Alright, I'm formulating a campaign plot that I want feedback on or additional ideas I suppose.
If you've got different kinds of players, that's fine, but I've got people who are happy to subvert some of their own control over the universe for a well-crafted arc rather than allowing them to box themselves into a corner story-wise. So while it'll surely deviate from my plan somewhere, if they get the sense that the puritans are supposed to be antagonists, they won't resist coming around to the radicals.
The PCs are in the service of a puritanical old Inquisitor. As first responders to a rebellion by the forces of a forge world, the Inquisitor and a bunch of Sororitas demonstrate a no-mercy attitude towards the traitors even though they flee when outnumbered and were pretty obviously duped by their commanders. Soon enough, a couple radical Inquisitors and some Relictors show up. The acolytes' Inquisitor is wary but bands together to fight the traitors. In battle the acolytes are separated from their master and shown a different, more logical approach to interrogation by the radicals. They uncover that the rebellion on the planet was just to distract from a space hulk leaving the warp near the planet with a Tzeentchian warband on board; they wouldn't have been able to escape if the forces that responded hadn't been embroiled in battle on the planet's surface. As sufficient navy forces to destroy the space hulk aren't close enough and it's spinning off in the direction of populated worlds, the two Inquisitorial forces mount a desperate boarding action on the space hulk. The acolytes' Inquisitor and the Sororitas meet their doom, but the radicals and Relictors defeat the champion with his own blade, which they take with them. The radicals seem well-intentioned if grim and explain to the acolytes to be open-minded, sometimes the warp is the best weapon against the Imperium's enemies. Thanks to Kage's inspiration, I'm now thinking of running this rather than a later mission as a court scene, so to allow the acolytes to have disparate starting roles in quelling a rebellion and then meet for the first time in the battle. Also, with what happens at the end, scrutiny from their Inquisitors' conservative cabal is still appropriate.
After this, the acolytes are bounced around on a variety of missions, many of which hint at a connection between ancient xenos and some prophecy of a Tyrant Star. Eventually, the cabal reveals to the acolytes that they're in the sector to investigate just such a phenomenon, though they believe it to be daemonic in nature. In some of these missions the acolytes make an enemy of a renegade black-robed sect of the Adeptus Mechanicus that's up to something in the sector and their leader, a rogue Magos. A lot of the threats appear to be Chaos-related on the surface but under closer examination are simply humans hoping to be favored by Chaos or are actually engineered by this sect. (One does involve the banishment of a real daemon that seems suspiciously easy though.) The acolytes' masters dismiss their assessments of the true threat however. If they work very hard, they'll find something amiss about a man in one mission who if they strike at will disappear in a flash of green light. Occasional contact is made with radical elements, who the acolytes' masters always warn them against. The acolytes have an opportunity in one of these missions to keep a book of black sorcery.
Eventually they are sent by missive directly after another mission to the jungles of Biegel-9, where I plan to run the plot of Xenology as an adventure. The acolytes are sent to purge the installation of a recently-deceased radical Inquisitor before his fellows show up in ten days. Upon arrival, the lone inhabitant, a deranged tech-priest acolyte, requests permission to dissect the remaining specimens in the time allotted so at least some good can come of the facility. The facility is supposed to be supplied by a nearby settlement, but supplies have stopped coming. The townies aren't happy to see agents of the Inquisition; investigation reveals that a man came into town and spread word that the facility was an alien menagerie. The acolytes barely escape. At the facility, increasingly strange things are going on. Machines aren't functioning properly. The acolytes are disgusted at the familiarity with which the tech-priest treats his kroot assistant. A video feed captures the kroot entering the room where the acolytes' astropath is found dead. His death doesn't solve anything though, as Tyranids soon get loose and are seen on the roof by the villagers. An angry mob surrounds the facility and without warning or command the guns open fire on them. The tech-priest has descended into madness and the puritanical forces have arrived and heard from the villagers what heresy the acolytes are complicit with. Amidst this breakdown, the purportedly-dead Inquisitor makes himself known: beneath his flesh is a metal body, and unthinkably this facility was to learn the weaknesses of humans as much as the species being dissected. The entire facility was built on top of a monolith, and now it begins to shudder to life, preparing to phase out with the acolytes on it. The acolytes are saved at the last minute by the arrival of radicals and Relictors, who also free and bring along the last remaining captive, an Eldar.
Taken back to the Relictors' fortress-monastery in orbit around Torva Minoris, the acolytes are treated to the information that the Inquisitor whose facility they were investigating isn't a real inquisitor, the version of the Imperial Truth that the Relictors maintain, and that the radical cabal thinks a xenos threat weak to the warp is behind the Tyrant Star and that's why they're collecting warp artifacts. The Eldar is unforthcoming after such long and harsh imprisonment by those he considers his lessors. Soon enough, the puritans arrive with an army at their back, demanding the Relictors give up any heretical items, the Eldar, and the radicals, including the acolytes. One of the radical Inquisitors and chapter master Artekus Bardane meet the puritans in battle so another Inquisitor, the Librarian, the acolytes, and the Eldar if they so choose can escape the fortress monastery with the warp stuff while it's being bombarded. Their only escape is to the feral world below, where as they deal with the savage tribes the Relictors recruit from, hopefully using them as an ally against the puritans and the guardsmen they brought. Starting here, or later if they don't warm up to him until then, the Eldar will reveal his role as a Solitaire. Anyway, they get off the planet through their own ingenuity, I'll leave an obvious path of tricking people away from their ship open but we'll see what they go for, but with some kind of casualties in the ranks of the Relictors/radicals who saved them (including the chapter master and ones who gave battle on the doomed fortress-monastery rather than fleeing if that wasn't obvious) and some kind of a mission to find out what is up with this ancient xenos threat that whatever the inquisitor on Biegel-9 was talking about and is behind the Tyrant Star. Somewhere in there they should probably Ascend, but I'm not sure quite where or quite what action somebody will distinguish themselves to the radical cabal with. I suppose that should depend upon what specific choices they make.
