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[Nirur Torir]

Idle thought, a setting where the only humans are vampires and other similar ancient undead. For metaphysical reasons, and a bit of fantasy racism, only humans can become true free willed undead, and all humans have long since either done so or died.

The mortal races, elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins and so on don't have records that predate the current state of affairs, so they don't actually know what humans are. They just call the species 'vampires,' because almost every extent human is a vampire and the others are barely recognisable. This in turn leads to weird conclusions about the origins of their own races, the possible origin of vampires and so on.

Elves point to the broad, brutish features and say that cleardy vampires originated from the same stock as dwarves and orcs, or are a crossbreed of the two.

Dwarves point to the tall, lanky bodies and violent ways and say clearly they're of elvish and orcish stock.

A rare few scholars theorise that the mortal races are descended from vampires, citing the presence of vampire-like skeletons in ancient ruins and artwork scattered throughout the world.

That has good prequel potential, too.
The players, all human, are a group of broken-down nobodies, newly inducted as fodder into a traditional back-stabbingly aristocratic vampire coven shortly before an apocalyptic magical war. The prequel plays out with plentiful time skips, and the players get to play through societal shake-ups as the disposable minions become priceless, each eventually ending up with tens of thousands of years of skills.

[Loud Whispers]

I'm currently planning in the works a Dark Heresy game for a bunch of players who are most certainly not 40k players. One played the tabletop but knows nothing about the lore; the other two never played the tabletop yet have been heavily indoctrinated by ITEHTTSD memes or Krieg shovel memes respectively. The latter two players in particular present a unique challenge, because their perspective of the Imperium is so laser-narrow focused on the expectation that the entirety of the Imperium is Kriegers charging trenches or Ultramarines doing tactical deep strikes. I already had to tell my player that I could not let him RP as a Krieger, because he would have to roleplay as a mute 12 year old boy soldier and he does not have the ability to do so entertainingly over discord.

But it is also an opportunity! Because I am going to throw them into a feudal swamp world where there is almost no Imperial presence at all.
Easily the thing I find coolest about the Imperium of Man's government is that it is a hegemony composed of factions upon factions, all of which have similar levels of authority and power. Interservice rivalry & wasteful duplication of responsibilities is standard practice, even within organisations. Most of all, the majority of the citizens of the nations that make up the planets that make up the Imperium are capable of living their entire lives without ever noticing the presence of the Imperium unless;

-They are subject to the tithe
-Their planet belongs to the direct control of an Imperial faction (e.g. ecclesiarchal world, administratum world, forge world, astartes recruitment world)
-Psykers & the black ships
-The planet is invaded by chaos or xenos, or rebels against the Imperium of Man

The way I interpret it, is similar to the frontiers of the Roman Empire in the England frontier, the Upper Nile frontier or the Euphrates frontier. Roman citizens living in any of these frontiers would only have the loosest sense of belonging to an Empire; few may notice at all the scant signs of authority. Roman coins. The occasional fortress garrisoned by Imperial soldiers. A wealthy plutocrat's foreign styled roman villa. A vague understanding that all their English tin or Egyptian wheat is being bought from somewhere.
But if the Sassanids advance down the Euphrates or a rebel pretender uses Britannia as their base of operations, suddenly Rome mobilises its legions and the common man becomes absolutely aware that they are living under Roman "protection."

So!

The players live in the Kingdom of Kitslevraya, which is itself situated on a planet called Chersonese. Almost all of the planet is shallow ocean water or marshy mangrove, there is very little in the way of true "dry" land. The primary mode of transport is canoe or canoe with outrigger, and everyone is a skilled navigator and swimmer from childhood onwards. The Chersoneseans navigate by the stars, and their oral traditions record that two of the stars they use for navigation are young (<4,000 years old), and appeared at the same time as the far-people. These two "stars" are actually orbital fortresses installed by the Imperium to safeguard Chersonese and control who goes in, and who goes out.

Imperial presence is minimal, and what few times a rogue trader or bold merchant shows up on-world every century or so, the people assume they have sailed from a far-away nation, not from another planet. Explorers from Kitslevraya occasionally set sail to try and find where the Imperium of Man is to try establish official relations, but Kitslevrayans to this day have failed to locate this powerful Empire. The world produces valuable resources; adamantium can be found in the ocean shelfs, the world is abundant in saltwater and wild sea-herbs have been known to enhance or suppress witch-craft on the planet. However, 4,000 years ago the Imperium sent an administratum explorator fleet which concluded the planet was uninhabited and useless, fit only for water harvesting. The paperwork for approving the tithe was however corrupted by unknown agents, resulting in the world of Chersonese being declared unpopulated and bereft of resources, with its status remaining unchanged even after the Imperial Admiralty and the Ordo Xenos took an interest in Chersonese.

