Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

....What happens?

The thing is, I am currently building an allied Daemon detachment to go with my CSM, but I don't want my army to actually be very fond of daemons, so I'm using the Vampire Count Crypt Ghoul models. They are now painted up to look like twisted mutant humans with warp fire bursting through their skin. Since I want to build some nice fluff around my army, I need to come up with a decent backstory for these guys and where they come from.

That is when I started thinking about Black Ships and what would happen if one of them was raided by a Chaos warband: I imagine the psykers trapped in there would be pretty deranged from being trapped and locked together with so many other psykers. Would it be plausible, fluff-wise, for a chaos warband to let some of these mutants run around with them, if not for anything other than morbid pleasure from watching them suffer and knowing that they've stolen the Emperor's breakfast?

I believe Black Ships are portrayed as being pretty powerful warships, but if one is damaged, for whatever reason, I can see a smaller group of Chaos marines being able to breach the hull and do some damage.

What do you guys think?

The ones that are manageable become Chaos sorcerers. The ones that aren't are perfect fodder for summoning rituals. Either way, a Black Ship is just gravy for a Chaos Warband.

Gravy by the bucket load, lots of potential for fodder for rituals or hapless cultests.

The most powerful, given the cargo you could have anything up to a highly valuable alpha level or nulls and blanks. Blanks and negative phykers would be a valuable asset vs warp based creatures and a relm of energy.

I wrote some fairly extensive background for an Inquisitor character many years ago and his career began when the Black Ship he was on (as a young psyker) was attacked but being a good egg he fought alongside the crew and that's how the Inquisition picked him up. Later, to earn his Inquisitorial Seal, he was tasked with hunting down every single escaped psyker from that raid.

I think that your idea is eminently plausible. The psykers picked up by the Black Ships can vary in age, some might only be babes in arms, others could be near the end of their lives. It could well be that these individuals could have already been deviant heretics who would jump at the chance to fight alongside a Chaos warband and others could be easily malleable to the aims of the Traitors in any case.

IIRC Black Ships are hardly pushovers but i imagine a well planned and coordinated attack could grab one.
I imagine the reaction from it's cargo would be anything from joining them, screaming profanity and attempting to cook them (Since more than a few are insane) or joining the crew to fight them. Though the last one seems kinda unlikely given their ultimate destination. (Some of them are probably willing to sacrifice themselves)

Cool, thanks for your replies!

I'd think it'd be a psychic nuke that causes a temporary warp storm. Would likely result in a lot of corruption for those onboard, and escort ships would get torn a new one.