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Hi Dakka,

I am looking to be writing a novella set in the 40k world and while I have the premise I don't have all the characters plots etc and so I thought I would post it here and see if the community as a whole had any cool idea's they'd want included.

Okay, the story is showing two things:
A: that there is a lot of difference between being a criminal and an evil chaos worshipping traitor!
B: quite how scary the inquisition/imperium can be when they are the bad guys!

Right, my thoughts are that there is going to be a bunch of outlaws who have banded together for protection/common interest. Each one of them has a fairly rocky past but they are all alike in that they are all wanted criminals. Now while they are the main characters that doesn't meant that they are particularly nice people, the band may have the convicted psychopath in, or the con artist who would sell his own mother. BUT: they are not nefarious super villains (at least not yet) and they are just generally trying to get away/by.

Okay, I thought it would be cool to have flashbacks as to what they did to end up like this so the scene where char a brutally kills his boss or something so you learn about the chars as it goes through.

Then finally, as the story progresses it gets darker and more sinister they end up killing a low ranking inquisitor who happened to stumble on them and get marked for death by high ranking people, they get more powerful themselves until they end up fighting or more likely running away from space marines etc. In the end, as their numbers thin the last character left realises that the only reason they have made it so far is that they have been watched over by tzeentch from the very beginning and has a choice between death or escaping into the warp with his 'new friends' showing the thus inevitability of chaos.

Right, I'd be welcome to read/brainstorm any idea's for plot devices, characters, past stories, enemies, antagonists pretty much everything and anything!! I think it would be great to have the community supporting as the idea's between all of us has to be better!!

Thoughts so far:
possibly a character who maintains he is innocent through out the whole thing and no one believes him..
ex guardsman/arbitrator who left the service in less than ideal circumstances
Some kind of doctor / medic
Not sure if I want a psyker if I do, it would have to be a little bit different

Looking forward to any feedback
C-Hydra

If you want good villain-protagonists I suggest you to read about the Darkblade. What about the characters' motivation? Maybe good intentions served the worst purposes? Sort of Inverted from the two Commissars I developed.

You can have a Dr. Death as the doc. Few of them are well-developed.
A Vic Mackey-like Arbites would serve well I presume.
For psyker, well mental instability should be an issue.