The two orbital Fortresses, Chersonese I and Chersonese II often receive visitors from other Imperial factions, but few visitors are ever permitted to land on-world, or have any legitimate interest in doing so. Occasionally when a wrecked spaceship crashes into the planet, it is considered a gift from the God-Emperor, whose cult has spread amongst the local henotheistic pantheon which predates the Imperium's religion. The ecclesiarchy has no permanent presence on Chersonese, so there has been no real effort to stamp out the worship of "other gods."

The lone permanent Imperial presence on Chersonese is a beleaguered Magos Biologis from the Adeptus Mechanicus and her small coterie of tech-adepts and servitors. She is referred to the locals of Kislevraya as the "Oracle." The "Oracle" is deemed such, because she knows everything and can commune with the heavens (she has a powerful vox-caster). She and her group will look more like 19th century divers (think bioshock), with their augmentations looking more rubber and steel than the usual iron and flesh the mechanicus rock (rust / water pressure resistant augmentations). They are there to study the unusual warp-affecting sea herbs and really hate when the locals waste their time with stupid questions. What they consider stupid questions are subject to vast tirades of binaric screeching.

My players will be thrust into this world, in service to King Mana Oo'oo. King Mana Oo'oo's daughter has lost her dog (dog in this world = leopard seal descendent), and he wants them to find her seadog. Some people blame the neighbouring Kingdom of Parabang Brabant. Some blame a coven of witches. One local drunk claims he saw the dog taken by aliens from beyond the skies. Maybe the dog just got lost.


On a perhaps unrelated note, I love deploying bodysnatcher murder mysteries! Demonic possessions, intellect devourers, skin walkers and my all time favourite depiction - the bonethief! I'm sure they'll be fine though. Even if I need more names for skin snatchers. Soul swappers. Nerve puppets. Head warmers.

[MrRoboto75]

Wouldn't the orbital forts move too much to be "stars," but perhaps new "planets"?  Planets, to old astrologers, were stars whose position would change relative to the usual star map.  Even if they were geostationary, their orbit is as long as the day so they "hang" over the same spot, I have some doubt it could be used as navigation.

Like I know 40k ships can inexplicably hang in an exact location in the sky like bricks don't, but I assume a permanent station might just orbit normally, takes less energy or something.

[Loud Whispers]

Oh yeah that's a huge oversight on my part. Although I do like the idea of the locals calling them the "wandering stars" and coming up with their own explanation for why two of the stars are chasing each other across the sky. They could still be used for navigation provided their orbital paths were predictable and the locals had a method to reliably determine the time - maybe they have their own watches/orreries/atykethera mechanism. The wandering stars would also be useful for navigation because you can see them in daytime, even when other stars cannot be observed

[Grim Portent]

Ah, I do love the '40k but you're so low on the pecking order you don't even know what the Imperium is,' premises. Have two of them myself (one for Dark Heresy one for Black Crusade,) which I will hopefully get to run one day.


It might be worth having rare relics from the ancient past of from the far-away, that can be used to communicate with the Voice Beyond, scattered throughout shrines and military posts in the larger settlements. Which is to say simple and crude vox units, usually barely functional, that can be used to contact a rather indifferent Administratum adept in one of the orbital stations who's job is technically to send supplies down to the planet's government and PDF, but because the locals barely understand what the vox even is, or lasguns, water purifiers and so on, so the job is basically to sit in a chair, shuffle paperwork and occasionally send a box of corpse-starch down when someone asks the Voice Beyond to help with a famine. Technically they could dump enough shoddy lasguns and budget flak armour vests to supply a few thousand local soldiers, but the locals are rather obtuse about learning to use far-tech and the Imperium doesn't care enough to actually teach them, so there's a bunch of supplies that have been mothballed for four millennia.

[MrRoboto75]

Okay, I can see that.

Another question: are both stations owned by the same faction?  I'd assume normally the imperial navy would just build one and call it a day.  The planet commands little to no surface presence, although the imperium could be wary of some outside presence.  It wouldn't surprise me if the mechanicus needed/wanted a separate station, though.  It could also be a beaucratic mishap, somehow the military built one station here, twice.

One station could also be some sort of civilian trade depot of some sort, it just happens to be large enough to be visible, 40k scaling and all that.

[Loud Whispers]

Ah, I do love the '40k but you're so low on the pecking order you don't even know what the Imperium is,' premises. Have two of them myself (one for Dark Heresy one for Black Crusade,) which I will hopefully get to run one day.

What've you got in the pipeline?

