Cus there is something about race that seems unstopable that makes GMs and player go I want try that

Graver said:

I see your point and I feel the same way, but one thing I think is difficult is to somehow include the 'human element' (i.e cultists) in a Lovercratian way to them. In most of these stories are some insane cultists involved, but I don't see how it can be possible to do this in a Necron context. Any idea?

Sister Cat said:

My WH40k playing friend liked them because they were easy to paint.

I use necrons in one of my current running campaigns. I'll tell you how, but first a warning to my players:

Om du är Valle, Anders, Ola, Moa, Malin, Erik eller Tobbe. Sluta läs nu, eller bli snuvad på den ashäftiga twisten i slutet av kapitel fyra och hela plotten i kapitel fem till sju.
/Anders

In my Pride of the Emperor campaign that has been running for a year now I'll eventually hand my players characters the very uncomfortable opportunity to save dozens of imperial systems from a threatening tyranid fleet by making a deal with a semi-dormant necron lord. I wanted a completely over-the-top plot for this campaigns second half. Two of the main themes are "the end justifies the means" and "we do the dirty work so you don't have to". So here is the plot: A rival inquisitor (that the players are trying to kill, believeing that she was mindcontrolled by the tyranids) have been working on a way to take out an approaching tyranid fleet by use of cleverly placed genestealer cults as a bread crumb trail to draw them into a system where a star is about to go nova. The PCs have stopped this from working by eradicating numerous stealer infestations over the sector, thinking they did a good thing (first 30 or so gaming evenings). When they finally kill the inquisitor they will find her backup plan, to use an ancient necron device that can make any star of the right size/temperature/composition go nova. They must then read and understand her notes in good lovecraftian spirit, find her accomplices and make them willing to help. Then they will have to negotiate with the semi-dormant necron lord. The price the lords wants is such a simple thing as a having a necron-tech communicator device connected to the mainframe of the central cognigator on Mars. After the players have managed this (hey, it's just a comm device, what harm can it do?), they will be given the instructions to finding and using the nova device, together with a list of requirements of the star it can be used on.

They will then have to transport it to the only suitable system, that the tyranid fleet is currently attacking... and that just so happens to be the players home system, and fight off waves of tyranids while they arm and set off the nova bomb martyring themselves and their home system in order to save the empire. A suitably epic ending of a two year campaign i hope.

I don't really plan on having the PCs ever fighting necrons, but I regularly make small cutscenes where the players get to borrow characters for one evening and play a small adventure. A few of these have been and will be the opposing inquisitors minions that help with the research by kicking butt (necron among others) and grabbing xeno artifacts. The players interaction with necrons will mostly be them finding traces of necron activity and of course dealing with the dormant lord via mindlink in the deep of one of his seemingly abandoned tombs. Anyhow, the above is no more than my outline of the campaign, whant ultimately will happen is really up to my players characters.

BTW: hi again FFG-forums, it has been a couple of months since last we met :-)

Mellon said:

Welcome back, Mellon.

For what it's worth, I find your campaign plot most suitably grimdark. Well done.

Sister Cat said:

Thank you, on both accounts :-) Your approval is much valued.

Well, first to answer Luthor's question above and to chime in my self on how Necrons are being used in my campaign ('cause they are), most of Lovecraft's works didn't involve many cults or cultists. There seemed to be more mad wizards and insidious witches which worked alone save for their unwholesome familiars and other Things, but, predominately, most things just dealt with That Which Was Left behind to be latter stumbled across by the narrator. Cultists certainly aren't necessary, but, yes, they are great when they do factor in and, in DH, they are a little more important.

In my 40k 'verse, the cultists of the Necrons are the Sloutgh who undulate in horribly joyous way at the thought of the "Harvest Gods Return" and the "Feast of the Reaper" (it's unknown even to me if the Necrons know of the Sloutgh and their worship or what the Sloutgh's fate would be upon their full on awakening). Human cultists would, in turn, tend to deal with or worship the Sloutgh. I guess the worm-boys have, in a way, taken on the roll of the Deep Ones in my game.

