Greetings Black Crusade folks. I'm looking for some information and to pick the brains of the collective wherever they may be. I've had an idea I've been working on for some time, I seem to spend ages planning dozens of campaigns lately but not being able to run with many of them but this one is good enough to pass the quality test and for me to deploy it! Anyway, here we go, this may be a bit long so feel free to zone out part way through. Consider the following premise:

The setting first off is outside of the usual one in the book. I'm creating a custom sector (or possibly just a sub sector, not sure on scale) named the Hades Cluster. A number of star systems and celestial bodies contained inside a ring named the Hades Belt of astral hazards such as warp storms, black holes, asteroid fields, radiation and solar storms...basically bad stuff. The ring creates the ultimate defence preventing almost all travel into or out of the region however there is a single weak point in the belt which to continue the metaphor would be named the Hades Buckle. It's a gap in the hazards and storms and the Imperium have it heavily fortified as a major checkpoint as it is the only safe way in and out of the entire region and is a major through point. There are other sneaky ways in and out but those are left hidden, few know of them and even fewer know how to use them. The systems within are considered Imperium in control but it's a loosely held together region of law and order but the Imperium don't mind because they know that the buckle is the only way out if they ever wanted to do anything and they havent got the manpower to bother sorting it out. This will be where they end up however their starting positions can be anywhere.

All the player characters are required to, as well as build their own characters, draft up a predetermined and possibly premature death situation which would suit their characters back story. Whether this be a Chaos marine dying in a failed boarding, the renegade character being shivved in the back in an Imperial cell awaiting trial, an adept being flattened in an accident in the archives of some library or whatever it is. Basically some method of them dying. They then end up living that experience for the first part, they are all one by one describing their moment of death but there is a difference for each of them and at just the right moment, I stop their stories and move on to the next character and when all is said and done, each of them will find themselves somehow spirited away from their moment of demise in a manner similar to Vortigaunts extracting Doctor Freeman from the exploding Citadel reactor in HL2 Ep1 (or something else). This is perhaps where I'm less confident on the introduction so I'm open for ideas on refinement on this.

Ultimately I want to use it to bring all the characters together in a room in some manner, going from whatever horrid situation they are in and arriving in a large, well decorated and lavish office/board room/some other room. They would all find themselves with their armour and equipment still on their person and all of them awaking from a stupor sat down with only the other characters in the room and a single human watching them all. This is the NPC I am aiming to have as the antagonist/primary assignment giver. I'm working on a name for the chap but the man is designed to be exceptionally well dressed, smart, formal, clearly with immense wealth but he's more than that. The best way to describe him would be the 40K version of Jim Moriarty , very well connected, exceptionally intelligent, cold, manipulative but also Machiavellian as well as a collector. I figure that a simple human is more of an imposing threat than an entire Chaos warband as it seems odd that a single figure could hold such power and prestige. He's one who will extort favours from others by various methods and help those usually because he can have that debt repaid at a later date. This is why he has arranged for the lives of the player characters to be saved. By saving their lives they effectively owe him one, which is a point I intend to make very clear as well as reminding them that he saved them from a premature demise and can just as easily send them back. Of course if anyone tries to kill him there and then I will need to make it clear that they havent got the choice, force a number of horrific Willpower and Strength checks as even their own bodies try to fight back and refuse to harm the guy.

Off camera and possibly something they may discover later is that the guy is a collector and user of all manner of forbidden black arts, knowledge, xenos tech, you name it and he has looked into it. To that end, through his various acts and history this was how under his power, he has managed to obtain terrifying technology and a number of True Names which is how ultimately he has obtained the full subservience of a Keeper of Secrets, a Lord of Change, a Great Unclean One and a Blood Thirster. The four great daemon entities in the pantheon of Chaos and they effectively serve him as and when he needs them and due to the power of the name they cannot raise a hand against him and he knows it and is happy to have them do a few bits of work for him on occasions. He also has the same over other beings in the galaxy having Imperial Commanders in his back pocket for just such an occasion, perhaps even a radical Inquisitor or two.

