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Arglebargle III
Feb 21, 2006

Issaries posted:

Mega crunchiness is on Owlcat this time.
The tabletop Rogue Trader is way simpler system with less math-problems and less loot treadmill and simpler abilities.

Wrong. Tabletop rogue trader is a giant pile of obscure rules. If you played it without rules headaches congratulations on having a great gm.

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Snooze Cruise
Feb 16, 2013

hey look,
a post
Round one of Chaos Space Marine boss fight: lose 2 of my peeps their very first action, promptly lose the fight

It died like a chump on the rematch though I just Argenta snipe it across the map while moving back and forth the ends.

Sab669
Sep 24, 2009

Sloober posted:

On normal it has been genuinely funny to me that the most dangerous things to you in every fight is uncontrolled npc allies.

Most of the bugs I've hit have been combat ones; camera locking to an NPC, perma slow mo, unable to setup in the start of fights when not an ambush, etc. a quick save and reload fixes these but they can be very annoying.

the fight in the voidship that had the wound buffers wasn't really too long, i outdamaged the loudspeakers capacity to buff and i have to frontliners that took no damage at all from the majority of stuff

In the fight after my parade one of the NPCs obliterated Cassia :(

I was sorely tempted to blast him for his transgression but I wasn't sure if the game would react negatively to something like that. I'm guessing it wouldn't.

The absolute sheer chaos of friendly fire is really amusing to me and fitting for the setting though.

GoodluckJonathan
Oct 31, 2003

This game is my first solid exposure to WH40k lore outside of memes. Just finished Act 1 and, uh, welp.

Couple Qs for the loreheads:

If the emperor's biological remains are still around why doesn't he just clone himself?

How did Aurora come back to life and turn into a space marine lol ?

Why are people constantly going heretic when it seems *blatantly obvious to everyone* the best case scenario is turning into some sort of monstrosity after a bit of fun?

Who is in charge of the empire, wait sorry, THE IMPERIUM, if the Emperor is off in lala land helping Navigators through the warp?

Issaries
Sep 15, 2008

"At the end of the day
We are all human beings
My father once told me that
The world has no borders"

Arglebargle III posted:

Wrong. Tabletop rogue trader is a giant pile of obscure rules. If you played it without rules headaches congratulations on having a great gm.

Well yeah. I meant players have it easy. Character creation takes bit time and effort, but after that it is smooth sailing.
GMs (and Owlcats) job is to distill and filter all that background BS into fun adventures, where I can swing my big Thunderhammer at baddies without doing math other than weapon damage.

Jack Trades
Nov 30, 2010



Maaan, why is there no option to hide completed quests? I don't need those cluttering my Journal.



:doh:

Relevant Tangent
Nov 18, 2016

Tangentially Relevant

GoodluckJonathan posted:

This game is my first solid exposure to WH40k lore outside of memes. Just finished Act 1 and, uh, welp.

Couple Qs for the loreheads:

If the emperor's biological remains are still around why doesn't he just clone himself?

How did Aurora come back to life and turn into a space marine lol ?

Why are people constantly going heretic when it seems *blatantly obvious to everyone* the best case scenario is turning into some sort of monstrosity after a bit of fun?

Who is in charge of the empire, wait sorry, THE IMPERIUM, if the Emperor is off in lala land helping Navigators through the warp?

The Emperor is plugged into the Golden Throne, trapped between life and death by the sacrifice of a thousand Psykers every day.

The best case scenario with Chaos is becoming an immortal exemplar of your God and getting to revel in your chosen vice forever

FurtherReading
Sep 4, 2007

GoodluckJonathan posted:

This game is my first solid exposure to WH40k lore outside of memes. Just finished Act 1 and, uh, welp.

Couple Qs for the loreheads:

quote:

If the emperor's biological remains are still around why doesn't he just clone himself?