In my campaign (though technically it's in RT as we're on the RT part of the cycle) the Necrons themselves will be making an appearance very soon and they do have human cultists ;-). The set-up:

A Tomb-Ship had crashed on Grace quite some time ago and is long buried beneath it's storm-ridden surface. Something on the ship, however, had been damaged and now, radiating out from it is an incredible fluctuation in the time-space continuum. At some point in time during his departure from the Calaxis sector after his wife and daughter were killed but before e returned to wreck unholy vengeance upon his kin, Erasmus Haarlock had found the Tomb-Ship after looking into these fluctuations. He was able to piece together a good bit about the who's and what's of what he had found due to his dealings with the Sloutgh as well as his families past dealings with the Eldar, though, as anything and everything goes, his impression still wasn't anywhere near a complete picture.

With the assistance of a variety of hereteks taken from Footfall and elsewhere (and executed to the man once their work was complete), he had a fortress constructed on the site, a fortified tomb for Helena, his wife, and Sarah, his daughter, who he entombed there amidst the temporal fluctuations in the distant feverishly mad hope that somehow such would unwrite the fate that had befallen them. After the bloody slaughter of his kin, he returned to their tomb and the immobile "Harvest Gods" that he, with the help of the sorceries of his personal witch and the machinations of the hereteks and his own xeno-tech genius, had bound to his will -or so he believed, the truth of the matter is unknown and may never be known. He left them as guardians of the "Time-Tombs"*, of the most precious things in all the universe to him, and of what he felt was the most dangerous and cursed thing to ever exist, the Haarlock Warrant. With ingenious traps constructed, some of which drew off of some of the esoteric sciences of the ship that even he in his most maddened state could barely comprehend, dormant "Harvest Gods" that he believed would be awoken by the tripping of several of the traps he devised to slaughter the trespassers, "gods" who were further held in reverse engineered stasis fields that drew off the temporal energies emanating from deep within the tomb and locked into the "Valley of Time" by a ring of warp-cursed obelisks locking the valley in an odd kind of sorcerous bubble, he set sail for the place where silver trees weep blood seeking the throne that would "undo it all."

Some fifty odd years latter, the first and only disastrous attempt to colonize Grace occurred and fifty odd years after that, there's still horrible tribes of degenerate humans living on that cursed planet. One tribe had the fortune, or misfortune, to have had their fortress-estate constructed near the Valley of Time. The obelisks that Erasmus had erected warded off the temporal fluctuations and, for the first wile, the renegades and decadent noble scum that came to live in that mansion knew noting of what pulsed in their proverbial back-yard. It wasn't until it all went wrong and the slaughter and the raiding began, did they accidentally stumble across it. Initially, they were blinded by desperate hope thinking that they had found a forgotten supply hold, something that may contain edibles. That, of course, wasn't the case. Several tripped traps and a nightmare of carnage latter saw only one surviving from the raiding party to return to the fortress-keep with tales of a shrine of death and of a skull-faced executioner clothed in metals of pain and punishment. They had awoken several of the Necrons.

In the years that followed, fortress-estate upon fortress-estate fell, eventually leaving only tree to prey upon one another. In that time, a pirate captain who sailed under the flag of the Pirates of Inequity had found Grace and saw it as the perfect opportunity to expand is power and holdings by establishing a secret manufactoium as well as breeding-ground for slaves to restock from without his peers being the wiser, his ace-in-the-hole so to speak. He subjected the most advanced and heavily populated of the three remaining Fortress-Keeps and soon turned it into a thriving if not nightmarish industrial mining and manufacorium complex. This act alone allowed the horror of Grace to continue giving the other two surviving keeps a fresh supply of better meat and materials to acquire on raids. Unfortunately, the irony of continually raiding a pirate outpost to carry away anything and anybody they can as quickly as they can is a bit lost on the cannibal tribes.

While one of the remaining now feral cannibal clans, known as the Counties**, is on the decline and hounded by strike forces supported by the dark and twisted warp-worshipers of the now industrialized clan, no-one has been able to touch the third remaining clan, the cannibals who now call themselves the Shriven. From the tales of the one survivor of the first and only raiding party into the Tomb and from latter encounters, the Shriven have come to believe that the ever changing skull faced killer of gleaming metal is an avatar of the Emperor's righteous furry and scorn for their many sins. Each and every Shriven has written (now they just scribble on leather while stating their sins as the concept of writing has been lost to them, just the action remains) first on parchment but now on human hide and is warn by the sinner as they make the dangerous journey into the Valley of Time to seek out the avatar whom they call The Shriver. They will usually take a captive from another clan with them, an unrepentant sinner as well to hedge their bets of survival. Before they started doing that, most never returned. Now, most return from their fearsome encounter, though a lot bearing painful wounds. When they return, they believe the God-Emperor has absolved their sins and wicked ways allowing them to join the ranks of the Shriven. Most must repeat this journey a few times in life as many slip from the twisted and degenerate path their faith has become, but most usually survive. It's also believed that in times of duress or danger (like a raiding party or pirates descending on their fortress-keep), the Shriven can flee into the Valley of Time and the God-Emperor through His Shriver shall protect them. Thus far, that belief has held true. To the other clans, the Shriven do seem to have divine protection.

