Aside from celebrating epic battles against daemons?

I manage to come up with one idea, for one Grey Knight character and some pieces of plot.

But what to do with a grourp of them? (Aside from the epic battles) How to investigate with Grey Knights? Do they investigate at all or is it just go there excorce this? I'm getting my copy of daemon hunter tomorrow but I'm curious about your ideas, and everything that isn't in the book ;-)

Well, from what I know from the TT - no, they don't bother investigating. They are the Chamber militant of the Ordo Malleus, and no more than either a thousand or several thousands for the entire galaxy. Considering how few and powerful they are, not to mention how well they blend in with the populace, I'd say they don't waste their time with anything that anyone else can do. They are called for when things have already went as bad as they can, and it's time for the last do-or-die - i.e. closing the portal to a demonic infestation that's already gone way out of control, stopping a rampaging greater daemon/daemon prince, holding back the effects of a major ritual the investigators did not manage to disrupt, etc.

As I see it, if the acolytes screw up, and the throne agents couldn't get it done, you call in for the boys in silver. Their job is to do what no one else has a (appreciable) chance of doing - either fighting a demonic entity considered to be beyond any other agency, or handling a place or an item too "hot" for anyone else - i.e. erecting purification wards in the middle of a region that's already almost gone to the warp, retrieving and storing an uber-powerful daemonic relic, etc.

the Shaman:

That's exactly what I meant.

Aside from those very obvious duties/missions, what else to do with those guys? Are there any Grey Knight Adventures out yet, or planned at least? I try not to think that Grey Knights are just a fighting simulator rather than an RPG, but I really have difficulties coming up with something else.

Well, Space Marines in general are engineered to be the perfect (or nearly so) fighting force, doubly so for Grey Knights - who iirc before their new codex were "conditioned" to the point the rank and file were nearly mindless. In general, I could imagine them being sent to explore an extremely tainted location or retrieve an artifact, but any adventure that features them should make a central point of their combat prowess against the forces of chaos, their resistance to the warp, or their psychic abilities. It needs, in fact, to be obviously beyond anyone else to handle - an assassin or assassin team can deal with any mortal threat, the guard and space marines can handle a regular military matter, and a seasoned team of acolytes (or throne agents) can deal with most cults well enough. It needs to be something that only the GKs can do, and that is worth doing with a small team rather than calling the Exterminatus fleets over.

The point of an investigation is to find out more about something. Grey Knights are an extremely powerful and rare tool, so they should only be used in situations where you know that the stakes are extremely high. For example, if you find a space hulk that seems to be based around a battleship sporting Horus's own crest, and reeks of the warp so strongly that it drives half the astropaths choirs in the sub-sector insane, then yes, I can imagine you would send the GKs to investigate.

I am planning a scenario set in a major city on an agri-world. The basics are as follows - a symposium is gathered to discuss whether the local Emperor Cult should be iconoclastic or not. The players' Ordo Hereticus cell includes a cleric, who is to participate in the symposium and look for possible heresy. They are going to have a secondary objective: to check up on a secret inquisitorial facility, which holds a bound deamonic entity - way beyond the characters' or the local imperial forces' ability to handle.

Naturally something happens and the characters are isolated in the facility while the daemon is running loose on a defenceless city, filled with clergy dignitaries from the Calixis Sector. An alarmsystem in the facility calls in a Grey Knight squad to handle the situation.

The Grey Knights must then track the daemon and its pawns, rescue and protect the clergy dignitaries - which includes interacting with them - while still make sure they are not seen too clearly and identified by what remains of the local populace. While all this is happening - I will occasionally switch between the acolyte cell and the Grey Knight squad.

I think the Grey Knights have to be able to do a lot of different missions. While there are not normally investigators (due to their need of absolute secrecy), they will occasionally be required to conduct some kind of investigation. Most of the interaction Grey Knights will have is between each other and their colleages and the few people who is allowed to know of their existance. Therefore I belive they are best used as a way to alter the pace in a campaign.

Generally I look to " Band of Brothers " and " The Pacific " for inspiration for Deathwatch and Grey Knight games - though I have not yet had the opportunity to run either yet.

I hope the player's cell survives (they are approximately halfway through the current storyarc and has just had there first casualty) to play through this story.