Now they go into another section of doing less-related missions, but some pieces fall into place: that Mechanicus sect is stealing psykers for research purposes, seeding the gene for psychic blanks into populations, and trying to direct the attention of authorities toward blaming the ruinous powers for any uprisings, leading to authorities leading more brutal pogroms than usual against humans with connections to the warp. Eventually they're called to investigate the disappearance of one of the radical Inquisitors; this will be A Stony Sleep from The Emperor Protects with the Alpha Legion replaced with this Mechanicus sect and obviously the Kill-Team replaced with acolytes. In this mission the acolytes prevent the sect from opening a Necron tomb. In the tomb is a star map with several locations marked. In the tomb, if they've been open-minded enough to recognize his usefulness, the Solitaire will tell them the story of the War in Heaven. This, combined with an tablet they saw on Biegel-9, makes the acolytes start to get what's going on.
Here's where I'm having trouble. I want them to have to go to these planets to uncover the mystery of the Tyrant Star, but I don't know what they would need to do there or how they would know this. I want one of them to be Mars. I want them to chase the rogue Magos all the way back there; the acolytes have to hitch a ride on a black ship to the Solar system and confront the Magos under the Noctis Labyrinth, where he reveals his sect's beliefs: the Omnissiah is a human understanding of the ancient star god the Void Dragon who slumbers beneath Mars. His influence is responsible for humanity's technology, the Emperor is a false god, the C'Tan are coming back and we should bow to the perfect machine forms of their servants, etc. They believe the Tyrant Star to be the prison of the Outsider, the last C'tan, trapped outside of time and space and trying to return; there is nothing that can be done to prevent the Necrons from awakening, so his sect is trying to prepare the way for them so that they, in their machine forms emulating the Necrons, might be allowed to live as servants. In this heated battle where the Magos sort of becomes an avatar of the Void Dragon, it finally comes to light (though I will have dropped hints and weird happenings all along) that the group's psyker has been harboring the daemon they They kill him though and a particularly radical NPC or party member will suggest turning him into a daemonhost using the forbidden knowledge they've been carring, giving his body willingly for the daemon to inhabit in return for binding and using it as a weapon against the C'tan and Necrons, as otherwise they may fail at exorcising the daemon from the psyker and have to kill them. Hopefully they do, as besides any Relictor daemon weapons they salvaged this will be their best weapon.
Upon returning to the sector, they find that the Tyrant Star hangs over the capital; the Cult of the Dragon or whatever it'll be called has been active in preparing for their new masters' arrival, setting up some kind of device or ritual that causes the Tyrant Star to stop its slow procession. Convinced of immediate daemonic incursion, the puritans have enlisted the Grey Knights and Sororitas in carrying out bloody purges of any possible psykers to lesson the impact if the veil between our world and the warp is sundered. It's up to the acolytes to convince the Orders Militant that that's a bad idea, which will probably come to blood with the puritans they've been contending with the whole campaign unless someone ends up being a really impassioned speaker. When the Tyrant Star flares into our dimension a Necron invasion begins, and only with all the allies they can gather and inform of the Necrons' weakness will they be victorious. Grey Knights, although difficult to convince to cooperate with radicals, would be pretty apt at destroying Necrons given they're all psykers it seems to me. Finally, the talking Necron Lord, the same one who was really the Inquisitor in Biegel-9 and who they'll probably have encountered a few other times, will have to be faced, and becomes sort of an avatar of the Outsider as the Tyrant Star returns back into time and space. I suppose I could have him have been the head puritan all along, but that might be too ridiculous, undermine the point that puritans are even bad, and would require carefully going over everything he instructs them to do, making sure none of it doesn't make sense, so probably not. Defeating him with the daemonhost or a daemonweapon will banish the Outsider back into a space outside space, and the Tyrant Star continues its journey through the sector.
Happy ending? No, the population of the world invaded by Necrons must be purged to protect the secret of their existence, and hence the sector of the capital is transferred to a rival world that the acolytes will have been given a very bad impression of the character of. And if they survived, any puritans are of course free from reprimand and will only grudgingly acknowledge that the actions of the acolytes were important.
Besides whatever ideas or comments or criticisms or better ways to do things come to mind, I need help with identifying plot holes and keeping themes consistent and stuff like that that's hard when tying together a couple sources. Like, in the end of Xenology the weakness that Necrons discovered about humans that they were going to exploit was curiosity, but that doesn't really fit with the themes of my campaign. So what exactly are the Necrons trying to exploit, the trend in humans toward overzealousness or puritanism to the extent that it blinds them to real threats? Something like that. Also, is there any neat way to shoehorn Haarlock's legacy into here? It's made up of some good adventures I wouldn't mind running but the whole climax seems incompatible and it's just hard to have the antagonists from that relate in any meaningful way to the antagonists I've got here.
