From certain perspectives, hive cities are nothing more than a collection of intersecting streets. If one is minded to view the metropolis through the eyes of a demagogue, there are millions of corners from which passers by may be harangued and abused. Any many see their world in this way. Naïve visitors to the hives are overwhelmed in short order upon arrival by the sheer ferocity and volume of the invective directed at them by hawkers, preachers, and bawds from every angle, in dozens of languages.

But occasionally, an individual is born who sees the connections between the streets in terms deeper than the purely financial. For those with the witchsight, street corners have mystical, magickal qualities, linking worlds and dimensions invisible to those whose perspective is purely mundane. For those prepared to leave mundane morality and sanity behind, there is power on the streets, power that can be tapped and manipulated.

For over twenty years, Sanny has wandered the streets of Hive Sibellus. To the casual observer, he is a typical hive dreg: scrawny, bedraggled and filthy. His bloodshot, rolling eyes, shock of greasy hair and wild, stabbing gesticulations mark him among the mentally ill. In civilised societies, such unfortunates are treated with kindness and mercy, but in the great hives they are ignored and cast aside to perish or to abuse others, depending upon their nature.

Sanny was in his early teens when the visions first came. At first accompanied by blinding headaches and later by voices whispering on the edge of hearing, they showed him strange connections between places and times, weird invisible strands of energy that drifted through the city and muttered instructions in dead languages in how to channel these forces for his own ends.

Sanny’s moods and rants soon became unbearable for his poor family, and he wandered onto the streets, never to return. He now lives off the uncertain charity of the hivedwellers, and off scraps of food the rats and bloodroaches are too slow to snatch from the gutter. He is an inconvenience to the Sibellians, an embarrassment. But he may also be their doom.

For Sanny is a pawn of Tzeentch. He is a nascent psyker, the most dangerous of humans, especially dangerous in his case, for the depth of his insanity conceals a malign purpose not fully understood even by him. Tzeentch has opened a tiny conduit in his mind between the real world and the warp, a conduit only possible where the vessel is already irrevocably maddened.

Now Tzeentch drives Sanny to wander through the city, making tiny adjustments to the flow of warp energy around him in order to fuel the growing gateway in his head. To the uninitiated, Sanny appears to be simply engaging in random acts of peculiar behaviour: suddenly stooping, picking up and empty ration-can, walking ten paces, and placing it at a precise angle next to a streetlight: shouting at a startled pilgrim, or rocking in a certain way at a certain time. But everything he does is designed to increase the flow of warp energy generated by the living masses around him into his own mind, where it is stored, awaiting a final, horrific release…

Appearance
Sanny is as thin and skeletal as a gantry crane, and is invariably wrapped in a soiled grey longcoat and clothed in mismatched rags obviously plucked from the sewers. He is pale and hairy, with a long beard and matted black hair. His eyes are his most striking feature, being reddened and sore like angry wounds, but yet wild and startling. His age is hard to determine, but if he were cleaned and groomed, he could be in his late 30s.

Sanny the ranter
WS BS S T Ag Int Per WP Fel
18 18 27 29 32 30 25 40 5

Movement: 3/6/9/18

Skills: Awareness (Per), Carouse (T), Chem Use +10 (Int), Common Lore (Underworld) +10, Forbidden Lore (Tzeentchian Magickal energy channeling) Secret Tongue (Daemonic) Concealment (Ag) Intimidate +10 (S) (Int), Speak Language (Low Gothic)

Talents: Melee Weapon training (Primitive), Strong Minded, Unshakeable Faith, Psy Rating 2

Weapons: Filthy shiv/knife: (3m; 1d5+3R, Primitive),

Gear: Rags, collection of old newspapers, wheeled trolley piled high with empty bottles and moth-eaten blankets.

Psychic powers: Sense Presence, White Noise, Inflict Delusion, Forget me, Visions, Channel Magickal power, Warpgate (see below)

Unique psychic powers:
Sanny is unique: he has been given a special gift by Tzeentch, a gift that will – one way or another – one day destroy him.