Yeah, sneaking the Mithral Men into a game that isn't all them, kicking daemons and chanting His name, is difficult. I played in a home-brewed system 40K game, where everyone was a Space Marine, working conjoinly with their Commander and an Inquisitor, and I got to whine till I was allowed to be GK, rather than Ultramarine, like the other three, and I did stand out some. Even just being Space Marines was a trick, since most people we encountered either bowed and scraped in our presence, or revealed their Cult/Xeno tendencies, and assaulted us, knowing theat they were made. Me being shiny, I attracted the most fire . It was okay, but all we really ended up doing was helping PDFs/Guardsmen, and killing cultists or Tau. Being 9' tall legends hindered our ability to mingle with the people, and again, I was the shiny one, so EVERYONE noticed me. Don't get me wrong, he was useful, and really great. His melee skills left even the other Ultramarines shocked, so they were able to focus more on the Heavy Bolter, Missile Launcher (both one guy), sniping, and combo leadership/medic we needed to fight Tau Battle Suits and cultist mobs, and survive it, and my knowledge of things infernal aided when we had to fight cultist sorcerers, two mid-daemons, and a rogue Inq. Lord. It was still tough coming up with missions to play, though, beyond "wipe out that cult!", "recapture and maintain that facility!", or "eliminate that threat" in general. Really, the best bet would be to split the game up into two parts, where each player has an Acolyte (preferably Throne Agent from Ascension), and then a separate Grey Knight. The Acolytes do the investigations, collect info, and if they make some bad calls, or if they discover something too big for themselves to handle, they relay the info to their Master, who then calls in the Knight squad, but the players then can only use info collected from the first party. If the Acolytes do well enough, then the Knights don't even need to be called in. That's about it, though.

Okay, I've babbled enough about it, sufficed to say, it's a challenge, much of the time. As has already been stated, Grey Knights are rare to point of frightening, and having even one anyplace where it isn't mandated by the heavens is wasting the best of the best. Another problem, unless you've read the Grey Knight novels, is that the Grey Knights are, as said earlier, a bit boring, as characters. If they can't win, no one can, and they might not be fun. They are, far and away, my favorite SM Chapter, but they aren't like Space Wolves, who brawl, cavort, and drink stuff that would kill lesser men with but a whiff. They've seen stuff that would freeze Canis Wolfborn, or Logan Grimnar stiff with fear (make the fur on their suits stand up on end), so they don't probably laugh and joke much. Near the end of their training, all traces of their past are eradicated from their minds, beyond the training, to deprive the daemons avenue to make offers, so they might not have much to talk about. Since they're psychic, they might not even have to speak to each other out loud. When they aren't slaughtering daemons, or liquidating compromised allies, they disappear into the vast, waiting for the next incursion, adrift on fast-response ships, honing their weaposn and souls. It's sad, but true, Grey Knights probably won't fit too well into most games.

venkelos: Please tell me more. This sounds like an awesome group and a ton of gaming fun.

I was and am still always a fan of =][= versus Astartes, =][= vs. =][=, Ordo vs. Ordo and so on.

I also never imagined a Space Marine to be 9feet tall witout armour, and the DW core book discribes them a 2.10m tall WITH armour, which is around 7feet, compared to DH feral worlders which can roll a height of 2.10m and a weight od 120kg... so it seems to be possible NOW to have Space Marines go undercover, at least in an location with tons of foreigners. Lysander also has to act the babarian slave/bodyguard for Inquisitor Draco... if anyone except of me remembers this book. --> So I guess one can TRY to hide them in plain sight as long as they don't wear armour. And armour taken off I'm not so sure if you can tell the diferent chapters appart (minus the obvious ones like Space Wolves etc.), so I guess one could even hide a GK in plain sight.

I own 'The Emperor Protects' and those 3 adventuers sound pretty good to me, action and battle yes of copurse, but several other stuff involved too.

But back to the GKs... I guess one would have to settle the adventures around the places, people and things that are already where the GKs are. Heretical Inquisitors, or some of them struggeling and fighting more over power and influence, than for the sake of mankind, or some madman from the Ordo Hereticus trying to prove that Space Marines are against the Imperial Creed, or heathens or evil or that they are all traitors like Horus, or whatever some deranged genius can brew up between his/her ears. So have 2 Inquisitors, one young and green from the Ordo Malleus who gets his first interactuions/missions with a handfull (or less) of GKs, maybe just one or a two-man army (or whatever the plot/group requires) and a powerful, influential, old evil bastard of the Ordo Hereticus who tries to chase down the former and his silver clad warriors.

Sounds pretty simple and lame till now, but noone in this conflict is fleshed-out yet. Give them reasons and beliefs and hatred and a few virtues and let's throw all the black-ops and secrets and backstabbing at the group, to represent the older Inquisitor's influence, because he can't do anytrhing openly antil he can finally prove oh how very corrupt the GKs are. blah!

Could this work?

