Can it be done?

Here is the set up: The PCs, returning from Prol after the too-awesome events of Scrivener's Star , stop at a small way station. The Voidborn and Darkholders on the station have been there a very long time. The group's psyker has some bad dreams, and the few psykers on the station accost them on an open market-deck saying that "He is returning! He is coming back as he promised!"

Everyone is going around making the sign of the Aquila and touching door frames and rubbing ashes on their faces in anticipation of the Return of this explorer. Ships docked at the station are troubled, and try to finish their business before Who-Ever-It-Is gets home.

The sun is darkened in contrast to the tear in warp space as a Hulk precipitates back into normal space. It won't hit the station, but that doesn't stop everyone from freaking right the heck out any way. Amid this, would you as a player be inclined to get out, or explore the place?

Before you answer: Consider that my PCs will be 3rd rank when we get to this scenario.

Also, I'm thinking of an Ork boarding party, perhaps an old Imperial distress call or psychic call for help from within the hulk.

In addition, if anyone has ideas they'd like to share, I'd love to hear them. I just don't want it to be too similar to Shades on Twilight.

Ultimately, I think it will be discovered that the descendants of the original explorer are on board the Hulk, and would love to get "home" in some fashion.

Okay, here is an idea:

The Space Hulk was invaded by Ork raiding party several decades (or even centuries) ago. The Orks fought fiercely with the crew and the passengers but neither side got a decisive victory. The fighting damaged many of the access tunnels from one side of the hulk to other, destroying their life-support systems and thus exposing the damaged sectors to vacuum, zero gravity and warp. These sectors were locked and welded shut by both sides of the conflict untill the only ways leading from the human occupied side of the hulk to ork side were a few small crawlspace sized tunnels and a huge central airlock with two gates (one operated from ork side and one from human side) resulting the fighting dying down into a few recon patrols in the crawlspace and humans keeping their side of the airlock firmly locked.

Fast-forward several dozen (or hundred) years. Human side has developed their own culture and traditions and still firmly guard the huge airlock gate, refusing to open it because of the "Others" lurking on the other side ready to attack them. No fighting has occurred in years and crawlspaces leading to the "Other Side" still exists but are mostly forgotten and thought to be just a stuff of legends by most. The orks have done exact same, multiplying into huge numbers and still seeking some way to get through the locked gates to the legendary "Land of War" which their ancestors tried to conquer.

Enter Acolytes. Shake. Have fun

The idea sound good...but I would add small gretchins into the ducts, raiding to the other side, stealing stuff ...and ...well.. doing their gretchin thing.

To answer the question: I think the players will investigate if in their recent past their Inquisitor encouraged them to act without waiting for orders. If initiative was punished...they might end up "waiting for orders".

While ork raiders are fine, how something that forces the players (and the station!) to get things done? The stations sensor arrays could find out that for some reason the a hughe number of reactors inside the different ships that make up the hulk started overloading after the ship entered realspace near the station. If this reactors overload in union, the blast will seriously damage the spacestation...perhpas crippling it to the point where it will break appar. The stations security will form a boarding party, looking for volunteers. If the pc show that they work for the Inquisition, they will for sure be granted the roles of either leaders or advisors to the leaders.

The hulk itself is host to a multitude of daemons. They got fused into the matter of the hulk and want it to blow up, as being "bond" in realspace hinders them.This allows for all sort of mad encounters onboard...all while the pc have to either stop the reactors or activate some drives to get the dreaded thing away from the station!

Polaria said:

Heh, that's pretty bad-ass.

Want to mix things up a bit, stay within reasonable distance of established "space hulk cannon" and make for a creepy and memorable adventure? Try this on for size:

The space hulk does indeed have a small population of surviving human crew, possibly descendents of the original crew. It also contains what is left of an ork raiding party.... One of the surviving humans on board is an old retired Imperial Guardsman who took a "nice cushy security job on a civilian starship". He has fought orks in his old war days, but there is something strange about the critters onboard the hulk and they scare the piss out of him. The surviving humans are barricaded inside a secure section of the ship and have welded shut all access to the rest of the ship. Supplies are very low and things are desperate, when the hulk finally reverts to realspace. The survivors cobble together a semi-functional vox and call for help, but distortion due to lingering warp radiation and the jury-rigged nature of their coms mangle most of their message. A few cryptic passages are all that can be salvaged from the static, but it is enough to warrant investigation and possible rescue.