Cloning isn't very reliable AFAIK, especially for the emperor whose a pretty unique being. The primarchs of the space marines are the closest things to clones of him that exist. Plus he's basically unconscious right now so he doesn't really hey to make many decisions outside of very brief moments of lucidity. Finally if this was even possible then he'd just die and some either guy gets to be emperor, even though thaf guy is his genetic copy its still a different guy and he wouldn't be cool with that.

quote:

How did Aurora come back to life and turn into a space marine lol ?

That was a different person. I expect we'll see someone else claiming to be Aurora later too.


quote:

Why are people constantly going heretic when it seems *blatantly obvious to everyone* the best case scenario is turning into some sort of monstrosity after a bit of fun?


Chaos is tricksy and makes you think that you either aren't really going heretic or that you'll be in control of the power. The dude blinding his family in rykas mynoris is a good example as you can use logic to make him realise that actually what he's doing is awful.

quote:

Who is in charge of the empire, wait sorry, THE IMPERIUM, if the Emperor is off in lala land helping Navigators through the warp?


There's a council known as the high Lords of Terra running the show. The game setting seems to be very slightly before one of the primarchs comes back and names himself regent and starts trying to fix things. (I'm assuming that the warp scar thing in the current setting happens around the time you recruit cassia as she is surprised to see it)

Sloober
Apr 1, 2011
im just hoping they add a QoL where the equations in the skills when you are leveling characters actually shows you the result for that character. no reason not to

Jack Trades
Nov 30, 2010

Speaking of which. Does The Emperor actually...do anything?
Besides just being a corpse that's used as a justification for fascism.

FurtherReading
Sep 4, 2007

Jack Trades posted:

Speaking of which. Does The Emperor actually...do anything?
Besides just being a corpse that's used as a justification for fascism.

Yeah he reaches out and does stuff sometimes. In a recent novel he temporarily possesses Guilliman so he can beat up one of the Daemon Primarchs. From what I understand he's mostly acting on instinct but has very rare moments of lucidity.

Axetrain
Sep 14, 2007

Even if he could clone his body I don't know if he could copy his soul. He's the reincarnated essence of 1000s of powerful psychic shamans and although I'm sure he's a beast in the gym that's not really why he's special.

Also he doesn't seem to me like the type that's keen on sharing power with another potential rival around.

Aramoro
Jun 1, 2012




Am I missing something here? This has happened a few times but you can just see here



Abelard here can move 6 except he can't see to move round the thing right infront of him. A bad guy just ran that way so I know you can, but I can't seem to.

Issaries
Sep 15, 2008

"At the end of the day
We are all human beings
My father once told me that
The world has no borders"

GoodluckJonathan posted:

This game is my first solid exposure to WH40k lore outside of memes. Just finished Act 1 and, uh, welp.

Couple Qs for the loreheads:

If the emperor's biological remains are still around why doesn't he just clone himself?

How did Aurora come back to life and turn into a space marine lol ?

Why are people constantly going heretic when it seems *blatantly obvious to everyone* the best case scenario is turning into some sort of monstrosity after a bit of fun?

Who is in charge of the empire, wait sorry, THE IMPERIUM, if the Emperor is off in lala land helping Navigators through the warp?

The Emperor has been 'dead' for 10 000 years and he is worshipped. For some reason Imperium isn't that fond of cloning and it is mostly banned.
the Original 20 Primarchs and their Space Marine legions are non-cloned bio and/or sorcery engineered descendants of the Emperor.

Aurora was some sort of psychic possession by the Chaos Space Marine. Or maybe a Daemonic Possession, if the Space Marine was possessed as well

Imperium is a totalitarian dystopia for most of it citizens and the any knowledge of Chaos, Heretics and Xenos are heavily suppressed.
Most of the people have never heard of chaos and its dangers. They know nothing of the dangers of heresy, but it can't be that bad...

The Imperium is a vast bureaucracy that works on inertia. Few powerful people nudge it along and change a direction a bit, but there's no single person in charge. There's a lot of competing factions that are semi-independent of each other. Multiple inquisitions, Marine Chapters, Cult of Mechanicus, Terran lords, Imperial Navy, Imperial guards and down to local Governors and Rogue Traders, who are sovereign in their own domains.

