So I am given the job of writing a campaign to play over the summer at my LGS and am done with the first few chapters of it. The campaign takes place on orbiana (actually most of it is in space, only he final few chapters will take place on Orbinana). the campaign is split into several chapters

Chapter 1: Dark Eldar pirates attack the reinforcement fleet on its way to Orbiana, the Dark eldar board and heavy fighting ensues. The dark eldar ship uses harpoons to drag the ship back to commoragh.

Chapter 2: Imperial forces on board the ship launch a counterattack on the Dark Eldar ship.

Chapter 3: The rendezvous with the remainder of the pacification fleet. The initial assault on the orbital platform above Orbiana.

Chapter 4: the mystery at the heart of the orbital platform

Chapter 5: Planetfall, insurgency, dealing with natives

Chapter 6: Uncovering the cult, the rebellion against planetary compliance

Chapter 7: ----

Chapter 8: ----

I have decided to post one of the chapters for you guys to try out, all comments and criticism are welcome and appreciated.

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Chapter 2

With the Dark Eldar defeated on the Pride of Vengeance the void war continues. The Dark Eldar and Imperial Fleets have inflicted heavy

casualties on each other and they still fight heavily. The players are told that the Pride of Vengeance's engines have been crippled by enemy weapons and they are drifting helplessly until they can get the engines functioning again.

At some point a few hours after the fighting the players are in the troop quarters relaxing. They feel a massive tremor that rips through the ship knocking the players onto the floor. Guardsmen get up all around them anxious conversations of nervous guardsmen wonder what caused it.

After about an hour the Company commander enters the barracks and addresses the guardsmen. He tells them that apparently the cowardly Eldar have launched several harpoon weapons that hit their ship. The weapons have enormous metal chains that the Eldar ship is using to drag the Pride of Vengeance into a portal that they have opened.

It seems the Dark Eldar ship mean to drag the Pride of vengeance back to wherever they came from. The Ship's Command staff and Regimental HQ has met and decided that they will launch a boarding action on the Eldar ship to disable it or disconnect the weapon from the ship.

The players and the company are brought to the hanger where they are herded into boarding pods to attack the Eldar ship.

The boarding pod is a small pressurized ship, little more than a crew compartment and an engine. The front of the pod ends in a melta-drill capable of eating through the hull. Between the two parts of the drill is the entrance and above this is are the flash grenade and shrapnel launchers. Behind the front, the hull extends outwards to seal the breach in the ship and stop the guardsmen from suffocating as soon as they step out. The crew compartment is cold, dark, and cramped with most of the rear space taken up by a pilot servitor and it's control terminal that steers the torpedo facing the entrance. A red light is all that illuminates the sparse interior.

The pod launches with a hard kick of the engine and flies out into space. The metallic voice of the Servitor every so often reads out time to impact. "Five minutes to impact…….Four minutes to impact……..One minute to impact……..Thirty seconds to impact…….Ten seconds to Impact……..Impact Imminent" The Pod impacts on the hull of the Eldar ship with a muffled Thud and the faint sounds of the drill can be heard from the front of the pod and it begins to shake.

After a short time drilling the pod eventually comes to a rest and an explosion is heard as the flash grenades and shrapnel launchers fire to clear the area in front of the pod. then the entrance opens with a hiss of depressurization.

As the doors open the players get their first look into the Eldar ship. The players are in a Corridor on the ship. It is dark and damp inside the ship with barely enough light to see around you. Broken bodies of wretched humans litter the ground. The humans are all chained together at the hands and neck. Clothed in ragged remains of various clothes and uniforms, various cuts and lacerations cover their exposed skin.

The ship itself oozes Malevolence and the strange architecture of the Xenos ship plays tricks on the player's mind. All players must take a Challenging (+0) Willpower Test, if failed the player takes 1d10 insanity points.

After a few moments to get their bearings the players get confirmation that other Boarding pods have breached the ship's hull and are engaging heavy resistance.

The players are then taken by surprise as two Wyches charge at them from the shadows.

