Suffer Not the Witch (Warhammer 40k Psyker Quest)

[x] Defy. Angel or not, you will not simply stand by and let Ciro step into the role of your master.
-[x] How will you persuade the others to support you? (Letting him control the plans would put him over everyone else in the party too. Bring up how no one got input on the plan but Ciro. Even if there are no better ideas, at least it's a plan they agreed to as well and it sets a precedent to stop this in the future. You aren't arguing to put yourself in command to replace him, just not ceeding full control to one person.)
-[x] How will you survive, should Ciro take issue with your defiance? (Maintain space above all else, don't get caught in close quarters, hope some other party members take offense to the space marine killing you for arguing that he shouldn't have full control over the decisions.)
 
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[X] Obey. You will follow Ciro's orders, both today and in the future.
- [X] Begrudgingly. Ciro is not an enemy to be made lightly, and you do not think he will take defiance well. Bow your head, follow his orders, but keep your eyes open. An opportunity will come sooner or later, you just need to be ready.
 
[X] Obey. You will follow Ciro's orders, both today and in the future.
- [X] Begrudgingly. Ciro is not an enemy to be made lightly, and you do not think he will take defiance well. Bow your head, follow his orders, but keep your eyes open. An opportunity will come sooner or later, you just need to be ready.
- [X] Remain open to the notion that he might be worth following sincerely in the future, a man who trusts no one is as helpless as one to trusts everyone

I really don't trust Ciro at the moment but he is indeed very powerful and could be a worthwhile leader in the future.
I was tempted to write defy, but with a delay for when we were not literally right next to him and could perhaps rely on our flesh morphing powers to protect us from the void and take our chances elsewhere....but I don't want to abandon Sidhe and Bore, they seem like very decent people by Warhammer 40k standards.
 
[x] Obey. You will follow Ciro's orders, both today and in the future.
- [x] Sincerely. You could do much worse for patrons than a charismatic space marine, and you need a patron to survive and prosper in this galaxy. He seeks authority? Let him have it.
 
[X] Obey. You will follow Ciro's orders, both today and in the future.
- [X] Begrudgingly. Ciro is not an enemy to be made lightly, and you do not think he will take defiance well. Bow your head, follow his orders, but keep your eyes open. An opportunity will come sooner or later, you just need to be ready.
- [X] Remain open to the notion that he might be worth following sincerely in the future, a man who trusts no one is as helpless as one to trusts everyone
 
[X] Obey. You will follow Ciro's orders, both today and in the future.
- [X] Begrudgingly. Ciro is not an enemy to be made lightly, and you do not think he will take defiance well. Bow your head, follow his orders, but keep your eyes open. An opportunity will come sooner or later, you just need to be ready.

I don't really trust him, but his plan so far seems workable enough and I don't fancy our odds with open defiance.
 
I'm going to take a paranoid guess and say that Ciro and the daemon are using this plan to sus out who's going to try and backstab them later...
 
[X] Obey. You will follow Ciro's orders, both today and in the future.
- [X] Begrudgingly. Ciro is not an enemy to be made lightly, and you do not think he will take defiance well. Bow your head, follow his orders, but keep your eyes open. An opportunity will come sooner or later, you just need to be ready.

For lack of a better plan, we might as well go along with Ciro's here, but the Astartes has just about conclusively proven that he can't be trusted. There's literally no reason for him to want to speak privately with the daemon unless it involves screwing over one of his companions in some way. We've stated that we're opposed to bargaining with the daemon and Ciro doesn't appear to care whatsoever about our opinion on the matter. And the implications now are that if we object to being ordered around, he'll likely kill us; so much for the title of "Free man" that he uses to refer to us; he's just another would-be master.

This isn't the best moment to do something about it, but Ciro's gotta go eventually.

Also, yay, this Quest is back.
 
