Is there any official information on this barren rock? I think I remember reading something about an Astropathic tower being built there but I can't find it again. Also has anyone used it and have any decent plot hooks they used? So far I plan on using it as a jump off point for my players to start investigating the disappearance of an ancient Repulsive Class Grand Cruiser and go chaos stomping.

There is some information about the Witch-cursed World in "Edge of the Abyss"

The Witch-cursed world with the tower from where no one ever returns. I always wonder what I should do if my players ever decide to take a look. I like to imagine it will be something like this:

Players: "We organize an expedition and enter the tower"

Me: "You are all dead. Make new characters."

Red Bart said:

Ale Golem said:

Sounds good. The Hermitage is a big price though. Taking away "neutral ground" might piss off some powerful people too!

How were you planning to handle the tower on 2819-Rho? What's lurking inside?

One of my players decided on a lark to take an expedition down. He tried to convince the rest of the party to go with him but they got concerned of my evil GM face. I had him make quite a few willpower rolls and fellowship to keep his core cadre of troops he took to the tower together. They made it in and discovered a strange latice of the still barely living astropaths being used as some sort of enslaver mechanism. Narrowly he managed to escape and through a frriendly contact he reported the matter to the inquisition who have now moved the installation from their "Troublesome things outside the borders" to "DEATHWATCH!" I actually might run a quick one session thing for the players characters from my short lived Deatchwtch campaign. Ultimately though the decision may come back to bite him as i plan on having some of those troops taken into the tower get some kind of creeping mental infection. I may forgo that plot as I might want to run the Whisperer's

Chaos is patient, ever present and insidious. A lifetime of pious worship to the God-Emperor can be undone in a single moment of horror or a child may be twisted within the womb, the faintest touch of the warp enough to plunge it into an eternity of damnation. Dragging one soul into chaos is considered a win for the endless forces at work but sometimes they achieve something even greater, an entire family line may be turned from the fawning sycophantic adulation of the corpse-god.So it was when the financial backers behind Installation 2819-Rho brought their plan before the Imperium representatives within the Calixis Sector. A plan was set forth to build an astropathic relay station within the Koronus Expanse, at least that's what was put down on paper, which wasn't completely inaccurate. What was actually erected functions more as a net than anything else. Astropathic messages within range of Installation 2819-Rho are received, recorded and then sent on their way. A small cadre of Hereteks analyze and remit pertinent information from these broadcasts to similar stations around the Koronos Expanse, in this way they ensure the forces of Chaos are on the bleeding edge of information within the expanse.

Within the tower reside, in addition to the Hereteks, the still alive and conscious Astropaths originally sent to the planet. Chained and strung up in a mockery of a true astropathic choir they are the unwilling tools of their betrayers. Their sorrow and rage can be felt immediately upon entering the facility requiring Willpower checks to avoid hallucinations and extreme emotional outbursts. Lacking the measures taken by the Hereteks to interact with them, any adventurer entering their chamber will be subject to immediate psychic attack as they lash out at any living thing they sense within their presence. It is not out of malice that they do this but out of desperation and insanity, they are more wild animal than man after enduring centuries of atrocity.
A pious member of the Imperium may be able to reach out and communicate with the strongest of them. If an Astropath is present then the mental connection will be immediate and may prevent the psychic onslaught. If friendly contact is established then overt psychic attack is no longer a threat, however the emotional psychic bleed is not something they may control anymore. Willpower, Charm or Intimidate checks will be needed for every half hour spent in this place to prevent any NPC followers from breaking ranks and trying to return to the ship.

A lower level will be accessible, this is where the dormant plasma generators lay buried. If the explorers decide to explore this area they will discover a macabre scene explaining the disappearance of entire crews around The Witch Cursed World. Thousands of life sustaining tanks stretch off in every direction, each contains nothing more than a floating brain and it's attached nervous system. Using the bio energy produced by these monstrous human batteries Installation 2819-Rho is able to generate enough power to run the stasis tanks, thereby preserving it's own energy source, its computer matrix and broadcast its beacon every seventeen minutes while still reading as an energy blackout to any intrusive auger scans.
Venturing to the upper levels of the tower will reveal the complex cogitators used to broadcast the stolen information intercepted by Installation 2819-Rho to it's foul recipients. Here any players would be intercepted by a small group of Hereteks and have the opportunity, with some high tech-use tests, to glean information regarding the true purpose of the installation and possibly it's origins.

If the adventurers, for any reason, explore outside the installation they will find a mass grave behind with the corpses, clothing, armor and belongings of everyone used to power the generators. The morbidity of searching the grave should be stressed and, despite the thousands of useful and mundane items they may obtain from it, they should only find a small handful worth taking before leaving as the horror of the scene overtakes them and especially any NPC troops they have with them.

