So I am on my 4th adventure with my group. The base of the story is theyre trying to catch an Imperial official (Hastius Grendel) gone rogue who has become a slaver/human traffiker. Where I am at right now is there Inquisitor has sent them to a planet on the edge of the calixis sector. Its in turmoil, but he believes that one of the more respected members of Hastius's "gang" is on planet. They are required to stay completely anonymous and infiltrate then capture this "higher up." well the backround for the planet is that the small bunk towns are very "anti pysker" (think new england witch hunts). The planet is also plagued by Ork free-booter raids. And the main city is divided in two by 2 gangs (one of which I wanted to have related to the main bad guy.).

What I have so far in the adventure is they land in a settlement that is about 2 days outside the main town. This is when they find out about the ork raids and witch hunts (I have 1 pysker). They meet with a trader that offers to take them to the main town if they can "Guard his caravan". Well on the way to the town they get ambushed in the middle of the night, pretty much all are knocked un-concious. Someone will notice alot of them have a tattoo on there neck (this is leading into the main gang.) When they come to, the drivers dead and the caravan leader is gone. They notice a sign a ways out that will lead them to the main town, which takes about a 6-8 hours.

This is where I cant figure out where to go from here to get them to the goal. Does anyone have any ideas or input? I want to try to have this adventure done by next weekend, but so far no luck.

Please help me get this stuff figured out.

Guerillaboy said:

Personally, I'd go with a creepy-paranoia feel to the adventure. When they arrive in town they find that the townsfolk don't like talking to strangers. The psyker occasionally hears sounds and voices, snatches of words and screams in the distance. The town preacher confronts them and demands to know their business in town (will initially accept whatever they say, but as he's completely insane it doesn't really matter). Eventually the learn that the gang outside of town sometimes raids them, killing or grabbing a few people at a time. This, of course, may lead them to suspect that the gang is working with their target (they aren't).

If they head out to look for the gang, the weird phenomena will stop. They'll be ambushed by a group of Orks but will be saved by the same gang they were looking for. Before they can talk to them, however, the gang will flee on horseback or in vehicles. The PCs will soon realise that the gang is leaving because a larger band of Orks is on it's way, this warband will chase them back towards town.

Much to the PCs surprise, the Orks give up the chase as they aproach town. The town's defences seem weak, almost non-existent... so why do the Orks pull back. As they enter the town, they realise the streets are completely empty. There's no watch on the walls and no one guarding the stores etc. Only two buildings seem inhabited - the temple and a single tavern. As the hour turns all the townsfolk suddenly emerge from the local temple to the emperor. If asked, they claim that their devotion requires them all to attend the weekly temple sermons. Any attempt to investigate the temple or meet the preacher will be rebuffed by numerous armed guards.

If they investigate the tavern, they'll find that it's clientle are all from out of town, mostly traders and their merchant guards. Though they'll view the new arrivals with distrust, they'll actually seem more welcoming than the townsfolk. This is where the human trafficking gang operates from. They (and the trader's guards) dislike the townsfolk. However the town is a major customer - they buy humans from off-world. The gang assumes that they use them as slave labour (the truth is less pleasant - the towsfolk eat them). They know that the locals don't like people prying into their business... especially the temple. Outsiders who get too curious tend to end up disappearing. The gang has decided to respect their privacy.

At this point the PCs will have a number of possible leads. They can try to capture an Ork to find out why they don't attack the town. The Ork doesn't know, but says that there's something about the town that keeps them away. They can instinctually/psychically sense that it is a bad place that they shouldn't get too close to.

They can try to find the bandit gang. If they try, the gang will probably confront them, but if they reveal themselves to be members of the Inquisition they will cooperate. The bandits used to live in the town or nearby, but managed to escape when things 'changed'. They don't know what happened to their former friends and family, but they know that they are different now. They seem the same, but less friendly, without emotion. At first it was just a few people, but it spread from person to person. Eventually there was a confrontation between those who changed and those who had not. The bandits have tried capturing some of the changed to see if they could figure out what was wrong with them, but after taking them from the town for more than a few hours they died. They fear the townsfolk are trying to spread the change to other towns on the planet. They know that some have left (how they were able to survive, they don't know). Now they attack any townsfolk they recognise (including the trader the acolytes initially met with, who was returning from his mission to another town).

The PCs will probably want to investigate the temple at some point. What they find there depends on the nature of the threat. Have the townsfolk been possessed by daemons? Taken over by parasitical aliens? Are they agents of the Slaught? Or something else entirely...

