The players having saved a town in the hive from a heretek making stealth assassin servitors from the population and using those that don't meet the qualifications into food for the remaining population, now have to deal with the population that is about to starve. The local factorum shut down 6 months ago and most everyone is out of a job and unbeknownst to the people food shipments stopped then too. The players are attempting to find a new source of food for the town so it doesn't starve.

I'm trying to think of a way for them to do this with of course the possibility of failure. Mostly what has come to mind is the "doing a favor for favor for a favor" gambit. Any ideas for this? I'm actually thinking of using one of the favors to push them into a gray area. "If you take this cargo of slightly illegal stuff (I'm thinking off world animals) to this point, I will give you the 10000 gallons of promethium you need". Ideas? Comments?

Unless it furthers an investigation, acolytes really shouldn't be bothered with something so trivial as feeding a hive. Leave that to the local authorities (the nobility, or the governor, or whoever), or if they're feeling especially charitable, maybe fire off a message to the subsector headquarters of the Administratum. If they're super generous, and they somehow had the resources, they could try negotiating with a chartist captain, appealing to his self-interest to get him to bring in foodstuffs (after all, food sells for a lot more to starving folks).

I'm not making them do it, this is their idea. I actually felt it was fairly fitting with DH/the inquisition that they stop the heretek and then later thousands of people just starve in unimportant forgotten part of the hive. I could railroad them into the next adventure but I like that they are seeing how things are done in the hive. There is probably plenty of food to go around its just the corruption of the hive stopping it from getting it to the people that need it. The idea I have is to make the characters feel like they need a shower after dealing with the everyday details of the place. There is a famous picture of a 1920s-1930s fat smiling Chinese rice merchant standing next to a starving crying child, and that is the feeling I want to evoke.

(after all, food sells for a lot more to starving folks).

When you've lost your job for 6 months, you do not have the money required to pay high priced meals.

There is the influence stats, that could cover this very easily, with a few roleplay scenes, in my opinion. No need to go in depth with this.

Nobody in the party has that kind of influence to keep that many people from starving for long. If they fail they fail and if they succeed they get nothing out of it and possibly more problems (in true DH fashion). This is about players investing in the personality of the characters. And an opportunity for good role playing.

Maybe they could try to divert some resources from the well off (either from the fancy part of the Hive or from a local supply route)? Then they can run the risk of losing influence with the nobility if they get caught.

Nobody in the party has that kind of influence to keep that many people from starving for long. If they fail they fail and if they succeed they get nothing out of it and possibly more problems (in true DH fashion). This is about players investing in the personality of the characters. And an opportunity for good role playing.

It's an interpretation of yours. If an Inquisitor, that has a turbo gigantic influence, and this is considered to be 70, then player characters that have either half or more of this influence, are able to nourish a few thousands people.

You ask how to do this, if it's not by using their ressources, then they could hire troops and steal the food from someone else or take many years, developp a food industry, and give it to these poor people. Otherwise, it's ressources investment.

Corpse Starch (Soylens Viridian) is is an excellent means to prevent starvation!

Keep in mind, though, that they are Acolytes in Askellon. They probably don't have very much authority, if at all, and not a whole lot of resources on their own. Unless their Inquisitor gives them more power (which is probably pretty rare) they don't have a lot of pull or cash to work with.

Their influence states pretty much the opposite.

So it's a question of interpretation. You can play it both ways.

I think it's a good idea. If the acolytes want to be nice and moral, let them.

They have several options.

1. Do a favour for someone. This is an excellent way to set up trouble for them later on. You do a favour, save the day, and get food to the starving, but it should either (a) provide some nefarious organisation with what they want - you can have them find out later that the impounded cargo was related to the faceless trade - or (b) annoy someone important (hive nobility?) which can come back and bite them later on
2. Use their influence. They do have the influence to acquire food for the townstead in the short term, and they'll need to in order to buy time to set up a permanent solution. But passing influence checks on that scale will involve burning influence. How much are they prepared to burn?
3. Get 'one over' on someone. Any major trade combine in the hive will have some sort of dirty secret (even if it's just petty corruption), and they are agents of the inquisition. It's possible they can intimidate/trick someone into helping - and at the same time, start creating themselves a suborned power base within the hive's commercial/industrial structure (useful for creating cover stories and so on later).
4. Call out the big guns. However bad their own influence is, theoretically they have access to Influence 70+. That's their Inquisitor's influence score, and they are allowed to use it. IF they think it's justified - and more importantly, they thing he'll think it's justified (hence couching it in terms of '3' above rather than just 'trying to feed the hungry' might work better).

