So I've got an interesting story I'd like to try and play out with Black Crusade.

The story starts with a daemon prince of Tzeentch, known as Khaliman, fighting against a captain of the Raven Guard, known as Randolphus. Randolphus is victorious and Khaliman is shattered into hundreds of pieces and strewn about the warp. Randolphus is later dreadnoughted due to wounds incurred in that battle.

Jump ahead 500 years and Randolphus has been made first chapter master of a fairly new chapter of space marines, The Emperor's Nightmares. It will still be thousands of years before Khaliman reforms on his own, so the remains of the minions of Khaliman, led by the players , plot their revenge upon the chapter and Randolphus.

The idea is an Ocean's Eleven style heist where they would steal the soul of Randolphus out from under the chapter. Maybe even use it in some ritual to aid in Khaliman's return. Yes, this is intended as a fairly high level Black Crusade campaign, seeing as the party would be up against an entire chapter of space marines.

How might the players go about doing this? I have an idea for an artifact of Khaliman that would allow them to astrally project, at the cost of severe levels of corruption

What sort of other resources might the players need? Does this even seem viable?

Hmm, I don't think a Dreadnought could be a chapter master.

Dreadnoughts need to sleep for very long periods of time, being awakened only every few hundred years for important battles. Thus, they would be unfit for chapter master duties.

The Iron Hands seem to get by with a bunch of venerable dreadnoughts on their council. The Blood Swords chapter had a dreadnought chapter master. Obviously he doesn't lead the chapter in battle, but was there to get the chapter up and running.

As part of the Emperor's Nightmare's fluff, the heist has already happened and a provisional council was formed to lead the chapter, as Randolphus is technically not dead, a successor can't be chosen.

Their information can be found here: http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Emperor%27s_Nightmare

Personally, I've never seen why Dreadnoughts don't occupy some of the higher ranks of their chapters. I've never seen why they *need* to 'sleep'. I've always just thought it was a method for preserving the sanity of the occupant (since being alive and conscious for millenia wears on you). I suppose that in a chapter where Dreadnoughts did occupy the ranks, successors could be determined whenever they went to sleep (i.e. chapter master serves for 250 years, names a successor, then goes back to sleep).

Alternatively, you could just end up with chapter masters who serve from the front for a long time and eventually get killed.

Iron Warrirors have a fully active dread as a warmaster if I remember the Iron Warrirors books, The Word Bearers book there is an active Dread.

@Nerdynick

Depending on the source, it appears that Dreadnoughts are slightly deranged anyway. I don't think they'd be up to the task of day-to-day politics and managment of a chapter. Picture your eighty-year-old grandfather - he's accumulated a lot of wisdom over the years, but he can be easily overwhelmed by new situations.

It really depends on chapter fluff and the particular story you are looking at. Most dreads tend to decay over time, but there are bound to be a few that retain a sense of self over long periods of time. Case in point, Bjorn of the Space Wolves. I know he sleeps like a normal dread does, but cumulative waking time must be thousands of years, and he still retains many memories of the Great Crusade.

The Iron hands have a council of dreadnoughts (refer to the introduction to Iron Hands for First Foundings). A dreadnought usually slumbers away the millenia until his Wisdom/ Knowledge/ Skill is called on once again by his Chapter. Therefore the venerable warriors are returned to slumber after they have fulfilled the need of the chapter.

Should you wish to run a dreadnought rules for the RG Captain, I would prefer to take the stats from Rites of Battle. That's just my opinion though.

Personally i am not keen on dreadnoughts maintaining any position of authority. Sure, the Iron Hands may use them in their council, but a council is just that - a group of individuals that debate and come to a consensus. A singular leader being a dreadnought i have an issue with though.

To be honest if you are adamant that the chapter be lead by a dreadnought, have it be an Iron Hands founding.

Dreadnought as chapter master? Maybe we shuld ask the Inquisition about such a heresy?

First of all: It saddens me a bit that pretty much all replies so far are complaints about a Dreadnought Chapter Master, and not possible solutions to the actual question.

Anyways, it sorta depends a bit on your player group as well, - whether they are very corrupted brutes that prefer guns blazing over guile, or a group that could infiltrate and subvert people as well.

I think you could have great fun if some, if not all, of the players could to some degree go undercover. There is a "soul-sucking" idea in the novel "Atlas Infernal", that could be interesting, especially if people with absolutely no morale was to engage in such a thing. Basically it has to do with using Eldar technology (Soul Stone knowledge), to store souls. This could perhaps be warped to actually steal souls instead I gather. So then you have a possible Eldar hook, where they can either trade, crush or enslave some eldars for such knowledge, end then a second part where they need to find someone/something that will teach them how to use these stones in an offensive manner (Could be anything from Dark Eldar sworcerers, to Thousand Sons/Ahriman or Demons and whatelse).

Finally they'd need a way to get this onto their target. This could be done by luring them out to fight against them (or a random hive turned to Chaos on their home planet), or by subverting the next batch of Adeptus Mechanicus that will go to work with the Space Marines, and one of them could latch such a device onto the Chapter Master when doing repairs (The last solution is fairly long term, but quite devious if they can wait). I could also really see some great fun in trying to destroy and corrode their maiin hive for recruiting while trying to dodge pissed-off Space Marines - Perhaps they could even mess with it doing the Induction rituals, or use their soul-sucking rituals on the flowers the applicants gather for the Marines?..

