So the Kill Team has just discovered a fully functioning STC, it will quickly become apparent that it has been tainted by Xenos. There is a group of AdMEch on the way with the firm intention of destroying the device that they see as an Alien Heresy, meanwhile the Deathwatch have initital orders to secure the find (although at this stage their superiors don't know what it is).

Question is where do I go from here. Myself and my brother were talking about this and we came to the conclusion that a fully working STC even if untainted could destroy the Imperium or usher in a new Golden era.

But thoughts are welcome.

*SPOILERS*

Ive got to say I honestly don't see the Ad Mech rushing to destroy an STC if there is even the slightest chance that any piece of it could be salvaged. They destroy worlds just to get part of a print out from an stc. I would consider the inquisition much more likely to try to destroy it personally. Having said that opinions on xenos tech tend to depend on the individual rather than the organisation, like some ad mechs like it, some don't, some inquisitors like it, some don't.

yes an STC device is probably one of the most influential plot pieces you can put into a campaign, as you say it is capable of very likely bringing down whole sectors of the imperium, for example the iron men STC from the fist gaunts ghosts book could well have seriously messed up the whole sabbat crusade. Or usher in a new age of peace and prosperity, although personally I would never write that into a plot for this game. What if Ordo Xenos Inquisitor A knows a thing or two about the Xenos that have tainted it and thinks he can reverse the taint, or that the taint shouldn't be reversed and makes it better. He could escape with a data wafer and follow up missions could be trying to track him down before he can pass it on to his likeminded contacts within the mechanicum. Or even better than that Inquisitor B could have discovered knowledge about a heretical cult within the mechanicum but hasn't been able to draw them out, but he suspects that Inquisitor A has contacts with them but hasn't been able to confirm it. You could track Inquisitor A to the handoff point and then the PC's go in guns blazing in a good old fashioned sting operation. They would have to fight an inquisitor and his retinue as well as a bunch of technologically advanced heretics, I bet you could make that quite interesting. maybe they even have some xenos battle suits that enhance strength and protection to super human levels to provide a nice challenge to marines.

AdMech isn't a very solid and single-minded organization. While there are certainly groups within AdMech that want to destroy everything xenos have ever touched there are also groups that are willing to sanction the use of xeno-tech. There is quite a large amount of "sanctioned" xenotech in use within Imperium and AdMech explorators actually actively search for those pieces... So you could actually stick the Kill Team in middle of two or more AdMech factions fighting for the control of that xeno-infested STC.

Visitor Q said:

You are not politicians. You are not people in this for your own personal gains. You are all loyal members of the Adeptus Astartes, and you have orders. Your orders are to secure the find. So follow them, return the STC to your superiors, and let your superiors handle the politics. If the Ad-mech come knocking, ask for their contact details so you can include them in your report.

You are members of the Adeptus Astartes working for the Holy Inquisition. If they attack you, their heresy is obvious.

The only possible exception is if the STC is an immediate threat.

Just to clarify basically the Kill Team are part of an unusually large Deathwatch assault against the Orks on a mining world. During the conflict they are told to meet with an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor who seems to have found himself under fire from orks. When the PC's arrived they found both Inquisitor and Orks dead. Inquisitor was killed by Orks the Orks by what appears to be an incredibly powerful albiet precise lance strike.

DeathWatch are ordered via vox to complete whatever mission the Inquisitor was carrying out and then extract themselves as soon as possible and to return to the main battle. The PC's have realised that the Inquisitor was looking folr the tomb of a dead Xenos. they have found the tomb and with it an STC.

At this point a group of AdMech have arrived.

Now I have already determined that the AdMech belong to an extremist anti xenos faction who wish to destroy the STC out of hand. The Pc's orders are to bring back STC to DeathWatch command (although at this stage their superiors don't know what the PC's have recovered).

I realise that the Deathwatch PC's will follow their initital orders but I was more wodnering where I as GM should go in terms of the meta plot.

The way I see it there are a number of issues

1) The STC will as mentioned be found to be tainted by Xenos 'software'. Can any of the information it produces be trusted to be free of heresy.

