I'm starting up a group in the new year and been thinking about what to do scenario wise except for the ones made by FFG and after watching Virus the other day an idea came to life.

What I'm thinking is this: The acolytes gets send to a forge of some sort because it have not been heard from in a long time, there are no telepathic, radio or other forms of communication and the messenger sent there have not been heard from. When they arrive they discover the workers and techpriests there have been slaughtered and come under attack by aggressive servoskulls, servitors and all other forms of mechanial creations, even the forge itself seems to be out to kill them and in the middle of all this is a crazed tech magos who believe that creatues of flesh, blood and bone will be the doom of the universe and hence wants machines to replace them...that's the general, quick idea of it.

Now theres nothing original in this as it's been done before in all sorts of media, but I kinda like it and I have this macabre picture in my mind of a long dead, rotting body of a techpriest being dragged along by it's own mechandrites.

Now my question is: what do all you GMs (or players) out there think of this idea? is it workable? fluffy? would it make for a different, exciting adventure?
Give me all your thoughts and ideas about this.

Fluffy? Heck, there's already an "enemy" in Creatures Anathema that can take control of bionics from their users and will continue to use them after the fleshy remains expire. What you describe sounds dark and twisted and a great chance to show how a devotion to "the flesh is weak" dogma of the Mechanicus can take you to very scary places.

Perfect.

It will surly not be "something different", but I think it will be a good adventure. Think about a way to hide the true nature of thing from the pc as long as possbile. As they approach and enter, make it look like there was a big fight and now everyone is missing...and make sure you make the place as mess

To a "Red Herring", brief the pc about recent activities of some other danger-to-mankind in this area (Traitors; Mutants; Ennoulians; Eldar; what ever you like as long it is not "demons"). Make the pc first run onto a group of these a while after they entered. Let them have a pitched fight. Later, they might find out that this group was already wounded/harmed... and perhaps didn´t try t storm them, but just where running away from something and out of the forge!

Cryxx said:

That movie is really underrated. It's good to know that there are people still watching it.

As for an enemy similar to the one in Virus, look up something called "The Schismatical" in Creatures Anathema, and you'll be set.

Just out of curiosity, Cryxx, does your group contain a Tech-Priest?

-If so, awesome, great RPing opportunities for the player. No immediate thoughts.

-If not, you could include one. Since they're going to a forge world, it would make sense for them to have a Tech-Priest assigned to escort/supervise/annoy them. Once on planet, his implants could fall prey to the same (virus, I'm assuming) that caused the on-planet tech to go beserk.

Actually the group have nothing at the moment as we won't start up before the new year but I'm counting on the group having a techpriest though.
Not sure wheter it should be a virus or what exactly, the "main villain" will be a techpriest so ancient that he is incoporated into the base itself, so he's not mobile though, still have to figure out the exact details of the scenario.

Instead of staging this on a forgeworld, I would set this story in an isolated research station. If an entire forgeworld is corrupted then Exterminatus is in order, and if it is not fully corrupted then the acolytes will have a rediculous amount of backup available one vox-demand away: "We are Inquisition and here to save your forge, send all Skitarii to my beacon NOW!". If the entire forgeworld is at risk, it is even possible to see any Legio Titanicus forces on the world to deploy. Definately NOT a scale I intend to use casually in my DH game.

Set things up on a nice isolated orbital facility, a lonely research station built in a very dangerous location or perhaps even a derelect Mechanicus Explorator ship. Conjure up lots of dark and creepy visual and aural descriptions for things. Insert your viral plot, add acolytes, shake vigorously. Serves 10, or 4-6 gamers.

The dead Magos crawling around on his possessed augmetics sounds great! Don't forget to throw in plenty of infected servitors (both combat and more mundane builds). Posessed factory equipment is also a must! Picture a factory full of plasma-cutters, welding arrays, industrial shears, power-riveters and so on running wild... Now stage an encounter in there. Besides all the obvious perks of having a Techpriest acolyte on the team, as a GM you get the added entertainment of watching him get more and more offended at all the blasphemy and indignity heaped upon sacred tools of the Omnisiah. By the time the "big baddie" is revealed your cold logical Techpriest should be frothing like a feral worlder to tear the villain apart with his bare augmetics! JOY!

As far as I got Cryxx, he isn´t planing this to happen on a forgeworld, but simply in a "forge" not heared of for a while . If I am mistaken, Zilla is quiet right with his suggestion; although I would wonder if the seclusian and sectarian Tech-Priest would jump THAT fast as soon as the minions of an Inquisitor waves hand . But the end result would be the same: to much backup!

Talking "What it is":
As already mentioned, you should go for the "Creatures Anathema" if you haven´t bought it yet but have the money left. It is full of nice little techno-based fiends ready to take over a forge: the Schismatical has already been mentioned often. You can of course just rule it is a "mundane" Tech-Priest whom has gone made. Other option include him meddling with the warp to power his machinery (CA offer an example in this trade with the Bronzen Malifect).

Talking "What the adventure will be about":
Whatever the "hook" is, the pc will first travell to the location (must not be periouls; but if you are into it you got finde some reason for some checks on driving or piloting or anything else).

Once arrived, the pc need a way inside. If the doors aren´t open they have the following options:

• climbing up to the ceiling to force the hatch of an airduct open (climbing & strenght)
• manipulating the electro-seals of the gate (Tech-Use) or any locks to if found (Security)
• overcoming a lock/door with firepower (might weapon needed Deplete Ammo; "fools choice")
• brute-forcing a door with a really sturdy weapon/tool (lowers stamina and the noise will make some-one come for them)
• have a look about for an easy entrance end/or an entrance some other intruder might have left (Search)

Inside, it comes down to "room-to-room investigation"...with the machinery attacking them. If the Magos is still in the "central" of the forge, it will be a very simple and clear cut adventure.... a little trick might be added if the magos had "sealed" himself somehow and the pc need either some proper tools or some passkey...which might be with some dead worker/tech-priest or some Servitor/Helot ... which might already be part of the enemy forces... either as "whole" or as "part of something else".

