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My favorite moment in the Dark Heresy campaign I participate in thus far was also the group's biggest "Oh crap, do we have a backup plan?" moment.

Our group had recently found out that a corrupted cleric was setting a trap for us, because during a visit to him our spokesperson had accidentally let a wrong word slip. Our original intent was to schedule a covert meeting with him, with the intention of discussing actions against a heretical organization. He found out we knew he was involved in said organization, and set us up, which we found out about in return. Most of the party wanted to avoid it all and play it safe, but he was also covering his escape and I knew we would lose him and could not afford to lose the lead on his boss. So I formulate a plan.

I ("Techpriest Zarkov Theta-One One Three; Zarkov will suffice.") dummied up a work order for demolition of the abandoned manufactorium the meeting was scheduled in, and with it as the pretense for my presence did a walk-about with the group's Arbitrator there as my "official escort". Also because he was the only one crazy enough to go along with me, and the only other one who could look official and mean it. Sure enough, there was a single Sororitas battle-sister there, power armor and autocannon, but helmet off. She had not been made aware of who I was, because I had held back from attending the first meeting.

Seeing her alone, I decided to advance to the beta stage of my plan, that being take her down quickly and hide the evidence or make her leave, and make ready for her boss's arrival when he comes in to see us dead. As opposed to stage gamma, which is the generic Leg It! phase. But hey, my faith was 100% in the will of the Omnissiah, and He protects, right? I'll get back to you on that. So we brazenly walk up to her, present the work order, and I talk a bunch of bureaucratic nonsense (Very well, in fact, along with a very good check for actually preparing the document earlier). The DM is impressed, and decides to let us have a go at it and has her call it in to her heretic boss out of confusion instead of shooing us away, distracting her for us to take her out neatly with a prayer to the Omnissiah and a bullet to the back of her skull. Or he would have, until he realized her vox unit is in her helm. Oh dear.

After a minute of her helming and saying stuff we can't hear as we try to play it official until the bitter end, he says "She slowly reaches up and closes the lock seals on her helm. You hear her gun's autoloader rack." Predictably, all unholy crap broke loose. I essentially put the barrel of my hand cannon to her faceplate for a suprise round shot and a high initiative shot on the next round. Yay for AP weapons with AP ammo! She didn't go down, though, and hosed me point blank with the autocannon. That's what fate points are there for, I guess, to be burnt (I woke up later with a metal arm, shoulder, a whole array of damaged stuff that wasn't repaired until I was able to make contact with a Magos Biologis, and some very worried comrades as my heart had stopped twice and been restarted by the energy in my potentia coil). Nobody else had a weapon with an AP higher than two, and when she finally went down it was to environmental hazard rather than incoming fire. Good stuff.

I learned my lesson from that fight, yes sir. Trust in the Omnissiah, and carry an even bigger gun! Old faithful Pax Mechanicum, my hand cannon, now rides shotgun to Deus Ex Tempestas, my shiny new bolt pistol. We got our man in the end, after some unusual firearm-related diplomacy with more sadly misled battle sisters. "Heretics? Us? I think you've got the wrong people, ma'am. Hey! Stop shooting at us!" Things have transpired in the sessions I missed since then, however, and I shall be returning to a group roughly 25 insanity points higher than it was when I left, and also up one free daemonhost nemesis. Surely the Omnissiah will allow for smooth sailing ahead, no? He protects? I'll get back to you on that!

First, a bit of Background on the group (Meet the Team!). For D&D.

Jake Ruskin: The groups leader (Sort of), a Human Warmage/Fighter/Eldritch Knight. The Straight man to everyone else.

Grok: Half Orc Barbarian. Wields one Giant hammer.

Kazi: The acident prone, pacifist ninja. Has been reincarnated as every single race in the 3.5ed players handbook.

Zeph Phayer: Half Orc Shugenja (Healer).

Thok: Half Orc Barbarian. Cousin of Grok.