CottonWolf
Jul 20, 2012

Good ideas generator

Jack Trades posted:

Speaking of which. Does The Emperor actually...do anything?
Besides just being a corpse that's used as a justification for fascism.

99% of the time, it’s ambiguous. For example, the Sisters of Battle can do bring about literal miracles. As can a Dogmatic MC, see running through the fire in the prologue. But it’s unclear whether they’re literal divine intersession from the Emperor, or the result of latent psychic power or force of will acting on the Warp.

Clerical Terrors
Apr 24, 2016

I'm so tired, I'm so very tired

GoodluckJonathan posted:

If the emperor's biological remains are still around why doesn't he just clone himself?

The Emperor is the specialest special of boys and can't be cloned, or something, the real reason is doing this would advance the setting's story and threaten the original IP holders' ability to sell plastic army men.

GoodluckJonathan posted:

How did Aurora come back to life and turn into a space marine lol ?

My read is that they're different people using the same moniker, you fell for the spooky machinations of chaos.

GoodluckJonathan posted:

Why are people constantly going heretic when it seems *blatantly obvious to everyone* the best case scenario is turning into some sort of monstrosity after a bit of fun?

Living in the Imperium as an average Joe sucks, you are an utterly replaceable cog in a fascist machine that fails to take proper care of you and is only interested in you as another resource to be spent. You live in squalor, have to do back-breaking work for your entire life with little to no chance of improvement and all of the food is British. If you complain too much you get lobotomized and turned into a Servitor. Meanwhile the high-born are constantly styling on you and clearly showing that there's a better life to be had, from which you are excluded by virtue of your low birth.
So being offered to get out of your stinky life and maybe get one over on those pesky nobles doesn't sound like a bad deal, even if the people offering you this chance look like methheads at a death metal concert, can't be worse than your current life, right?

If you're a noble then you're almost automatically a corrupt, gluttonous freak and are being promised even more of what you already have, how could you resist?

Chaos also doesn't tend to tell you upfront what they're actually going to do to you, and information is so heavily controlled that most humans have no way of knowing either.

GoodluckJonathan posted:

Who is in charge of the empire, wait sorry, THE IMPERIUM, if the Emperor is off in lala land helping Navigators through the warp?

A gaggle of senile old men on life support machines known as the High Lords of Terra. Although in the modern timeline they've taken a back seat and are letting one of the Emperor's "Sons" Roboute Guilleman run the show, since he's one of only halfway competent people with a somewhat legitimate claim to his position.

Clerical Terrors fucked around with this message at 15:21 on Dec 11, 2023

Mulva
Sep 13, 2011
It's about time for my once per decade ban for being a consistently terrible poster.
Hey.

They aren't all men!

Jack Trades
Nov 30, 2010

I am glad that this game generally gives you an option that's something other being the one or the other version of an rear end in a top hat.

CottonWolf
Jul 20, 2012

Good ideas generator

Clerical Terrors posted:

The Emperor is the specialest special of boys and can't be cloned, or something, the real reason is doing this would advance the setting's story and threaten the original IP holders' ability to sell plastic army men.

Fulgrim got cloned that one time, and then was promptly locked in the “GW would rather not think about the implications of this” lore vault by Trazyn.

Infinity Gaia
Feb 27, 2011

a storm is coming...

Jack Trades posted:

Speaking of which. Does The Emperor actually...do anything?
Besides just being a corpse that's used as a justification for fascism.

I'm half remembering lore but I think the only reason humanity has FTL travel is because of his giant psyker brain maintaining the Astronomican even while basically dead. If he died (he'd probably immediately reincarnate but) everyone would be stranded in their own systems.

Jack Trades
Nov 30, 2010



Top responses when talking to Cassia feel like they should be punctuated with "*tips fedora*".

