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Hey there. I recently started a Campaign among a group of friends and the plan was to become bounty hunters in the Koronus Expanse and to set up their own little empire away from the prying eyes of the Imperium. It seemed to be starting alright, they did a few bounties and captured a pirate base in an asteroid field......... but then I thought I'd mix it up a bit with an exciting warp shenanigan -

In one of their lifts a new floor button appeared between two levels, which led to a room which was functionally identical to one of their midshipman's quarters (but shouldn't be able to exist there between two levels).
At first they enjoyed experimenting with the room, finding out that it ran off the ship's life support only when the lift was open on that floor etc. etc.
This experimentation led them to find that if they mined through the wall of the room, they were mining into solid adamantium and their auspexes showed that the adamantium extended for 18 metres around the room, beyond which their sensors couldn't make sense of the readings

Naturally they decided to capitalise on this source of metal.
The decision was: Mine as much adamantium as they can, out to 15 metres to be safe, and then sell it.
After selling it, they then decided to mine to the 18 metre mark to 'see what there is'.

Cutting it short this opened a warp Portal, causing everyone in the room to disappear and whenever the room was sealed, screaming could be heard from the other side.
To explain - With the lift doors open, it looks like normal room and you can watch your friend walk in there fine. If the lift doors shut, anyone in there disappears and their screams are added to the cacophony. Whilst in the room (with the door open), you can see a small hole where they attempted to mine beyond the 18m boundary, the hole was covered with pink shimmering liquid.

The Navigator identified this as a Warp Portal problem and so it completely freaked out my players to the point of them dismantling the lift and installing a staircase in its stead. (In hindsight, as a GM, I should have left it there but I didn't because I thought they were avoiding the problem of a warp portal instead of dealing with it)
The lift (and the button) were gone BUT the screaming remained and slowly began growing louder -- affecting the crew's morale and psychological health.
They attempted to sound-proof the area and seal it off (forcing crew to avoid the area entirely) but that failed to prevent the spread of screaming and problems.

In the end the RT decided to confront the problem head on and (with the Lift Doors held open) went to investigate.
Again, cutting a long story short --- after communicating by throwing messages into the portal, he found out that the room was a plaything belonging to a Slanneshi Daemon.

Their next attempt at resolution was bringing in a bunch of priests, who told them that they knew **** all about dealing with the mythical horrors of the warp and then left as quickly as possible. (again, I should have let that work but fluffily it wouldn't really).

In the end, the RT having seen no other option - believing himself damned by the shadowy arm of the Inquisition for having such heresy on board the ship or damned by the malefic presence of the Daemon itself - decided to take the 'if you can't beat em, join em' approach.

Inevitably this has led to rampant hedonism and firefly-esque reaving that I know is completely unsustainable. This type of play will lead to boredom or infighting and the Campaign will end horribly and leave a bad taste in everyone's mouths.

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Is this salvageable?
(Note, I don't think I can run a Black Crusade game... I find Chaos rather one-dimensional and struggle to convey their ideas and politics)

What can I do to avoid this in the future?
(I don't want to stop doing cool things but I don't want to rock the boat like this again)

What would you have done?
(If you had dropped this room on your players, how would you have managed it?)

Why did you introduce the room? What did you anticipate the players doing when given the opportunity for free stuff surrounded by mystery? When the seal was breached, did you have any possible story lines planned? Why did you decide to have the priests utterly fail with no indication of direction? Wouldn't they have communicated such a blatant heresy (either intentionally or carelessly) to someone who might find such a portal problematic?

Presumably, an Inquisitor would have taken interest in the situation and sent word to determine if the RT was a potential ally to contain/close the portal or already corrupted and in need of purgation.

Inevitably, the slide into Chaos is one of enslavement disguised as liberation. As you point out, the routine gets old and the daemon will demand ever more. Surely you have NPCs you can use as a catalyst. Perhaps one is more favored and the daemon chooses him to over the players. The RT is now forced to be servile as the entity demands debasement or finally stop this vile force that he has unleashed. Such an effort will not be easy, and delaying will only entrench the diabolical forces further. Salvageable? Perhaps. But not without sacrifice. Perhaps it will cost life and limb. And then, perhaps, they will learn how expensive bargains with ruinous powers truly are.

 Otto Weston wrote:
To explain - With the lift doors open, it looks like normal room and you can watch your friend walk in there fine. If the lift doors shut, anyone in there disappears and their screams are added to the cacophony.

Umm... that's awesome! Well done on being a clever GM!

 Otto Weston wrote:
Is this salvageable?
(Note, I don't think I can run a Black Crusade game... I find Chaos rather one-dimensional and struggle to convey their ideas and politics)

Yes it is, go and buy Tome of Excess. As the Tome books show, Chaos is far more than one-dimensional (even Khorne has feelings! ).

(Full Disclosure: I wrote parts for all the Tome books, so I have an obvious bias, but still they're great books)

 Otto Weston wrote:
What can I do to avoid this in the future?
(I don't want to stop doing cool things but I don't want to rock the boat like this again)

This is a good thing in all honesty. You came up with a really cool plot hook, your players tried to first exploit it, and then find ways to fix (or even avoid) the problem, and when they could avoid it no longer they dived in head first. That's a win in my book, for everyone involved.

