Editing Dark Heresy: A Life in Seven Parts

This page is for the PbP game, "A life in seven parts", run by me and played by eudaimonSteve. It is currently under construction. -Mr Adventurer
=House Rules=
Fate Points and Fortune Points are completely divorced. You have 3 of each, and the number of Fortune Points you have is not dependent on the number of Fate Points you have.

'''Fate Points''' do not 'refresh'. You can (re-)gain them with extraordinary achievements, especially ones which are dramatically motivated. With Fate Points you can:
*Spend one to avoid damage that would kill you, in a dramatic way (enemy's gun jams at the last second, unexpected explosion knocks out his aim, you are miraculously thrown clear, cavalry arrives etc). There may be some other consequence of the event (knocked prone, pushed away, even disarmed or knocked out) at my discretion, but not to a degree which increases the amount of peril you are in (no Fate Point spending spirals).
*Spend one to automatically succeed at any Test, even one that you could not normally attempt, within reason. If the Test is an attack then the first die of damage is automatically treated as though you had rolled a 10, and so you may test for Righteous Fury as well.
*Offer to spend one to implement a significant piece of dramatic editing - the Planetary Governor falls in love with you, you find the secret daemon-cult lair on your first day's search, you are a lost scion of a noble house, or the like. Obviously, this is on a case by case basis.

'''Fortune Points''' refresh after each useful rest your character takes, e.g. every morning. You can spend a Fortune Point in the following ways; italic parts are the existing rules:
*''Re-roll any Test.'' You may take the better of the two results. You can spend more than one Fortune Point on the same roll in this way, and choose the best result from the set.
*''Count as having rolled a 10 for Initiative.''
*Adjust a Test you make by 10%, to either succeed on an otherwise narrow failure or to gain an extra degree of success on an already successful roll (or even reduce the number of degrees of failure on a failed Test). You can spend more than one Fate Point on the same roll in this way, and the bonus stacks.
*''Instantly recover 1d5 Wounds.''
*''Instantly recover from being Stunned.''
*Offer to spend one to implement a minor piece of dramatic editing - the storekeep falls in love with you, you find exactly the stool pigeon you were looking for on your first evening's search, the enforcer is your cousin, or the like. Again, this is on a case-by-case basis.

=The Character=
[[Lazarus Jakes]]

=Gunpoint=
Gunpoint is a hive world in the Calixis Sector, in the Hazeroth sub. It is a small world of unstable rocky geology that nonetheless houses rare and valuable minerals, and with two hives: Hive Vanguard, an Imperial hive; and Hive Sanctus Obscuro MCCVIX, a hive founded by the Adeptus Mechanicus.

==History==
According to the tech-priests stationed on Gunpoint, the planet is rightfully a forge world under the sole jurisdiction of the Mechanicus. According to the Planetary Governor Lucien Wrestus, the world belongs to him as an Imperial world proper. He claims that records show that the world was settled by the Hive Vanguard builders before the Mechanicus assembled their outpost; the Adeptus state the opposite, that they had claimed the planet before the Imperial citizen settlers arrived.

The Administratum, perhaps wisely, has yet to return a ruling.

It is thought that the contention of ownership is a result, in part, of the fact that the two authorities settled the planet and the sprawls grew with little to no interaction for thousands of years, into the hives they are now, until they ran out of space on the planet to claim for themselves and competition for natural resources made conflict inevitable.

==Settlements==
Because the majority of Gunpoint's surface is unstable and even fragile rock formations, there are only two major settlements, each placed on the only known stable points on the planet's crust: the two hives, Vanguard and Sanctus Obscuro, on points at opposite poles. Hive Sanctus Obscuro dominates the southern hemisphere, while the Imperial spires of Hive Vanguard lay claim to the northern hemisphere. Each hive is supported by a number of radial subhives, each in a position to make maximum use of the natural resources in the area - or at least, the natural resources that used to be in the area before they were exhausted: promethium pumps, metal mines, and harvest processors are the usual purpose of these radial spires.

There are no other settlements that are not built for industrial purpose; the nature of the unstable landscape makes them unwise. There are outposts, placed to oversee resource extraction or for military purposes, but these are small factory-like places built to withstand the frequent rock-quakes and spore-storms, whether through flexible, stilt-like legs upon which they stand or complete use of grav-repulsors or airbags to keep the settlement afloat. 

There are rumours of exile settlements, people who have fled or escaped the hives to make their own way in the caverns that riddle the planet. The chance of such collections of people surviving any length of time is considered to be nil.

===Hive Vanguard===
Hive Vanguard on the north side of the planet soars up five miles into the sky, a black mass of structure that tapers as it goes, the upper spire well away from the thick, dank lower levels which are in turn beshadowed by the ring of nine subhives that sit radially around Hive Vanguard, each over a mile tall in its own right, and each connected to their looming parent by thick arterials pumping transports and power back and forth.

