run a Dark Heresy game that will soon be going into Ascension: and with the fortuitous release of Deathwatch I plan on running the same campaign, switching between the two sets of characters every week.

The set up is as the Inquisitor and Throne Agents are chasing their nemesis and trying to keep him from acquiring some new unnamed Uber-powerful thing. They race to the place where the vessel is to rendezvous: and before heading out the Inquisitor calls on an old acquaintance (Brother Sergeant Agamorr from the Shades of Twilight) and is granted a Kill-team of Deathwatch for his mission. Their ship, the Verdant Glory catches up to their nemesis and a ship-to-ship firefight ensues. The two ships are ripping each other apart as a massive Space Hulk the Ark of Nightmares blinks in and out of the Warp. In the Space Hulk’s wake the two ships are sucked in and fused with its cyclopean bulk.

So they will be stranded their until they either figure out the mystery behind the Ark of Nightmares, escape or call for help, or destroy the bulk of the Hulk. This is to be an open-ended sand box style game where one week we will see the Ascension character trying to piece together what the deal is with the Space Hulk and find a way off, the next week having the Deathwatch holding off the manifold other denizens of the Hulk.

It’ll have a map and almost be like Risk or Settlers of Cataan, each mission in each ship granting control equal to the 10’s place of the group’s renown or influence. The players will have to manage their desire to move forward with their mission with the ever-worsening logistics of sporadic life support, waning food and air supplies, and dwindling ammunition.

Any suggestions on running an Ascension game on the Space Hulk? Any ideas of leads or investigations to pursue? They still will be able to make use of their influence: but it will mostly be working over the other survivors or maybe a Rogue Trader crew they stumble across before discovering the Genestealer cult in their midst

I like the idea! I am dissapointed in Shades on Twilight because I consider it a waste of a really good setting. They have a haunted Space Hulk, cryptic communications, the lost souls of former psykers and a dead demon seemingly still locked in combat with a lost Inquisitor. And they decide that the best use for this is a one-encounter-after-another action adventure?

Anyway, how about a section where the characters need to put on Void-suits and move through a large broken area of the hulk? There is no power and the effects of the hulk is dimming even their brightest lights into low-grade glowsticks. They are out in the open on what might be a ships hull, or a large storage bay, they don't know because they can't see more than a few meters. They are navigating exclusivly through auspex-readings (which is probably failing now and then) , there are deadly pitfalls and strange obstacles littering the area and they can't hear a thing except for their own breathing.

Turn down the lights, indicate that there might be something after them and let the characters fumble their way forward. You could probably do it without ever actually having a monster attacking them, but if something does attack they should not see what it is. Dark figures, assaulting them without warning (no sound!), shots fired into the dark, never really knowing if you hit something or not. I would even consider taking it so far that you roll all the dice unless the figure is standing really close, to keep the players in the dark about about how things are going.

As for goals... that I am still working on myself for a slightly similar idea (though smaller in scope) so I don't know. Areotech is always a possibility on a Hulk.

Thanks! I'm totally bogarting that idea and adding it to my list. I'm trying to run this as none-linear as possible, and while I have a few major plot arcs everything is at the discression of the PC's as to what they want to do or where they want to go. To accomodate I'm trying to make a list of ~50 plotseeds I can use to wing my way through any scenario.

Well: I have the Space Hulk all drawn up - I doodled a bunch of profiles from ships from Battlefleet Gothic and all the Xenos races I could get my mits on (then threw some easter eggs, profiles from other sci-fi franchises like the Nostromo's Profile) and put them in a suitably chaotic cluster overlayed with a hex grid.

As far as goals - they were pursuing the agents of a Radical Inquisitor when they get trapped on the Hulk. The Radical's aim was to get to an Archaeotech Space Ship which is still in pristine condition in the center of the hulk and re-animate one of the Sensei who is in stasis there. The Radical has always been about trying to build a better terran race by splicing the genes of humanity's best and brightest (Charisma of Sebastian Thor, Strategic Brilliance of Solar Macharius, etc.), then slowly spreading them throughout humanity's domains to guide the Imperium to a brighter future. The Throne Agents and Deathwatch know nothing about the Sensei or why the Radical went here.

As it stands their goals can ultimatly be boiled down into one of three

1) Survive and escape the Space Hulk

2) Discover the Radical's interest in the Hulk

3) Cleanse the place of its Xenos taint.

Their will be other factions competing over resources and objectives on the Hulk - as it stands right now I have 6 major factions they will have to contend with...

• Radical Inqusitor's Agents - The agents of the Radical Inquisitor which will be trying to discover the locale and capture the Sensei. They are led by the Radical's most trusted agent and hit-man.
• Trespar and the Children of the Future - Six Renegade Astartes that have led their heavily-mutated Chaos undivided cult to the hulk on a divine vision to raid its treasures and corrupt the mighty Imperial Weapon within.
• Rogue Trader & Demiurg merchants infiltrated by Genestealer Cult - A Rogue Trader and Demiurg (That's right...Squats) Merchant that were battling when they got caught in the Hulk's wake and sucked in. They appear an excellent resource of supply and infilitration but it is only too late that the Throne Agents realize that the groups are a front for a potent cult of Genestealers led by a Magus & Patriarch.
• Experimental Tau ship - Technically from the 4th Expansion and from the earliest years of the 42nd millenia, in an attempt to mimic the efforts of Navigators a Tau ship was designed for long-range warp jumps but wound up on the hulk. Not only are they on the wrong end of the galazy, but the fickle nature of Warp has catapulted into the past.
• Ork Freebootaz - THEYZ LOOKIN FER A RITE GOOD STOMPIN!!!! DA ARCH-ARSONIST OF CAEHALN BE LEADIN DA BOYZ!!!11!!!1!
• Eldar Farseer - The fate of his craftworld is inextricably linked with what is about to occur on the Hulk. They are a mysterious and beneficient presence at first, and will eventually contact the team to offer an alliance: The throne agents help the Farseer's team and the Farseer takes them through the Webway to wherever they choose. Unfortunatly, the Craftworld he hopes to save is already destroyed, and a section of it can be found as part of the cyclopean bulk of the voidborn detritus.

There will of course be random warp horrors and smaller ship-specific threats to deal with - but these are the major players who are all (unkowingly) after the same things. Factions will be contending with each other behind-the-scenes and as some weaken others will grow stronger and the threats to the players can ramp up proportionatly.