Im gming Lure of the Expanse and my players are gonna go to the Processional of the Damned. The adventure as written leaves some to be desired. It's such an evocative setting , that of a giant ship graveyard. I was thinking of using the stalker games as a bit of inspiration, with anomalies where gravity and space was not behaving naturally.

I remember there was a good topic earlier on Oblivion but im having a hard time making the other parts of the Processional interesting.

How do I make one field of shipwrecks and spacehulks different from another and interesting? I want to preserve the sense of mystery and horror. Any ideas?

...have some ideas along the line of "time distortion" in the Processional:

- Glimpse from the future: The Vox-Officer receives a message from deep within the sea of Space Hulks. When put on screen, they first receive just static. After a few seconds of dread silence, they can finally see a grainy picture on the screens... of their own bridge! Suddenly a person comes into sight. This should be your Rogue Trader (or another appropriate player character), but aged, wearing a ragged clothes and with a mad gaze in his eyes.
He madly starts ranting about the terrible things they have found and the "scratching sound at the edge of reality" and begs the players to turn around and leave this thrice-cursed place immediately ... before being impaled by a sword right through his chest!
Droplets of blood splatter on the screen, the body slumps to the ground and the last thing the players see is one of the other PCs holding the blood smeared sword with a maddening grin before the screen cuts back to static.

- The strands of fate: this is more of a game-mechanical representation of the time-distorting effect of the Processional. If the players use a Fate Point while in the Processional to avoid being hurt or even killed (for example if they use it to reroll a failed Dodge test and succeed on the reroll), they experience both "alternate realities" at the same time. Given the example with the Dodge test, you could first describe to the player how the bullet / the sword stroke / whatever connects and causes a terrible wound. Go into gory detail with this as much as you want. Then, without a bang or anything, he/she stands there unscathed, left with the memory of the pain and the warmth of their own blood on their hands.
If you are in a nasty mood, you could then make them do an Intelligence test to "rationalize" what just had happened to them. If they pass it, they realize the inconceivability of what happened to them and should either do a Fear test or gain some Insanity points (1d5 should be appropriate).

re-reading my post, I realize how much my English does suck before I had my morning coffee ... -.-

well, you should get the idea in spite of the atrocious word order...

That thing about fate points is simply brilliant that one im definitely gonna use! So much mindscrew!

One question I keep asking is; What exactly is the processional of the damned?

Why does it exist and why does it do the things it does?

Why do the Hollow Men scavenge the vessels and how do they even exist?

The eldar described it as a sinkhole in reality. There are hints that there might be a malevolent intelligence in the center of it.

The description of a star of dark matter makes me think of a similar description of the Yu'vath fortress and the Terror Star.

Is it possible the Processional is the god that the Yu'Vath worshipped? Some sort of god of time or destruction? Though that seems a lot like nurgle, who is ultimately a god of entropy.

Any theories?

I'm generally of the opinion that the artefact at the centre of the Processional is a second (or even the original) Komus/Tyrant Star under construction. Especially given the way it distorts reality around, twists minds and plays with time.

That's kinda my theory too... wrote some homebrew fluff for the whole Tyrant Star / Processional stuff that goes something like this:

There is a boundary layer between realspace and the Warp, a Great Barrier where the two realms cancel each other out. A ship translating into the Warp has to pierce this infinitesimally thin layer with its warp engines. But this layer is more than just an energetic obstacle in warp travels... it is a place where the concept of fate itself becomes a quasi-substantial dimension. A tattered web created by the entwined strings of fate.

When the Old Ones were slowly losing the War in Heaven against the C'tan and Enslaver plagues were ravaging their homeworlds, some of them decided not to go out in silence and accept the inevitable downfall of their whole race. Using their superior technology, they punched a hole into the fabric of reality, intent physically entering the realm of fate and thus writing their will into the destiny of the galaxy for all eternity.

Well... their undertaking kind of failed. Upon accessing the Great Barrier, their bodies were obliterated and their minds fractured by the infinite possibilities of a billion alternate futures. What was left of them afterwards clinged to some form of unlife, trapped forever in the unraveling web of fate.

Until mankind entered the grand stage of the galaxy. During a time now known as the Dark Age of Technology, man conducted strange experiments into quantum realities. They re-discovered the web of fate inside the Great Barrier, and in their hubris they began to manipulate this newly found realm, weakening the veil of reality once again. Only the Eldar knew of the real dangers of meddling with this dimension from ancient legends handed down over generations, but their culture was already caught in a downward spiral of hedonism and excess and their half-hearted warnings were simply ignored by mankind.

When man finally made opened a breach into the Barrier (in a region of space that should once be known as the Calixis Sector and the adjacent Koronus Expanse), whole swathes of stars faded and died in an instant. The maddened remnants of the Old One's souls clawed their way out of their prison and darkness poured forth from the rent in reality, consuming whole star systems and driving billions insane. At a great cost in lives and resources, the darkness was driven back again but the breach was never fully sealed again, only stabilised by a fusion of now lost technology and arcane rituals.

The Tyrant Star and the Processional are both remainders of this great breach in reality, places where the Great Barrier is bloated and torn, spilling into the Materium. While the Processional is dormant and dead for millenia now, the Tyrant Star is still driven by a parody of the will of the Old Ones, aimlessly wandering the Calixis Sector in search of a way to once again bring madness and despair over the galaxy...

