The Rot of Hondious Event

Artwork by Martin McCoy. 

This article originally appeared in 28 Vol. 6, and was edited courtesy of Adam Wier

In the spring of 2023, Martin McCoy approached me about running a narrative INQ28 event with him. He was eager to put together something of his own and after having conducted my own Mordheim event the previous year, Martin wanted to lean a bit on my experience putting together narrative events. Needless to say, I was overjoyed and excited to help!

Hondious, a feudal world on the far-flung edge of the galaxy so bereft of resources that even the greedy Imperium would not bother bringing it back within its fold, was Martin’s brainchild. Coming to the table with the setting, we then started brainstorming the current state of the setting. Naturally it had to be in some form of collapse. Combining some of his favorite themes, Martin formulated the “Red Joy,” partly inspired by the Dancing Plague: a mania that swept through Germany in the 1500’s.  He really wanted to create an antagonistic force with human pathos. The serfs of Hondious suffer terribly from Imperial and Noble neglect. What if the Red Joy addressed those grievances in some way? Could we write a plague story that makes infection seem more desirable than continuing to live as a cog in the Imperium’s shadow? It seemed like a direction both promising and tragic. So we began imagining a plague that rotted the bodies of the infected but filled them with empathy and joy as it happened. What would be particularly joyful on a planet cut off from the rest of humanity by bad luck and poverty? Connection. The thing Hondious had been most denied. So we finished our plague by deciding it networked those it infected together into an empathic hive mind. It made them feel unnaturally elated, made them want to dance and blow horns, connected them and filled them with joy all the while rotting their flesh down to bloody rags and fusing their ruined bodies into new, shared, abominable forms. 

But we wanted inquisitors and offworlders in our story, so we needed a compelling reason for the Imperium to care about Hondious - at which point, we asked ourselves: what if our empathy plague became sentient, once it touched its first psyker? What would happen if it infected enough psykers to make it even more powerful? Martin created a fictional character, Surveyor-Prefect Miscaruss, and detailed his disdainful encounter with the world, so we decided that the Prefect had left behind numerous materials - including his own survey station. Perhaps the Red Joy’s goal was to seek the survey station, to ultimately utilize its powerful communication systems to project itself psychically off-planet? 

Surveyor-Prefect Miscarrus, in his initial encounter with the planet of Hondious. Artwork by Martin McCoy. 

With the narrative out of the way, we could focus on the bloody work of rules. A number of rule sets were discussed, but thanks to the help of Steve Hupfer (of Hive Scum and NEMO infamy), a modification of Forbidden Psalm was juxtaposed with The Last War to bring to life a sleek set of rules. With only a short amount of time to play and most players meeting for the first time in Richmond, it was decided to favor function over form in order to ease the experience for those involved. 

With food in short supply, peasants riot and guards flee as the Inquisition, Feudalist Knights and Red Joy descend on sleepykamistudio’s Grain District of Highcrown. 

The overall Grim Richmond event had a Google Docs sheet that enabled any of those attending to sign up for one of three factions: Feudalists, native and low-tech Hondiouns, Inquisitorial retinues or feverish gatherings (or murders?) of the infected Red Joy. While the event was initially intended as a ‘traditional’ INQ28 event of ‘Inquisitors versus a threat’, Steve suggested that players be allowed to participate as the Red Joy as well - which yielded spectacular and artistic hobby results! We decided to limit the participation to twelve players in order to keep the story focused, concise and have a firmer hand in orchestrating the event the day of. Each faction had a few strict limitations to keep in terms of model count, starting points to spend, etc; but more importantly, I kept the overall faction descriptions broad to better allow players to create their own unique take on their retinues and their story. 

Throughout the buildup to the event, the idea of Hondious became more and more clear. Martin and I’s working relationship involved the following: Martin had a vision of the planet - and I would ask clarifying questions to better craft the world and help flesh out its history, heroes and villains. Through this, I created an event information PDF that had a short description of the planet, the three factions involved and concluded with Steve’s rules. This helped the players get a feel for the planet and laid out expectations for the overall culture of the narrative event. 

Additionally, Martin had made several pieces of art to represent the mania of the Red Joy and the body-horror it contains. These helped to set the tone for a shared vision of what the Red Joy looked like and the miserable conditions present on the planet of Hondious.

The march of the Red Joy, artwork by Martin McCoy.

To further flesh out the world of Hondious, I began writing short fiction with an open invitation for others to participate and collaborate. This was another avenue for hobbyists to engage with the event if they were unable to attend in-person or make miniatures for it. While Martin had laid the foundation, we hoped to build towards the sky and more intimately document the events that had transpired on Hondious. For this purpose, I gathered and crudely edited a number of short stories from multiple authors over a series called “The Rot” to better bring the world to life before the event.

