Hello everyone. I’m new to the forums and new to Rogue Trader and am looking for a bit of adventure advice. Some of my favourite episodes of Star Trek are the Rip van Winkle stories where people from the distant past come out of a long sleep (Space Seed & The Neutral Zone). I would really like to bring that theme to my RT game.

My idea so far is to have the RT and her crew come across an ancient assault pod ejected from the warp. On retrieval they find that miraculously three of the ten marines on board are still alive but in a deep sleep. When the marines are revived they speak only an archaic version of high gothic and believe that the Great Crusade is still on. They were sucked into the immaterium by a freak warp storm during a planetary assault. I am sure you can now guess where the story goes from here.

Of course the marines are from one of the traitor legions. The trick is that they are from the period when the taint of chaos was just beginning to spread. One of the surviving marines has fallen to chaos but has yet to manifest outward signs of his corruption. Of the other two one is deathly loyal to the Emperor and the other could be swayed to Chaos unless the crew convinces him of the justice of the Imperium. From here the plot moves to signs of chaos showing up on the ship, the crew doing some detective work with everything culminating in a “big reveal” moment followed by a show down with the tainted marine.

Now comes the part where I need some advice. I am really torn on which traitor legion to pick. Right now I am leaning towards either the World Eaters or Death Guard. Each has their own appeal.

With the Khorne marine the final battle becomes one of having to take down a blood crazed marine decimating the ratings. Possibly along with a few cultists he convinced that chopping everyone else to bits was a good idea. This has all the makings of a good blaze of glory encounter resulting in massive damage to the ship and crew. Queue massive Hollywood style explosions.

The Death Guard is also really interesting to me. Nurgle is my favourite of the Ruinous Powers . A chaos god that acts like some sort of weird jolly old Santa handing out plagues and filth to his oddly contented followers, it is bizarre enough that it works for me. The Death Guard marine scenario would have much more sleuthing. The marine slowly spreads a plague among the lower decks and recruits followers while trying to disguise the signs of his own disease. Lots of opportunities to build tension as things begin to fall apart.

So what do you guys think should I go with the slasher or the survival horror option or perhaps something else?

The Emperor's Children would make him potentially very charismatic; this might allow him to persuade elements of the crew, who might otherwise be too awestruck by the fact that he is a living Space Marine, into doing some of those aforementioned "signs of Chaos" actions. I can see the appeal of the other two, but even pre-Heresy World Eaters were...maybe...a little crazy,with the Nails, and all, and the Death Guard? I don't have a real negative to flag, but I still might suggest the EC. If you DO pick one of the above two, I'd go with the Death Guard, as they are good at "spreading the taint" of Chaos, and affecting the crew, in a more long-term way, where I, small-mindedly, only see the World Eaters as over crazy, bloodthirsty, and not so persuasive, subtle, or other such things. Best of luck.

For maximum twistyness, you want Alpha Legion. Nobody's ever sure what they're up to. Nobody. Except Alpharius. And they all say they're Alpharius.

An interesting take might be Luna Wolves.

Also, it is probably worth deciding what take you're going with the origins of the Horus Heresy. That will play into their approach. After all, if you buy approach the Horus Heresy novels use, the first Primarch to go to Chaos wasn't Horus - he got set up and corrupted by Lorgar and Fulgrim.

There's the one Horus Heresy novel where it's a couple of Space Wolves, World Eaters, and Thousand Sons, and maybe a couple others, and none of them know that the Heresy has kicked off - none of the guys from "Traitor" Legions are in the know about the Traitors in their Legions, they're Loyalists, but they're chasing a Word Bearer ship on its way to surprise Exterminatus the Ultramarines at home. Might be worth a look.

World Eaters are nuts, and were nuts before they went Chaos. Ish, depends on who's writing and just how bad off the individual World Eater is/was.

More realistically, you want to make sure that whatever Legion they're from is one that underwent a name change before the Heresy. And say they're from the pre-change Legion. That way, unless somebody's rolling around with something like Forbidden Lore (Horus Heresy) or (Astartes Legions) or (Chaos Legions), etc, the characters are unlikely to identify them. Possibly just initially

Fortunately in my group I am the only one versed in 40k lore. No need to worry about about spoiling the twist by giving away the Legion Name. I am looking forward to the moment the marines find out the Emperor is now bound to the Golden Throne without the party being able to explain why.

I hadn't thought through the whole 'Nails' factor with the World Eaters. While it could make for some amusing role play opportunities it would probably result in all three marines being unceremoniously spaced once the party decided "these guys are jerks". It looks like I will be dicing to see if it will be the Death Guard or Emperor's Children. In my Dark Heresy games I never ran anything where Slaanesh was prevalent so it could work out well. Come to think of it, in keeping with the Space Seed theme, the character of Khan works quite well as a member of the Emperor's Children.

I'm not just talking about the players knowing (they might or might not). I'm talking about the characters knowing. As Rogue Traders/his retinue, they'd have some basic knowledge about who the enemies of humanity are - including and especially the Traitor Legions - if only to know that dealing with them is Not Approved Of, and can get your entire Dynasty destroyed .

Also, you should decide what kind of Marines they are in terms of what they're trained for. Remember, back during the Great Crusade, the AdMech actually worked and the "Religion" did not outweigh the "Science" - and they actually had a thorough understanding of technology and the theory behind its function, not the common "machine spirits did it". They also didn't have anywhere near as tight a monopoly on technology, and the advancement of knowledge by means other than digging through records was common. A Tech-marine/equivalent from back then could be massively helpful in dealing with technology, especially archeotech, and even to an extent xenos technology.

Also worth deciding is whether these Marines were part of their Legion before their Primarch was found - all of the Original Marines were recruited from Terra itself. Many will have seen the Emperor in person (probably at a distance, though), some, especially if they're of higher/specialist rank, will have encountered/known some of the big names from back then from outside their Legion.