I am writing/designing an adventure titled "Ghast's Menagerium."

PREMISE= Ghast's Menagerium is a Rogue Trader vessel specializing in xenos creatures, which it collects and then sells to the highest bidders for whatever purpose. As the players party is returning from an endeavour, they encounter Ghast's Menagerie on a similar heading. Lord-Captain Ghast transmits a list of the strange creatures he has in his holds and invites the players to come aboard and see them. Due to the other-wordly nature of some of the beasts, and the fields used to contain them, use of a teleportarium is forbidden.

Ghast's Menagerie is a 12km long vessel, with 3 central towers= the Bridge, the Navigator Sanctum, and the Astropath Cloister. Just beyond the towers and before the Enginarium is the largest diamond glass dome outside of a hive. Housed in this dome are large beasts kept in conditions as close to their habitats as possible. From outside it appears to be filled with jungle.

Whilst the players are in the receiving bay, alarm klaxons sound, and the vessel lurches violently. The players feel the raising of the Gellar Field, and Ghast's Menagerie is launched into the warp. They will also notice frequent power fluctuations, which they will soon realize is causing the various holding fields to collapse, releasing the many monsters in the holds. The first encounter is in the receiving hold, as 2 murder servitors per player enter the room and attack. Each servitor is equipped with a strange black "halo" afixed to its skull. Following this, a young Navigator is found bound in the corridor. Questioned it is revealed that he was being taken to the Bridge, and that the Lord-Captain had gone insane. More details remain to be written.

The adventure is divided into 4 sections after the initial attack=

1: the Navigators Sanctum= The players accompany the young Navigator to the sanctum, during which time there will be 3-4 random encounters. The sanctum us under seige by murder servitors, 3 per player. Once the siege is lifted, the Navigators thank the players and reveal that Lord-Captain Ghast has succumbed to his vice- Halo Devices, and is a monstrosity. His recent unplanned warp jump was to allow dark forces to board the vessel and sieze a special item Ghast found for them on a dark xenos world. The Navigators, with their allies the Tech-priests, have kept the Gellar Field up and independent of the bridge, and to further strengthen it from the dark forces in the warp, have had to shunt most power to it. So the vessel is now swarming with beasts and is drifting, in and out of the warp. The Navigators, who are few, implore the players to go to the Astropath Cloister and save them, as Ghast's has dispatched a void suit team to breach it from space and capture or kill them all.

2: The Astropath Cloister= The players must suit up, and venture out onto the decks to battle Ghast's archmilitant and his team. Upon defeating the crew and saving the Astropaths, they can then contact their vessel, which is discovered to be a week away. The Astropaths, having monitored Ghast's activities, have discovered that soon the dark forces he is in contact with will arrive to claim their prize. The prize is being hidden in the Enginarium, and the players will have to go and help protect it from the dark forces.

3: The Enginarium via the Xenos-habitat= To access the Enginarium, the players will have to go through the Xenos Habitat, which has now become a jungle filled with giant monsters. There will be 3 major encounters here=

a: The Grax= The Grax is a near mythical monster, nearly sentient. It is centauroid, with its hands ending in sword like claws. This is an ambush.

b: Winterscales Siren= The Siren is a mind control beast. I have to do more work on it, but it will be a willpower test, failing it gives the siren control of the player.

c: Rigellian Hydra= This is a 9 headed hybrid of plant and animal. Grappled characters are brought to a central mouth where they are devoured one limb at a time.

After escape from the Xenos-habitat, they players are ushered into the Enginarium, where the Tech-preists keep the heavily shielded artifact Ghast wants. The artifact is actually an Eldar Farseer, captured by Ghast, and to be traded to the Dark Eldar.

The Eldar Farseer is Elluria, and while on a quest, she was captured by Ghast's hunters. The Navigators discovered Ghasts deal with the Dark Eldar at the same time they discovered his halo device affliction, and spirited her to relative safety. The Dark Eldar arrive when the nature of the cargo is revealed.

The Dark Eldar will teleport in with corsairs and warp wytches attempting to over run the Enginarium. This should be a big battle. Elluria the Farseer should help the players unless they have other plans. Without her help, they will not win the battle.

4: The Bridge= After the Enginarium battle, Elluria reveals to the players that Ghast took a collection of spirit stones she was tranpsporting, and holds them in his quarters or on the bridge. She knows the rough location only, and it is near the bridge. So they must attack the bridge. The bridge will be heavily manned by murder servitors and Ghast, who is a monster now. The battle ensues, Ghast is defeated buy possibly escapes to the Dark Eldar Corsair orbiting outside. The spirit stones are recovered.

