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We have a dark heresy campaign and there is an Arbite in the group who is experimental shall we say.

They have had a thought. On our ship is a deamon sword.

The Arbite has experimented with farcosia (a heretical substence made from psykers that has interesting effects, almost like the slow mo from dredd) and smoke grenades, aerosolising the farcosia and then further combined it with a flashbang and a hallucenegin grenade (a magos helped him put this together). So he has a hallucenegan grenade that flashbangs upon detonation releasing all sorts. Technically not a war crime because the law doesn't yet exist to prohibit this.

His new venture is deamon weaponry. This has our party psyker intrigued. Somehow his ideas bait us in.

His idea is to melt down the deamon sword and dip bolter rounds to deamon tip the bolter rounds.

Our question is this, what happens to the deamon, there is no lore we can find what happens to a deamon when the weapon changes form.

Is the arbites idea even possible?

 SeanDavid1991 wrote:
We have a dark heresy campaign and there is an Arbite in the group who is experimental shall we say.

They have had a thought. On our ship is a deamon sword.

The Arbite has experimented with farcosia (a heretical substence made from psykers that has interesting effects, almost like the slow mo from dredd) and smoke grenades, aerosolising the farcosia and then further combined it with a flashbang and a hallucenegin grenade (a magos helped him put this together). So he has a hallucenegan grenade that flashbangs upon detonation releasing all sorts. Technically not a war crime because the law doesn't yet exist to prohibit this.

His new venture is deamon weaponry. This has our party psyker intrigued. Somehow his ideas bait us in.

His idea is to melt down the deamon sword and dip bolter rounds to deamon tip the bolter rounds.

Our question is this, what happens to the deamon, there is no lore we can find what happens to a deamon when the weapon changes form.

Is the arbites idea even possible?

Destroying the physical form of the weapon should also destroy all sorts of runes, wards and more esoteric components (like being tempered in the blood of eight imperial priests or whatever) that bound the deamon to the weapon, so it should either banish or release the bound entity. It's why the Grey Knights etc. usually lock away potent daemnon-items rather than destroying them. So your Arbites' attempts should result in disastrous consequences, which is quite fitting for such heresy - if you're a bit feisty as a GM, only tell them this if they directly ask you and pass some difficult checks: what they're doing is pretty out of character for almost anybody in 40k that is raised on a strict 'Abhorr everything that is not imperial' policy, and especially for the psyker who frankly should know bettter. It's best explained by being under the influence of the Daemon already, who obviously makes them think that any part of this is a good idea

Tsagualsa wrote:

 SeanDavid1991 wrote:
We have a dark heresy campaign and there is an Arbite in the group who is experimental shall we say.

They have had a thought. On our ship is a deamon sword.

The Arbite has experimented with farcosia (a heretical substence made from psykers that has interesting effects, almost like the slow mo from dredd) and smoke grenades, aerosolising the farcosia and then further combined it with a flashbang and a hallucenegin grenade (a magos helped him put this together). So he has a hallucenegan grenade that flashbangs upon detonation releasing all sorts. Technically not a war crime because the law doesn't yet exist to prohibit this.

His new venture is deamon weaponry. This has our party psyker intrigued. Somehow his ideas bait us in.

His idea is to melt down the deamon sword and dip bolter rounds to deamon tip the bolter rounds.

Our question is this, what happens to the deamon, there is no lore we can find what happens to a deamon when the weapon changes form.

Is the arbites idea even possible?

Destroying the physical form of the weapon should also destroy all sorts of runes, wards and more esoteric components (like being tempered in the blood of eight imperial priests or whatever) that bound the deamon to the weapon, so it should either banish or release the bound entity. It's why the Grey Knights etc. usually lock away potent daemnon-items rather than destroying them. So your Arbites' attempts should result in disastrous consequences, which is quite fitting for such heresy - if you're a bit feisty as a GM, only tell them this if they directly ask you and pass some difficult checks: what they're doing is pretty out of character for almost anybody in 40k that is raised on a strict 'Abhorr everything that is not imperial' policy, and especially for the psyker who frankly should know bettter. It's best explained by being under the influence of the Daemon already, who obviously makes them think that any part of this is a good idea

Yeah the arbite has been on a spiral, he got his eye ripped out by a deamon, then almost died to a deamon incursion. Then got the body from said deamon incursion he was supposed to look after stolen, when he tracked it down he saw child psykers being turned into squelch. Then he speant lots of time interrogating a dark eldar and almost feeling sorry for them. Then got kidnapped by another dark eldar and imprisoned.