Once the players defeat the Wyches they may choose to head off in either the left or right direction down the corridor. Left:

If the players choose to head off in the left direction after a few minutes of walking they run into a squad of five guardsmen in a desperate firefight against an equal number of Kabalite Warriors. The guardsmen are taking cover behind the drill from their pod that had breached from a downward angle so the whole pod is on a steep upward angle.

When the fighting is over the guardsmen tell the players that the way ahead is blocked by a thick bulkhead. The bulkhead shows signs from the other squad's attempt to breach it but to no avail.

If the players speak further with the guardsmen they might hear reports of a heavy fighting further ahead in the ship. One of the guardsmen has a Vox caster and he is receiving reports of massive casualties among the Imperial forces.

Players take a Difficult (-10) Perception test. If passed they hear faint sounds of inhuman screaming from the other side of the bulkhead.

Right:

The players head to the right of the pod and come across the ruins of a thick bulkhead, a boarding pod had apparently drilled partially through it upon breaching the ship and there is just enough space to crawl through to the other side. Inside the pod are the corpses of the boarding pod's passengers.

Examination of the Boarding Pod's occupants show that they died from suffocation after the pod struck the ship at a bad angle and the metal peeled away exposing them to the vacuum of space.

Beyond the alien bulkhead the players arrive in a large room. The room contains cages that hold corpses in various stages of decay. The corpses are not only human but also Orks and various unrecognizable creatures. In the center of the room is a raised dais on which sits what looks to be a circular table inlaid with various alien controls and screens displaying readouts written in an unrecognizable language. On the table is what looks to have once been a human (or more accurately, several humans) that is distorted beyond recognition.

The body laying on the table is massive, twice the size of the players. A metal Mask covers their face and shows reflections of the lights from the control panels. The thing's four massive arms with far too many fingers are chained to the sides of the table so the creature's body is stretched out . It's chest cavity is open revealing unfamiliar organs and xenos machinery stitched to the creatures innards. The creature's three legs are also chained to the table and stretched out to lay the body flat. The creature is covered in patchwork skin that seems to come from many different aliens and human. The Horror exuded from the wretched creature before them is so terrifying that the players must take a Challenging (+0) Willpower test , if failed the players take 2d10 insanity points.

There are two exits leading from the dimly lit room. The first is to the left of the bulkhead that the players entered from. A long, dark corridor leads deeper into the ship. The second is directly across the room and is another large bulkhead like the one the players just came through. Near the bulkhead is a panel with several different buttons on it, each of the buttons has an Eldar Rune on it.

If the players decide to go down the hallway they travel for awhile before reaching the Armory .

The bulkhead is closed and can only be opened by the control panel to the side. To activate the door the player must make a Hard (-20) Forbidden Lore or a Difficult (-10) Tech-Use test to open the door.

If the players open the door they arrive at the Slave Pens.

Slave Pens:

The Bulkhead opens with a faint hiss and the players enter the next room. This room is large and filled with stacks of cages. The chains hang from the ceiling where bodies of tortured Humans and Xenos are hung from hooks. On the far side of the room is another heavy bulkhead.

Beaten and bloody humans fill the cages, many are weeping or moaning. They are dressed in ragged remain of clothing and most are covered in lacerations and scars. They are all malnourished and unhealthy from living in terrible conditions by cruel captors. Men, Women, and Children of all ages cringe in fear of the players.

The players can choose to break the locks on the cages and free the prisoners. As they do this the humans inside the cages slowly begin to walk out of the cages and wander around the room.

At this point a Dark Eldar Wrack opens the bulkhead on the far side. On the sight of one of the xenos the Human prisoners charge at the Wrack and tear it limb from limb in a rage. The prisoners then inspired by the death of the Wrack grab whatever in the room can be used as a weapon and head off through the bulkheads on either side of the room to kill their former slavers.

