I have an idea for an adventure, but I'd like it to be as close to cannon as possible. I imagine a thunderhawk crashed hundreds of years ago on a desolate planet and was forgotten by it's chapter, thus the gene-seed was never harvested from the marines that died in the crash. A heretical group has discovered the crash site and has found a way to harvest the gene-seed from the dead marines preserved corpses and use them to grow other marine organs for implantation. The procedure is horribly inefficient and unstable so the individuals implanted with the new organs come nowhere near to the power of a true space marine.

I was wondering what marine chapters are close to this area of space to allow for a more logical reason of how the thunderhawk crashed there to begin with?

Well you could always use the Black Templar....they have crusades going on all over the galaxy so the chance of running into one of them is far greater than seeing any of the other chapters.

Also I'm not sure but I think that the Dark Angles are near by as in the same segmuntum but other than that the others are halfway across the galaxy.

The Deathwatch or Grey Knights are a good call, too. They're both part of the militant arm of the Inquisition (check the core rulebook, p.248) so it's safe to assume that wherever the Inquisition is, members of those chapters are nearby. I don't know much about the Deathwatch, but the Grey Knights are all psykers.

EDIT:

I should've just checked the first time I wrote. Here are some links:

wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Deathwatch

wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Grey_Knights

That should provide enough to get you running.

antigenius said:

Deathwatch and Grey Knights make a good amount of sense actually. If it was another chapter, as soon as word got out, a squad from that chapter would want to come deal with the heretics personally...though that would cause some very interesting command problems between the squad and the acolytes.

I think I'm going to go with the Grey Knights. The small remainder of psyker abilities work to give the surrounding area a darker feeling. Sparse connections to the warp drawing the wildlife to the crash sight, feelings of strong unease and nausea as the party passes between the overlapping psyker fields.

jareddm said:

I had a single Grey Knight show up in a session once. I did a little work converting the codex abilities of the Grey Knight into DH terms. It made for an extremely powerful character, but you're welcome to the details if you're interested. I'll post 'em later tonight (since I'm at the office right now and, sadly, far away from my gaming library).

antigenius said:

The grey knight idea for the crashed thunderhawk is a pretty good idea with their tight connections to the inquisition. antigenius, I would be really interested in thoes details for your grey knight if you dont mind sharing.

So here's my info on the Grey Knight. The original NPC was a "deus ex machina," sweeping into a room where the PCs were cornered by a roomful of mutants commanded by a daemonhost. He leveled the mutants in two rounds (thanks to some lucky and dramatically appropriate rolls) and banished the daemonhost in the third. It's a first draft, so it might need some work, but all the talents/abilities/etc... were converted from my 4th Edition Codex: Daemonhunters book. For stats, I used the rules from Dark Reign to generate a Space Marine. There's a lot of good material there, especially for the Astartes and their weapons.

Talents/Special Abilities
Fearless - Grey Knight are inured to every manner of horror and death from initiation. They automatically pass Fear checks of 3 or lower. A level 4 Fear check is treated as Level 1.

True Grit - If wearing power armor and armed with a storm bolter, Grey Knights suffer no penalties in close combat.

The Aegis - The ancient power armor is inscribed with hexagrammic wards and is psychically charged by the Knight's own abilities. Minor Psychic powers used against him automatically fail. All other psychic attacks directed against his person require a contest of skill: the Knight's WP vs. the enemy's. If the Knight succeed, the attack has no effect. Otherwise, the attack proceeds as normal (meaning if the attack allows for a saving throw, the knight also gets that chance).

The Shrouding - The Knight's psychic prayers protect him from his enemies. Enemies must treat the Knight as though he has a Fear Rating of 2.

Rites of Exorcism - A Grey Knight's psychic purity is painful to demons. They suffer -10 to Fellowship around him and must pass a WP test to charge.

Additionally, the Knight is considered to have the Psy Rating 3 talent.

Psychic Powers
Banishment
Threshold - 20
Focus time - Half Action
Sustained - Yes
Range - 5m
You focus your devotion to project a psychic field 5m from your body. Any demon within 5m of you suffers -10 to attack.
Overbleed: For every 5 points by which you exceed the Threshold, you extend the Range of this ability by 5m.

Destroy Demon
Threshold - 15
Focus Time - Half Action
Sustained - No
Range - you
Your studious training gives you insight into the weakness of demons. You may reroll any roll to hit a demon for the rest of your turn. You must accept the results of the second roll.

