Hi all,

Thought it might be fun to discuss some of the possible way in which a party of Black Crusade players might be able to contribute to the death of the false Emperor in a more meaningful manner than attack generic planet XX and try to turn it into a daemonworld, and therefore avoiding messy confrontations with entire Space Marine Chapters, Imperial Guard regiments and the might of the Grey Knights...

Here are some of my ideas on the subject and I'd love to hear yours.

1. Inflitrate the Inquisition, with a view to getting hold of the routes and schedules, used by the Black ships, so that other chaos forces specialising in inflitration such as the Alpha Legion can attempt to destroy or sabotage them in one fell swoop, effectively starving the Emperor of his only food source and plunging the Imperium into anarchy.

2. In a similar manner, work alongside Dark Mechanicus researchers, who are looking to create their own Golden Throne in order to understand its functioning. After some success is made, launch attacks on imperial installations guarding the production of the rare elements needed to maintain the Golden Throne. If this seems a little far-fetched, do something similar with other essential Imperial technology such as Gellar fields.

3. Test or field trial meme-viruses designed to turn the psyker populations of Black ships into warp-powered explosives.

4. Work as minions for Fabius Bile as part of a primarch creation programme, while trying not to be used as part of his experiments. Could possibly involve the capture of a Blood Angels Sanguinary Priest, a genestealer, taking the Ovipositor, removing the genetic cassette coding for the genestealer's phenotype and replacing it with Sanguinius's DNA obtained from the cells within the Sanguinary Priest's blood. Potentially could hideously back-fire if Fabius fails to remove the genes coding for the psychic call to the Tyranid hive-fleets....

5. Step 1. Obtain full working knowledge of Eunica. Step 2. Profit!

6. Hear a rumour that a bunch of Imperial archeologists are getting close to discovering of undreamt of power. Beat them to it, find out it's a time machine, go back in time and do your best to prevent little Horus or an Alpha Legion spy from deactivating the shields on the Vengeful Spirit. Or alternatively, hiding behind Horus's throne and then shiving the Emperor after he's just used up all his strength obliterating Horus....

7. Corner the sub-sector market in children's toys while lacing them with chaos-drenched subliminal messages. Would the Inquisition see it coming?

personly i think we should stop all supply of haribo to the imperial guard regiments and watch the chaos unfold mohhhaaaaa

serious note though i like the ideas laid down also maybe a game where they race against a pro imperial faction on a non affiliated world to gain control

or to corrupt the ruling caste to bring them power

Perhaps fleeing from Imperial Tyranny, your Black Crusade leads a rag-tag fleet on a search for a legendary world to call home...

I'm not sure I understand  the purpose of this thread. TS' suggestion would seem to me to actually require a larger budget in terms of extremely hard-to-get information or expertise. For example managing to actually infiltraiting the Inquisition for a Chaos followers seems to me that it would actually require even more resources and energy than drawing together an army of traitors, heretics and mutants to try and overtake some random planet. And outirght warfare would probably be easier to handle as well. Most of the stuff that has been suggested would also likly draw significant Imperial attention and probably violence before the greater effect could take place.

Or maybe its just that I'm slow?

Yes, most of this stuff does require significant resources, but they are still on a vastly smaller scale than that required by the traditional method of gathering the Chaos Legions, daemons and mortal warbands and throwing them at Cadia.

For example, inflitrating the Inquisition would require at most thousands of operatives, compared to the several trillion warriors needed to mount a concerted push towards Terra.

Yes, of course. It will be significantly smaller than say the 13th Black Crusade to infiltrate the Inqusition. Hell I can't even think of anyone except Abbadon and maybe one or two of the Daemon Primarchs that could hope to gather the resources for an operation like a full fledge invasion of Cadia - and stand a chance to take it. But even so, while infiltraiting the Inquisiton might "only" need a few thousand individuals, I think that these individuals can't just be some random Joes off the street. They will after all have to have make regular contact with lots of Imperial personal who may well be highly skilled at detected signs of Chaotic influence in a person. Unless you have very highly skilled and very well preapered agents, I would imagine that they would be rooted out very quickly.

I would probably suggest using infiltraiting of local Imperial administration and keeping the personal away from the limelight of public life. For example the planetary governor may be a bit bad since he will be among the first ones to met off-worlders if things are wrong. But the planetary governer's secretary's extramartial mistress may be in a more ideal position to get information, and perhaps gentle nudge policy in a certain direction.

As I see it, the Imperium simply can't be toppled in one go. It is just too big and just too strong. What is needed is to grind it down. And if possible, without using the Chaos forces themselves for the heavy work, but instread rely on other pawns. Orks should be a favored one for managing the Imperial armed forces and keep them busy. In my eyes, Chaos should best focus on raiding and acts of terrorism and subterfudge. Causing Chaotic revolts on planets that can force these to be either abandoned by the Imperium or outright put under Exterminatus is a good way, since it will in the end make the number of worlds under the Imperium's thumb to draw resources from fewer. The only races that I think that any Chaotic forces should NOT try to hinder the Imperium's effort against, or try to help, are the Tyranids and the Necrons. They both after all have the agenda of cleaning off all life form the galaxy and thus will run counter to any except the really mad Chaos followers' goals - and indeed the very goal of the Chaos gods.

