Deathwatch Session 1: tau, spores and the unknown!

Yesterday I got my first taste of RPG'ing in any form since about grade eight! I have been pretty excited to try out the Deathwatch RPG from Fantasy Flight Games.  Who doesn't want to be a Space Marine!  The group was Jason (playing a Blood Angel assault marine, Sepheren) Lorand (playing an Imperial Fist tactical marine, Alexander), Matt (playing a Space Wolf long fang, Baldur) and myself (playing a Flesh Tearer apothecary, Marius - thanks to my fiance for the vampire name to "borrow") and Mike acted as GM.

Marius - Flesh Tearers Apothecary

To start off with, we're playing pretty fast and loose with the rules.  At least to begin with it's easier than trying to apply that whole huge rulebook from the start.  We're all previous GW employees so our GM (Mike of shiftedmatrix) was pretty comfortable avoiding things like demeanours, since Matt knew how to act like a Space Wolf, etc. (aka  Awwooooooooooo) We had 60 points of Requisition (to get equipment) which was spent on a chain-axe for me, heavy bolter suspensors for Matty, an auspex for Lorand (became a running joke all day long) and some special bolter rounds.

The background for this mission was a previous uninhabitable death world "Taros" on the fringe of Imperial space has suddenly spurted life in terms of some heavy vegetation and other life signs being detected through long range scans.  We've been charged with a recon mission to determine what is occurring on this planet.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ + + + + + + + | INTERCEPTED MESSAGE FROM TAROS | + + + + + + + +
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

************************************ static ***************** chatter ***********
***** crackle ************* static *************** for the greater good ****

We were dropped for deep strike in a land speeder by Techmarine Aros (one of Mikes old characters) from a Storm Raven gunship and flew in towards the solitary radar ping we'd managed to pick up.  Pretty quickly Baldur was able to smell blood and we found some near mutilated cattle like animals.

So after landing several hundred metres away from the blip we track in on foot to find a tower with a radar dish on top (we actually knew it was a tower before entering the clearing thanks to a slip of the tongue by Mike - lol).  Alexander and Sepheren examined the terminal at the base of the tower, but managed to fail their tech-use attempts so badly that they did nothing but set off the alarm and release 4 gun drones!

investigating the tower, attacked by gun drones

Alexander took some damage from one of the drones while Matty took one out, Sepheren took out a couple in melee and I blasted away ineffectually.  During the scrap the radar started turning to point off into the forest so we decided to book it (not directly but generally in that direction) in case we were about to be ambushed but to ensure some confusion was sown Sepheren decided to jet over the tower and drop a krak grenade on the radar equipment.  Recon mission achieved LOL (We began to use the term "RECON'd" from this point to basically mean blow the crap out of it!)  I also tried to heal Alexander and failed spectacularly (calling into question my ability to tell between my chain axe and the narthecium!)

Through the forest Sepheren was alert enough to spot a huge log trap swinging down in time to easily perform some evasive maneuvers and save our asses.  Regardless of Alexander wanting us to all jump out of the flying land speeder to investigate we decided to hang tight until we came upon a small farming village.

We investigated all the buildings, finding more murdered cows and a dead Tau civilian, finally in the final building we found a power generator which when turned on powered up a computer system of some sort.  Alexander had more luck with this version, finding a projected path for something to land nearby and an actual path along with a countdown showing somewhere between several hours and perhaps up to two days before the object landed.

I'm throwing the map in here to break up all the text.  We landed near the X with the red circle, we almost got ambushed at the small x between there and the red square (the village we investigated) near the circular "danger" area (where we get ambushed!)

map of the newly vegetated area of Taros

When we tried to make our way back to the land speeder, a Tau piranha flew some warning "strafing" runs between us and the speeder.  Alexander tried to take out the engine and only succeeded in convincing the gun drones they should disembark.  Sepheren used his jump pack to scamble for cover.  Matty missed the gun drone he fired at completely and I blasted one out of the sky.  Sepheren then managed to jump and land right on the piranha with a threatening krak grenade and force the Tau to land.

We "negotiated" with the Tau, they were pretty insolent and I wanted to just end them, but in the end we followed them to this area they were too scared to investigate (wussys!!) and promised between ourselves we would go back and xeno-cide those rude cow faces!

They led us to the obviously scary dark area (we could have found it, should have shot them!) and took off like the scaredy cows they are!  Being space marines we weren't worried at all and flew in on the land speeder.

We found these green "cloning" sacs in a large patch, many empty but some appearing full. We couldn't tell much from the outside so I blew one open with my bolt pistol so I could investigate.  I was able to determine there was some similarity to Orks in the spores I found.  At that point a giant cross between a troll and an ork crashed into the clearing howling and slammed into the land speeder.  For the first time I had a really high initiative, so once Sepheren had maneuvered the speeder out of the way I charged in.  Throughout this battle we fought three of these "trollorks" - the first I cleaved a huge chunk out of him before Baldur blasted him to bits.  The second got the drop on Alexander and hurt him pretty bad.  Marius kept showing up Sepheren as I had several headshots with my chain axe causing large amounts of damage and dodged all their attacks back while the assault marine was somewhat ineffective.  The final trollork landed on the speeder causing a bunch of damage to it and sending Baldur flying.  After smacking Sepheren a bit, Baldur and Alexander were able to take it down with combined weight of fire.

strange spore sacs, ambushed by crazy troll/ork hybrids

I then managed to heal Alexander completely and Sepheren flew us outta there back to a clearing in the forest.  Our plan was to head back to the Tau settlement we had found but we called the game there due to the Leafs game starting pretty soon and we didn't want to end in the middle of an encounter.

All in all a very satisfying re-introduction to RPG'ing.  Looking forward to our next session!

ps. I called this Session 1 as it was my first time, but the other three characters had played a bit before - so if any of them ever write anything up I'll link to it and call it Session 0 ;-)