Warpgate.
Threshold: 10
Focus time: 20 full actions
Sustained: yes
Range: personal
Other requirements: The caster needs to accumulate 999 Tzeenchian Magickal energy points to use this power.
This is a special psychic power focussed upon the caster. Once activated, it causes the caster’s brain to swell and expand in his skull, bleeding out of his eyes, mouth and ears. The cranium splits, and the brain, writhing and reforming like melted plastic, curls into a circular shape about 20 feet wide. A weird light emanates from the centre of the circle, and then reality splits wide as if it had been stabbed from within, and thousands of Tzeentchian daemons pour out, slaying everything in sight, and probably dooming an entire planet to a hideous death. The caster is, needless to say, slain, and his soul damned forever.

Channel Magickal power
Threshold: 5
Focus time: Half action
Sustained: yes
Range: personal
This is a simple Tzeentchian power that allows the caster to accumulate and store magickal energy to power deadlier rituals. Once cast, the user gains an insight into the flow of psychic energy in an area about a mile square, and also receives a general idea of how this energy can be redirected. Redirection can take place using simple ritualised behaviour, the form of which is largely irrelevant, and which is typically personal to the user. Once redirected, the energy is stored in the user’s mind, which rapidly drives them insane, at the rate of 1 insanity point for every Tzeentchian Magickal energy point per day. Once irrevocably insane, the user becomes a pawn of Tzeentch.

Each time this power is cast for the first nine years, the caster gains 1 Tzeentchian Magickal energy point per month. After this period, the rate begins to increase to 1 point a week. After a further 9 years, the rate increases to 1 point per day.

The more Tzeentchian Magickal energy points the user stores, the easier he is to detect by other psychics. Once the user accumulates 250 Tzeentchian Magickal energy points, a psychic receives +5 to his psyniscience test to detect him, and +5 for every further 100 points after that. Once he gets to 900 psychic points, a user is like a blazing light to other psychics, and can even cause spontaneous nosebleeds and headaches in “normal” humans within 100 yards.

Sanny has accumulated 412 Tzeentchian Magickal energy points over the years. He’s almost half way there…

Personality and motivation:
Sanny actually has no motivation himself: he has become a total cipher, a conduit for Tzeentch’s malign purposes. Sanny maintains enough sanity to feed, dress and care for himself (to a primitive level) but little more than that.

He is impossible to intimidate or interrogate, but retains enough self control to resist capture and fight to defend himself, and will not hesitate to use psychic powers to this end. Players meeting him in a social setting should be left in no doubt that he’s irrevocably insane, but if they try to capture him, they should wonder if he’s been faking all along. In fact he hasn’t: he IS mad, but Tzeentch doesn’t want his pawn to fall into the Inquisition’s hands just yet…


Using Sanny
Sanny is a tricky adversary to use properly: he combines tremendous potential danger with relatively little present danger. Yes he’s a moderately powerful psychic, but he’s also a schizophrenic homeless guy with no friends or resources. The trick is letting the players slowly realise what they’re dealing with, and what the stakes are. Here are a few suggestions:

• You could use Sanny as a foreshadowing device in other adventures. Whenever the players wander through Hive Sibellus, have them see him acting strangely and ranting at passers by. Perhaps have him grasp a player and hiss deluded (but creepily accurate) prophesies at him/her. What you should avoid doing is letting any psykers in your party anywhere near him during the early stages of the adventure: save him for when parties have split into groups, and have him harass the non-psykers in an entertaining fashion until they’re used to him and look forward to seeing him again. Then suddenly have a psyker spot him for what he is (using psyniscience) and let realisation slowly dawn on the players that they’ve been allowing a potentially vast Daemonic incursion to fester right under their noses…
  
  
• Or you could try a more direct approach: have the Hive Sibellus astropathic choir sense that something is rotten in the city, and have your inquisitor send the acolytes scurrying into the underhive to track down the source of the disturbance like psychic bloodhounds…
  
  
• Or just present him as a random encounter to players to spice up an existing adventure: “Hey…that guy’s a psyker, and he reeks of the warp! Get him!”

Comments

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GrimJesta   | Registered | 2008-08-08 15:20:38 Whoa, it's an evil Aqualung! I dig it. Especially how each little thing he does is slowly bringing about the bad mojo. Nice. -=Grim=-

Space Marine Mike   | Registered | 2008-08-09 16:35:07 Nice work Lightbringer! Well thought out. I like the idea of letting the children play with the live hand grenade. I think Sanny will become a "regular" in my games with the PC's never knowing until it almost too late! (evil snicker)

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.