I hear a lot of people...well...maybe not a lot, but a good number of people asking questions about how to roll Xenos PC's, or the like.

On the one hand, it expands the DH system to encorporate elements of the universe that we all love, but aren't built into the game. Heck, there is a whole player written sourcebook on playing Space Marines. I can understand this, to some degree.

On the other hand, you're talking about working within an organisation that has a full third of its members devoted to rooting out and killing Alien influences. Personally I take a very hard-line stance against mutants, heretics, and aliens. My characters would have no compunction about killing any of the three enemies of humanity at the drop of a hat.

On the other hand, some Inquisitors are much more radical than others, and some aliens would be able to blend in with humans more readily. If played properly I think it could be done, but the idea of an Orc walking the streets of hive sibellus on a mission from the Inquisition is ridiculous.

Your thoughts?

I agree that Orcs running rampant through human habitations is ludicrous.

I tend to believe that Eldar and Tau could form tentative alliances with Humans, but I see it more on the governmental or military level. Goodly folk in the Imperium would not tolerate aliens on their streets. They've been raise to be intolerant of those that are not like them. A good old fashioned lynching would be likely to happen if some Eldar or Tau walked into the center of a town.

Anyway, I would love to try my hand in playing in a group of Eldar Rangers. This game was made for that. A group of craftworld Eldar roaming the galaxy looking for ancient Eldar settlements, routing alien threats to their craftworld and hunting down Dark Eldar could all be large parts of that type of campaign.

This game is fairly narrowly focused right now. I'd love to see the scope broadened to allow people to play characters from different species and factions.

Could alien species mix together? Unlikely, but it'd still be cool to have rules for playing alien species other than men.

I think an Eldar, with slight reconstructive surgery, or a significant disguise, could pull off being a human. If such a thing were found out, however, everyone whom has had contact with it would burn.. even those who didnt know it was an eldar...

I dont think it would ever really fit, the classic concept of aliens and humans working together in space. Its just not 40K.

Now a one shot or a short campaign where Eldar, Human and Kroot team up for some reason is feasible. But not in the classic Han and Chewie or Kirk and Spock style.

However, I am still working out my adventure plan for a Farscape 40K style game. But then again, I guess that is more rogue trader and more in the Halo Stars then straight imperium.

Mercenary, rogue trader, and non imperial humans would be able to interact with aliens.

However, you've got to remember that Imperial humans are indoctrinated with the imperial creed. This tells them that a) xenos are evil and b) humans are divinely perfect.

This means that even if a human tolerated xenos presence, they would still look down upon them. Even the most callous, underhanded imperial would still think himself better than an alien. Being xenos is a disease, one that they will never recover from.

Hellebore

Indeed, this is one reason that Rogue Trader will be coming out: To give the feel of Humans interacting with aliens in thier crews, let alone outside the Imperiums ruleset in Warhammer 40K. It's what I can't wait for really as it's rarely seen in the constant warfare of the setting. (Not to say Traders won't be seeing their fare share of the bloodshed and risk.) Then of course the feel for the game might just include soly xenos species as well for a player-group.

With that in mind for DH, if an Inquisitor and some acolytes actually were doing work along the edges of some space, I could relatively see the use of less overtly hostile xenos species mixed in on occaision, and perhaps one or two full time intergrated there. But it would be cloak and dagger to be sure, on both the xenos part and the Inquisitor in question. I personally would love to play an Ogrun working on behalf of an Inquisitor. (It wouldn't surprise me if that hapened, as who'd expect it?) They'd be more out of things then the Feral Human, and that could be fun or bad depending on how the player goes about it and they aren't out of the realm of possibility being used in the Imperium, albiet less commonly.

Rogue Trader is the way to go if you want multiple races included. The inquisition is too focused on defense, so aliens should only pop up for short alliances.

Navigators are completely outside of imperial jurisdiction, so having an alien in the retinue of a navigator is possible. Rogue traders could also get away with it, albeit with a "slave" or "scientifical reasearch specimen" tag attached to the xenos to show a "nice imperial face" to the officials.

My personal feeling here is that, unlike in say Star Trek, the aliens in the 40K universe are actually too ALIEN for effective roleplay. They don't think like people at all, with the partial exception of the Tau. Playing one would be akin to playing a Mi-Go in Call of Cthulhu.

most aliens in 40 are very alien, and wouldn't mix well. However, if you were to run a game 'on the fringe of the imperium' with everyone playing scum recidivists and priates then certainly you could get some more plausable alien PCs.

While I agree that the Imperium in general wouldn't be the best place for an alien PC, I think you could work one into your Dark Heresy campaign without excessive difficulty.

