This is a brief of the mission my group is currently running through or will be continuing on next week. Once I figure out how to get the formatting right I'll try to post the stats for the Mobs. I forget what the Robot makers were called for the Adeptus Mechanicus, i decided to go with Adeptus Roboticus to save some time looking them up. Only question i wasn't able to answer and decided to leavea lone until now is, just how tall is a Titan anyway? Not Important now, but may be later in the story. In any case I figured I'd share this as a potentially good way to introduce Necrons in a fairly creepy way.
SILAS, DO NOT READ!
Mission_06: The Robot Factory of Kalf
The characters are sent to investigate mysterious disappearances on Kalf. They travel via a specially chartered vessel, the “Argent Star” as guests of Captain Quillion DuValle. At Burneholde, the planetary capitol, they stay at the “Haven’s Gate” Inn courtesy of Captain-Governor Jonas Burne (Former Imperial Guard commander, retired). They find a Guide named Zog Mattac at the “Black Dog Tavern” to take them to town of “Wendell’s Landing”, which was apparently attacked sometime in the last few months and all of the inhabitants disappeared. They travel on Zog’s six-wheeled amphibious armored vehicle, the “Filthy *****”.
During initial investigation they find several of the buildings have burrow-holes underneath where they were apparently attack from underneath. They also find several walls with unusual-looking holes, like the material had been stripped away at the atomic level. In the town hall they find a lead-lined room that a lone survivor was holed up in. Naomi Howe, twelve years old, is the daughter of the town mayor, and was nearly hysterical when they find her. Eventually she calms down to tell them something about the “Machines” that came to “Take them away”. They also find a safe she eventually opens for them that reveals various town documents, deeds and maps. One of the maps shows an attached pict-recording of a set of ninety-foot high doors half-buried in a cliff-face and a notation of “Factory? Forge?”
When they get to the site to investigate they will find the doors are engraved with the Cog-Wheel Symbol of the Adeptus Mechanicus, but the Seal of the specific branch is indecipherable (IQ/Knowledge test at -20 to recognize the Seal as belonging to the long-banned and disbanded Adeptus Roboticus.). At the bottom of the vast door they will find a six-foot circular hole has been burned through the door in a similar fashion to the mysterious burns they found in town. Careful examination of the melting and rippling pattern on the outside will reveal that the hole had been burned through the two-foot thick steel of the door from the inside out (No rippling or melting on the inside of the hole). They will find an assortment of unusual footprints going in and out of the hole and into the depths of the factory proper.
Once inside they will find themselves standing in a vast and irregularly lit hallway lined with giant, empty service bays of some kind and silent as the grave. They can see several levels of cat-walks criss-crossing through the air above them, the walkways across the middle are apparently retractable. The floor itself is layered with an assortment of grease stains, oil stains, dirt and other detritus of the ages. As they walk various insectile and rodentia-equivalent vermin scatter away from their presence and their lights. If they noticed the footprints outside they will notice more fading off into the darkness. The rest of the main hall is relatively empty though as they reach the end of it they will here a ‘whir-click-click-click’ noise that repeats at intervals coming from a bay at the far end. When the reach the bay they will find a malfunctioning Servitor is attempting to ‘repair’ something in the bay. The servitor’s biological components have long since mostly rotted away, leaving a nasty slime in its wake. The noise is coming from its head as it keeps swinging to the left, then ratcheting back to its original position. When they look more carefully they see the thing it is working on is apparently part of a giant mechanical foot, what it belonged to is anyone’s guess. The servitor is unarmed and harmless and with some work by Dimzad can be taken over and controlled to act as a ‘guide’ though it’s vocal capabilities are severely limited (Yes and no, and an occasional rambling diatribe on the lack of upkeep.)
At the far end of the hall is another vast door, very firmly closed. They will have to scramble up a rusting ladder to a higher-level catwalk and a smaller door through the connecting wall. If they choose to go up the left-hand side they will note that the door there has been burned through much like the hole outside. The next room is pretty much a dead-ringer for the previous room and again empty. But as they move through the room they should become aware of other movement in the room, on the catwalks above them. When they finally notice the movement they will see several more of the Scarabs crawling along, pacing them. If they choose to attack the entire swarm will descend upon them and a fight will ensue. Otherwise they will settle for pacing them and observing. When they get to the far end they will find yet another set of vast doors, these partially opened, enough for ten people to walk in abreast. As they approach a swarm of eight servitors boil out of the darkness on the far side of the door and attack them.
