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We have a new GM and some new players so we decided to do the easy learner book campaign (paranormal activity happening near a Cathedral that is just being completed).

Our group was made up of -
2 Arbitrators (I was one of them)
1 Assassin
1 Tech Priest
1 Scum
1 Psyker

Anyway, we rocketed through the ship section (basically just ignoring everything the GM was trying to dangle in front of us) and got down to the planet pretty quickly.

Following the flying Cherub Servitor to meet our Inquisitorial Contact we started seeing these groups of people with blue flame tattoos. Us Arbitrators suspected Cult activity and wanted to follow a group of them into an alley but we were out-voted by our group.

Then, when we had to follow the Cherub down another alley later we came across one of those blue flame tattooed men ranting crazily. To prevent any potential Daemon summoning, I clubbed the man and knocked him out (the other Arbitrator had wanted to shoot him and I wouldn't have disagreed, it would have been within our rights to execute him for potential heresy).

Immediately after clubbing him, we were attacked by 10 of those supposed cult people. We gunned them down and managed to capture one of them alive. We drugged him and then took him on to the Inquisitorial Contact's residence.
We then proceeded to torture him mercilessly (our group was exceedingly divided on this point, 2 Arbitrators and the Scum were for it... everyone else against). We believed he was holding out because he never said anything apart from repeating a weird phrase that didn't really tell us anything. We kept torturing him but eventually had to give up because we didn't succeed.

In the end, we killed him (for being a heretical cultist), then we threw his body out onto the street with a Heretic sign around his neck.

For the next 45 minutes we were arguing about what had happened.

In our point of view (the Arbitrators). We had clubbed a chaos cultist before he could potentially summon a Daemon. Then we had gunned down a bunch of cultists before torturing a captured cultist and executing him to dissuade other heretics as is our job.

In the view of our other group members. We had clubbed a man who might have simply been acting strangely from heat-stroke (he had been sun-burnt). We then gunned down his friends who were coming to protect him. Then we tortured and killed a man, who may have been totally innocent (for all we know the blue flame tattooed people could be Emperor worshippers).

What would you have done in that situation?
P.S. Our GM says there will be repercussions for what we've done lol.

Well, you killed several people and tortured them only the flimiest of circumstantial premises that maybe they might have been doing something wrong.That's unqualified evil and the act of a psychotic tyrannical authority.

So pretty much par for the course in the 40k universe. I mean that's the entire point of the setting. That's an eternal shitsack of war and darkness, with no redeeming features where you're better off never born because life sucks and then death sucks even worse.

Seems pretty normal for Arbites to me.

Sounds like your group has some idealists that have yet to learn about the true terrors that the Imperium is confronted with on a daily basis.

So........typical Tuesday morning for the Inquisition.


And honestly, if this is a story setting from a book, very very high chance they were heretics.

Within the bounds of a typical RPG you were fine, but if you want to up your game and not act like typical D&D characters you could invest in some more non-lethal (or less lethal) weapons (gas grenades, shock mauls etc) to disperse threats without leaving a pile of corpses.

You also have a psyker in the party so you should have had some indication whether or not anything demonic was going on.

Finally if the blue flame guys are walking openly and are everywhere, either they are:

Harmless
Good guys
Or so damn powerful and prevasive you should not piss them off till you're good and ready

Landing on a strange planet (and ignoring chance to learn more on the ship) and then picking a fight with a major faction right off the bat is rarely a good idea. Best to check in wtih the Inquisition/Arbites before killing and torturing random people on the street.

Again, not out of character to the Inquisition or an RPG, but since you asked...

Indeed. If it were me GMing? That guy you killed was the governor's relative. Now you're having trouble getting an audience because he's in mourning, and the local cops are looking for a murderer. If you're lucky, they'll ask you to help, as agents of the wider Imperium. If you're unlucky, then you're suspicious outsiders and you'll get the blame. That's ignoring the possibility that the local government is part of this cabal, in which case you'll be chained to an altar and Pink Horrors will be nibbling on your extremities.

Don't expect any help from your Inquisitor because he's light-years away and you'll have been hanged by the time he even hears about it. You're too junior to be worth doing anything retributive over, too. Off to the gallows; I hope someone has good upper-body strength and a high Toughness.


If the GM thinks it was disruptive behaviour, that is. If everyone's fine with it, fair play. However, from your description, there's some disagreement. You really should make sure all the players are on the same wavelength, or you'll end up with some friction in the group.

If it were me? We'd have listened to the ranting, to see if he said anything that tied in with the mission briefing (you know, the stuff on the ship that you skipped? ), and possibly staked the place out and followed him. We'd have met our contact, but not necesarily mentioned the madman (hey, this contact could be in on it too). Then, once we'd found out there was a group of cultists meeting in town, we'd probably have attempted to infiltrate their hideout ad gun them down.

Well, I'm not all that keen on random killing and torture in an RPG, EVEN in the grim darkness of the 40th Millennium.

You really should have spent a bit more time in the character and group design process before playing.