Dead Forge Worlds

[Firepower]

You sir, watch a lot of horror movies. Or you are blessed with natural derangement. Either way, those are some great ideas for panning out the "haunted" idea.

 

Silent Hill meets the Grim Future. if the OP doesn't take it I almost certainly will :lol: .

[soddinnutter]

If you like i have more. Much, much more.

 

They were just the first ones to spring to mind.

[Ace Debonair]

People can see things out of the corner of their eyes when they walk the corridors of the dead hab-blocks, manufactories and mega-smithies. In the hab-block that houses much of the First Company Barracks for instance the sound of children can be heard. Sometimes the children draw childish pictures on the walls in chalk.

 

Dude, cool. :lol:

And freaky and unnerving, of course, but still cool. Especially 'cause while it wouldn't freak out the Astartes (Fear? What is this 'Fear?') it would damn sure spook out anyone trying to research the chapter or the world on which they are based.

[Grand Master Tyrak]

actuly forge worlds are put down all the time, lack of resorces close by, years of decay that no ship comes there anymore except to take stuff away, so the ad mech move on, takeing the masters of the forge and leaveing the dregs to die in there own time, the dregs just found a way to survive, dismantle things and such, but hey, thats awsome, makeing your techmarines freakin powerful, considering the citizens are all forge slaves

Sez who?

 

(AKA where did you find this information, pray tell?)

@ octavulg: well really i forget, it was a while back, i think on the librium site, or it was from one of the novels they mentioned this, grey knights, second book, dark macanicus i belive would be the book if thats where, but it makes sense really

 

Just one quick point - the AdMech didn't abandon the Forgeworld in Dark Mechanicus - it disappeared completely into the Warp. Choice was not involved. As soon as it popped back out of the Warp they tried to claim it back (part of the point of the novel).

 

Even when whole swathes of Segmentum Tempestus were being abandoned under Inquisitor Kryptmann's plan to face Hive Fleet Leviathan, the AdMech refused to abandon their forgeworld on Gryphonne IV (and got eaten for their trouble). I'm not saying it's impossible to have them abandon a world, but Hive Fleet Leviathan is the bar - you need something worse than that, at least for a major forgeworld like Gryphonne IV.

That throws up the usual problem with major threats in DIY Chapters - we'd have been told in-universe if such a threat existed.

 

My advice? It's impossible to come up with a good reason for the AdMech to abandon on of their worlds due to outside threat without breaking the suspension of disbelief.

 

That means you need an internal threat to get the AdMech off-world. Necrons would be my choice - they're hard to eradicate and there's already the AdMech penchant for falling too far into tech-worship (strong enough to be known in-universe, even without all the access to knowledge about the Void Dragon that we have), plus the number and location of their dormant tomb-worlds are completely unknown.. Orks might work, but the Imperium does know how to get rid of them without them coming back (fire :lol:) . Chaos contamination probably won't work - it is possible for the Inquisition to purify and reconsecrate planets, it just takes a lot of time and effort. Of course, most Inquisitors would do it for even the smallest of forgeworlds since it means they're owed a favour by the AdMech (who are normally notoriously uncooperative about matters like jurisdiction and Inquisitorial authority) - it's hard to gain any influence over them normally, and favours are the currency of Imperial politics.

 

That still leaves a problem - how do you make the threat credible enough for the AdMech to leave and bring in the Space Marines, but not credible enough to be worth abandoning the planet altogether? My answer would be to avoid the question altogether and just work it into your fluff. Make it seem like the Space Marines don't want to leave, and are pushing the AdMech away by saying that the threat (I'm going to assume you'll go with Necrons and use them in all my following examples) is still active. If you want to work some shades of grey into your Chapter, drop a subtle hint or two that your Chapter might be deliberately keeping the Necrons active in order to help themselves to the planet's technological stuff. Maybe you feel like making use of the planet's automated orbital defences to get round the manpower problem when trying to defend a homeworld (which the Necrons have conveniently got round by being underground), or perhaps there's a set of automated forges that can be easily adapted to producing Space Marine technology? Throw in a world that provides good recruits nearby (a Death World maybe, or a world that fell into civil warfare when their AdMech masters left) to have as your "formal" homeworld whilst you use the factory world as an "informal" homeworld. Or perhaps you could just be fleet based so as to not bother with a "formal" homeworld.

 

The bit about it being a factory world rather than a proper Forgeworld is good - it'll still be owned by the AdMech (so it's not up for grabs on a permanent basis), but it explains why you were called in at all - there wouldn't have been enough Skitarii based there to hold back the Necrons, and there wouldn't have been a Titan garrison. That does mean you can't have an actual forge that produces Space Marine gear (although you could repurpose one to crudely serve as a 'temporary' Chapter forge) - that technology is top-secret stuff, and it is only handed out to the most important and well-defended Forgeworlds (they don't want it falling into the wrong hands).