Unbeknownced to the Shriven, what they call the Shriver is actually several Flayed Ones and Wraiths which have been activated over the hundred or so years since Erasmus left. They only ever see one so have come to the assumption that they are all the same creature. Due to the skull motif, the latent guilt of the original colonists over what they had done and become, and a bit of a degradation and misunderstanding of imperial Creed, they have come to the faulty conclusion that this one being they have witnessed must be an avatar of the God-Emperor's wrath. The strange conditions within the Valley of Time only help with that assertion.

The awoken Necron forces currently only patrol the area inside the warp-obelisks that Erasmus had set up. Whether this is because he actually was able to contain them or for some other reason or motivation on the Necron's part is and probably never will be known -the same goes for their selective killing. Whether they realize or care that if the Shriven remain alive, they will bring more victims is unknown and never will be as is their ultimate motivations for doing much of anything really. The same goes for the remaining Necron legion abroad the Tomb-Ship and just about anything else relating to them I reckon.

And this brings us to the current situation the Players and their characters face. They are after the Haarlock Warrant and have tracked it down to Grace. In order to get to it, they will eventually encounter the Shriven or those who know of them, learn of the Shriver, see the warp-obelisks and that, coupled with the warp-worshiping tribe of industrialists will probably come to a very wrong conclusion. Once inside the perimeter of the time tides, they might start realizing other things are afoot as their psyker begins to lost connection to the warp while, at the same time, odd events and perceptions abound due to the tides. Then the deaths will start, survival slasher horror truly begins and, if they persevere and piece tings together, they'll make it to the inner sanctum of the Time Tombs.

In the inner sanctum, they'll find the dead hereteks and Necron equipment that's been tampered with all watched over by a Necron Lord apparently still in stasis but with a stasis box containing the Warrant placed in it's hands and both Helena and Sarah enthroned above and behind the Lord in such a way that, to Erasmus' maddened mind, they can watch the slaughter of any who have made it this far and be vindicated. While the characters might not recognize exactly what they're seeing, I know at least one player will (the most paranoid of them) -this will truly be a question of how far they really want to go to get that Warrant and what they're willing to risk.

I'll be handling the encounters with the Necrons in a very brutal fashion, but then again, I'm almost certain that they will go into the Tomb with a good squad of soldiers as backup. They will fight and die in the background as the PCs work to Figure It All Out which, even if it is technically told in RT, works in DH just as well ;-)

tl;dr = ya, I'm using the Necrons, it's in an RT game not DH as an extension of a story started in DH with an approach that would work in DH just as well, the Necrons have cultists, Haarloks are involved, it will build up like a slasher movie or survival horror with plenty of red shirts to show that this is serious, and the end is really a question of how big of a risk they are willing to take to satisfy their own ambitions.

* yes, this bit is in part inspiered by the Hyperion books... for those who know, when thinking of the horror of the shrike, what first comes to mind? ;-)

** They are called this because of the fearsome and insane king they have known now only as The Count, the last remaining original settler

Mellon said:

Man if I tried anything like that on my party I'd be in for some wasted hours of writing only to have to players kill the necron lord with his own bomb and sacrifice someone else doing it and then find another way to stop the tyranids.

Graver said:

Okay, my fault then. I haven't read any Lovecraft novel. I just try to convert Masks of Nyarlathotep at the moment and would like to include Necrons and the like (in my campaign the Slaugth are/were also some sort of C'Tan servant race) instead of Chaos (again). But in Masks of N cultists play an important role (more or less) and thus it seems difficult to really include Necrons and most probably I have to stick with classical heretics, Chaos and daemons again...

Btw your campaign idea sounds great.