I have an idea for an adventure for a group of high-ranking, experienced acolytes.

A planetary governor has announced that he would be doing the unthinkable. Granting pardons to rogue psykers! He put out a planet-wide proclamation, that any rogue psykers or untainted heretics would be granted a pardon of any crimes and be given asylum from the black ships and from the Inquisition. What's worse, the planetary governor has the backing of an Inquisitor! A full-blown radical to say the least, but one with enough influence and power to make sure the proclamation doesn't reach off-world.

Strangely enough, his methods are showing some success. Numerous rogue psykers have come out of the woodworks and being brought to the inquisitor's specially built asylum. Rumor begin flying that something truely blessed (or cursed) must be maintained within the asylum, as those psykers who are seen moving about it display a level of control that not even a sanctioned psyker could manage.

This adventure works best if the party happens to be stationed on this planet as a forward base, away from their inquisitor. They would need to find some way of communicating off-world, then possibly lead a rebellion against the governor and the radical inquisitor by breaking into the asylum, finding out how the psykers are managing such control, and rallying the local population against the governor to attempt to overturn this abominable operation.

I like it. I like it badly!

Consider the idea blatantly stolen! (for my own gaming sessions that is).

Awesome! Thanks alot!

Nothing's better for scaring a group of veteran Dark Heresy players than to love them to death (in a non-Slaaneshi way)

This kindness MUST be purged! Obviously it's chaos influenced! Come get pardoned for being a Psyker?! and get a free cookie? preposterous!

Seriously though it's a wacky idea that may work. This "asylum" sounds like the radical Inquisitor's shady little pet project. Cutting off communication though will get noticed soon enough and a radical idea like that would soon spread as rumoured news offworld. I'd imagine possible riots of citizens protesting this heresy and don't forget the Arbites and Ecclesiarchy, they wouldn't exactly be in favour of such an announcment...

It might well be that your rogue Inquisitor is aware that his actions will soon draw the ire of other Imperial authorities, but he may be intending to draw out some serious power from the Warp through the use of these psykers that will make this threat redundant.

If I was using this idea, it would be tempting to take it in a less obvious direction. What if, unlike the suspicions of the acolytes the Inquisitor was not being influenced by chaos, but actually something more terrifying still? What if Necrontyr forces, so long dormant on this planet, were just beginning to spread their influence? In order to fully awaken, and harvest the souls of the entire planet, they have partially awakened some agents, who have manipulated both the Planetary Governor and the Inquisitor into luring the psykers to the capital city, where they are secretly lashed to a device that bleeds off their power, in similar fashion to the Golden Throne, but diverting power through to the sleeping creatures beneath in stasis.

As an extra clue, vast quantities of energy are also being fed from the Generatoria outside the city, with resultant deaths from safety protocols being overcome - the acolytes may begin by investigating the immolation of workers at an Industrial complex, running back through the pressed officials and overseers of the Generatoria to the Office of the Planetary Governor, the Inquisitor, who may well be able to manipulate the local Arbites and eventually to the shadowy Necrontyr agent who is steering the whole thing (possibly masquerading as one of the Inquisitors most trusted acolytes perhaps)?

Another option might be to use the Slough instead - they could possibly be using some unpleasant organic implantation device to control humans, and like the Necrontyr be luring psykers in to feed and / or construct some terrible alien weapon.

Darkshroud said:

This is not meant to be the work of a two-bit conspiracy. The inquisitor (I'm terrible with names, any help would be much appreciated) has an enormous team of expert buracrats in the Administratum throughout the sector who have been manipulating records, forging orders, and rerouting ships around the planet for decades. It's been close to a hundred years since a black ship or Arbites ship has come to the planet. The loss of communication was a very slow process, by which notifications of power failure and scheduled repair times were sent across the planet, giving the populatio the excuse of a few faulty energy conduits.

As for the Ecclesiarchy, the truth of the matter is that they're in on it! You see, the inquisitor's method of controlling and manipulating the psykers is actually a holy relic of Saint Aret known as the Ignatis Portialis, or at least that's one of its uses. It was the inquisitor who discovered it for the Ecclesiarchy, making them extremely grateful and indebted to him. If the party were to look into the inquisitor's background deeper, they'd find that he actually has a hatred of psykers above all else. It would seem that he would be the last person willing to agree to a pardon.

The primary use of the Ignatis Portialis is far more cataclysmic. It has the ability to seal the portal to the warp that exists inside a psyker's mind. The only problem is that it doesn't just seal the portal, it collapses a brick wall on it! The psyker is left a lifeless shell, barely able to function, but now unusable as an entryway for demons from the warp to this world.