 

Either way, the problem of getting a threat to kick the AdMech off-world (and keep them off-world) and the Space Marines on-world can be solved by not solving it. Throw a little suspicion onto your Chapter - how have they got hold of this world? Why hasn't the AdMech taken it back? What kind of threat could tie them down for so long without them calling for the Imperial Guard to do the attrition for them? You can hint at why, but you shouldn't say it. It doesn't have to be corruption, just hints of the Chapter being self-serving. Perhaps they feel that the separation of powers in the Imperium is wrong, or imbalanced, or perhaps they think they can do a better job of ruling the world than the AdMech (that could be humanitarian, not making the population work so hard and doing a smaller good whilst forgetting the greater good, or it maybe it's just pride)? Don't actually answer that last question, just drop a few hints to make sure people ask that question when reading the IA.

 

Any thoughts? It's might not really be what you're looking for, but normally the Imperium does enforce the separation of powers strictly - Space Marines aren't allowed technological control (the AdMech got that courtesy of the Emperor himself), and we all know what happens when Space Marines let their pride get the better of them. It's the best I can think of.

[Nomus Sardauk]

Following on from soddinnutter's examples:

 

A Space Marine force discovers an ancient colony/outpost of human origin, it has been abandoned for thousands of years perhaps even millenia. The Marines investigate the colony, there are no signs of battle, no evidence of foul play whatsoever, it seems the inhabitants simply disappeared without warning as the remains of food is left out, machines left running, etc. The Marines decide to use the colony remains as the temporary base of operations while they explore the planet but something is wrong, all the marines have a constant feeling of being watched no matter where they go, they are constantly in a state of cold sweat and every now and then the Librarians swear they can hear faint whispering.

[soddinnutter]

Just a question.

 

What about powering this Forgeworld? The world is going to have been utterly uninhabitable without technologically dependent means, O2 recyclers, protein re-sequencers and the like.

 

The radioactive signature of a fission or fusion reactor i would imagine even the most under equipped Imperial/Mechanicus/Astartes Battle Barge could detect. But they do not. Solar power? Wind turbine? what if there is a reactor of sorts that powers the remnants of technology on the planet. The marines follow the wires back. they follow them across continents of death and waste and dust and ash and rust to the one remaining generator on the planet. They go inside the building. They explore it to its heart. they open the reactor to see within. they get a glimpse of nothing for the briefest of a moment. then the lights go out globally. what ever was powering that barely alive world is gone now.

 

One of the local tribal leaders (The other leaders all respect him for his ability to survive and thrive so he's the nearest there is to a Governor) on the Deadforge, one of the first to visit the chapter and beg them to stay, becomes a guide of sorts. Seven days after the chapter arrives he is found dead in his dwelling place. the photo of his family he hung on his wall shows the family weeping, they had been smiling when the chapter first arrived.

 

There is an entire warehouse full of Imperial Guard Uplifting Primers, millions of them. The Librarians can feel something less wholesome in that warehouse. The other books are just camouflage for something.

 

The Forge Master, along with a batch of specialist equipment from a Tech-Magus who owes him big favors, finds a box addressed to himself. He opens the box. There is a human lung in the box. mystified he takes it to the Apothecarium, about halfway there he starts coughing up buckets of blood. Gene-tests show the lung to be his.

 

The Chapter Masters coffee mug starts giving all who touch it flashbacks to happy childhood memories. Very occasionally the mug gets confused and gives you a flashback someone else's childhood.

 

The suicide note of one of the Venerable Dreadnaughts, because once they feel their grip on sanity loosen too far they die with dignity, is just Pi written from cover to cover. It is mathematically accurate. Look as they may they can not find a pen.

 

That's the old bridge to Ravenholm Island. We don't go there anymore.

 

There is a huge cathedral sized cavern somewhere a long way under the Fortress Monastery. In it there are ~1,000,000 typewriters, the floor is covered in sheets of paper covered in gibberish and the occasional discarded banana skin.

 

Find in low orbit the body of a Space Marine preserved in amber.

 

A pict file is discovered on one of the public cogitator engines it shows the people watching the cogitator engine from a point of view three feet their heads and two feet behind them. There are no recording devices in the room.

 

There is one corridor in one of the administration buildings with Overseer painted on it. no matter how long you walk down this corridor you can never reach this door. The longest attempt was by an initiate not over burdened by superfluous intelligence who ran for nearly a week solid. No one knows what is behind that door.

 

There is an elevator in one of the abandoned prisons. it has three buttons: up, down and disposal. up sends you up one floor. Down sends you down one floor. If you press Disposal the doors open into a completely black abyss. No floor, walls, ceiling. any light shone into it in any spectrum is not reflected, there is no echo. Pressing up or down after going to the floor above or bellow the one you were on before you pressed Disposal.

