Just an idea for a game of Rogue Trader RPG

[BigRob]

Greetings fellow Warseer people.

I am in dire need of information since all I seem to find on the internet is slim pickings. I'm thinking of putting in a Space Marine into my game of Rogue Trader, the players will find him in stasis and of course he's been there a while but how much will it go against the grain for him to be a "Pre Heresy" Lunar Wolf? This then presents my players (well the ones with forbidden knowledge on these matters) with the problem of what to do with him.

I've not read Flight of the Eisenstien but I know the basics of the Captain Garro and gang mission so indeed some marines can stay loyal to the Emperor but what would the deal be with a Lunar Wolf who is still very much mentally back in the Crusade era when Horus was a hero and the Emperor walked among men, would he be corrupt already or did the corruption not come til after they became "Sons of Horus"? Could this marine be a "good guy" who has no idea of the world he wakes up in and instantly paints a big shiney target on my players for every Astartes, inquisitor and arbites in the segmentum or would he be an already corrupt bad guy who will begin some devious scheme to return to the Legion and serve his chaos masters?

Secondly what kind of chapter were the Lunar Wolves so I can set his personality when dealing with the crew? I've planned for several ways this can go although knowing my players there is a good chance they will simply throw the stasis pod into a star and leg it.

Cheers

[Orthodox]

Greetings fellow Warseer people.

I am in dire need of information since all I seem to find on the internet is slim pickings. I'm thinking of putting in a Space Marine into my game of Rogue Trader, the players will find him in stasis and of course he's been there a while but how much will it go against the grain for him to be a "Pre Heresy" Lunar Wolf? This then presents my players (well the ones with forbidden knowledge on these matters) with the problem of what to do with him.

I've not read Flight of the Eisenstien but I know the basics of the Captain Garro and gang mission so indeed some marines can stay loyal to the Emperor but what would the deal be with a Lunar Wolf who is still very much mentally back in the Crusade era when Horus was a hero and the Emperor walked among men, would he be corrupt already or did the corruption not come til after they became "Sons of Horus"? Could this marine be a "good guy" who has no idea of the world he wakes up in and instantly paints a big shiney target on my players for every Astartes, inquisitor and arbites in the segmentum or would he be an already corrupt bad guy who will begin some devious scheme to return to the Legion and serve his chaos masters?

Secondly what kind of chapter were the Lunar Wolves so I can set his personality when dealing with the crew? I've planned for several ways this can go although knowing my players there is a good chance they will simply throw the stasis pod into a star and leg it.

Cheers

Nobody short of a really senior space marine would immediately recognize a Luna Wolf. Most arbites and other authorities will know that there was a villain named Horus, but not necessarily that he was a Primarch or anything about his legion.

The thing you really need to consider is whether this person is really a preheresy luna wolf. Ten thousand years is longer than modern recorded history; people from the heresy are essentially Gilgamesh, it's hard to say whether any of them even exist. The marine might claim to be a Luna Wolf interred in stasis before the heresy, but it's more likely that he was interred well after the heresy and after m34, and might be a loyalist, might be a traitor, might be an Ultramarine or an Iron Warrior.

Luna Wolves came from an abandoned mining planet used as to dump prisoners. They are many generations removed from original convicts, but they still come from a brutal culture. The wolves are militaristic barbarians.

[AndrewGPaul]

The Horus Heresy has, dpending on the author, entered the public consciousness in the Imperium, but only on the level of myth and legend. Horus is the Satan figure who caused the Emperor's confinement to the Throne.

Regarding his personaility, if he came from Nocturne, then I'd go with what Orthodox says. On the other hand, there was still a large minority of Earth-born Marines in the Legions.

Someone waking from the 30th millennium into the 40th will probably not recognise the Imperium as the same entity he left. The veneration of the Emperor as a deity is going to be even more alien to him than it is to "modern" Space Marines, and the pervasive influence of religious organisations such as the Ecclesiarchy and Adeptus Mechanicus are going to be in direct contradiction to the ethos of Compliance which he would have known.

[BigRob]

When it comes to identifying since none of my players have "Forbidden Lore: Astartes" or even "Common Lore: Astartes" to them one space marine looks very much like another, this

This is the kind of thing I was aiming for with this storyline, events have led them to here and meeting a space marine, the players will be very surprised to find he is not at all what they were expecting (especially our very vocal preacher) and of course, they may decide this makes him a bad guy and try and kill him. I do have some leeway as none of my players are particularly 40K heavy when it comes to the background (excpet our Dark Heresy GM who looked like someone had strangled a kitten when the other players killed "the wierdo in the black robes with the silly rosette"). This marine will be totally out of touch with whats going on and may well demand to be returned to the Empire and contact his legion, when you say compiance AndrewGPaul, were the Heresy era marines as mentally rigid as current era marines (only replace the fanatical Emperor worship with fanatical following of the Emperors orders?), or may well have his own agenda/secret orders he will be picking up as soon as he can, demanding the players assist him or simply taking over thier cruiser.

I could always make him Cursed founding instead, my inspiration for this piece is an excellent piece of fiction from WD many moons ago, presented as a report into the exploration of an abandoned genetics facility where they were making Fire Hawks and this would provide a whole new set of challenges, not least of which would be exactly how cursed he is and if his chapter are reknowned or being stamped out by those nasty inquisition chaps. I have some weeks to work out the details

Of course, it had already crossed my mind he might well be an alpha legion marine in disguise........