For example - if a radical Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos chooses to employ a Kroot scout, it's very possible that through a combination of long concealing cloaks and browbeating (they are working for the Inquisition after all) it could be made to work.

Would it be easy? No. Would it take away certain options? Yes. But that could be part of the fun...

bogi_khaosa said:

That's one of the best roleplay traits right there mate: To not think like a Human. That's why I frequently pick the most non-Human species in Star Wars, Star Trek and other aliens abound games. There's ripe areas to actualy be different then what you're used to. If you can pull it off your group is in for a real treat, and might actually start seeing things in a different light, not justin a game, but as to why Humans are still in most ways, mammals that just talk. A big boon though if you know some base biology/psychology to be sure, but it's also good for practice if you can always start going: "Hmm what would my character do, especially because it's NOT Human."

Abhumans fit as close enough to human yet not human. Same goes for mutants on some worlds that allow them to exist as slavesfor labour camps. The rich and powerful may have some for amusement and party flavor.

Eldar could easily blend in with little disquise, a hood most of the time or just hiding thier elf like ears.

They can also possibly pose as exotic abhumans or humans from different types of worlds (low gravity perhaps).

And what about a kroot who is from a clan (or whatever the are called) who feeds on humans? Wouldnt they evolve to look more humanlike and take on human characteristics, including mannerisms?

Solardream said:

Agreed - had immense fun playing a Gaim (Big humanoid bug - Ambassador breed made to comminicate with humanoids) in Babylon 5 Rpg,

For some reason suggestions like - "well if you are having a shortage of food( on finding a world with a famine) - grind up the weak and useless and feed it to the strong and useful members of your primative society" did not go down well dispite how helpful I was trying to be and did not get translated to our Narn hosts..............

or "Well if you all served the Queens there would not be any such problem" being a frequent utterence.

Calmly mentioning that I was now feeling the influence of the captive and psycotic queen and that the other players may wish to remove my weapon and be on their guard in case I tried to rend them was fun (in the middle of a minefield no less)

Being completely and utterely willing to sacrifce my life at any moment for the "Queen" although it would be helpful if my body was sent home for devouring and ingesting information.

And you really are all onbessed with this sex act thing arn't you - from viewing information databases on the internet

Peacekeeper_b said:

The original material had Solitaires living in human society for "decades" without being noticed. Must be hard, though--having to move that slow, etc. Yeesh.

Then again, the original material also had Eldar more commonly interacting with Imperial society (whatever that means!).

Kage

There is one paragraph in DotDG on pages 181-182 which might be of interest here. The paragraph is about an inquisitor called Arcturos who is a member of the radical Xeno Hybris faction (a minor calixian faction). Arcturos is said to have been involved with the eldar in various ways over the years, and the last phrase of the paragraph states:

"Arcturos is also reputed to coult a number of xenos, including an eldar, among is acolytes, though this may be pure fabrication."

When I read that I immediately thought about the upcoming Rogue Trader and the possibility of the being some kind of Eldar career there... might this phrase be one of the easter eggs that Ross mentioned were hidden in the DotDG?

Bring on the Eldar Rangers baby!!!!

That's what I'm talking about!

See, the Eldar are the one race I could see passing for human...really tall, thin humans. But if you give them concealing clothes, they may be able to slink around the darkened streets of a hive.

They question is why would an Eldar be the acolyte of an inquisitor? You're not an Inquisitor's allies, you're his menials, basically. I can't imagine an Eldar lowering himself to the point where he is willing to take orders, second or third hand in some cases, from a human. They don't exactly view us as the most splendid of races, if I'm not mistaken.

That is a question of how far are you willing to go to RP, but personally I think it strains creditability.

I'm not sure this would be the case. Possibly an Eldar Ranger or whatnot would likely be working for his craftworld and would possibly only consider teaming up with the Inquisition and humanity for a joint cause only. Based on the fluff and background, I'd think an Eldar would not work for the Inquisition's employ. It would be more of an alliance. I would also think that the humans would complain about having to work with a Space Elf and the Eldar would show disdain for the uncouth individuals he felt forced to work with.

I would love to play in a group of Eldar Rangers. Give me a Cameoline Cloak, Needle Sniper Rifle and a jet bike and I'm good to go. I'll sneak in and out of Human, Orc and Chaos lands furthering the cause of my Craftworld...as alien as their wishes might be to the Imperium of man.

Outside of that, I'm not sure where FFG is really going with this, but I'd love to give the above situations a try.

Solardream said:

Personally I think this deemphasizes the inhumanity and, ahem, alienness of the alien, which is fine for Star Trek or Star Wars in which extraterrestrials are all really people with maybe a few exaggerated character traits (they're like people, but really aggressive! or, they're like people, but really logical!). It doesn't fit with my view of what an alien should be in what is basically a gothic horror setting. YMMV.

bogi_khaosa said:

Personally I think letting a player play a alien now and then can do the opposite, and make them even more alien. Especially if some of the rules work differently for them.

