I'm about to start GMing a Black Crusade game for a few friends, all veteran Dark Heresy players. For various reasons, I thought it might be fun to run a game set in Dan Abnett's Sabbat Worlds setting. So far, the group consists of two power gamer types who'll be playing marines (one probably a sorcerer) two others that nearly always play face characters and a guy who usually plays some sort of army grunt.

Any ideas on what faction they could be part of or where they could start out? I have some of my own, but I thought I'd get on here and pick some brains just in case someone had used the setting before. Also I'm not that familiar with it, having just started with "Traitor General" (because I heard it contained the most chaos info)

I have not actually read the Gaunt's Ghosts so I may talk BS now, but you could always let them play some fairly mercenary types at the start of the campaign and then let them get into some contact with different factions and themselves form and opinion on what faction they want to join. Or even start their own faction once several of the initial higher-ups have been killed during the war.

That was basically my fallback idea. I was wondering more if there was a specific faction or battle I could throw them into though.Traitor General has a lot of good chaos fluff that I can use later on, but having them start out as garrison troops on Gereon waiting for Gaunt to show up and gank them seems like a pretty lame start to the campaign.

Well, can't you start with an actual Chaos invasion or let them take part in chaos-vs-chaos battles while they await the Imperials? That could also allow them to get some Infamy points which they will need later.

Presumably, your PCs are not going to follow along with the actual outcomes of the events that occur during the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, otherwise your PCs lose.

Have them start with the burning of Tanith. From there, their Etogar assigns them the duty of harrying fleeing Imperial assets (obviously you want the Tanith to escape, so give them something else...something juicy). You can use events in the Ghost series as objectives within the compact...deny Ouranberg to the Imperials, crush the defense of Hinzerhaus, take the Standard Template Constructor of Iron Men for yourselves, etc. All of these objectives require the PC to muster their resources. See if your PCs can turn the Sabbat Worlds Crusade on its head. Maybe they learn of Gaunt's infiltration of Gereon, and they have to devise a plan to thwart Ibram's objective...whatever that may be. What if the Traitor General turns out to be a double agent, actually in on the infiltration? Can they prevent the second coming of Saint Sabbat on Hagia?

I used the Sabbat Crusade as background for my Inquisitor group.

As starting adventure I assembled the characters at Enok Inokentis flagship and sent them to kill the Beati on Herodor (using the map fom my copy of Sabbat Martyr and a random encounter table)

I allowed my group to alter the story heavily, resulting in the violent death of the Saint in the holy Balneary in front of her followers and the nearly complete destruction of the First and Only.

Now one of my players fears the return of the Tanith as boss caracters (according to the Law of Conservation of Ninjutsu)

This was followed by the rescue of the Traitor General Sturm from a prison ship and his delivery to Anakwanar Sek on Gereon. The characters were tasked to supervise the training of the Sons of Sek. After the incompetent comanding officers vanshed in a Warp Vortex, the regiment was sworn to the Characters and later used to rid the planet of the rebel groups (who were convinced by on infiltrating Character to lead a massive assault) and Sek was killed in the chaos of the battle.

With their own army and planet at hand the characters startet several quests. To establish their hold on the planet they had to eradicate or convince groups of the population and raided several Administratum storage facilities to get metals and technical know how (wich are rare on an agricultural world).

They fought four champions of chaos, who struggled to overpower a cristaline Eldar farseer over the dominion of one of the former Eldar planets/ crone worlds on a quest to bring Urlock Gaur a mighty artifact. The quest was introduced by a guest players Eldar warp spider, who turned from his craftworld and acted on his own agenda. The Eldar took the farseers head, the characters delivered a copy of the farseers staff, keeping the original for themselves (trading it later for the book of Ahriman)

At the moment they fill their ranks with a cult of the starchild, who they will have to convert to chaos. As one of the characters has adopted Aexe Cardinal as his homeworld, i am planing them to visit the wold again in support of the republic of Shadik. As the Tanith are gone, regiments of the death world of Krieg will be the imperial support to the aexegarian coalition

it should be annoted that, as we played a heavily houseruled Inquisitor setup, the characters became extremely powerful in very short time. Gereon acts as their base of operations, giving them access to equipment. The former Sons of Sek, now called Angels of Faith are trained for special operations and act as supporting NSCs with restricted influence.

[Also I'm from Germany, so feel free to correct any spelling mistakes as you like]