I'm A new GM and am running my first campaign of dark heresy. My group is 8 players and all classes execpt for an Arbite. Since I am new to GMing i am running the Edge of Darkness story. So far we are one secession in and they are getting a feel for the game and doing some investigating but no combat so far. I have a bunch of combat senarios laid out for when the occasion comes up and will see how it plays out. The group is sort of reluctant to actually interact with the NPC's beyond evesdropping and looking around. I think with a little encouragment on my part I can rectify that. I have also been outlining a story of my own that is based around investigating a heretech cult that turns out to be trying to reserect Necrons. I kind of think that maybe that is too much for a low level campaign , but i like the cult idea, maybe a cult that is delving into forrbidden lititure instead. Or a Krone worshipping cult? So far it is in the outline phase and not a lot of specifics. Any suggestions on the cult thing would be helpful. The party will probibly be level 2 or 3 by than

A group of heretical tech-priests dedicated to harnessing Necron technology could be a VERY interesting group of recurring villains for your campaign. Perhaps they discovered some of the Necrons' ancient history want to study the Necrons to determine how a race of once-fleshy beings were transformed into holy creatures of living metal. The end goal of many devout tech-priests is to become as close to a full machine as possible and shed the weaknesses of their frail mortal bodies -- not only did the Necron overlords accomplish this, but they transformed their entire race into machines. Maybe this cult could have the ultimate goal of transforming all of humanity into Necron-like robots (the salvation of all human life to them but a horrifying prospect to everyone else). On the way there, they might make use of all sorts of Necron tech (gauss weapons, self-repairing metal bionics, phasing technology, etc).

With that said, actual Necron weaponry would utterly devastate a low-level party -- the party's first enemies would be the henchmen and hereteks in the employ of the high tech-priests. For example, the party could kick down the doors to a heretek's workshop to find him studying a small sample of Necron living metal, or they could bust up a smuggling ring that deals in heretical tech (including some Necron-related items). Keep the hints very subtle at first, especially if your party is familiar with the 40k background and knows about the Necrons.

You certainly don't need to make this the focus of your entire campaign, but having links between low-level adventures and high-level masterminds helps bring the world to life. A few linked adventures spaced throughout the campaign could make for some very memorable experiences.

Thank you for the advice that is very helpful. Should make for a great campaign.

Genestealer cults are also very iconic for WH40K. This would also encourage the players to "interact" with NPC's as they have to identify cultists by talking to them. It has the added benefit of mixing social scenes (say at a typically decadent ball) with dungeon crawling in the sewers trying to locate the genestealer lair.

Hi and welcome to the forum!

One evil way to make things happen is for the PCs to be the bait. They are sent in and there heretics are tipped off to them with the intention of luring out the heretics from hiding.

Bringing your NPCs to life is one way to encourage people into playing the game beyond mere skulking around. Another great way to encourage players is to give them the space to interact on their own (yes, I'm well aware that Edge of Darkness is not too straightforward and already grants the players a considerable amount of freedom, and I'm not assuming you're railroading).

Other than that, the Necron subplot sounds really cool, but as someone mentioned before, Necrons will easily devastate any low-level parties, and high-level parties as well for that matter. You could just tweak their stats to your liking, though.