Here some ideas from my side:

* They can use their influence to convince a rouqe trader to ship food until the situation gets better.

* Local tech priests maybe some genetics are funded to design and create farms. This can also be a challenge for the relationship between humanity and mars.

* They can take the reserves from the nobles. Everyone knows that the nobility has big reserves. This step can introduce new enemies to the group but the masses will like it

If the influence of the group is not good enough but it is very important for them they can ask for a favor which needs to be repayed in the future.

I like the idea of acolytes willing to help even if it doesn’t really fit the setting. Caring for others? In Wh40k? Surely you jest?

First you need to determine where the required food is. It can be off-world which means getting it from a business cartel, not a Rogue Trader as those people have limited involvement in settled regions.

If there is sufficient food in the hive, just not being allocated to the people the acolytes want to save, they will have to deal get the food supply reconnected without raising suspicion.

Off-world business cartel:

They are businessmen and thus likely willing to make a deal and the overall quantity is probably quite low for them. But what can the acolytes offer in return? Protection from overzealous authorities? Help with smuggling? Playing courier for dangerous contraband under the protection of the Inquisition? Note that a powerful sector-wide business cartel will likely have a lot of influence. They won’t be afraid for a few acolytes. They likely ‘own’ governors, nobles and admirals who need their products and enjoy their kickbacks. Your players will have to come up with something that appeals to a business conglomerate or to its CEO….maybe something that appeals to his personal vices?

Local:

This depends somewhat on your view of how society works. IMO, it is a feudal pyramid. Outcasts> serfs> nobles>adeptus.

The people your players want to save are serfs and relied upon their master (maybe a nobleman factory owner, maybe a businessman or corporation) for sustenance. And then the factorum closed. Why? Did the owner lose interest? Lose out in a local trade war?

The answer to that provides the solution.

If the owner lost interest, the players can appeal to a competitor. Spruce up the factorum, make a few samples and try to get the competitor to restart the factorum and take on the disenfranchised serfs.

If a competitor forced the shutdown of the factorum, the players should sabotage the competitor. Blow up his factorums…hijack his shipments, drive him out of business or weaken him. Then the owner can restart his factorum again now that his rival is out.

But if the acolytes, after doing their duty, just left the world it would give an opportunity for a new campaign later.

Khorne cannibalism cult.

or

Tau ambassadors bring food to feed the starving masses who the big bad Imperium have forsaken.

@Ranoncles LOL the funny thing is that the players are sort of responsible for the situation in the first place. The players saved Novabella a food planet that makes rations. The Tantalus corporation shut down the Desoleum ration factorum due to increased competition from Novabella. Because if you can't guilt your players who can you guilt. Everything the players do should have some sort of fallout, I think.

Ooh, having some Tau offer food would be amusing.

@Ranoncles LOL the funny thing is that the players are sort of responsible for the situation in the first place. The players saved Novabella a food planet that makes rations. The Tantalus corporation shut down the Desoleum ration factorum due to increased competition from Novabella. Because if you can't guilt your players who can you guilt. Everything the players do should have some sort of fallout, I think.

I was actually going to suggest using it as a lead-in to the Novabella mission. Just goes to show!

Sell them.

Work force is always needed somewhere!

Maybe a forge wirld needs laborers, or a mining colony ecc. Contact them and offer to bring the starving inhabitants in exchenge for food and accomodation, make a deal with a chartist captain for transportation and you have solved the problem gaining new potential allies on both sides!

Ofc player eventually will realize they have sold an entire population into brutal slavery.