2) If it is handed over to the AdMech in the long run that could be disasterous for the Imperium. The AdMech could potentially seek to split altogether now that they hold the keys to the Dark Age of Technology

3) Equally if the AdMech as a whole learn of the discovery it could be disasterous. Either they would see the STC as a dangerous heretical Xenos trap or alternatively as a threat to their existence. Afterall it won't take too long before some bright spark in the Inquisition realises that with a working STC the Imperium doesn't need the strange, and frankly border line heretical Machine Cultists anymore.

4) Finally the Deathwatch may be concerned that such an item may lead to a time of strife and war even taking into account this is the 40K universe we are talking about. Afterall the Dark Age of Technology was a time when men stood tall and arrogant and thought of themselves as gods and delved into secrets best left forgotten. It was a time of Abomniable Intelligence and even treaties with Xenos.

Visitor Q said:

1 - The Ad-Mech are likely to spend centuries, if not longer, studying it to make sure it is safe to use. So they will find any taint.

2 - There are two reasons that keep the Ad-Mech in the Imperium: They need the raw manpower to help defend them from other threats, and they believe that the Emperor is linked to the Omnisiah. The first won't change much* and the second won't change at all (unless a sect that disagrees gets the STC). Why would the AdMech want to leave ?

3 - When the Ad-Mech learn about the STC, they will want it. If the person with it won't had it over, they will move in to take it by force. And by force, we are probably talking about Titan legions. Only an Istvaanian would want the Ad-Mech using force here.

4 - So the DW should find a sect of the Ad-Mech that they can trust not to go down those lines, and give the STC to them.

*Any weapon plans they find are likely to be harder to produce than a lasgun and, while they are going to be better weapons, they aren't going to be sufficiently better to replace the guard with a smaller number of better equipped troops.

Visitor Q said:

If it was supposedly a FULL STC system, then realistically, Mars would be sending a fleet, and entire Chapters would be being scrambled. Do you mean a single 'new' STC design for something?

I'm not here to call into question another GM, but I do feel you may have severely underestimated the importance of an STC machine, functional, tainted, or otherwise. Mars would mobilize in force, as well as many Marine Chapters, and The Council of Terra. It is basically the single most important thing the human race has ever developed... and they lost them.... and forgot how to make more. Tainted by xenos or not, it would be the most important thing in all the Imperium, short of the Emperor himself. I like the idea of using something like this in a campaign, but it should be the primary focus of every mission in the foreseeable future.

I think there was a Black Library novel where two guys discovered a functioning STC data-wafer with pattern for combat knife inside. They got rewarded by a whole planet of their own for each. If STC-pattern for combat knife is worth two planets a full, functional STC would be worth... I don't know... Anything and everything?

Polaria said:

This. The overwhelming majority of STC data discovered by the Imperium and the Adeptus Mechanicus is fragments and old print-outs. The Rhino as we know it isn't even a "pure" STC, but rather derived from pieced-together knowledge taken from an unknown number of data-fragments and locally-adapted hard copies (because the original STC databases didn't just tell you how to make something, they told you how to make a version of something that was adapted to your particular needs and surroundings, out of whatever local materials were available).

Finding even a tiny fragment of STC data is sufficient to set you up for life and put the Adeptus Mechanicus into a frenzy of theomechanical debate as they contemplate the influence of this new insight into their canon of STC designs.

Visitor Q said:

1) Except for the extremist factions on either end of the spectrum, Ad Mech would carefully test *any* found STC for taint. Of course none of it can be trusted, so it must be checked carefully over centuries if not longer.

2+3) The mainstream Ad Mech believe their Omnissiah is on Terra, along with most extremists. Not a chance they're abandoning Him. The rest of the Imperium relies hopelessly on the Ad Mech, so equally they're not turning on the cogboys without an incredible reason. And an STC they can't use and can't keep against Titan Legions probably isn't a good enough reason.

I used an intact STC library (plus additions from a human group who weathered the DaoT) as a end of campaign goal in Rogue Trader. In the epilogue, the party got to name their price. New High Lords of Terra were raised and more.

