Hi,

I'd like to prepare my next adventure. I want it to happen in a forge world (2 of my players are originated from a Forge World.)

Therefore I'd like to gather as much information about these world (description, maps, images, ideas of the day to day life, economics, social life, religious life, underground life, ...)

I have found very few information in the Lexicanum. I know that probaby the Lathe Wolrd should contain some (I still need to order it as it will not be translated in french). But if you have other sources, I'll be glad to take them

Thanks

This might sound weird, but try the German version of Lexicanum. It often has more information. You can use Chrome to automatically translate the page into your language of choice.

Other than that, yes, Lathe Worlds has a lot of info about forge worlds.

If neither of those pan out, just make **** up. Nothing wrong with that.

Do you already own a copy of the "Inquisitors Handbook "? It introduced the "Forgewold Origin Background" and offers some insight into it. Well, at least it has some paragraphes to it. Lathe Worlds is you best bet, so, and if your English is good enough I suggest to buy PDF copy at Drivethrurpg.com

The General "look and feel" might be taken form the movie "Alien III" . While the world in that movie is an understaffed prison colony, the Thing was a smeltery of sorts and will give you a good Impression. If you do not own the movie, look for some trails or "best Scenes" stuff.

I generally suggest to think of "Mars" (or any other rather lifeless planet), mix in components of the typical Hive World with a heavy Focus on Industrie.

Don't forget to download " The Lost Dataslate " - free supplement to The Lathe Worlds.

About "look and feel": "Titanicus" by Dan Abnett, "Mechanicum" by McNeill.

Random thoughts about having a Forgeworld feel like a Forgeworld

• the working class wear jumpsuits with the colour of the suit indicating their profession/tasks
• each of the working class has a large barcode laser tat on their forhead instead of having a cognomen
• make it a point the surfaces lack the ornamentation so common even among hive worlds. All are sheer besides cogwheel symbol over this or that entrance/doorway
• servitors are embedded into structures (only head and/or torso and one or two arms “growing” out of a wall)that function as checkpoints, function as “info terminals”, monitor the traffic of wares, tasking and re-direction servo skulls and workers, overseeing the stockpiling and redistribution of goods in a warehouse etc.
• there are a large number of servo skulls darting and gliding through the air and every larger, occupied area seems to be monitored by at least one of them
• Enforcers are called “overseers” and are meant to make sure that the human work force isn´t idle
• “Real people” are either listless and silent or very tense and frantic
• Every once in a while there a 3 to 6 “alcoves” with arrays of little mechanical arms with tubes of different size attached to them. Some or all of them are occupied with servitors that stop by to “re-norish” themselves and get the “waste material” pumped off from them. A rather quick process and a servitor comes or leaves every 15 to 30 minutes.
• Workers go about their day in different, rotationg shifts. No matter if it is working, eating, sleeping or “recreational time”
• There is not much “entertainment” offered. Music and art aren´t endorsed by the Adeptus Mechanicus. As a result, the human workers improvised music, most of it involves a lot of drumming, clapping and stomping. (if you have ever ssen the group “STOMP” you know what I mean). There is “singing” as well but since verbal education isn´t endorsed in workers either it is lacking in lyrics and more rhythm or a lot of “high and low” combined in melody by those with beautiful voices (thing experimental art music here!)
• There are a lot of “Helots” (human workers with implanted tool-limbs or additional limbs) around.
• Outside of recreation areas there is no chatting(! Despite what is necessary to do the work. The “overseers” actively disencourage “needles conversation outside of the re-creation shift”
• The recreation areas sees a lot of quiet talking among exhausted workers, so, and the “food halls” see lots of it
• You will find NO bars at all. Alcohol and other harmful substances are BANNED. There are alcohol smugglers, but it moonshine and people might go blind from it. Those who do are punished by recycling them for servitor parts
• Instead of bars, the workers have the large recreation halls (sit, drink flavoured water and have some areas to do stuff like walking games or social talks and such)
• Much of the social life goes on in the small “hab stacks” so. The overseers do patrol here infrequently (to make sure nobody is sipping booze on the streets or is smoking!)
• People drug themselves with sniffing glue or solvent, drink booze. Obscura is highly sought and EXPENSIVE
• Most of the food is grown in hydrocultures and later worked into “bread”, “cake” or paste.. It is nutrious, but blant tasting or horribly artificial in taste. There are “additives” to the food in form of little pills (think of our food additive products in the various forms).
  
  [EDIT: Removed some of my VERY bad gramma]

Most of the food is grown in hydrocultures and later worked into “bread”, “cake” or paste.. It is nutrious, but plant tasting or horribly artificial in taste. There are “additives” to the food in form of little piles (think of our food additive products in the various forms).

-Not to mention 'soylent green'. Disciples of the Machine God would have no qualms about 'recycling' every available resource...

Hi there Adeptus,

I guess that CorpseStarch could actually be less present then in your regular hive world. After all, a lot more of any given dead Body will be harvested for servitors parts. Unless the ForgeWorld has no (or only a minor) Servitor Fabric.


Further Random thought:
Remember that Workshops are workSHRINES and we are talking fabricTEMPLES here.

