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40K RPG "Let's get it over with, already!"

Started by Inquisitor Thaken, June 26, 2010, 04:00:29 AM

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Inquisitor Thaken

INTRODUCTION

Okay, time for the 40K universe to calm down into a nice, peaceful place, or totally devolve into chaos. The following campaign is geared to take it one direction or the other. The campaign could be played using Inquisitor, Dark Heresy, or original 40K Rogue Trader rules.

These are a few ideas I came up with that will bring a roleplaying game based on the 40K universe to a dramatic conclusion, where either good or evil finally triumphs. These are mostly an outline or rough sketch, and there are plenty of questions that I have not yet answered. I'd be interested in what you guys think, and any suggestions you could offer.

THE GOAL

Mankind has to either evolve into the super-powered psionic race that we are supposed to become, in which case the PCs triumph or a 5th Chaos God is formed, in which case the stability of the universe finally shatters, and man, eldar, orks and all the other races are irredeemably lost.

Note that the following assumes some familiarity with the 40K universe, and that not all is in concert with the present fluff.  I always assume that 40K fluff is to be taken with a grain of salt.  The Imperium is well known for its use of propaganda, and what you read in one edition or set of rules as opposed to another may just be based on the beliefs and viewpoint of this or that Inquisitor, general, admiral, preacher, or whoever.  Thus, much of this spans many editions of 40K, and all of it is subject to my twists and whims.  Otherwise, it just ain't a roleplaying campaign.

HOW I GOT THE IDEA

I got this idea from playing a 1st ed. 40K battle, played in 15mm scale. It was Eldar against Chaos, and the figure I was using for the Eldar Avatar was a mounted warrior with spear. One of the players commented that my 40K Eldar force was a neat looking mock up, and said that it was strange to have an Avatar mounted on a horse.

That got me thinking, and the following campaign sort of flowed out of that.

HOW THE CAMPAIGN STARTS

The PCs are somehow drawn into a battle on an Eldar craftworld. This is a new craftworld (in that the Imperium has never heard of it before) and some Rogue Trader (and the rest of the PCs) wants to be the first to get rick off trading with it.

While on the Craftworld, a Chaos army (Black Legion) atacks. The Eldar claim that this is a complete surprise, but seem to know more than they let on.

During the battle that follows, the PCs happen to see the Avatar fighting various daemons. One of the PCs is a scholar of the Eldar race, who is shocked to notice that the Avatar, unlike any holograph or drawing he has seen, is mounted on a fiery horse.

WHAT THE PCS MUST DO?

The scholar PC should have the presence of mind to be very intrigued by such an anomaly. Avatars vary slightly from craftworld to craftworld, but not this much. However, investigation with this local Eldar gets a very frosty reception. They are initially grateful to the PCs for helping them fight the daemons, but this line of inquiry gets them hustled off the worldship with a pointed "don't come back" in the form of a plasma bolt across the bow of their ship as they leave.

SO WHAT NOW?

The Rogue Trader should figure out that new knowledge regarding oddities (and perhaps weaknesses) of the Eldar could be worth an enormous amount to the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Ordo Xenos, and many other powerful organizations within the Imperium. The trade agreement was a bust, but this might not be.

The Imperial files on the library world of ______ might have an answer, so the party goes there. However, information on the Eldar is scanty, and full of rumor and contradictions. The only thing they do find of interest is that 50 years ago an Inquisitor by the name of Hezekiah Masters once led an Imperial Guard force in battle against Chaos on the Eastern Fringe, and ended up fighting alongside these same Eldar, also noting the same phenomenon, and vowing to look into it. Inquisitor Masters is reputedly still on the Eastern Fringe, battling a daemonic outbreak in a secluded nebula.

THE EASTERN FRINGE

The command at subsector _______ has its hands full, and has no time to look into eclectic reports by greedy Rogue Traders. A Tyranid Splinter Fleet has erupted into the subsector, and its single marine legion and two Imperial Guard armies are doing all they can to contain it. Inquisitor Masters? He was reported to have joined the marine chapter in an advisory capacity. No, we don't know exactly where he is, probably the main course for some Tyranid Norn Queen. Now, if you gentlemen don't mind, some of us have work to do...