4) And a source of weapons against same xenos, tempered by ten millenia and more of hard won wisdom. The Deathwatch use xenotech and archaotech forbidden to many. They're hardly likely to automatically discount a fully STC library.

Delacross said:

I understand the importance of a working STC!

The Ad Mech Priests who are on the trail of it are an ultra extremist sect. To them the fact that there is a xenos tainted STC represents the most outragous of heresies. They want it destroyed.

It is exactly because the Imperium would focus all there attention onit that I introduced it in the first place.

As for making it the focus of every mission. It is presently in the hands of the Deathwatch and they are not rushing into anything.

[*Any weapon plans they find are likely to be harder to produce than a lasgun and, while they are going to be better weapons, they aren't going to be sufficiently better to replace the guard with a smaller number of better equipped troops].

I disagree with this. The whole point about the STC's was that it made technology easy to reproduce given pretty much whatever materials you had to hand and without any prior knowledge of the relevant science involved.

As for why the Mechanicum might split from the Imperium or vice versa, at the moment it seems to me that the Imperium and the Adeptus Mechanicus are locked together in a marriage of conveniance. The Emperor as Ommnisah is more or less a convenient fiction to prevent a full blown religious war. If however one side or the other had accsess to a fully workign STC then suddenly the balance of power shifts dramatically.

The Imperium might abandon the Mechanicum simply because they now have the ability to reproduce whatever machines they need. It might be around this time that the Imperium starts questioning why some strange machine cultists who have some very strange dare I say heretical ideas abotut he Emperor and humanity in general have so much influence. The Adeptus Mechanicus might abandon the Imperium because they have now found the mother load and a new era for the cult to expand. perhaps they still retain the Emperor as a figure head and seek to launch a crusade of conversion in his honour.

To be clear at the moment the fact that an STC has been discovered is known only to a dozen or so DeathWatch marines. The AdMech who knew of its (possible) existence are dead.

NB:

I am putting out scenarios and possibilities here for rpging potential not what is definitely going to happen. Afterall it might end up being a massive love in and the Imperium and AdMech work together to bring back the Golden Age of Technology. Horray! Imperium wins.

But where is the fun in that?

Well a full and working STC would only give the faction with it a chance of survival, considering the array of opposition against humanity at the dusk of the 41st millennium. Golden age? Not for some time!

Decessor said:

True enough.

I am certainly not going to be rushing into any massive canon changing plots just yet. So far the STC has been spirited away to the Watch Fortress and the PC's sworn to secrecy. They are finishing off the campaign against the orks but no doubt the question of the STC will rise soon.

What is an STC? some of the acronyms I don't know yet. this is one.

STC is "Standard Template Construct".

awesome, that grants so much understanding. thx

For those unfamiliar, this is a useful link: http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Standard_Template_Construct_(STC) and http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/STC

Xenotech has an odd place in the Empire, and xenos 'taint' is a different beast than chaos taint. The way I see it is the DW would probably repot its existence back to the High Lords, and hand it over to them. Then the central organization of Mars (meaning not spliter factions that wanted to blow it up) would probably start their 1,000 research project on it. The scope of the STC, once it's found and secured, is outside of even the mighty Deathwatch if you ask me. The Deathwatch deals with local incidents that could have galactic impact, but deals with them before they get too far off the ground, and a fully functional STC would definitely change the galaxy (all in due time).

If you're running in the reach and running it around 817, who is to say that when they secret the device off to Mars/Terra, it's not studied for the next 82 or so years and is one of the key reasons the 999 M41 date is so mytical and important- maybe M41 IS when the Age of the Empire ends, and something else emerges, all thanks to the efforts of a Kill Team in the Reach.

Though given that impact, you might want some of the final adventures of the campaign to involve the Kill Team personally escourting it, and having various forces arrayed to stop them, might make a nice epiloge to the campaign, and could speak to why the Achilus Crusade was so important after all and why Achilus himself was surrounded with such mystery- perhaps the crusade was not in fact to reclaim worlds for the Empire, but to reclaim the STC, and thus the Imperial Golden Age.

woops! mistaken post, and can't delete...sigh....nothing to see here!