Hey everyone! I am a new GM for Dark Heresy, and I'm soon to be running the Desolation of the Dead campaign found in the Game Master's Kit. The only question I have so far is that I'm having a difficult time imaging or putting together a layout for the Fayne House's Factorum Mortuarius.

Does anyone have any ideas about this? The structure is colossal, with at least an upper and lower level(maybe more), holding a Body Dock, Blood-Wash, Flensing Pits, and a large dome containing the Bone Grinders. The Overseer's Office is suspended above the Bone Grinder on one edge of the dome.

I believe the book describes the Bone Grinder/Overseer office in the lower level.

I just want to arrange in it a way that makes sense for the building. How do characters get from level to level(stairs, lifts etc..) and how do characters get to the suspended Overseer's Office?

I'm sorry if this is dumb, architecture is not my strong point. Any help or ideas would be awesome!

I haven't read the adventure but I think you're overthinking how space works in games. There are a bunch of locations of interest (which you listed) that the players will want to go to. Everything in between is unimportant. Until it becomes important (you've been ambushed in the hallway!), so gloss over it.

I haven't read the adventure but I think you're overthinking how space works in games

In my opinion, you cannot overthink a space in an adventure that will be the site of battle

[EDIT: correct some gramma]

!SPOILERS!!!!

@Mecimix

In have run the adventure (with a lot of modifications) and inserted intersections between each of the sections. Those intersections contained electronics, pipeworks...and narrow staircases that lead to the overseers gantry that run through all levels but the body dock.

In addition, I changed the direction of the battle: the cultists let the player characters in (mine do not use cover but openly show their true colours) ...they had let them passed and once they left a section, they broke out the weapons from the hidden caches and readed themselves for battle. This allowed me to describe the whole place once before havng a battle.

I toned down the blood wash as well: wading through hip high body fluids is RIDICOULUS. The office is place above the bone grinders, by the by. It is bolted to the wall of the room.

I agree with cps. The feeling of the place is much more important than an actual and correct floor plan.

I ran it with my group of (not very subtle) characters. They pretended to be "from accounting" and bluffed their way in. (In actuallity the guardians of the door were ordered to let them in. The cultists had readied an ambush)

I described the place as gigantic and tried to convey this all throughout the episode in the Factorum Mortuarius. All the while I never went too much into detail (unless the players asked). My goal with this was to make the structure seem so unfathomably (is that a word?) big that it defies all that the players are used to. (I try that with most big settings in DH).
Only when it came to the actual ambush I got more direct and after the first shots were fired, I described the immediate surroundings and the fight went big and bad.