Ear-of-Terror said:

Sadly, that game passed into obscurity years ago. It was really fun at times, and there were some very interesting NPCs (a crazy tech-priest, a grouchy, chain-smoking elderly astropath, and more), but our GM wrote the rules with d20 (my usual system), and we had to make up extra stuff all the time, or so he thought, and everything was nigh impossible to survive (apparently, he wanted us to level fast, and feared anything would seem too easy). Imagine we're an under half-strength squad (true), and we're constantly fighting full squads of Gaunts, Orks, or Conscript Platoons. In this game, every squad was like a swarm, which always rolled as a group, and always rolled a 20, because with 40 cultists, someone always will, and then they got bonus damage for having up to a certain number of extras left standing, but lost collective health as one organism, so there always were the maximum standing. Stealth was nigh-impossible (rolled a 20 on Spot or Listen), survival unlikely, and so on. If the cultist was a loner, he also had a melta charge strapped to his torso, so he could charge one of us, and deadman switch us to death, or he was a sorcerer statted to fight the four of us, and my psychic resistance meant I was the only guy holding against him, which goes poorly when the other Space Marines begin firing at me, or each other, in addition to everything else. Add to that, one of us WASN'T a Space Marine (an augmented Human sniper expert, instead), and so he was included in the enemy strength, but was constantly off a ways, trying to snipe things, and avoid combat that wounded us, thus would kill a comparably squishy Human. Our NPC Astropath got possessed out of nowhere (only a lucky 20 allowed me to banish it and save her, as she was important, though she held it against me, a little suicidal, maybe), a Blank we had on loan from my Inquisitor got sniped in the brainpan, and barely survived, which was the only time he didn't make my character puke in his helmet. Tau had stealth suits and better guns then ours (but we aren't allowed to loot Xenotech, and why should a Space Marine ever have too?), every cult had broken into the hive spire's armory, and on, and on, and on I could whine. In the end, we fought a Champion-level Noise Marine, barely survived, and I had to accidentally psy-cinierate our squad leader/medic to kill the bastard. That ended the campaign for a little bit, and then we all wanted to graduate college, so we buckled down, and the game fell by the wayside.

Ear-of-Terror said:

If I am wrong, I apologize, but the quote I so often here is "9-foot tall, genetically-engineered supermen". I often see them towering over other Humans, in a way that Tech-Priests and Inquisitors, often also noted for having access to Power Armor, don't seem to do, even when so garbed. A Battle Sister isn't usually pictured as looming over a Guardsman, men themselves known to be built at "heroic for their scale" proportions (and one might not be able to pick an SoB out without their nunnery armor), and so the Astartes would look huge, and unless they are wearing platform shoes made by Stilt Man, armor can't add several feet to their height. I'm sure like many things, their height is subject to change; might not always have been men only, in law, either, or other little fluff bits that disseminate through the various editions. We rarely see individuals with armor pictured without it; in the above game, we had to take off our armor onship, for some reason, and apparently walked around in simple robes (never were attacked in space, without armor, though, so I can't gripe too hard there. They don't usually show various people of different organizations next to each other, for context, with or without armor, so I can't say "yep, I'm right", but it's what I've always been led to believe. If nothing else, I figured they were augmented to grow taller to support a wider frame, wherein more of their extra organs could be functionally stowed.

Space Marines aren't 9 feet tall. Average for a marine is 7'3" or so. Armor adds about 10 inches to their height, including a helmet. And I think you don't understand how big a 7'3", 400 pound super soldier is. Space Marines are still BIG, just not 9 feet tall, that is Primarch territory.

It's also common for Space Marines to go without armor when they are in a safe place. Read some of the novels, it happens, literally, all the time. The Horus Heresy novels are the best example of this.

Guardsmen aren't 'heroicly' scaled, most of them are average ted, with the exception of the ultra badass sergeant, and Catachans.

venkelos:

Oh... that sounds like a pain to survive. Maybe a bit too much on the egde of the razorblade ;-) but it seems I was wrong with all the fun. GMs that want to make it hard, Hard, HARD are complicated, some seem just to want to kill your character, other want to keep them low-level and third kind thinks this is the only way to make it good. Not with Space Marine Characters but in similar ways I live throughthe same RPG problems.

About the 9feet heroes.

HEIGHT ans WEIGHT: whilst wearing their power, an unarmed Space Marine typically stands slightly over 2.1metres tall asn weighs between 500-1000kg. When you visualize your Space Marines character, you should decide if he's taller or shorter, lighter or heavier. Generally speaking Spcae Marines don't vary to a large degree in height or weight - your character, however. may have been one of thiose unusual few who is the exeption.

DW core rulebook, p. 28

2.1metres is veery much 7feet or very, very close to it. And they hopefully don't wear plateau shoes, but look at the pictures, their boots are giant and even the soles are thick. So peel the armour of, how tall will they be? something a little above 2metres, closing in on 7feet. That is still 'don't-hurt-yourself-with-the-door' tall but it is hideable among other humans.

But... I didn't want to discuss height/weight here and am still looking for ideas or examples for what to do with the mighty GK...

As everyone has said, Marines in general are going to suffer in most any mission aside from "go kill stuff" they are shock troops, and GK are super specialized shock troops. Im struggling to think of what to do with them to be honest, aside from using them as a "omg plz send help we screwed up" button for a team of acolytes.

Also on the note of size. I dont think its just height, but sheer MASS of marines even without armor that would make them stand out.

I have always used this as a good guideline.

There is another side by side comparison chart for both Chaos and Imperial that was in GW stores maybe 3-4 years back as well, but I cant seem to find an example of it right now.