Saturday, February 27, 2016

The Tome Among the Tombs - a Pulp Alley Game

The scribe shivered. He did not want to be here. Who could say what unquiet spirits lurked in this place of the ancient dead? And yet one could not refuse the summons of an Inquisitor. And this was no ordinary Inquisitor. This was Odo Lucipater: fervent, fearsome, fanatical. Throughout the sub-sector, the scourge of anything that smelled even vaguely of chaos.

Odo Lucipater had summoned him here. A terse description of one Tome of Regilus, a volume of ancient power. Scripts and sigils that he had studied. And so, pried from the comforts of desk and tome, he came.

As he walked towards the graveyard, he had the distinct feeling that he was not the only one arriving...
Master M was keen for a game of Pulp Alley sci fi, so I pulled out the gear. We played the 'Race Against Time' scenario from the rulebook. Odo Lucipater begins in contact with the major plot point: searching for a secret compartment in the base of the space marine statue. Only he can complete the plot point, but can the forces of evil prevent him?
The minor plot points: the scribe, crates of supplies, and two robotic contraptions that may have knowledge of the area.
Lucipater's retinue fans out, covering the approaches to the graveyard. It consist of a judge, a recordist, a deathcult assassin, and a mechanicus bounty hunter.

Company! The judge quickly takes down the threatening flamethrower, but is driven back by a concerted assault. He took the brunt of the chaos assault throughout the game.
The recordist scurries off to grab a plot point.
Assassin on assassin. The death cult assassin went down and recovered twice, then the chaos assassin went down twice but only recovered once!
The chaos psyker closes in and begins hurling balls of warp energy.
Meanwhile, the recordist has found his target: "so tell me, best toupee under 40 credits?".
The chaos assassin discovers he is in fact the chaos assassinated.
The cultists press hard as the warp energy continues to fly. The judge finally succumbs, but the Inquisitor resists, ultimately prying the tome of Regilus from it's hidden home. Freed from his task, he turns his attentions to the cultists and the psyker.
The game ends with the recordist adding to his robotic menagerie, and just two chaos figures left on the table!
While the game was a walkover in the end (5-0), it was pretty tense up until the last two turns. As the cultists pressed in, it looked as if they were poised to swarm the Inquisitor and derail him from his search. The one thing that prevented them was the judge's stubborn refusal to die.

Read about the next game here.


  1. Lovely figures in a very atmospheric setting. Top notch stuff Preacher. Do you miss the lack of "crunchiness" that there is in Pulp Alley? Or does the game whip along without having to worry about all the different gadgets 40k characters can have?

    1. Thanks Conrad. Good question: sometimes when I'm designing a character I wish there was more weapon customisation. On the other hand though, Pulp Alley allows a much greater degree of character customisation than say Rogue Trader for example. And once the game starts, I find that it's really the characters that are more important and memorable than the weapons they're toting.

  2. Absolutely great stuff, really enjoyable!

  3. I haven't tried Pulp Alley outside the 1930s yet, but this inspires.
    Now, where did I put these unfinished robots...?

    1. Do it! Would love to see your report. I'm a big fan of the 40k background, and I love all the creativity on the various RT/Imunda blogs, so this was a bit of an obvious choice for me.