I'm a (relativly novice) GM, who is writing down his first adventure. The first part of it wil take place at Castel (I don't know the english name, but it's the station which lies at the far end of the Maw). While my PC are on the station, a huge fleet will emerge from the Warp and lay siege on the station. So far, so good, i'll just have to adapt "the frozen reaches" to the location, but the siege part won't be posing a problem.

My problem, however, lies with what happens right before the attack. I had this idea that the ennemy would attack some parts of castel from hte inside, by infiltrating some of it's soldiers. The objectifs i had in mind were:

-trying to assasinate all the important members of Castel (including any rogue trader present at time)

-bombing the power core and the environemental systems (which, i considere, muste be close together, so only one objectif)

-attacking the docks

-attacking the shield generators

-destroying the pit of voices (again, don't know what the english names is, it's the place where Castel's Astropaths live (cf "lure of the expanse")

However, those three last objectifs don't make any sens: the shield generators and the docks are to well defended to be destroyable by some small squads (besides, I don't want to scratch the paint on the PC's ship), and there is an Astropath on every freaking ship ,making it kinda hard to cut off Castel's communications.

Could anyone give me ideas to replace those 3 objectifs, or to make them playable?

Thank you.

P.S. English is not my native language, please excuse any small errors that sliped there way into this query.

why dont they just let the docks and shields be. they lay siege, not take over the planet instantly. the shield is prob the most important thing, becouse if it falls and the enemy, since it has enough ships in SPHESS to siege the place they will win becouse if there totally dominating air power.

and about the fear that they will send help through astropaths, other astropaths can block them. they have an ship combat action to do so. and if not, they got big evil name of warp device that **** up all communication through warp and make the test to send a message a -60 or something like that.

"Castel" is Footfall in English (I don't really like the "Castel" name in the French version ).

According to Into the Storm, astropaths can jam psychic communications in a 30 VU radius around their ship. Let them try that near Footfall.
Besides, there are Astropaths only the station itself, and interstellar ships only : not every freighter in orbit of Castel got an astropath. I'm not even sure every merchant fleet do have an Astropath.

Footfall/Castel is a vast collection of rock-hewn habitats held together with battleship chains. I very much doubt it has a single, centralized power source, shield generator or environmental system. You would have to attack each rock with a separate team to take out them all if you wanted to do it commando style. You'd need dozens of ships (or maybe even more) to take them out by bombardment all at once.

But you did say it was a huge fleet, so it would still be possible. But I really don't think you could consider it a single objective.

@ plynkes, that's true, but i was more thinking Footfall along the lines of one whole. Stretched, convoluted and anchored on a dozen of asteroids, yes, but one unit nontheless, with covered walkways and stripmined hulks of old starships to link the different areas. I don't think that it's anywhere stated what Footfall looks like.

Another question, does anyone know how Footfall's food and water suplies are stored/maintained?

What's the nature of the enemy? Would they recognise the psychological effect of cutting lose the Emperor's statue from the centre of the station?

Also, given the scorching effect of Furibundis (the humongous Red Super Giant the station orbits), seizing multiple shield generators would be an extremely effective way of holding the station hostage. Especially if they show they're serious by going ahead and demolishing one.

The food & water supplies are brought in by any old visiting warp-capable ship as tribute, so it'd be pretty random in amount and location.

You see, that's a bit of a triky question: The assailants are actually brainwashed humans, who think they are continuing the holy work of saint Drusus. And, thanks to the huge quantity of fluf we have on that subject, I don't really know how hey consider the mainsream Imperial cult and it's depictions of the Emporer.

OOh, so the shields of Footfall are actuammy to protect the station from radiation… Hadn't undersood it that wat, thank you.

There's a ship component in Hostile Acquisitions that can jam astropathic communications across an entire system, as long as you have a psyker to mutilate, and you can keep him alive long enough. It broadcasts his agony as you, for example, cut off his fingers one by one.