Scenario 1: Party enters a Tower (From the Top). It has a massive well in the middle, and a staircase running around the edge. We are attacked by a mooncalf. It attacks Gregory (Grok, when he was brought back as a halfling) and Zeph. It grabs them and drops them. Zeph casts Featherfall, and they get down safely. Next, the Mooncalf grabs Kazi (currently a gnome). Thok jumps off the edge and grabs Kazi. They are dropped off the edge. They fall to the bottom, killing Kazi and leaveing Thok with 10 wounds (Consider we are now 8th Level or so). It is at this point that Jake decides that descretion is the better part of valor, and runs back through the door, shutting it behind him. The mooncalf begins to descend to attack. Grok kicks open the door at the bottom, and they run through. They now find themselves in a room where, not only are there more monsters, is also to small to escape the mooncalf. Fortunately Jake takes pity on them and kills the mooncalf.

Scenario 2: Later that Dungeon, we are in a room that has several slideing platforms moveing aroung in a pattern. Kazi decides that they move to slowly, and jumps between them. Rolls a 1. Gets a reflex save. Fails. The Ninja is now splattered over the ground.

Scenario 3: Several Dungeons Later, we are tryng to rescue Thok from a cult stronghold. Kazi is told to pick a lock. She rolls a 1, and jams the lock. Gregory decides to bash down the door. Fails twice, then a bunch of monsters turn up behind us. He tries one last time. The door bursts open. Gregory runs back to deal with the monsters behind us. More monsters come through the door, and eat Kazi. Zeph and Jake dive down the hole we came through. Gregory kills the monster he was fighting (2 down, 4 to go), then dives down. We dimension door back up, and the mage kills the Wartroll with a spell. Gregory charges in, and kills a third Rage Drake. The other 2 kill him. The mage blasts the remaining 2. They run at him, and he basts them, killing 1. The remaining one attacks him, and he cuts it's head off with a sword.

Scenario 4: In the Next Dungeon, Grok kills a Dragon with one hit. This fact does nothing to improve Kazi's mood, as the dragon was holding a Vorpal sword before he betrayed us. Guess Who rolled a natural 20, and on whom?

Haha, I love and hate those moments. As you just see a smirk spread across the DMs face and you know something bad is happening.

So many to choose from...hmm.

Most recently our Inquisitor came under some scrutiny from higher ups and we were met at our hideout by a Interrogator(I think). He wants us to come in quietly, hand over our possessions and help them locate our Inquisitor. At this stage we're carrying quite a few items of questionably nature, are rather attached to our weapons and also don't like the look of this guy. We start of by trying to persuade him that we're better of keeping our things and searching for our inquisitor on our own...he doesn't buy it.

Thinking we'll be instantly shot for the some of the books I'm carrying among other things we decide to run for it, find our inquisitor and sort things out with him. Before we can do anything 6 SOB burst into the room behind the Interrogator, all pointing guns at us. Luckily they don't want us dead yet and give us a warning to surrender rather than shoot us. The emperor smiles upon us as all 3 of us roll either 9s or 10s for Initiative and it's time for a plan. Thinking we can in no way kill all 7 of these people and also it would not help prove our innocence we decide on a combination of flash bang and hallucinogenic grenades are in order. The Interrogator then rolls and fails on the hallucinating table, getting the result where he thinks there are worms crawling all over his legs and starts firing his Plasma Pistol into his leg at point blank...we hope never to see that man again as he may not be too pleased with us.

We were playing a Dark Heresy campaign, and my party had fought our way into a small temple to Chaos hidden in the highest point of a Hive City. We'd (regretfully) escaped the Harem of Slaanesh, shattered the Altar of Khorne, burned the Book of Tzeentch, and cleansed the Plague Cauldron of Nurgle. So here we were, relatively unharmed thanks to our lucky dice rolls, watching a Chaos Space Marine Sorcerer and eight Cultists performing some kind of ritual.

We all agreed to charge in and slaughter the Cultists to interrupt the ritual, then use the Blessed Crozius given to us by a Chaplain to slay the Sorcerer.

We kill the Cultists with ease, then I (the Stormtrooper) charge the Sorcerer and swing the Crozius, knowing its power can only be used once...

And I fluff the attack. The Sorcerer finishes his incantation and opens a gate to the Warp in the room. Daemons pour through and rip us to pieces as the Sorcerer becomes a Daemon Prince.

Sucked to be us.

