No worries

I definately think the players first passage through the outer wards is worth being a big focus of a game session. It's so weird and distinctive and atmospheric. Maybe even done in flashback if the players need to go straight into the action for their first game, or maybe they are sent to their first mission prior to their formal swearing-in because of its urgency etc.

Or perhaps the players have been passing through the labyrinthine clockwork with ease for some time.. till someday, perhaps with a new team member and/or npc in tow their way becomes a great trial in itself! Added to the struggle just to find their way as a group will be the tension of what is causing them the difficulty.. is the new team member not a true servent of the emperor? Or has one of the marines started to lose their faith in the emperors light? Is there something wrong with the accompanying inquisitor? Or is there something going on with the outer wards themselves and their mysterious purpose? Or could the emperor be guiding them astray for a purpose.. with them discovering some enemies of the watch who've been lost in the wards for centuries preparing to destroy some vital component of the wards themselves!

Battybattybats said:

That seems like a horribly naive thing to leave the watch stations defenses based on, especially as the true origins of the Omega Vault are unknown. "It is said" isn't a valid thing to make policy on. After all I'm sure it was said that Horus was the emperor's most loyal servant. I just can't see the inquisition or the death watch leaving things up to. "It was said."

Also it's quite possible if you want to preserve the first trip through the watch fortress gates of Erioch they could have been sworn in at one of the other death watch watch fortresses and put immediately to work eventually being brought back to Ertioch once their ready for a debrief.

Thanx for the further idears, Batty! Keep 'em comin'!

And, yes, Lurker, you have a fine point....but, we could assume that the Watch Commander has things a bit better figured out than the writers behind Erioch and the Omega Vault....that he knows more than we players have been told....

....and, just to point out, we 21st century humans actually do have a system of policies based upon 'it is said' - our whole legal system is founded on such 'naivete', if you will. But perhaps I should not expound further....

My way of thinking is that there are, indeed, things going on that the marines are aware of that we players just have not been told. Like how the outer mazes of Erioch work....or how Watch Commanders screen Black Shields...because these are clearly sooo wide open to abuse by, say, Alpha Legionnaires, that it is truly naive, i feel, for us to assume the space marines have not established some form of security.....

....of course, I have no real idea WHAT that might be....

I'm reminded now of a novel in which an Ultramarine warship was told in no uncertain terms to stay the f!#k back from the Fortress Monastery of another sm chapter....all loyalists, all friends; but nevertheless, the Chapter took NO risks and did not allow the ultramarines warship anywhere near their monastery...THAT is the kind of security I would expect of the space marines....so I assume suchlike goes on with the DeathWatch, too.

No feel free, I wanna hear where a reviewable situation of evidence, testimony, and proceedure compares to a bit of superstition and rumore. Don't worry I'll wait while you try and link something together.

This is the Grimdarkfuture, they regularly toast planets where the infection of chaos or the alien has run too deep consigning billions of "innocents" to the fires to prevent the planets fall. The notion that they would just accept Blackshields into Enioch based solely on whether they can make it through the grinding maze (and remember space marines are hard wired to be without fear, so most of the paralyzing indecision portion of the watch fortress doesnt work.

I mean when you think about it, this notion of huge clock like grinding mechanisms grinding away at the entrance to the watch fortress threatening to crush the unwary at any moment works until you remember they have to get large scale materials within, they have to get captured Xenos through the gate, they have to get Dred's through the gate, hell they likely have to get heavy vehicles through it.

The maze, like the blackshields, were just something that they hung in space (potentially by two different writers) made some very specific statements about, and let it go. I'm all for whimsy in some things, but at some point the setting has to work for the waging of war on the emperor's enemies. Because that's the only bedrock truth, there is only war.

and war...war never changes. Oh wait, wrong series.

In the novel Phalanx, there is a "chapter less" marine, a former Crimson Fist that refused to be demoted after loosing a battle to a traitor chapter and instead droped the crimson fist to go on a quest, to find and destroy Sarpedon (he is an ******* but still a material for black shield).

Captain Uriel Ventris was exiled from the Ultramarine with Sergeant Pavonis and sent forth to battle in chaos. This could have led to a black shield since uriel already had a DeathWatch training (which actually proved to be the reaqson he was exiled, he did not follow the Codex as written by Guillaume).

p.s. With the amount of Librarian, psyker, chaplains and battle training,hypno indoction, etc. You have to be pretty hard core to hide the fact you are a chaos. They probably use bunch of devices that will let them know if you are corrupted and what not.

My guess is most black shield are SM who where exiled or left because of a great shame. (Fraternising with Tau, trying to find peacefull solution to a chapter honor duel, loosing an honor duel for the right to the 1st charge on X assault, with the amount of philosophy chapter "lock" themself in, there ar eplenty of ways to create "loyal" black shield way before redeemed traitors one and the hidden traitor is kind of wierd, they say they are not asked about their origin but they probably go trough somekind of deep psyker probbing to insure the motive is to die for the Emperor at the very least.

Well, Lurker, I was simply letting slip an ever-so-delicate jab at the fact our legal system is based on 10 little rules in a popular Book detailing supernatural occurences...., since i eventually rub everyone the wrong way, i felt it wise not to expound too vociferously....