A bit off topic, but if you have Hostile Acquisitions, you might think of lumping Asrarium Koronus (HA, p.142) into the adventure for the Eldar Nexus Point. My own read through the book seemed a bit bereft of reward, compared to much of the rest of Lure. The Hollow Men were interesting, but you might work whole ships of the Divine Astrometricum. While these ships are probably going to be inferior to yours, they might be bigger than those of the Carrion, and against your ship, which might be damaged as a result of encounters with the Carrion, the Hollow Men, and the DA, they might prove a significant threat. If the party can persevere, they might be able to pull away with a nigh-priceless relic, the Astrarium, which they could sell for ridiculous amounts of money, or keep, and get a great deal of use out of. It might even go toward helping find the Dread Pearl, if you are doing the whole run.

Personally, I really liked how something referenced back to Lure, and if I ever run it, a chance to get something as cool and rare, even if not a weapon, will be a great optional endeavor, something to give them a feeling of acquisition accomplishment I otherwise felt that the Processional was missing, and a nice extra, once they find out how the set ends. I also really hope that they like/did like Lure of the Expanse. For not being an expansion, it's still my overall favorite book, thanks to the cool Eldar stuff it gives me, such as Serrenon, one of my favorite write-ups in all of my FFG books.

Just out of curiosity, what level were your characters at, when they started LotE? As much as I like it, one of my biggest failings in this system is a small inability to judge difficulty. I don't know if characters could run Lure from Rank 1, or if they needed to be Rank 6. Where were yours/what exp quantity would you recommend, based on their track record? Thanks much.

Double Post, sorry!

I'm not sure if any of this is rendered invalid by printed material, but for the Processional of the Damned, I'd imagined that whatever warp currents drew all the hulks and dead ships there were noticed by an alien civilization, whichever suits your fancy. They took advantage of it Processional, and when they vanished, their automated guardians were left behind. Hollowed out asteroids/refitted pieces serve to hold squadrons of automated bombers/interceptors run by advanced AIs that attempt to scrap any ships that enter the Processional, and thus the graveyard adds all newcomers to it. As for making the ships unique, try to emphasize the unique and varied nature of the ships there. Eldar, Ork, Chaos, Imperial, and even stranger yet. Don't be afraid to emphasize the nature of vessels of which the party can't even conceive. This is where the ships of the void come to die, regardless of species. Maybe even a desiccated tyranid hive ship could be floating amongst the wreckage! I also really like the warp-echos and vox-ghosts that were mentioned above.

So im continuing through the processional and because I thought the standard adventure was kinda boring I had the nexus shut off due to a freak "blowout" that tore out several systems from the players vessel and made the nexus shut down. These occur at regular intervals so the players have to move from hulk to hulk so as not to be hit.

Now they need to create an artifact to jumpstart the nexus, one part they already have. A spirit stone from an eldar craft (that was torn apart by a malevolent force that had been kept in check by the few last remaining waystones in the ships core). There were a few attacks by Warp spiders and Dire Avengers , dead and hollow just like the hollow men but on a different mission, they tried to kill all intruders.

Now im at the next part, the players need to scavenger for repairs on a space hulk and find the warp core of a stryxis vessel. Problem is I don't know what to do with these two to make it memorable. Im trying to make it short but include something interesting in each hulk they visit.

After those there are some ships in the inner cloud of space hulks; A tyranid bioship (dead, mostly), and one of the hulks that has a history with one of the players. (Her own homeship , that somehow got transported to the processional after an eldar attack. She has some special connection with the Eldar.)

In addition their nemesis , Feckward is there with an allied ship and im trying to make it a cat and mouse chase to stay out of Feckwards way. In the end I hope to create an enemy mine situation where they have to cooperate against the carrion or possibly another rogue trader come to blockade the exit to the webway nexus.

So where do I go from here? How do I expand the ideas I have?

When I ran this for my players, they found their own flagship, terribly damaged and clearly centuries older than it currently was. They boarded the vessel only to find signs of a terrible battle and diary logs from their characters lamenting the terrible decision they made and how something particularly terrible had happened to the arch-militant. Something to do with being "stung by a bee".

They later found what remained of a few of their characters, all very horribly dead. The arch-militant was the only one they found alive if you can call it that. He had been infected by a Yu'vath construct (the bee) and had grown foul yu'vath warp cybernetics including a nasty warp cannon that replaced his arm. He was mindless and attacked on sight.

It was a nasty battle and they lost quite a few troops. Needless to say the whole thing was creepy as hell and after escaping they resolved not to go back to the processional, despite all the potential scavenging opportunities.

I had a ton of stuff planned for when I ran the processional, and forgot to write it all down! It's really rather disappointing now that I look back.

I was thinking of them seeing their own flagship.

I also figured the Processional might have something to do with the Yu'vath. I had an idea that they might not have followed any of the big four gods of chaos at all. But something different entirely. Haven't really pinned down what exactly the nature of this minor god might be. Perhaps bring back Malal? Since the Processional seems linked with void and oblivion.

If you remember some scraps of it just help me brainstorm here.