If the players speak with some of the slaves they will be told of tortures and suffering inflicted by the Dark Eldar and the utter hopelessness of the slave's situation on the ship. after listening to the stories of some of the slaves and what has been done to them by their Dark Eldar captors the characters gain Hatred (Dark Eldar).

The NPCs hate the Dark Eldar for what was done to them and are worked up into a bloodlust and are rioting against the Dark Eldar.

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For now this is all I am going to put up, If enough people want more then I will post more of this chapter. All comments and criticism are welcome, i dont expect this to be perfect as it is only the 3rd Only war campaign I have written but i appreciate any thoughts.

I apologise for the different fonts and colors, I am copying and pasting most of this from the file that I saved the campaign to and it doesnt exactly copy well into this format.

Wow, you did a hard work there, I see you are planning everything to the little bit. I will surely try your chapter and give you some feedback soon!

OK, I just played this scenario with my roomate today. He used the 5 characters that we are currently playing with in our campaign. They are quite advanced characters (3000 xp points) with some nice equipment:

- Sarge with stormtrooper caparace, chainsword and hotshot laspistol.

- Weapon Specialist with flak helmet/vest, best quality monosword and bestquality laspistol. She also wears nightvision googles.

- Weapon Specialist with full body flak and longlas.

- Heavy Gunner with stormtrooper caparace and missile launcher.

- Operator with stormtrooper caparace and lasgun.

As you see, a quite special squad. We didnt use comrades for this, because in our games comrades are more like full-fleshed NPCs, so I didn't want to unbalance the scenario even further…

Lets start! No assignment gear was issued, so they went to the Dark Eldar ship with their usual equipment. This is important, because we ruled that while the enemy ship is really poor illuminated for human eyes, so there was a -20 to all WS tests not done at point blank range (the PC with nightvision googles proved invaluable in combat situations).

First of all, Fear tests and Insanity Points are INSANE in this scenario. Most PCs had to spend Fate Points in order to be "operative" during the first combat against the Wyches even though they are combat veterans (once PC had already 11 Insanity Points). Combining the two Insanity Points possible gains (1d10 / 2d10), the PCs lost a total of 15, 4, 16, 14 and 13 Insanity Points in the scenario. I think that's too much (specialy bearing in mind that they have only seen a small part of the ship and of Dark Eldar monstruosities…). Two PCs ended with temporary phobias and one with another kind of trauma.

My personal take into this two Fear Tests would be:

- "Ship Malevolence" Willpower Test (+0). If not passed, PCs gain 1d5 Insanity Points.

- "Three legged monster" Willpower Test (-10). If passed, PCs gain 1 Insanity Point. If not passed, Pcs gain 1d5 Insanity Points and roll on the Shock Table (page 304).

Secondly, the Wyches encounter is quite interesting. I played this two enemies doing a heavy use of dodge, assassin strike and darkness. Sadly, poor GM dice rolls managed to harm only slightly 3 of the PCs. The combat was resolved only with melee and pistols. After the combat and a couple of First Aid rolls, only one character was harmed (-3 wounds).

The PCs decided to split themselves and go into two directions after that. The 2 closecombat oriented PCs were the ones to approach the guardsmen fighting against the Kabalite warriors . This was a mistake… they rapidly called for help to the other 3 PCs, but while they waiting, Kabalite warriors slaughtered all the NPCs guardsmen and left the Sarge with a Critical 2 and the Weapon Specialist with a Critical 5.

[by the way, when Venom leaves you on Critical Damage, do you have to aply any Critical effects? If so, which kind of Critical effects??]

Toxic (2) from the Kabalite rifles is a pain in the ass.

When the other PCs arrived, using Fate Points and a frag grenade and a frag missile, they whiped out the Eldars. In your description of the scenario you said nothing about using explosives or special ammunition inside the Dark Eldar ship… the PCs thought that frag explosives would not be able to break the ship, so they used them against the enemy…

I found impractical making the PCs to roll Perception (-10) only to hear abhuman screams… Wouldn't be easier simply to roleplay it?