@Magnus,LOL, I'm trying not to do an straight investigation every time, or at least the same type of investigation. So I'm spacing out the FF adventures with my own or revamped ones so they don't feel railroaded. Thinking about revamping The Temple of Elemental Evil for DH or White Plume Mountain.

@Nirgal I like your thinking, The probably best all around solution is for the players to send the people to Novabella. A trained workforce to a planet that needs people. Now if the players can only figure that out.

A big theme in 40k is the futility of Man's efforts. The Inquisition is constantly on guard, but is ultimately fighting a losing battle. Quash one heresy and three more crop up. Solve the food production problem on one planet and another starves. The best an agent of the Imperium can hope for is to make things a little less bad for just one more day.

Your players sound like idealists trying to do good. There's no better game for taking that attitude and grinding it down to cold pragmatism than DH. So let your players find a way to solve world hunger here, but in doing so create unforeseen problems that one could argue are worse than the problem they solved.

Maybe it's a deal with a Rogue Trader to set up a supply line, maybe a deal with one of the less-horrible xenos races, or maybe there's a popular uprising that leaves fewer mouths to feed, but the end result is that something they didn't intend leaves mankind worse off than before.

@CPS I was already thinking this, the most obvious effect would be that be that Desoleums rations business get hit even harder than before due to the import of a skilled workforce on to a planet lacking in people. But that sort of feels like a been there done that with this adventure. I'll think on it.

@Magnus,LOL, I'm trying not to do an straight investigation every time, or at least the same type of investigation. So I'm spacing out the FF adventures with my own or revamped ones so they don't feel railroaded. Thinking about revamping The Temple of Elemental Evil for DH or White Plume Mountain.

@Nirgal I like your thinking, The probably best all around solution is for the players to send the people to Novabella. A trained workforce to a planet that needs people. Now if the players can only figure that out.

To live in the imperium of man means to serve, everyone is a slave in the empire (only exceptions maybe the lords of terra), but there's difference between a slave in egypt and a slave in china!

they could be called by those interested to provide work force, arrange everything and in a couple of years they could be haunted by the decision finding out that living conditions under the new master are terrible! Then they will have a serious moral issue and probably they will realize they can't do anything to solve this new situation!

First of all - there should be riots. Always in the history of mankind starvation and unrest were inseparable.

And I can think of one solution session to this problem.

Acolytes may find out that there's a gang selling food to upper hive for high prices. When they investigate, it occurs that food comes from illegal manufactories deep within the underhive (or somewhere else in the hive, your discretion). You can think of a chain of clues leading there and how they can go in there. When in place they find out that the mastermind of this whole operation is their former enemy - the villain's helper from one of the previous sessions (if there isn't any guy like that let him be some kind of a ganglord).

Here is couple of ideas what they can find in the manufactory:

- food is processed out of humans hunted in the underhive. Many of them bear the taint of mutation, so there's a risk that it can spread all over the hive.

- food is processed out of xenofauna and -flora found in the underhive or out in the wilds. Actually it's quite healthy, but it doesn't have the Badge of Allowance from the Adeptus Administratum, so it can't really be produced legally. Surprisingly Adeptus A. don't really want to grant it, because it's high officials benefit on high prices on a black market.

- there is a space hulk orbiting the planet for centuries. Long time ago it was supposed to bring food to the hive world, but it was suspected of plague (casual, non-chaotic one) and purified. The manufactory is actually a cosmodrome, from which ships are launched to the hulk to retrieve ancient food and bring it to the hive. It is quite dangerous though, because ship is guarded by group of crazed servitors that went bonkers when their human halves where purified.

Do whatever you want with it, have fun

(after all, food sells for a lot more to starving folks).

When you've lost your job for 6 months, you do not have the money required to pay high priced meals.

There is the influence stats, that could cover this very easily, with a few roleplay scenes, in my opinion. No need to go in depth with this.

That's what transactions in kind are for.

If they set up a trade routes, the ships never come or go to the wrong planet. If the starving masses are relocated, they are forced into servitude. Manage to get a bunch of food to them? Gangs and warlords horde it all, doling it out as they see fit.

Whatever happens, it shouldn't end well. 40k isn't about happy endings, and the Inquisition isn't about delivering aid.