He's not had a great time, his insanity is getting up there.

Also remember Daemons are rarely, if ever, happy about being Bound.

Vashtorr gets rounds this by making it a Limited Time Deal - with the Daemon at least getting the opportunity to spend more time in realspace, being harder to banish, and so able to claim more souls.

Removing the Warding (which will depend how the Daemon was originally bound) would most likely release the Daemon from its bondage. It would have at least a brief period in realspace before the warp reels it back in, and that is not going to be pretty for anyone in the vicinity. Particularly as it’s the skill and ability of the person binding the Daemon which limits what was Bound, not the size of the item.

So even a Daemon Knife could contain a Bloodthirster.

The Arbite is clearly just applying the Scientific Method.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Also remember Daemons are rarely, if ever, happy about being Bound.

Vashtorr gets rounds this by making it a Limited Time Deal - with the Daemon at least getting the opportunity to spend more time in realspace, being harder to banish, and so able to claim more souls.

Removing the Warding (which will depend how the Daemon was originally bound) would most likely release the Daemon from its bondage. It would have at least a brief period in realspace before the warp reels it back in, and that is not going to be pretty for anyone in the vicinity. Particularly as it’s the skill and ability of the person binding the Daemon which limits what was Bound, not the size of the item.

So even a Daemon Knife could contain a Bloodthirster.

So with this in mind, how could we make demon tipped bolter rounds? Asking for a friend of course.

I’d imagine you’d need a Cursed/Possessed ranged weapon.

There is a canonical Daemon Bolter Weapon in the 3.5 Chaos Codex, but I can’t remember its name. Other people will though, because it was rad!

There are essentially three main issues with creating a Daemon Weapon.

1. The knowledge/power of the person doing the binding.
2. The strength of the bound Daemon’s own will
3. The quality of the item it’s to be bound to.

Basically you can take a complete n00b at the art, and ask them to stuff a Daemon in something. The actual result and level of success/not being murdered to death by an enraged Daemon depends on the three factors above.

The lower the ability, the more powerful the daemon and the ropier the item, the worse it’s gonna go.

I’m not sure if we’ve ever had rules for RPG level of Daemon Weapon Crafting. Certainly the original Realms of Chaos book had rules for making your own, but purely from a game stats perspective. May well be something in the FFG books. HBMC is the fellow to ask about that.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’d imagine you’d need a Cursed/Possessed ranged weapon.

There is a canonical Daemon Bolter Weapon in the 3.5 Chaos Codex, but I can’t remember its name. Other people will though, because it was rad!

There are essentially three main issues with creating a Daemon Weapon.

1. The knowledge/power of the person doing the binding.
2. The strength of the bound Daemon’s own will
3. The quality of the item it’s to be bound to.

Basically you can take a complete n00b at the art, and ask them to stuff a Daemon in something. The actual result and level of success/not being murdered to death by an enraged Daemon depends on the three factors above.

The lower the ability, the more powerful the daemon and the ropier the item, the worse it’s gonna go.

I’m not sure if we’ve ever had rules for RPG level of Daemon Weapon Crafting. Certainly the original Realms of Chaos book had rules for making your own, but purely from a game stats perspective. May well be something in the FFG books. HBMC is the fellow to ask about that.

Black Crusade has pretty detailed rules for the forging of daemon weapons, which should be cross-compatible with both editions of Dark Heresy.

What you could also do, would be to bind, curse or imbue the ammunition directly.
A fully daemon-weapon'ed bolter round would be quite a waste, as making these is both ridiculously hard and extremely dangerous even for full-fledged heretics and radicals and you would have to do it for every single round... Here, as Grotsnik said, a ranged daemon weapon would be way better, as these are described to generate their ammunition themselves independently.
For cursing the ammunition I would require my players to either produce the ammunition directly for that purpose or alter them each individually. This would need both an artificier and a psyker working together and wouldn't even be that heretical as no daemons would be directly involved
Imbuing it with either daemonic essence or warp energy directly would kinda be like what the Thousand Sons are doing? I'm not an expert on that, maybe their separate codices go more into that.

So based on above. To add, farcosia stablises deamons in realspace.