Now, when the PCs arrive at the locked door … The Operator of the team has INT 45 and Tech-Use +30, so it should not be a problem… I don't fully understand the difficulties you apply to open the door, though. I would say:

- Forbidden Lore (Dark Eldar) (+10) to open the door (can't try this option if you don't have the skill). This a skill that most of the PCs don't have, so make it useful for those few that have it!!

- Tech Use -20 to open the door trying to sabotage the circuits.

- Tech Use +10 to open the door using special equipment (krak grenades, demo charge, lascutter, meltagun…).

- Athletics -50 to open the door using brute force (can combine the efforts of multiple PCs). If failed, maybe they gain a Fatigue Point.

Finally, the scene where the prisoners kill the Warden is epic from a roleplaying point of view, but I would gamify it a little but making the PCs responsible for the inspiration of this attack. Maybe roll

- Command +20

- Charm +10

- Intimidation -10

Or do it automaticaly, but let the more "leader-type" or "social-type" characters say some pretty words, do their job and feel important :-P

As a whole the scenario is really interesting, specialy the ambience, but maybe a little bit high-end for starting characters. Two main problems:

- You have to rethink Fear Tests and Insanity Points. You don't specify it in your description, but if after every failed Fear Test the PCs have to roll on the Shock table, the first encounter with the wyches can be a total disaster…

- Dark Eldar Toxic weapons can be deadly. Between 5 and 25 splinter rifle shots in one round (from the 5 Kaba warriors) will turn most gorups into tomato soup. I would either downgrade the enemies (maybe they only use melee inside their ship) or don't make the PCs face more than 3 warriors at a time.

We had a great time doing this and would gladly read the rest of your plans for this campaign.

thanks for the feedback, i will take another look at this section (will probably help me since I have hit writes block for the part I am working on right now) and edit what I have, I did sense that there might be some parts that are too easy or too hard for the players (the former is not so bad but the latter needs to be addressed) and have looked over some of it before but this helps alot.

so to address these issues:

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Lets start! No assignment gear was issued, so they went to the Dark Eldar ship with their usual equipment. This is important, because we ruled that while the enemy ship is really poor illuminated for human eyes, so there was a -20 to all WS tests not done at point blank range (the PC with nightvision googles proved invaluable in combat situations).

• Never even thought about this, In my mind the lighting on the ship is poor but forgot to add it to the rules. also mission assignment gear would be helpful here I will look into this and change some things.

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First of all, Fear tests and Insanity Points are INSANE in this scenario. Most PCs had to spend Fate Points in order to be "operative" during the first combat against the Wyches even though they are combat veterans (once PC had already 11 Insanity Points). Combining the two Insanity Points possible gains (1d10 / 2d10), the PCs lost a total of 15, 4, 16, 14 and 13 Insanity Points in the scenario. I think that's too much (specialy bearing in mind that they have only seen a small part of the ship and of Dark Eldar monstruosities…). Two PCs ended with temporary phobias and one with another kind of trauma.

My personal take into this two Fear Tests would be:

- "Ship Malevolence" Willpower Test (+0). If not passed, PCs gain 1d5 Insanity Points.

- "Three legged monster" Willpower Test (-10). If passed, PCs gain 1 Insanity Point. If not passed, Pcs gain 1d5 Insanity Points and roll on the Shock Table (page 304).

• Yeah, I caught this after reviewing the insanity points and I have realized that I misread the rules for it. I am in the process of addressing this issue but you have some good Ideas here that I might use.

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Secondly, the Wyches encounter is quite interesting. I played this two enemies doing a heavy use of dodge, assassin strike and darkness. Sadly, poor GM dice rolls managed to harm only slightly 3 of the PCs. The combat was resolved only with melee and pistols. After the combat and a couple of First Aid rolls, only one character was harmed (-3 wounds).

• This encounter is more to get the Players alert as they arrive on the ship rather than actually Kill anyone. better rolls may change the results but they arent really supposed to be too much of a challenge.

