My Players have just dipped their toes into the "Whispers on the Storm" adventure from the GM Kit. I'm struggling to work out what to tell them when they ask about the Yu'Vath though (a couple of them have Forbidden Lore: Xenos and one has Scholastic Lore: Occult - I'm led to believe the latter is necessary to know anything about the Yu'Vath though).

So far I've read:

• They worship the warp (the warp itself, "monsters from the Id" or specific Ruinous Powers?)
• They were made extinct during the Avengin Crusade (though were not the focus of the campaign - it was a crusade against all xenos in Calyx, right?)
• They have some cool tech that manipulates the warp / dark energy, some of it semi-sapient and hell bent on revenge (looking at their ships, how did they lose?)
• They enslave other species

I don't have access to Dark Heresy books though (another GM wants to run it, and I want to be surprised), which may or may not clear some of these queries up.

I guess I'm wondering how to play out the adventure's penultimate scene. What are their motivations (beyond revenge)? What were they trying to accomplish before their extinction (universal destruction, dominion, eschaton)? Why do they hate (simple xenophobia, because chaos told them to, because humanity stopped them from doing X)?

It may be that these answers don't exist yet, which is fine - I'll just make something up - but if they do exist, I don't want to have to contradict myself later.

Thanks in advance,

R.

Greething, brethern,

as an emporer-fearing citizen will tell you, their tech is not "kewl" but ruinous, hineous and blasphemous to any extent (but powerful, one have to give them credit on that!).

I thinkg they lost because they were simply outnumbered . They do have a lot of enslaving tech, that is for sure!

Since it feels "wrong", I would not say that they worshipped any of the four major ruinous powers. "Warp itself" sounds finde.

I would not think about who where teh Yu´Vath or why the Yu´Vath fought their battles. It doesn´t matter anymore because you will not face the Yu`Vath but what was left of their warpcraft and witchery. In this point, they are very similiar to the Necron before the C´Than where added to the mix. But less "robotic" and more "malific".

If you try to figure out the motivation of a Yu´Vath remain, try to think about a vey single minded and discplined daemon that woke up on morning with a task. It does not know "why" and does not care. It has a task. It was build to fullfill this task. It will fullfill it and it will do so with otherwordly intelligence and a cold glee.

My two cents

Ta, Gregorius. Certainly food for thought.

May the Emperor's light always shine upon your path.

It should be noted:

1)They were made mostly extinct during the Avengin Crusade. Their worlds were destroyed, and nothing remains of their small Empire. This doesn't mean they might not have a "lost" colony or fleet some where.

2)The Yu'Vath nearly stopped the Crusade in it's tracks. It was forced to regroup, and get the assistance of the Space Marines and the Inquisition. The Imperium won because of numbers, and the fact that they only had a handful of world. After the Crusade the Inquisition suppressed all information about them.

In our game the GM runs them as crystaline warp 'constructs' left behind by the Yu'Vath... Their only remaining purpose to complete their function until ruin - and that function is to kill. Somehow that's more scary than an alien race. I believe our GM was heavily influenced by the 'Inhibitors' and the 'Berserkers' that feature in popular sci fi books... (can't remember either of the **** author's names at this moment!)

Dalnor Surloc said:

I would suggest you preface this with "as far as we know". Little is certain where the Yu'Vath are concerned...

I was looking at that particular free adventure and almost decided to build a campaign around it. The campaign itself would be a reimaging of Call of Cthulhu's Walker in the Wastes (check out www.yogsoth-oth.com for a audio campaign of it.) Essentially I would start the campaign out in the Calixis sector, with the characters dealing with a competing houses interests and discover that this house and a few others are collecting malific and tech-heresy items for transportation to another location. The characters house would not be tied to the system, but they would discover the system during research into these renegade houses actions. The characters would meet with the warship similar to before but perhaps the captain is an Inquisitor who wants to know why the characters are interfering with his investigation, and brings them aboard to help deal with what is going on in system (and to hide the inquisitions interest.) The characters would have free rain to set up and profit endevours they wish, but the inquisition would now require a tithe from them.

The major bad guys would not be whisperers but individuals that gave themselves over to the vessel and worship it as a god, which the ship uses (and actually enjoys.)

This is just a baseline (although initially I actually thought it would be interesting to play a starting adventure where the PCs are low level 'dark heresy' characters, and find/are turned by the ship as the initial whisperers.

Salcor

Giaus Novus Khan said:

Sounds about right to me. They aren't going to be reasoned with or stopped without violence.

And that would be Fred Saberhagen and the "Berserker" novels. Great fun those. There is a short story by another author I can't remember who expands on the types of autonomous machines in the galaxy, with more than a passing nod to those novels.

www.berserker.com/FredsBerserkers.html

Giaus Novus Khan said:

I like this, and agree the Whisper itself should be like this (a vast, cool and merciless intelligence). What troubled me was the thought that the Yu'Vath connection would come out, someone would attempt a FL: Xenos roll, get several degrees of success and then whine when I say, "Sorry, the Inquisition suppressed all knowledge about them." Now I've got some ideas that'll show them the sinister, even if it doesn't help them fix the problem ("Alas, how terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise").

Cheers,

R.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

That goes without saying. It's quite possible there are colony worlds in the Expanse or even a small empire of worlds. The Expanse was cut off during the Crusade.

Dalnor Surloc said:

Go deeper. Little that the Imperium knows about the Yu'vath is certain... and even those things that are correct tell only part of the story.

The Yu'vath work as a threat not just because of the things we know about them - warp-based, pseudo-sorcerous technology, ancient Xenos civilisation clashed with the Imperium during the Angevin Crusade - but because of the things we don't know.. and that goes as much for the Imperium as well. The Inquisition actually knows very little about the Yu'vath, and that lack of knowledge is as big a peril as anything physical.

I believe an imperial scholar once said, “If it does not rot, if it can lie like this here forever... is it truly dead?”

and just remember my favourite point to make to my players...... FL xenos means they know a bit about a few xenos races not all of them..... lets be honest a FL xenos test can tell you all about orks maybe tau possibly eldar but i doubt they would have any info on the c'tan or the the brain boyz or other extinct races

lord inquisitor revan darksoul said:

I'd say that depends entirely on the origins of the character, or whether they have taken any advances on the skill. An Imperial World native might not have heard anything about the Yu'Vath of course, but a Void-Born might well have heard tales of colossal crystalline ships that fire pure warp energy at their victims, raising the dead in service to their alien masters.

Errant said:

tjhis is true while i was generalising you do need to take charcter history into account but also take into account that the imperium as a whole is very xenophobic and information in most places will be severly limited