After many years of failed persuasion attempts, I finally decided that I did want to play Inquisitor after all.
It's essentially a small-scale D&D type game, but utilising the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
I had a great time constructing my character, but ultimately the GM vetoes my million-tentacled warp-thing that wielded Orks as melee weapons and had a gun that utilised the Lost Primarchs as ammunition.
So there it was. Stuart, James, Foxxy and myself. I had opted to play as a Kroot mercenary, since I'm pretty grossed out by humanity in the forty-first millennium. He wielding a Kroot rifle that doubles as a halberd in melee, with a knife as a back-up, high speed, and several acrobatic, close-combat and sensory perks.
Like this, but brown.
Stuart took a low-level psyker who wielded an actual halberd, with powers he wouldn't let me see.
Like this, but less good.
James took a grizzled old guy who either had a serious limp or crude bionic legs, bringing into battle an old-school shotgun and revolver.
But in the future.
Foxy rolled a psyker whose powers apparently manifested in the form of ice, or as I call it, "cryogenesis". I didn't really get it given the setting, but apparently cold is a potential manifestation of the warp so I went with it.
Yeah.
The scenario: each of us had been employed to recover an unknown artefact from some esoteric location by different noble families of the Imperium. There were three chests on top of some kind of blocks or industrial container, one of which contained the relic, though which one was unknown. They were arranged in a line, each of the three blocks had a ladder and were connected to one another by a bridge. there were two rows of barrels adjacent to the blocks, one on each side, which a central gap in each bridged by ladder or walkway. My Kroot started at one end of the blocks, Ice King at the opposite end, and through the barrels on either side came Stuart's psyker and James' Clarkson.
My initiative was highest and therefore I could go first, but I had no idea what I was doing so I let the others have their turn first so I could get into the swing of it. James limped into the playing area and immediately knocked over the barrels due to his own clumsiness, making a mess, a racket and clobbering his good leg. Everyone else immediately heard him except for me, with a combination of my superior Kroot hearing and the first of several terrible rolls.
Stuart advanced much more carefully from the opposite side and, having heard the noise, successfully turned himself intangible with his warp powers in preparation for any hostile engagements.
Foxy approached the ladder to the container on the opposite side from me, but accidentally frosted it up and slid off.
Finally ready to embark, my Kroot scaled the nearest block in a single leap and opened the chest, finding it empty. Annoyed, I ducked behind it as cover and sniffed the air for adversaries, all of whom had heard the click of the lock. Detecting a presences, I activated my motion-tracker auspex and located the characters of James and Stuart on opposite sides of the middle block. I readied my Kroot rifle and aimed at the top of the block on the side of Stuart's auspex blip in case anyone climbed up.
Which he did. Using the boxes and barrels stacked up against it (the ladder was on Jame's side) he carefully clambered up. Whereupon I shot him. Not recognising the human's ethereal glow, my Kroot aimed an placed a crack shot right through the middle of his head. It plinged harmlessly on the Titanium steel in front of the psyker's face and alerted everyone in the room. Fortunately my Kroot had enough sense to realise that he had actually hit his target and the failure to cause so much as a scratch may be linked to the peculiar glowing of his target. He calmly reloaded and took aim again, in case the glowing dissipated.
Which it did, next turn. Stuart failed to maintain his instability and it flickered off. I immediately fired, putting a round right through his abdomen. He limped behind that block's chest before I could shoot him again. Knowing he was hurt but not certain how hurt, my Kroot elected to pursue in close combat, so ran and leaped across the gap between blocks, through my duff roll meant he missed and found himself hanging from the edge with his nose in the psyker's blood. Who himself was attempting to use his psyker powers to regenerate his wounds, succeeding only in giving himself a nosebleed. But I did at least acquire Stuart's scent, gaining permanent awareness of his location.
It was at this point that Ice King had gotten to the third container and found the relic inside. And also set off all the alarms, which surprised him enough to have him cowering behind the box for several turns. James' desperado limped off in that direction below Stuart and I. My Kroot had climbed back up, but another duff roll meant that in doing so he'd cut his leg on the blade of his rifle somehow. His charge into combat was hampered by yet another duff roll, negating pretty much all possible advantage and turning what should have been a blood bath into a sordid affair in which only my Kroot suffered any actual damage, slicing a flesh wound into his right arm. That was fine until Ice King shot me with an ice spike, severely injuring the same arm and causing me to drop my rifle. Annoyingly my buckler was worn on the other side. Stuart then tried to regenerate again and turn his instability back on, but only made his nosebleed worse. I can relate.
Ice King then pushed the now empty chest off of the block, destroying the bridge between his block and mine. Not a problem for me, I could jump it. But the blood squirting from Stuart's nose and the injuries I'd sustained drove me into a frenzy. With my good arm (the left) I drew my knife and savagely attacked him. He just managed to fend off the first flurry, then leaped sideways off of the block to escape. He missed the boxes and landed on the floor, breaking his arm. Once again he tried to regenerate and turn intangible, and began bleeding profusely from his eyes for his trouble.
I leapt down on top of him and bit a great chunk out of his wounded belly, healing myself in the process. Kroot always consume their fallen enemies and comrades after combat. Usually they wait for them to die first (they're not savages), but I was wounded and wanted my arm to work again. I'd combined a few special abilities rules so that I'd regain health and injury levels by consuming fallen characters.
Then came a series of utterly disastrous rolls for everyone that I can only call The Fail Cascade.
Ice King came face to face with James' shotgun, and while trying to protect himself with ice attacks on managed to freeze himself within a pillar of ice. Meanwhile Stuart's psyker tried to psychically regenerate again, causing an explosion that injured him further and very nearly hurt my Kroot. Who, still hungry, went for the bleeding psyker once more, missed entirely and got a mouthful of halberd instead, which wasn't even being used in defence: it was entirely my own doing. With broken halberd blade stuck in my head I was stunned for three turns. During these three turns:
Foxy's Ice King remained trapped in ice.
James used up all of his shotgun ammunition fruitlessly trying to blast his way into said ice.
Stuart slowly crawled away, bleeding profusely and losing consciousness.
And I could do nothing but laugh.
Once my Kroot regained his senses he pulled the shards out of his mouth, strode over to Stuart, ripped his arm off and ate it completely. Ice King broke free of the ice, engaged an ammo-less James in close combat and ran him through with ice spikes. The GM decided Stuart had suffered enough and declared that some hitherto unknown psychic blood power that grew in strength with injury which activated on the brink of death, woke him up and with a few successful rolls allowed him to escape the tabletop, one-armed, to fight again in a future campaign (presumably with a new bionic or mutant arm). My dinner gone, frenzy passed and injured arm rejuvenated, I hopped back onto the block, recovered my rifle, leaped across to the last block and took aim at the fleeing Ice King, who was escaping with the relic. Then I remembered I still needed to reload, damn! I took aim again, he was pretty far away by now, and fired.
I missed.
Foxy won, at the cost of James' life and Stuart's arm. I at least had ameliorated all of my injuries on the field, though my pride may never recover. That halberd nonsense was some pretty bullshit.
But whatever, I had a great time. I can't wait to play again.