5: Arrival of the players vessel= The players vessel arrives as the Dark Eldar Corsair is bombarding Ghast's Menagerie. A space battle ensues. If it goes against the players, have an Eldar Vessel arrive and blast the Corsair to pieces. Elluria thanks the players and boards the Eldar Vessel. She perhaps gives them something of value, a star map or something.

Profit from this adventure will be Ghast's Menagerie itself, which is still valuable regardless of the monsters running around. +5 profit.

Capturing and putting the surviving beasts away.+3 profit.

Any ideas?

GHAST'S MENAGERIE CONTINUED=

So I have to create 20 unique xenos beasts as encounters on the ship. Any ideas in this area would be much appreciated!

Further backstory= On a recent expedition, Ghast discovered a Yu'vath device, which, being the halo device junkie he is, he immediately attached to himself. This device is used to implant the "black halo's" which the players see on crew members and servitors, and give Ghast complete control over the individuals. If the implanted being dies, his body arises as a zombie, which Ghast does not control. Once destroyed, the devices shatter into so much black glass. By the time of the adventure, most of the crew aside from Navigators, Astropaths, and Tech-preists, have been implanted, as well as most servitors, except for the Core Cogitator, which has successfully resisted his efforts, and told the Navigators about Ghast's plan.

Ghast's ultimate plan is to feed his vessel and all its crew to a warp entity as a sacrifice. The Dark Eldar are to accept the Farseer as payment, with her spirit stone cargo, to give Ghast the beacon which will summon the warp entity. Ghast himself thinks he would then become a demi-god or some other nonsense, as he is totally insane, when the souls are all consumed by the entity. I have not decided which entity yet, or even if I should just create a new one. On board the vessel are 90,000 implanted crew, and when the vessel is plunged into the entities maw, it will consume their souls. That is his plan.

Another part of the adventure I have considered is having the passage to the Enginarium from the Xenos habitat blocked, requiring the players to swim through the lower aquatic xenos section to a valve which will let them into a passage leading to the Enginarium. This would require an underwater xenos threa, but would be similar to the void combat from earlier.

Sections of the vessel the players will enter, and all of which make seperate adventures, are the Navigators Sanctum, the Astropaths Cloister, the Enginarium, the Munitorum, the Xenos Habs, The Cargo Bays, the Outer Hull, the Central Passage, the Shrine, the Bridge, an so forth.

Wow, no replies. Perhaps I put this in the wrong area??

It is a very interesting idea and sounds like an exciting adventure. One could wonder about the size of the ship though. I like the idea of having the players trapped in a ship with rampaging monsters and a hostile crew.

There seems to me one major flaw in this all. The reason why the players are getting involved. If the Captain is already as mad as described, would he bring in strangers when he is so close to the fullfillment of his plans?

Perhaps it would make more sense if this was going to be a 'mutiny'. The ships Explorator would be a logical choice.

I had not fleshed that out yet. I want to put the players on the ship to purchase possible profitable beasts, then the plot begins. Maybe the mutiny begins at that moment, maybe someone from the ship tries to send a message to the players. Any ideas you might have would be greatly appreciated. And monsters too!

Sadly Sister, I got this idea from several sources=

1 was THE BLACK HOLE, mainly because the Cygnus looks like an RT ship a little AND there is a mad scientist.

2 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, the old D&D module

And I wanted to have a good old fashioned dungeon crawl.

There are obviously more things going on on the ship. Lots of loot in the holds and tons of xenos tech on board. But it is designed to be thrilling and dangerous. Maybe when the Navigators try to send a message with the players the captain freaks out and plunges the ship into the warp.

Sounds very interesting, however I think the profit margin might be a bit off. They can get +8 profit from this one adventure? That is more than a treasure worlds ransom. If they keep getting profit at that rate they will be some of the most powerful people in the imperium within a few sessions.

+3 profit from capturing the beasts seems a bit off. Profit factor increases represent a long term increase in their influence and wealth, and is typically achieved by setting up lucritive trade routes, colonizing worlds, and collecting taxes. This is a one time sale. Maybe just give them a 500pt achievement point reward (which will eventually translate into .5PF)

For comparison, if the players recover the Forsaken Bounty (from the RT rule book), a cruiser filled to the brim with lost treasure, archeotech, and all manner of other goodies, and set up a long term excavation and trade operation, they get a PF bonus of +3.

Sorry to focus so much on that, I just worry that your players power is going to increase too fast, which can ruin the game. Instead of slowly growing in power and resources they go from nobodies tobeing able to afford multiple cruisers in just a couple of months.

Other than that, it sounds very interesting. I like the creative creatures you have come up with. I would really play up the xenosium (or whatever it is called) scene to mess with them. Lots of awareness checks, hints that they are being stalked, obstacles to overcome that leave them vulnerable. It sounds like it could be a very fun session.

Well, I do not plan on giving them all of those profit factors, just can't decide on which one is best. +8 is a massive fortune no doubt.

