Hi all!

I'm currently running and writing my first Dark Heresy campaign. My group is Ordo Hereticus and while I grind my brain for plots, I seem to always end up with the same basic thing:

1. There is some hidden cult, heretic or somesuch

2. Characters seek information about this

3. Some offer the group help, at a price

4. Groups help, get the information and move to the cult

5. Group eradicates cult

Of course not always exactly this, but often, I find a basic pattern, regardless of planet type or anything else.

I don't know how I ran into this weird writer's block, but I need to kick it off and get my gears moving. Usually, it's not a problem for me to get good ideas, but I've run into this sorta period.

Any inspiration, any help, anything at all would be greatly appreciated!

Here are a few ideas off the top of my head-

-Help in tracking down the cult/bad guys is a trap and the PC's are lead into an ambush.

-One cult wants to trick the PC's into helping them eliminate a rival cult. PC's find out and have to decide between the lesser of two evils. An adjustment to that might be a Xeno group wants to help the PC's eliminate the cult but Pc's have to decide if helping a Xeno is better than taking care of bad guys.

-No-one knows anything about the group the PC's are trying to track down. Word comes in that an obscure library/outpost/planet may hold a cache of information but Xenos/cultists/bad guys are already in control of it. a warp jump to the place might lead to trouble....daemons getting aboard ship because of a faulty Geller Field.....Ork pirates.....other Xenos

-A lead that the PC's are following leads them to suspect one of their own/their inquisitor/another Inquisitor and his retinue.

Make your stories morally ambivalent. Maybe they need to track down someone branded a heretic, but who only has the people's best interest in mind like the baron in Purge the Unclean who came to aid the mutants.

Make the choices that PCs make come back to haunt them.

Create suspicion towards their Inquisitor.

Use war-type scenario's like a planet in evacuation for a xenos army, or make location-based scenarios like exploring a space hulk.

Well, "cult" seems to play a predominant role in your brain storming, so how about removing it? There is no cult, it just looks like there should be one.

Sure, there's a whole town of folks all up in arms about a secret coven of witches assailing them with unholy powers and making their lives a living hell. There's been several deaths (all of them looked like accidents except for old man Nebinizer, the towns oldest man who just fell over dead for no reason at all... warpcraft!), crops have been lost, and two still borns have already occurred as well as one two headed calf born. The town has burned 3 suspected witches so far and are hunting for more based on their pained confessions and accusations, but the suspiciously not suspicious deaths continue, people suffer from nightmares of being hounded by witches, and disquiet still grips the town. despite all of this, there are no witches, just scared superstitious people caught up in mass hysteria with imaginations running out of control. How long will it take the PC's to figure out that there is no witch at work here? How many "witches" will they condem to death before they figure out that there are no witches at work in the village? Go all Salem Witch Trial on your players and see if that breaks your block.

I know two things that have helped me come up with scenarios and may help you are politics and intrigue. I keep my players in contact with their inquisitor and others often so they get to see the different view points. Essentially, Inquisitors are very independent agents of His Holy Majesty. They all have personal motivations they're able to act upon, they often don't agree with one another, and covert or even open war does occur between them. Establish some NPCs in the Inquisition, naval forces, and planetary governments. Most of all have them disagree on ways to protect the Imperium, vehemently preferably.

Some examples:

-Your Inquisitor is a puritan, and has learned that a fellow inquisitor in the area has been cooperating with the Eldar (or another xenos race) in hunting down an Arch-Heretic that threatens the sub-sector. Rumor has it he's starting to "go xenos". Such heresy cannot be permitted to exist. Your acolytes must find him, determine the truth and take appropriate action.

-There's a mutant uprising on a near-by world. Your acolytes are sent to investigate the situation only to find it quelled. As they dig deeper they learn that the Planetary Governor was able to bring peace again by using a special police force of rogue psykers. Their work is indesputable, but everyday they live without sanctioning increases the threat of daemonic taint. Worst of all, the Planetary Governor knows this.

-Your Inquisitor is a radical who has for some time been overseeing a covern of Tzentchite witches that are bound to him/her. One has a prophecy that a terrible plague will sweep across the sub-sector should a certain pious Lord General be permitted to lead his forces against a legion of Nurgle cultists.

-The Lord Inquisitor of the sub-sector has always been stern and uncompromising. Recently, however, his commands have become rash and questionable, with a disturbing number of exterminatus at his hands. Your Inquisitor and possibly others have taken it upon himself/themselves to remove the Lord Inquisitor from command. To make matters difficult, he has a core of fiercly loyal Inquisitors that will stand in your way.

The above ideas dealing with tossing another inquisitor into the mix got me thinking about my No Cult suggestion and, bam, another idea along those lines:

The heresy/cult/individual the PC's are sent in to investigate and eventually purge as per the established pattern is actually either a cult under clandestine infiltration by another inquisitor (and it's the infiltrators the PC's first identify as cultists...) or a false cult/heresy set up by another inquistor's cells in order to entrap an entirely different heretic they're investigating. What ever the case, since the other inquisitorial agents are working deep undercover, the PC's shouldn't be able to turn up their inquisitorial ties very easily.