Hope some of it makes sense

Maelflux seems to be right, sorry for my previous spam

When it comes to capturing souls I would sugest you read Q'sol descripion once more. They trade in souls and in souls only. Alive slaves or captive in stones or traps (p. 329). So they do have a soul-trapping technology (sorcery powered or else). Players go to Q'sal, do a quest for them, so they may obtain some kind of soultrap. (Maybe even the "Temple of lies" from the book - it's a Q'sal quest AFAIR). Special trap of course , standard soul traps might be obtainable through infamy just for every day use.

Bear in mind, that capturing Randolphous' soul is only the beggining. Lock something else in chaptermaster's chest. A deamon, or some kind of lesser soul, that could be conntrolled.Or maybe Khaliman himself would want to use a Randolphus' soulles body to do same nasty tricks. Your Tzeenchian Deamon Prince would like bringing a whole chaper to the dark side with some good leadership. That's a nasty plot. Tzeentch would like that.

And why not more - they live on a hive world inhabited by 32 bln souls. Summon a warp storm, change the world to a deamon world, or maybe just kill everyone and trade their souls for something nasty.

Hope that's more useful than my previous post.

Also if you did not want to have the group have to invade a imperial world you could always have the chapter master drawn out to a less defended location. Warp space is full of dangers. Not to mention how much fun a possesed dred would be.

I must say. I really like the whole "Possessed Dreadnought Chaptermaster" thing. I really do. I think I might have to steal that one for myself

Also, if the players are willing to spend quite a few years on this plot, they could perhaps corrupt the Chapter's Recruiting Grounds in such a way, that all the new recruits/Scouts/Battlebrothers become tainted themselves. Combined with a possessed Chaptermaster, that would truly be devious. Of course, it has to be a very insidious and subtle taint of sorts, to remain undiscovered by the rigorous sceening tests done by the Chapter Librarians.

You would probably have to infiltrate the Forge first, then the Apothecarion, and, finally, the Librarium. The last one would be the most important, but I am pretty sure that, since he is the chapter master, he is under constant supervision when he is sleeping. If I were you, I would wait for some kind of Ascension equivalent, as if any of the characters are discovered within the Fortress Monastery, Total Party Kill is guaranteed

Lord Sector Hax said:

There won't ever be an Ascension equivalent - look at how we don't have one for any of the other lines of 40kRP and how there isn't any mention in the release schedules. Ascension was a foray into power-gaming gone wrong. Also remember that XP wise, characters in other systems to DH can already get to such high ranks on their regular advance charts.

To really portray a dreadnought chapter master, just take the Watch Captain and then Dreadnought advances. Bump him up to all but 2 ranks off max before taking the Dreadnought scheme then that should portray the level of power you seem to be searching for. I'd also give a fate point back (after not having any in order to become a Dreadnought) to portray such a mighty adversary. Finally i'd give the character something like 10d10 insanity points to have an idea of how badly the chapter flaw is affecting him and how the long years of being a Dreadnought have weakened his mind.

yeah, i really like the idea of a dreadnaught chapter master.. don't know why but it just makes sense that the wisest and strongest space marine becomes chapter master, as for player resources, maybe give a few out of book bonuses to the players based on class, giving sorcerers the ability to summon a pact bound deamon swarm is one of my favorites, nothing is better than having the sorcerer either pour out a jar of blood onto the floor, or vomit, or inject a drug and then from the refuse of that deamons appear in great numbers, not to mention that you may need to change the way combat works because of the number of spacemarines.. i really like this mission idea, but the players will need powerful tools, i may even have a series of missions leading up to this one to let them gather an aresenal of chaosy goodness, including deamon weapons, have them loot everything from mechanicus protoltype weapons to ainchent relics of long lost warfare, give them the options to add to thier ally pool or even kill off thier alles for better standing in chaos...In order to go up in Oceans 11 glory i would say give them plenty of time to prepare, as if they can call on assets during missions it makes it that much cooler, also where would this battle go down?? afterall a planet would be much more diverse, but the chapter battle barge would give more mobility.

@Kasatka

There won't ever be an Ascension equivalent - look at how we don't have one for any of the other lines of 40kRP and how there isn't any mention in the release schedules. Ascension was a foray into power-gaming gone wrong. Also remember that XP wise, characters in other systems to DH can already get to such high ranks on their regular advance charts.

Look who's had access to FFG's internal plans for the next decade.

Note that every RPG thus far has had a "Characters that have X many XP (Infamy in the case of BC) have moved out of the scope covered by this game and into another" blurb. For DH, there has been Ascension and it was... a rather mixed blessing. If Primaris Psykers used the FFG psy system rather than the inherited one and Vindicare lost a few of their umpteen reactions, I think the supplement would be fine. If "the system had faults" was a reason not to continue, we wouldn't ever have seen Black Crusade - hell, we would never have seen Rogue Trader!