I've got an idea for one of the main villains in my DH campaign. In the end the players should come up against triple heresy - an arch-heretic, a tech-heretic and a radical inquisitor. Originally I thought of an NPC, Magos Alechemys Divinatus Octus. But I just had a neat idea for developing the Magos, since they'll likely be the next target once (if?) they deal with the arch-heretic first.
1. The Magos has undergone what he/she/they terms "the rites of division." They divided their brain into 8 eighths, with each eighth forming the shard of a new whole brain and body, with the rest of their functioning mind replaced by cogitators. They have essentially reduced their human components down to the bare minimum that retains personality and doesn't(?) cross the line into becoming an AI being. This also means that there is a Divinatus Primus, Secundus, Tertius, Quartus, Quintus, Sextus, Septimus and Octus. This gives a lot of spare NPCs to play with, and could be a fun / horrifying discovery for my players, especially since they refuse to get tech use and the amount of havoc a multitude of rogue Magi could get up to is vast.
2. There is potential for one of the Divinatus to disagree with the rest of its order. Like one of them inherited the amygdala and is just a bundle of anxiety and fear which thinks the other Divinati have gone too far in their experiments. Would it oppose the other Magi? Would they imprison this Magos? I imagine they would program some way into themselves to resolve conflicts amongst themselves, e.g. terminating one another is not permitted.
3. In game terms, my players have acted
swiftly. They have not wasted any time doing a slow investigation; the moment they realised their Inquisitor boss was missing they started assembling a crusade and kicking doors down. As a result, they may actually be able to find the inquisitor within 3 days of their last recorded message. I'm thinking of a fun final encounter to round off the rescue mission, where the players have to break into one of the Mechanicus' research facilities.
This would be the site of a massive battle, where the Magos first ambushed the Ordo Hereticus inquisitor for straying too close to uncovering the truth. An Ordo Hereticus inquisitor being a paranoid twitchy trigger finger mess that they are, wasn't easy to take down.
My conception for the order of battle:
1. Hereticus Inquisitor goes to meet with the Magos to "discuss" why Mechanicus forces are not assisting against the xenos or helping enforce imperial authority in the hive. Realises quickly that the Magos is compromised, whilst the Magos also realises quickly the Hereticus Inquisitor is not going to compromise. Someone has to die.
2. Magos fails to capture/kill the Inquisitor in a surprise attack, which was already anticipated. Inquisitor's cadre and retinue cause mayhem in the Mechanicus facility, causing sabotage that kills nearly everyone. This being a facility that was the domain of a Magos Alchemys, I like to imagine there are loads of machines and experiments related to the ultimate goal of true transmutation. So lots of machines focusing on changings of state. Tech-warriors armed with exotic xenos/warp based weapons that cause mutations, rapid entropy or tech-priests intent on creating theoretical superdense elements/exotic states of matter. So an easy way to explain why my players don't immediately get gunned down by six hundred elite skitarii armed with exotic weapons is; most of them have been killed in an antimatter annihilation event that has gouged out a considerable amount of the facility, leaving it exposed to the terrible psy-worms and bio-construct gribblies that inhabit the amaranthine wastes.
3. Amidst the chaos, Divinatus Octus and Inquisitor Xavier Mordaunt engaged in battle. Divinatus Octus was slain, and communications cut off from the site after the cascade explosion triggered an EMP blast which wiped out long-range communications with the other Divinati. The Divinati are methodical, however they have their own urgent problem; they are clearing out a buried space hulk and so have only sent a scout force to verify what has happened at the research site. All of their other forces are engaged with taking control of the space hulk and renovating its warp drives & gellar fields. Overtly, the Divinati are allied with the rogue inquisitor Gosvinger, and are helping him take control of the AI-archaeotech ship the Mission of Hope. Covertly, the Divinati are attempting to achieve their own transmutation into an ascended being:
With their backstory being when they divided themselves into eight pieces, they discovered the eightfold path of chaos. But rather than being "corrupted," the Magos views the warp as something axiomatic and comprehendible, repeating in patterns which they have identified. E.g:
The holy numbers of the four chaos gods forming their own patterns. So whereas Inquisitor Gosvinger is trying to use the archaeotech AI Mission of Hope to help him create a "holy" daemonhost army capable of waging war against daemonkind in the warp (as daemon weapons can permanently kill daemons, not just banish them), the surviving Divinati are trying to make one of their kind (probably Primus) ascend into the thousand armed incarnation of the Omnissiah. The Divinati end-game is to activate the warp drives and escape before the Inquisition or Mechanicus can stop them.
