I have to agree with Luddite here. There's no way the things you described in this bunker would survive 5 millenia un attended, but don't let realism get in the way of a cool or interresting story.

Thank you Luddide for your great post, most apperciated!

Q: How did they know what to look for if they didn't know what to look.

A: The player group works for Inquisitor "A" and Inquisitor "B" have asked this team to help his own group. He doesn't tell why, maybe because there are 2 tech-priests, 1 guard and 1 priest in the player-group. (In Inquisitor B -group there are only ex-guard soldiers.)

Players have to follow this "B" -groups leadership and at the same time spy for the "A" for what is happening and why, without group "B" soldiers noticing.

At the moment, they have managed to copy themselves the mission parameters, but they lack the correct password to open it. So they just have to tag along until they get it or find what they are looking for.

Techpriests are crucial for this mission to hack open locks and so forth. Priest is important to keep the Emperor tight in their mind. (Planet is rebelling, there might be threat to morality) And lastly, soldier is needed to..you know, keep them alive.

Anyway, I pretty much gave my players free hands to do what they want, only in occacion to point them in the right direction when team "B" teamleader cnosults his dataslate. (Piece of equipment the techpriests would LOVE to get their hands on, just for a while...)

Inside the bunker there weren't any mold or lichen, just dust and darkness. Every machine (trucks and so forth) had corroded beyond repair. Skeleton on the ground crumbled to dust after our brave guard touched it with his lasgun. I know that in real world everything would ha eroded beyond use and recognition, but this was first game for the techpriests, I wanted to give them something to do. Hack doorcodes, repair generator, find parts for the machinery, hack in to computer, secretly copy the files from there without team "B" leader to know anything about it and so forth.

And I have to admid, it was lovly to watch their expressions when they were as silently as possible sneaking around that bunker. Only two of them had light with them so they didn't see much from their surroundings. Everytime they found something, I tried to describe it as vagely as possible if they were further away from it. I could almost see the exitement in their eyes and even postures around the table *grins*

Long story short, some little things were somehow operatable (after repairs) but most of the things were dust and corrosion =)

Anyway, thank you all for your pointers!

Cheers!

elPANTERA said:

Now THIS is very interesting.  Something that has been discussed and debated at length on the old FFG and other fora (forums?) is the nature of the structures of the Inquisition.  How Inquisitors interact with each other, plan and mobilise their activities etc.

Here you seem to have a model that;

1. Has Inquisitors in contact with each other
2. Cooperating to the extent that they are willing to hand over their own acolytes to be subordinate to another Inquisitors acolytes
3. Willing to covertly investigate each other, even while cooperating.

Very interesting.  So do you see the inquisitor as part of a larger organisation or a freeroaming individual?

elPANTERA said:

The Tech Priest doesn't have to limit himself to opening doors etc.  He could just as easily been an appropriate advisor as to why everything decayed.  also, perhaps he could have repaird the power system or been given radiation decontamination gear that only he could use, to clear up the pollution of the fractured nuclear reactor...

elPANTERA said:

Well, thats a couple of key points, both of which i mentioned above.

1. This ISN'T the real world.  Who knows what the machinery was made of.  Maybe it was made of advance metal and power systems that DON'T corrode over time.  Maybe the atmospheric processors still functioned and maintained the conditions at a stasis level that meant organic decomposition was arrested...and...
2. ...the answer to those questions should be driven by the needs of your story (within reason)...which you seem to have done. 

 Ha ha! Someone else broke the forum for a while...  

Kage

Kage2020 said:

Eh? 

The formatting on the posts above mine... that's all.  It's kind of funkily amusing.  Maybe it's just Chrome, though...