It might be worth having rare relics from the ancient past of from the far-away, that can be used to communicate with the Voice Beyond, scattered throughout shrines and military posts in the larger settlements. Which is to say simple and crude vox units, usually barely functional, that can be used to contact a rather indifferent Administratum adept in one of the orbital stations who's job is technically to send supplies down to the planet's government and PDF, but because the locals barely understand what the vox even is, or lasguns, water purifiers and so on, so the job is basically to sit in a chair, shuffle paperwork and occasionally send a box of corpse-starch down when someone asks the Voice Beyond to help with a famine. Technically they could dump enough shoddy lasguns and budget flak armour vests to supply a few thousand local soldiers, but the locals are rather obtuse about learning to use far-tech and the Imperium doesn't care enough to actually teach them, so there's a bunch of supplies that have been mothballed for four millennia.

Just imagining a fat quartermaster with his mouth full of biscuits startled awake, asking "who is this?" As he finally gets a request for something impractical from the locals. They ask for some miracles and he does his best to figure out what exactly their problem is and whether he should send medicine, rations or bayonets.

I like to imagine he also has a boss who keeps track of his KPIs and customer satisfaction rate, so he can't slack off either, no matter how arcane the request is from the vox casters

Okay, I can see that.

Another question: are both stations owned by the same faction?  I'd assume normally the imperial navy would just build one and call it a day.  The planet commands little to no surface presence, although the imperium could be wary of some outside presence.  It wouldn't surprise me if the mechanicus needed/wanted a separate station, though.  It could also be a beaucratic mishap, somehow the military built one station here, twice.

One station could also be some sort of civilian trade depot of some sort, it just happens to be large enough to be visible, 40k scaling and all that.

My thought was one station belonged to the mechanicus, as Magoses are pretty high ranking in the organisation structure and can call on some crazy resources, whilst the other station belongs to the Navy and hosts the Ordo Xenos presence which is largely there to spy on the Mechanicus and/or the planet

[Grim Portent]

What've you got in the pipeline?

Dark Heresy premise is a sort of post apocalyptic western, inspired by Mad Max and Red Dead Redemption more than anything else.

Setting would be a desert world, though I've forgotten what I was going to call it, a planet mostly consisting of a largely inhospitable desert with vast tracts of wreckage and scrap metal, with two large cities, one with a spaceport (the capitol,) and a set of smaller settlements and outposts from the various adepta there to rummage through the wastes for valuable resources or to try and find deposits of natural resources that have gone undiscovered. The wastes are mostly inhabited by nomadic junkers, with the odd oasis settlement based around old technology that makes a permanent settlement possible, like ancient hydroponics, water purifiers and weather control devices.

PCs would be members of a nomadic wasteland gang, with a big armoured train like vehicle with supplies and water condensers and things that serves as their home, and a bunch of bikes, cars, speeders and animal mounts that get used to form a protective perimeter and to scout ahead. Something like a few dozen NPCs, plus the PCs, travelling through the wastes scrounging to survive, fighting off other wastelanders, imperial authorities who're unhappy about supplies getting stolen, and scrap-ghouls, a degenerate form of mutant cannibals that worship the wrecked machinery that litters the land. Necromunda meets Gorkamorka but with no Orkz type of thing.

The Imperium, or more specifically the Administratum, Arbites and off world nobles would be serving the narrative role of civilisation encroaching on the West that you see in a lot of Westerns. The nomadic junkers, the small settlements and so on are gradually being forced into a more conventional lifestyle so the Imperium can better exploit the resources they're discovering and rediscovering on the planet.

Had an idea for a reference to the Devil from old folklore, a daemonic spirit roams the planet in the form of a man dressed in a black suit and offers what seem to be the deals of a lifetime but which always end in tragedy.



Idea 2 is for a Chaos Feudal World, never thought up a name for it. Population would be baseline humans, ogryn, ratlings, psykers, and a handful of 'skeleton-wizards' which would be a degenerate cult of Dark Mechanicus adepts. World is split into kingdoms, baronies and other such arrangements, with everyone worshipping some combination of the gods of chaos and/or powerful daemons, but not always by the same name or in the same aspects. So one kingdom might revere Tcharr, the bringer of the flame of knowledge, while another would worship Zhenth, the lord of many faces. Both aspects of Tzeentch, or his daemons, but not necessarily friends because of doctrinal differences.

The PCs would be champions of one of the kingdoms, ideally they'd all be knights, literally the kind that ride horses and wear plate armour, but that's not strictly necessary for the premise it would just be cool. They'd have a few sessions of dealing with essentially D&D style adventures but in a world where everyone worships Chaos, then the sky would split apart and great meteors would rain from above, and dragons would soar in the skies above hordes of daemons with weapons of cruel painful light as the war to end all wars came to the world.

Which is to say the Imperial Guard would arrive to reconquer the world for the Imperium, with a little space marine support, aerial supremacy and vast regiments of infantry. Then the premise would be that the primitive but sorcerous natives of the world would face against the advanced but relatively less magical forces of the Imperium. WHF Chaos Warriors vs 40k Imperial Guard, from the perspective of the WoC essentially.