Clerical Terrors
Apr 24, 2016

I'm so tired, I'm so very tired

Mulva posted:

Hey.

They aren't all men!

You are right, some of them could be potted plants dressed up in finery for all we know.

CottonWolf
Jul 20, 2012

Good ideas generator

Infinity Gaia posted:

I'm half remembering lore but I think the only reason humanity has FTL travel is because of his giant psyker brain maintaining the Astronomican even while basically dead. If he died (he'd probably immediately reincarnate but) everyone would be stranded in their own systems.

This is true. But you could make the argument that this isn’t really him doing it through any choice of his own and just his massive psychic powers being used as a giant battery.

Axetrain
Sep 14, 2007

He is necessary for the Astronomicon but one of the less known reasons he needs to be on that throne is to psychically hold a giant portal to hell closed that's inconveniently located in his basement.

Axetrain fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Dec 11, 2023

SonOfGhostDad
Nov 16, 2022
The Emperor now mostly functions as humanity's own Chaos god, existing primarily in the warp, but occasionally bestowing personal miracles whilst acting as a literal guiding beacon for their continued expansion and acting as a bastion against humanity's complete and immediate devourment by one of the other Chaos gods, a la Mr. Burns's disease door.

Preechr
May 19, 2009

Proud member of the Pony-Brony Alliance for Obama as President
I like to think that the Emperor is constantly observing and living vicariously through Ciaphis Cain, because after 10000 years of torment and all of human history before that he was finally curious what life would be like if he wasn’t a colossal dick and could just enjoy things. It’s why he never dies in all his wacky adventures, because the Emperor refuses to let his favorite show get cancelled and demands a new season.

habeasdorkus
Nov 3, 2013

Royalty is a continuous shitposting motion.

Caidin posted:

I think about a 3rd of my fights in the first act had some enemy gunner gleefully gun down at least 1 to 3 of his own guys in the opening round so turn about I suppose is fair play.

The reinforcement packs in the Word Bearer fight killed the Word Bearer at point blank range as he went to wreck the shuttles while trying to shoot my remaining party members from halfway across the map. I didn't even realize it happened immediately due to camera wonkiness.

Issaries posted:

The Emperor has been 'dead' for 10 000 years and he is worshipped. For some reason Imperium isn't that fond of cloning and it is mostly banned.
the Original 20 Primarchs and their Space Marine legions are non-cloned bio and/or sorcery engineered descendants of the Emperor.

This isn't quite right, the Imperium uses cloning for lots of stuff. For example, using cloned bodies/brains is the less evil way of making Servitors and there's cloned Imperial Guard forces in the lore (though the Afriel strain turned out real bad probably due to warp fuckery and Kreig hides the fact that they're sending out armies of clones to fulfill their tithe obligations). It's more that the Emperor was one of the most powerful psykers in galactic history/also perpetually immortal/nigh impossible to clone. The Horus Heresy 10k years back really hosed up the Solar System and left Earth a wreck, and Emps was real bad at letting people know all the secret cool stuff he was doing and what all his plans were, and within a few hundred years you've got a full on very aggressive religion stating that he's a God. Cloning also doesn't really work well for making Space Marines, either, so it's at least partly a technical problem. In the lore there is at least one effort to create a clone of the Emperor. By the Drukhari.

Issaries posted:

The Imperium is a vast bureaucracy that works on inertia. Few powerful people nudge it along and change a direction a bit, but there's no single person in charge. There's a lot of competing factions that are semi-independent of each other. Multiple inquisitions, Marine Chapters, Cult of Mechanicus, Terran lords, Imperial Navy, Imperial guards and down to local Governors and Rogue Traders, who are sovereign in their own domains.

Yeah, the Imperium is a balkanized, fascist, incompetent mess of competing interests. They are not the Good Guys in any sense, playing as strictly Dogmatic is playing as a perfect Imperial citizen. And even places in the Imperium that are reasonably decent very likely use moral abominations like Servitors. Still better than Chaos, but I can't think of a lower bar unless it's the Dark Eldar. Even after 10,000 years of decay the Imperium as a whole is still likely stronger than any other group... if it weren't for their own constant infighting and self-defeating brutality.