All you have to do is set up the other inquisitor's cell, launch the PC's at them, and watch the hilarity ensue. How long will it be before one side or the other identifies themselves as inquisitorial agents? What will the body count be by then? Will the other inquisitor retaliate? How long will the two clandestine inquisitors launch forces against one another before either of them or their agents realize that they are fighting another inquisitor and not the heresy they were originally investigating? would the original heretical cult moved on by then or did it even exist in the first place?

Oh, the fun you can have...

Have your acolytes track down something a litte more mundane - a serial killer, perhaps disguising his work as cult activity to throw investigators off his trail. At first the players operate on the assumption that a cult is indeed responsible, but puzzling the clues together leads them to the true culprit - a coldly intelligent psycopath, perhaps someone higly placed in the local government or even the Inquisition itself. Do they take him down even though it might damage the Imperium in the long run or do they let him continue with his little hobby, deciding that his contributions to the IoM are more important than the lives of a few plebs? Basically a scenario inspired heavily by shows like CSI or Criminal Minds, with a little moral dilemma thrown in.

A good one is a crash landing on a primitive world.

- PCs are traveling for another mission under cover on a tramp freighter.

- The freighter stops at a frontier/feral/death world, and receives a message requesting pick up passengers .

- Pirates have captured the only space port on the planet, and have been conning passing ship into coming into the planets gravity well.

- The PC end up in a escape pod launched towards the planet.

Now the PC must deal with natural dangers, natives, beasts, and the like as they trek across the world to the space. Then once they arrive they must raise the natives against the pirates holding the space port.

Maybe their Inquisitor sends the PCs on a recruitment mission. This is complicated by the fact that the guy they're supposed to recruit (or test for suitability) is some kind of dangerous psycho... is he a heretic or ideal acolyte material?

You can even leave that sort of thing open-ended: the party has good reasons to go with option A or option B... maybe there's even an option C. They get to do the legwork and then make the call. There's no "wrong" choice (in the sense of finishing the adventure, morality aside), except insofar as each choice has consequences that will play out down the line.

Graver said:

This actually reminds me of one of the twists I threw in when running Illumination.

The Inquisitor in my campaign informed the characters that a fellow inquisitor (Tyburn Graves) had sent a team of acolytes to Iocanthos, but that a few days day after the Brazen Sky left its previous port of call, the bodies of the Graves' team had been discovered with their briefing, passage and identity documents all missing. As such it was believed Graves' team had been intercepted by heretics intent on interfering with/capturing/otherwise harming Aristarchus the Seer. They were told that as a favor to his colleague and because he had assets (the PCs) availible, the PCs' Inquisitor was sending them to do the Iocanthus mission in place of Graves' team. However, while Graves trusted Aristarchus implicitly, the PCs' Inquisitor said he wasn't as certain that Aristarchus wasn't involved, therefore in addition to the parameters in the published Graves briefing, the PCs were to 1) protect Aristarchus from the heretics 2) not tell Aristarchus about the lost team or any of the other goings on, and 3) turn Aristrachus over to their own Inquisitor after the mission was over. Also they were told that due to the vagaries of the warp it couldn't be certain whether the ship they had passage on or the Brazen Sky would get to Iocanthos first.

On Iocanthos they eventually did end up tangling with a group that claimed to be inquisitorial acolytes. The situation got ugly (one of the PCs was captured and tortured by the other group, specifically by what appeared to be a sororitas initiate and a tech priest) and eventually wound up with the other group killed (after 3 fights, 2 crazy truck & jeep chases/crashes and a truly harsh curb stomping). To this day (many months and adventures later) the players can't be certain whether the other group were really acolytes or heretics posing as acolytes..

Graver said:

I love this idea, especially since the guardsman in the group I run for has been developing an extreme fear and hatred of witches.

As someone said before, there's always the moral ambiguous approach. After all, the Imperial Cult is still a cult none the less.

If you want to do something trippy, use the Temple Tendency. A variation of one of the scenarios I ran: Ecclesiarch Preacher is fearful of assassination, requests help from the Inquisition. The Ordo Hereticus sends aid because the guy has helped keep peace and stability on the planet (it's ruled by a bunch of faction who hate each other, yet they all are pious and therefore won't rebel while the Preacher lives). They investigate the assassins (real threat, do a Martin Luther and have them nail on the door to the Preacher's church a "do these or else" list) and find them all to be working for a single noble on the planet. Hopefully they'll think to investigate this noble, when they do they find out about the Temple Tendency connection (remember, the Inquisition thinks that it's only splinter cults as opposed to an outbreak of heresy and the noble will make sure not to disillusion them of this perception). Make the noble out to be a hero and his servants to seem all good, leading them to question why they want to kill the Preacher. Then you have the Preacher turn out to be some kind of monster (in the case of my scenario, I had him turn out to be a child molestor who would "dispose of the evidence", earning him the ire of the Temple Tendency).

Then your Acoyltes have a *VERY* tough choice to make: Do they let the assassination go through and seem incompotent to their Inquisitor, along with having the entire world cast into anarchy? Do they help with the assassination and let the entire world burn? Do they stop the assassination and let the Preacher go free? Do they burn the noble out for heresy and thereby make *MANY* enemies in many high places? Do they kill both the noble and the preacher, both of whom are guilty? Do they just kill the assassins? The list of options they have goes on and on, but suffice to say there isn't really any "good" or "correct" solution to the problem.