When the fight stops they will be able to see the Servitors are pretty much in the same shape as the first one they ran into and were likely malfunctioning to begin with. Closer examination however will reveal that they have been tampered with; power sources had been modifier to run on ‘alternative biological elements’, i.e. - Blood. If they take too long to examine them the bodies will begin to hum then explode in a shower of sparks and green gas (1d5+5i, 6m radius; toxic). The next room runs perpendicular to the previous rooms and after some looking appears to curve away in both directions, leading them to suspect the room id a vast circle. As they advance in either direction they will quickly realize they are correct and that the inner wall (Facing the entrance.) is dotted with various doors leading inward. As they proceed they will notice the scarabs are continuing to follow them (A new swarm if they destroyed the old swarm.), but several of them will break off and run off in the opposite direction they choose to travel in. (Really doesn’t matter which way they choose to go, they will eventually encounter the Necron Warriors as they travel.
Circling all the way around the main ring will reveal very little and eventually they will choose to investigate the inner-wall doors. They will find themselves passing through a series of much smaller rooms (Only 20 feet high) that vary from machining rooms, to research rooms to offices, to sleeping quarters (rows of bunk beds) and the occasional mess-hall. Almost all of the rooms are unlit, the few they find that are lit are generally occupied (75%) either by more of the weirdly modified Servitors (75%) or Deranged Hereteks. Eventually they will penetrate to an inner core of rooms branching off of an inner circle. The rooms here are still generally unlit but the main hall itself is lit, though fitfully. Investigating the rooms in the core is where they begin to learn the purpose of the facility; it’s a long-abandoned Robot Factory. They will begin to come across active cognitors displaying various robotic components, some of which can be mistaken for Power Armor components (Intelligence at -30 to see the difference). Some of the designs ARE for power armor, but not armor for living beings though some seem to be the precursors of the Adeptus Astartes Dreadnoughts, the Penitence Engines of the Inquisition or the Walkers of the Imperial Guard.
As they proceed inward they will begin to encounter more Servitors, usually accompanied by Hereteks (2 Hereteks per 4 Servitors). Eventually they will break through into another much larger room, this one seemingly the center of the vast factory. The large, circular room is easily half a mile across and half that again soaring overhead and dropping below, making the room nearly spherical as far as they can see through the profusion of catwalks and plated section of flooring. As they continue to make their way inwards they begin to hear the sound of combat that gets louder as they get closed to it. Before they can reach it however a shadowy form stumbles out of the darkness, a man who has apparently had the bad end of a fight, looking like he has been torn up something fierce and is covered in blood and the bloody remains of clothing. He bears the patch of the Kalf Mining Consortium (KMC) on one sleeve. If Naomi is with them she will recognize him as Miles Fornier, the Foreman of the local KMC crew. If Garrick has Sense presence up he should quickly realize something is wrong when the man does NOT appear as a life-form (NOTE: Later on he may be able to tune into the unique Necrontyr Life-force Signature, but not now). As soon as they realize something is wrong the Necron Flayed One unleashes the blade-like claws it had hidden under its sleeves and attacks. It is quickly joined by 5 others.
Once they have dealt with the flayed ones they can proceed towards the battle they heard and come upon a large platform apparently dangling over empty space. On the platform they cans see a large number of Servitors, Hereteks fighting alongside what look like a very archaic model of Dreadnought. They are fighting off an onslaught of Necron Warriors, Scarabs and Flayed Ones that appear to be crawling over the far edge of the platform. In the midst of the Warbots, Hereteks and Servitors they can see another, much more impressive-looking Dreadnought body festooned with mechadendrites and apparently giving orders. With intelligent planning they can probably aid in the battle against the Necrons and eventually help shove them back over the edge where they apparently fall to their dooms. Any one looking over the edge will see the rough earth of the bottom of the spherical room and the top of a mostly-buried pyramid of familiar design that is crawling with more Necrons slowly grouping up into assault formations.
