Chapter III: Amongst the Missing

Cast

Z/Karna – young feral world hitwoman

Trantor the Bald/Flem the Hairy – Old, bald, psyker

Red/Rabba – Ex-Catachan (feral world) Imperial Guardsman

Littilus – Off learning a new psykic power under the auspices of the Inquisition

Barbosa/Drake – Red Redemptionist Cultist of the God-Emporah!

Drustos/Flare – an Adeptus Mechanicus with a big nose and passion for killing hereteks

On Scintilla, the group from Chapters 1 & 2 is introduced to Drustos, a tech-priest, with the comment – your group needs brains. After a month of training in ciphers and covert tradecraft, the tentative Inquisitorial Acolytes are released from the Tricorn to establish cover lives in the capital hive Sibellius.

Z soon finds a fixer named Lionus who sets her up with lucrative work breaking debtor’s legs and murder.

Red gets hired as a guard/chauffer at the uber-wealthy Falconni family’s estate in the Upper Hive. Outfitted in the Falconni militia’s uniform; double-breasted cobalt blue jacket and jodhpurs with gold trim, the catachan killer looks quite…cute.  

Trantor opens a used book shop in a low hive marketplace.

Littlus is held back for additional training.

Barbosa gets a job at a mid-hive soup and sandwich shop (Panera’s)

After several weeks of living their own lives, a blank eyed courier arrives with a instructions to meet at a specific time and location in the Administorium District.

Arriving, your group takes a cargo elevator to down hundreds of meters to a blank corridor, at the end of which is a storage room with a wall sized opaque mirror. The mirror fades and you stare into a stainless steel room with an odd man in medicae robe, several floating servo-skulls and a body on a table. The man is Medicae-Interrogator Sand, the groups supervisor and the body is one Saul Arbest. Arbest was a nobody, his body found in a transit station in mid-hive. He had died of massive organ tissue rejection. Saul had suffered cruelly at someones hands – many of his organs replaced, a hidden cavity in his chest created through the removal of one of the man’s lungs.   Most singular is the addition of a pale white “worm” that had been attached to the man’s spine. Sand believes it was for control. It is a clear case of Tech Heresy and must be answered.

Sand assigns the Acolytes to travel to the Southern Corscarla Division of the Sibellius Low Hive, root out the Heresy, and bring back any samples they can. The group is presented with false identities as “regulators” of the Coblast Assay, a tech reclamation and ”human services” corporation, as well as a data slate (space iPad), some cash, and a biosample kit.  

The group hops the transit rail and descend into the dilapidated depths of Corscarla. Industry and anyone who could has moved on. What remains are the crumbling dystopian vision of dense city life. The people and the place look worn and hopeless. The group opts to follow the dataslate directly to Saul’s old apartment. Using identifiable terrain, Z/Karna leads the way – Hive-Death World, no difference, right? The group passes the Trantoran Alms House and takes a right at the Trantoran Workers Union 3 (bar) and wanders a little eventually finding Saul’s deteriorated habstack. The journey takes a solid hour of walking.

At Saul’s apartment, the group finds a woman hiding. She is quickly identified as Lili Arbest, Saul’s sister and the one who reported the dead man missing 32 days ago. The acolytes terrify the woman and go through her backpack. She claims that she has no idea about what happened to her brother, who had been laid off (along with most of the Division) by the Tantoran Compact thirty days before he disappeared. Lili plans to leave, as most of the other residents with a future have. She has been coming back from her job at mid-hive to look for her brother but no luck. Pressed for more info, she seizes up and answers one syllable responses. Flem the Hairy wants to try something a little softer and signs for the others to go. Dustos stays but the rest step out.

The woman gives little information, but asks the old man if he will walk with her to the rail station. 

Flem/Trantor agrees and the two start walking, followed at a distance by Z/Karna.

Lili is afraid because someone broke into her room (uphive) and would have taken her then if only she hadn’t been staying at Suals room, hoping that he would come back. People have been disappearing from Corscarla in the night, never to be seen again.

Along the way, Karna/Z notices that the local Enforcers scare the hell out of the locals – moreso than any police should, even in the worst of places.