4. Meanwhile at the mechanicus site, if the players arrive fast enough, it'll be a race against time. Some of the Inquisitor's retinue and the inquisitor themself will still be alive, but not for long. Some are injured, there are amaranthine wildlife, injured skitarii and escaped experiment subjects still roaming around too.
Inquisitor Xavier MordauntSaved by his armour's life support systems, force field and general sturdiness, Xavier Mordaunt is being held aloft by the "dead" body of Divinatus Octus (players will later discover that was actually Divinatus Quintus. 4 and 5 are amongst numbers Chaos doesn't really care about. Primus is probably going to be the segment the chaos gods favour the most, Octus the one who is the most ardent believer in the chaos axiom, whilst Quartus is probably the the segment which most opposes this radical tech-heresy. Plus I already have a character called Quintus so may as well get rid of the duplicates).
Xavier "killed" Quartus, however their body doesn't know it yet. Quartus's body remains active with automated defence-protocols online. So this presents a puzzle to the players; how to retrieve their inquisitor without triggering a hostile response from the Magos's body which could get them or their boss killed.
Random stormtrooper dudeOne of Mordaunt's retinue. Hard as nails, a rare example of a guardsman who was later sent to stormtrooper school in his middle-ages. Encountered an escaped daemon which slaughtered everyone as quick as a blink. This Schrondinger's daemon is an inert statue when looked upon, but when no one observes it, it reverts to its warpy corporeal murder form. Stolen and studied by the Divinati for how such a warp entity could transmute back and forth between warp and material forms. The stormtrooper is stuck - the daemon's razor-sharp claw is wrapped around his throat and he can't exactly go anywhere or damage it in its statue form. The only way he has survived this long is that his left eye is a fake, glass eye. However, the curse that afflicts this daemon doesn't discriminate against disabilities or prosthetics; a bionic eye, a fake eye, a blind eye, is still an eye as long as the person who has it feels like they're their eyes.
A maltek, evil sinister-looking tech-priestOne of Mordaunt's retinue. Blind, deaf and mute thanks to all the battle damage and radiation messing with their bionics. Has spent the last few days blindly scavenging for parts to do a quick field-fix of themselves. Is using an auspex scanner hooked to their MIU as a quick replacement for their broken organs. Walks around looking like the pale man from Pan's labyrinth, using a chain saw to cut through dead bodies with suitable replacement bionics. Assuming the sinister looking tech-priest doesn't get shot on sight by paranoid players, actually just one of their allies in need of help.
A dying death cult assassinA mortally wounded death cult assassin, found at the end of a corridor full of dead tech priests and skitarii. Can be saved with some challenging medicae checks or if they can find some chirugeon servitor, but being a death cult assassin and all, does not expect or wish to be saved.
A feral worlderHiding in the ceiling by doing hardcore parkour. Knows where the "war chief" is however has been stuck in a great hunt with a many-legged chameleonic predator, that seems to merge with the materials surrounding it. However, it is not actually a chameleon. It really is phasing through materials, like a necron wraith or tomb stalker...
The pilotsTwo dead in their aircraft seat, their aircraft heavily damaged and upturned in the sands. Their bodies, already crawling with the local saprotrophs from the amaranthine wastes. Closer, successful inspection will determine they suffered almost no external wounds of any kind, having been killed by some experimental death ray. Inspection of the aircraft's black box reveals their flight was ordinary and they arrived at their destination without trouble, though 93 minutes after landing, experienced extreme accelerations, orientations and a sudden stop.
A dead witch hunterFound dead in a charred room full of burnt bodies, their heavy flamer inert by their side, with a few large and bulky masses much too strange and large to be human. Miraculously, their body is unburnt. The Emperor (or heat retardent clothing) protects. Players get a free fate point back for witnessing such a glorious miracle.
The three musketeers10000% annihilated. But players might be able to recover security footage showing the three musketeers causing the cascade annihilation event.
A data-savant hiding in a vaultManaging to seal himself in a vault to avoid dying to the battle and explosions happening outside, the data-savant made a risky call that whatever was imprisoned in the vault was less dangerous than whatever going on outside.
Not sure what the data-savant encounters in the vault yet. I'm thinking a cursed mirror whose reflections may sometimes manifest and emerge to try and force the other "back into the mirror" as both believe themselves to be the original, and the other the doppelganger. Most reflections use what means are available to them to force the other into the mirror. As the data-savant is a weak and feeble sort, they have been saved by their ineffectiveness, as both of them have instead been arguing for days and trying to prove through logic and debate that they are the original and the other should walk into the mirror.
Free spaceA loyal retainer who is also speared on Divinatus Quintus's many mechandendrites. However, they did not survive.
Author
Topic: WH40K discussion thread: [loading grimdark, please wait] (Read 1048237 times)