What if farcosia is added the round as well as a warded bolter round with a deamon? would that be a case of fire bolter round, enemeny it hits is hit with deamon tipped bolter round. The bolt round obviously is destroyed thus releasing the deamon, but then the farcosia is there not only infecting the others in the space nearbolter detonaiton but also giving the deamon fixed time in realspace.

Thoughts?

Well, that’s entirely up to you.

However, given the canonical dangers of anyone practising Daemonology, you’ve described the Arbite as tinkering.

It may sound harsh, but as a GM whilst I’d allow them to pursue that research? They’d have to be incredibly lucky to pull it off, let alone pull it off without being devoured or possessed, sucked into the warp, creating a warp portal (stabilised by this dust stuff), accidentally making the entire planet the summoning circle etc etc.

Because I can be an Evil DM when my players deserve it (this very much counts as “you did this to yourself), I’d go apocalyptic on them.

Yes, this sounds like a good way to release an especially cranky daemon into your forge. This is assuming the daemon weapon can even be melted by a standard furnace. Daemon weapons, especially ones binding stronger daemons, are typically extremely durable and often cannot be harmed except via powerful arcane means (like a more powerful daemon weapon).

So odds are either the blade is fine, or a daemon goes on a rampage.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Well, that’s entirely up to you.

However, given the canonical dangers of anyone practising Daemonology, you’ve described the Arbite as tinkering.

It may sound harsh, but as a GM whilst I’d allow them to pursue that research? They’d have to be incredibly lucky to pull it off, let alone pull it off without being devoured or possessed, sucked into the warp, creating a warp portal (stabilised by this dust stuff), accidentally making the entire planet the summoning circle etc etc.

Because I can be an Evil DM when my players deserve it (this very much counts as “you did this to yourself), I’d go apocalyptic on them.

Oh if pursued it would be 100% accept consequences of your actions.

This is all for science of course, all hypothetical


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Haighus wrote:
Yes, this sounds like a good way to release an especially cranky daemon into your forge. This is assuming the daemon weapon can even be melted by a standard furnace. Daemon weapons, especially ones binding stronger daemons, are typically extremely durable and often cannot be harmed except via powerful arcane means (like a more powerful daemon weapon).

So odds are either the blade is fine, or a greater daemon goes on a rampage.

Would a null help with this process you think?

A Null may see the Daemon Weapon just not work.

Though it does raise the spin-off question of what happens if you stab a Null with a Daemon Weapon.

The blade would do harm, sure. The Daemon bit would probably Do Nothing, and that may be the end of it. But, I suspect it could result in the Daemon being banished, as it’s essentially thrust into a blackhole equivalent?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
A Null may see the Daemon Weapon just not work.

Though it does raise the spin-off question of what happens if you stab a Null with a Daemon Weapon.

The blade would do harm, sure. The Daemon bit would probably Do Nothing, and that may be the end of it. But, I suspect it could result in the Daemon being banished, as it’s essentially thrust into a blackhole equivalent?

What if the null was present for the tranforming of the sword into something else. But then went after, would the deamon be banished by the emere presence or is it like tranquilisng the demaon moving cages?

Having a Null present for the summing/binding may prevent it happening in the first place.

I mean, it’s not set in stone background wise. But what is clear that Nulls/Pariahs massively weaken Daemons in their presence.

From a binding POV? That could be a double edged sword.

Upside? The Daemon may be easier to handle or persuade into the item, as it will provide them the necessary anchor.

Downside? Once the Null leaves the immediate vicinity, you may find the binding sigils etc simply aren’t enough to contain the Daemon, and that’s a bad, bad thing to find out.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Having a Null present for the summing/binding may prevent it happening in the first place.

I mean, it’s not set in stone background wise. But what is clear that Nulls/Pariahs massively weaken Daemons in their presence.

From a binding POV? That could be a double edged sword.

Upside? The Daemon may be easier to handle or persuade into the item, as it will provide them the necessary anchor.

Downside? Once the Null leaves the immediate vicinity, you may find the binding sigils etc simply aren’t enough to contain the Daemon, and that’s a bad, bad thing to find out.

IIRC a lot of Null-/Blank-related shenanigans happen in the Abnettverse trilogy of trilogies (Eisenhorn, Ravenor, Bequin) and the canonical answer seems to be 'Who the feth-all knows, basically it happens as the plot demands it'. Notably, powerful enough warp-stuff is seen 'burning out' a blank/null in one of the books, a concept that matters exactly once and is literally never mentioned again anywhere, neither by Abnett nor by other authors.