About to board the rail, Lili thanks and hugs the kindly bald man. She tells him that there may be a lead to Saul – his old drinking buddy and loser friend Evast Zed. She saw him hiding in the local temple yesterday. He avoided Lili, so he may be hiding something.

Trantor joins Z and they share information. They make a note to check out the temple, with the rest of the group…

Meanwhile…

Flare, Drake and Rabba head to the Trantor Union (bar). Unfortunately, as they enter, none of them have any experience with hive-life. In fact, 90% of the patrons at this public house are (openly) wearing narco-gang signs and colors.  Drake, fanatic cultist of the Red Redemption that he is, strides to the bar and begins chatting with the bald, scarred tender. Soon he is surrounded by threatening gangers. Seeing the situation rapidly deteriorate, Flare/Drustos and Rabba/Red hang back.

Uncertain what to do, Drake/Barbosa stays true to the god-Emporah! He leaps on the bar and begins a fiery sermon. He was actually making some progress…until he promises food. Near instantly, the crowd turns hostile. From the back of the crowd of roughly 30 gangers someone fires a shot. Flare looks for a target, but doesn’t see one. Rabba moves to the side of the bar opposite, near a set of stairs and tries to crawl in a bottle. Drake? Drake jumps off the bar, grabs the barkeep and puts a shotgun to his head – telling him to get him out of the bar NOW!

Everyone draws guns (except for Rabba, who tries hard to be ignored) as Drake and the human shield bartender ease towards a small side door. Non-combatants flee past robot-like Flare, as the tech priest looks for a likely first shooter. The whole bar is and audible racket and in chaos.

Suddenly, the sound of boots on the stairs behind Rabba silence the whole bar, looking up, everyone sees a man looking like a younger, tougher, Micky Roarke bedecked in gang leather pants and a wife beater tank top squint at Drake and casually lift an enormous hand cannon!

Drake turns and sprints for the door, hits it and is out, just as a large chunk of wall to his right is blown out with the blast from the hand cannon. Drake sprints into the Hive.

In the bar is a pause, then the rough character on the stairs looks at the assembly like they are idiots, After him! Waving the gun at the door.

The bar empties of shouting gangers running after Drake. In the ensuing chaos, Rabba rejoins Flare and the two slip out of the bar and make for Saul’s apartment. Under the watchful and unseen eye of the man on the stairs…

Drake’s Run

Prusued by a 30 something strong mob of armed narco-ganger, Drake is breaking land-speed records in his running. Unfortunely, his homeworld had nothing like the hive and the winding streets are a flippin maze to him. He is quickly disoriented and cannot seem to shake the mob. Just as he approaches a corner, a bullet tears into the back of his armored coat. Drake its thrown around a corner and tripping falls against a grate, which collapses, dumping him in a sewer. He peeks up in time to see that his “exit” went unobserved. By now, the artificial daylight of the low hive Is fading to pitch black. Alone and covered in shit, Barbosa says silent prayers to the God-Emporah! While trying to figure out a plan out of this…

Meanwhile…

Rabba/Red and Flare/Drustos gat back to Saul’s room and make contact with Karna/Z and Flem/Trantor. Flem and Karna are still enroute when the light dies to a very low glow. Karna grabs Flem’s arm and indicates silence. Ahead, the killer has spotted two figures rags approaching Saul’s building. All other pedestrians have disappeared off the street. Even as the two stalk the odd two ahead of them, Flem remembers lili’s last words about disappearances in the night.

Z gets a good look at the two entering the building. They have waxy flesh and their joints are crudely re-enforced with bands of metal. They have masks, apparently sown on their heads, and from the maks glow red eyes.

Signalling to Drustos and Red a warning, the two in the room prepare a greating while Z and Trantor come up from behind…

GM Notes: I need to apologize; I like the idea of investigation games, but sadly they tend to start off slow and require a soft hand. I think that between that and the new setting, the beginning of this adventure was frustrating for some (including me), and for that I am sorry; I need to work on this. I have some ideas that should help, and let me work at being a better storyteller. The good news is; the rest of the adventure is more in tune with our group’s…finesse? Next session (20 December – my place) you are in the middle of it, most about to implement a hasty ambush on two creepers. Barbosa, while still in the sewer grate will have more than enough to keep him occupied. J