You may ask at this point then, if he has all this then what does he want the players for? Well to this end I was considering why a great figure such as them would indeed require them and so far one such concept I had in mind was using them as treasure hunters, collecting more terrifying and dangerous antiques for him. Unknown xenos technology, relics and artifacts of a forgotten age and in doing so they can earn their freedom from his bargains and eventually he'll send them on their way or allow them to further serve him in exchange for rich rewards.

So there's the idea, now I have a lot of work to do on this and I do really need feedback on this, there's much I'm toying with and will consider changing but it's the idea which I'm keen to run with itself or the NPC concept at least which I feel is a very intriguing idea I could pull off. Over to you, be as polite or as brutal as you like. More information is available on request.

This is pretty hip. I'm running a similar game, actually. However, though I might have missed it, I don't really see any parts where you need inspiration? If you need filler NPCs/pre-made PCs with flavorful backstories, I can probably help with that.

This is pretty hip. I'm running a similar game, actually. However, though I might have missed it, I don't really see any parts where you need inspiration? If you need filler NPCs/pre-made PCs with flavorful backstories, I can probably help with that.

So far I'm after validation on the concept and perhaps a better way of introducing them. Additionally I'm concerned about the longevity of the idea. There are only so many treasure hunts and suicide missions I can send them on before things may feel "samey" but that might be just me. Extra suggestions welcome for ideas on interesting or supporting character and NPC concepts as well or anything you feel may enhance the suggestion. Names would be good because lately I'm having a bad case of name suggestion-lexia.

I'm totally on board for helping you out, but I'm a bit occupied at the moment. Which books are you using? I like pulling from all the books, personally, but I can narrow down my advice if desired.

In case it needs to be said, I don't have any issues with this game approach.

ADDENDUM: Here are a few character concepts for (N)PCs in my tentative <Dark Heresy Second Edition> game. I was going to share their profiles anyway:

• DH-2e - Doctor Death : The [Deathsight {Mutation}] shows the character the many deaths of those he looks upon. However, this chirurgeon uses those same visions to heal people. After all, if he can see how his patients could die, he is all the better armed to treat them. He also has big, hulking muscles for carrying his regiment on the road to recovery and victory, often literally. Looks nothing like a stereotypical doctor, but that dichotomy is what makes it fun.
• DH, DH-2e - Personal Hell : A [Hive World] character with the [Fear the Silence {Superstition}], the [sedatephobia {Mental Disorder}], and the [bionic Hearing {Cybernetic}] with built-in [Litany Micro-beads] needs to be constantly bombarded with sound. The Litany Micro-beads deafen him with hymns in times of quiet, but that's the only way he can stay sane. Should he be affected by a Haywire Field, or if his cybernetics otherwise fail, no sound will ever reach him.
• BC - Travel-Sized : Using the [Featureless Face] and [Headless {Gift of the Gods}], a quadriplegic could fit neatly inside a [80cm x 50cm x 25cm] box. This is assuming that the character is 1.65m tall at 55kg. Given that humans are more or less seven heads tall, the entire body can be broken up into 1-3-3 head-long sections. Without the head, arms, or legs, the remaining torso is only three heads tall (71cm), two heads wide (47cm), and approximately one head thick (24cm). Individual arms and legs comprise about 5% and 10% of a human's weight respectively. So, without any limbs at all, a human would be about 70% of her natural weight (38.5kg). The average human head is around 10lbs., 4.5kg, making the character's final weight is 34kg. All things considered, this character could be stashed anywhere you could hide a Heavy Weapon, such as within a backpack. Breathing might still be an issue though.

I'm totally on board for helping you out, but I'm a bit occupied at the moment. Which books are you using? I like pulling from all the books, personally, but I can narrow down my advice if desired.

Books available include BC core plus each of the four tomes with access to other books from other lines such as all of Deathwatch, A few DH and core of Rogue Trader,

Interesting ideas there as well. Some of those are quite intriguing.