 

A thunder storm-cloud in a jar is found on the desk of the head Astropath. It was there when he inherited the office. he once threw it out of the window (he's 87 floors up). It was on his desk when he turned round. Afalling object wouldent have even reacjhed the ground by ten.

 

One of the neophytes finds a laminated cardboard box. anything placed in the box has a 50/50 chance of being there when you open the lid again. it could be there / not there / there again sort of thing. Occasionally a "meow" can be heard from the box.

 

In the Library there is a big dark leather bound book. Opening it will reveal High Gothic written in neat copper plate handwriting in dark red ink. It is about the life of whoever is holding the book. their entire life beginning to end. Starting at birth on page 0 and ending on page ??? when the book drains them of a fatal amount of ink to write their story with. It was apparently created by the Psyker that got too close to the room with the straight-jacket in it.

[Octavulg]

Actually, I know how to get the Orks gone so Space Marines could set up and the Ad. Mech wouldn't - virus bomb the place. Then set up in the ravening evil-storms.

 

Doesn't work for a recruitment world, but would be a neat fortress.

[Ezekial Gravestone]

ooohhh, dude, just running that stuff thro the TV in my mind, its nice and creepy, all classic marks of old horror, i say go with that

 

wow my browser is freakeded, that is all to soddinnutter's nice horror myster stuff, nothing else on thse page (( even with 2 refreshes )) told me there was anything after it, but now i have a lot more reading to do

 

(( @ Grand Master Tyrak oh i know, but i think in one of thoes long rambling chapters they mentioned other worlds, or it was the old lexicarnum i found the info in

[blooddragon]

I am actually liking a combination of the two ideas.....The Forgeworld awakens the long sleeping Necron, they call for aid and The Hammers of Dorn respond, after possibly years of fighting the Necron are "defeated" but in truth they just one day disappear, today bloody war tomorrow nowhere to be found...but very soon after their disappearance very creepy and explicable things start to happen, on a small and large scale....over a period of time the ADMECH fearing dark influences, remnant taint abandon the world and many of the serfs/workers. The Hammers of Dorn in true stubborn Dornian fashion request to stay wanting to get to the bottom of things and with permission from the AMECH claim the world, of course the agreement of any tech found would be turned over.....over time the chapter starts having small issues like Marines not feeling in harmony with the machine spirit of their armor/vehicles, Librarians having weird visions and premonitions....the serf inhabitants telling stories more ire as some told above happening to them, and in true Dornian fashion the Marines refusal to give up on their quest.

[soddinnutter]

Would not use necrons. They are too predictable. Things loose the ';)!' factor when they are predictable. I mean, yes it looks weird but if it's anything to do with the Necrons then it's going to be for the soul purpose of omnicide. But dead children drawing childish pictures on the walls in chalk? Straight-Jacket with no one inside? left/right cybernetic arms? The fact that the AdMech left the world with everything intact, Don't want it back, refuse to touch anything if they are told it was manufactured there and after centuries still refuse to tell what happened in that last half standard year?

 

It's probably not Necrons. Necrons you can deal with. It's not Chaos because the psykers can't smell it's stink.

 

At one of the Biologicus stations there is a glass case. There is a large skeletal human arm, apparently torn off at the shoulder. there is still a bit of musculature clinging to bits of the bone in places. The inscription below it is badly burned. The Arm belonged to someone called Rubinek. What can be read of the Description on the inscription would suggest that two of the fingers should be missing and there is no mention of any meat on the bone.

 

Investigating a distress signal sent by a senior Human Operative of the chapter, the one responsible for organizing patrols of spire walk-ways. The Operative is still in the Fortress-Monastery. Take the Operative with them to help with the investigation. they trace the signal to one of the abandoned non-functional water filtration and purification structures. They follow a corridor littered with mines and trip-wires and bear traps to a welded door. they prize open the door. Inside is the body of the Operative. His throat has been cut. He has been there several days. they look back to their Operative. He is not missing.

 

Quite early on in the Chapters occupation of the Deadforge one of the local psykers/shamen, having no children who bare the psy-blessing, donates all of his psionic training equipment to the Chapter to help equip the new training center in the Fortress. The chapter could be wanting to take over proper psyker training on a global scale. The old shaman donates his keyring. On it are a set of oddly shaped keys. They do not open doors. they open minds. They can lock them up as well.

