So, just got back from tonight's Dark Heresy session. It was interesting, and I'm still not sure if it went really well or very badly. I'm playing a Psyker, and after two sessions of not rolling a single 9, they were out in force tonight! We're on a space station, eradicating a Nurgle infestation, and the very first thing I do is activate my sense presence. Bam, there's the first 9. Our Guardsman foolishly doesn't have any charms, so the DM picks on him, and we body swap. Naturally, he freaks out. But he does it in my body, so everyone is seeing the Psyker freak out. And there's only one thing you do in that situation. Kill the psyker. Guardsman burns a fate point to swap our bodies back before he dies, and then I have to burn one of mine to survive the injuries.
So, I'm back in my body, but fucked. Naturally, the first thing I do is frantically turn my Healing power on myself. Oops, that's another 9. And this time, I summon a Plague Bearer into the elevator we're in. Most of the party faints, while I start vomiting uncontrollably. The feral Assassin is fine, and dispatches the demon, with the "help" of our Cleric, who flames it into oblivion. And chars the rest of us pretty well too.
Now, our void-born Assassin isn't too happy about this, especially as our Guardsman is going on about me swapping minds with him. Shotgun in my mouth, boom. Burn another fate point to survive, and my puking causes the shot to miss. The feral Assassin declares that this must mean the Emperor wishes me to live, and the Assassin agrees, for now. He keeps his shotgun ready, while I feebly start healing people, trying to show them that I'm still fine, it's just that the veil is weak due to the heavy Chaos incursion. Which is true, but not the reason that things have gone wrong.
The elevator finally reaches the bottom, and we disembark. There's fungus and decay everywhere, so we move through, torching what we can. Eventually, we come across a big fat guy, who was channelling Nurgle power or something, causing this whole mess. Kinda like the Overseer in Fallout, to look at. But Nurgled, obviously. So he starts ranting about how he's thrown off the shackles of the False Emperor and all that, and combat starts. He's pretty scary. Our Guardsman flees in terror, because he always fails his WP checks. Our Cleric is shaken, while the Techpriest, Assassins and myself don't care.
But he's tough too. Only our feral Assassin looks like being able to hurt him, and he's having a fairly hard time of it. Rest of us aren't doing jack. Not looking too good to me. I make the offhand jokey comment to the other players that maybe I could do with some of this Chaos power myself, so I can blast this guy into oblivion, because I'm fucking hating Nurgle right now. Still joking, I asked if the other players reckoned Tzeentch would be up for that.
The DM looks up from his book.
"Do you want to proposition Tzeentch for the power to defeat your enemies?"
I hadn't actually seriously considered it, but the more I thought about it, the better an idea it seemed. I'd already burnt two fate points this session to save myself from the PARTY, it wasn't looking good for my Psyker. So I figure, fuck it, let's do it. I am asked to make a Fellowship roll, and I fucking well make it.
All of a sudden, I become Psy Rating 3, gain Fire Bolt and two Minor powers of my choice, and 20 Corruption Points. Unfortunetly, I don't get the part of Fire Bolt where I get to pick what it looks like. It's *clearly* Tzeentch flame, but thankfully none of the other characters have the skills required to recognise that.
I let fly with a plume of rainbow-coloured flame, and torch the Nurglehost for 15 damage!
Who quite quickly recognises the power of his master's enemy, suddenly taking notice in the scrawny looking guy in the back of the room.
I'm already fucked from the previous encounters with the Plague Bearer and my party, and he cuts loose with some nasty looking lightning. It blasts me across the room and smashes me against a bulkhead. For the third time in the session, I have to burn a fate point to survive. And it's my last one. All it does is stop me dying, I'm still on zero wounds. And with my luck on rolls, I'd probably kill myself by not making the Toughness save when I use my Healing again, or fuck things up with more 9s.
One thought runs through my mind:
"Please, Tzeentch, I want to live!"
Another Fellowship roll and Bam, there go another 20 Corruption Points!
But in exchange, I get a whole lot back! For starters, I'm back up to full wounds, with my cap increased by 2 permanently, and my Toughness ramped up to 8! I get some really nice traits, such as Hatred: Nurgle and some Unnatural Healing jobby, which basically means that anything that doesn't kill me, I'll recover from within a day. I'd kinda been hoping for the Biomancy power Seal Wounds, but this will do.
I get a couple of Mutations too. Turns out a lot of these bonuses actually come from a Chaos Cyst that's appeared inside me, that wants very much to keep me alive. I got another Mutation, but I don't actually know what it is yet, which worries and excites me!
So I'm feeling pretty good about this whole Chaos thing now, especially with my extra dice for activation rolls. Time to end this. I roll my three dice, for another Fire Bolt. Two 9s and an 8, meaning my overbleed on the power is ridiculous. One bolt becomes four, but now it's time to roll Willpower to hit. All my rolls are in the single figures. What's real important about this is a house rule we use. For single shot attacks, the GM adds the degrees of success to our damage, kinda like the Autofire rules for multiple hits. These are all technically single shots, so I'm getting about 14 extra damage on this barrage of blasts. The Nurglehost is melted, reduced to a burning puddle of goo in his bowl-like throne.
Of course, then there's the two 9s I rolled to deal with. The statues and pictures in the room all start to bleed from the eyes, and then there's the Mass Possession to deal with, but nothing really comes of it. A few of the other players are a little freaked out, but I explain to them that the veil is extra thin here, and this sort of thing is to be expected. It's mostly true, and is kinda what's been happening in previous sessions.
Then of course, having finished the job, we return to base for our decontamination and debriefing. And I'm starting to get a little worried. If our Inquisitor starts to hear about me shooting multi-coloured flames out of nowhere, especially as I was in a very dire situation, he might get wise. Our feral Assassin starts raving about the "awesome rainbow fire" I was shooting, and the void-born assassin voices concerns. But it turns out we're from the Ordo Xenos, and no-one has the required knowledge to know that this is a bad thing! Until then, we'd been kept really in the dark about things, but we've all just gone up in rank! Of the three Ordos, this is clearly the safest for me to be in, as the other two are all about Chaos and Mutants, both of which are groups I kinda fit into now.
So, it's all looking pretty good for me. I've lucked up quite a bit with regards to staying alive, and not being found out. I reckon I can swing this, keep things going. The only thing that worries me is that I'm out of fate points. But hey, I've still got PLENTY of room for more Corruption Points! I can always sell out for more power if things get bad!