Hi

I'm thinking of running a campaign with the Logicians as the Big Bad Guys and was wondering if people would like to post their ideas for tech heresy experiments. I'll start the ball rolling with an I've been toying with.

1) Founding 'X' - "The Emperor brought about the end of the Age of Strife and all but conquered the galaxy though the Great Crusade via the product of intense genetic experiment and human enhancement. With this technology we {the Logicians} would finally have a weapon fearsome enough to match even the Adeptus Astartes"

A Logician research cell with the aid of hereteks and rogue Adeptus Biologis members is trying to recreate the technology the Emperor used to create the Primarchs. Early experiments have met with limited sucess, mainly creating brainless genetic monsters that die mere hours after creation. However, the latest batch of experiments is getting 'better' no less monsterous the abominations are surviving longer and a select few showing a vicious intellect. Led by a ringleader they have escaped the lab and are rampaging through the local civillian population.

2) (Similar to the above) "The Ashen Tear can be likened to a scapel, precisely cutting away that which is harmful. Now we have our 'Sledgehammer'..."

The Logicians have created a powerful gene manipulation drug. After a gestation period, that unfortunately varies from subject to subject, the infected begin to mutate into hulking brutes, superhumanly strong and even tougher but with minimal brain capacity that leaves the subject open to suggestion. By using a piece of newly acquired piece of Archeotech (basically a psychic emitter) these 'soldiers' can be controlled to do the Logicians bidding/fighting. [GM idea - For added fun a PC could be infected and it's only a matter of time before they change completely/Psychic Emitter goes online. Can the Acolytes find a cure in time! (If indeed such a thing exists?)

What do you think? Let's hear your ideas?

All hail Progress!

Plan A might include (of course, this is the crazy plan) an attempt to steal a sample of the geneseed of a Marine Chapter (it wouldn't be the first time such a thing has happened, and in at least a couple of cases the geneseed has fallen to the Tyranid). Which would get entertaining to all involved, especially the innocent bystanders.

There is always the "Dark Founding" where not all of them were found and destroyed. And of course the two legions that went walkabout during the Great Crusade.

Sounds nice, perhaps a bit epic, but epic is good.

Logicians are a very vercitile foe, they could come with things normally to Sci Fi for DH...

Interestingly I thought about a similar campaign about half a year ago. The short premise goes something like this:

A planetary-governor of a backwater planet allied himself with a couple of rogue Hereteks and together they intended to “repair” the flaws of the Afriel Strain project ( http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Afriel_Strain ) by using ancient technology that borderlines too tech-heresy. The governor’s aim was to create a new type of mass-reproducible super-soldiers. While not superior to the Adeptus Astartes, the Afriel Strain would not need to abide by the Codex Astartes rules (no chapter may be larger than a thousand marines, etc.) and the production process would rely on much easier and faster technological means.

That’s the short-short version.

I personally love the idea of the process used to create the Primarchs being toyed with - anything that plays with the big 'mysteries' of the 40K universe in this way are what great stories are about within the game, especially if the principles themselves remain shrouded in myth or glimpsed fleetingly before disappearing irrevocerably and forever. In the same way I liked the idea of the whereabouts or relics of the two lost Legions being discovered and held by the dastardly Technicians as well. In a similar apocalyptic vein here are some more possibilities:

• (with inspiration from the 'Gaunts Ghosts' novels) - the discovery of an STC device. I know that this is a bit of an old chestnut, but something like this could provide the motivation to visit a planet, possibly beyond the light of the Astronomicon, racing to destroy or preserve the machine before the Logicians nightmarish agents reach there first. There would have to be a compelling reason why this discovery has not been made (e.g. inhospitable planet with a crashed vessel carrying the tech away from the Galactic heart - shades of 'Alien' in the setting?). Given that in Gaunt the STC was churning out AI of a pretty malignant kind, the 'metal men,' this new device could provide some other damning technology from pre-Heresy?

• again, based more on perceived 40K canon - the last project of the Emperor was the possible creation of a Webway portal, similar to that of the Eldar, to connect the Galaxy together. The Logicians may be trying to craft a miniature version of this, using augmented psykers, twisted science etc... to connect two, or more planets across opposing Sectors of the Imperium. Even more scary would be the thought that the technology might be able to time jump as well, so that a portal might project the recipient backwards in time - possibly as far back as 10,000 years, say? There may not be a way of progressing back from there, or the portal might only remain open for a limited time rather than be permanent.

It may be that you're looking for something a little less full on.

Or meld the two. A force of false geenseed warriors is being mobilized in heretek arms and armaments, but the Marines are being sent in to deal with it. The problem is, the Marines are a long way off and encountering their own problems, and the Logicians are acting to apport the Taintseeds to the opposite end of the galaxy, putting the Tyranid, the Necrons, or some other such force between themselves and their Imperial adversaries, on an unknown planet.

PC's mission - identify the destination of the Warp Tunnel, and sabotage the transit on this side before it can be used to allow the Taintseed soldiers or the Taintseed itself to be sent to parts unknown (and certainly before the Taintseed gets jeopardized by such as the Tyrannid).

Ah - beautiful mayhem! You would have to wonder why in such a diabolical situation the Inquisition would send in a bunch of Acolytes alone! Maybe this kind of mission would be crewed by an Inquisitor or two, but with a role for the team to play on making planetfall?

In any case, with the clock ticking, the Marines from whom the Geneseed has been stolen willing to carve a path through anyone that gets in their way in the Calixis sector, the Logicians mobilising whatever tainted experiments they have available to stall the Inquisition, Warp tainted local conditions, the vagaries of parties of Inquisitors working at cross purposes even - it may be that as the portal closes, in the midst of some epic battle, it's only the PCs that get through in time - now, as Pneumonica mentions on the other side of the portal with the tainted seed, in some monstrous underground vault facility on the further side of the Imperium!

