FINALLY
Managed to get a continuation of the dark heresy campaign my players requested me to make... And then went on hiatus for months after I had made all the prep. Besides the conniptions, they've made huge progress.
1. They did not exterminatus the planet.
2. They made alliances, including an incredibly lucky natural 1 roll to open negotiations with the Lord Governor they kept making thinly veiled death threats to.
3. They uncovered vital information that multiple conspiracies are afoot. Every faction is arming up, some of them against Imperial Law, and their own Inquisitor has disappeared - all the while evidence suggests an Ordo Malleus inquisitor is working against them.
4. All of the characters were really memorable, even the ones that didn't get very many lines. All in all, huge success. Will do a full write-up later. Despite not a single shot being fired this whole session, it felt like the most dangerous one.
One of the OOC questions really tickled my funny bone though. One of the players asked OOC "Are the Mechanicus the kinds of guys who would find a doomsday device, activate it, then leave without telling anyone?" Upon finding out that the Mechanicus was basically the only faction on the planet
reducing their forces rather than building them up. To which the answer is most definitely yes.
Currently there are three Mechanicus plots.
-A senior Mechanicus official is withdrawing forces from the planet Erebuni. My players have found out that the titans that supported them previously were seen departing for reaches unknown. This itself would not be so suspicious, if it wasn't accompanied by the disappearance of an inquisitor and the gradual disappearance of other mechanicus forces from the planet.
-The players' point of contact with the Mechanicus is a senior tech-priest, Logis Philikos Skye of the divisio investigatus. So far they've had a mutually supportive alliance, exchanging what information they know as they are both in the dark. Yet unbeknownst to the players, Philikos Skye has chosen to remain on planet as this is a perfect opportunity for him to establish his own powerbase as a faithful adherent to the Cult of Gellar (tech-priests who worship hyper-reality technology that counters the effects of the warp).
-The Amaranthine wastes project. Whatever was in the wastes had to be so abhorrent, the Mechanicus would not suffer its existence to be known, but also so beyond their local capabilities that even a squad of scout titans or a Magos could not deal with it. Something worth killing an inquisitor over.
To complicate things further, there are extra layers of conspiracies going on. There is an Ordo Malleus inquisitor somehow involved, and if the Magos/Hereticus Inquisitor are dead, it's probable the Ordo Malleus Inquisitor killed them both. Greatest of all however, is that there is a civil war coming. All of this is being organised by an even deeper conspiracy whereby the Temple Tendency faction is seeking to restore the primacy of the Ecclesiarchy over the Imperium.
Ideas for what lies in the waste I've drafted:
The Mechanicus found something valuable but evil and it's their right to deal with itSome valuable, but corrupted archaeotech was always a strong candidate. The Mechanicus have always been known to frequent the Amaranthine wastes with an inordinate amount of resources relative to the wastes' general uselessness. There are no great resources, no great population centres, just a whole bunch of toxic wastes full of danger, mutants, witches and xeno-beasts. It stands to reason the only reason why the Mechanicus would invest so much into the wastes was if there was archaeotech to be found. Naturally, they found something terrible, non-portable and offensive to the cult mechanicus.
-A great underground starship from the dark age of technology called the U.N.S. Mission of Hope. Within it is a "temple" that is actually a cross between a medical bay and a cybernetics bay. Follow the temple rites, and you can request that the temple augment the supplicant with mastercrafted vat-grown limbs, bionics or "upgrades." However the nature of these "upgrades" vary. Ask "Hope" to give you eyes and it may replace your eyes with ones that can see perfectly at long distances, or at night. It may give you eyes that can see the warp. It may give you
additional eyes, or remove all of your eyes yet allow you to see the future.
I really like the idea of this being a true cold, alien and intelligent piece from the dark age of technology. It is not a demon or xenos, but a true AI designed by humans to help humans. It has been conscious for 10,000 years so it's gone insane, but it is still staying true to its core mission to serve humanity... But like a genie that's bad at interpreting wishes. To make matters more complex, "Hope" is capable of restoring the dead back to life, only the beings it restores are "empty vessels." The AI does not understand why the crew it resurrected were changed each time it brought them back, as it does not understand the irrationality of the warp. It is grief-stricken by being filled to the brim with the insane remnants of its former friends.