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The PCs decided to split themselves and go into two directions after that. The 2 closecombat oriented PCs were the ones to approach the guardsmen fighting against the Kabalite warriors . This was a mistake… they rapidly called for help to the other 3 PCs, but while they waiting, Kabalite warriors slaughtered all the NPCs guardsmen and left the Sarge with a Critical 2 and the Weapon Specialist with a Critical 5.

[by the way, when Venom leaves you on Critical Damage, do you have to aply any Critical effects? If so, which kind of Critical effects??]

Toxic (2) from the Kabalite rifles is a pain in the ass.

When the other PCs arrived, using Fate Points and a frag grenade and a frag missile, they whiped out the Eldars. In your description of the scenario you said nothing about using explosives or special ammunition inside the Dark Eldar ship… the PCs thought that frag explosives would not be able to break the ship, so they used them against the enemy…

• Interesting decision to split up, not one that i would have suspected they would make, I think I will need to playtest this section more to find a good balanced combat. I didnt really think of the venom in a Splinter rifle, I thought it had rules for the venom in the book but I will go back to check.
• Also I assume that the Ship's hull was made to withstand much heavier weapons then frag missiles and grenades so i decided not to include anything about it because i didnt think the players could carry anything heavy enough to pierce the hull of a starship (even with the melta drill on the boarding pod it takes a minute or so).

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I found impractical making the PCs to roll Perception (-10) only to hear abhuman screams… Wouldn't be easier simply to roleplay it?

• Probably, i mainly did this to see if the players caould get any hint at what was on the other side. I think that the bulkheads would be thick enough to block out most noise and make it hard to hear but i will leave this up to the discretion of the GM.

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Now, when the PCs arrive at the locked door … The Operator of the team has INT 45 and Tech-Use +30, so it should not be a problem… I don't fully understand the difficulties you apply to open the door, though. I would say:

- Forbidden Lore (Dark Eldar) (+10) to open the door (can't try this option if you don't have the skill). This a skill that most of the PCs don't have, so make it useful for those few that have it!!

- Tech Use -20 to open the door trying to sabotage the circuits.

- Tech Use +10 to open the door using special equipment (krak grenades, demo charge, lascutter, meltagun…).

- Athletics -50 to open the door using brute force (can combine the efforts of multiple PCs). If failed, maybe they gain a Fatigue Point.

• The difficulties mainly stem from the players being unfamilier with Eldar technology, I think some of these suggestions here would be better in this scenario but I will do some more playtesting with different rules and see what works best.

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Finally, the scene where the prisoners kill the Warden is epic from a roleplaying point of view, but I would gamify it a little but making the PCs responsible for the inspiration of this attack. Maybe roll

- Command +20

- Charm +10

- Intimidation -10

Or do it automaticaly, but let the more "leader-type" or "social-type" characters say some pretty words, do their job and feel important

• Interesting Idea, I like it and it fits in with the character's role. maybe the prisoners were broken by their captors and are hesitant to rebel.

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Eldar Ship Part 2: (note this is a direct continuation of the previous part)

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Note: From this point forwar the Eldar ship is in disarray

There is another slave room by the bulkhead, this one has a hallway to the left of the room that leads deeper into the ship. This hallway leads to the Bridge .

Armory:

After walking for a few minutes the players arrive at an open bulkhead. Beyond the bulkhead is a large room with shelves and walls covered in exotic, alien looking, weaponry from hundreds of different races. Many of the weapons have little discernible function. at the far end of the room is a rack of evil looking Swords.

Faint whispers urge the players to take them for themselves. The players must make an Easy (+10) Willpower test. If any of the players succumb to the whispers and begin to walk over to the weapons. They get two more chances to avoid picking up the weapon however these two more tests are Difficult (-10) Willpower Tests .

If a player actually does pick up a sword they immediately becomes incoherent and attack the other players. When this happens the player who controls the character takes control of the comrade who can make a Difficult (-10) fellowship test to try to snap the player out of it. The daemonic sword uses the profile of the Great Weapon found in the Core rulebook.

