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[Loud Whispers]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You are standing by a lever that can switch the tracks of an oncoming freight trolley. Tied to track A are five individuals. Tied to track B is one individual. You do not know anything about the circumstances or appearances of the individuals. If you do nothing, the five on track A will die. If you pull the lever, the one on track B will die.

What do you do?

[Imperial Fist appears on your shoulder]

Imperial Fist: we should fortify the lever, so the enemy may not take this position from us

[Iron Warrior appears on your other shoulder]

Iron Warrior: with a small modification to the tracks, we can kill everyone

[nenjin]

Thanks for the review of RT. I've been waiting for someone to tell me what if any problems they have with it, and that's the first mention of loading screens I've seen.

[Loud Whispers]

Thanks for the review of RT. I've been waiting for someone to tell me what if any problems they have with it, and that's the first mention of loading screens I've seen.

I'm surprised no one else mentioned the loading screens. I've got a powerful PC and each loading screen takes 3-12 seconds. This can start to add up when you're on the bridge (loading screen) go to the travel map (loading screen, with a very high likelihood of an event which takes you to the bridge (loading screen) which then returns you to the travel map (loading screen)) then the local system map (loading screen) to reach the planet you want to visit (loading screen), if you haven't had an event taking you back to another loading screen. Managing your colonies, gear purchases, exploration e.t.c. as the game unfolds requires a lot of switching between the bridge, ship and map which just adds more and more loading screens to the point where I wilfully held off actually selling stuff to the main 4 factions because it would require me to stop exploring and go through four more loading screens every time. Chinese water torture of mildly inconveniencing you to death. Makes me dread the cutscenes, because each one needs a new loading screen every time it changes scene

[Robsoie]

Thanks for the review of RT. I've been waiting for someone to tell me what if any problems they have with it, and that's the first mention of loading screens I've seen.

I'm surprised no one else mentioned the loading screens. I've got a powerful PC and each loading screen takes 3-12 seconds. This can start to add up when you're on the bridge (loading screen) go to the travel map (loading screen, with a very high likelihood of an event which takes you to the bridge (loading screen) which then returns you to the travel map (loading screen)) then the local system map (loading screen) to reach the planet you want to visit (loading screen), if you haven't had an event taking you back to another loading screen. Managing your colonies, gear purchases, exploration e.t.c. as the game unfolds requires a lot of switching between the bridge, ship and map which just adds more and more loading screens to the point where I wilfully held off actually selling stuff to the main 4 factions because it would require me to stop exploring and go through four more loading screens every time. Chinese water torture of mildly inconveniencing you to death. Makes me dread the cutscenes, because each one needs a new loading screen every time it changes scene

That reminds me of Pathfinder: Kingmaker that while i liked the game had me never finish it because of some of the most infurating amount of loading screens every where and the overall lack of optimisation (ah all those useless items you needed to download a plugin to regularly destroy and avoid crippling your loading time even more), it reached a point i was wondering if my time was not spent more in loading time than in actual game time (as loading time became longer and longer the more you played, due probably to lack of optimisation/unity stuff)

#start
- go from map to capital -> loading screen (this one i understand)
- go to throne room to deal with your kingdom stuff -> loading screen (why the hell was it not loaded along the capital, the town is very small, smaller than even the old Baldur Gate starting town, and the throne room is just a room)
- do whatever you need to do oh now let's go to our room in the back -> loading screen (you got to be kidding me)
- go back to throne room -> loading screen ( *sigh* )
- leave throne room to deal with some quest guy in capital -> loading screen
- leave capital to world map -> loading screen
- move toward quest location, oh an ambush -> loading screen
- deal with ambush and go back to worldmap -> loading screen
- going back to quest location -> need to sleep and heal in camp first -> loading screen
- back to world map -> loading screen
- arrive on quest location -> loading screen
- surprise turn of event, you need to go back to your throne room to talk to a specific guy, leave to world map -> loading screen
#go back to start

[nenjin]

That figures. Rogue Trader and Kingmaker are both made by Owlcat studios.

[Grim Portent]

Got an idea for a Dark Heresy mission.

Haunted slaughterhouse, in particular the kind that produces corpse starch, including the variant made of human remains.