[Veteran Sergeant]

Like it was said, what we know as common knowledge as readers of 40K books is far, far far more than what the average 40K citizen knows. To many of them, any Space Marine is almost a myth, let alone a specific Legion from ten thousand years in the past. I think if you're going to use a Heresy era Marine stuck in stasis, make him Death Guard, so his armor can be nondescript. If you identify his Luna Wolf heraldry, players may figure him out simply based on their outside game knowledge, which may remove any surprise.

As far as their dispositions go, that's really up to you. Most of the Legions turned traitor due to outside influences, not something inherent in their makeup. The Sons of Horus/Luna Wolves followed their leader. So a Marine who missed the Heresy might wake up still thinking he was a loyal Marine. It might even make a fun story hook to help him discover the long lost story of his Legion. As was mentioned, the Imperium of 40K is going to be bizarre to him too, and could introduce some tension when he overreacts to people worshiping the Emperor. Remember, a Marine from 30K knows the Emperor as a real individual; he may have even seen him in person at some point. At the same time, a denizen of the Imperium knows very little about the truth of the Emperor being confined to the Golden Throne after his battle with Horus.

If you went with a "found" Fire Hawk, you could have some fun with that character. Again, common citizens of the Imperium will know nothing of the Fire Hawks (unless, I guess you're playing some place that was touched by the Badab War or somewhere else the Fire Hawks had been by off chance), nor will they have any idea about the Chapter's ultimate fate.

[Khorneguy]

The corruption really took hold after they were renamed the Sons fo Horus and the events of Davin. Yes their pride may have been a factor in their fall but the wounding of Horus with the Anatheme was even more so.

If he was from the Pre-Ullanor era, i would say he is not inherently corrupted, as the seeds of Horus' fall had not been sown yet, but I would not make any modern day characters aware of this distinction. It's been engrained into them through myths and legends that Horus was the Arch-traitor. They would not have been taught that he and his legion were once pure and uncorrupted. 99.9% of non-space marine chaarcters probably would even know that he even commanded a Space Marine legion, whereas Space Marines wpould've been taught that he and his legion were flawed from the beginning. A particularly open-minded Inquisitor may know or at least have an idea of the truth, but that's it

[Grimbad]

I've had some difficulty getting it through one of my players' heads that the Horus Heresy is secrets and lies and legends. There was a good in-universe present day account of the Heresy in the 3rd edition rulebook. It was something like "And there came a time when a third part of the hosts of man rose up in treachery and combined with Daemons..." and it goes on like that for a while, never mentioning any names or places at all.

Note that Scholastic Lore: Archaic specifically does not include the Horus Heresy. That's Scholastic Lore: Legends, along with the Age of Strife and so on. If it were me, anything less than three degrees success on Scholastic Lore would produce an account of the Horus Heresy roughly equivalent to "Nixon dropped the atomic bomb on Vietnam in the battle of Watergate".

Bear in mind also that he won't speak their language, or any language they have any chance of knowing.

[BigRob]

Ah yes I have been reading up on this thanks to the internet (My goodness the Emperor was a muppet). I believe I can get away with it in the game (as none of them has ever met a real space marine nor do they have the skills to help them here) and in the Meta since the Luna Wolves symbol is a wolfs head (and they will all think Space Wolf...).

I'm liking the idea of the Marine tracking down his missing Loyal Legion, its close to one of the options I had for it and I did think of going with the idea of Amnesia (again a wonderful fiction piece about an Ultramarine terminator who looses his memory after becomming missing in action) but it might be just a tiny tiny bit cliche for an RPG.

Hadn't considered the major language barrier, I assumed someone from that period would speak High Gothic, kind of like a Roman comming back to life now and speaking in Latin.

[Idaan]

I'd say that given that Horus Heresy is basically Fall of Satan, the knowledge of the former events would be similar to the knowledge of the latter possessed by an average Catholic peasant in the Middle Ages. So yes, they'd know that there was a guy named Horus/Lucifer and that he rebelled against Emperor/God, but was cast out. But knowing, say, the name and symbol of the Lunar Wolves, or some lesser traitor characters and their deeds would be comparable to knowing how many demonic hosts Belial commands, what's his rank in Hell and how to summon him - it'd raise a few eyebrows and at least one pitchfork.

[Iron_Lord]

I can think of at least one novel that basically did this- Barrington J. Bayley's Eye of Terror. In this case, the character was a Heresy era Dark Angel lost in space not too long after the battle of Istvaan V. He landed on a Chaos planet, and a Fallen Angel tried to deceive him into believing that Chaos won the Heresy.

So there is precedent for Black Library using the idea- so it shouldn't be that unfeasible in Rogue Trader.

[BigRob]

Yes, I have discovered that one of my plot ideas has already been nabbed by Gaunt's Ghosts although to be fair, I was taking it from Tomb of the Cybermen.

[BigRob]

Ah, no need to worry about background with my players, they simply agreed with everything the Marine said, took him to the nearest naval base, astropathed ahead so they were waiting, let him out of the airlock into an ambush and the marine was hit by a hail of fire.....fire from naval ratings....armed with shotguns....the marine had a Darloth Chain Cannon.

So Port Wander is in ruins and anyone with a ship has fled, this space marine has stolen a warp capable ship and its crew and was last seen heading off into the expanse just before the Navy showed up. And the players have a new "Enemy" talent and a dinner date with those nice people from the Inquisition and Astartes about how exactly they found this marine and where they got thier information from (a nasty little heretek cogitator they stole......).

Always nice to have a badguy who can randomly show up later on when the players need a beating