So I'm trying to put together a compelling storyline for my PCs to run through in Deathwatch as I GM it and my brother's going to play a PC/NPC sort of standalone character to the whole thing who isn't a member of the Deathwatch Kill-Team. Here's a general smattering of thoughts as I messaged him some brainstorming on what he'd do in the campaign back ground, if you're interested in reading.
I would -really- love input on the accuracy and practicality of what I suggested actually happening in the Warhammer 40k universe, with how the Chaos and Warp works, with how Warp Gates work, with how corruption and the psykers work, and generally how the corruption of Jericho Reach and the Imperium of Man would respond to these hypothetical events.
Sorry if it's rambling at times, I just threw this together tonight:
Me: Ok, so I think you're going to be an Inquisitor that took a small squad of the highest elites the Deathwatch had to offer to acquire the artifact of ruinous powers that is capable of opening a warp on command. The artifact was discovered during an archeological mission on a dead planet that had random warp incursions spring up on it years ago and so they established a permanent defense outpost on the planet for quick responses to the warp incursions. They were mostly minor and never more than a couple of daemons would emerge and they would emerge spuradically through out the years so it was never a force of significance and so the Inquisition never took a close look at it. Until they found the artifact that was brimming with chaotic power to the point where it would literally manifest warpspace when it was so overcome with chaotic power. So it has a link to warpspace that charges it naturally with energy from the warp and when it builds up, it lets off a static discharge of warpspace energy, ripping a hole in real space and pulling daemons through like a vacuum, calling forth energy into the realspace.
Me: But it would build up over time and it would take years before it would well up and discharge. When a low-ranking librarian found it and decyphered the horrible truth he was overcome with corruption at witnessing the awful reality made manifest in his conscience and he immediately defected in the blink of an eye to a chaos marine, going mad with power and he tried to control the artifact to rip a hole in warpspace and summon forth legions of terror. The Inquisition sent you and a group of Deathwatch elites to handle the situation.
Me: You killed the corrupted librarian, the deathwatch marines slaughtered the incursion daemons, and you grasped the reality of the artifact without being corrupted, but you realized only the highest ranking Inquisitors could handle.
Me: Only Puritan Inquisitors who do not desire to tinker with corruption in order to better fight it, only those who shun corruption with their utmost being will be able to resist it's influences. So you keep it with you and guard it with your life.
Me: But before the chaos marine was slain, he sacrificed himself to the ruinous powers and called them forth, allowing them to pinpoint like a distress beacon where the artifact was in realspace/warpspace and they went ravage with desire for it so they could open a continual link between warpspace and realspace, one that couldn't be closed so long as sacrifices where fed to the ruinous powers to keep it open.
Me: Sensing an incredible call to acquire the artifact, every chaos space marine in the local quadrant of realspace surged forth to your location and your squad of Deathwatch were immediately met with heavy resistance from chaos space marines. By the time you realized what was happening and understood the meaning of it's sudden surge in power to call out to the ruinous powers, who in turn commanded chaos marines to assault your location, it was too late. You sent out a vox communication to the Deathwatch Fortress in Jericho Reach that the source of the sudden corruption and the long history of breakthroughs from the warp into realspace in the area were understood in under temporary control, but the full nature of the situation is too sensitive send over vox. You would only unveil the secrets in person to an Epistolary of the Deathwatch who then would take it, under full guard of the Deathwatch, to the Epistolary's homechapter Librarium to be locked away safely in the vault and studied by high ranking psykers. That was the plan the vox message conveyed, but as soon as the vox message was transmitted, the Deathwatch elites were overwhelmed by the chaos space marines. The Deathwatch sent a full force assault to your location but when they arrived, there was a bloody massacre of hundreds, literally hundreds of chaos space marines, your dead deathwatch elites, and you were missing at the epicenter of a blast which caused the deaths of everyone else with startling indifference. No one could fathom what caused you to do kill them and disappear, it was assumed you defected to the chaos, didn't want to submit to the chaos marines who came to retrieve the source of trouble which you had acquired, and you left into the warp. The entire Inquisition was on high alert, but over the years, you never reappeared, no one knew the full nature of your discovery, and so it was dismissed as more looming threats from the warpspace called for attention. The local watch was never reformed and the dead planet went back to being dead.