Awesome idea, but I would make the human watching the PC's wake up, the 40k equivalent of Col. Moran. (Moriarty's right hand man) Otherwise you might get the situation of the Khorne berzerker waking up and going BFTBG and killing your "Napoleon of daemonic contracts". At the very least i'd give him some force field protection, or have him being a holo-projection.

Berzerker: "You saved us huh? And that makes us owe you? Ok then, i'll make this quick..." *chainaxe gets activated*

How about sending them after Trazyn the infinete? Maybe the necron archeologists wants the same as your moriarty npc, or he has something the characters need to steal, or maybe Trazyn wants the characters or moriarty* himself!

* i refer to him as moriarty since u didn't give a name for him yet,

Here is a sample of the type of stuff Trazyn is into:

" Dear Lady, let me express my fulsome appreciation for your most generous gift. It is so very rare to discover another of my own kind that appreciates my work, therefore to find understanding amongst a member of another race is nothing short of a revelation. I realise that you briefly trod my galleries, but the fact that you spotted in so short a time that my Acabrius War collection was lacking three regiments of Catachan warriors reveals that you truly have a collector's eye for detail. And to send five regiments! Such generosity will allow me to weed out and replace a few of the more substandard pieces in my collection. If I might level a minor criticism, the instructions issued to your gift were manifestly not as clear as you thought, as most of them had to be forcibly restrained -- sadly it seems that the lower orders will always behave like an army of invasion, whether that be their purpose or not. However, this is a minor complaint and seems almost churlish under the circumstances, so please allow me to repay your gift with one of my own. Accompanying this message is the Hyperstone Maze, one of a series of tesseract labyrinths constructed at the height of the Charnovokh Dynasty. It is a trinket really, only of interest to scholars such as you and I, but I trust you will find it amusing -- assuming you have the wit to escape its clutches, of course. "

Have them die, but then find themselves in a different body. Perhaps something that is drawn as a card?

You might have the child, the older man, the daughter, etc.

They may have to win over new bodies for themselves as a first task? And then the rules change.

I'm going to call your antagonist the Sampler, what does he want from them, what is his end game?

Perhaps what it is, is simply entertainment. They are his personal reality show, and they need to do terrible things that go counter to their personalities to be able to keep to his favour. The Khorne Space Marine beserker now trapped in the body of a woman, having to seduce his/her way through a Slaneeshi Pleasure Ship to the desired trinket in question.

I would have him/it shift, where you're not sure if he's human or something else. Perhaps he keeps whispering in their ear when they start getting boring. "Boring", you hear him say, and then a mechanical game effect comes into play.

As with such campaigns, I would keep the game short, as the Sampler will grow tired and then just do a TPK.

However, there needs to be ways for them to escape, perhaps this is all an elaborate illusion or then there are rivals to the Sampler who can interfere with his "feed". Or perhaps one of the PCs has to do something really outlandish to keep him distracted?

The challenge is having players who are willling to give up some of their decision making ability (maybe even have one player chosen at random to play the antagonist, every mission).

-C

My own thoughts after reading the Tome of Excess: The Sampler is preparing for the Great Game. The Great Game is nothing as plebian as gladitorial fights, but involves displays of six circles of slaneesh. They need to bring back displays of each circle. The PCs have been selected by Slaneesh or by other such warp fiend for such purpose. There are of course other rivals with their own warbands seeking to collect the same or similar trophies for their benefactor.

Have them die, but then find themselves in a different body. Perhaps something that is drawn as a card?

You might have the child, the older man, the daughter, etc.

They may have to win over new bodies for themselves as a first task? And then the rules change.

I'm going to call your antagonist the Sampler, what does he want from them, what is his end game?

Perhaps what it is, is simply entertainment. They are his personal reality show, and they need to do terrible things that go counter to their personalities to be able to keep to his favour. The Khorne Space Marine beserker now trapped in the body of a woman, having to seduce his/her way through a Slaneeshi Pleasure Ship to the desired trinket in question.