Hammerhand
Threshold - 10
Focus Time - Half Action
Sustained - Yes
Range - you
Your hands crackle with psychic energy. Your Strength Bonus is doubled for the rest of the round. Both your fists count as weapons, though you may not use other weapons such as bolters, Nemesis Force, weapons, etc...

Holocaust
Theshold - 20
Focus Time - Full Action
Sustained - No
Range - you
You project the fire in your soul into a ball of white-hot flame incinerating those around you. Anything, friend or foe, in a 2m radius (centered on you) takes 1d10+5 damage with armor saves taken as normal.
Overbleed: For every 5 points by which you exceed the Threshold, you add 2 points to your damage roll.

Sanctuary
Threshold - 15
Focus Time - Half Action
Sustained - Yes
Range - you
Your faith in the Emperor protects you from the evils of the Warp. You surround yourself in a sphere of psychic energy 2m wide. Demons cannot enter this space nor draw a line of sight through it. Any demon within 2m of you when you begin this power are immediately pushed away until they are 2m from you. Any demon that attempts to cross the barrier is immediately destroyed (demons will inherently sense this thus exempting them from stupidly bum-rushing a Knight and promptly winking out of existence). While this power is active until you cannot move or shoot, but close combat does not break the power.
Overbleed: For every 15 points by which you exceed the Threshold, this power affects an additional ally. They are treated as having a 2m sphere centered on themselves as long as you can draw a line of sight to them.

Scourging
Threshold - 20
Focus Time - Full Action
Sustained - No
Range - 30m
You focus your righteous wrath into crackling energy. This attack deals 1d10+5 damage bypassing up to 5 points of combined Toughness and Armor.
Overbleed: For every 5 points by which you exceed Threshold, add 2 points to your damage roll.

Word of the Emperor
Threshold - 10
Focus Time - Reaction
Sustained - No
Range - you
The teachings of the Emperor lash out from your mind freezing your enemies in fear. You may use this power during any phase, ally or enemy, as long as you haven't used your Reaction for the Round. All enemies attempting to charge you cannot move till the end of the Round. Charging is a Full Action, effectively preventing them from attacking, however if they have an ability that allows them to Charge and perform some other action in the same round, they may still perform the other action.

Nemesis Force Weapons
The write-up in the Codex: Daemonhunters says that a Nemesis Force Weapon's potency is in direct proportion to the psychic might of the wielder. So, as the Knight progresses, the weapon gets more powerful. I handled this by having creating a chart that tied the Pys Rating talent to a specific effect on the Nemesis Force weapon.

Psy Rating 3: +10 STR
Psy Rating 4: Power Weapon (weapon ignores armor saves)
Psy Rating 5: Force Weapon (if the weapon wounds, make a WP test. A success kills the opponent outright. Only works on opponents that have wounds (not vehicles, etc...))

So there you have it. In reading it now it seems pretty well-balanced insomuch as a Grey Knight can be a balanced part of a Dark Heresy game. Enjoy. Let me know how it works for you. Comments and suggestions welcome. Unfortunately, I can't find the Space Marine career that I used to generated the NPC.

Interesting rules there. I'd be tempted though to take the psyker powers away for standard Power Armoured Grey Knights and treat it as a seperate Malleus Disipline for agents on the path to becoming an Inquisitor or for higher up Knights. Grey Knights are not generally known for their Psyker Powers except in desperation when they resort to Holocaust. I'd also be inclined to treat the shrouding as some sort of baffling passive power, perhaps a toned down of "see me not" that affects the damned. EDIT: Actually now I think of it the fear 2 would be close to what i was thinking anyway...I was thinking maybe a WP test to fire on/attack them and big negatives if they fail.

Anyway back on topic theres an old Black Templar Chapel in the system thats long abandoned and a couple of Iron Hand Dreadnoughts guarding some Drusus Shrine (suspisious much?).

As for your plot it's cool but keep in mind Space Marines do not abandon their Brothers and gene-seed lightly so there better be a good reason why.

For people saying Gray Knights are a good idea for a plausable background chapter may I remind them that there is only 1000 Gray knights and while the game may be about the Inquisition every other sector has its own branch of the Inquisition with thier own problems. Gray Knights only make an appearance in the direst of circumstances and would never leave any of their equiptment or fallen behind on anything less than a Daemon world. So unless the OP has plans on setting the game on a hitherto unknown Daemon world which the acolytes have to go to I would give Gray Knights a miss. Also I would steer clear of Gray Knights for the corrupt geneseed story anyway as implanting gray knight geneseed in someone chaos tainted would probably just kill them.

