Ok, I understand this book is mostly about steeping yourself in the dark powers granted by the worship of the Dark Gods. That said Hereteks have so many non chaotic options to still have been cast out of the Mechanicus without ever uttering a single prayer or devoting a single deed to any of the Four Gods of Chaos. Xenos tech, unhallowed archeotech designs, Artificial Intelligence, immortality, attempting to clone the Emperor or even just coming to the belief that no complete STC exists anymore and that Mankind must reacquire its lost knowledge itself having gained the wisdom from it previous mistakes to cotnrol that power.

So how would you hand such a Heretek in the ranks of Chaos worshippers? They could still have aligning goals in the short term. He needs their resources, they need his knowledge and ability to turn the greatest weapons of the Imperium against it. Especially valuable would be a Heretek trying to crack the secret of creating a Primarch from scratch to create his own Astrates legions.

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It's something I'm also wondering about, as my first character will (at least begin) completely uninterested in Chaos or its major powers and keeps near the rest of the party because they can protect him from the Adeptus Mechanicus's agents. I suppose a non-Chaos Heretek can fit in as well as a Chaos Heretek as their primary purpose is to take care of technological problems in either case. The only difference between him and the party is that they'll probably want to stick a daemon in whatever he makes.

Glowcat said:

Well, depending on your outlook, a Daemon controlling a machine is better than an A.I.

Our heretek isn't necessarily against the Cult of Mars, but he has the viewpoint that alien machines with their foreign machine spirits are just different evolutions of technology, and wants to study and research them. He wants to study and understand them, which is what got him excommunicated and branded a Heretek. His ties to chaos are initially the protection, but he's going to slowly sink when he starts to think how a daemon in a weapon isn't too far different from a machien spirit when you really think about it...

And it all goes down from there.

Falling to the Ruinous Powers isn't something most people do willingly. You just hang out with a bad crowd, go to exciting, (corrupt) places and before you know it, your deeds are prayers to the Chaos gods. You may even mean well, up to the end, but it doesn't stop your actions from being corrupt in the eyes of the Emperor and more importantly, The Powers. You do have to remember that you don't need to do evil deeds to serve Chaos' cause. While a lot of Chaos' servants certainly deserve being called "evil" most just want out. Out of the tyrannic rule of the Imperium and all it's servants.

Sadly, in this world, that's often enough to let the Ruinous powers in.

You should have a word with your GM though, and try to work out how you might gain Corruption & Infamy more slowly than those willingly devoted to the chaos powers. If your GM is good, he'll drag you down eventually anyway, or at least offer a lot of temptations you'll have to resist. Either way, sounds like a fun concept to me.

We have a pretty similiar thing in the group we're about to start. A bunch of devoted nutjobs and a heretek who doesn't care about the Chaos gods but certainly will be doing their work with his plans.

Let us know how your game turns out and what arrangements (if any) you've made with your GM.

I also had some thoughts about 'why would a heretek want to ascend into daemonhood?'. The most obvious answer is 'he wouldn't'. One can have some sort of breakdown after a few gifts of the gods, then he could accept dark gods, or go the other way and cut off all the 'infested' flesh and go full machine.

in the game i'm running our heretek started out just wanting to experiment freely to try and improve man kinds knowledge, unfortunatly he has started hearing voices whispering secrets and slowly he is begining to listen this voice just happens to a minor chaos god who is trying to increase his standing and is infact the founder of the obliterator virus and are heretek has decided its a voice of the omnisiah

let the coruption begin this is his way for apothesis or spawndom a techno demon or techno spawn

Drake56 said:

Yeah I hope they make the obliterator virus in some extension of the game.

His!

With FFG's record, these would probably be answered in a future supplement.

L

Dark Heresy has rules for Heretek Savants. Seems easier to take the Inquisition out of Dark Heresy (since DH looks like it was intended to be a generic 40k roleplay and that they added the inquisition stuff at the last minute, ie. how DH core has not a single scrap of crunch reflecting the PCs serving the inquisition) than the Chaos out of Black Crusade.

Deinos said:

Hi:

Where? What book?

L

Deinos said:

Step 1) Do all advances as Allied, Ignore Alignment.

Step 2) Change Infamy to Influence and its tens digit into Fate

Step 3) Profit

Meanwhile if you worked from DH you'd be dealing with different approaches to balance (Starting Skills, Base Characteristics, etc.), Thrones instead of an acquisition roll, different Skill groups, and the closed Career/Rank system. No, it is far better to go with Black Crusade than with Dark Heresy.

Heretek Savant is in Dark Heresy.

""No, it is far better to go with Black Crusade than with Dark Heresy."

And sure, you can reskin any game as any game. Hell, there's a modpack for DH which makes it be about piloting giant robots.

Deimos said:

I'd just not become aligned - "unaligned" also covers general renegades who worship no gods, as well as those who worship all of them, or whatever.

Deinos said:

Hi!

In the corebook?

L

Whoops, I meant its in RADICALS Handbook, my bad.