'Allo guys. I intend to run a deep-cover campaign for the climax of my player's time in Dark Heresy before we move to Ascention-level play.

As the title says, I have 3 ideas that I'd like the excellent community here to weigh in on.

1: A fitting foe.

My goal with this big bad is for him to be an enemy of their inquisitor, so he has to be more dangerous than anyone they've met before. Their inquisitor is a member of the Ordo Cronos, who has access to limited time travel (I haven't decided on details yet, but the effect is that he has perfect timing and a VERY good idea of what "should" happen). As such he only has two real enemies that can threaten him (his regular work is time consuming, but not very threatening to him, which is why he has acolytes). These two foes are Minerva, an AI from the dark age of technology that can read the Akashic Records; and the Czar of Vultures, an VIII legion prophet who often weakens planets from the inside by starting a cult and creating internal strife before he call in the warband he belongs to.

For this adventure I want them to face the Czar, but I run into the problem that no matter how tough I make him, no matter what gear I give him, my players are so damned killy that I would not be surprised if they beat him to death with their bare hands. I think #2 might solve this, but I'm not sure

2: A way to force my acolytes into their cover-persona.

My acolytes are about as subtle as an ogryn in a bridal dress. So I've been considering having them psychically conditioned to believe that they are their cover persona. The conditioning will break and their old persona shall return on a trigger-word.

I know my guys like their gear (more than half of it is trophies from heretics they've put down) and I don't want them totally screwed when it's crunch time, so I've been toying with the idea of having some of their weapons in a rapid-deployment case (1/2 action to gear up everyone in range) that one of them will lug around under the impression that it is an unholy relic that must be protected by them personally. This is the part that I'm the most uncertain about in #2.

3: Actual deception, not just withholding information.

This is where my "ethical" concerns come in. I don't want my players to know that they are undercover, some of them have trouble separating what they (the player) knows and what they (the character) knows. To fix that I don't want to tell them that they are undercover. I want them to believe that they are Black Crusade characters who are trying to rise through the ranks of the Czars cult to learn as much as they can about his operation for their true patron, who they will believe to be an ascendant champion of Chaos Undivided that can protect and reward them for their information on the Czar. The information will be dropped at a remote location in the form of a data-cube that my tech-priest will encrypt.

To tie #3 in with #2, their patron will provide them each with a "word of power" that will grant them "immense strength and knowledge beyond your ken" that they must only use in their time of greatest need, for it will reveal their true master to the Czar of Vultures and his flock. This word of power will of course be their mental-trigger that restores their skills and abilities.

As I said, my concern with #3 is the ethics of how I want to run this. Is it too sleazy to mislead them like this? and is there a better way of doing it?

And the biggest question is: Does this sound like fun?

I think you can get the players to do this without actually deceiving them. You could play an authentic black crusade game. Tell your players that you'd like a small break from your normal game and want to do an experiment called "what if you acolytes were the bad guys". Here's how I would pitch it.

1. You want to do this story for this real bad villain but you thought it would be more fun to play through.

2. It'll only be a few sessions. You'll still gain experience that applies towards your normal characters.

3. Every thing that happens in this game will be apart of the regular game when we get back to it.

4. Your characters are already pretty strong so let's have them just totally power trip for a bit instead of making new characters. It'll be more fun just letting loose.

Then just run your game. Insert little hints here and there and then spring it on 'em three or four sessions later. The big reveal when one of them finds undeniable evidence that they have been playing the real game the whole time. This will give everyone playing the ultimate Macharian Candidate sensation.

As for how all this transpires with out their knowledge? Well let's say they were in deep space traveling from point A to point B. The gellar field has a really bad malfunction and the ship has some problems. The events of the malfunction are pretty bad and the crew takes their important passengers and secures them in a sort of "safety room". The safety room mind scrubs people for their own protection and sanity. The bad guys eventually find the ship in real space in pretty bad shape and find the safety room. The players are "liberated" from this derelict vessel and end up with the villains.

Eventually the Inquisition realizes that their acolytes have unwittingly infiltrated. Knowing that the safety room would leave a pass code to reactivate their memories they wait for the right moment…

If any part of this helps I'll be very pleased. Good luck! Sounds like you have a cool adventure ahead of you.

I'm kinda partial to leaving the restoration of their persona in the hands of the players. Early on when we were getting the hang of the game, they'd do something stupid or horrid or see right through the campaign, one of them even opted to shoot the psyker in the intro adventure in the back of the rule book, Aristarcus I think it was? Anyhow, whenever they did that I'd declare "plot powers activate, no you didn't/no you can't" (such as trying to throw loose power 30m away or shooting a superior).

I don't want to be the one who triggers the restoration because it'll feel too much like the old days of "plot powers activate." which I have been trying to move away from. The only possible problem is how to handle one of them activating it too soon (I suppose I could always have them burn a fate point and wake up in a gutter)

I do like ideas 1,3 &4 though. They give me some solid basis for how I'm gonna sell this to them.

Another thing that I'd like you're opinion on, one of my players recently found out he is a psyker. He was personally trained by the inquisitor. He was/is a guardsmen at rank 6 or so. I decided that since he is single biggest beatstick my group has, I shouldn't take that away or make it an even bigger stick. As a result I decided that he would be well trained, but have a broad psychic education. (do a few tricks and don't let the daemons in sums it up).