Remember that although the Inquisitor has the authority to call ridiculous amounts of backup the Acolytes necessarily don't.

Sometimes (I'm inclined to believe that most of the times) the Inquisitor actually prefers working behind the scenes and not alerting the whole sector about his whereabouts. S/he could easily instruct his/her acolytes that no backup should be called unless absolutely necessary. Besides, do your Acolytes regularly carry Inquisitorial Rosette? If not, then why would Adeptus Mechanicus damage or destroy one of their forges with massive firepower just because "joe-whatshisname-who-claims-to-work-for-inquisitor" calls? Especially if all their own systems show that the Forge is simply off-line...

If your Acolytes have the Inquisitors Rosette at their backpocket and you assume that they can command anyone at any time, the you will have the "too-much-backup" problem always there. I mean whats to prevent them from marching into Hive worlds governor and demanding a half-a-dozen power armors and a couple of divisions of PDF?

@ Cryxx

Did you already made up your mind about just what this forge is producing? I have a picture of "heavy industry", but the exact nature will define a lot about what might/might not be there.

If it is "far far away" and it did not get check for a while I assume it won´t be anyhting of ultra-high importance but more something that turns out "more average things".

Right at the moment, "Imperial Chimeras " come to my mind. Perhaps the planet was sight of a big battle a long time ago and the "forge" is a reclaimation facility. Servitors/workers/natives drag the wreckage and hulls to the "Forge" where they are disassembled and devided into things to be re-used and things to be re-cyled.
This would allow you for servitors equipped with sheers, torches, heavy lifting gear... and explosive to detonate remaining old (and unstable) ammo which got removed in a first step "before entering the forge".

Gregorius21778 said:

What if you run with the idea of the crazy tech priest and the room to room search:

Have the tech priest had some sore of set of trials and riddles ( "riddle of steel" ) that lead up to a man who is not just nuts, but also fanatic about the machine god and techno-flesh...

Most of the posts here have actually summed up my general ideas, I haven't started working on it in any major manor yet as I'm working on general NPCs like inquisitors etc for the campaign.

I'm not planning on this being a major facility throwing out space marine equipment and baneblades but more tools, tow trucks and the like.
The setup regarding personal I have in mind is mostly normal humans as workers and soem security, some servitors and a few techpriests and enginseers and the ideer is that th enormal human workers have been killed or incapacitated in some way and crudely been made into servitors trying to "fix their broken parts" with whatever was at hand, servoskulls with some flesh still on them and all sorts of strange and grotesque mechanical creations.

The crazed magos himself I see as no more than his upper torso and head, the rest being plugged into a giant machine that in turn is connected to the forge.
Regarding the forge I've tossed around a few ideas: Underground lab kinda thing (sorta like in the first resident evil), a giant factory on the surface or a space station or ship, the ship idea was my original one to get a bit closer to the movie from which I got my first inspiration.

In general it should be a good old fashined dungeon crawler with horror elements mixed into it and ofcause planning on the players and acolytes not having a clue as to what is going on til they get attacked by the weird creations of the mad magos and thinking about the good old classic of "setting the selfdestruct (everything in the future has this function) and then run against the time to get off the planet/station/ship".

How about a voidship which functions as a huge facility (by now called "facilityship"), being on a tour around a certain number of rather close system (calculated jumps, no Navigator). The ship is fatching up raw materials (tribute, bought, whatever) from the surface (with lighters, shuttles and the like), leaves parts and products and moves about... forging new items "on the fly".

The pc could first be investigation the growing number of dissappearing villages(!) in an area. If they guess the pattern (sooner or later) they will be able to confront a "harvesting troop" of the ship. But due to the lack of Identification of the shuttles, they won´t know.

The shuttle servitor is largely harmles (one the harvest troop is down) and will fly beg if "triggered".

Make the planet rather "low tech" (perhaps feudal?), so are not able to "call for help" and have to destruct the ship itself somehow.

Oh lord you're like a mind reader...get out of my head!

As you proberbly can tell I had an idea sorta like that (this is one of those scenario-ideas that keeps spawning new ideas) but was thinking more along the lines of towns raided and tech been stolen which would be the crazed magos thinking that the lowly, emperor worshipping people does not deserve to have the tech since only the ominissiah's true servants are worthy of such an honour...it's worth playing around with at least.

I was thinking about making the ship a sort of space-hulky type thing, but since I plan on running Shades on twilight with the group I'm afraid it would seem to similar.

Hi Cryxx!

Always happy to be homesteader in your head ^^.

I see one "problem" with the "raiding complete towns for Tech" approach:

• if you raid complete imperial town, you´ll have to explain why the towns militia/security force/garrison wasn´t able to react/give clues/fight them back.
• the solution to this might be "the harvesters came with such force that resistance was futile"... in which case you either have t explain why the planetary authorities failed to notice such an attack (PDF lacking sensor stations? No void ships nearby?) and already track it down to the Facilityship... or noticed the Facilityship coming in the first place!

Otherwise, the mission would/should change to a "this Facility ship is attacking us! DO SOMETHING"...but in such a case, the pc will only be part of a complete boarding partiy, probably company or regiment size!"

Well, being a big fan of the borg I could always just say that survivors were insimilated...as you said: resistance is futile
Ofcause there's alot that needs being worked out and I am planning on doing that ofcause, but first of I need to figure out what to do...an "easy fix" could be the ship have entered the system and dosn't reply to hails, so the acolytes is send there to figure out just what is going on.