[X] Obey. You will follow Ciro's orders, both today and in the future.
- [X] Begrudgingly. Ciro is not an enemy to be made lightly, and you do not think he will take defiance well. Bow your head, follow his orders, but keep your eyes open. An opportunity will come sooner or later, you just need to be ready.
- [X] Remain open to the notion that he might be worth following sincerely, a man who trusts no one is as helpless as one to trusts everyone
 
[X] Obey. You will follow Ciro's orders, both today and in the future.
- [X] Begrudgingly. Ciro is not an enemy to be made lightly, and you do not think he will take defiance well. Bow your head, follow his orders, but keep your eyes open. An opportunity will come sooner or later, you just need to be ready.

Don't really want to kill Ciro yet, but I do want to be ready if he's wrong. Sidhe increasingly seems like the chillest companion, we're on the same page it feels like.
 
[X] Obey. You will follow Ciro's orders, both today and in the future.
- [X] Begrudgingly. Ciro is not an enemy to be made lightly, and you do not think he will take defiance well. Bow your head, follow his orders, but keep your eyes open. An opportunity will come sooner or later, you just need to be ready.
- [X] Remain open to the notion that he might be worth following sincerely in the future, a man who trusts no one is as helpless as one to trusts everyone

If you require someone else to tell you whether the cage works and then talk to the demon alone anyways you're either massively foolhardy or already have a fall guy in mind. Hopefully I'm wrong so let's give Cicero a little more rope to hang him self with.

Also, we now know that Tar was not only trained by his former Inquisitor master but also that he probably betrayed them. If Tar kept ahold of any daemons bound by that master then we're probably going to see them released in this upcoming fight, and they're probably going to be the most dangerous ones of them all.
 
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[] Obey. You will follow Ciro's orders, both today and in the future.
- [] Begrudgingly. Ciro is not an enemy to be made lightly, and you do not think he will take defiance well. Bow your head, follow his orders, but keep your eyes open.


And here is where the internal group politics start arising. Its not a bad plan and we aren't left alone with Ciro, so I'm voting for obey. We definitely should be keeping an eye out for this now to try and stay on top of it though. We know pretty much nothing about all these people and being a mushroom is likely to get us killed or eaten by some warp creature.

Surprisingly, despite all the rampant xenophobia Sidhe seem like the best bet for a partner with us. I doubt we'll ever be friends per se, but I could see us settling into a professional working relationship along the lines of "I don't hate you and can admit you're decent at your job." Best of all, they are the one with no immediate Chaos red flags!

Edit: swapping vote due to OP information.
 
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It's interesting to see that the vote is so heavily in favour of "Obey Begrudgingly" so far. I don't think there has been a single vote for "Defy". Which isn't a criticism, mind, I sort of figured that begrudgingly obeying Ciro would end up highly favoured, but I think I ought to take a moment to lay out some of what I'm aiming at here with the story.

The intent of "Suffer Not the Witch" is to explore how exactly renegade psykers like Vincenzo end up the way they so often do in the lore of 40k, and indeed how various other renegades and heretics do as well. To that end I think I should highlight that the current overall feeling, a sense of "Ciro cannot be trusted and we resent him, but he's also a space marine so we'll obey him rather than get splattered across the bulkhead" is... more or less how Space Marines rise to positions of power in 95% of renegade warbands, be they chaos-aligned or not.

So, if you're thinking that you want to dislodge Ciro etc, or simply escape from his rule... do have a think about how you can accomplish that, and what you can do that 95% of renegades cannot or will not do.
 
I mean we don't really know much about any of these people besides a couple hours of interaction and a inquisition report. So I'm still at a sit and wait approach.
Plus it seems foolish to start rocking the boat at this point when there are still external threats bearing down upon us.
 
I'm at the "we're a newbie psycker and Ciro is an experienced Astartes, we need to level up first before we try anything" stage.

E. Plus, demons can be fun, so I'm not even that much against it.
 
It's interesting to see that the vote is so heavily in favour of "Obey Begrudgingly" so far. I don't think there has been a single vote for "Defy". Which isn't a criticism, mind, I sort of figured that begrudgingly obeying Ciro would end up highly favoured, but I think I ought to take a moment to lay out some of what I'm aiming at here with the story.