Possible endings include the acolytes leading the bandits in an assault on the town, or perhaps holding up in the tavern as it comes under attack by the townsfolk (a great way to impress the bad guy's gang would be to help them fend off the townsfolk). Whatever the outcome, the battle with the townsfolk should emphasise the horror of watching seemingly normal people tear peolple apart. A humble housewife rips off a man's arm, a small child tears out a gang member's throat etc.

Guerillaboy said:

The witch-hunts have been fueled by the slaver and his associated gang. The concept here is that slave, rogue psykers are incredibly valuable on the black market (insert nefarious market for psykers), and it didn't take much of a conspiracy to engender a paranoia in the population.

Balance being hunted by the witch hunters with hunting the conspiracy behind them. Reacquaint yourself with the play The Crucible for the proper emotional environment.

One word of advice: DO NOT FORCE THE KNOCKOUT

Last time some dumb*** GM tried this on a party (after his plans were in ruins, he tried to fiat, when that failed, he tried to say "um, let's rerun that combat, you weren't supposed to win..."), the game imploded and half the players refused to ever game with him again (I simply refused to let him run anything again until he could show that he wasn't an idiot anymore... but this was just one problem of many with that guy).

Use the best tactics and specialized gear you can come up with (that is reasonable for the situation) and do your best to make things go as planned, but if the PCs manage to win out despite your best laid plans, don't fiat a "Well... you all fall unconscious anyway" result. It will piss them off (no one likes being rail-roaded, especially like that) and will lower their involvement in your game and their respect for you as a GM.

So, have a back-up plan... heck if the PCs win, then the gangers and PCs will still have seen enough of one another to get the info around that you want out, just try and get a ganger out of there alive. One thing is not clear from what you have written, you meant that the attackers had tatoos, or the PCs, or the gangers tatoo the PCs in their sleep?

Once in town, the PCs shouldn't really need much direction, the town is divided between two gangs, it shouldn't take much legwork to figure out which side their target is on. Once they know that, the rest is a matter of their approach (get inducted into the target gang, use their rivals to help them out, or maybe start a gang war and wait for the target to get flushed out, then do a ******-and-grab while everyone is busy killing each other.

macd21 said:

Here is the problem with that. For an ork, the feeling death awaits here translates as, "plenty a propa' fightin' ta be had o'er 'ere." You have to remember, while from the perspective of every other sentient, the 40Kverse is a grimdark cosmic horror story, for the Orks, it is joybright. I always imagined an orks perspective playing out like a Winnie the Pooh tale.

As for OP, six things: The Seven Samurai, Mad Max 3: Return to Thunderdome, Doomsday(the film directed by Neil Marshall), The Hills Have Eyes, the Wicker Man(original, not the remake), and the town from the first Fallout game where Richard Dean Anderson plays the sheriff. I think everyone knows where I'm going with this.

I'm sorry for the double post, but this needs to be mentioned OP, no plot survives contact with the players. It's best to come up with not so much a detailed and linear plot, as a developed sandbox with a goal, and then roll with what the players do, giving them nudges in the right direction. Remember the advice Bruce Lee gives in I can't remember which movie, "you must be as water."

Sun Stealer said:

Which is why the fact that the Orks won't go into the town is troubling. Orks don't usually back down from a fight. But something in the town is scaring them away.

macd21 said:

"Oie? Ovah 'dere? Nuttin Dere!"

Simple pyschic trick. Thinking about the town/outpost plops the though, in your own voice, into your mind saying "Nothing's there." Since it's your own mind, and your own voice, who are you to question yourself? Especially Orks.

"Nuttin' Dere!" So they move on.

That works, though I think the "somfing wrong wiv dem humies" aproach is creepier. The Orks know there's something there, but it gives them the creeps. It's not that they're scared of it, necessarily ("we ain't scared of nuffink!"), more that it fills them with unease and distaste. Going there is just not enjoyable, so they go to find a fight somewhere else.

macd21 said:

That works too. I see where you're going at.

How about, anyone who spends any amount of time there ends up pacifist for some reason. As in, there's an ork tooling around town, sans weapons, and while everyone hates him, nobody actually *does* anything about it. The ork himself has lost his taste for violence entirely.

A pacifist ork would scare the pee out of me.

"Eh wot... naw. This is...eh, a time-outs. We's on break. I gots some teef for that nice shoota ya gots there..."