Death Watch are a bit better but still rare. Do any normal Space marines appear in the Eisenhorn or Ravenor books as that is basically next door for a space marine chapter and if not make one up or use the Templars like someone else suggested as they aren't tied down. My problem would be that they would have decayed over any significant period of time like any other human body, after a couple of hundred everything would have decomposed and there would be no more progenoid glands and there is still the fact that marines go to increadible lengths to recover thier dead and equipment so it would have to have been somewhere realy inaccessable to even space marines for them to leave behind.

Sorry if I am being too negative but if you were wanting it to be true to background then there are the concernes I would have.

Kaihlik

I somehow remember two Iron Hands dreadnoughts somewhere in the Calixis Sector...

I don't want to pee on anyones fireworks here but Deathwatch and Grey Knights are a bad idea for the following reasons:

1: Death watch are not 1 chapter but a conglomeration of chapters drawn for all over the Imperuim. Different marines are seconded to the DW for a 10 year service time. If you were going to use a DW marine then he could come from where ever you want.

2: Since there creation, Grey Knights have been secretive and use an unknown geen-seed marker (some say it was taken form the Emperor himself). As a result I see the GK making sure that they retrieve EVERY fallen warrior. It's also worth noting thet the GK succeded where the Primarchs failed. Not 1 GK has ever fallen to Chaos.

What if the crashed thunderhawk was actually from one of the traitor legions and someone was making organs from a warp tainted source with out knowing it?

Also, dont forget that the Ultramarines are the most prolific chapter, they're responsble for approx 80% of the other chapters out there.

So when in doubt, just sling in the Smurfs!

Velvetears said:

Or one of the many millions (a slight exaggeration, I know ) of successor chapters they've spawned over the course of 10,000 years

Actually do forget the Ultramarines as they are literally on the opposite side of the Galaxy. Any chapter you do choose would likely be an Ultramarines successor though.

Kaihlik

Kaihlik said:

*nods*

Which is what i meant by the 80% comment

The vast majority of the Marine forces are Codex based, with reletively few being deviant chapters ~(such as the Spacewolves, Imperial Fists or the Salamanders)~ who are non-codex.

Almost every Ultramarine successor chapter (perhaps with the major exception of the Black Templars) is standard and mundane and pretty much codex in every way but not so rigidly as the UM's themselves.

A UM successor would be the most logical choice, remaining in canon and with the general feel of DH.

Then again, there Is always the option of a ship lost in the warp reappearing ,the crew think a few days or weeks have passed but in reality several hundred or even thousand years have gone by.

Imagine what would happen if marines in mk4/5 armour (Heresy era) suddenly made an appearance? All manner of people would like to get their hands on that equipment, especially if some of the old era technology was there as well, Jetbikes, Robots and other wonders iof lost STC goodness...

Could say it was wreckage from the Crusade when the sector was brought into the Imperium, is there any documentation on what Chapters would have been in the area back then?

Thats one of the things about the descripton of Warp Travel that I dont like is that they always say its possible to arrive before you left or for the journey to take thousands of years in real space but they never really use that. Warp travel almost always works fairly normally other than delays. Would be interesting if someone actually used these elements of warp travel for some interesting story twists but that is another topic.

There are so few chapters with official historys that its hard to pick one that is near the Calixis sector also in the 40K rulebook on the space marine section that shows homeworlds the Calixis sector is covered by the head of a space marine. It would be nice to know if there was any Space Marine chapters that fought along side the original crusade fleet as that might give players a good chapter to use for this sort of thing. There is usually at least a company of marines involved in a major crusade to do the missions that are unsuitable for the guard. Actually a roster for the original crusade fleet would be an interesting thing to have too add some depth to the Calixis sector with a list of guard regiments and Space marine chapters/companies that helped.

Kaihlik

Only Crusades related stuff i can find is from the Wiki..

