Its taken a few months and several over hauls, complete story changes and ideas but I've finally settled on a story for the campaign I hope (fingers crossed) to begin within the next 4 to 5 sessions after our current mission finishes and I take over as Gm allowing the current one to experience the game. However before I proceed I hope that some of you more experienced GMs could just take a look over the campaign I hope to run as this will be my first attempt at Gm’ing. I thank you for taking a look at my post and thank you for any replies.

The Overall premise for the campaign is that an Inquisitor is kidnapped by Traitor Legions for information about a hidden silo of weapons(life eaters and over exterminartus weapons but also an artefact that contains a daemon King) seized by Imperials during the Horus Heresy and subsequently forgotten about. The Inquisitor following a line of candy left by the legion ends up on the planet where the Alpha Legion posing as a DW KT successfully kidnap the Inquisitor whilst the other legions are there in an attempt to crush the Imperials so they can open the vaults unharrassed, however they didn’t anticipate the Inquisitor sending off a distress signal. So, the PC Kill Team is sent to retrieve the Inquisitor, not knowing how, why or who took the Inquisitor only that he was on this world helping the Imperial War effort.

When they arrive on the planet they are met by a newly appointed Lord General who is over viewing an Imperial beach landing (ala Operation Overlord) a possible break though in a long drawn out war of attrition. Midway through bringing the KT up to date with the Inquisitors disappearance they are informed there are Traitor Astartes aiding the Heretics (something not known to Imperials at that time) with this new piece of intel the KT is given 2 choices:

1) The LG asks the KT to drop behind the enemy lines and disrupt the defence so the beach landing won’t turn into a blood bath. The will have to destroy artillery pieces, storm bunkers and face off against Traitor Astartes so the Imperials can hopefully push through with more ease. (If they don’t follow this route the Imperials will be slaughtered and the Imperials lines will be left barely defended. A counter attack from the heretics will punch the Imperial lines wide open and cause the KT hell in the long run.

2) If they chose to investigate the Inquisitors disappearance they will, after over viewing the hololithe radar footage they deduce the Inquisitor didn't disappear where the Imperials believe but quite a distance before. Once they land at the newly discovered site they will deduce that the two flanking thunderbolts have been shot down, and the Vendetta had landed as though the pilots had preformed a routine landing, however the two pilots have been slain by bolt weaponry and both the Inquisitor and KT are missing. If the KT do a little searching the find a town with tracks from the crash site leading to it. If they enter the town straight through the centre they are ambushed by the NPC KT who appears to be supported by Alpha Legion. When they survive the ambush they can find a little more about the Inquisitors whereabouts and how he was kidnapped, mainly that the KT accompanying the Inquisitor were actually Alpha Legionnaires. **This option will still be open after they assault the beach head.
Once the ambush is over an investigation of the town the KT will discover a possible location of the inquisitors whereabouts where the beach assault will have more long term implications.

The way I want to run this campaign is quite open ended with as little scripting as possible. After playing in a couple of DH session where we, the PC’s have been little for than an audience for the Gm where the slightest deviation from what he had planned would cause him to intervene and get us back onto where he wants us to be. I hope by giving the PCs a choice it will force them to role play a bit, give them a moral decision, allow thousands to be slaughter or help alleviate the problem etc.

So this is what I’ve got planned in detail up to now. I’m not to keen to rush too far ahead of the KT just in case they deviate from what I have planned for them So things like possible locations for the Inquisitor, traitor dealings and stuff are planned as of now however I do have some notes written down to give me something to work from.

Again, thank you for taking the time to read this rather lengthy post and any comments and advice is greatly appreciated.

Well it looks good to me. I would possibly change the "not anticipated the Inquisitor to send a distress singnal" to "the Inquisitor managed to send a distress signal". The Alpha Legion don't look like the kind of guys to me that wouldn't anticipate something like that, but I could see a resourceful man/woman as an Inquisitor to manage to send it before being overmanned, or managing to send it without being detected.

While the start and middle sections of the campaign were good and flesh out well, the ending felt a little thin. I couldn't get my head around what you had planned for the end. But maybe that's just me.

EDIT: On a re-read I see that you had not wanted to write it out before you knew what the players would do, still it could be interesting to read your thoughts on how you think that it might develop depending on the most likely actions taken by the Kill-Team.

Thank you for a reply Gurkhal.

I thought I'd just mention what I've wrote he is a toned down, to the point summary of the start of the campaign.