As to why I said "what is left of an ork raiding party": One of the passengers on the ill-fated ship was in fact a genestealer-hybrid traveling in disguise. As fate would have it, this hybrid was one of the first of the passengers to be trapped by the ork raiders and was promptly eaten by the greenskins. The ship's Captain is unaware of this event, but in a panic over the rickety ork ship targeting his vessel does an emergency warp-jump figuring that it is preferable to deal with the handful of orks that have already boarded his ship than to deal with an entire ship full of the green menace. A handful of usefull passengers and crew, in addition to several reasonably helpless ordinary folk manage to survive and barricade themselves, but the Navigator and Astropath are amongst the dead. They are now adrift in the Warp without a Navigator on a compromised ship! Fortunately, the Emperor heard their prayers and made the orks stop attacking for a while.

The pause in ork attacks is less divinely inspired than they immagine. Having consumed genestealer genetic material and being somewhat genetically morphic themselves, the orks began...changing. The tainted orks fight the "pure" orks in the sealed-off sections of the ship, the huddled human survivors unaware of this turn of events. A handfull of genestealer-ork hybrids (and genestealer-gretchin too!) eventually win out, and now the semi-psychic hybrid race is HUNGRY! The desire to feed builds up proto-psychic energy until the warp eventually vomits up the ship in a habitated star system. Thinking the orks to be dead or at least stranded on a section of the ship that is cut off from the human survivors, a distress call is made...

Enter acolytes.

Briliant Ideas!

Especially ZillaPrime's scennario.

I'll use my campain.

Thx.

I remember seeing in one of the rulebooks that genestealers affect other races differently. Only humans become more genestealers, orks have their reproductive spores pushed into overdrive, becoming the living artillery known as a Biovore. Of course, there could be many types of ork-genestealer hybrid, but firing enormous spore mines that seed the area with new 'nids is a nicely terrifying prospect.

My take from the past.

Mutants who have split into 3 factions
1)Redemptionists who are trying to blow up the hulk. As a twist they will help the acolytes as they view them as blessed by the Emperor. (Not that they won't blow up the hulk with the PCs on it.)
2)Mutants working for a mad tech priest who promises to cure them.
3)Mutants working for a bound daemon.

A handful of Necrons infected with a memetic virus which breaks their conditioned loyal to Necron leadership, and the C'tan. As well as restoring sentience to the Necron Warriors. The warriors don't wish to be cured, while the necron imortals retain their loyal to the C'Tan despite the attempts of the rest of the necron race to exterminate them. The imortals are on the hulk seeking a lost artifact in hopes of having something valuable enough for the rest of the necrons to risk curing them. While the warriors are trying to stop them as they might draw the attentions of the rest of the necrons.

A genestealer magus has formed a small cult with the purpose of exterminating a small group of Zoats who survived the purge by the hive mind. (The hive mind has no assets in this area of the galaxy.)
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Zoat

There was a whole thread on this on darkreign.

http://darkreign40k.com/forum/index.php?topic=1066.0

I recently had my party encounter a Hulk while travelling as passengers on board a merchant freighter. The captain called everyone together and said they were putting together a boarding party to see if anything there was worth salvaging, and offered the acolytes the same pay as the rest of the crew (i.e. double pay plus share of salvage) to join the expedition. They went for it.

In the situation you describe I'd be tempted to have the Hulk crash into the way-station. The collision tears a hole in the side of the station and its all hands to the pump trying to stop the whole station depressurising. Once the immediate threat is over with, the group determines that the life support on the way station has been damaged. It is irrepairable without spare parts, which are not available. Solution: go and cannibalise the Space Hulk.

The above scenario does kinda rely on (a) having a tech-priest or someone else sufficiently tech-y to know how to fix the problem, and (b) your group being willing to step up a bit and say "well, technically this isn't inquisition business but since we'll all die otherwise we'll get involved anyway".