Once the initial charge has been pushed back they will be confronted by the Adeptus leader, Magos-Governor Tyrion Aasimov, the last surviving member of the Adeptus Roboticus. He will give them the terrible History of Adeptus Roboticus Forge 12-74-A and what lead to the current state. He regrets their part in destroying more of his forces, to the point of making it unviable to continue the defense of the Facility and his plan to set off the self-destruct and escape with whatever he can. He will ask them for aid in getting at the very least himself off the planet and as much data as they can transport. He will be very disappointed to know that they only have one small transport but as long as they agree to help he quickly begins the process of compacting and saving as much data as he can while he also sets up the self-destruct. The race for the exit will be a timed run and if they take too much time to get out they will likely be caught in the blast, even still there is a very good chance they will run straight into the arms of the Necron forces that have been Phased down to the surface from the Orbiting tomb-ship that brought them there. Luckily as they stare in awe at the oncoming hordes of Necrons their transport roars into view and lands nearly on top of them. Clarity had picked up the arrival of the Tomb-Ship and the subsequent destruction of their merchant ship transport as well as all of the other orbital defenses. She came to get them based on a vision form Sarah that said they would need the assistance. They can then flee to the interior of the planet and as far away form the Necrons as possible until the self-destruct completes and the Factory detonates in a ground and air-shaking explosion.
Background :
Thousands of years ago the Adeptus Roboticus had stumbled across a crashed Necron Tomb-ship buried in the depths of the mountain they were building their new Factory in and over the course of completing the construction of the facility they examined they vast Ship and eventually figured out how to awaken the Necrons, only to discover to their horror just what they had unleashed. Luckily they had not begun construction of the massive Auto-Titans they had been slated to begin building, though they had begun to turn out advanced Warbots, predecessors to the Imperial Dreadnoughts. When the Adeptus Magos-Governor of the facility realized what had happened he triggered an explosion that buried the entire facility under the mound of rubble and sealed off the inner core from the rest of the factory. The survivors managed to hide away until the Necrons returned to their stasis-tombs and eventually emerged from hiding, but the damage had been done. They were buried beyond recovery and began the long, slow spiral into darkness and depravity as they scraped by to survive, finding what food they could and in-breeding to maintain a population enough to pursue their research, but over time their knowledge atrophied and withered, leading to poorer and poorer maintenance and eventual degeneration of both the survivors and their servitors as well as the designs of the remaining Warbots.
With the recent awakening of the Necrons across the Galaxy the Necrons in the Tomb-ship began to re-awaken and begin to look for the exit from the factory-tomb that held them as much of prisoner as the Adeptus Roboticus. Since then they have run a raging battle across the Factory with the Warbots helping the Adeptus maintain an edge for some time but they are slowly losing the edge as Warbots are destroyed and the Necrons keep phasing out to their status tombs where they regenerate and return for more. Recently the Necrons located the exit door that had slowly been uncovered by the erosion of several thousand years and burned themselves an exit to the outside world where they began to encounter and kill any humans they ran across. Now they await the arrival of a rescue-ship to help them repair and unbury their tomb ship so they can join the assault on the Galaxy.
Wrap Up:
Eventually the Necron Tomb-ship will leave orbit, its objective lost, but not before spending several days bombarding every habitation they could locate on the surface, including Burnholde. Once the Necrons have left Dimzad and Magos Aasimov can sift through the wreckage of Burnholde to find enough parts to build a temporary transmitter and send a message to the nearest Imperial system Hive-world Vaxanide. In several weeks a small Imperial Battle-Fleet shows up to collect them, carrying Magos Aasimov and his Data off to parts unknown and returning them to Malfi some months after they left. Likely Dimzad and Magos Aasimov have by then had a chance to conspire and copy all of the data that Dimzad might get it to the Adeptus Mechanicus on Malfi for dissemination and study. It would be a shame to let all the great advances of Adeptus Roboticus Forge 12-74-A to go unknown.