 

After the death of one of the Battle Brothers his body is returned to the chapter, his remaining intact organs are harvested and whats left of his body is placed in the catacombs below the chapter vaults. Several days later people report seeing him again. Waiting in line for food in the food-hall, performing maintenance rituals on his armour in the forge, reading old battle reports in the Library, the usual stuff. No one at the time notices this as odd but always after a few hours they realize what they have seen and think it more than a little odd. after about a month of this, after it has been verified by ~600 separate reports it is decided they will examine the body. they open his coffin. there is nothing but an empty hessian burial robe. the moment they turn their backs on it there is a disturbance in the air. they turn around and the robe is gone. Triumphant laughter can be heard in the distance. All harvested organs are reported missing. All records in the library data-engines regarding this Marine suffer simultaneous data-corruption, all the ink and graphite in the written records becomes smudged.

 

In the Confidential Archives of the Fabricator General can be found a collection of signed death warrants from. Some of them are very old. Many of them are ancient. All of them are for important historical figures who were assassinated. many names, the very old ones for instance, are a mystery to the chapter, Julius Caesar and John F. Kennedy for instance. The oldest one the chapter recognizes is the warrant for Konrad Curze. All are hand signed by someone called Myrddin Wyllt.

 

There is a box on a plinth in a locked room of the chapter vaults. there is a cloth over the box. the cloth moves as if something under it was breathing. Two servitors with plasma-cannons and no ears are placed besides it to guard it. everyday a serf must inspect it. it has been so for centuries. One day he inspects it and there are speckles of blood on the sheet. there are two different servitors holding melta-cannons. He reports this to the Chapter Master immediately. It's always been two servitors with melta-cannons hasn't it?

 

in the food-hall there is an old yellow plasticy looking fridge. The interior is a pretty constant -30°C. It's not been plugged in for decades.

 

One of the chapters relics is an Adeptus Arbiters record book. In it are 21 extremely large finger prints dating back to January the 1st 874M30. Domestic dispute case, drunken family brawl.

 

One of the rooms the Navigators contracted to the chapter use to frighten younger Navigators who first get their posting to the Chapter; A room that's noticeably large on the inside than on the outside. The room's outside wall is clearly 10ft long, but on the inside the walls are all 25ft long, with a ceiling double the size of the hallway's ceiling. The farther they go into the room, the farther away the door looks exponentially. At the exact center is a ball of twine. It freaks Navigators out and makes them weep uncontrollably. Those that do not feel troubled by it are executed. No one asks why.

 

There is a regicide board. If a body less than an hour dead is placed next to it the pieces will move seemingly of their own accord. If the game is won by the side closest to the corpse the deceased wakes up with not a mark upon them. the pieces can not be moved by an outside force. One person has been brought back by this method. The current Chapter Master. He was not the same afterwards.

 

One of the Archivists, when sorting through the private library of one of the Magus Council finds a book. A leather-bound book. Every five minutes, the book ratchets open by way of a clockwork mechanism and a glass eye on a telescoping support extends out to look around. It then disappears into the book and the book closes. When opened any other time, the book is normal, with a detailed description of each location it has visited noted within in neat, typewritten letters.

[Octavulg]

There is a regicide board. If a body less than an hour dead is placed next to it the pieces will move seemingly of their own accord. If the game is won by the side closest to the corpse the deceased wakes up with not a mark upon them. the pieces can not be moved by an outside force. One person has been brought back by this method. The current Chapter Master. He was not the same afterwards.

 

OK, how the hell did anyone figure THAT out?

[soddinnutter]

@ Octavulg

 

Maybe someone was playing it when they had a heart attack. Or it has a user manual. Or a list of instructions printed on the underside of the board.

 

To be honest i didn't think that one through very well.

[Grey Hunter Ydalir]

There is a regicide board. If a body less than an hour dead is placed next to it the pieces will move seemingly of their own accord. If the game is won by the side closest to the corpse the deceased wakes up with not a mark upon them. the pieces can not be moved by an outside force. One person has been brought back by this method. The current Chapter Master. He was not the same afterwards.

 

While interesting the only comprehensible thing I can say to this is just..... What?!

[Octavulg]

Hey. I already did that.

 

Get your own thing to be incredulous about. :P

[Firepower]

Another one

 

Some odd centuries ago Deadforge's (btw this has become an awesome unofficial name for the planet) creepiness got to poor Bob the serf, and he began running around in a white sheet with eye holes, making wailing and spooky noises. Understandably perturbed, one of the marines but a bolt round through his head. The next day the marine began mimicking Bob's behavior until he was executed himself, and the cycle went on for sometime until everyone just gave up and got used to The Guy in the Sheet, or Bob for short (everyone stopped keeping track of who the new Sheet Guy was after a while).

 

 

:teehee:

[blooddragon]

I like the idea of naming the world Deadforge maybe it had another name at one time but over time under the control of the Hammers of Dorn it just becomes more commonly known as Deadforge. I like the haunted world, a taint of chaos that keeps the marines constantly on the hunt for some hidden shrine or cult but aside from the weird and unexplainable occurrences they can't seem to find anything.