Dark Pursuits: A highlight

[Sent1ence]

A few years ago, I ran my players through the pre-written adventure in Dark Heresy 2nd Edition Core Rule-book, Dark Pursuits. All three had read the book closely and were very keen to interact with the Subtelty mechanic and frankly, managed what was basically a ghost run. It's been a little too long for me to give details on all of it, but below is the stupidest, most successful thing they did.

 

The characters they made are as follows:

Terk, an ex-imperial guard, built like an angry fridge, and who immediately aquired the largest sword a criminal gang would sell him. His lasgun has never been fired on anything but overload (we are now 3 years into playing).

Dregg's the Skunk, a Desoleum native, hive worlder born and bred, general smooth talking scum bag with a foul smell, mohawk and an inexplicable strong southern accent.

Kregious, the long suffering tech-adept surgeon, with the social skills one would expect and a some extremely impressive muscles that he assures everyone are his own.

 

Having discovered that Port Gyre, the void part that serves Desoleum Primus, and Dreggs recognizing the design on a black market dealers access oath cog as belonging to a branch of the Adeptus Adminstratum in charge of port records, they left to investigate further.

Dreggs carefully caroused in the right places, and bluffed his way into drinking with some small time smugglers who looked at his attire and attitude and assumed he part of the same trade, while Tersk and Kregious bribed their way into a disused warehouse for a pittance so kregious could tap into the records port records from a more secure location. Tersk polished his old armour and sword and stood out the front, smoking doing his best to look like the sort of cheap security that might be associated with such warehouse.

 

They both revealed something similar: The Porteus Auctoriate is notorious for accepting bribes, and can be relied on change records for a reasonable price.

One of the smugglers reminices about a desperate cover up of a landing because the clerk who rearranged things (a notorious obscura addict) had scheduled a smuggling shuttle to land on an occupied pad, resulting in a mid street landing and a struggle with the sanctionaries. The clerks name was Anteshern, and Kreigious was able to cross reference that with his rapidly growing list of minor clerical errors splayed out before him on his dataslate. Anteshern had been involved with the record for 341 Beta-Sky,  a ship associated with the smuggler they'd been investiagating.

 

With a name and some knowledge, they sent Tersk in to the grand imposing offices of the Porteus Auctoriate, under the somewhat flimsy disguise of a retired soldier trying to arrange for his pension to be delivered. The junior adept in charge of dealing with arrivals did not believe him, assuming he was visting guardsman after somewhere to smoke out of the chemical stained rain. But with a few tales, a small bribe and a chance for the impressionable young adept to hold a real, used (and abused) lasgun got tongues flowing the limited office gossip spilling out of the young man. It turned out Anteshern's addiction is known in the office, and is widely considered pretty embarassing, but he's a prefect, so what can you do? With that fun new relayed, three minds come up with a cunning, cunning plan.

 

Three figures emerge into the gloom of the Auctoriate. A guardsman of unclear origin, in highly polished dress uniform but with worryingly practical looking weapons, a tech-adept with mechandenrites whipping back and forth, and a glare for anyone who glances at him for more then a moment, and a man in a mismash of very expensive clothes, with large heavy binder of stained documents and mohawk freshly died in shades of read and orange.  It's this mohawked figure that slams his binder down on the desk and tells the (fortunately new) front desk that he has urgent business with Prefect Anteshern, that simply cannot wait. He slaps a wad of cash for emphasis, and is waved into the elevators for the 3 story ride. They march straight past Prefect Anteshern's protesting assistant and into his private office. Again, Dreggs slams the binder onto the desk, and says to the shocked man behind "Start reading fast sonny, we have plenty of profitable business to discuss."

 

The pages in the binder are blank, or pulled from yesterdays newspaper. The binder itself is from the Auctoriate itself, something saved from the incinerator the day before. Looking up in shock, Anteshern finds himself looking down the barrel of the gun, and a smug, chip-toothed grin.

 

Outside of Anteshern's private office his secretary tries desperately to listen in on a conversation that seems both serious and heated. After a few minutes, the mohawked man and emerges and offers an exlpanation: Anteshern's addiction to obscura is costing the reputation of the Auctoriate more than the higher ups want. They've been hired to come in, and take him back to a medicae so he can be treated without being seen dragged out in front of everyone. The security systems on Anteshern's windows are disabled, but once they've headed down the fire escape, it will be reactivated. Inside, a medical mechadendrite administers a dose of tranquilizers to the Prefect.

 

The party took a brief look over Anteshern's computer, to ensure the information they got out of them was accurate. They descend the metal fire escape, carrying the scrawny scribe between them, and head off through a back alley to ground car parked there just in case. Starting the engine, they made their way to an overcrowded medicae unit, where Kregious carefully placed the still unconscious Prefect. And, now that his softer hearted colleagues were well away, decided that letting Anteshern live would risk compromising them too much. So after checking in Obscura addict (Low Risk) in the medical waiting system, he administered 600mg of medical quality to obscura to the cartoid artery, and went to kindly volunteer his time and expertise to the overworked doctor heading the facility.

 

Overall they ended this mission with a subtlety of 67, leaving no witnesses, almost no suspicious interactions and treading on few toes.

 

the next mission, they used a melta-grenade on a random cultist that ambushed them in the street, and walked directly into a known cult manufactorum undisguised and tried (and failed) to hack into random terminals. Once they had already been identified by escaping cultists twice.

[Mazer Rackham]

Sounds like a proper old - very stealthy - romp!

 

You've obviously done very well as Players/GM to keep it going for a couple of years. 

[Sent1ence]

Two of the are related too me, there's not escape for them