GoodluckJonathan posted:

Why are people constantly going heretic when it seems *blatantly obvious to everyone* the best case scenario is turning into some sort of monstrosity after a bit of fun?

The slippery slope is enforced by the warp in the world of 40k. Henrix wasn't wrong when he talked about the risks of wearing the heretics' uniforms in the tech priest temple to infiltrate the guards, just having that poo poo on you will eat at your soul. Plus, the Imperium has sects who's initial reaction to Imperial citizens finding out about daemons is to murder the entire planet. Meanwhile, if you're one of those underdeck serfs on a ship where you're abused by the guards, always broke, and have no future other than eventually dying horribly from an enforcer purging you for no reason you can discern, or in a mechanical accident, or in a battle you had no say in fighting... wouldn't you be interested in making your lot slightly less bad? It's a major part of the lore that the Imperium is its own worst enemy because it creates the perfect conditions for Chaos to take root.

GoodluckJonathan posted:

How did Aurora come back to life and turn into a space marine lol ?

I read Aurora talking to you from beyond the grave during the Triumph as classic Warp Fuckery, and there being two people using the name Aurora - with the Chaos Space Marine being the man behind the heretek tech priest.

e: Man, why was I trying to use the Discord command for spoilers on SA? I must not be awake yet. My bad if anyone got spoiled before I fixed them.

e2: I should play Divinity Original Sin 2 again and compare it to this game, because comparing it to BG3 isn't fair given the difference in budgets. But this does feel jankier than I remember D:OS2 being. Still having a lot of fun, but it's not quite the same. I never got through Kingmaker and didn't play Owlcat's other Pathfinder RPG, so I don't have a ton of experience with their games.

habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Dec 11, 2023

Sloober
Apr 1, 2011

habeasdorkus posted:

The slippery slope is enforced by the warp in the world of 40k. Henrix wasn't wrong when he talked about the risks of wearing the Heretic's clothing in the Tech Priest temple to infiltrate the guards, just having that poo poo on you will eat at your soul.

there were so many enemies in that fight its a lot of fun, you miss out if you do it. i accidently got two of those flesh demons too, i think from warp effects (they were not remotely threatening since they were stuck to my thunderhammer wielding abelard. the game just plopping those in without like... showing it? is kind of annoying

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



The only real insight into living under Chaos is from the Black Crusade TTRPG. Which honestly doesn't really sound worse than the imperium, in both circumstances you live a short miserable life full of pain, but hey with Chaos you might get to steal some of the good cocaine before you die.

Snooze Cruise
Feb 16, 2013

hey look,
a post

Sloober posted:

there were so many enemies in that fight its a lot of fun, you miss out if you do it.

if a game gives me the opportunity to electrocute myself i am taking it

habeasdorkus
Nov 3, 2013

Royalty is a continuous shitposting motion.
Is there a way to avoid killing the electropriests if you do that big fight first? I went to the right side first and had to fight them because they gave me no chance to talk.

e: argh, hosed up the spoilers again.

habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Dec 11, 2023

xeria
Jul 26, 2004

Ruh roh...

Nephthys posted:

It's a toggle if you use controller. Mine is broken though so I wasn't able to use it for long enough to see how good this game is with controller.

It's a toggle but you have to re-toggle it every time you interact with something in the environment (loot, goods, etc.).

I generally prefer playing with a controller so far but it can be finicky navigating menus and it's a bummer that you can't (at least that I saw) easily swap between controller and mouse/keyboard without reloading the game.