The intent of "Suffer Not the Witch" is to explore how exactly renegade psykers like Vincenzo end up the way they so often do in the lore of 40k, and indeed how various other renegades and heretics do as well. To that end I think I should highlight that the current overall feeling, a sense of "Ciro cannot be trusted and we resent him, but he's also a space marine so we'll obey him rather than get splattered across the bulkhead" is... more or less how Space Marines rise to positions of power in 95% of renegade warbands, be they chaos-aligned or not.

So, if you're thinking that you want to dislodge Ciro etc, or simply escape from his rule... do have a think about how you can accomplish that, and what you can do that 95% of renegades cannot or will not do.
Perhaps we can suggest a modified plan where we pair with someone else. We could pair up with Sidhe and then privately discuss how best to circumvent Ciro's plotting, or if we stay with Nadia, we can attempt to find a way to banish the daemon while he thinks we're doing something else.
 
"Ciro cannot be trusted and we resent him, but he's also a space marine so we'll obey him rather than get splattered across the bulkhead" is... more or less how Space Marines rise to positions of power in 95% of renegade warbands, be they chaos-aligned or not.
That's a good point for deny right there though, might be better to try to head off this at the pass before CIro gets entrenched then. Maybe try to force him to share his reasoning with the rest of the 4 of us so we can have our own say in plans?

Something like this maybe? not sure if I'm going to swap my vote yet.

[ ] Defy. Angel or not, you will not simply stand by and let Ciro step into the role of your master.
- [X] How will you persuade the others to support you? (Letting him control the plans would put him over everyone else in the party too. Bring up how no one got input on the plan but Ciro. Even if there are no better ideas, at least it's a plan they agreed to as well and it sets a precedent to stop this in the future. You aren't arguing to put yourself in command to replace him, just not ceding full control to one person.)
- [X] How will you survive, should Ciro take issue with your defiance? (Maintain space above all else, don't get caught in close quarters, hope some other party members take offense to the space marine killing you for arguing that he shouldn't have total control over the decisions. Also, try not to be alone together with him.)
 
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That's a good point for deny right there though, might be better to try to head off this at the pass before CIro gets entrenched then. Maybe try to force him to share his reasoning with the rest of the 4 of us so we can have our own say in plans?

Something like this maybe? not sure if I'm going to swap my vote yet.

[ ] Defy. Angel or not, you will not simply stand by and let Ciro step into the role of your master.
- [ ] How will you persuade the others to support you? (Letting him control the plans would put him over everyone else in the party too. Bring up how no one got input on the plan but Ciro. Even if there are no better ideas, at least it's a plan they agreed to as well and it sets a precedent to stop this in the future. You aren't arguing to put yourself in command to replace him, just not ceding full control to one person.)
- [ ] How will you survive, should Ciro take issue with your defiance? (Maintain space above all else, don't get caught in close quarters, hope some other party members take offense to the space marine killing you for arguing that he shouldn't have full control over the decisions.)


I'd like to add that we don't ever be paired alone with Ciro if we want to survive.
 
[X] Defy. Angel or not, you will not simply stand by and let Ciro step into the role of your master.
- [X] You will change his plan a bit to suit you. You will use your abilities to go up the ducts, rather than with him, and attack from there.
- [X] If he takes offense, you will simply point out you've not mentioned all the tricks up your sleeve. If he demands transparency while speaking with daemons alone, perhaps he was doing something dangerous back there.

A little defiance, just to set the tone for everyone. He's not as much of a demi-god as he makes himself out to be. Also, because we're a psyker, and standing next to a guy that deals with daemons in private is a terrible, god-awful idea.
 
[X] Obey. You will follow Ciro's orders, both today and in the future.
- [X] Begrudgingly. Ciro is not an enemy to be made lightly, and you do not think he will take defiance well. Bow your head, follow his orders, but keep your eyes open. An opportunity will come sooner or later, you just need to be ready.
 