List of crusades

1. c 781.M31 The First Battle of Cadia. (Codex: Chaos Space Marines 3)
2. 597.M32 Failed attack on defences of Cadia. (Liber Chaotica: Khorne)
3. 909.M32 The Host of Tallomine. Daemon Prince Tallomin leads attack that is crushed by the Space Wolves. (Liber Chaotica: Khorne)
4. c001.M34 Destruction of the Citadel of Kromarch on El'Phanor before crushed. (Liber Chaotica: Khorne)
5. 723.M36 Doombreed, a prince of Khorne declares war on the Adeptus Astartes. The Warhawks and the Venerators are lost. (Liber Chaotica: Khorne)
6. 901.M36 Unknown.
7. 811.M37 The Ghost War (Liber Chaotica: Khorne). The Slaughter of the Blood Angels at Mackan (Codex: Chaos Space Marines 3).
8. 999.M37 Unknown.
9. 537.M38 Unknown.
10. 001.M39 The Conflict of Helica. Iron Warriors fight Iron Hands at Medusa. (Liber Chaotica: Khorne)
11. 301.M39 Unknown.
12. 139.M41 The Gothic War. (Liber Chaotica: Khorne)
13. 999.M41 Attack on Cadia. (Codex: Eye of Terror)

Actually a roster for the original crusade fleet would be an interesting thing to have too add some depth to the Calixis sector with a list of guard regiments and Space marine chapters/companies that helped.

Kaihlik

Sounds like something that would be included in Rogue Trader.

I wasn't familiar with just how far and to what lengths a chapter would go to recover their equipment. Obviously if there was a suite of terminator armor on the thunderhawk, it would be a big expedition, but I thought that for normal Mk. VII armor they would be able to produce more with only a small amount of effort.

After reading everyone's comments, I understand that the Grey Knights wouldn't work as well as I initially thought, and I didn't want to use the Deathwatch because each member would have different gene-seed and different mutations to deal with. I didn't think about using a traitor legion though, that might actually be a better route to go. Possibly World Eaters, as I'm starting to map out the details of the planet, I wanted to go for a feral world that's been cursed by the ommnissiah. I've read on the forums how no one thinks the primitive weapons are useful, so I'm designing the world to have a constant field that is toxic to machine spirits. Or that's how the tech-priest's describe it. Vox goes dead, motors just stop, guns refuse to fire. Anything with any form of machine spirit simply stops working, including the thunderhawk, which is why it originally crashed.

I figure with World Eaters, the mutants that resulted would be seen by the local savage tribes as champions given to them by the emperor. Irony is fun.

Well they would have gone out of their way to recover the Thunderhawk (or as much of it as possible) but also the however many suits of power armour, wargear and whatever as well as making sure they recovered the geneseed. While they can produce power armour it is not easy and they would rather recover a suit than build a new one as the nature of the Imperium is that an older suit may be better made than a newer one.

Kaihlik

I still say that Black Templar is going to be your best bet....they really are all over the galaxy

I would humbly point to Brother Seargant Agamorr of the Deathwatch (from Purge the Unclean ).

His shoulder plate has a symbol of crossed thunderhammers on it. His text entry says that he is a "Full battle brother of the hammers of retribution". Which has to be a successor chapter, and Brother Agamorr is not allowed to disclose the position of their base.

This could either be a parallel to the "Hammers of Dorn" or just be successor chapter of nearly any other chapter. Given the ambiguity of every entry in "Disciples of the Dark Gods" i would suspect that their original founding chapter will never be hardwired into a text. To give Dark Heresy GM´s the opportunity to attach them to any chapter they want, opening more possibilities.

There you go. This is the calixis sector chapter, and i would suspect to see more of it in "Deathwatch".

I was wondering where he was from but our GM is going to run the Purge the Unclean scenarios so I cant read them.

That would actually be a good one to use because you know that they are at least in this area of space as Death Watch tend to be recruited from chapters nearby where they are going to operate, although to say that they are from the Calixis sector is probably pushing it. I think it would have been mentioned already if any of the planets in the Calixis sector were space marine home worlds.

Still until there is a proper confirmation or denial the Hammers of Retribution seem to be a good chapter to use if you want to include Space Marines.

Kaihlik

Up until PtU the Hammers of Retribution didn't exist btw..

But have a link to some niftyness..

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/List_of_Space_Marine_Chapters

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Pictorial_List_of_Space_Marine_Chapters_A-L

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Pictorial_List_of_Space_Marine_Chapters_M-Z

Kaihlik said:

Uhh....at first i thought i spoilered you. But then...well, the info won´t enable you to derail the plot

But youre right, it is not mentioned if any of the planets in the calixis sector are space marine home- or recruiting worlds. But the list of worlds published is not finite and rigid...its just a list of known worlds. In between is enough space to hide small empires. As he doesn´t say where his chapter is based, this could mean they come from a neigbouring sector, this sector or are on a penitent crusade from an other part of the imperium. Or they have a mobile base. Everything is possible.