I just recently picked up RT, and have been coming up with ideas for a campaign I was looking to run. I don't like to step on the toes of canon though, so I had a few questions. Without getting into it too much, I was thinking of having a 'Siren' type scenario. Decades ago a fleet surrounded a planet being swallowed by the Warp. All aboard were either killed or possessed. The sole survivor is an Astropath artificially kept alive, tortured and kept alive aboard the skeletons of one of the ships. Since the daemons can not possess him, they torment him causing his voice to shriek through the warp and draw in ships that are subsequently attacked.

So my main question is, what happens when an Astropath is cut off from their fleet? Being soul bound to the Emperor, would it prevent the daemons from holding the AP captive? Can the Emperor 'snuff out' corrupted Astropaths? Any help would be appreciated, thanks for reading.

ThdChemist said:

Q1: Nothing as far as I understand it. If an astropath is cut off from the fleet he'll still survive and thrive, though in your scenario, surviving in an unpleasant place.

Q2: Nope. In fact, my understanding that psykers are actually more open to being possessed by a greater daemon simply because of their 'gift'. Granted the Emperor gives some protection to the Astropath that isn't enough to allow the astropath to escape. What would be cooler, is if the astropaths brain has been removed and it that which is screaming through the void and warp.

Q3. I don't know the answer to this. i'd say not since psykers can run about freely IF they manage to escape the Black Ships search for them. One astropath, depending on his rating. An Alpha grade psyker would probably draw a heck of a lot of attention, while a lower grade less so.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for the input, it helps alot. The idea I had is that ages ago, a hive world got in trouble for hoarding all manners of heretic artifacts/tomes/etc(leaving it open at this point). The whole place went corrupt and given its intricate tunnels, it was governed that the only way to cleanse was via virus bomb. The kicker is that upon impact the bomb malfunctioned, and rather than wipe out everyone, it lead to the world dying slowly and painfully. The inquisition ships set up a blockade, waiting for the world to die. Being packed with forbidden artifacts, the place was already on the verge of being swallowed by the Warp.

So for decades, the population suffered while the agents of the imperium guarded the planet. The bomb sat undetonated, leaking its contagion. Long story short, the bomb is a budding Daemon Prince (an idea I had thought about when considering conversions). So the world becomes a pathway for Daemons who eventually infect the ships that are embargoing the planet. They corrupt all on board, and imprison the astropath. The idea is to draw ships in to spread the contagion and thus give the bomb more sentience. Over decades, shoals of shattered wrecks began to encircle the planet. The reason for the planet being 'uncharted' is due to the fact that it slides in and out of the Warp.

In reading the RT core book I get alot of 'space pirate' from it. I think the idea of a siren, ghost ships, and an 'island' at the heart of a sea of shipwrecks packed with treasure to be appealing. The main villains would be the bomb itself (not really personified), the bombs 'mini-bosses' being the corrupted Imperial agents, the mad bio-cyber-daemon imprisoned 'siren' astropath, and an Ork freeboota kaptain who trails the party to the priceless fields of scrap surrounding the planet.

No Probs.

Nice storyline by the way.

Hi! I see the following problem with your story as written:

The planet was known by the Inquisition and Qualified as that dangerours that it had be "guarded till death". If the planet pops in and out of the warp in the same place, the place will be patroled by spacecrafts under the command of the Inquisition....and orders/warning will have been told regading the solar system it is in.

On the other hand, a whole planet popping in and out of the world (perhaps in different locations) is a bit much.

My suggestions: Change it into a frontier world that was re-discovered during some crusade by a smaller part of the original fleet. The planet is in a region with very unstable warp. The crusade splinter field found the world and deemed it deserving of virus bombing for haven turned away to the emporer and comitting demon worship (or anything else). They started bombing, the bombing failed. The planet leashed back with it´s own weapons (releasing demonic entities, since all was already lost to them).

Due to the unstable warpspace, messages and reports of the crusade splinter fleet weren´t clearly received, the splinter counted as "lost" and the area as "unstable". The world is know dead (or as good as dead), circled by the wrecks of the ships...and the daemons use the astropath of the destroyed ship, just as you wrote it, to lure in more and more ships.

This way, the story of a "lost crusade splinter fleet" makes the area reek of treasur (in form of salvage), so an "astropathic shriek" out of this reason might lure in some treasure hunters...