Ignoring my horrendous ability to spell in low gothic, I have a group of new players in DH2 and I'm trying to develop a nemesis (faction or individual) to my group. I'm currently running an adapted version of the Into Darkness intro campaign (The one with the Logicians) from last edition. My party consists of two techpriests: one a gun-mech with a a fear of rain and mysterious missing parents, as well as a Medic with a giant axe and a hatred of Chaos Spehs Mahreens. The other two are shrine-worlders: a giant tank Arbites with no gun, and a psyker with insanely high strength. The first session is done and they've been making quite a racket, so now I'm creating an assassin with a sniper and lathe knives. None-the-less I would like the input of some of the experienced GM's

Well, everything goes in DH as a nemesis. The stereotype Tzeench Demon who has the evil master plan to doom the PCs, a mad here"tech" who wants to revive a Titan and has to collect certain parts from important imperial machines or if you like intrigues a competitor may be another cell of acolytes or another inquisitor.

I myself like to lure my players in to make their own nemesis through their "good" deeds. You can read my first post in campaings for share, I introduce there in the first adventure three later opponents. My favorite is the little girl the players thought they saved from certain death in a crashed spaceship. I let her be a perfectly likeable NPC so the PCs would try to help her on the journey and become kind of friends. At the end the girl feels betrayed, she is ordered to be executed by the inquisitor and sees how the PCs are spared and do nothing to help her. For the players the adventure ends with them boarding a shuttle and hearing the execution volleys. What they do not know is, she just embraced her newly found psychic abilities and escapes death...years later she tries to harm the PCs and wants revenge, first through middleman later then the revelation.

Some pretty cool ideas!

Now this would be a perfectly effective, if not for the fact that the psyker and tank embrace the "Burn, Maim, Cleanse" doctrine. everyone they come into contact with suffers an 'accident': Vaporizing dregs, pushing important NPCs, even one of them tried to strangle the Interrogator. Plus there are never any witnesses :/

Well, then they maybe kill a relative...a son, farther, daughter...of some very mighty, who finds out that the PCs did this...maybe a camera filmed it and they did not notice it? I mean maybe this one snob they pressed for answers was wounded too bad in the interrogation process and his last words were a message to his dad the vice admiral of the imperial fleet...or an arch magos...or a commander of a titan legion ;P

The problem with including nemesi (?) in DH is that more-or-less human characters are extremely easy to kill. Every villain that I've introduced in my DH1 campaign whom I hoped would become a recurring threat has been killed the first time the Acolytes get line-of-sight to him or her. Admittedly my players are pretty combat-optimized, but even merely 'competent' combatants are likely to drop a master villain if given half a chance.

The best way to avoid this inglorious outcome is to take a page from Dr. Zin in the old Jonny Quest cartoons: make sure that the villain is never physically present at the sight of his/her wrongdoings. Keep the villain limited to paper trails, legions of expendable henchmen, and maybe an occasional taunting face on a viewscreen.

If the Big Bad absolutely has to be present, load 'em up with Fate Points, bodyguards, and multiple escape plans.

The problem with including nemesi (?) in DH is that more-or-less human characters are extremely easy to kill. Every villain that I've introduced in my DH1 campaign whom I hoped would become a recurring threat has been killed the first time the Acolytes get line-of-sight to him or her. Admittedly my players are pretty combat-optimized, but even merely 'competent' combatants are likely to drop a master villain if given half a chance.

The best way to avoid this inglorious outcome is to take a page from Dr. Zin in the old Jonny Quest cartoons: make sure that the villain is never physically present at the sight of his/her wrongdoings. Keep the villain limited to paper trails, legions of expendable henchmen, and maybe an occasional taunting face on a viewscreen.

If the Big Bad absolutely has to be present, load 'em up with Fate Points, bodyguards, and multiple escape plans.

Or take the Alpha Legion approach.

So the acolytes have killed alpharius the mastermind behind a series of cultist uprisings in the sector?

Next session introduce them to pack of saboteurs who work for someone called (you guessed it)...Alpharius!

There is always another Alpharius...

Have every cult member call themselves Alpharius.

"WHO IS ALPHARIUS? WHERE IS HE?!"

Obviously female cult member, "We are Alpharius."

Enter into stereotypical 'I am Spartacus.' situation.

The problem with including nemesi (?) in DH is that more-or-less human characters are extremely easy to kill

If that is a problem, fix it.

You can come up with all sorts of crazy things. Because if a "mortal" is of nemesis caliber, she/he is likely an intelligent person of power/importance, skill and experience.

Here's one of my old recurring adversaries, a Planetary Governor with a cybernetic implant, that is vox-slaved to a nuclear arsenal.

He lives in a hive that is void-shielded from orbital bombardments.

Upon death -> woooosh goes the city.

Kill him up close = OK, you better get out your running shoes (and no - you won't make it out alive).

"I like to ask myself, what would the Joker do?"

"I like to ask myself, what would the Joker do?"

Not necessarily the smartest move, the acolytes aren't Batman, they're willing to kill. Joker does what he does because he wants to see if Batman will let him live.

It was a joke-reference, sorry for being unclear.

Fair enough. I have been wanting to put in a heretic that works for Tzeetch by destroying the natural order of Imperial society in a most explosive a fashion as possible, and tempting people by explaining to them the nature of the galaxy.

That the only sane way to live in these times is insanely, to bind yourself to rules is inherently wrong and simply another form of worshiping an insane system. In essence you're already chaotic, why not just embrace a different god?

I haven't looked at it in a while so I don't know how applicable it is to DH2, but DH1's Radical's Handbook has rules and advice for creating Nemesis characters. If you can get that book on the cheap it's well worth it, and not just for this reason.