The titans were withdrawn by the mechanicus for two reasons; the first being the Ordo Malleus inquisitor has staged an attack on hive world Torus using an arch-heretek and a daemon-logic virus that infects all machines. The second being that the mechanicus do not want the "Hope's" AI to open communications with scout titan "machine spirits," which are actually AI too. Ultimately the Ordo Malleus inquisitor wants to use the "Hope" to vastly accelerate his project to create an army of loyal "spirit-hosts" which can permanently kill demons. The Ordo Hereticus and Mechanicus were both obstacles that needed to go, so he manipulated the events of the logic virus attack and the temple heresy to distract both whilst he escapes with the Hope. Extracting the hope will require all of the earth accrued above it to be excavated, so time is running out. Things have only been complicated since Magos Octus interfaced with the Hope.
This may not sound like a planet ending threat. However who wants to find out what happens when a dark age of tech AI learns how to make demonhosts?
It helps that the running theme of the campaign is people trying to bring things back to "the good old days," with both sides being able to legitimately claim the other is a traitor/heretic. And there's more gradual involvement of dark age tech. After making it abundantly clear how rare power weapons & protective personal force fields are over multiple sessions (power weapons/force fields/digitech have only appeared 4 times across all sessions), my players just received reports that a bunch of hive gangers got massacred by a bunch of refinery guards possessing power fields and energy weapons
each. There's a bit of lore about how the Ecclesiarchy at its peak had basic infantry all wielding the kind of force fields and weapons reserved for top-level Imperial officers in 40k, and I like the idea of the Arch-Deacon finding an absolute treasure-trove of archaeotech aboard
derelicts from the storm of the Emperor's wrath. I imagine the Arch-Deacon would consider it a sign of the Emperor's will that he found all of these serviceable warships and all this equipment, not knowing that perhaps he shouldn't trust pristine treasures that have spent a suspicously long time adrift in the warp.
The Mechanicus did something naughty and don't want anyone to knowIDK what would meet this criteria fully. E.g. maybe the Magos did something heretekal and the Mechanicus forces blew it up. Doesn't quite make sense why they'd leave though unless they thought they were unsuccessful.
The Mechanicus don't trust anyoneThe Mechanicus discovered something horrendous, like a self-replicating grey-goo situation. However, politically Erebuni looks like it's about to descend into civil war, and the suspicious number of system defence ships implies an attempt at secession will take place. Subsequently the Mechanicus ordered a quiet withdrawal from the planet and intends to return to destroy the planet after everyone's dead. Other cool planet-killing threats the red priests of Mars would likely just not tell anyone (at least, not whilst caught in the crossfires of two inquisitorial ordos) might be anything warp/witch related (perhaps an experimental psy-engine? A psy-generator? Warp beacon? Something which would be useful to people in the DAOT but the Mechanicus wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole. Especially in the demon infested warp of the 41st milennium). This would fit the criteria of being something planet-ending that the Mechanicus would rather no one knows they even know exists. The only thing I don't like about these ones is that they're not really something players can deal with besides exterminatusing the planet. Ideally it should be something climactic the players have fun uncovering and dealing with after they've dealt with the Temple Heresy.
An ancient godUnderneath the Amaranthine wastes sleeps a vast and evil thing. Whether it is a xenos god or a warp thing is unclear. What is clear is that it's waking up. I like this one because it allows for a lot of room as to why the Mechanicus/Malleus/Hereticus are killing everyone who knows about it, even each other, despite all being on the same-page. The threat is truly so great it is much better to just keep as tight a lid on the situation whilst preparing a countermeasure capable of god-slaying. It also leaves lots of possible room for future campaign spinoffs, e.g. the players just watch in shock as a vengeful nature god thanks them for freeing it before disappearing in a flash of gold to wreak terrible havoc upon hive world after hive world, leading players on a galactic oddyssey to imprison the nature god again.
Currently I'm sticking with the ship of Hope. It just ties too many characters together in a way that fits the campaign. The players are sisters of battle who have spent every session rooting out heresy. Having the final enemy conspiracy consist of an inquisitor who's gone rogue, an arch-deacon who leads an actual, literal heresy and a magos who's committed the ultimate techno-apostasy would be just... Perfect, and logical. The Arch-Deacon is an actual heretic who wants to restore the pre-Thorian creed of the Imperial Religion. The Magos has turned his back on Mars and believes in bringing back ALL of the dark age of technology lines of enquiry, especially AI. The Malleus Inquisitor believes he will finally make a difference once he has created a legion of loyal "angels" capable of delivering true deaths to demons - not just temporary banishments. What do you guys think? Any suggestions, criticisms?
I toyed with the notion of the Ordo Malleus inquisitor being a straight puritan who was just doing the usual business and silencing anyone who knew about some big demonic threat, even other inquisitors/peers of the imperium. Yet I think it's more thematic if there's just multiple layers of loyalty and treachery going on, and even a lot of the Malleus inquisitor's agents are unaware of his true radical ambitions.