What I've got planned for the players is basically a race against time. The longer they take to find the Inquisitor the more corrupted he may become, once they've rescued the Inquisitor (though I have decided where he finally is). Something I don't think i mentioned is that this Inquisitor is the only known person to know and have the access rites to the vault and each of the traitor legions have different motives. Once the KT rescue the Inquisitor they will have to find the vault (which naturally will be behind enemy line, probably under a heavily defended Iron Warrior citadel) and remove the artifact that contains the daemon and destroying the cache of world ending weapons whilst constantly being asked by the IG to lend a hand breaking a line, defending a position etc

As for the beach landing, this affects how much aid the KT can call on the IG for. If they chose not to help the IG like I said before the Traitors will punch through the Imperial lines, the Lord General being slain and the Imperial war effort reduced to a few companies fighting a guarilla war just to survive, A lot of Imperials will be converted (mostly the already demoralised PDF) to the chaos cause, so they might land in a city that was once a haven for Imperials only to find them selves forced into hiding to escape the cults hunting them. I want to encourage mission planning and squad mode so before assaulting a defended position the KT might have to look at records to get a scope of what they are about to Assault less they find themselves in a dead end surrounded by a Iron Warrior kill squad.

As I've said though I dont really wany to plan to far ahead because knowing the group they'll do something totally farfetched that will throw what ive got planned out the window

Hello!

First of all, Good luck on your first time GMing and it is so great you give it a try!

Second, if I can make a suggestion, make those choices more important.

Now, i read your follow up post in which you highlight how time is of the essence, but you never mentioned this in the first post, so making the choice a non-choice. Of course 1) followed up by 2) is the best way to go. You do not want to find yourself in a Chaos planet just because you were too prissy to lend an hand to the IG.

BUT, if doing 1) might compromise your mission.... then THAT is a choice!

Keep in mind at this point, from what you told, the KT has no idea if the inquisitor is even alive, so they do not have a clock ticking over their head so to speak, provide one to them. Maybe the Inquisitor has managed to keep a crypted untraceable communication open. The Alpha Legion has plenty of jammers around, though, so the KT might receive fragments of audio from time to time, clearly from the inquisitor, but no clear location,

The fragments will grow more and more frantic as time passes and he turns to Chaos. Also he will become more and more urgent as the chaos forces get nearer and nearer to complete their objectives.

I approve of the IG asking for assistance ALL the time like you outlined in your second post, make it also seems that the IG is always on the brink of defeat and that the KT help would be invaluable (if they are fighting Chaos forces and Chaos SM, it is probably also true). So that now they know the clock is ticking, they know the inquisitor is alive and they know their mission is urgent... but they also know the IG is in trouble. Make them met and 'befriend' some IG likable officers or commissars and the choice is now much harder.

In shorts, make sure there are pros and cons for all choices you give and that they are at least somewhat evident to the players (it is not nice to give them choices, one with obvious pros and no cons and then have hidden cons spring on them later, of course you can have them work a bit for obtaining all info on the choice, not all has to be as it seems).

Thank you for the reply.

Unfortunately because one of our group is absent the first session I have had to switch the proceedings around. I've decided to have the KT land before the invasion to capture the starport and investigate the ruins of the downed Vendetta the Inquisitor was using first. To give them something else to worry about a recovery team sent by the High Command has also gone missing in a little town near the crash site. When they land they will find 2 DW corpses in the Vendetta and one unconcious marine who's been shot in the head (the PC who isnt here), When the KT enter the town they will find should they look a small outpost with a cage and some other stuff that would suggest the Inquisitor was here before being flown off somewhere. During their time in the town they will be ambushed by Alpha Legion in an attempt to cover their tracks meanwhile receiving a distress call from the High Command asking for help on the beaches. If they manage to defeat the AL they will find clues to the Inquisitors possible whereabouts. What they do from that point will really dictate what happens in the story. From what I can tell they have several avanues to go down:

1) Continue looking for the Inquisitor

2) Help the IG on the beach head

3)Find out who the unconcious marine is, what he's doing here and how the Inquisitor was kidnapped

One thing I was going to mention in the mission briefing was that the IG are losing the war and that capturing the Space port is their only attempt at winning the war. The biggest problem I've got is actually deciding what to do if they dont help on the beach head. I was thinking that if they didnt help then the Heretics would launch a counter attack that would completely smash through Imperial Lines and force the KT back to the HQ to extract the Lord General and his staff which ultimately forces the IG underground. There are some cities that will be vital to stopping the Traitor Legions from getting into the vault (even though I havent designed them yet), maybe if the IG fail they will become almost impossible to get through, which is good as finding the Inquisitor is only half the story, once he's found they have to not only find the vault but find a way to open it (hence why the Inquisitor was going south) and move not only the Imperial weaponry off world but also some of the xeno tech in there, so I suppose if the IG are beaten it will become difficult to get the gear off world.