Agreed, Radical's is my favorite DH1 book, largely because of the explanation of the inquisitorial philosophies and that every group has a finger in the pie of the Calaxis Sector.

"I like to ask myself, what would the Joker do?"

Laugh?

How about making the nemesis another inquisitor? He has it in for the characters, and they can't just walk up and kill him without being declared traitor.

That sounds like a really good idea! I didn't think of anything 'above' the acolytes heads. Perhaps a run in with an inquisitor of another ordo with plenty of expendable acolytes.

If you need inspiration for a bad inquisitor, I propose to read Eisenhorn, especially second part (if I remember correctly). There you get quite some inspiration, if you want your nemesis inquisitor to be the groups doom, without him being offical a bad guy...but quite the opposite...I do not want to spoil anything.

"I like to ask myself, what would the Joker do?"

Not necessarily the smartest move, the acolytes aren't Batman, they're willing to kill. Joker does what he does because he wants to see if Batman will let him live.

I dont think so.

The Jokers point was to show others their own self-righteousness and ignorance, and punish afterwards punish them for it.

He wants to bring out the real character, that lures beneath the surface, and show his enemies who they really are and what the principles they live by are worth at the end.

I think he has quite a lot influence from Tzeentch (insanity, inconsistancy, plotting), and would make a great nemesis for acolythes.

Against them, he could try to make puritan acolythes walk more and more radical ways, until they become more and more like him.

Hi DoubleAim,

what kind of games do you and your Group intend to game? What part of the game do all of you enjoy the most?

- a combat oriented slug fest?
- a lot of puzzling and mystery while you are Investigating the clues?
- Horror and corruption that harrow the characters despite their strength and success?

Your group SOUNDS a lot like the first one, but I might be wrong with this.

Since your players are very likely to slaughter opposition (and enjoy it) I would suggest to stick to the Logicians and centre a campaign around forbidden bios-sculpting, transgenetic blasphemies and malatek-kyborgs that would make a Phaenotie proud. The doings do not even have to make to much sense since those Logicians are "science for science sake".

Have a Group of flesh sculptors, only losely knit and each of them tinkering in their own field to please one Arc-Heretek that "sponsers" them. Have the the characters hunt them down and face different Horrors...each with one certain "Trademark trick". The Boss battles should be between a Boss Monster (or a Group of elite creatures or hordes of lesser creatures) of the suclptors choosing... while he tries to flee. Prepare rules for the flight and a different method of flight for each of them (and yes, it is fair to have some of them simply teleporting out..but only one of them, perhaps two).

Those that the characters cannot catch will shop up at their masters side at his Headquarters, adding to his retinue AND adding there "Special field" as abilities to the murder Gholams the "Master" already uses.

What is the master all about? He tries to "gene-code" his own space marines, therefore acquiring progenitor seeds hailing form chaos space marines (he does not dare trying those of the loyals since he is still inside the Imperium...and thinks himself save there from the retributions of CSM... mix in an small assault Team from the Alpha Legion to proof him wrong).

Thank you Gregorious, for more or less completing my story arc, for my players. I've been featuring alot of Tech-heresy, in my campaign, intertwined with some horror based missions (my players don't do very well with subtle investigation style missions, so I use alot of combat heavy slugfests, and insanity/corruption filled horror stories) you have just laid down all of the framework I've been trying to sort out to complete my story.

Thank you Gregorious, for more or less completing my story arc, for my players. (...)you have just laid down all of the framework I've been trying to sort out to complete my story.

Well...if that wasn´t sarcastic (?)... I am not above whoring myself out *pointing shamelessly to the LIKE button offering itself up under my post)

@DoubleAim & Secutor

Would like some ideas/concepts for the lower ranks of them? They won´t have much stats and will sure as hell have reference to DH1st material (I still use their background), so.

If only Secutor would like some ideas, I will open up a different topic (to avoid spamming/hi-jacking here)

@Secutor

Feel free to PM me if you like

Thanks man you've given me a great idea for the my story line!

PS. You got it right on the slugfest, poor ol' Interrogator Sand is already getting a migraine from all the follow up he has to do for the 'Coscarla Incident'. There ain't no rest for the wicked...

PS. You got it right on the slugfest, poor ol' Interrogator Sand is already getting a migraine from all the follow up he has to do for the 'Coscarla Incident'. There ain't no rest for the wicked...

I get the feeling that we may be running the same story, my Acolytes started a fight with the enforcers, and then decided to 'purge' the rest of them, and we're very quickly mowed down, despite my best attempts to talk them out of it. Eventually leading to the fleeing of the rogue techpriest, and the unleashing of the plague to kill everyone/thing living in Coscarla, forcing Interrogator Sand, and some senior agents to go down there and burn the entire district to prevent the plague from spreading.

Thus creating their nemesis for this campaign. I keep dropping clues for them but so far no one has pieced it all together that everything they've been going after stems from the same guy.

Yup same one...

Welp time to roll my 'counter' acolytes so to speak.

My campaign is set in a home-made sector called Prosperitas that I've been building for a year now. It's big bad guy is Arch Fabricator General Lazarus CXI. He's recovered a fragmented STC that contains early blueprints for the Astronomicon. It also has a Keeper of Secrets lulling inside it, corrupting him entirely. The Sector is renown for being one of the few contingents where the Legio Cybernetica are still practicing. Additional resources, containing high quality synthetic muscle as well as Cortex cores are being smuggled into the Sector to aid in the creation of a Cybernetica legion of unprecedented size. This is what the players are investigating, but they're not ready for a full legion of Slaaneshi robots and a Keeper of Secrets wielding a reverse-engineered Astronomicon that projects the warp into realspace. It's gonna be a barrel of laughs.