Ideas wanted for a Rogue Traders tomb. My players may try to steal something out of a tomb on a world that the Rogue trader founded. This might lead to a dungeon crawl or such. If you were a rich trader how would you build your tomb in 40k? Security, treasure, trap ideas wanted too.

Thousand eyeless, canibal Ghilian-cultists worshiping and maintining the most over the top golden Rogue Trader crusier-turned-tomb. Commanded by Rite of Setesh-ised (and thus, driven insane) lesser progeny of the Rogue Trader in question, allowing the acces only to the gene-print of true Heir.

Run House of Dust and Ash. That is a Rogue Trader's Tomb. If you don't want it to be an island then transplant the house to somewhere else and have it explode a different way.

What is House of Dust and Ash in?

Dark Heresy 1st Edition Disciples of the Dark Gods, it's the adventure in the back. Even if you don't run it the book itself is one of the better splat books out there and there isn't a lot you can't transfer over to Askellon.

It also has fanatical worshippers of insane Rogue Trader. Also some imprisoned aliens called Children of the Kingdom. And sadistic choice-trap.

The problem is that this is on a populated hive world, and the story is that on the 5000th anniversary of the traders death he is being brought out for the celebration.

You can just take the single house/tomb. Even Hive Worlds have single manses for important enough people. If you wanted to keep the entire island you can have it be a hover island or something.

A touch off topic, but hopefully helpful;

I actually had a lot of success designing DH levels by just throwing the classical DnD style dungeon crawls out the window.

Instead I focused on the way that video games like Tomb Raider and The Last of Us build levels and thus focused more on creating situations in which the Acolytes are challenged to move around the space, as well as building set pieces.

An example:

My Acolytes were chasing a Heretic named Dusk who was a hunter of Chaos relics, they followed him into an abandoned section of hive when he was in search of an ancient book of Daemonology. The book was previously held by a radical inquisitor who was hunted down by a rival puritan inquisitor. Their fight collapsed a large section of the Desoleum underhive and weakened the veil in the area.

I ruled that the particular warp phenomenon in this area meant that whenever anyone died it would rip a small hole through the veil and minor daemons would continuously pop out until a psyker was able to close the rift.

The party entered the area through a massive broken pipe and came out on a set of scaffolding about fifteen meters above the ground, there was a small (broken) lift in front of them as well as a broken area of scaffolding where they could reach the ground through some climb checks.

Waiting on the ground was a group of Dusk's goons who laid down some suppressing fire. The party thought this was all well and good since they had the high ground, the party Sniper immediately took a shot and killed the cultist heavy gunner.

A warp rift opened and started spitting out Daemons, the party then had a race against time to get their Psyker to the ground to close the rift before the Daemons killed more cultists to open more rifts.

The simple challenge of making the Acolytes need to solve a movement puzzle during combat is an extremely effective dungeon tool for DH.

Some nice ideas Oridealin! I also like, to create more complex enviroments, rather than just classical combo of mooks and traps. There are few things that cant be improved with dense poisonous fog, for example

Another idea, how about making the tomb mobile, like massive mausoleum on the back of Titan or Ambulon-style walker? Endlessly wandering the wastes of some peculiar death-world? And make the whole mission styled as Shadow of the Collosus wandering. Survival and Navigation are, in my experience, badly underused skills.

EDIT: and make it hidden with stolen/heretek Shadowfields, to prevent simple scan and lift by guncutter.

EDIT2: and add dense poisonous or hallucinogenic fog on the whole surface.

EDIT3: and cannibal cultists and techno-mummified lunatic-children

If you were a rich trader how would you build your tomb in 40k? Security, treasure, trap ideas wanted too.

On a monumental scale. a Mausoleum Hive-Spire nearly a kilometre in height, on the outskirts of the hive (at least it was when it was built - it's now part of the hive structure proper), built around a main vaulted hall you could walk a scout titan down, with walls covered in rare treasures, artworks and inscriptions of all the great things he's achieved.

Legacies sponsor ministorum chantries to pray for his soul (and provide absolution for any questionable things done during life) in side-chapels off the main hall, alongside barracks for the conventional guards and quarters for servants who maintain and clean the place. As a result it's essentially become one of the hive's major cathedrals over the last few millennia.

Below the 'public' areas are the crypt itself. The priests and house servants control access - some are codes, some are physical keys and some are gene-locked, each leading to various vaults - treasures both legal and illegal, held in secure stasis-vaults armoured from intrusion and protected by servitors and automated guns. 'Simple' gold, but also treasures from his journeys - trophies from alien worlds such as big game skeletons (including the skulls of megafauna the size of imperial knights), rooms of alien weapons, battle standards of other houses, armies and worlds conquered.

Also down here are libraries of jounals, navigational charts and similar secrets that are still used to this day by descendants of the dynasty.

The deeper ones are held within a crackling archaeotech Gellar field, preventing daemonic and psychic incursion or teleportation, as well as adamantium and ceramite doors that wouldn't be out of place on a planetary command bunker.

Some of the stasis vaults contain rare and lethal predators - this time stored alive and trained to protect the inner tomb from unwanted guests.

The innermost chamber is armoured, shielded and defended beyond any level of sanity. Three incredibly rare mechanicus battle-automata are guarding the last door, answerable only to a genetic heir. Inside are two stasis chambers. A large one, containing the Rogue Trader's gilded coffin, and a small one, containing a casket for his Warrant Of Trade.

......Both are, of course, empty....and always have been.

......Both are, of course, empty....and always have been.

I hear aural humming of Sarcosan Wave Generator in the backround

Great ideas, I will definitely use them. I think Magnus Grendel has the right feel for this adventure. I was thinking of using Egyptian tomb style crossed with Imperial design.

[this text is not spell-checked, so bear with my English]

[The Garden]
Around the tomb, there will be a garden of imported and/or biological altered trees. They all will look dead, blackened, gnarled and winding, but will still sport white-blueish flowery bloom in their branches. The bloom falls early and easy, without fading, and so the grounds are covered in white, dead flowers. Wind chimes are hanging from the trees, but the whole places is shielded against the wind, so they will never make a sound (this is meant as a symbol for death). Servitors in black robes, wearing porcelain masks tend the gardens while cherubim fly about, each of them wearing a grey veil, flying by while crying and moaning. Some of the servitors and cherubim are guardian units instead, armed with needle weapons. Those strike out silently against any intruder not wearing a matching “ward accessor”. The servitors and cherubim are housed in little crypts of their own, Technomants come to see after them at intervals. In the center of the garden is

[The Monument]
A gigantic monument representing the dead rogue trader, in all its glory, looking up to the sky, as large a multi-story building. Entering through doors at the “socket” of the monument, one gets into an ossarium where servants of the RT (or his lineage) are kept (just their skulls or perhaps the bones) as part of the funeral.

Staircases lead up all the way to the head, which is a hollow dome where the RT rests in a crystal sarcophagus. They way up leads to a literal labyrinth of chambers, not ordered into stories but just isolated rooms, with stairs going up, leading down again, going up again… some lead to show pieces and rememberances of grand deeds of the RT, the place being a museum of his life. The upper level are just for the RT dynasty and his close friends. Treating their without a matching ward accessor means that all the death traps aren´t disarmed. The place is even more labyrinth-like and only hidden passages lead up to the dome with the crystal sarcophagus.

the party Sniper immediately took a shot and killed the cultist heavy gunner.

As the party Sniper in question I loved that fight, and as an extension the whole dungeon.