The servitors that form part of the labour force inside have started to become sporadically violent, among some other strange phenomena such as drastic drops in temperature, the formation of frost over industrial machines that are running red-hot, mysterious voices and crying, resulting in the deaths of several corpse grinders and, more importantly, at least one overseer.

Normally the workers would be forced to work through this sort of thing, but the death of an overseer, in spectacular fashion, has the overseers unwilling to force the corpse grinders back to work since it would mean putting themselves in harms way as well. Local efforts to resolve the matter have failed, and so the Inquisition is sent for by those who know how to do so.

When the PCs arrive the slaughterhouses are running on minimal staff, the handful so desperate that they will work in what they are sure is a daemonically haunted building filled wiith knives, saws, giant mincers and bone pulverisers, and servitors equipped with various tools of butchery and heavy industry. Production of corpse starch is low as a result, and there's pressure from above to resolve the matter quickly.

Within the slaughterhouse many of the servitors who could once walk to different points on processing lines have now been welded or bolted to the floor, so as to limit their sporadic violence to those who venture within arm's reach, but in some rooms every single one will turn their head to watch any living human who enters the room, while continuing to perform their tasks perfectly. Hoarfrost coats the walls and ceilings of some rooms, though the temperature remains normal. Industrial bone grinders and mincers that run hot enough to burn anyone that touches the metal covering their motors are now coated in ice hotter than the boiling temperature of water. Ghostly wails echo from the mouth of various machines, calling out in the voices of the dead, unique to each listener. Lights flicker, tools randomly activate even when not being used, workers occasionally feed their own limbs into slicing machines with vacant, glassy eyes.


The PCs investigation should result in them finding out the following;

One of the workers, a youth in their mid teens, who is still inside the factory is a bit more crazy than the rest, mumbling about how the people who get sent to be turned into corpse starch deserved better, complaining of pounding and screaming noises, the sound of fists hammering against the sides of the machines from the inside. Querying the other workers will then reveal this was going on before the haunting started. Searching for disciplinary records reveals this worker has a history of headaches and fatigue that they have been punished for.

Investigation of the facility records should reveal that one of the bodies sent to be processed before the haunting had the same family name as the aforementioned worker. Further digging into the records should show that they were also assigned to the same processing line as the worker was on that day.

There is a large meat locker where partially processed animal carcasses are hung to be aged, for the consumption of the higher classes of the planet. Since the haunting began, several murderous servitors have begun hanging the bodies of labourers in this room. One of the bodies, hidden towards the back of the chamber if the PCs decide to thoroughly search it, has been there since before the haunting began. Going to the effort of identifying the body reveals it to be the one related to the strange worker.

In the room an overseer was killed in there is illegible writing carved into the metal walls by the tools of servitors. PCs familiar with Heretical matters relating to the Warp can determine it is a list of names, but not daemonic names. If one of the PCs can actually read the script of daemons (unlikely, but possible) they determine it is identical to the list of human cadavers processed into corpse starch.

Psychic PCs can feel a raging roil of emotion and pain in several rooms where bodies are processed, but detect a particularly strong pain in the processing line the strange worker is normally on and the meat locker with the body of their relative hidden in it. Forcing through the pain allows the psyker to detect a hunger from the machines in the room of the processing line.


Any couple of these should lead the PCs to the natural conclusion that the strange worker is at least some of the following; a latent psyker, responsible for the haunting, and traumatised by the arrival of one of their relatives to their production line to be butchered into bottom of the line food.

The psyker has unintentionally become the medium through which a lesser daemon* has crept into the facility, and bound itself to the factory line on which the psyker worked, through the tools of butchery and the corpses that they had processed since this channel opened. The servitors along that line, the power tools, the industrial grinders, are all malicious and desire to hurt people, and this corruption has slowly been seeping across the facility as tools and servitors moved between different lines, carrying that psychic contamination with them. To banish the daemon will require one of three methods, or any good ideas the PCs come up with:

1) The psyker must be fed down the line themselves. The daemon is connected to the material world by their pain, and once the daemon consumes their soul, an act it is at once desperate to avoid and unable to resist, it will begin to lose it's grip on the machines it has possessed, resulting in the haunting gradually ceasing. This inhumane solution will inflict significant harm to the minds of most PCs.