 Otto Weston wrote:
What would you have done?
(If you had dropped this room on your players, how would you have managed it?)

If I wanted to avoid them turning to Chaos? I probably would have made their attempts to deal with it more successful. I would have put in hints that similar phenomena had been observed on some ships (or even wild stories about hidden decks that only appear during long Warp journeys, etc.) and allowed them to venture outside of the ship to find possible solutions.

Maybe even have the resolution to the issue play into the Endeavour mechanics inherent to the Rogue Trader game, giving them milestones and sub-objectives that take them around various planets and whatnot, all the while having to deal with the evil inside their ship and what it's doing to the crew. You could have the crew forming factions, some are swayed by the Daemon, others become more radicalised within the Imperial Cult as a way of fighting against it.

Hell, your PCs could even be super sneaky and try to sell the ship to someone they don't like, trading it for something else!

Honestly I'd try and keep going. Let them do their hedonism thing but then bring the full wrath of the Imperium down on their heads.

Paste them, wreck them, destroy them, take away everything they have, leave them floating in a dead ship spriling towards the sun, let them call out to the dark gods for salvation and hear only laughter.

And then...

Someone saves them.

There is old fluff about the Illuminati. An organization of people once possessed by chaos who now use their insights to fight it. (there's also newer fluff about the Exorcist Chapter who the Inquisition deliberately has possessed and then cleanses, cool stuff there).

The twist was the Illuminati were puppets of the Eldar who saw them as useful catspaws to eventually bring about the return of the Eldar, something about gathering the Sensei (literal children of the Emperor) and sacrificing them en mass.

So they're 'saved' by either the Eldar or Inquisition (or both) tortured, questioned, trials by combat, tests of their wits (dropped into a maze with nothing but a pocket knife kind of thing), never told what's going on, then finally sent back out as puppets of the Illuminati. With mysterious missions and all sorts of traitors and booby traps to keep them in line.

Now you have a new direction. You the GM have infinite resources to keep them in line (do they have bombs installed in their skulls? is one of the party members a brain washed traitor) and the players have all this motivation to break free and get revenge either on chaos or the Illuminati or both.

Maybe add one of their former victims (or family member) to the party as a the on-site enforcer for the Illuminati.

I'd say it could work.

As the Kid says, but once they are found you can spiral the game into Black Crusade territory.

No matter what, always make sure the players have clear objectives ahead of them.

Remember there's only a few fates for the damned

Death (game over)
Spawndom (game over)
Daemon Prince (game over)
Redemption (you still have a game)

So it's not that hard a pick.

On the contrary; Daemonhood isn't necessarily the end of a game, and not everyone necessarily accepts it anyway (Abbadon being the prime example).

In terms of this campaign - not becoming Black Crusade - the players either need to 'fix' the problem (which is a worthwhile endeavour) or get rid of the ship (which means acquiring a new one).

The problem is this:

In the end, the RT having seen no other option - believing himself damned by the shadowy arm of the Inquisition for having such heresy on board the ship or damned by the malefic presence of the Daemon itself - decided to take the 'if you can't beat em, join em' approach.

Essentially, the priests didn't know how to deal with the daemon. Fine. You don't think, according to the background, that it would work. But then the PC's gave up....and, to some extent, you let them.

But there are people out there who DO know how to deal with this sort of thing, and the Rogue Trader has the contacts to find them.

Finding them and getting hold of them without anyone finding out requires.....subtlety..... but it's not impossible. After all, malefic scholars don't exactly advertise their presence.

A rogue trader is likely to have contacts - legal or otherwise - amongst the shadier parts of the Imperium. Equally, even going to the Inquisition isn't necessarily a death sentence if it's the right bit of the Inquisition. A Xanthite Inquisitor would love the opportunity to poke this phenomena for a bit and it never hurts to have a Rogue Trader and Inquisitor owe one another favours.

There's always profit to be found, somewhere.

The real problem here is that you, as the GM, gave the players the opportunity to derail the campaign, and didn't pull the brakes on that train until reaching this point.

So, you've got a few options:

They hired some priests who saw daemons and ran off. Good. Those priests are going to tell *someone*. That someone is probably going to be the Inquisition, Ordo Malleus, with the resources of the Grey Knights to "deal with the problem". Rocks fall, everyone dies (unless the still-faithful members of the crew can give material aid to the Inquisition to prove their loyalty... then, they just get mind-wiped. Maybe. Or executed with full honors.).

Worse, perhaps, those priests tell someone, and word starts to spread that Captain So-and-So has a daemonically-infested vessel. Ports start turning the ship away, on pain of destruction, the crew starts going insane, cults start popping up in the lower decks, mutiny is all but inevitable. The ship either needs to be scuttled into a star, or flee into the Maelstrom to join a Black Crusade. Do the rest of the PCs jump ship, or do they turn from the Emperor's Light and join a warband?

Unless you're going to press the reset button and have them wake up the day before they found the magic elevator, it having all been a dream, your whole "bounty hunters in space" idea is a wash. You've derailed your own plot with this twist.

If they run for the Maelstrom, you have the beginnings of a great Black Crusade game. If they don't, you have the beginnings of a great Dark Heresy game, as the Inquisitorial band that pursues them.