Right now my first campaign has run two sessions. Acolytes in the campaign work covert missions for Inquisitor Globus Vaarak of the Ordo Heriticus. So far, the cell consists of :

Hack -a void born sanctioned psyker who likes to use his growing pschic abilities to hinder his enemies.

Praetia -an arbitrator from Scintilla, skilled inverstigator and expert with shotguns

Attilas -an Imperial Guardsman turned mercenary, native of Scintilla, expert with a variety of weapons

Nihilus -an priest of the Machine God hailing from a forge world in the Calixis sector. He is involved with the Cult of Sollex and knows almost as much about weapons as Attilas.

Grendal -an assassin taken from a feral world at a young age and raised by the Moritat.

As their first case, the cell finds themself investigating a cult hidden within the noble House of Ulthar. Hack, Praetia, and Attillas started by investigating the disappearance of a novice priest visiting House Ulthar, and while the trio tracked their movments, Nihilus and Grendal lead a team of commandos on a mission to penetrate House Ulthar's castle. Nihilus and Grendal intended to capture a member of House Ulthar and question them.

Hack, Praetia, and Attlus found themselves fighting thugs hired to kill the missing novice priest. During the fight, Hack used the flash bang power to blind the four thugs, and he followed up by jamming the weapons held by two of the thugs. Attilus and Praetia shot the two thugs with jammed weapons. One two remaining thugs, still blind from Hack's flash bang, lashed out with his automatic rifle. His wild spray of gunfire killed his partner, and Attilus finished off the crazed thug with las shot to the face. Left without survivors to question, Praetia began questioning bystanders for information about the thugs.

Nihilus and Grendel followed a path through the underhive into tunnels beneath Ulthar Keep. With in the a vault-like room beneath Ulthar keep, Nihilus and Grendal discover a temple dedicated to demon worship, and they choose to set charges to blow up the temple. House Ulthar guardsmans stuble across the insertion team. Though an intense fire fight ensues, a well-aimed las shot from Nihilus cooks the ammunition and grenades hanging from the chest of one of the House Ulthar guard. The resulting explosion claims the lives of the House Ulthar guardsman.

Valeria Ulthar, a young heir to the wealth of the trade house, gives into curiousity and seeks the source of the commotion. Recognizing Valeria from pictures shown during a briefing, Grendal incapacitates Valeria. WIth a bound and gagged Valeria hanging over his shoulder, Grendal leads Nihilus and the insertion team back into the Under Hive of Scintilla. Meanwhile, Hack, Praetia, and Attilus find a witness who tells them the thugs come from a gang who make their home in the Under Hive.

The mastermind behind House Ulthar's connection with the Brotherhood of Horned Darkness discovers Valeria Ulthar is missing. Unaware he faces the might of the Inquisition, he orders House Ulthar guard to pursue the insertion team into the Under Hive. He allerts thugs in this employ the join in hunting the insertion team, and he contacts a friend who will be the big bad for the entire campaign. I'm still working out details on the friend, but I know he's a villian who combines subtle manipulation with a flair for the dramatic.

I"m still have trouble on that ultimate villian. I've decided someone who is charming, subtle, and tends to blend in. He prefers to work through others, but he stays close to the action so he can watch his careful planning pay off. As a devotee of Tzeentch, he believes careful planning and subtle manipulation will acomplish more than direct confrontation, but I'm not sure how to play this kidn of villian in my campaign without aggrivating the players. There's a careful balance here, and I want to hit on it.

dwraley said:

Ah, but if he doesn't aggravate the players at all, he's not that bad of a bad guy.

If you don't want him to be in direct conflict with the characters all the time, simply have them go on a few seemingly unrelated quests and after a couple or three of those, have their Inquisitor inform them that the main villain has increased his influence and that, despite all efforts to the contrary, everything they've done seems to have only helped him.

How exactly he's benefited from their actions will depend on what exactly they've been up to, but you should be able to spin just about anything into a bonus for him if he's devious enough.

That seems like a wise way to handle the matter. One of the villians already in the campaign is rather difficult to kill, despite the fact his stats aren't overwhelming in any department besides Fellowship and Intelligence. So having him manipulate events from behind the scenes makes a great deal of sense.