Dark Heresy:
Poorly lit Promethium Storage facility. Leaking Promethium tanks.
Trigger Happy Guardsmen and Assassin.
Enter the mutant.
BOOOM.
fortunately my character legged it as soon as he noticed the leaking tanks. (I know my other gamers very well).

Many years ago (Pre RT !) I was a player of a game called Traveller (nowdays referred to as Classic Traveller), and suffered one of the most intelligently devious, cunning and evil-minded GMs it's possible to meet. One particular event remains in mind to this day ( and I'm talking almost 20 years ago now).

I had landed my ship in an unpopulated area of an insignificant planet ,though I forget why exactly. Within an hour of setting down, collision alarms started going off, yet nothing had triggered the Long Range Sensors. Scanning the hull of the ship revealed a large beastie cheerfully ripping chunks out of the hull to get to the tasty, meaty goodies inside (my passengers who were in a sort of Stasis called "cold-sleep").

I tried everything I could think of : electrifying the hull, over-pressuring the airlock it was covering then popping it open to blow it off, even seeing if a beam laser turret could get a bead on it, all to no avail.

Finally, having exhausted all options from within the ship, and having run more detailed scans of the beastie (which I later found out the GM had based on the AD&D Balor) I decided on a novel plan.

Hopping into the highly modified Speeder I kept in the cargo hold, I zipped around like a top-gun pilot on acid, peppering it's hide with shots from the on-board laser, but barely gave it a rash. Time for Plan-B !

I positioned my craft hovering about 20m from the creature, facing away from it so I could tag it with the aft firing harpoon. The shot was a good one, clean through it's back and out through the rib-cage (which only annoyed the bugger). Slowly pouring on the power, I resolved to pull it off the hull, climb to high altitude and drop it from a great height.

Great idea ! except for one thing. By this time I was so intent of getting rid of the creature, I'd forgotten that I'd landed the ship in a canyon. When the beast finally let go of the ship (by which time the Speeder was at full thrust) I blasted like a metal comet, flying a full 50m in a graceful arc that was ended by an overhang on the canyon wall peeling the top of the speeder back like a sardine can! Much dice rolling later we resolved that I was barely alive and that the creature's momentum had impaled it on the tail of the speeder.

My character was in a bad way, but at least the damned beast was bleeding to death ! It's head made a nice ornament on the ship's mess hall wall.

Sadly, the evil genius who devised this scenario (among others) died in 1990, but he left me & our friends with some great memories as well as kindling our interest in RPGs which led eventually to WH40K.(he was a bloody good Imperial Army player too !) (Fare-thee-well, Old Friend )

So our DnD party was traveling through the woods with a Forest Giant we had befriended. When we hear a bellow from the woods that turned out to be Ettin Brothers and thier pet bear. The DM lays the scene out.

Out from the wood emerge two of the biggest Ettins you've ever seen with massive clubs and tusks protruding from their slavering mouths, oh and they have a brown bear with them.

We proceed to attack them since we had a giant on our side. The Giant takes out one Ettin, dying in the process, while the party takes out the second. Then the afterthought bear tears through our whole party with the only survivor being the psion with the ring of fireball. He was faced with the decision of nuking the party who were all slowly dying from bear maulings or dying himself. So he lets the fireball ring rip and kills the bear and the rest of the party. To his dismay he has only 4 hit points left and guess what evil villian we thought we had just smoked decides to reapear. The rest of the afternoon was spent rolling new characters.

To this day we still call it the Matrix Bear. Never seen so many crits in one fight by one monster before.

All right me and a group of friends (3) had just got into DnD
anyway we had a Elf illusionst (scorrcoer?), a hafling like Belkar from order of the stick and a human cleric + a fighter npc. The town there in comes under sige from a force of about 3000 hobgoblins. The fighter + cleric decided to man the wall the others flee in an airship. (cowards!) What happens next shock's me. They get the poilt to set corse for the goblins. The halfling knifes him and sets speed to max, he breaks the leaver. They leave the cockpit seal it with acid and bailout with a ring of feather fall (o_o)! It crashes kills about 6 thousend goblins + 3000 refuges in a masive explosin. They then lot there houses.
There evil now.