I also learned that I have to unlink the party when I'm exploring an area with traps/hazardous terrain because moving the controlled party member in place to, say, turn off the steam pipes, clicking A at the pipe with the party linked doesn't actually do anything except make the rest of the party run back and forth across it because I guess if you're all linked together, then the game forces non-skill environment clickables to use your main PC instead of just whoever you happen to be controlling. And I haven't figured out which controller button lets me swap between who I'm directly controlling outside of combat.

Warden
Jan 16, 2020

Terrible Opinions posted:

The only real insight into living under Chaos is from the Black Crusade TTRPG. Which honestly doesn't really sound worse than the imperium, in both circumstances you live a short miserable life full of pain, but hey with Chaos you might get to steal some of the good cocaine before you die.

Also the novel Traitor General, which depicts an Imperial world under Chaos occupation. It really, really loving sucks for the population, but is none too shabby for occupiers.

The Chaos dudes are basically strip-mining the planet of all resources, including all of their water, as fast as possible, because they are not at all certain they can hold it against the eventual Imperial counter-attack (and they turn out to be right about that).

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012
It's worth noting that multiple factions of the Inquisition are looking at ways to bring back the Emperor through science and warp-magic. The fact that their efforts have resulted in miserable, embarrassing, and often extremely bloody failure for ten thousand years should tell you a lot.

One significant problem is that the greatest human mind in the field of cloning and personality transfer is Fabius Bile, a Chaos Space Marine mad scientist who has his own (horrible) agenda for perfecting humanity. The Inquisitor: Martyr ARPG revolves around him working with an especially rogue faction of the Inquisition to create a new Emperor-like entity called the Alpha Pariah, at a hideous cost and with extremely ambiguous results.

Sekenr
Dec 12, 2013




Can someone spoil a thing for me I went with heretical choice at the very start but since than was very idiosyncratic with my choices. Most notably I hidden the blade hilt from Hendrix but then for some reason gave him the blade itself, dont ask. Will not sticking to the chosen path bite me in the rear end later? Will I be dissapointed story-wise?

Clerical Terrors
Apr 24, 2016

I'm so tired, I'm so very tired

habeasdorkus posted:

Is there a way to avoid killing the ||electropriests|| if you do that big fight first? I went to the right side first and had to fight them because they gave me no chance to talk.

Yes, if you clear out the big fight first you'll still have to fight the ones who jump you in the hallways but they ones behind the door will be friendly to you.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

GoodluckJonathan posted:

This game is my first solid exposure to WH40k lore outside of memes. Just finished Act 1 and, uh, welp.

Couple Qs for the loreheads:

If the emperor's biological remains are still around why doesn't he just clone himself?

How did Aurora come back to life and turn into a space marine lol ?

Why are people constantly going heretic when it seems *blatantly obvious to everyone* the best case scenario is turning into some sort of monstrosity after a bit of fun?

Who is in charge of the empire, wait sorry, THE IMPERIUM, if the Emperor is off in lala land helping Navigators through the warp?

a) The emperor has no need to clone himself because He's not fully dead ; and He has no need to move around or talk because ever since Chaos burst through the immaterium He has only had one task that occupies the whole of His blessed noggin : acting as a giant psychic lighthouse for the Universe, and keeping reality from tearing itself more than it already has.
Some heretics would also say the people who are at the head of the Imperium during His most assuredly temporary setback benefit too much from His being a lifeless husk to consider solving the problem.

b) Not sure, but then I'm not even sure it's the same person, or if Aurora is a title/role within the cult. Tzeentch, man.

c) because life in the Imperium suuuuuucks. Might as well go out with a bang. Also because, as you can often see in the game, simple contact with chaos-touched items or even just symbols can make you stark raving nuts.

d) the various Adeptuses (Adepti ?) (Administratorum, Ministrarum, Mechanicus etc...) all have their semi-independant leadership on Mars and Terra, there's a big council where ostensibly their Big Kahunas discuss and legiferate but in practice they all compete with and backstab each other all the time and the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing at any given time.