Most INQ28 events are not complete without terrain to play on. With less than ninety days from conception to execution, this was one of our largest challenges. The amount of effort and physical size of terrain I believe proves to be one of the largest barriers facing any event. Thankfully the community stepped forth and were able to provide two of the four boards; a sinister woodland board, originally built for an event that was COVID-canceled from Shane Brockway and a grain city district from Doug Mueller, that was purpose-built for the event. The third involved a vertical clocktower Mordheim board that I had been experimenting on, specifically built for easy transportation on flights. Lastly was a large labyrinthine, modular board that would represent the original site of the Imperial Survey laboratories, left and neglected for two decades. While it was the most time-consuming aspect of the entire event, it was rewarding experimenting and designing the layouts and proved to be my favorite piece of terrain I have made in my life!

Thule Survey Lab of Surveyor Prefect Miscaruss I created for the event. Photo courtesy of Blerzcraft

While time was restricted on my end, the community stepped up once more to help; ask and you will receive. NPC models were needed to represent characters within the story and Cole Griffin created a wonderful and deranged “scholar” model to compliment my clock tower board. Martin created “Plaxico”, an escaped mutant that could have held the cure for the Red Joy and Martin commissioned Matt, from Totally Not Panicking, to create the final manifestation of the sentient plague - the Beast itself. Surely it was an abundance of riches to see the creativity of the community at work.

  

Some Red Joy models, including the towering monstrosity in the back (created by totally not panicking), the flesh construct Plaxico (on the left) that Martin sculpted, and a corrupted Spyrehead Lucretia Barghest with two bloody goblins (created and painted by Adam and Eric Wier). Photo courtesy of Eric Wier.

The Clocktower of Heimdall III that I built for Mordheim but brought for the event.

Building from the Mordheim 2022 event I held, I wanted the experience for those players involved to be even better. After seeing for years how Ana Polanšćak conducts her own events, I created a spreadsheet of secret primary and secondary objectives for each faction on each board, consistent with telling a story of Hondious’ miserable conditions. To help solidify the secretive nature of these, I sculpted wax seals for each faction to conceal the objectives in envelopes. The objectives, as well as board-specific scenarios, were all stained to represent the ruined vellum of the world of Hondious. Lastly, Martin created a pockmarked board to help keep score of players’ victories and, keeping in the vein of the rictus grins of Red Joy victims, asked KnuckleBones Miniatures to design 3d teeth to represent the “victory points" for those participating. Two teeth would be awarded to a player for achieving their primary objective and one tooth for their secondary. 

Sealed secret objectives, weathered board-specific scenarios and lots and lots of teeth! Photo courtesy of Eric Wier.

Finally with the factions, backstory, rules, fiction and terrain complete, the day had come. Until the 11th hour, players were feverishly creating their retinues and putting the final touches on their paint jobs and, an hour into the event, we kicked things off. Martin presented an overview of the situation on Hondious and I described how the games would work and players would rotate. Each table had a retinue from each of the three factions with their own specific secret objectives, tailored for the board they played on. Players would then rotate to a new board, with new secret objectives and tally up their “teeth” at the end of two games. The four players who had the most teeth would be able to participate with their full retinues in the final event against the Beast and other retinues could contribute a single model. This last confrontation resulted in a fantastic, if chaotic, last battle that had over twenty people crowding a table yelling over dice rolls and models. 

Lucretia Barghest, corrupted by the Red Joy, steps from the shelter of a ruin, eager to take advantage of the destruction around her and meld with the half-dead Sisters of the Altarwood writhing on the forest floor. Photo courtesy of Eric Wier.

Having fused with the most powerful psykers on Hondious, the Beast descends upon the Imperial Survey Facility of Prefect Miscaruss, intent on expanding to neighboring worlds… Photo courtesy of Eric Wier.

The players all assembled for the final battle to hinder - or aid - the Beast escape from Hondious. Photo courtesy of Blerz. 

Lucretia Barghest melding flesh to create edifices to venerate the Red Joy. Artwork by Martin McCoy. 

All in all, I would call the event a success!

If you would like to read more on the Rot of Hondious' final battle, you can get a thorough retelling on the blog Between the Bolter and Me! I find that putting together narrative events is extremely rewarding. When you look up and see others enjoying games or immersing themselves in the stories they are telling, it really makes the monumental effort worth it. 

The Feudalist Knights betray the Inquisition at the eleventh hour of the final scenario, with disastrous- if hilarious - effect. 

The entirety of Grim Richmond (or Rich Grimmond, depending on who you ask!)

Until next time!

Bill