A fair compliment of servitors can be sprinkled around the Installation for the explorers to encounter. Once a return is made to their home ship they may find that their stay was days, or weeks, longer than what was experienced from their perception due to psychic interference. In this time some of the crew may have succumbed to the metal torture endured by tarrying too long around the planet, reduce crew population the GM sees fit.

Red Bart said:

The sidebar on page 29 of Edge of The Abyss give some decent ideas on what will be necessary to salvage The Hermitage. The Rogue Trader's family owns a fair number of space station orbiting worlds within the Calixis Sector that the Imperial Guard uses as outposts, training grounds and recruitment stations for the planets below so it seems a fitting prize, their first space station in the Koronus Expanse.

It would definitely be an iconic price to own. But after laying the horrors of 2819-Rho to rest, they'd deserve it!

It's always interesting to see what other GMs come up with. Yours and the one lurkeroutthere wrote are both excellent, but let me take a stab at coming up with a good "lurker in the darkness":

I'd make my 2819-Rho a serious death trap. Unless the players are particular careful or inventive they'll and up as smears on the wall, Not that I wont give them the heads up. I'll be sure to look at them intently and ask them "Do you really want to go there? You've heard the rumours.". In my opinion any of the officially described worlds and in particular the stations of passage will take a tremendous effort to tame. So my 2819-Rho will be designed to kill anyone who enters the tower. When they set foot inside, all communications will cease. Even their personal communicators fail. Their lights will almost not be able to penetrate the darkness. They might detect that the tower is hollowed out and its walls are molten to a black glass. If they are fortunate they'll notice that there is no floor. It's a straight drop down of about 1km. Should they be able to descent this dark cavernous space they'll be attacked halfway down by a silver gleaming centipede like xenos. If they survive that and touch down on the bottom, they'll see that they are in a huge space made out of some black smooth rock covered in golden runes and green glowing machines crackling with eldritch power. In niches throughout the room skeletal robots made of the same silvery metal as the centipede creature are stacked. You've guessed it: the astropaths were taken by a monstrous necron tomb stalker assisted by numerous scarabs. The only reason the Maw exists is because the Necron machines are pushing the warp back. The warp was used by the old ones and the Necrons are notorious for having no dealings with it (their ships for example have FTL drives and never use the warp). If the players brought a veritable army, the Necrons will awaken. If they haven't the necron tomb stalker together with the tomb spyders and a horde of scarabs will do their best to eliminate them. The more the Necrons fail, the more Necron warriors will awaken, and eventually even a Necron Lord or a C'tan Shard. The passage back up will close hermetically with living metal (punch through it and it will seal up again). The only course of action left is to venture through the maze of catacombs and cavernous Necron vaults all the while while being chased by a Necron horde, desperately looking for an exit. If there is an exit of course...

There are rumors and tails of horror.

Far away from the Koronuys expense, there is another Warp Storm, smaller then the Eye yet radiating as dangerous a maligned presence.

Some rumors in the higher circles fo the inquistion say that this station of passage is actually a gate to this warp storm, one that is used by silver or black power armor groups of secretive space marines...

Those squad would be sent forth to attone for mistakes, wrong deeds or for some other sinister purpose. One single thruth persistent part is no one returns, even the mighty space marines...

[//@#%$ Sigma One &^@*]

The phage virus as been deployed successfully, anyone not bearing the right frequency will be destroyed at the atomic level by the nano phages...

[/@^&%^!&!]

This is the literally their first mission as Rogue Traders, both in character and as new players to the game, so I decided to hold back on a TPK... for now. Before half the group decided to change their Career at the last minute I did have them slated to face off against Necrons in their first session, alas now I have to push that back.

I like the idea of a communications blackout once inside the installation, hopefully it'll keep them from splitting up. Suggestions on psychic phenomena for the entrance way would be greatly appreciated, what I have follows.

Willpower Failure Chart

1. Why Am I crying?! The character weeps uncontrollably and has trouble seeing through the tears. (Counts as stunned)

2. Make It Stop! The character drops to their knees momentarily at the sound of thousands of souls shrieking in agony. (Counts as deafened)

3. Let Me Out! The character is suddenly pinned to the wall as several hanging chains violently wrap around their limbs and neck. (Counts as paralyzed)

4. Who's There?! The characters eyesight quickly fades to black and they know something is out in the darkness. (Counts as blinded)

5. I'm Going To Be Sick! The character vomits up something unsavory. (Counts as stunned)

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

6. Get these bugs off me!

7. Run inside and hide!

8. Attack the darkness with everything you've got!

9. (If they have any "red shirts" with them): That guy right there, was he with us all along? He's an imposter! (If there's only the players themselves): That's not my friend! He's wearing a mask; get it off!

