After spending the last several sessions not knowing what the hell is going on in Tattered Fates, I am going to give the PC’s in my campaign a significantly more straightforward scenario but I am looking for a bit of advice regarding the intro.

The premise of the scenario will be quite straightforward. ‘The Churgeon’ of Edge of Darkness fame has appropriated a genestealer for research purposes. With an interest in the genetic alteration created by the stealers ‘bite’, she has prepared a base on a back water, semi medieval world with the intention of creating a controlled brood. This has gone terribly wrong after one of her agents became infected and released the stealer. When the PC’s arrive on the plant, the churgeon and her team will be dead (with the exception of the infected one) and the stealer will have relocated to some caves beneath a village which has been completely infected. The brood is still fairly immature with several first generation hybrids and one second generation hybrids.

I want to come up to come up with an intro that achieves the following
1. Gets the PC’s to the planet to investigate without telegraphing stealer activity. (The characters know nothing about stealers but the players certainly do)
2. Limit weaponry to some degree (although obviously there is a risk that they will struggle when they confront the stealer)

The ideas I have had do not work fully
1. The defacto governor (king on the planet who knows he needs to tithe a quantity of a certain material to the ‘lords from above’ but is ignorant of the general imperium) reports potential mutants. But why would he not just have wiped them out (or tried to)
2. An orbiting surveillance station identifies an incoming ship that matches a ship that the churgeon was suspected of fleeing on when her last ‘experiment’ was discovered. I would prefer this to be unmanned but would it not require an astropath? Also, why would the churgeon not have destroyed it?

I would like the PC’s to investigate the village first to notice the strangeness.

Suggestion/comments would be appreciated

Hi there

1) Getting them onto the planet without screaming "GENESTEALER!"
Well, I think you already mentioned it yourself. The pc get briefed that a ship that was known to hold the Churgeon visited the world (Astropath Message from the Orbital Station). I would not make it an unknown ship, so. Ships that do not identify themselves and aren´t listed with the Imperium will be attacked on sight/treated as pirates (as far as I know).

The Mission:
a) Find the Churgeon or be very-very-very sure that she is not on the planet
b) If she is there, capture or kill her and any possible minions of her. What ever she is working on: capture or destroy it.
c) Report back via an Astropath (either provide an NPC or have an Astropath in the king´s capital)

2) Limit weapons
The pc are to go undercover. Otherwise, there search might tipp-off the Churgeon and will make locating here much much more complicated (normally, nobody cares for the planet strangers with off-world technology automatically gain much attention).
Thereby, the pc are to only take weapon/armor with them that is either from the local tech-level; can easily be mistaken for the local tech-leve (i.e: Mono-Swords; un-activated E-Weapons) or are easy to conceal (most pistols).

3) Why does the Governor not wipe out mutants?
The mutant populace is part of the tithe. For some reason (perhaps a warpstorm some millinum ago or do to some strange radiaton from the sun) the world produces are rather high number of minor mutants. Those are herded in as the tithe ships come and are given over to them... a world some systems away is in need of cheap, disposable labour (for the mines; the removal of nuclear waste; whatever).

4)The ship
Never ever use unmanned ships. RT established it that ships have thousands of crew men. The ship was a jump-trader that passed for trading primitive equipment for fresh water, vegetables and fruits. The ship is heading further out to the edges of the Imperium. They might have traded some cheap made objects for what they needed. They might even have bought Slaves/Serfs to have more ratings/replace gone ratings. Hack, perhaps so many ships stop by to buy ratings from the Lords and Fiefs that THIS is the reason why the king rather records them (to sell them off later) instead of killing them outright!. There is no real trade, so, since this world has nothing to offer which would not already by claimed as tithe

5) Investigation the village
Which village? Anyway, either the pc can learn that the shuttles from the jump-traded landed near said village (information can be obtained from the orbital station) or this was one among several villages.

Second option: place the "Village" near the Hide-out you plan the pc to find the corpses of the Churgeon and crew in. If the village is within a day travell, it is natural to check it.

ADVICE: Give the pc some means of fast transportation. A hover-vehicle. But make sure they only use it at night and hide it during the day.

Suggestion/comments would be appreciated

As far as why the king didn't try to wipe them out himself; maybe he did. Maybe he sent two dozen of his best men to eradicate the inciters and none of them returned. Scouts report the mutants are still entrenched in the village. Maybe they've even spotted one or two of their men among the mutants (although I wouldn't mention that until the PCs are on planet, after it's too late to get better gear, just in case they pick up on the 'stealer hint.) Perhaps the king mentions that detail after the PCs arrive, but not in his original report. Or perhaps they don't hear about it until they meet up with one of the king's forward scouts closer to the village.

As for limiting gear, uness you have a pretty high rank groupvery very wealthy group that has purchased lots of equipment there really is no need to limit it, Genestealers are a hard beast to put down. Their speedagility are frightening as well as if they engage it in the cave system in the dark it will have suvival thriller written all over it (a la alien).

If the king is largely unaware of the Imperium as are his people, if strangers show up toting gunspower weapons they will be seen to be Godly, shamans, mysticsdemonsdevils, punishment from on high, the local minstorum may use the players arrival to reinforce the God-Empourer.

I would allow the players to decide on what level of weaponry they take with them, that way when they face the genestealer with only primitive weaponsonly melee weapons it's their own dam fault, but if they insist on bring heavy weaponspower weapons have then treated like gods if they show them off, wizards of the highest regard to be worshipedfearedsee what they do,to make the genestealer fight still interestinga challenge do it in a dark, dank cave that has lots of iron in that throws off auspexwith the dark conditions the players will need to bring the light.

Have fun

You know, in theory, you could just have your players "stumble" into this situation blindly. Have them stay overnight in this village and planning to leave next morning, but then they notice that there is something odd going on with those people and proceed to investigate, at first probably only suspecting a weird death cult or a rogue psyker or things like that.

Of course you'd still need to have a reason for how the players get to said village, but I think this is where the ship rumour could come in handy. Just have the players land in the spaceport, have them question the local authorities and then get pointed towards some mountain or similar landmark when they ask around (perhaps the bad guy had local people help him transport supplies to his base there). When the players proceed to travel to this supposed hideout, the village will be on their path and the perfect place to rest at nightfall. Cue the creepy horror scenario.

Should the players really opt to forego any rest and just travel through the village (which is possible, given that players are players and never do what you plan them to do), come up with something that awakens their interest in this place. This could be as simple as a scream and a horribly mutilated body.

(PS: what is it with this new bug that deletes the words "and" and "or" from people's posts? as if the forum wasn't annoying enough already...)

Just skimmed the post, but about the "limit weapons" thingy this is harder that you'd think.

First of all, it is fairly typical for acolytes to use alot of easily concealable high-tech weapons and armor.

Secondly, even if they do want to bring stuff like heavy bolters etc. it is not necessarily that hard to hide them in vehicles, big bags etc. This means they won't walk around with them all the time, but might well go get their big guns if things get too nasty.

In my experience the few times the acolytes were given the choise between going "light" and stealthy or going "heavy" but more risk the always chose the latter, which turned out well despite added difficulties or dangers.

The only reason to go pure low-tech is if they expect to be frisked and such equipment is deemed heretical or witchcraft on the planet in question.

I would say there is one exception to limiting your players equipment, but your players should be making that choice. A Banquet, an invition to a ball or some other noble shindig, whilst being dressed in finery it's difficult to blend in with noblitly wearing armour, or talk to someone toting a bolter, while most player would want to take them (rightfully) it just doesn't help them to be so obvious.