Me: But here's how it actually went down, and you would know this. You had formed a link to the artifact by understanding it and that link is what caused the librarian who held it before you to be corrupted, but you were maintaining will and sanity against the corruption. You were the psyker that it had linked to in realspace and, like a true psyker parasite, it considered you a host to be possessed as you were incredibly powerful. It was not willing to let go of it's link to you until you were fully possessed, it's will manifesting to a degree in response to your own power, but not equal too. If it could possess you it would ravage the world, but the chaos space marines were deadset on acquiring the artifact for the use of the ruinous powers, but the semi-sentiency of the artifact would not allow itself to be rent from the hands of such a powerful psyker, for should it gain control of you it would gather power to even rival the ruinous, daemonic forces of the warp and in it's growing self-awareness, it was not willing to let the chaos space marines tear it from you for, if it could corrupt you, then it would rip a hole in the realspace large enough to bring forth the chaos apocolypse into realspace. The Chaos Space Marines, much like the Space Marines' relationship to the Inquisition and other Psykers at large in the Imperium, could not grasp this reality and the miscommunication led to an epic blunder. The artifact, responding to your greivous wounding at the hands of chaos space marines the artifact rips a warp rift with such fury that it throws forth energy and destroys everyone in the area but you, because it can't kill you, it needs you.
Me: But you, being an immensely powerful psyker and puritan Inquisitor, resist it's influence with every fiber of your being, almost driving you mad in the process, but your training and psyker abilities allow you to be protected, sanity, body, and soul from the warp rift and you resist it's pull into the warp. Your soul fights against the artifact and it fights with you, but because it can only manifest itself to the power of it's host reactively you two struggle and finally the warp rift claims you two in the struggle, but instead of sending you directly to the ruinous powers, you two drift out into the formless wastes.
Me: The ruinous powers hold little sway in the formless wastes and so cannot track you. The artifact discharged it's power leaving it dormant and much in your control.
Me: But because it discharged it's chaos power, you cannot use it to get back. You also cannot seek out anyone in the area because it's filled with greater daemons and furies of the wastes whom you can overcome in one on one struggles but you are also not a significant force to draw attention from anyone or anything in the formless wastes. The latent power of the artifact was strong enough to create it's own minor realm within the formless wastes that is able to sustain your life from being ripped apart by the warp and protect you from it's random denizens. It is self sustaining in supplying you nutrients, but it effectively puts you into a comatose sleep as the realm itself has no definition of physics or time within the warp and you are basically a distended consciousness within your own physical existence. All you've known for the last two years of realspace time (an impossible to calculate amount of time in warpspace) is that you have struggled and wrestled with the artifact for as long as you've been adrift in the formless wastes of the warp.
Me: This struggle links your soul indeliably to the awareness of the artifact and, while the artifact still holds a physical body of what it is, you no longer struggle against it's parasitic influences as something outside of your conscience. It has melded with you, forming a mental partition inside your phsyche and it is within your own sanity that you make war with it now, constantly quelling it through your shear undying loyalty and devotion to the Imperium and your oath as an Inquisitor.
Me: Two years passes by in realspace time, after our group of Deathwatch marines has formed and started out on xenos-stomping missions, growing as a group and growing in strength. After those two years in realspace the artifact inside you has recharged in power and, this time manifests itself to call out to the ruinous powers within the warp itself, but by this time you've mastered the flow of the chaotic power which it eminates and you instead use the power to discharge into forming a warp rift which posits you from the formless wastes into the realspace location from which you were originally ripped from. Now you're in control again as it has to recharge for an indeterminate amount of time before it can manifest itself again, but now the ruinous powers, having felt the surge of chaotic power that it hungered for years ago when you first discovered the artifact, calls forth another chaos space marine assault on your location. But you're quick to the gun this time and you immediately vox to the Deathwatch Fortress. For them, it is received with bewilderment and Watch Command picks up were they left off last time, sending out the nearest contingent of Deathwatch Space Marines, this time being the PCs who were on mission in the area. The Chaos Space Marines trickle in, but so do the Deathwatch PCs and, after having fought them off, immediately extract you back to Deathwatch command. In the massive loss of Chaos Space Marine forces from two years ago when you entered the formless wastes left the presence of Chaos Space Marines in the area of realspace very much depleted and there is no real hope of them successfully assaulting the Deathwatch Fortress. But Chaos Space Marines all over the Milkyway Galaxy begin rallying and moving forces towards Jericho Reach, which the Imperium and Inquisition catch on to and harrass their efforts left and right, stalling indefinitely the Chaos Space Marines from bearing down on Jericho Reach. You, however, cannot convey any of this information for fear of corrupting those around you
Me: who hear of it so you hold it in until they fight their way back to the Deathwatch Fortress in Jericho Reach. When you explain the full nature of the situation to local Epistolary of the Deathwatch contingent in Jericho Reach but he refuses to believe you are not corrupted yourself and he tries to subdue you when he discovers it has laid hold of a portion of your conscience and is self-aware because of your existence. He seeks to kill you. You unleash your psyker abilities and slaughter him. The Deathwatch Command is in over it's head and detains you and the PC party together, fearing the PCs may have been exposed to corruption as they brought you in. They can either choose to aliance themselves with you or against you.