And, I agree, these idears were probly just "hung up in space" (much like bricks aren't ) with little in-depth thought....but....I can fit these idears into my perception of the grimdark....conceptually, i think they're sound....it's just they didn't give us anything concrete to go on (which seems to be standard procedure)...leaving the details to us....

(I'm more comfortable with Black Shields than the gears 'n clockwork of the ancient Erioch machine; but i think both could work.)

We just need to brainstorm some good idears for these things, to make 'em work. For the entry maze, i'd be inclined to write up a chart/table to be rolled upon for navigating thru (since it changes all the time, any normal idea of a map seems impractical). It would also have to test the mettle of those venturing through. Presumably, there might be a secret, quick way thru? And it would have to be foolproof, xenosproof, chaosproof. Any further thoughts?

lurkeroutthere said:

Yes, this is the grimdarkfuture.. a world ruled by superstition, where technology is understood with mysticism not science, where people pray to machines as maintanence, where they feed the machine rather than refuel it. We can find all manner of examples of irrationality or disputes as to effectiveness in real human history after all a current superpower relies on polygraph tests as part of it's security screening considered so unreliable as to be considered worthless in many of the worlds courts of law, one or the other is clearly foolhardy! A future ruled by such extremes of such superstition, a future which refers to the technological height of humanity as the Dark Age of Technology, is going to have all manner of holes in it's reasoning. And worse... the world of 40k has many of these superstitions manifest as real, from divine healling of technology (the emperor curing a lame Titan Legion Knight on his arrival on Mars with a touch of his hand and the words "Machine heal thyself" for example) through to Ork tech which shouldn't function at all and which often is missing vital components. In the grimdarkfuture everything is superstition, and much of that superstition works!

As for prisoners and heavy items and the maze... i expect those are teleported in. Certainly the heavy items could be teleported in, perhaps archaic teleporters that can't transport living tissue so anything organic goes through the maze. A prisoner carried in statsis by marines could be carried by the faithful through the maze. Some parts of the maze involve gargantuan cogs and spindles, so paths would exist that a dreadnought, at least a faithful dreadnought, could traverse. Also many materials would be stored outside the maze, where the many ships are docked.

Zappiel said:

LOL actually the claim our laws are built on those 10 rules is itself a superstition. As much of our legal system stems in fact from pagan civilisations legal systems such as the legal system of Babylon Greece and Rome. But enough wandering aside.

The clockwork could be a complex psy-field generator attuned to the wavelengths of the astronomicon so that it moves and shifts relevant to the degree of the maze-walkers attunement to the emperor himself, i.e. a mechanistic version of their faith in him and devotion to his will. The cogs and gears constantly refining the shape of the complex field and alligning to literally block the passage in (or.... out!) of anything oppossed to the emperors will while straightening the path of those most in line with it.

Perhaps it was not originally attuned to the emperor though... perhaps someone, possibly even a primarch or maybe even the emperor himself, re-tuned the wards to his psychic signiature? Perhaps it could be re-tuned again, or maybe there are ways to get past the mechanism that no human has ever known about... but older beings may!

Perhaps while in stasis a prisoner could be carried within but in their ignorance when stasis turned off they could be adding impurities into the sacred psy-field resulting in slow corruption or destabilisation of the field and the wards? As the cells and chambers fill and those living in the fortress breed it could be slowly damaging the function of the wards. Perhaps this is even the mechanism that speeds the opening of the vault?

A chart/table sounds like an awesome idea! it should have a simple modifier system so that if the players are acting extra-loyal lately they will have a better chance of an easier time while if one or more are plagued with doubts it may skew them down difficult paths. Perhaps even in stasis or dead a prisoner or trophy might make the going more difficult or present challenges to the marines.

(Too many answers to read; hopedully no one else said this exact thing) One would assume that the easiest solution would be to give it over to the higher-ranking DW Apothocary. With their expanded records of all the Imperium's gene seeds, they could likely identify who it came from (Chapter), and if it is in pure, usable order. If it can be used, it could be secretly returned to it's home chapter, possibly by another Marine returning home from service with the DW, or by an Inquisitor, the Apothacary, or whoever, and reused as it is. If the Apothacary can't identify it, which is unlikely, it would probably be stored, till another Marine came through with similar gene-seed, or more likely if it were tainted, then it would have to be regrettably destroyed.

More than likely, though, he would ID it, and have it discreetly returned to its Chapter of origin; almost any Marine returning home would accept the solemn responsibility of carrying his Battle Brother's gene-seed home, too, if the Apothacary can't do it, himself.

indeed, an idear has been inspired in me head.....given the DeathWatch Chapter's use of seconded marines from (almost) all (of) the other chapters, the Deathwatch oughta have the most wide-ranging records of geneseed outside Mars/Terra.....a valuable target for enemies of the Imperium....not something any random bad guy would be after, but someone like Fabius Bile...he'd have the wit and resources to bust into a watch fortress and loot records....possibly with dark eldar assistance...could start a whole webway war....can the DeathWatch win the Harlequins to their side??? good luck...

I think its a combination of Chaplain and Apoth figure out who it belongs to. In many cases though, the Black Shield is on his own bc his chapter had been wiped out. So there would be nobody to return it to.

In other cases, the Chappy and Apoth would simply return it to a parent chapter.