Ghast's Menagerie is a battleship size vessel and predates the Imperium. It was never built for warfare but does have some armament, equal to a cruiser, but no ram. I almost think it would be better in the adventure to cripple or even destroy the ship in a meteor storm to make for an intense ending. It is still a work in progress! The vessel has much wealth in its holds too, so destroying it might be a better option.

I am going to start posting creatures tonight, I hope. Anyone have any ideas?

Perhaps the presence of the Explorers trigger the mutiny because it provides a distraction to those involved in the security? The pc's are send back to their shuttle with an armed escort when they are attacked and by then it is to late.

For monsters. Well there are some classics. You could use Tyranids who at this time are not known to exist so a few of their numbers are nothing more then exotic beasts, a Lictor would make a scary opponent all by itself. Other monsters might include, an armor plated Behemoth that likes to charge, an arachnid with a venemous scorpion tail, flying jellyfish who use electrical bolts for selfdefense, Of course nothing wrong with a sabretooth tigeroid or rejects from Jurasic Park. What about a silicoid based life form that resembles an animated rock?

So now, having read-up on the CLONING post, part of the back story for the adventure is going to be this=

Lord Captain Ghast, while exploring a strange xenos world, was killed by a particularly nasty beast. His body was returned to the ship, where his crack team of Tech-Magos Medicum try to revive him. One, secretly a Sarcosan Heretek, promotes the use of a Dark Age of technology device called the "Lucidan Exo-Womb", a device which the remains of a dead person can be placed in, which will then replicate that person in a few months, producing a perfect copy, seeming to transfer all of that person memories and "soul" to the cloned body. Ghasts faithful command crew, all utterly loyal to the great man, acquiesce.

Ghast is decanted 3 months later, seemingly back to normal, with no memory of the past 3 months or the battle that killed him. All seems normal with him. However, the problem with the Exo-womb is that it allows the person being cloned to be attacked by chaos, fighting a battle against demons to come back. Ghast failed in the battle, and what survived is an evil and insane demon possessed doppleganger.

It is this doppleganger which has become addicted to the halo devices and has done so many horrific things, and plans to bring the vessel and its souls to the Chaos God it worships. It is for this reason, and not profit, that he has attacked and captured Rogue Traders and their vessels, not to build a bigger fleet, but to have the required number of souls to feed this God. The players party will complete the total. The Navigators and other professionals on the ship have long been plotting a mutiny, but the presence of the Yu'vath infested servitors has kept them down, until they are forced to act by the attack on the players.

Ghasts fleet consists of several other frigates and cruisers, all controlled by the same control "crown" he controls his servitors with. There is a possibility that the players will recognize one or more of the captured ships, and question it. The first attack on them, and the plunge into the warp, will leave these vessels out of his control, and they are either going to go insane, or come to their senses. I still have to think this out.

Allow me to make some suggestions.

First thing, he whas always had an unhealthy interest in halo devices and allowed his crew with the heretek explorator way to much leeway with them. Thus he created his own downfall (moralty lessons here kids

Then he got killed, trying to capture an especially fine specimen for the zoo of Sibelus. A behemoth of a beast (King Kong?) charges the RT killing him seconds before he finally gets dosed. He is placed into the halo device and whole it works, the exposure to the device and the warp has tainted him and droven him to madness. Driven by his own ambition he puts forth the plan to conquer the whole sector and he lures RT's in to take over the command crew with his halo devices. But unknown to him, the behemoth that killed him is still there, waiting for another chance (Captain Hook )

Or

While on an expedition he is captured by a parasite Xenos Form (think Goa'ld or something similar). Of course these aliens plot to take out the human presence in the sector. To do that, they place their offspring in human hosts. And now they have control of all the officers of the ship, they start to assemble a fleet. Luckily the Navigators and other Psykers prove immune to the parasite touch so they can still try to do their mutiny

Luring Ships in with stories of his menagarie he then offers them a banquet (laced with eggs from the species), thus creating more of them.

It is when the Players enter, that the Navigators try their mutiny and all hell breaks lose. Of course in this scenario, it is the Captain who control most of the animals.

As a gag, you could let them find a facehugger from the Alien movie. Or even better: A dead facehugger that must have infected one poor member of the ship... ;-)

I do not think this adventure is going to work the way you want it to work.

You plan a lot of beast encounters.

Ask yourself why the players shouldn´t simply keep away from such areas. The ship is large enough to do so and the players have (at the start) no real motiviation besides "staying alive".

If I would be a player in a position like this, I would either head straight to the bridge (if I think I can reason with some-one their) or I would go for air ducts and crawl spaces and into hiding until we leave the warp. Their is no way for me and my view men to take control of a whole hostile ship, so I would just try to hide till the ship is back in real space and then make it to the launch bay to steal the next guncutter. After kidnappign one Astropath, since we will all end up in the middel of nowwhere and need to call to our ship so they can hopefully pick us up.