The question is: How should I represent this in Black Crusade? Is there a PC type that will work for this, or should I whip up something special. Perhaps more importantly, if his powers are the same will it become too obvious what's going on? And is it believable for his powers to go dormant while mind-scrubbed?

I have actually played in a game a lot like this. The GM told us that he'd had an idea for a one off session. He pre-genned characters for us and even gave us each a little background that our character remembered. We played members of a cult who knew they were being heretics but were ok with it because of our backgrounds. Then partway through play we found an exterminatus scroll in the cult area and a device that released us from the mental conditioning. The GM then gave us our old characters back (those of us that had them) and told us we suddenly remembered who we were.

I think this worked best because we didn't know we were actually playing our characters. Basically the 'pre-gens' were our physical and mental stats with XP spent in different classes. So I would suggest you gen up your characters in Black Crusade with the same amount of XP and but the same stats. I think the suggestion above is excellent about telling them you need a little break from DH, maybe so you have time to prep and awesome finale for it. Give them the new characters, say you wanted to save time and this is only for a while so pre-gens would be fun. I would suggest that you give them enough corruption to have a 'gift from the the dark gods' that is the 'word of power'. Tell them that they must only use it at the time of great need.

Now if one of your players says it too early hand them a note and don't let them tell anyone out of character. That person then has to RP his actual character staying undercover. Should the others find out that he is actually an Inquisitorial agent, their current personas ought to kill him, so he has an incentive not to give it away.

Should they all use them too early you have already forced the subterfuge on them and they will be in the midst of this epic cult. Even a group of ultimate badasses can't just fight their way out of something that is large enough. Just make that clear to them.

I like the idea of handing out a note to players that jump the gun, I do believe I'll use that

on another note, how likeable should I make the heretics? Some heretics are raving disciples of the blood god, others are just imperial seperatists that don't want to kill every xenos they see.

So how relatable should parts of the cult be? Should I try to introduce more emotional conflict when the players revert? and should there be different groups within the cult that have different methods to achieve the same goals?

You could try to get an interesting dilemma for the players once they revert. I would suggest that the upper echelons of the cult are raving heretics. They don't need to be complete psychopaths but they should be very definitely bad. They should be controlling larger numbers of dupes, and people that have lost their way. People that aren't necessarily evil and could very certainly be 'saved'. See how your players react.

Some suggestions for savable people:

Someone who couldn't afford to feed their family so turned to the place that was offering handouts, soon the handouts came in return for certain deeds.

Someone who was tricked into the cult thinking it was just a sect of the Imperial Creed, has realised but is too scared to try and leave.

Could also have mind control that when dropped leaves perfectly normal people who are horrified at what they have done.

Do they just turn everyone in/kill them themselves, or do they cut out the bad parts and lead the rest back to the Emperor?

Another way to go is to let your players really get into the 'being evil' and then see how they react once their real characters realise what they have done. Maybe the trigger words return one or two of them to themselves whilst their hands are still covered in the blood of murdered innocents… Maybe the Inquisition understands they didn't know what they were doing due to the mind cleansing but still requires some sort of penitence.

Seizan said:

1.Done well your players will realize on a meta level that the Black Crusade game is really a ruse and it won't be "plot powers activate". Also just because the Inquisition has the codes and needs to get them to the players doesn't mean it's like a magick "TA DA". Being that your acolytes will be really deep undercover the means by which the Inquisition will get the code to them will have to be strangely subtle. Psykers are bizarre especially the ones who can send messages very far have some really creepy and esoteric powers.

If you've seen the movie "23" you would have a good basis for a sort of paranoia based magicks. Like for example the team starts to see a string of numbers in very odd places. Rocks lined up in a strange pattern. Blood drawn on the walls of a ship. The number of teeth that fly out of a mutants face. Don't be subtle about it either. Make it clear that some thing is going on. Then when the players look in to it they'll eventually find out what the code is for and "wake up". The Inquisition will have saved them but the players will have done the real work of figuring out the strange messages. This would add plausibility to your story as well.

2. I actually don't know too much about Black Crusade. I would just implement the coolest stuff that wouldn't be too hard to rationalize after the fact. As far as the psyker powers go I'd stick with them going on a power trip with the current characters they have. Therefore no one will think it's strange that he has x,y, and z. However for spice you could allow your acolyte to learn one or two forbidden magicks which when he returns to regular play will separate his character from some lame pre-gens. Your player will always have a pretty cool story to fall back on whenever that power is brought up. It will really help him/her stand out. Just be careful here. You don't want power creep and you definitely want to make sure that everyone else has a cool things, skills, or story hooks they bring back from their time on the "dark side".

My next bit of advice I know is unsolicited but I really have to say this… Keep it short! This is a fairly involved storyline but could easily be told successfully in a two hour movie. So no reason to make it a eight session ordeal. Try to knock this sucker out fast and it will have the strongest impact before your players catch on and the tension gets ruined.

I think a lot of this will help but if you're only able to pluck out one or two good ideas then my typing will have been a success.

BrotherKane said:

This is awesome, I think I will borrow your GM idea one of these days .

Not even my idea so please feel free!