The inquisitor doesn't just want to use it on the psykers he's collected though. He plans to activate it on a sector wide scale, leaving all psykers, sanctioned, navigators, even librarians in a near comatose state, drained of their connection to the warp. To use the relic on such a scale requires a huge number of sacrifices, and not just any sacrafices. Only unsanctioned psykers who have been bound to the device can be used to empower it, which is why he's agreed to the pardon. Any psyker that has stood before the light of the Emperor is useless for powering the relic, their warp connection no longer pure. Though all psykers can be affected by it's ability.

The Ignatis Portialis was never meant to be used on such a large scale. It was originally designed to seal an individual psyker's powers inside itself. The Ecclesiarchy knows nothing of the inquisitor's plan to use it to wipe out all psykers from the sector. Is not chaos-tainted at all, but the inquisitor is slowly making the relic more noticable in the warp as he binds rogue psykers to it.

The public would indeed riot from this announcement, but the local PDF (which is completely loyal to the planetary governor after being screened by the inquisitor) will be able to put down most of the riots, especially if the acolytes don't get involved.

To make things more interesting is once a certain number of psykers are bound to the relic, the powers of the warp take notice and immedietely learn of what the inquisitor plans to do, forcing them to take an active approach. Any rogue psykers still in the asylum are immedietely possessed, hell-bent on killing the inquisitor and taking the Ignatis Portialis, now full of souls, back into the warp. This leads to a three-way climax, with the party storming through the asylum, the inquisitor rushing to complete the ritual, and the possessed psykers, ripping from their cells, wishing only to stop the inquisitor, killing anything and everything in their way.

I had planned this to be a more active adventure where the party is already too late to stop the inquisitor's preparations.

RedMike said:

Thanks for the ideas RedMike! They're really great. Unfortunately, I know almost nothing about the Slough and wouldn't even know where to begin with with an adventure about them.

Something that just comes to mind are Enslavers (described in Creatures Anathema). I mean, if several unsanctioned psykers gathers in one areea of close proximity to eachother it would probably attract a shitload of Enslavers like moths to a flame (except these moths twist the flame into a nqasty portal in order to enter realspace and in turn the moths start to enslave everyone to do their biding). It could prove to be a REALLY apocalyptic climax with thousands of Enslavers running rampage on the world in question. How does that sound? >

The obvious moral of such an adventure would be: No good deed goes unpunished. XD

Varnias Tybalt said:

I had never heard of enslavers before, not yet owning a copy of Creatures Anathema. Do they only affect psykers or everyone?

jareddm said:

Everyone. Basically Enslavers are alien entities that live in the warp (they're not daemons), and they dominate psykers they find making the psyker go unconscious and the begins to manipulate the psykers body so it mutates into an actual warp-portal (killing the psyker of course) from which the Enslavers can enter the material realm. Then when they are out they use their pimped version of Dominate called "Enslave" and starts to... Well enslave everything in the vicinity. They are quite nasty buggers and according to Creatures Anathema, Enslaver infestations usually entails in the Inquisition bringing down Exterminatus on the infected world.

So if you feel like having an apocalyptic climax to the adventure, send in Enslavers! >

Wow Jareddm that sounds a pretty hefty and awesome game!

Sounds like it'll be quite the large mission/campaign. I like the jellyfish of doom (enslavers) idea too.

As for names n stuff if you're having problems kick starting the ideas try this site: http://www.seventhsanctum.com/

It's got loads of random name/character/equipment generators.

Darkshroud said:

Thanks alot! I put a good amount of thought into it. I like my campaigns fairly well thought out, with at least a few possible endings already planned for. And yes, I also love the enslaver idea. In fact, I might end up using that instead of demon possession, as enslavers seem more like an out of control force of the warp rather than a well thought out calculated plan by demons.

Wow! What a cool site! Thanks alot, i'll certainly be putting it to good use.

This is an awesome idea for a campaign/mission, I hope it works out for you and your players

As for names, an alternative to using name generators that I use is to look through all the games (PC, RPG, PS3, etc) that I have and use names of characters in them that I like, or alter them slightly. One such example of a name I use for online games/characters is Malakai - it was the name of a rival Keeper in Dungeon Keeper 2, spelt Malachai in the game itself. I altered the name slightly and use Mordechai (not realising this was the name of an example Inquisitor in the DH core book) as the name of my players' Inquisitor.

Another idea would be to look through ancient mythology and use names from there or even the Cthulu Mythos. The list of Elder Things' names is great for Daemon names.