Hi all

I'm trying to create an "unique" (so no tyranids) one-off. The basic idea is to have an apostate cardinal building a cathedral on top of a necrons tomb. There, he will try to open the tomb.

So enemies will be the cardinal and entourage (sisters of battle, penitent engines, servitors). And of course necrons if the tomb is opened (with the big bad a c'tan shard).

What do you think of the basic premise? Does it sound like fun and hard enough for a Deathwatch team?

Could be cool. Interesting idea, having the Cardinal's heresy involve something other than Chaos. He could fully believe that he is doing the right thing for the Imperium: exploiting a cache of powerful xeno weapons. The tricky part with having a physically unimpressive 'boss monster' like a Cardinal is preventing the PCs from simply sniping him from long range and calling it a day. Force field protection will be a must! This might be a good mission to put the Killteam in Scout armour and test their stealth/infiltration skills.

The stealth part is a good idea.

I plan on having a necrons monolith below the surface of the cathedral. He'll be there with some heretical sisters of battle and penitant engines to keep the kill team distracted. And maybe 4 pointifex guards (who can dodge for him, even impersonate him if needed). And the shard is the true boss monster so I only need the cardinal alive to open the tomb / monolith. Quessel Uwick from Mark of the Xenos (p 82) sounds like a good fit for the cardinal.

I thought of using him summoning a daemon prince, but that feels like it's been done before.

I'm not sure if I should start this with them knowing he's a heretic, or them investigating something wrong in the cathedral.

No need to make him apostate, even, make it a real mind bend for the group.

An Inquisitor calls the kill-team in and says that a nearby Ecclesiarchal Shrine must be purged. The inquisitor states that they are attempting to raise a Xenos beast and they must be stopped.

Phase one - the attack on the shrine. It's well defended - Soriatas, penitent engines, arco-flaggelants, hordes of fraternis militia, that sort of thing. But there is no sign, at all, of any pro-xenos, anti-imperial dogma. Everything seems clean. By this stage, of course, they're committed. They're coming under attack by the shrines defences. They fight their way through to the Cardinal, standing atop a pulpit as arco-flaggelants with drills and plasma cutters are boring through the ground beneath him. He's protected with a void shield that will require demolitions or a techmarine to start bringing down - as they're doing so, the cardinal monologues, telling the kill team that he's had visions that a living saint has been entombed beneath this cathedral, possibly even one of the lost sons of the Emperor himself. The arco's will hit the tomb entrance as the void shield comes down - enter boss fight against a cardinal and personal retinue.

Phase two - the cardinal is dead and the way to the tomb is cleared. THe tomb doors shimmer and open and BAM fight you some Necronies. Allow the group to realise that these are Necrons and that the only way they'll survive the legions of death is by getting into the heart of the tomb and setting charges around the tomb's power core. Initiate sequence: "Fight lots of robots!". Boss battle is outside the power core chamber, possibly a Canotep Spyder, os Triarch Stalker - something big and roboty that looks like a final boss fight.

Phase three - The kill team enter the core chamber and start setting charges around the power core. The core looks like a sarcophagus, some five meters long. As they finish setting charges, the core itself shimmers, flows like liquid into the form of a massive, if slender, golden figure some five or six meters high. It congratulates them on getting this far and setting the charges before explaining that they may have actually managed to get here before it had enough power to awaken to its full strength. Although it is likely to be destroyed in the coming detonation, the Deceiver shard offers to grant the kill team the gift of perception - what it must have been like for those innocent militia and soriatas that they slaughtered on the way through. Phase three ends with the kill team's vision going white and a high pitched sound nearly splitting open their heads.

Phase four - the kill-team awaken… and you hand out stats for Fraternis Militia (use cultist stats from the book). THey KNOW they are astartes, but they are in frail human bodies with pathetic mortal weapons. They seem to be in the heart of a labrynthine cathedral - but on the very edges of vision, they can see that they are still, in reality, in the tomb complex. Stuck inside this illusion, they must get back to their ship by navigating the tomb. They are hampered by visions of seemingly hundreds of other militia and assorted Ecclesiarchal troops. Occasionally, grotesquely exagerated astartes come out and blast the screaming hordes with giant boltguns. The kill-team will need to dodge incoming fire, charging astartes and other horrors that they themselves had perpetrated against the militia as they run. This should play out less as combat, more as traps - the kill-team cannot kill these phantom astartes, the best they can do is use their lasguns to drive them back. This death run continues until the kill team manage to escape the tomb/cathedral and their charges detonate. At that moment, the illusion drops and they can attempt to escape the tomb complex beneath them exploding in whatever way you see fit for the game.

BAM!

That's a great idea! I love the first part, giving little information about the mission and only revealing later on he's gone heretical. It should give the kill team some things to think about.

The last part might be fun as well, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to fit everything in one session.

Split it up over a couple. Leave it hanging on a cliff hanger. Once they set the charges and they think they're about to win, dramatically describe the shard rising from its tomb and then say, "And we'll leave it here for tonight. Part two next week!" If your players declare that they hate you, or throw things, you've won!