2) The destruction of the servitors and the larger machines housing the daemonic spirit. This does not close the door that the psyker provides, but it ends the haunting at the cost of damaging the ability of the facility to function and risks future hauntings.

3) An exorcism by a skilled tech-priest, psyker, sorcerer, cleric, sister of battle, or a PC with True Faith. This is arguably the most dangerous method, as it will require protracted effort in close proximity to the heart of the daemon; a large machine designed to pulverise dismembered humans into organic paste, with a large number of attendant servitors, overhanging meat hooks on a conveyor belt, and other similar threats. In return though, this method inflicts no sanity loss and will have no impact on the production rate of the facility, being the 'good' end of a sort.

Doing any of these will require getting close to the machines, which will attempt to compel the PCs to feed themselves into them, or lash out with blades and meat hammers in the case of servitors. Killing the psyker, or helping them resolve their mental anguish, will make confrontations against the daemon somewhat easier.


*Waaay lesser to be clear. Like a fury, one of the un-aligned minor warp predators, or a weak lesser daemon of Khorne at most.

[Loud Whispers]

Cursed abattoirs are pretty baller. Even without demons and witchcraft, an abattoir fed through the 40k "supersize it" scale would be horrifying to behold. This being 40k and all, how would you play the long term consequences of finding out the nobility may have been eating people?

Like with corpse starch, I always imagined it was like the recycling tanks from Alpha Centauri. Biological matter (waste, people, animals, food discard) all gets mushed and grinded, mixed in with a fungal mat which is then finally processed into the bars of corpse starch. But if the upper class have been eating meat directly, and labourers have been found dead in the meat lockers of meat supply meant for the upper classes... That could be a plot hook for something that is a lot darker and wider reaching than one rogue witch. Love the scenario

Also currently I'm just spitballing for evil mechanicus ideas. What do you all think for these? I want to go big because my players' characters still don't know what the chaos gods are, so this is a real opportunity to show the four in their best light. Especially since I've got 7 different flavours of evil mechanicus to colour the shades in
My conception of the Magos is that they are a Magos who divided their organic brain into 8 pieces, supplemented by cogitators to fill the gaps. Some remained loyal to the creed of Mars, some have shed the shackles of ignorance in totality, whilst others have fallen to one of the chaos gods. They have spent their life running the Alchemys division, whilst conducting top secret research into xenotech/warptech with powerful, shady backers in high places. So I want to keep everything close to the theme of "purifciation/distillation," "changing of states/metamorphosis" with lots of tech revolving around phase tech, warp tech, transitioning states of matter, elements or making weird compounds and isotopes. This is for a very high XP ascension campaign so I can really go crazy with the lethality, my only limiting factor is I want 90% of the projects to be things someone could plausibly believe would help the Imperium/Humanity/Omnissiah before they lost their mind with the remaining 10%. This should give plausible plot timer countdowns to saving planets before the doomsday events happen

The Convection Cough
This one I want to give to the seventh shard, Septimus Divinatus, rebranded as Centimus after they metamorphosed into a giant depressed centipede. Having fallen to Nurgle's worship, Centimus has created the Convection Cough. I don't really have a strong idea for how this disease will work as I just thought it was a baller name for the kind of thing an evil mechanicus nurglite would make. My current idea is:
1. The initial infectious stage. Coughing & sneezing occurs here.
2. Many die from the cough. A few survive and get better. The unlucky few survive and proceed to stage 3.
3. At stage 3 those unlucky survivors steadily increase in temperature with every cough until their innards are hotter than a blast furnace, their every cough spreading pestilence with the searing heat, yet unable to die from their own flames. Such poor victims are immobile, and usually end up welded to whatever surfaces they lay down to rest upon. Their surrounding environment gets colder and colder the higher the concentration of convection cough victims are, as the warp plague works like Laplace's Demon, reversing entropy into its victims.

Centimus's end goal is to use a whole bunch of convection coughees to fuel its metamorphosis into a beautiful daemon prince butterfly. I imagine this project was originally a benign attempt at understanding the secrets of an ancient plasma drive salvaged from a nurgle-blessed warship.

