Long time lurker seldom poster
Anyways i wanted to ask you my fellow GMs how you view the Slaugth in your campaigns (if you use them at all that is).
I myself mainly use them for the odd investigation/horror/TPK mission, where I want the players to be paranoid scared and running for their lives. As such I use mostly human collaborators and bio-constructs within the campaign. Primarily I use the bio-constructs for terrorizing the populace/players, having them hidden, only seen rarely and such. The humans are either ignorant about who they are actually working for, directly mislead or in the rare circumstance in which they known their masters utterly terrified of them. For good measure I also have the Slaugth able to implant small ‘worms’ into the brain of a human and thus dominate them by this parasite. The sideeffect being that the human gets unnatural toughness and strength and don’t have to respond to pain, but after a duration of 3 around months they start to get insane as the worm in their brain degenerate the surrounding tissue.
As to boost the paranoia aspect all, of the Slaugth bio-constructs (including the mind-worms) breaks down after death into amino-acids, fats, water and of course the odd metals they may contain.

Anyways as I have been lurking these forums for years now I know that I’m not the only one using the Slaugth as horror elements, but as I am currently running a campaign where they are starting to show elements of their long term plan, I am curious of how you fine fellows see and use the Slaugth (if at all).

I haven't come around to use the Slaugth yet but I'm planning on doing it pretty much like you are. In addition I also play them as selling double-edged swords to various Xenophile groups. "Selling" bio-constructs which the Xenophiles thinks are their to control but in reality the bio-constructs are as much working to fullfill the objectives implanted into them by the Slaugth as doing what their new human "masters" desires.

Also, and people playing in "Touched by the Alien" should stay clear , I'm having a plot in mind where there is a Xenophile pocket empire which managed to stay hidden from the Angevin Crusade thanks to various Xenos technologies that obfuscated the Warp routes to these planets, where the Slaugth are worshipped by a large cult with an organized priesthood. And before the campaign is over and the truth discovered I'm planning for the Acolytes to have run-ins with parts of this cult, part of them people "gifted" with bio-technical enhancements and parts of them Xenophile adepts of the Adeptus Mechanicus awed by the alien's technological skills. These will however be minor elements as the Slaugths main "thing" will remain the Syndicate.

I am planning to run them pretty "straight from the book" but with the Haarlock heresy in mind. My intention is to introduce each of the various factions looking to go after Haarlock's legacy, including the Slaugth, in separate missions so that the players end up seeing a larger picture and get a sense of the race against the others as part of the last book.

I'm not sure exactly how I am going to introduce them yet but it will involve some shady business dealings that ends up revealing a Slaugth infiltrator.

These guys are great for a behind the scenes manipulator race in a RT game. There was even a trio of Slaugth that infiltrated the underdecks of their ship and set up a 'labor union' among the menials that caused all sorts of problems for the command crew.

DesFeux said:

That's pretty close to how I've incorporated them DesFeux. I love the mind worm concept, and I'm going to steal the idea . Some of the stuff I did was use creatures or xeno's as the Slaughts agents/killers. Example is here www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp .

Used the "Specters" as their agents that assassinated high ranking officials on a planet that the Slaugth couldn't corrupt, and then tried to assassinate the PC's when they are started investigating the Slaugth's activities. The "Macharian Nightmare" was used as a boss fight in a large underground tomb area that had pillars, rubble, and machinery to hide behind and rush out at the PC's, attack, and then tactically fallback again. The running machinery also helped to hide it's hoof beats. Wasn't that just evil of me. (Rhetorical statement by the way ………….

Though now that I look back at the xeno, I gave it Sonar Sense so the loud noise vibrations might of played havoc with it's own senses… I retract my previous statement now :*(