Alright, I'm designing a Campaign based off of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. Frikkin' love that game. Spoilers for the game to follow, but you really should have played it by now. It's great.

Obviously, I'll have to translate the content to grimdark 40k terms (being, you know, Mario game), and have done a decent job on planning that so far, as well as identifying what to make each boss in 40k terms and why they'd be where they are, etc.

The overall idea is that a badguy wants to either pop open or wait for a giant, scary door to open and then to control/possess/unleash/etc. whatever is behind it, without fully understanding its nature. This does, of course, end badly.

In the game, it's a terrible Demon. The good guys have to collect a set of items to re-seal or defeat said demon. I want to keep to the theme shifts present in the game itself, and as such want to keep supernatural things from the game still supernatural, whether actually being warp-stuff, or more likely only seeming supernatural, etc., keep the tech stuff techy, blah blah blah.

The current campaign I'm running revolves around the release of a Greater Demon, so I don't want to do the obvious and have another keep-a-demon-in-the-box scenario. Fortunately, it would preserve the feel of the unknown and the sense of eldritch power for the thing behind the door to be a load o' Necron. I can still maintain the FFG timeline by reading through Outer Reach to use whatever of their material applies and then the big door etc. will make it seem like the Necron are unique to one world on the Reach, when it's really just one big ole' tomb or what not. I'll work out the specifics later.

I've got a problem in that the badguys in the game operate out of a space base and have energy weapons and stuff. They're a highly technological foe, which puts them at odds with the fantasy-based Demon behind the door. So now I've got the Demon equivalent being the mysterious yet tech-driven Necron, but I don't want to Chaos-it-up because this is the Ordo Xenos, and the enemy is mysterious to the good guys in the game. So I want somebody that would be mysterious to the characters, but still have some sort of Technological basis if possible. This enemy needs to be capable and willing to undertake elaborate plots.

The Yu'Vath, perhaps some that escaped the Angevin Crusade in a Space Hulk and have wandered to the Reach, could want to unleash whatever is behind the door perhaps in misinformed hopes that it's something they could use to re-establish a Yu'Vath empire. I don't actually know enough about them, only having Kronous Bestiary and a short Lexicanum article on them. If there is a Dark Heresy book that would give me more stats or a load of info on them, that would be great, since I have no idea how they would be organized.

Other than them, I can't think of another fitting villain for this that is not simply a confused Chaos cult, especially as Dark Eldar would have little excuse for not recognizing a Tomb World - unless someone has an idea about that, of course, but in general, they would know what's up. There should be a way to have two identifiable personas, one for the head bad guy, and one for the second in command, who featured extensively in the game in dialog and several fights.

So yeah, I need ideas, etc. for the bad guys the Kill-Team will encounter on their expedition. Any other ideas from those who have played the game, or those who haven't, really, would be nice. Any ideas you have would be welcome. I have no time table, having ages to make this campaign, so I've got plenty of time to hammer out the details.

Ok my first thoughts:

DARK HERESEY HAARLOCK TRILOGY SPOILERS

In those books Erasmus Haarlock goes into the Tyrant star in order to find a way to change an event from the past and bring his wife and child back to life. If he met with a C'tan inside the Tyrant star it might have tricked him into working towards the opening of this tomb world. The C'tan might want the chance to get at and free a bound C'tan that is there for example. So in this case the C'tan would be your overall badguy and Haarlock the second in command type guy who actually does a lot of the work.

He is described as having dealt with both demons and xenos during his time trying to achieve his ends and therefore has a bunch of interesting resources to call on - some of these could easily extend into the area you set your game in. There is more detail in the Haarlock books. That seems interesting to me as you put a human face (or seemingly human as he is changed by his time in the star) on the problem that turns out to be xenos controlled/duped.

I may look into some of those ideas. A C'Tan shard would be a fantastic end-boss, but as far as I know there aren't pre-made stats for them, are there?

There are C'tan Shard stats in the Hand of Corruption BC adventure book. They probably need some buffin if they be for a big end campaign end boss, or else your rank 6 KT is going to steamroll him.

A C'tan attempting to reforge itself by bringing together its shards could be interesting.

After having read Outer Reach (it came in the mail the day after this thread was made), I have determined that: The Necron can totally be their own bad guys, trying to release a C'Tan shard they've got stowed away, which has awesome stats in Outer Reach, by the way.

Great book. Don't know how it's statted in the BC adventure, but it's got some hardcore capabilities in Outer Reach, like ignoring cover at range and in melee, and getting 2 or 3 hilarious abilities. You roll for their stats.

So, two Necron, one in charge of the other, sends out his lieutenant from time to time to screw with the Kill-team's plans as they recover a legendary Space Marine panoply with which to confront the C'Tan shard behind the door. Sweet. I will put them through all the hilarity of the game, but instead of hilarity, it will mostly require them getting knee-deep in blood because grimdark.

So, uh, any other ideas? Some of you people had to have played Thousand Year Door. Hit me with ideas, I like hearing you guy's thoughts.