I would have him/it shift, where you're not sure if he's human or something else. Perhaps he keeps whispering in their ear when they start getting boring. "Boring", you hear him say, and then a mechanical game effect comes into play.

As with such campaigns, I would keep the game short, as the Sampler will grow tired and then just do a TPK.

However, there needs to be ways for them to escape, perhaps this is all an elaborate illusion or then there are rivals to the Sampler who can interfere with his "feed". Or perhaps one of the PCs has to do something really outlandish to keep him distracted?

The challenge is having players who are willling to give up some of their decision making ability (maybe even have one player chosen at random to play the antagonist, every mission).

-C

Being put in a female body isn't gonna stop a true champion of Khorne! i'd go Elizabeth Bathory on that pleasure ship:

"Hello there handsome, have you ever bathed in blood before? Why don't you come and join me? Oh the bath is getting a bit cold, here let me add some warm fresh blood to it- Yours!"

Now a slaaneshi champion in a plague marines body...

I've had some thinking about this, so far the plan ideas have changed a little and their introduction. I am keeping the death scene although I might indeed do a body swap or alternatively a character sheet swap IE everyone swap sheets with the person on your left/right etc for the first session just to screw with their heads a little.

Anyhow taking the suggestion I do agree to not have them meet their task master first and the plan is to have them in some sort of darkened cell, stripped of all gear and equipment possible and sat in large wooden chairs, unbound. A single figure, large and imposing will sit watching in the corner whom is also the first to address them. I'm intendending for this chap to appear as some high status lieutenant of exceptional power and prestige. He will also be the first to die as our primary NPC figure whom, I will stick with Moriarty just because I can't think of another name yet, will show displeasure at someone else addressing the group before him and have him brutally murdered on a whim by large figures resembling a tank from L4D/

The overall aim is that the party have become indebted to him and that he can quite happily send them back to their deaths at any time. The challenge then is to pay it off and their aim is to not only earn favour with the gods but also with their taskmaster whom has enough influence in the sector to make them highly miserable. They will be his pawns on the chessboard, using them to achieve his goals. For example one such plan in sending them off to sabotage the career of a powerful planetary governor and wreck their loves entirely purely because that governor lost a game of poker to Moriarty a few weeks ago and refused to pay up. A career in exchange for a few thousand thrones.

However these jobs will never be easy, his favour is fickle and he could just as easily shower them with rewards for good service as he is to rip out their tongue with his hand and reattach it to their hand just out of fun for him.

Nice. Just realised that as a true follower of chaos one should be used to fickle masters who will eff you up if you screw up, but the rewards are great. Thats the core of chaos: the whole high risk high rewards thing.

Serving Chaos is going all in with your soul, Daemon prince or spawn, win or loose...

Ducking the music spam above and continuing: super massive black hole. No I am not about to go into the Muse song of the same name but if it's stuck in your heads after this, "Ha, welcome to my entire afternoon!" Anyway joke aside, there is one at the dead centre of the Milky Way galaxy which is what the entire thing spins around. It's also on the left hand side of Ultima Segmentum where it meets Segmentum Solar. Now as far as I'm aware, the Empire has never officially said anything about this astral phenomenon other than it being near the site of the Badab War and surrounded by resource rich worlds, is that correct to anyones evaluations?

I'm further building on the idea and need some more feedback from you wonderful guys and girls (and daemons/xenos/machines etc) I had an idea about storing my cluster of space which I originally named above as the Hades Cluster but is now being renamed to Erebus (not affiliated with the CSM of the same name) IN the black hole itself. At the heart of a galactic phenomenon which can consume entire worlds and eradicate them, a mysterious bubble of space/time exists (approx 60ly diameter) which is larger than the black hole itself (estimated to be roughly 17 light hours wide). How such a situation came to be is unknown and what keeps it there is an even bigger mystery. I wanted to make a sector which its actual galactic location would be a total mystery and what better place than in a black hole. It cannot be observed as even light cannot escape the pull but it is accessible via a pair of warp gates connecting back to Segmentum Obscurus. So you have a system which people can easily access from anywhere but no idea where it actually is in relation to the galaxy. It's perhaps heavily populated and given its almost impossible to access any other way, a safe place to fortify in if you're anyone