Say the way they can use fate points, or how their version of Righteous Fury works. Skills based on different Characteristics then the ones humans use.

I remember in one game in college where the GM was just so annoyed at all the different systems being run constantly that he just had each of us make a character up in our favorite system and then just let us resolve our actions in that systema and he would translate it into whatever system he was using. He more or less made it up as he went and had no real guidelines, but it was interesting to see similar designed characters, from different rule sets, functioning very much different.

And when D20 did Call of Cthulhu, the only reason they kept the sanity/insanity rules intack was because the system was so different and contrary to normal D20 rules (% base, you want to roll low and so forth) that it gave D20 players a sense of mystery, awe and the macabre. Course those of us who had played CoC from Chaosium just knew it was a better system.

But as I said, the alien/xeno as PC should be a rare event and not all the time.

Personally I am really waiting for Creatures Anathema because it my give me basic guidelines for creating and playing aliens. I am an old supporter of the eldar army (battle 40k). From the beginning of playing Dark Heresy I thought how to include in game eldars and different alien races. I reached a conclusion, that only alien races with which it is possible are eldars, dark eldars and maybe tau. In addition the Empire could cooperate only with eldars or tau ( both of them off course as a last resort).
As for blending into the human society, as you already wrote, it will be easiest with eldars and dark eldars. But it is possible (IMO) in two cases:
1. If their life depends on it, they are escaping, hiding themselves and likewise
2. If they have some important order from above, some sort of secret mission.
I can't see any other way that ancient and proud eldar would be able to withstand in this lowly (in their opinion) human mob. They are too proud race to do it without extremely important cause (I mean living in human cities in conditions normal people live ). However it is possible if it fulfilling these two points above.
After the attentive reading of Dark Heresy and textbooks to battle 40k I think that some form of the cooperation with the Inquisition, imperial fleet or the army is possible (it has happened quite often in battle 40k, similarly in PC game warhammer 40k dawn of war).
I think now about involving the eldar PC on 1-2 sessions.
Joining alien permanently to the team is quite possible somewhere on frontiers of the empire, or in worlds which that have small connection with the empire. Let us not forget that the empire is gigantic and some worlds for millennia weren't in contact with a rest of it. It is possible, that on some exist some form of the symbiosis between aliens and people. Possible, they became dependent on themselves (merchants - customers, protectors- protected).
I don't remember where I read it but there are worlds with e.g. human settlements protected by eldars against some worse enemy.
It is also possible to imagine a situation when e.g. the chaos is heading for some human planet, but on the way comes across the eldars ship (or fleet), as a result eldars are forced to retreat in that planet direction. In the face of the Chaos invasion it is possible that the governor of the planet and inhabitants will cooperate with aliens (or e.g. it can be human fleet instead of planet). Pictures like street battles where police force are aided by one or two eldars in defending inhabitants against the chaos, can forever change a point of view of these people on aliens (haha I imagine now movie or anime scene like that:P, a little child watching with adoration an elegant eldar warrior). I don’t say that eldars are good, no, but it is possible to create image like that in human minds (especially when eldars have some hidden agenda).
Moreover the Empire in Dark Heresy is created in a pattern of the Roman empire, even laws and radical approach have the reflection in the Roman law and customs. And in Roman empire both citizens and a alien functioned in cooperation (I am writing papers, among others about the symbolism of the stranger and alien in ancient cultures: P). In spite of laws and bans stranger, barbarians (regarded worse, evil, originating from animals, having superhuman powers), appeared safely not only at the streets of cities in distant provinces but even in Rome. They weren't at once burned or lynched. Really some of them were so alien to inhabitants of Rome like eldars or tau for people in DH, seriously. My deepest apologies for langue mistakes and problems with English.

I like the idea of being able to play alien races.

Do I think they should mix with humans and work for the inquisition? No. I think that goes against the fluff of the 40k universe. Humans are not only xenophobic, but they purge themselves of any among their numbers that seem to deviate, such as mutants.

I'd love to have an Eldar Ranger campaign going. I've always been a fan of the Eldar. While Space Marines were my first army in the tactical game, the first army I loved playing were Eldar. I think it would be cool to have a campaign where the players were members of a Craftworld trying to protect the interests of the Eldar.

This probably fits more in line with the background of Rogue Trader than it does in the Calixis sector, but I look forward to seeing if this is a possibility going forward.

Tau might be cool too, but only from the perspective that there is a possibility I could pilot mecha armor with railguns.