Simple as really. I've recently played Dead Space, thought it a rather good game with a cool story, one that could be placed in the 40k universe i thought.

So i thought some more, ignoring the planet side stuff to start with, how would it be done?? Technomagos from the biologist of the mechanicus turned Heretek (of cause), one that specialty is Gholam's and other "fleshworks" add in a bit of the Warp and you can call it a day, or can you??

How would you go about doing it??

Along similar lines, Industrial tools as weapons......

Well, that is an interesting question.

Seeings as the critters more or less possess the bodies of the dead, but mutate and change them... Hrmm, and they have some characteristics similar to Genestealers. Honestly there are a couple of ways to do it. You could do them as an otherwise ancient and nasty xenos species, or as some variation of the zombie plagues.

The Drive Nailer is basically a nasty rivet/nail gun with the safety features disabled, that's one. The Melta-Cutter and the Bulkhead Cutter being two more "tools" occasionally seconded as weapons on occasion. All three listed in the Inquisitor's Handbook.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Another great game to draw inspiration from might well be BIoshock. It has a great atmosphere, a good story and the whole "bizarre" science thing going for it. I'd not to see Big Daddies and Little Sisters in DH.

System Shock 2 can be run pretty much unmodified (which I'm going to do in a while).

Ahh, I loved Dead Space
You could have the Necromorphs (as in the viral creatures themselve,s not the infected humans) as an edited Psychneuein (Pg 353 Corebook). Remove the Psy rating effect, amp up their wounds quite a bit and give them unnatural toughness ^^
But for the Strategic Dismemberment...Id' suggest using a house rule from the HR forum, it's quite a ew pages in, but basically it states that for attacks, you roll damage, subtract enemies TB and AP and the remaining points are taken as wounds, but also as critical damage. This would be a lot more effeciant and effective than having to while the Necromorphs wounds down with body shots until their arms are weak enough to fall off

The story:
Were you planning to include unitology in it by any chance?

I wouldn't. 40K already has a rich and diverse story. Probably why you bought the game. Next question!

Mutating viral zombies? Sign me up! (Sorry, that's all I have)

Mantis Sine said:

There is ALWAYS room for improvement... probably why Games Workshop changes their fluff.

and there is ALWAYS room for more zombies... they are like Jello.

Dead Space is, indeed, a great game. I played it all the way through in about two sessions when unwell, and decided that it was creeping me out so much it was making me worse!

GW's Space Hulk was clearly a big influence on it (in the same way Alien was clearly a huge influence on Space Hulk.) The closest GW equivalent is still Space Hulk, which I hear on the grapevine is to be re-released later this year with new plastic Terminators and genestealers.

To me, it always struck me as the perfect look for a vessel that had been briefly stuck in the warp with failing Gellar fields - all the cew end up as mutated monstrosities that have to be purged so the ship can be re-used...

TalkingMuffin said:

OMG! It's a talking muffin!

And since I haven't gotten a chance yet. Let me stress YET. to play dead space this all makes me even more interested in doing so. But just so I can feel like I've added something pertinent, Event Horizon I thought was also good to use for inspiration for a ship that went into the warp sans gellar field.

Zarkhovian_Rhythm said:

Oh yes. Most definatley. And the actual design of some of those rooms and interior spaces of the Event Horizon are another great example of Imperium ship design, beng as many were inspired by and/or outright copied from sections within the Vatican and other venerable churches of Europe. As to Dead Space, great game. I also own Dead Space: Downfall which is the "prequel" animated movie. I enjoyed it.

-=Brother Praetus=-

cyclocius said:

However, one my original ideas was using the Tyrant Star as something causing the hallucinations and madness on a large mining ship out on the edge of system, with the USS Valor being some kind of Mechancius ships looking for the ship because of a Heretek on board.

Yeah, that'd work really well Let me know how it goes

Brother Praetus said:

Genestealers is a good idea in terms of physical aggression, cleverness in using vents to flee/outflank, a hivemind governing persona, and movement speed and size but it doesn't hide the Necromorph's true threat as being an actual bacterial infection that can linger in a non-dead host for hours and possibly days before the immune system can purge the infection. The key part of Dead Space relies on Necrosis to happen to the flesh of a body so the bacteria can start to mutate and control its host, this gives the GM a wide range of possiblities with a seriously injured PC or NPC,as once a limb or segment of the body goes necroic the host can painfuly be turned into a Necromorph while he or she is still alive. This necrosis of flesh could be done as a Toughness Test per 4 hours of rest with a -10 to the test, with a culumative penality per every 4 hours so in 8 hours the player has a -20 and at 12 hours the player has -30 to his tests if his wounds are not healed by team member assistance.

Also the bacteria induces ramping up degrees of temporary insanity, that if the infected person doesn't eventualy leave the direct influence of the artifact and allows the immune system to purge the bacteria the PC WILL commit suicide due from the insanity giving birth to a form, pending GM's ideas, based off of the PC's stats and given over to the GM as a NPC for possible boss engagement. To prevent build up of, what I should consider mostly temporary, insanity points a will power test every 4 hours after bacterial incubation sets in. Once again, a culumative penality, starting with a -10, builds the longer the PC stays in the influence of the Artifact or infected area. It's up to the GM if there is a threshold on when the insanity goes from being temporary to becoming permanent.

The infection could be possibly treated, but not removed, with a hard Medicae test on PC's to see if they've been first examined. Then if they won the test, a Medicae test to keep the bacteria in check could be done starting with no penality on the first treatment leading up with a culumative penality of -10 per test following the core penalty free treatement. This is to reflect the aggressive behavior of the Necromorphic bacteria.