Imagine that the region is surrounded by this bubble and it is seethrough. You can see out from it, observe all the stars in the galaxy and be at the very centre of all things. For a brief moment the heretics can truly claim to be at the centre of the galaxy. In such a region of space then, what odd astral phenomenon can I throw at them then? See I'm thinking of perhaps keeping gravity and some of it normal, to create an eerie feeling that in the heart of something where it should be abnormal to even exist, here lies this perfectly normal region of space. Do you think the idea above even holds any merit?

So you have a sector with stars and planets, etc in a bubble inside a black hole. I guess there is no way to leave the bubble except trough the warpgates. What puzzels me is that they can look outside the black hole.

Actualy in 40k, the center of the galaxy is a large permanent (naturally occuring) warpstorm known as the Maelstrom.

I guess you could have a sector wide piece of realspace in a bubble similar to a Geller field inside the warp. How about that?

As to how this has come to be and who's resposible for making it: A C'tan did it. (Maybe the eldar or the old ones, very maybe chaos itself, but my bet would be necrontyr/ c'tan)

I guess you could throw just about everything in there really:

Maybe the gravity fluctuates, distances seem distorted (penalties for awareness/ balistic skill tests) as the light gets bent and refleced in unatural ways. Time might slow down or be sped up. (Initiative bonus/penalties?)

Some worlds might have atmospheres that have become concave mirrors reflecting the planet's landscape in the sky. Others might have atmospheres under presure requiring special breathing apartus in order to stay alive.

So you have a sector with stars and planets, etc in a bubble inside a black hole. I guess there is no way to leave the bubble except trough the warpgates. What puzzels me is that they can look outside the black hole.

Actualy in 40k, the center of the galaxy is a large permanent (naturally occuring) warpstorm known as the Maelstrom.

I guess you could have a sector wide piece of realspace in a bubble similar to a Geller field inside the warp. How about that?

Well you can leave the bubble through the sides. It's not like it'll pop, you'll just end up back in realspace...right in the centre and then be subject to immense gravitational forces and for all intent and purpose, you've had it. Looking out to see normality is my way of making this seem a bit more unnerving and that despite all known laws of physics and matter that this region just ignores it and that the barrier seems to just allow one to look out onto the wonders of the heavens and the galaxy.

Further expanding on leaving, the idea would be that as your craft started to pass through the barrier, gravity would assert control and start to drag your vessel through and that would effectively be your event horizon however unlike conventional laws of physics where once the event horizon is reached, outside observers only see the still preserved for eternity, the field seems to just clean it up like a smear on a windscreen. This is intended to be some serious xeno tech. While the Necrons and perhaps the C'tan can master the art of dimensional compression and study singularities this is a whole new level of astrophysics to be able to manipulate reality to such a degree and designed to be a massive temptation of power to the heretic willing to take the risk! I was thinking something similar to the Ancients from the SG series but less human looking...

Looking into the Maelstrom as well, it looks actually off centre which implies it isn't the true heart so it's near but not the exact middle. It does seem that GW have avoided the concept of them entirely, doing some further reading since my last post so I might even have free reign.

I love the idea of the reflective landscape in the atmosphere, could be a beautiful suggestion although for some reason for a brief moment I had in my head the idea of a cosmic disco ball! The perception thing might also come in handy, perhaps as they get closer to the source of the bubble and the anomaly, reality and physics begins to further break down with illogical distances and perceptions, time dilations etc?

Just as follow up, first session done and dusted and no major fatalities or incidents...surprisingly.

Just as follow up, first session done and dusted and no major fatalities or incidents...surprisingly.

What!? You can't be playing Black Crusade!

Murmer... If only my group was that lucky...