I would take a page from Paranoia the RPG.

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, and just like Friend Computer in Paranoia, the upper crust of the AdMec has no real concept of the human condition. The human machine, definitely, but not living, breathing human beings.

There's plenty of drugs in circulation. Human abilities can be enhanced in various ways through specific drugs, and the AdMec tries, in their blundering way, to exploit this to its fullest.

Manufactorum workers work 24 hour shifts and are on massive doses of stimulants, making them careless and prone to fits of rage. Of course the AdMec only understands that they get more consecutive hours per worker when the workers are drugged to the gills. Side effects? What's that?

Children are high on smart drugs during school hours. The rest of the time they're either working or stoned placid. Which of course means that a large percentage go through brutal withdrawal up to several times per day, unless they or their parents can get them what they need on the thriving black market.

Speaking of markets, and recreational areas in general, these are explosions of colour, weird geometric shapes, and all manner of weird smells. Shoppers are expected to drop a few trips to enhance their shopping experience and decrease their expectancy of the goods they buy.

Everyone is excessively polite, even while they're murdering you in a blind, drug-fuelled rage. The AdMec have concluded that politeness decreases friction in the human population, so any lapse in manners is grounds for being turned into a Servitor. People either learn early, or become Cherubs.

Barring worse fates, it is standard practice to turn parental units into servo skulls for the children, once these mature to a certain age. The Servo Skulls maintain much of their practical work experience, and serve as a combination of training wheels and surveillance units for the children. The Servitors do, of course, not maintain any semblance of humanity.

One of the most popular - and secret - cults, is the Cult of Ecologic. These people secretly harbour things like malnourished plants, dangerous, if diminutive, wildlife, and similar, and worship The Emperor as a kind of nature god. Of course, none of them have ever actually seen anything like a natural ecosystem, so they have some pretty **** strange ideas of what exactly it is. And a lot of vicious in-fighting is centred on arguments about this.

The deeper levels of the Forge World are the compressed ruins of thousands upon thousands of years of industry and ultra-technology. Much of which is haunted by archeotech data defence systems, or taken over by rogue or possessed Abominable Intelligences. All of these systems use people to stay alive. Some use people for hosts. Others inspire secret Cults who they then employ as maintenance workers and spies.

... Really, go find a copy of Paranoia somewhere and drop a pile of gothic on it.

Thanks a lot for all your ideas. i'll take what fit post my world.

Any pictures/drawings/maps/... that can help me and my players visualise the planet?

I'd say go wild with your imagination. The Dark Heresy core rulebook and especially the Inquisitor's Handbook mentioned by Gregory offer some good inspiration, as do the books from GW's Tabletop.

I really liked the description in ... I think it was the Inquisitor's Handbook, where it said that every single citizen's life is meticulously planned and organised by unfeeling cogitators aiming for maximum workplace efficiency, creating a bureaucracy that makes the Adeptus Administratum look compassionate. The place in which you sleep, the food you eat, whether or not you are allowed to have children, and even with whom, all will be determined and assigned by machines. Coupled with the TT's description of Forge Worlds as being largely populated by Servitors, where normal humans are a minority , and where minor infractions or failing to fulfill your work quota can see you lobotomised and added to the vast army of machine slaves, this makes for an incredibly dystopian image somewhere between absolute order and madness, surrounded by walls of cold metal covered by the dust of millennia.

This is my preferred image of Forge Worlds.

Ultimately, however, keep in mind that the various sources of "fluff" are intentionally contradictory - you have as much liberty to ignore stuff or make new things up as all the authors working on the official novels and rulebooks. Lexicanum kind of gives a false impression here in that it still claims that everything is supposed to go together, when in fact all the different pieces of information are optional and may well coexist in different interpretations rather than a single one.

For inspiration regarding society, I like to point towards stuff like THX 1338:

This might sound weird, but try the German version of Lexicanum. It often has more information.

I noticed that, too. And more correct in that I have yet to find a German Lexicanum page where someone cited a source that doesn't say what the editor claimed at all.

THX1338, incidentally, is one of the best films ever made. There's no way you can go wrong stealing from it.

"Not as clumsy or random as lensflares. An elegant movie, for a more civilised age."

Thanks for all the ideas.

I ordered the Forge Worlds book. I surely find some inspiration. And all kind of heresy my players will have to uncover and fight.

I'm currently searching deviantart for illustration of forge worlds and similar worlds. If you have other sources, please feel free to share

Try: http:// www.malleus.dk/ Ordo/Articles.aspx

The tactical maps and the Picture and work for "Postumus Halls" and "the Kormak Sector" might come Handy. Especially since they are offered in a "blank, unlabeled" form as well.

You might also consider the Space Marine computer game. It is situated on a forge world under attack by orks and chaos. You have massive buildings, factories, worker habs, plaza's etc.

Very inspiring...

You can find cut scenes etc. on youtube.

^ the Spacemarine game is a great idea, look for some screen shots. I believe the game developers used WWII, industrial Russia for their inspiration of the forge world.

I do always think of this picture when I hear the mention of a forge world, but that is just me