Idk how to make this an interesting scenario for players though. Maybe have them respond to an urgent request from an Ordo Hospitaller mission, showing a city slowly being overrun by the convection cough. I also don't think I would show a lot of the usual nurgle stuff, to keep it focused on his themes of entropy/change instead of his usual theme of guts and bloat. So I'm thinking the main challenges for the players to deal with would be:

-Deciding the fate of population centres suspected to be affected by the Convection Cough.
-Dealing with panic caused by hacked vox towers broadcasting Nurgle's message of despair and protection + the aftermath of the Ordo Malleus trying to kill everyone who heard the broadcast.
-Finding Centimus.

The Virtual Panopticon
This one I want to give to the paranoid, schizophrenic and future-seeing Tertia Divinatus, now fallen to Tzeentch. I'm imagining a gigantic circular tower where the Magos is wired in the middle, with the walls just covered in giant eyes that bore into the souls of everyone within the building. The building itself is full of rows upon rows of stolen psykers, raided from a Telepathica Blackship.

Scenario-wise, I'm thinking the virtual panopticon would be an opportunity for players to fight some really wild, gnarly enemies. Since the virtual panopticon can conjure forth very angry warp holograms, I can make fights that would otherwise by canonically impossible. Need to work on this one though, since I don't know what the hell a Magos that can see the future would do with this knowledge. I'm thinking of a tragic kind of take where the Magos peers into the future and in every instance, they see their own failure, and are desperately searching for a way they can succeed and save a forge world from destruction. Tzeentch being Tzeentch, is glad to show them trillions of simulations all ending in failure, but with each attempt getting closer to success. Could have very fun interactions with the player characters

The Autochthon
This one I'm giving to all of the Divinati fragments. The Autochthon is a Servitor inspired by the Obliviate, in the sense that they are all the same thing, but the Imperium is horrified by one but not the other for arbitrary superstitions. The autochthon is a servitor programmed with a complex imperative to make more servitors. When released upon a planet, they will begin converting the existing populace into more autochthons, before commencing the construction of greater factories. If left unchecked, they will just keep going. Don't really need to change anything, the Imperium's use of servitorisation is already nightmare fuel - though the autochthon is slightly more nightmarish, with no attempt at pain relief, purification, ritual or lobotomisation attempted. Highly offensive to the Mechanicus, Ecclesiarchy and generally everyone as a result. Also a great way to have a recurring common enemy on multiple planets that all serve as a calling card indicating "ah shit our heretic target was on this planet." This one is pretty insidious as it can plausibly have been an experiment that factions in the Imperium could feasibly tolerate employing. I think Orthodox Mechanicus officials would be disgusted at the idea of servitors acting autonomously and violating sacred rituals, but Imperial nobility or more radical Mechanicus officials may view the Autochthon as an efficient tool, furthering their spread.

The Apostosic Circuit
It's just a warp-tech device that summons demons and then vaporises them with plasma coils, over and over again, recording the fluctuations in radiation and warp energies. I'm sure a Magos could very well weaponise one, harnessing its warp energies for something nefarious, or just using it as a daemon 3d printer.

The Haemorrhage Principle
The workings of Quartus Divinatus, twisted by Khorne into a patient, stalking, arachnid-like predator - whilst retaining an intellectual, eloquent and patient personality. A book, a scroll, a holovid, a binaric screech, the Haemorrhage principle is a meme-virus that lodges in the minds of its audiences, posing a question. Those that receive the principle but fail to solve it will eventually spotaneously exanguinate. Solving it entails essentially modifying yourself until you become a brass living weapon of war, just as Khorne intends. Just love the idea of a gigantic murder-machine sneaking into libraries and leaving copies of his literature, with the potential for the principle getting mass broadcasted resulting in an exterminatus level threat on a par with the convection cough or apostosic circuit.

The Steel that Itches
I can't quite think of any doomsday Slaaneshi-Mechanicus projects that fit all the criteria of "good intentions gone wrong" + alchemy theme. I think the Slaaneshi Sextus Divinatus would focus on smaller scale projects on perfecting the Omnissiah's divine form, e.g. if man is made in the image of the machine, create the perfect synthesis of perfect man and perfect machine. Lots of chasing them through a trail of stolen cloning vats, sympathetic hereteks and squaring off against augmented super-nobles