Me: But since they're treated as corrupted and force is brought to bear against the both of you, you two are kind of fated to be on the same side as you, using your psyker abilities, lead them away from the Deathwatch Command in Jericho Reach and now the Ordo Hereticus and Ordo Xenos is after you because you are treated as defectors of both the Imperium Ecclisarchy and the Deathwatch of the Ordo Xenos within the Adeptus Astartes. So now you all have to decide what in the bloody heck to do because now you have the daemons of the warp after you, the Imperium labeling you as heretics, and the usual bag full of xenos in the Jericho Reach to pillage through. All the while the sentiency of the artifact within you grows stronger and slowly drives you insane. You're a ticking time bomb. Even if you can subdue it the next time it surges forth in power, you don't know when it is or if you will even survive being corrupted yourself by the time it happens. If you die, the artifact will be lost once more and you're not sure if even at this point it wont outright possess you when your consciousness sleeps within your body. So you have to survive to fight it's power now. Your psyker abilities and inerrent loyalty to the mankind which has labeled you a heretic and seeks your death are the only forces which stand between you and the artifact, dating back to the Horus Heresy and created in the wake of the tragedy and horror of all the souls who died in the ancient conflict, from rending your consciousness assunder and possessing your body. The PC Deathwatch Space Marines are all that stand between the Imperium of Man, the Xenos hordes, and the denizens of the Warp from laying hold of you and the artifact together, which would no doubt spell the end of all realspace at the hand of the Warp.
Me: Or rather, scrap that, you guys should still be allied WITH the Deathwatch and Imperium of man. Let's just say there is exceeding tension within the Orders of the Imperium and the Ordo Xenos, while not happy it's Epistolary was slaughtered by you, but you yourself are still technically a member of the Deathwatch and a high ranking Inquisitor yourself, so your word is claimed over his and since you do not demonstrate visible corruption, the Ordo Xenos backs you and the two factions of Inquisitors (Xenos and Hereticus) stalemate over how to proceed. But it's clear the artifact needs to be separated from your body without killing you, because any attempt on your life brings forth the ridiculous hungering need of the artifact within you to self preserve, so they quickly decide to stop taking attempts on your life.
Me: So rather than go rogue on the whole thing, you and your PC Deathwatch Space Marines have to try and extract you out of Jericho Reach. Traveling through the Warp to get to Jericho Reach would be horrific because you inform the relevant Imperium officials that the ruinous powers are hungering after you within the warp and realspace alike, so the best course of action is to stay out of Warp Travel and to resist their presence in real space all the more without drawing attention as to where you actually are.
Me: This means summoning a massive frigate of the entire Imperium command to Jericho Reach would tell them where you are and give you away. You can't Warp Travel because then they'd descend on any forces heading through the warp to Jericho Reach visciously and you can't Warp Travel out of there because doing so would mean the same fate at the hands of the ruinous powers, but also there's no knowing what the artifact would do if allowed to be in the Warp that is controlled by daemonic powers.
Me: So therefore the best course of action is to move with extreme subtlety through Jericho Reach using a small force of Deathwatch Elites and make a protracted journey through realspace back to the Imperium.
Me: Actually, scratch that last bit, because I just researched it and Jericho Reach is isolated from the Imperium and heavily controlled by the Chaos. So there's this Jericho Maw Warp Gate that was used to launch a crusade into the Jericho Reach area, but when your artifact let out a beacon to the ruinous powers from withint he warp itself suddenly there's a massing of chaos cultists and chaos space marines around the Jericho Maw Warp Gate and they're forming up to assault the Deathwatch while also protect the warpgate froma llowing you to get out.
Me: So you guys have to fight to the warp gate and use it to get to the Imperium or just use realspace travel.
Me: I don't know, I'm burning out on this one, lol xD What do you think?
THANK YOU FOR READING YOU'RE FANTASTIC!!!
So what do you guys think? Is it engaging? Would you want to play something like this? Would it be practical within the Warhammer 40k universe? What are some helpful suggestions you might have to the campaign events?
Really any input would be helpful
And once again, thank you for your time.