Last but not least, I think RT is the wrong game for a complete "you and you view pc alone" dungeon crawl.

My two cents

First off, the players arrive on what is considered a reputable trader in beasts, and there is no reason to be concerned. Ghasts Menagerie has a reputation for being an incredible collection, not just the creatures but the other artifacts Ghast has collected over his 200 years of exploration. So they are coming to enjoy themselves. The ship has numerous arboretums, the food is exceptional, and the gardens are amazing. So they are not coming to fight they are coming to conduct a business deal and relax a little.

Secondly, they arrive in 1 lighter to observe the creatures on sale. They are not coming to transport them back.

Thirdly, when the vessel plunges into the warp, large sections of the hull are severely damaged, requiring the characters to move through areas they have to move through. This plunge was engineered by the mutinous members of the command staff for reasons already explained.

You can come up with all sorts of reasons why you would not play it or would not run it. However, I know it will work, and is working well so far. Perhaps you would prefer an adventure where your players just sit around and send troops at everything? This IS not fun in the least bit. I wanted an adventure where the players DID NOT HAVE access to all their minions, and I wanted lots of combat and puzzles to solve. It does work, and the party have really enjoyed themselves. It is a dangerous adventure, simply put.

Also, the ship does not stay in the warp long, just long enough to throw them a week away from their ship.

And as I posted earlier, you are not going to head to the bridge and reason with anyone. It is the bridge and the halo infested Captain that send the team to catpure the party so they can be implanted.

Lastly, I think that ANY game makes a good Dungeon Crawl if you gear the action up tight enough. You do not think that Rogue Traders plunge into ancient temples and ruins looking for valuables? This is a Dungeon Crawl. Fighting from corridor to corridor in a Space Hulk? This is a Dungeon Crawl. Sending thousands of troops against a target so that you can get a higher profit factor? This is an Accounting Experiment. I do not particularly find negotiating contracts and trade agreements exciting, nor does any party outside of Rules Lawyers and Accountants. If Rogue Trader was meant to be a no combat no exploration no crawling game, then it would not need all the equipment listed to do these things, nor would it need ships and all their rules, to get there.

I think Rogue Trader makes for EXCELLENT Dungeon Crawling.

Grand Inquisitor Fulminarex said:

I think what makes Rogue Trader awesome is that it combines the classic exploration game-style (e.g. dungeon crawling) with a political game style (e.g. games like Vampire the masquerade). Rogue Traders will have to achieve missions in a dungeon crawl style, but they will always have an eye on the "greater" political developments beyond that lone mission: forming alliances and trying to build their own empire of trade.

In my eyes, Rogue Trader combines the more linear style of exploration-scenarios with an open sandbox-constituent in a great manner.

My point exactly. Also, I much prefer Space Opera to all other genres.

Wouldn't 90,000+ mind controlled people be as much of a problem as holds of xenos beasts? Is that why they go throught the beast holds rather than the regular corridors to avoid the army of minions? You could always throw a tyranid lictor into the air ducts to discourage that means of moving.

DH's The Creatures Anethama has a good grouping of xenos beasts with stats and fluff. One races in there is a group of yellow humanoids (their name escapes me at the moment), but they have a dislike for the Aquila from past dealings with Harlock and tend to cut the second head off the eagle when desecrating imperial imagery. Have one of these guys on board, and if the players rescue him and bring him home they could regain faction with them and posibly set up a trading contract for their xenos weapons . Or perhaps have one of the digi device making apes in power armor to save. Basically you could flesh out another corridor with an escort mission to get one of these sentient xeno guys out alive. Have them being harrssed by storm crows perched on statues that line the surrounding coridors. If you want to add more moral choices for the players, have these xenos being attacked by some of the more aggressive xenos there (or trapped by a collapsed support structure) and see if they help out. Success gains them an ally or if they use it as a distraction to move on to another coridor, then have the xenos show up later for revenge.

Loot beasts from movies like the human sized vampire bat people from the Never ending story. Have them kill one of the mind contoled guards by wrapping his wings around him and then have a pile of bones the the ground. Make the players avoid grapple attacts or have a random piece of their armor disolved by digestive acids.

Throw in some scar dragons that breathe fire, or venomous insects that inflict fatigue. Have a large coridor set up like a labyrnth that is psychicly shielded and has electronic scrambles so make data slate maps get interfence. make them navigate the maze with a serries of int or navigation checks. Put some sort of artifact at the center that is guarded by mutant bull men that have unnatural strength x 2.

Reclamator Wolfe said:

I think it is from the movie beast man not Never Ending Story