So that's what I think of it. Grind the Imperium down through small victories or force the Imperium to win Pyrrhic victories that harm themselves more than us in the long run. Outlying systems that can be cut-off from the Imperium can be outright conquered or converted with the chance that they will survive under Chaos influence. Of course fighting a long war with the Imperium could well allow other forces, most likly aliens, to take advantage of it and cause the Imperium even more problem. Say that you start a series of Chaos lead revolts in a sector, or sub-sector for that matter, it will lead to the Imperium arriving to supress the problem. So either they engage in a long war that will eat resources from other places and perhaps allow the Orks to take a sector or two. So once the Imperium have cleansed a sector and returned it to the Corpse God, the Orks might have invaded taken three other sectors.

Some good thoughts there :)

Another angle of attack would be to undermine the very concept of the Imperium. For example, what would happen if Chaos Cultists obtained proof that the Emperor never wished to be worshipped as a God and were able to disseminate broadly?

Another amusing but highly risky gamble would be to try to launch a mission to "cure" Roboute Guilliman. After all, if Chaos poisoned him, Chaos (particularly the daemon possessing Fulgrim) might have the cure. The assumption here is that a returned primarch would rebel or lead a revolt against the corrupt nature of the present day Imperium and that the resulting strife might help weaken and divide the Imperium to the point that conventional assault might succeed.

Hmmm, continuing from Lucifer's thoughts, having any of the "surviving" primarchs return would be pretty bad for the ruling factions of the Imperium.  All of them would have a less corrupted memory of their father's teachings and such be at odds with most of the Imperium.  Sending a Chaos warband on a quest to find a Primarch under the guise of loyal servants of the Imperium would be a clever way to stir up trouble on a shoe-string budget (as shoe-string as anything gets in the 40k verse at least) and allow Chaos to make a better pass for Cadia.

I don't know if a returning loyalist Primarch would be a such good way for Chaos. These are awesome superhumans after all if Roboute Guilliman returned, two-thirds of the Adeptus Astartes would follow his commands more or less blindly, and I imagine that most of the population will just fall to their knees and stare in disbelief at the sacred Primarch and gene-son of the Emeperor returned. While any loyalist Primarch would be a problem for Chaos, Guilliman is probably the worst alternative as he's good with more things that just fighting.

I do however agree that the concept of the "Imperium" might be worth to undermine, at least untill Abbadon can capture Terra, eat the Corpse God himself, and then create a new Imperium dedicated to the glorious majesty of Chaos. :) Stating that the Emperor never wished to be worshipped or highlight the Imperial Cult's roots with the Primarch of the Word Bearers could also cause some fun trouble. Or just generally provoce the Imperium to conduce actions that undermine their own standing, or foster secular separatist notions among planetary populations. 

or Fabious Biles just creates another Primarch copy in order to gain access to the chapter's relic!

Glorious Fabious Bile!!!!

Gurkhal said:

I think the point was that Guilliman would be opposed to the Imperium at its current state.

Gurkhal said:

The Imperium as it is currently is simply not the way the Emperor envisioned it, he did not consider himself a god and actually even pushed one of his sons towards Chaos because that son venerated his divinity so adamently and the Big E wanted no truck with organized religion.  Other aspects of the Emperor's vision for the Imperium I have no reference for but it is suspected that he would be ameable to the idea of a treaty with the Eldar and Tau...  it's also suggested he was a great scientist and while he would likely understand the need for slow, steady, calculated advances, he would also not be pleased with the stagnation in the present Adeptus Mechanicus.

Short of the Emperor himself, the loyalists primarchs have the least corrupted memory of how the Imperium should be.  Even though most of them have their own opinions and personalities, they all should still have a reasonable clue of "what daddy would have wanted."  The ones that disappeared instead of died  vanished in the direction of the Eye of Terror with the exception of the White Scars... meaning they're likely either in the CSMs stomping ground or battling Dark Eldar if they're still alive and hey, who better to resist the maddening sights of the Dark Eldar city then someone who is already mad and corrupted?

Yes, in the long run a returning primarch is seriously bad news for Chaos.  But the time between his initial return and the time the Imperium gets used to the new status quo is quite the opprotunity.

There's half a dozen chaos primarchs that haven't done anything in centuries.  Go and petition one of them to get off their lazy butts and do something!

Lucifer216 said:

All of those are really good! #3 had me almost spitting soda on my monitor.

Going back to the point about the psyker population and their collection by the Black Ships, boosting anti-psyker hatred across the Imperium, through Redemptonist cults and ultra-puritan Inquisitors might be an interesting way to go. 

Another key vulnerability the Imperium possesses is its reliance on Navigators. Successfully triggering off a massive inter-house Vendetta that could irreparably compromise their already limited gene-pool below that needed for a sustainable population would be a massive win for Chaos, given their use of Sorcerors and Possessed to fulfil the same function.

I'd also like to point out that in Titanicus by Dan Abnett, the alliance between the rest of the Imperium and the Adeptus Mechanicus almost gets compromised by the discovery of information that casts doubt on the belief that the Emperor and the Omnissiah are one. While this particular angle has already been tried, Abaddon does know about the Void Dragon in the Noctis Labyrinth. While awakening the Void Dragon, would in the long term be a problem for Chaos, the massive damage it could do might make it worth doing in conjunction with other plans to destabilise the Imperium. 

A very insidious idea would be to slowly, step by step alter the girl pics in the imperial guard's nasty magazines to more and more resemble eldar girls until whole regiments are drooling xenos lovers.

After that one can either call them out to the inquisition while at the same time instigating them to rise up and defend themselves against a corrupted bureaucracy that wants to kill them all.

Then use the resulting time of unrest to hide other actions or try to profit from the internal strife in other ways.