Hey all,

Question for you regarding the Slaugth. I really like these aliens and am looking to incorporate them into a future endeavour. However, there’s a problem in their design. Slaugth infiltrators, even in human guise, are psychic nulls/blanks, ala a culuxes (sp?) assassin. They generate a field around them that makes others highly uncomfortable and actually makes psykers kind of ill. How exactly have you all dealt with these infiltrators that stick out like sore thumbs?

For background, I’m going to have the explorers stumble across a feudal/renaissance tech level planet. The planet is populated by humans with several major population centers (most cities around 1 mil pop) and numerous smaller settlements. Very earth-like planet, environmentally. The planet is ruled by an overlord (a slaugth master) who is a harsh but fair man.

Many crimes are punishable by death, from the obvious ones (murder, treason, etc) to the lesser ones (large theft, break and enters, etc). Death is always by decapitation, with the heads swiftly whisked away (in preservatives, to be consumed). The people are happy as there is virtually zero crime since the overlord has ruled and are policed by a mysterious group called the Peaceful Children.

The truth of the matter is that the slaugth came to this world about two centuries ago and rapidly assumed command of the various warring city states. They united them, and began a program to create their own enforcers. The population are required to submit a certain tithe of their youth to the overlord’s service, as Peaceful Children. Those submitted to service are basically killed and replaced by slaugth bio-constructs, using the youths’ bodies to create extremely resilient soldiers, virtually immune to most weapons possessed by the relatively primitive humans.

The slaugth eliminated crime through their ability to retrieve memories from brains consumed. They would catch a member of a criminal network, such as a thieves’ guild, consume their brain, and be able to see who that person worked with, thus being able to eliminate entire criminal networks and families with extreme efficiency.

The explorers will come across this world and most likely initially see it as a world they can easily exploit. They’ll want to meet with world leaders, etc. How can I arrange said meetings without the players going “Why is the entire ruling class psychic blanks?!”. They’ve played DH before, and might put two and two together very quickly. Any tips?

-Thulis

they (the slaught) could use holograms, or meatpuppets with miniscule loadspeakers in their mouths, or the could be standing behind a screen !? also you could just invent numerous taboos that disqualified visitors to court to actually approach the rulers ??

hey

! : ?

One million is an extremely high population even for a renaissance level technology, at least with an earthlike mix. Only a handfull of cities reached that level in our history (Rome, Constantinople, Bagdad, Peking and that's about it).

Sanitation and food will be the major problems there - you'll need reliable sources of clean water and an effective sewer system. Those are within a renaissance society's capaciy but will remain major projects. And bringing in enough food will require either bein on a coast, on a navigable river or having a serious canal to bring in ships (Rome had the Tiber to bring in Egypt and north african grain, Constinople sits on the coast, Badgad on the Tigris (or is it the Euphrates ? one of the two) and Peking was linked by canals to the both the northern grain-producing plains and the southern rice-producing areas.

Which means having most major cities atound 1 million inhabitants would require some very favorable circunstances, even if discrete Slaugh infusion of knowledge can help. Building that population level and the infrastructure to support it will take time. Keep the million figure only for a handful of major cities and let other in the one to two hundred thousand.

The technology introduced (sewres, sanitation, etc) coudl be pointers to an alien occupation in a feudal world...

Sewers and running water wouldn't be that out of place - they're within the considered tech level. Throw in some more subtle things that are very unsual on a feudal world like basic antisepsis and some crude antibiotics and other bathtub chemistry. Without ay sort of 'magic' fluff added. It's not very noticeable but seriously unusal. Also make sure thise advances are linked to the ruling class to point the finger at them.

Another option is some sulticated plants and/or food critters that aren't nativ to teh planet and were introduced by the locals. Some satellite-survey grade maps are anotehr option. Basically no blatant 'someone was here' giveaway, but piling little off-key details that no renaissnce level sociey could have on it's own.

Manunancy said:

One thing to remember is that many cultures in the Imperium are anachronistic in terms of technology or society, often due to interference by the Imperium, or as a relic of pre-Imperial/pre-regression civilisation and its accompanying technology. Consequently, seemingly out-of-place technology may have completely innocuous reasons for being there...