any time recently, our tech priest, our navigator, our rogue trader and our missionary. Everyone else has kind of split off, some by telling me, others by just stopping posting. I know this is half the nature of PBP games and half the nature of bad storytelling on my part, I got too hung up on the politics and haunted ship portion and didn't get to the buckling of swashes portion fast enough.

But now we are at a crossroads, you've resolved the "Main Quest" issues the DI has, deciding what to do about the DI and deciding what to do about the mercs. As such we can handwave the various side quests I'd intended mostly for members of the party that are no longer posting, the crazed astropath, the embezzled funds, the actual nitty gritty of recruiting tech priests, ratings and officers. Otherwise we can just call things quits here.

I'm comfortable with either, if we decide to press on then i'm going to open up a new thread taking place in several months time as you've gotten the ship ready to go underway and now have a choice, you can investigate the "bubble empire" set up by those who have been fleecing your family and their allies with an eye to conquest, pillaging, and whatever other sundry acts you deem necissary and your letter of marque authorizes. Otherwise you can set to salvaging the planet bound troop ship Omoi spoke of.

I'll await your decision.

I'm down for keeping playing. Not sure about going after those screwing us, or the extra ship.

Having an extra ship would be nice, but taking care of the problems in our own house would be good too. But since Lucius is only a minor member of the house, I'm going to go with the extra ship.

And don't be too hard on yourself. This lasted 8 pages so far, alot of ones I have played on other forums are lucky to get that sometimes. And to tell the truth, enjoyed every bit so far, so +1 vote to you. Now cheer up and get ready to run more RT

I would really like the time skip. I am all for going into the warp, and finding out what evil things.... perhaps we should stay and not go after the ship. Seriously, I am up for whatever, and am fine with handwaiving the stocking up of the ship.

Oh to the swash, hopefully we will not need the buckle® too much.

EIther way warp tavel is involved so no such luck there.

I will post the next thread as soon as I can, I have a family re-union this weekend so it may not be until monday. I intend to have a nice clean start and summary then.

A strategy suggests itself to me: salvage the troopship, then use it to make a two-pronged assault on the "bubble empire" (aside: did I miss something? When was this first mentioned?) by landing Thousand Blades troopers on whatever planet/space station/ship the enemy are using as a base of operations while simultaneously using the Divine Inspiration to blast the crap out of whatever space assets they may have.

You didn't really miss anything, it was supposed to be discovered as part of your explorations into where the funds sent to supply the DI and such gone. I'll outline it better in the first post of the new thread but basically you find out the local house Vorhees administrator on Port Wander has been draining funds from Vorhees accounts to buy a stake in a fledleling criminal empire out in the expanse. I had two routes built in to get you there (three really) one was to do some digging on the station, the other was jsut to raid the Vorhees estastes cogitator banks. The third rail which i did everything in my power to discourage you from. was talking to Omoi as he did his own digging long before you got here on why a great house ship was just sitting idle and unsupported before moving in.

Actually that sounds like a damn good plan, do both

It would be the way I would go about it.

Just so everyone's aware the game restart will be delayed at least a week. I have a couple things I absolutely must get done before going to origins one of which is a SR related writing project. As such i'm curtailing some of my leisure related time sinks to try and make myself finis, that and trying to get my work squared away before that point isn't helping either.

No worries bud, good luck with the writing

I am back from origins, new thread will be started ASAP. Intent as of right now is to get it written and posted today (monday).

New thread is up:

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=35262

Well I think we're done, thanks for the fun all.

Twas a good game, sorry it didn't pan out. Lurker, if your looking for a game of RT, there are a few pbp ones going on at nerdbound

I may have to look into that.