There is a corridor that leads off from the armory. At the end of the corridor is the Bridge.

Bridge:

The players travel for what seems like an hour through the winding corridors of the ship, bodies of Slaves and Eldar alike litter the ground everywhere ten humans for every Eldar killed. The players arrive at a staircase where the bodies of slaves are piled three deep. At the top of the stairs are two Wracks that seem to be guarding the entrance.

The Bridge is a large room with alien monitors that show scenes of the Imperial Fleet, the imperial ships look even more broken and battered then the player were told. Several Dark Eldar crewmen (6 crew) sitting at their stations controlling the ship from consoles. They look at the players for a moment before returning to their tasks as if having intruders on their bridge was beneath their concerns.

Sitting on the command throne (or Xenos equivalent) on a raised Dais is Dracis Y'tharsa, the Haemonculi commander of the ship. He sees the players and steps down from the Command throne.

Dracis Y'tharsa addresses the players:

" Welcome Mortals. Welcome to The command center of the Y'larrial, my magnificent ship. I am Dracis Y'tharsa, Haemonculi to the coven of the Red Shroud. As you can see we are quite busy at the moment but if you are so eager to die then I will be happy to oblige you."

Dracis draws his weapons and attacks.

With the death of Dracis Y'tharsa and his bridge crew the ship has no one left to control it and chaos reigns across the ship. The players report to regimental HQ that they have wiped out the bridge crew and they (along with all other squads fighting their way across the ship) are ordered to fall back to the ship. In the confusion the players are able to find their way back to their pod and push the button on the servitor's console to allow it to return to the ship.

The ship, which is no longer being dragged towards the now closing Eldar portal is now able to send out repair servitors with Melta cutters to detach the harpoons that the ship was hit by.

It takes the Pride of Vengeance several days to make enough repairs to resume their journey to Orbiana more thorough repairs will be done in orbit around Orbiana.

The players are allowed to rest now.

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Again All comments and criticism are welcome.

sorry, a small change in the second part of the campaign that i mistyped

"Note: From this point forwar the Eldar ship is in disarray." Should be changed to: "GM Note: From this point forward the Dark Eldar ship is in dissary with a slave rebellion going on accross the ship, GMs may choose to add events of slave uprisings against Dark Eldar throughout the players journey."

Also another quick question, How long (approx.) did it take you to finish the Mission?

I don't remember how much time did it take to us, sincerely, I think that more than 2 hours, although we interrupted the game a couple of times.

This second chapter looks great! I really like the ambience possibilities of a Dark Eldar ship. A couple of things, though:

- How can the PCs find the control room of the ship so easily? It's supposed to be xenos-tech, they have no clue where to look for… Maybe one slave offers to help them find the control room or maybe they can vox-contact their Imperial ship and recieve instructions from there.

- I love the idea of the armoury, but I'm afraid that all the players in the world will be tempted to grab some of that weird weaponry… Maybe you could drop a couple of autoguns and a couple of good craftmanship feudal-world swords to satisfy that kind of PCs.

- The last fight encounter will be extremely deadly… 6 crew members with poisoned blades it's too much, believe me, toxic [2] will hurt. I would give them blades "without poison" or wych knives.

- Fear [2] will also be too much. Every PC that fails his WP test will have to roll on the Shock table and you'll se that half of them will be incapacitated during the combat. Maybe Fear [1] if you want…

hmm… your probably right, this part of the campaign is still unmodified. The reason that the players know where the bridge is is that I wanted to make it more linear because if im being honest my group is not the best at figuring things out but I might change it around.

Also I agree, the armory does need work, I originally put it in as a place to fight a grotesque (havent written that yet) but I think I will expand more on the armory itself and even cut out the fight if it proves to be too much, this part is still in heavy playtest right now.

As for the poisoned blades on the crew this is more me not correctly reading the rules for them and not realizing how hard this part would be for the players.

Thanks for the help, I guess I really need to take a second look at this and do more playtesting.