Now, as the Portal becomes unstable, they must retrieve the seed and escape while the facility itself goes on the alert (or is attacked by a third party perhaps, like the Tyranids).

In the halo stars a STM could have crashed on an xenos planet, where the once primitiv xenos now flourish as they have build a mini empire from the STC, creating a tiny xenos mirror of imperium, and maybe an army of "men of iron", and the logicians trying to trade with these xenos to get a few of the secret of the STC.

Oh, priceless! This means that the Imperium can't just Nuke and Pave, because the Cult of the Omnissiah will demand the world(s) to be un-glassed so that they can get a chance to gain access to the STCs.

Niiiiiiice.

y'know, another idea that might tie in nicely here is a cell of the Logicians trying to track down a copy of any data collected/created by Fabious Bile. He's often claimed to have rediscovered the secrets of the geneseed and perhaps even creating the primarchs themselves. At any rate, anytime someone mentiones 'genetic corruption', I think 'Fabious Bile'.

So why not have some of your heretics go looking for anything that might have been done/written/created by Fabious Bile and his research team(s). True or not, accurate or not, it might catch the interest of any number of heretical tech cults. Combine that with the genetic heresy of the Adranti and you could cook up something moderately horrific fairly quickly.

A few gene samples from the nearest Tyranid Hive Fleet should round it out rather nicely. What more do Space Marines need than a collective intelligence? (I mean, seriously, that should give a group of ten of them the intelligence of a whole person. lol )

What you reckon Lupinorc? Any of these ideas seem feasible? It seems that you've got the seeds for many hours here...

Ahh, yes, the FFG forums, for all your Heretek needs.

Yes, these are awesome ideas Thanks Everyone!

As an aside my players hate you all!

(I kid, they don't know you (but will soon know of your works mwahahaha! Must resist urge to unleash Fabius Bile on them...)

Just an aside, Lupinorc - are you a player living in East Anglia - perhaps around Cambridge?

It would be nice to know there are a few more of us around the area is all - so nothing sinister intended! That way if your players do end up hating me, then I will have to barricade myself into my house for real!

Yes we are in East Anglia (Peterborough) but don't worry those of the group that can drive can't afford the petrol to Cambridge!

Besides one of my players is the GM for our WFRP game and he could do with a taste of his own medicine!

Yeah - funny enough, that's what I often get from my players! Something along the lines of "I'll show you how you give out XPs more generously / magical items / equipment" etc...

They seem to be under the misunderstanding that I'm stingy! In any case, I hope that the Logician idea goes well - we can stay in touch, after all, on this forum.

Just thinking about something to add a little more to it.

These hereteks have created an abomanation but it is unstable and incomplete and they don't have a geneseed and are in need of a 1 or 2 to study to improve the creation.

They sacrifice a small cell to get the Inqusition's attentsion. Purpose to get the Astartes involved so that they can get hold a geneseed.

Can the acolytes realise that the hereteks "leaked" the info and for what reason, before the small squad of Space Marines are ambushed and the hereteks get what they were really after?

Shockwave said:

Now that's an idea filled with pure gold! Who the heck can boast that they've saved a Space Marine much less a small squad of them? That would serve to give the players one hell of a ego boost ;-)

That's awesome!!!!

I'm running Purge the Unclean adventures with a Logican twist to it to get them started. *SPOILERS AHOY* The Space Marine that joins them on the Twilight mission could meet with an unfortunate accident. Instead of the book the other "acolytes" could be after him! Or more to the point, his geneseed!

You could always use the genestealer ovipositor together with Space Marine geneseed as your way of making...

Primarchs!

All you have to do is the following....

1) Obtain genestealer ovipositior
2) Obtain Primarch DNA sample
3) Change the genetic payload of the Ovipositior so that all genestealer traits encoded are replaced with primarch traits
4) The altered ovipositior (possibly surgically implanted into the inquisitior) is used to infect someone.
5) Their offspring become 1st generation primarch/human hybrids. They then go off and infect people.
6) the cycle is repeated until the 4th generation (almost entirely human is reached), where upon their offspring are full primarchs.

Now for this to work, you would have to make pretty **** sure you got rid of every last scrap of genestealer DNA in the ovipoisitor delivery system.

Imagine how bad it would be if you were completely successful, apart from eliminating the tendency to psychically call to the Hive fleets? Suddenly you have a large amount of Primarch DNA being used to make new Tyranids. Not pretty!

Incidentally I reckon that the only way you could have a system like the genestealer method of reproduction which counts through generations, would be some form of persistant DNA methylation. Telomeres are only good as a counting mechanism for somatic cells, while the modifications have to occur at the germ-line.

(sorry if that's a bit too involved, but hey I may as well put my Biochemistry PhD to some use

Tyranid Marines? First generation Hybrids in modified Terminator Armor? Scything Power Claws?

There's nothing but aweome in that.

As a follow-on from Edge of Darkness I had the Churgeon continue work on the bio grafts that she developed in Coscarla Division and succeed in creating advanced versions which greatly boost the subjects physical capabilities whilst rendering them extremely susceptible to commands given by anyone who has been augmented with what I called 'Master Grafts'. Two Logician agents with these grafts nearly took out the entire Acolyte team on their own. Although the Acolytes eventually defeated the Churgeon, they do not yet know what happened to the technology and I have some very interesting ideas about where to take the game from here which I won't post in case one of my players is reading.

Perhaps the Logician's have found an ancient ruin which contained searchs for creating a weapon system that created warp storms around a target planet.

Salcor