Necromoprhed creatures should have some form of melee attack or ranged attack that induces necrosis but does not deal the typical toxic damage from standard rules. If the melee damage induces critical damage, then the flesh starts to become necroic and the above toughness tests should be done otherwise if the damage is below critical level treat it as an infection attack. Once hit with the attack, the GM should roll a 1d5 to see how long in terms of days (or hours on GM's choice) the player's bacterial incubation lasts before the infection's full effects kick in and after that another 1d5 for the party members in range of 10m of the infected player before they show signs of infection. After leaving the influence of the infected area and/or artifact/person that induces the infection the GM should roll 1d10 to see how many days does the player take to recover and to see if any temporary insanity points are purged or permanently kept. Note, the PC is most not be allowed to be in range or contact with other PC's or even NPC's as this will restart the whole process over again and infect a whole new area.

The orginal artifact in Dead Space was a Blue tinged monolith found on Earth, while the one on the colony is a Red tinged man-made replica that emits the bacteria in an airborne form or in some other way and also induces varying degrees of insanity to those still alive but possibly infected by the bacteria, this could give to the GM a perfect set of tools to use an artifact of the Warp (be it NPC made or Warp spawned) with it totaly random creation or a possible a device designed either by Papa Nurgle or Tzeentch to do some sort of task. With Nurgle it could be a straight up mission to infect all of a possible Rouge Trader vessel and use it to carry forth his plague to worlds via black market or have a more hidden agenda with Tzeentch with this god using the artifact to fulfill unseen plans that may at their core involve enslavement and conquest of Khorne's own minions though infection. So there is a lot of working room here for a plot device.

That Confused 1...

You're confused.

It's (probably) a virus, not a bacteria. I have to point out that the key word here is "probably", since I've seen it described in some texts as a virus and in others as an "alien microbe"... meaning a bacteria.

Think about how viruses work: They're basically pieces of DNA or RNA inside a protein sheath, that attach themselves to a cell and inject their DNA, forcing the cell to produce more copies of the virus instead of normal proteins. These copies then "pinch out" through the cell wall to infect more cells; in some cases, causing the cell to rupture and die in the process. The point is that they have the ability to alter DNA... bacteria do not. (Edit: I need to add the disclaimer "At least, nowhere near as rapidly nor as directly as a virus". Certain bacteria, particularly the mycoplasmids, have been connected to malignant cell transformation.) This doesn't explain the hivemind, though, or the biological material clinging to the ship's walls in some areas... scientists still can't even agree on whether or not a virus is ALIVE, and how the virus could mutate a body (a DEAD body, at that) so quickly, is beyond my ability to explain as well. I sense some "handwavium" and/or "applied phlebotinum" here.

Not only that, but the marker is, itself, psychic on some level... the hallucinations that Isaac Clarke (your character in the Dead Space game) were having of his wife were generated BY THE MARKER. (Doctor Kyne, the Ishimura's science officer, was also having interactions with his dead wife... also caused by the marker.) It wants to be returned to the planet where it can continue to block the hivemind. That's what it meant by "make us whole again"... it wasn't referring to Isaac and his wife (who committed suicide, btw, before he even came on board the Ishimura), it was referring to the marker and the hivemind.

I realize that all this has no bearing on the discussion at hand, specifically the "how would you do it in DH" part. Just thought I'd clarify some misconceptions about the nature of the marker and the Necromorphs.

So...the marker is conscious? That is awesome. Nuff said.

Of course, that leaves one question, in the scenario where you have to defend Nicole while she opens a door for you to reach the SOS beacon...who is that working the machine? And again, when you're landing on the planet, you're not in the pilots seat....

cyclocius said:

Conscious? Perhaps. It could also be a psychic impression of its purpose manifesting in a receptive and living mind; the manifestation taking a form with which the recipient is most familiar and comfortable. Afterall, the marker seems to exist for the express purpose of imprisonning the damnable source of the Necromorphs. Reasonably, it would be designed to encourage the living from tampering with it; or, barring that, encourage restoration of the prison environment.

It still begs the questions of who/how/when. Especially since in Downfall it is mentioned that the site where the marker was found appears to have been tampered with previously by heavy machinery which has been out of service for well over a century. That, and the fact that as far as anyone knows, the 'Maru was out the farthest anyone had ever been at that point. I really need to finish Dead Space, as well as Mass Effect.

-=Brother Praetus=-

You've not finished Dead Space?!?!?!?

But...to bring this back on topic......Tyranid something something...

Mantis Sine said:

I hope by the Emperor's fuzzy bunny slippers that you're kidding. Because at $55 per book, this is easily the most expensive RPG series I've gotten involved in. No amount of fanboyism should stop us from trying to get our money's worth.

Helpful: A hard and fast way to use the Dead Space story would be to make the mining vessel into a huge deep-space explorator vessel that disappears into the warp for a few decades and filled with a lot of important stuff the Ad Mech would very much like to have back. Said explorator vessel reappears at the edge of a rather valuable system so combining the worth of the system and the value of the tech on board, the Inquistion slips a few alcoytes into the repair team sent to fix what they think is a problem with the vox system. To make a long story short, the party discover a cult of Nurgle had inflitrated the ship (complete with biomancer tech-priests) and released a plague upon the crew while picking up an important Chaos artifact. The cultists are almost all dead, plague zombies are running around the corridors, and the survivors are fighting to either keep the artifact on the ship OR load the thing onto a shuttle set on a collision course for the nearest Hive World where the monolith will act as an anchor for Papa Nurgle to start sending his faithful into the Calixus Sector.