[Loud Whispers]

1st one does feel gorkamorka sans orks.

Gorkamorka - ork = Gama

I do hope the devil has been beaten once in a music contest by some bards who happened to play the best song in the world

#2 reminds me of the bit of crossover lore where some WHF chaos maurauders accidentally raided some 40k space marines, got a good fight in and then just left after they were satisfied with their foes' prowess

[Grim Portent]

'Course Gorkamorka is basically Mad Max but with Orkz, so any vehicle themed desert stuff in 40k is going to resemble 'Gorkamorka but X.'

2 was probably subconsciously inspired by that old bit of fluff, but it actually just grew out of an idea for an Imperial Feudal World party being dropped into Spaaaace after some adventures, and then being altered by all the theme park planets from Black Crusade. Think Tome of Blood, the Khornate expansion for BC is what really solidified the idea.


I also really want to try a game where the PCs are Chaos Knights, the building sized walkers rather than horsemen, engaging in war, tournaments and hunting megafauna, plus some situations where they have to dismount their iron steed to deal with things like internal House politics or challenges to their personal might.

[Rolan7]

I love this whole concept a lot.  It reminds me of Might and Magic (6 specifically) where the setting is high-fantasy with unexplained but common magic, and there's these weird hints here and there, then suddenly it's like "What the fuck there's a computer in this dungeon".  And there's all this lore about a larger galaxy and sci-fi past and it's like "okay... cool... how do I banish the 'demons' with any of this".  I liked how the game just rolled with it instead of it being a huge reveal, because to the characters you're playing - it really isn't!  It's just more arcane nonsense they need to quest through.

40K is bombastic, and ridiculous in scope.  It's nice to see that become the mythology and arcane nonsense of a fantasy setting.  I love the Oracle especially.  Even if she cared to explain "science" to the locals, which she has no reason to do, it's not so simple as "Electricity is X".  Uplifting a culture is very difficult and nobody involved cares to do it!

[scriver]

These last posts gave been very inspiring, I agree

[Grim Portent]

Been ruminating on how to describe looking at an eldritch being as a GM, I have a few plot ideas that involve Lovecraftian things-beyond-comprehension, and the key to them is always presentation, and presentation can require forethought.

I'm thinking avoiding the usual imagery, tentacles and eyes and so on, might be a good idea. I'm thinking instead focusing on more abstract ideas and the way it makes the person looking at it feel.

Something along the lines of the following.

You lift your head to look at it. Sharp pain blossoms in your eyes, blood trickles from your nose across your lips, you taste it. Harsh, metallic. Your teeth itch. For an endless moment you see it, wood rots to mulch and then dries to dust, life bursts forth and cascades into decay, impossible geometries fold in upon themselves as time and space recoil. The moment ends, you are looking at the floor again, drops of your blood dripping from your nose and chin to spatter the ground with crimson red.

[brewer bob]

"I'll just make a couple of minor changes to the history of the Warhammer World."

Yeah, things have (unsurprisingly) escalated from this. Now I've ditched the idea of doing a homebrew bronze age history for Warhammer and going for a "I'll just make my own fantasy world quickly" with all the notes I've been taking down. And as Earthdawn was mentioned here (one of my all-time favourite settings), I'm stealing a lot of stuff from that too. So, some kind of unholy mishmash of all kinds of stuff I've liked since a kid (there'll certainly be dinosaurs, too!).

Yet again another project I'll never finish, but it's a fun way to pass time.

[Grim Portent]

Dumb idea for a quest.

Adalhard, Duke of Thrydain entrusts the PCs with an important letter, and an accompanying large scroll to be delivered to his wife. Adalhard himself is taking part in a military campaign at this time, and hasn't been home for two years and may not return for some time.

During the journey to the duke's lands various brigands attempt to sieze the letter and scroll on behalf on unknown parties.

Upon successful delivery the Duchess is grateful, the PCs get their fee, and are asked to hang around for a week while she composes a reply for them to take back. Plenty of time for ordinary story shenanigans. After the week is up she gives the party a letter and similarly large scroll to take back to her husband.

Once again brigands try to steal it for unknown parties.

Quest ends when Adalhard is given the response, as he decides to offer the party other more important tasks because they have proven able and willing to travel long distances at some risk.


If the PCs decide to look at the letters or the scrolls, perhaps finding some way to open them without breaking the seals or by using magic, they will find that they're part of the Duke and Duchess' way of keeping the flame of romance alive despite years apart. Which is to say the letters are raunchy love letters, at least in part, and the scrolls are paintings, portraits of the Duke and Duchess in states of undress. The brigands trying to steal them are generally supposed to steal any correspondance for spying purposes, but there would be quite a bit of blackmail potential in these particular missives.