So, if you're thinking that you want to dislodge Ciro etc, or simply escape from his rule... do have a think about how you can accomplish that, and what you can do that 95% of renegades cannot or will not do.
As a side note, I feel like the answer here might honestly just be "stab him," because as it turns out, we're really, really good at that, and he's also pretty good at that, but we have a force sword and he doesn't. Also, I think there might be a typo on the character sheet, because the sword is listed as having a base damage of strength +5 +4d10.
 
[X] Defy. Angel or not, you will not simply stand by and let Ciro step into the role of your master.
- [X] You will change his plan a bit to suit you. You will use your abilities to go up the ducts, rather than with him, and attack from there.
- [X] If he takes offense, you will simply point out you've not mentioned all the tricks up your sleeve. If he demands transparency while speaking with daemons alone, perhaps he was doing something dangerous back there.
 
[X] Defy. Angel or not, you will not simply stand by and let Ciro step into the role of your master.
- [X] You will change his plan a bit to suit you. You will use your abilities to go up the ducts, rather than with him, and attack from there.
- [X] If he takes offense, you will simply point out you've not mentioned all the tricks up your sleeve. If he demands transparency while speaking with daemons alone, perhaps he was doing something dangerous back there.

We ought to think hard about what cards we can play to defy Ciro even if we don't go through with it.
As a side note, I feel like the answer here might honestly just be "stab him," because as it turns out, we're really, really good at that, and he's also pretty good at that, but we have a force sword and he doesn't. Also, I think there might be a typo on the character sheet, because the sword is listed as having a base damage of strength +5 +4d10.
My first thought on reading "what you can do that [other] renegades cannot or will not do" was somehow alerting Crane that his pet daemon is about to escape, which I'm pretty sure nobody would vote for.
 
[X] Defy. Angel or not, you will not simply stand by and let Ciro step into the role of your master.
- [X] You will change his plan a bit to suit you. You will use your abilities to go up the ducts, rather than with him, and attack from there.
- [X] If he takes offense, you will simply point out you've not mentioned all the tricks up your sleeve. If he demands transparency while speaking with daemons alone, perhaps he was doing something dangerous back there.

We ought to think hard about what cards we can play to defy Ciro even if we don't go through with it.

My first thought on reading "what you can do that [other] renegades cannot or will not do" was somehow alerting Crane that his pet daemon is about to escape, which I'm pretty sure nobody would vote for.
can you reach out to crane, though? Perhaps to play him against ciro and the daemon.
 
It's interesting to see that the vote is so heavily in favour of "Obey Begrudgingly" so far. I don't think there has been a single vote for "Defy". Which isn't a criticism, mind, I sort of figured that begrudgingly obeying Ciro would end up highly favoured, but I think I ought to take a moment to lay out some of what I'm aiming at here with the story.

The intent of "Suffer Not the Witch" is to explore how exactly renegade psykers like Vincenzo end up the way they so often do in the lore of 40k, and indeed how various other renegades and heretics do as well. To that end I think I should highlight that the current overall feeling, a sense of "Ciro cannot be trusted and we resent him, but he's also a space marine so we'll obey him rather than get splattered across the bulkhead" is... more or less how Space Marines rise to positions of power in 95% of renegade warbands, be they chaos-aligned or not.

So, if you're thinking that you want to dislodge Ciro etc, or simply escape from his rule... do have a think about how you can accomplish that, and what you can do that 95% of renegades cannot or will not do.

The primary problem with dislodging/escaping Ciro at the moment is that we're still in the same situation that made us decide we needed to wake him up in the first place; we need to escape the Black Ship and we can't do it alone. And so far there's not much evidence to indicate whether any of our companions are sympathetic enough to back our play if we decide to gamble by defying Ciro. And then, because Ciro is an Astartes, it's also a pretty risky gamble to think that we can take him in a fight. Accordingly, trying to vote for the Defy option just seems... kinda suicidal, at least at this particular juncture. Maybe I'm missing something though.

Sidhe is probably the only companion I think we currently stand much chance of persuading, at least as the situation currently stands. I note though that we're just about to be split up from her in Ciro's plan for the attack on the bridge, and might not get another chance to check in privately with her to see how she feels about Ciro for a while.
 
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