Also due to how gigantic the Imperium is, and the fact that entire galaxies can get cutoff from Terra for years on end because of warp storms, each world or cluster of worlds is ruled more or less independantly & self-sufficiently ; their only contact with the greater Imperium being a) providing manmeat for the grinder, sorry, the Guard & Navy every so often and b) shipping bulk orders of whatever that world is supposed to produce for the centralized war effort.
As long as a given world does both reliably, nobody *really* cares one iota what happens on it, who's in charge, whether the laws and religion are followed properly etc...

In return, they can expect the Imperial Navy or better yet, space marines to show up should the world be invaded by xenos or succumb to Chaos. They'll promptly bombard everything to dust then summarily execute whoever's closest until either the problem is solved or the planet itself cracks.

CommissarMega
Nov 18, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER
Another reason people turn to Chaos is that it's subtle- even those Chaos factions who are infamous for their hordes of screaming berserkers don't start out that way. It's not like there's a white van pulling up to grubby Imperial citizens, a daemonette leans out and says "Hey fellow kids, you want some hentacles?". Chaos infection starts out like any addiction- the dealer gives you a hit of the good stuff, or you 'find' a bit of the good stuff, and everything else follows from there.

One example I remember is from Black Crusade, one of the tabletop RPGs. There's this gourmand named Kellum Lim, the finest in his hive, nobody has better taste than he. There is barely a dish in the sector he hasn't sampled, no vintage that hasn't crossed his varied palate.

And yet, one day, he smells a smell wafting in through the air supply that makes everything he eats take on a far more sublime sensation. Oh, he can't get enough of it- but he has no choice but to do so. Try as he (or rather, his staff) might, the smell could not be replicated, and in that failure everything Kellum consumes is... pedestrian. No matter how rare the sweetmeat or vintage the wine, without that one scent it all turns to ash and ditchwater in his mouth. Day by day, the once renowned gourmand becomes more of a skeleton of his former self, both literally and figuratively, pining away from the lack of that savoury scent.

But though his body wastes, his mind is still feverishly at work, trying to investigate the scent that has become his obsession. And one day, he finally finds the secret- on the day that he smelled what has now become his life's (and soul's) work, one of his cooks accidentally burned their arm on a stove. And so, though his supply of cooks dwindles, Kellum finally rediscovers the joys of life that he once thought lost, and he's able to partake once more! But only for a while, too short a while. Because even this grows passé and trite, and there isn't even the prospect of an investigation to stir his mind- Kellum knows where the scent came from, it just seems to be losing its efficacy.

That's when it strikes him- as a gourmand, he understands better than most the importance of ingredients. And so one night, he invites the hive's greatest nobles to a dinner- and who wouldn't want to attend a banquet held by the great Kellum Lim himself? Which is how they all end up drugged and unconscious in the dining room, where the flame in the fireplace roars, stoked to a fury by Kellum. The gourmand himself was in his room, air supply turned to full blast, a vast array of dishes before him, waiting for the first hint of the scent to waft through.

Later, as investigators sifted through the burning wreckage of Kellum's home, they took note of the fact that Kellum's own remains were nowhere to be found- not unusual, considering the size of the flames that consumed it. One of the investigators also noted a strange scent in the air- something that needed investigating, no doubt.

EDIT: I've just remembered- in Dark Heresy 2nd Edition, which takes place far, far away from all the First Edition stuff, there is a small throwaway line in one of the fluff paragraphs. It mentions how a certain Kellum Lim seems to be making waves with his banquets among the nobility of one of the sector's most prosperous hives...

CommissarMega fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Dec 11, 2023

CommissarMega
Nov 18, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER
Anyway, if I may doublepost and quote myself:

CommissarMega posted:

I seem to recall the alpha and beta having a lot more Contracts to pump up your colonies, but it seems like those have slowed down to a trickle. Do you get them as you progress the story now, or is there someone I have to talk to?

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Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012
That said, the unfortunate truth is that the Imperium is hosed-up and depraved enough that even the screaming, blood-drunk berserkers are often just switching employer rather than profession.

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