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.

Hello everyone! I'm a first time gm running a black crusade group at my fraternity and I've got a good group of guys hooked on the 40k universe. The problem is I'm starting to run out of ideas for where to go next with my campaign. The group is 3 humans and two space marines (2 psykers, apostate, chosen, and forsaken). It's fairly early in the campaign, and I had them on an imperial world trying to escape, and destroy a rival group that culminated in discovering a violent gang was being backed by a Word Bearer who summoned, via sacrifice, several bloodletters to destroy the PC's. The PC's one with a couple casualtys and are now heading to a deep space space station on the edge of the screaming vortex. They eventually want to organize a Black Crusade so the Vortex is where I want them to go. I guess what I'm asking after a little bit of rambling is what would be some good little adventures in the Vortex that would eventually lead them to power.

Ideas that I have so far.

Fall under the patronage of someone in the vortex.

Do missions such as removing rivals/secretly gathering power/discovering arcane lore.

Come upon a ritual/tech that could turn a young adolescent into a marine (physically at least) and wrest it from those that control it.

Recurring villains from each character's origin story.

I'd like some extra ideas as I'm not the most creative individual.

Many thanks for those that respond!

Well they are traveling through space and maybe Abaddon doesn't want them to call a black crusade and sends guys to try to stop them. They get beat of course and man escape pods and fly off onto the planet below. The planet below is an imperial hive per say and the warband has to regroup in the city since they were scattered after landing.

You could say that they are running low on supplies or their ship is crapping out and they have to hijack an iperial one. Have them board an IG cruiser, take it over and use what they need from it

Well generally to gather forces for a black crusade they need to either win followers by challenging warlords and gang leaders in a fight to the death or win someones patronage like a chaos lord who is powerful enough to have several warbands under his leadership.

An idea that adds both of these is from the iron warriors book where honsou enters the harvest of skulls which huron blackheart sets up. In this tournament either the leaders of the warbands or champions fight each other and if one champion wins the fight to the death they claim the other champions warband and the victor of the tournament earns the tyrants patronage (corsair troops along with the accumalated warbands aswell as ships and weapons)

You could something similar to that or if you have any apostles (you have two) you could have them going around and try and convince other warbands to join their cause which can lead to side quests or challenges :-)

one adventure I remember reading about was to do with winning someones patronage. The PC's asked for patronage so they could start a black crusade against an imperial forge world. The Chaos lord was of the word bearers legion and had four champions each bearing a differant mark of chaos. The Lord said they must complete a quest for each champion. The Khorne champions quest was to bring 20 space marine heads, 20 Ork Heads, 20 Eldar heads and 20 human heads to him. The Slaaneshi champion requested a vial containing 6 poisons which could only be found on certain planets as he would then drink the mixture for the ultimate pleasure. The plague champion tasked thhe PC's with spreading the zombie plague on a nearby hive world laying it open for his hosts invasion and the tzeentch sorcerer tasked them with bringing an inquisitor lord to him in chains
.

Thanks for the ideas guys! Everything is going fairly well and I'll be using some of these ideas in the future!