I should start off by saying MAJOR SPOILERS for my players. If you are one of my players, please stop reading now as you'll invalidate about 6 months worth of gaming.

So we're currently in the middle of a long term game of Deathwatch, based in the Jericho Reach. The marines are closing on rank 4 and just about to escape the space hulk Mortis Thule (I'm running Ark of Lost Souls). Tyranids are the major enemy so far and will continue to be for a while and I plan to have the kill-team be instrumental to all but crippling the Tyranid fleet in the Jericho reach before going off to get wrapped up in The Dark Secret.

(Hey Phil this is the Dark Heresy forum, why are you talking about Deathwatch)

So assuming the current campaign doesn't die for some reason, it should go on for about a year I'd say. Then we'll probably play something else for a while. After that I was thinking of starting a Dark Heresy campaign based around a cell of acolytes who are trying to save as much as they can from the faltering Achilles Crusade and doomed Imperial worlds of the reach. The PCs will be brought to an arbites precinct fortress within the Iron Collar and told that the Tau and Chaos forces have leached so much resources from the crusade that Imperial Forces have been unable to hold back the Tyranid advance. Tyranid forces will soon be assaulting Imperial worlds that are being used to command the entire crusade. Lord General Militant Solomon Tetrarchus will not listen to reason, and steps must be made to salvage what the Imperium can from the subsector. They will be tasked with retrieving artifacts from doomed worlds, convincing independent forces to fall back and even sabotaging Imperial efforts to engage on war fronts that they cannot win on.

(OK, so what was all that about the Deathwatch)

The twist, of course, is that the Jericho Reach is not doomed. The Deathwatch will wipe out the majority of the Tyranid fleet and the Imperial forces of the Orpheus Salient will turn to engage in clean-up or redeployment operations. Meanwhile the PC's orders will stay the same. Sooner or later they will realize that something is not right and that they are not in fact receiving orders from the Inquisition and they will have the choice of either hunting down whoever has been giving them orders or joining them.

My current thinking is that the whole thing is an alpha legion plot, so when they come to the final confrontation they can call on their old characters for aid.

Of course a big part of the game will be the players realizing that they are in fact playing in a consistent world as opposed to the restart that it seemed at first.

So what do you guys think? Do you have any ideas for missions? Do you think that this will be fun for a 4-7 investigation game? How would you insert the investigative nature of Dark Heresy into this game?

Meta-plots are the best plots. Are there key locations or "Hubs" that you used in your Deathwatch campaign? NPCs that were favorites of your players? Enemies that particularly ground their gears? I would throw them all in together. Games are awesome when you have this persistent for PCs to live in, even if you are starting from a different angle.

It sounds like you are planning on offering them missions with set goals (i.e. recover this artifact, assassinate this governor) which is fine, but you may want to consider changing that angle. Perhaps the Acolytes are brought on without knowledge of the end goal to force a withdrawal. The Lord General Militant is probably an intelligent, calculating man. Though he knows what he wants, that doesn't mean he has to share it with the PCs. He could spin some tale about "mysterious forces at work" and "enemies infiltrating our forces" to direct them towards his own goals. If you make it seem like an insidious BBEG is at play, they will have to work to uncover who or what it is. In doing so, they may have to damage the Imperial war effort which is exactly what Tetrarchus wants. He would recognize that the PCs will eventually discover the ruse, and may set traps, ambushes, assassinations, and other trickery to eliminate them.

Figures from the first game was part of my plan. Obviously I can't really do this from the start or they'll give my game away. Currently all the major NPCs are either space marines, from 1 planet, or from Mortis Thule or. So this is limiting, but I have ideas in this regard.

Locations are a little more difficult, most of the well known ones being watch stations and the wastes of battle-worn hive world. However, I'll think on it more while making DW scenarios.

I think you misunderstood me a little. Lord General Militant Solomon Tetrarchus is the commander of the Achilles Crusade but he is not the one giving the orders. The orders will come from a shadowey figure that the players should at first assume is their Inquisitor, or from middle men. The final "mission" should be to hunt this guy down using connections they established earlier in play.

Figures from the first game was part of my plan. Obviously I can't really do this from the start or they'll give my game away. Currently all the major NPCs are either space marines, from 1 planet, or from Mortis Thule or. So this is limiting, but I have ideas in this regard.

Locations are a little more difficult, most of the well known ones being watch stations and the wastes of battle-worn hive world. However, I'll think on it more while making DW scenarios.

I think you misunderstood me a little. Lord General Militant Solomon Tetrarchus is the commander of the Achilles Crusade but he is not the one giving the orders. The orders will come from a shadowey figure that the players should at first assume is their Inquisitor, or from middle men. The final "mission" should be to hunt this guy down using connections they established earlier in play.

Ah, well regardless, many of the options I gave still stand. If you have access to it, the Only War written adventure Final Testament deals with the PCs unwittingly being used to sabotage the Imperium. There are a lot of good ideas in there on making it seem believable, and then dealing with the PCs once they figure things out. Tricking them into harming the Imperium would be a difficult thing to get PCs to do without realizing it, but awesome if you can pull it off.

Yes thanks for your input.

I'm not sure I have Final Testament in my PDF library, but I'll defiantly have a look. it might be worth buying... Any examples off the top of your head?

**SPOILER ALERT**

The PCs commanding officer is part of the Imperial Guard, but working for the Severan Dominate. He uses the PCs to sabotage the Imperial war effort, deceiving the PCs into thinking the loyalist troops they are fighting are actually just locals aligned the enemy, SD soldiers in stolen uniforms, or things like that.

For example, a Tech-Priest has been conducting an investigation of the front and found there may be some powerful archeotech in the area. The traitor Captain, knowing that this tech would severely harm the SD if found, assigns the PCs the objective of recovering this information from the Tech-Priest's research station. It isn't marked as Imperial (despite being behind their lines) so the Captain tells the PCs that the research station is currently held by agents of the Severan Dominate. They are to take the reports, sabotage his cogitators, and assassinate the Tech-Priest (so the attackers can't be identified).

Later on, the PCs are given the task of clearing out a line of defensive bunkers on the front. They are part of a defensive network to repel the SD, but the Captain informs them that the guardsmen stationed there have been killed, and Severan Dominate soldiers are masquerading in the dead guardsmen's uniforms. They are led to believe that they are retaking these bunkers, but in reality, they are punching a hole for the Dominate to attack into.

So things like that. Although obviously written for Only War, it would be a great series of examples for your campaign as it has very similar themes.

Not that it bothers me as I am not going to play the adventure but you might want to put a spoiler alert on that to warn others.

You're right, I would hate for it to be ruined as it is such as good concept!

Thanks for that. Non-military version of just that, is what I'd be going for.