Corruption and Faith

Corruption is the ever-present temptation faced by characters to call upon the dark things beyond the veil of reality, things that whisper promises of power in their dreams, or just beyond hearing. Corruption cards offer great powers unique to the character’s nature, but for the price of the slow moral degradation of the character’s soul until it is finally twisted towards some dark purpose of the chaos gods.

There are five levels of Corruption, representing increasingly severe states of the characters soul. The cards are read in the following order:

Tempted > Brushed > Touched > Marked > Overwhelmed

You should look over the first four cards in advance, to plan how you might roleplay them when they are activated; the final Overwhelmed card should only be read when it becomes applicable. The standard anatomy of the card looks like this:

Descending into Corruption

The process of becoming corrupted is the slow degradation of the soul as a result of personal choices. The methods by which you can increase in corruption are as follows:

• The first and easiest way to increase your Corruption is to use the ‘Corruption Power’ on your card. Doing this ‘cues’ you to increase your corruption. If you look at the ‘cue’ section on your corruption card you will see the number of cues it takes to increase you to the next level of corruption.

• The cue [Target(s)] I test thee can be resisted by expending a single point of Willpower, however, if you have no Willpower remaining you gain a Blight card and increase your Corruption one full Level (e.g. Brushed→ Touched). In certain situations failing to resist this can have far worse consequences.

• Sometimes, in a moment of true desperation you might want to use a power from a higher level than you are currently on. In these moments you can Beseech the Warp for Aid by willingly reaching out to the powers beyond the veil of reality, you may advance to that corruption level and access that power. Be aware there is no going back from this kind of advance, a character who actively beseeches the Dark Gods for aid cannot actively seek redemption (see below) from corruption. To do this is to invite PvP as the only way to actively save the soul of a character who has gone down this path, involves exorcisms so intense they often kill the individual. The common method for this is burning at the stake. After you have Beseeched the Warp for Aid, and used the power, you should seek out a Ref for additional consequences.

Damnation Milestones

While Corruption can be cured by acts of Redemption (see below) the act of reaching high levels of corruption leaves permanent wounds upon a character’s soul. These ‘milestones’ are activated the first time a character reaches a certain Corruption level, and they are permanently in effect for the remainder of the campaign thereafter:

• Your soul becomes Blackened the first time you become Marked by Corruption, from this point on every time you receive a Blight effect you treat it as two cues for the purpose of increasing your corruption level, rather than one.

Repentance from Corruption

Providing an individual does not fully give themselves to the forces of the warp, it is possible to bring back a soul from the threshold of damnation. The healing process is known as Repentance. This is the act of fortifying the soul against temptation, and punishing the weakness in the mind and body that led to the lack of willpower to resist the temptations in the first place.

A character who is Marked or Overwhelmed by corruption is so fully under the sway of the warp that they will not actively (even if it is against character) seek repentance – rendering an Exorcist more useful, and a Priest less so. Even the most noble character’s soul can be turned, no matter if they used the powers offered to them with the most benevolent reasons. Marked and Overwhelmed levels may not be Repented in uptime without Ref permission, so deep are the talons in an individual's soul.

After suffering through an Ordeal or an Exorcism a character cannot make use of any of the powers on their Corruption cards for the rest of the event, unless they actively Beseech the Warp For Aid – at which point they may not reduce their Corruption though Ordeals or Exorcisms for the remainder of the event.

Ordeals

The guiding theme of Ordeals is that a price must ALWAYS be paid by the character in some mental or physical fashion to restore the sanctity of their soul – the process of repentance is a combination of a character seeking Guidance and undergoing an Ordeal.

The need for Guidance represents the need for a character to reach out to an individual of significant spiritual importance to guide them back to the ‘path’. A character seeking this should approach one (or more) other characters, who will serve as the ‘anchors’ who will aid them through the ordeal. Within the Imperium the figures who are trained to aid citizens suffering like this are traditionally Priests of either the Machine or Imperial Cults, which is why most branches of the Imperium have some kind of chaplaincy. It is important to believe strongly in the spiritual guidance of the other individual, and Commissars and indeed other pillars of Imperial authority might also serve the same value. There is no specific Trait required to oversee an Ordeal.

An Ordeal represents that there is no ‘easy way’ out of ridding yourself of Blight and it should have a deep impact on the character undergoing it. Though the ordeal itself doesn't have to be performed with great fanfare (though it is allowed and encouraged to do so), you should roleplay the price paid in an obvious and distinct manner. A change should occur in the character between the moment before and after the Ordeal and it should affect the character quite deeply on either a mental or physical level, probably both.

Though the process of the Ordeal does not have to be public or ‘shouty’ in itself, the resulting impact (mental or physical) should be shown in such a way as to be clear and distinct to other players (ritual scarification, brands, heavily impacted functioning for a number of scenes, etc.) that the character has undergone some form of suffering after which you drop your Corruption one level (i.e Marked->Touched).

Exorcisms

Exorcisms are serious and dangerous situations; the forces of the warp are unkind and unwilling to be driven out when they find purchase in flesh, and skilled Exorcists have to be careful of their own souls when carrying them out. The forces of the warp are as likely to strike back at the Exorcist as they are to tighten their grip on the victim the Exorcist is trying to save.

The roleplaying guidelines for curing these conditions through exorcism generally follow those of Ordeals, but should be treated more severely – usually requiring more extreme and violent methods to drive out the Blight inside of them that cause extreme suffering (again you should remember the safety rules when performing this roleplay) and the consequences should be somewhat more obvious on the victim. The full rules for Exorcising Corruption are laid out in the Exorcism section of the rules.