On to the battlefront, where the PCs meet and fight alongside the marines and guardsmen against the ferocious 'nids. Afterwards...

INQUISITOR MASTERS...

...is dead. He was killed leading a purge of a genestealer infested world at the edge of the Tyranid onslaught. Bolt rifle shot by a genestealer brood brother took his head clean off. His body? What was left of it was recovered by his agents and taken to... where was it? Some backwater world BEHIND the Tyranid advance, if you can believe that... What was it's name? Oh yes? _______. Why take him there? Who knows? He was one of those screwy Radical Inquisitors, and you KNOW what they say about THEM...

WORLD OF WONDERS

If the PCs are gutsy enough and crazy enough to pass through the Tyranid fleet and locate planet _______, they find amazing things. First, it is populated by Squats! These are happily mining, building stuff, designing, flying through space, and doing all the other stuff Squats do, and TYRANID SHIPS ARE FLYING BY, UTTERLY IGNORING THEM!

When the Squats discover these servants of the Imperium, they are none too pleased. It turns out that history has been rewritten a bit. The Squats were not wiped out by the Tyranids. They were nearly wiped out by the Imperium as a threat to mankind, and it was all due to Hezekiah Masters.

Masters came to this sector a hundred years ago after discovering the Mounted Avatar, and questioned the local Squat Engineers regarding it. He also provided them with some alien artifacts that he was unable to discover the use of, and this won him the Squats' friendship. One of the artifacts was a very powerful device indeed, made by some long dead alien race. A crystalline object that could, if rightly operated, see into the future and could, by adjustment of certain variables, see some (not all) possible futures as well.

Most of these futures were bleak indeed, showing the utter ruination of the universe, as the psychic energy of the increasingly insane sentient races drove it over the brink into union with the Warp.

Some few, however, showed mankind evolving into a fully mature psychic race, cleansing and mastering the Warp. How this would come about was not revealed.

Masters decided to see to it that it DID come about. He reasoned. Mankind must evolve. Evolution took millions of years. But the Tyranids could "evolve" new species in a very short time indeed.

Would it be possible to CONTROL the dreaded Tyranids? To somehow subvert the very Hivemind to his will, and force it to evolve humanity into the mature psychic beings necessary to defeat Chaos once and for all? Master thought this just might be so.

He enlisted the Squats as his allies in this great project, for their technological prowess, and meant to enlist the Eldar of the Horseman's World as well, for their knowledge of the Warp. However, on his journey back to their Craftworld, he was drawn into the battle with the Tyranids (Masters saw this as a great opportunity to observe their powers firsthand), and lost his life. His agents managed to recover his body, and returned him to the Squat's world, where he is presently -and laboriously- being cloned.

But the Imperium had spies everywhere, and a powerful cabal of Inquisitors and Cardinals learned of Master's plan, of his alliance with the Squats, and were terrified by it. A Tyranid-evloved Man? What insanity could that lead to. In desperation, and after much planning, the cabal came to a terrible decision, the Squats must be wiped out, and Master's with them. Even the loss of this potent abhuman ally was not too much for the Puritan Inquisitors to contemplate, compared with what might be brought about by this mad Radical's scheme.

The Tyranid invasion was used as an excuse. A mighty fleet was sent to virus-bomb the Squat Hearthworlds, while their own military had been treacherously drawn off to the frontlines against the Tyranids. The victory was almost total, and few Squat worlds survived.

But some did survive.

Among them was one that had advanced relatively far along the lines of Master's thinking. They had not been able to control the Tyranids, not yet, but they had managed to create a sort of "psychic bug repellant" that made their worlds psychically invisible to the Hivemind. It could not attack what it could not know was there. Now the Squats were safe, obliviously defended by one of mankind's greatest enemies.