Hi peoples

I'm a long time role-player and GM (AD&D 1st and 2nd eds, some other things as well) and I've been asked to GM a Dark Heresy campaign. I don't know a lot about the setting (or the rules for that matter) and I am just getting used to the Imperium and the way it does things.

In terms of how brutal it is, I have difficulty in grasping the morality and rationales involved - if indeed there is any! For example:

Suppose there is a planet in the Imperium. Run of the mill, temperate climate, lowish tech, sparsely populated, say a few million inhabitants. Now suppose someone discovers a mineral valuable to the Imperium on this planet. What (and why) is the Imperium most likely to do?

1. Import thousands of workers, mine the mineral where it is and survey the rest of the planet extensively.
2. Survey be damned - import millions/billions of workers and machinery, turn the planet into a forge world.
3. Blow up the planet and mine the debris at their leisure.
4. or something else?

I know each campaign will be different of course, but I would like to get a feel for what/why the imperium does what it does. What I want to avoid is portraying a situation which my players might consider 'unrealistic' of the Imperium. Opinions/suggestions welcome.

Many thanks

km

My interpretation would be a combination of 1 and 2. They would import and completely strip the world of all its resources turning it into a Hive World. I've read lots of 40K stories and books and in many of them the landscapes are bleak and blasted wastelands that are polluted horribly from years of Imperial operations. Mutants and misery abound...

There are of course all sorts of worlds in the Imperium some are lush pleasure worlds, some are tomb worlds, some are jungle riddled death worlds, but on the whole it seems that if it is setteled in any meaningful way pollution and degradation follow.

Good luck on your game! Its a lot of fun!

kiwimuso said:

Sounds like a frontier world or a feudal world.

kiwimuso said:

If some sort of survey team finds deposits of a valuable mineral, this information is normally given through certain channels to the higher-ups in the Administratum. Maybe it was the Administratum that sent the team to begin with, but maybe it was a noble house, trading/mining cartel or a Rogue Trader that found out about it (maybe by chance). The latter three could most probably file some sort of petition to the Administratum to get the rights for exploiting the deposits in one way or the other (and paying tithes to the Adminitratum from then on). If the Administratum itself takes an interest through calculating the expected expense and value of the deposit (i.e. if it is really big), your option 1 comes into play and the Adminitratum would turn the world into a mining world in one way or the other. The decision-making process of the Administratum normally takes ages or at least decades and the process of turning a feudal/frontier world into a mining world as well.
Sepheris Secundus is an example of a once fertile and temperate world turned into a hellish mining world.

Forge worlds are planets held in the fealty of the Adeptus Mechanicus and a “run of the mill” planet is never turned into a forge world under normal circumstances. Sometimes planets are given to the Mechanicus out of respect, because of their extensive help in a crusade (e.g. the Lathes) or because they more or less demand it.

Hive worlds are mainly production centres and population centres and often evolve throughout the centuries and millennia instead of being turned into.

The firepower needed for blowing up a planet is not that easy to generate even for the Imperium or to be more precisely the Imperial Navy. I never heard of blowing up a planet to mine the debris in 40K I fear.

Luthor Harkon said:

It isn't very efficient, either. You'd need void capable craft, crewed by trained people to recover whatever is floating around. Then probably orbital facilities or other Void-installations to collect, store and perhaps process the material before it is shipped off to wherever.

Much simpler to just set people digging. People are cheap, and pickaxes almost as cheap. And plentiful. No training needed. And the ore can just be piled up on the ground. Perhaps throw some walls and a roof over it. Sure it might take a while to extract it all, but those void ships can be better used elsewhere, and a steady stream of Raw materials is better than sporadic motherloads.

Yeah. When it comes to rational on how to "develop" the Imperium tends to go for a specialized approach on a whole. It's either big population centers of manufacturing/resource extraction that aren't given over to the Mechanicus (Hive), the ones that are given over entirely to industry of the Mechanicus (Forge), dedicated to food production for the other world-types (Agriworld), or because the nobles thought it's got a great view (Pleasure).

As I've said, if it's not Mechanicus, the place doesn't look real nice, doesn't look good for total agri-production, and it's got a lot of good stuff to tear out of it, you're looking at a future Hive world building up around the mining colonies if it doesn't get trapped by native factors (bad politics, nasty environment, etc) that limits technological implementation. If other Hives are any example, they'll eventually start plopping down manufactorums there if it's practical to reduce needed resource transit and the losses that invariably happen from warp/void travel after the mining operations have gathered enough momentum.