10. Everything is tainted! My weapons, my armor, my equipment. Burn it all!

What my GM ended up doing was we where tasked to go and destroy some Xenos/Warp entities that the Inquisition had detected. (The Inquisitor was the one who payed for our ship) We went to the world with an Interogator (Who was a Sister of Battle), Tech-Priest, 2 guards, and another guy. (can't remember the exact terminology, but he made a psychic void around us) We followed a trail from the tower to a cave in the mountain side. There where murals of insectoid xenos on the walls. There was also a strange buzzing and voices in our heads that would compel us to advance against our will. (which we discovered on a previous visit) Anyways, we eventually found a maze that led to a large central chamber that was covered in the bodies of humans and xenos alike. We where then attacked by groups of hollow men and after killing them off, a group of hulking cockroach like xenos. (Who would keep entering the room and attacking until my character found a weakpoint) Needless to say, the void person was killed nearly instantly and the Sister of Battle was taking critical damage. To stop this madness, my character (Astropath) had to use psychic powers on a warp power conduit in the middle of the room. The power fluxed, causing the xenos to die, and the planet proceeded to explode, after we had escape. Don't know what is next because that was last game session

Wow there is some seriously good material in here. I used it in my last game as a spring board for a expansive double grand endeavour race across the expanse with some heavy fantasy elements and the eldar webway.

I'm happy someone got some use out of the thread, my game fell apart before it started.

my group decided to start out with the eternal praetorian AND make their first stop at the witch cursed world. I was pretty excited with the path they were taking but i totally drew ablank. I ended up giving the whole crew visions of ghosts, including the old captain being murdered. luckily that scared them away before icould tell them i was out of ideas…

Cornwallis said:

LMAO

Still, something to ponder. It cannot be anything obvious and known, between:

1. Psychic interference.
2. The ship that wound up depopulated on orbit without traces of struggle.
3. It was, obviously, scanned ad nauseam both out of greed and paranoia, with no results other than "there are no mineral resources worth digging". Also it's a sunless world, so on background of interstellar cold any activity producing significant heat (including any "hidden" habitats, fortifications, etc) would be no more subtle than a lit candle on moonless night.
4. The astropathic relay ( Installation 2819-Rho ) worked for 5 years before whatever-it-was got them.
5. After going cold, the tower was also scanned ad nauseam with no results other than it's dead and cold.
6. There's "ghost signal" from dead relay.

(1) alone would point at Psychneuein, but even (2) rules it out (at Mara it was a massacre , and in general these things are not s enough to hide corpses) and astropaths would notice that earlier.

Enslavers can't pick off Astropaths, and again, if they got through, where are they, all their thralls, or at least bodies?

(1) and (6) point at some warp shenanigans.

(1) could be an old Yu'Vath souvenir hidden somewhere, with (2)-(4) effects of guardians — they won't reach orbit, but the Rogue Trader on that ship could run a shuttle to surface "just this one time", and others just got lucky and didn't walk into dormant sandslime, etc right away (including what still lurks on that derelict). But (6) stretches it (perhaps active Yu'Vath warp-machinery could "replay" it, but these things won't be undetectable).

Wait…

Quote

“Installation 2819-Rho,” located within the Maw. The records simply refer to when the station went operational---002.M41

…

For the next five years, the same number of astropaths were dispatched to 2819-Rho, until a final notification notes

…

For the past three centuries, the Calixian Scholastica Psykana has indicated they would pay handsomely were someone to investigate the tower and report their findings.

Last 3 centuries or so? But Rogue Trader adventures happen in 8xx.M41 ( Daughter of Regals was lost presumably to Rak'Gol in 811.M41). 2819-Rho was dead (with ghost beacon!) for over 8 centuries. What's with the pause for 5 centuries? Did they just consider the offer hopeless until the worst tales were forgotten or distorted into nonsense, or did they get more money lately?

On 12/21/2018 at 6:56 AM, TBeholder said:

Wait…

Last 3 centuries or so? But Rogue Trader adventures happen in 8xx.M41 ( Daughter of Regals was lost presumably to Rak'Gol in 811.M41). 2819-Rho was dead (with ghost beacon!) for over 8 centuries. What's with the pause for 5 centuries? Did they just consider the offer hopeless until the worst tales were forgotten or distorted into nonsense, or did they get more money lately?

Never let it be said that the developers overly cared too much about timestamps. That's one thing I've found in my readings of Dark Heresy at least.

The answer is, "I don't know, GMs are encouraged to come up with their own answers" for the most part.