I am a novice GM at best and I am not a very good writer but I have an idea for an adventure seed for an upcoming campaign I am working on, what do you guys think.

I was reading rites of battle and on page and on page 249 It lists artifacts of the omega vault. What really caught my eye was “The Truth” in which “The Omega vault opens to reveal a deep and terrible truth about the imperium of man itself. It might be a shattering revelation dating back to the very birth of the imperium...” So I started to think what is the biggest earth shattering revelation I could come up with which lead me to the Book of Horus.

This is a rough draft which hasn’t been fully flushed out.

The Omega vault opens to reveal a book entitled The Book of Horus. This takes place before the Horus Heresy. The book of Horus reveals that the Emperor has determined that Humanity relies on him too much and is using him as a crutch. He understands that only through his death can humanity be strengthened and reforged in the ultimate crucible. The Emperor turns to Horus his most trusted and beloved son and asks of him the impossible, he asks him to betray him. He asks Horus to raise an army equal to humanity’s might and slay him. In doing so would ignite a war which would last millennia but in the end mankind would reach its true destiny, the greatest would rise to the top with out the crutch of the Emperor. Only in this way can mankind hope to endure. Horus's fierce loyalty obligated him to agree but he asked one condition, that he would die with his father as he could not bear the guilt.

Having found out this secret the players would have to decide what to do with this information for the consequences of widespread knowledge of this secret may be more dire than the actual Horus Heresy.

I got this idea from the Book of Judas, and I am still working on it. Although there may be some contradictions in the fluff, the fluff always qualifies it self by saying only part or none of it may be true, much of it is legend etc. Also the book of horus might not actually be true in my campaign and I haven’t decided on who wrote it and why.

The basic idea to shed a different light on Horus is great stuff for a campaign.

However, you will need a good explanation why the emperor not simply killed himself or went into exile – or why he didn‘t at least let Horus kill him in a manner that doesn‘t trigger a civil war that throws mankinds‘ development back for thousands of years.

I think the best way you can drive that campaign is to run it as some kind of race for the Book of Horus between different groups. Nobody can be sure what kind of information that book exactly offers, but everyone tries to get it. Some of them want to destroy it, some of them are lurking for the power of heretical wisdom, some of them are simply truth-seekers. When your players finally get that book, they will have a hard decision whom they believe – and if they want to speak out the truth even if it makes them to heretics in the eye of the Imperium.

Finally, you should never let your players know if the information of the book is true or a lie. That campaign will get its attraction from the uncertainty.

"...in the end I see the truth...

...one man want to become a good..."

from the Horus meditation...

I think it does not matter who wrote, why he/she wrote it and if it is actually true. You can make an artifact out of it of such legendary proportions, that you can build entire wars, crusades and campaigns around it without your kill-team ever seeing or reading the actual book.

I think it is a great idea. I have built my current campaign around a similar artifact. The kill-team has now found a sketch of the artifact without knowing what it does and what it is. I will leave them in the dark on this for a long time, but they will know very well in the following missions that the artifact is something really important.