Look more closely at the lower levels, and you can see the densely-packed Imperial architecture that has grown up over a thousand years, gargoyles and lifter platforms and defense lasers littering the steeply-inclined surface. Behind these ferrocrete and plasteel walls teem untold millions of inhabitants, all of them packed away in thousands of dense hab-blocks each consisting of hundreds of individual hab-units stacked atop one another and looking out into the narrow streets that the neighbouring blocks also look out into, and which feed the inhabitants to the tramlines and mass transport trains.

Low in the hive city is Subsector T, which holds the workers for Factorum Level Theta, which produces the all-important Component Theta-436-T. The families of technomats and assembly line workers that live in Subsector T are each assigned a single hab-unit. Each such unit is 2 metres from floor to ceiling and has one bunk room, two metres square, with two sets of bunks; and one living room, with a total area of twenty-one square metres and including a one-square-metre shower pod and a food preparation area as well as a table and four chairs (unfixed). If you are lucky and your unit is on an outer edge of your block, you will have a window onto the street. 

In Hab-block 9467-Green, there is one such hab-unit. It has four listed occupants: Frastus and Ethina Jakes, and their offspring Lazarus and Zee Jakes. The Jakes family are lucky - their unit not only has a window, but it also is on the very top level of Block 9467-Green, so that they have nobody living directly above them.

====Life in the hive city====
In the lower city, where Lazarus has lived and worked all his life, life is perpetually cramped and crowded and loud. Light is provided by chains of luminen glow-globes that dot the ceilings, brightening and dimming in 12-hour cycles to simulate the passage of a sun that the workers have never seen.

This low in the hive city, it not very rarely that the occasional gang brawl, sump monster, or Obscurus-funded insurrection comes up from the sump. Due in part to the ongoing cold war between the two hives, there is a cultural expectancy that every resident will arm themselves in case of sudden attack on the hive's resources. In practice this means pistols; anyone seen walking around with a longarm will be viewed with extreme suspicion and fear, and besides, it would get in the way of your work. Some people can only afford simple hand-to-hand weapons such as knives or clubs, or simply prefer to carry something small that won't get in their way. Uphive, it is said, the merchant families and noble houses have taken the tradition to absurdity, carrying either incredibly ostentatious weapons like lacquered bolt pistols, or even just belt-swords forged from gold and crusted with shining gems.

=====Gangs=====
Violent gang activity isn't very common in the parts of the hive that Lazarus has grown up in, although further into the Underhive it's as common as breathing as people struggle to survive.

===Hive Sanctus Obscuro MCCVIX===
Often simply referred to by Vanguardians as "Hive Obscuro" or just "Obscuro", or even "Twelve-fourteen" after the numerals. More to come!

==Politics==
The two governing authorities on Gunpoint - the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Imperial Palace - are at a very uneasy standoff. Despite numerous attempts, neither can conclusively prove their right to rule the planet. However, they have both reached the limits of expansion: Gunpoint is small, and though it is seemingly endlessly rich in the rare minerals and ores which are the main export the two hemispheres are wholly under one or another authority's claim.

The tech-priests, as usual, are aloof and difficult to approach; while Governor Wrestus displays all the tenacity of a true servant of the Emperor. Neither side will budge.

And yet the competition goes on. A cold war often simmers over into internicine conflict along the equatorial borders, and sometimes raids are conducted deeper into foreign territory, or even insurgencies in the great hives themselves - whether by infiltrated agents, or carefully-manipulated elements of the native populace.

Elements of technology seep over from Obscuro, just as - it is rumoured - the Mechanicus occasionally gain insight into production methods from the industrious Vanguardians.

==Geography==
The whole of Gunpoint is a rocky mass, pitted and completely riddled with caverns both natural and the result of abandoned or completed mining operations. The unusual geology forms into bleak landscapes peppered with such excavations.

Mined ores and compounds are the primary export of both hives, and these naturally-ocurring strange minerals also give rise to the dominant flora and fauna of the planet: a multitude of different lichen and mosses, some useful, some instantly lethal, and the lifeforms that have evolved symbiotically with them.

Huge fields of nutri-lichen grow over geothermic hotspots, tended and farmed by gigantic crawler-harvesters. These fields feed the people of Gunpoint after they are collected and refined and, if you are rich enough, flavoured.

=Links=
[http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=471970 IC Thread]<br>
[http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=471421 OOC thread]<br>
[http://app.fantasyflightgames.com/dark-heresy/calixis.shtml Offical Dark Heresy Page - The Calixis Sector]<br>
[http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?catId=cat1290323&categoryId=1100011&section=&aId=5300010 For some information on hives, try the resources found on Necromunda at this GW page]