Kage

I will give you an answer based on what I know about archeology; If you find bones that are intact and has not disintegrated after 5000 years, then you will find artefacts there too. It takes perfect conditions of balanced temperature, air moisture, etc. to keep bones preserved. And that is basically the same for metals, leather, wood, etc. When it comes to plastic it depends. If you are talking about biodegradable plastics, it would be gone. But I dont think the Imperium is using "green" technology. Theoretically it is possible that electronic circuits could work, but it is very unlikely. Mainly because background radiation will break down electronics over time. The more complicated and smaller the circuits (the imperium uses very extreme nano-scale circuitry) the more sensitive it is to radiation, heat, static electricity etc. You can think of it as a stone wall being hit by the water from a garden hose. It might not have an effect in one year, 5 years, 10 years, 100 years. But over 5000 years it certainly will show on the wall where the water has been hit. It will have been eroded and weakened.

However, it is obvious the Imperium has access to fantastic technology. For example stasis fields that seems to be able to completely arrest the flow of time, making that which inside the stasis field impervious to ravages of time (in all forms). I however see flaw in this, since the circuitry or whatever it is that generate the field is itself not protected (I assume since it is not stopped in time). However, it does not matter much. It is all an deus ex machina for allowing things to survive extreme amounts of time.

Luddite said:

Actually all of this is pretty much "happening in the shadows, without players knowing". Frankly speaking, its pretty much 'work in progress', I make stuff up as the players stumbles on. Actually you just gave me few good plot ideas :-)  (And I haven't thought these questions before, thank you for bringing this up)

And to answer to your question:

    Q.  How do they interact and so forth?

    A.   The way I see it, is that Inquisitors are independent powers in the universe. They must inform their whereabouts to their superiors every now and then, mostly twice a year. Other than that, not much communicating between Inquisitors. But there are exceptions in the rare cases when they are friends or they own favors to each others. Knowledge is power, but Inquisitor in dept to you is solid gold. :-)

    In this case, the Inquisitors happened to meet by chance in the ballroom dance -thingy at some planetary governors inaugural. (not sure is this the right word for it..) The Inquisitor "B" casually asked the "A" if he happened to have team ready for him to borrow for some weeks. It would be just little off-system trip to rebellous planet. Small "in-and-out-before anyone-noticing" type of mission. He has his own team ready, but his techpriest were incapasitated last mission. He could ask directly for Mechanicus for help, but he doesn't trust them that much. He wants a tech-adept from the Inquisitorial ranks, from a fellow Inquisitor, if he have to.

   He gave just too little or too much information about this mission to wake Inquisitor "A"'s interest so he promised to help him. There happened to be one team ready near here, just fresh out of "Acolyte School for Extraordnery People Who Know How To Do Things Well But Want To Learn To Do Those Things Even Better". (Players first mission. ..Actually one of the players had managed to reach to level 2, he was the teamleader for the player-team).

  Inquisitor "B" thought about this for a while and decided to go for it. Those acolytes are fersh out of training, so they don't know anything yet.. So there are small change for players to find anything they are not supposed to know... He didn't know that there was one little more experienced on board (one of the techpriests) and he got the mission to spy this other group.

   Inquisitor "A" told that this would be the first real mission for this team, it'll be good experience for them. And the Inquisitor "B" would be in small dept for the "A". Details were discussed and they drank little more booze to seal the deal.

  Player who agreed to spy the other team was promised money and power and a step up in the hierarchy if he managed to do this.

  Anyhow, it's pretty open (yet) what is inside those canisters and what the inquisitor want to do with them. Is he a radical or something else? When they report this mission, does the Inquisitor "B" find out and if he does, what happens? Does he confront the players and tell them that this was partly a bogus mission to flush the Inquisitor "A" out in the open and partly to secure these canisters to safety. Does the "B" try to recruit players on his side, against the "A"? Or does the "A" order them to capture the canisters for him and at the same time he tells players that the "B" is a radical, trying to use the canisters for his own evil plots.

  I try to give the players a few large directions for them to choose and keep smaller directions available if they decide against all that I have planned (this would be the most likely direction they take. If I plan this, they to that etc... :-) )  Are they blindly loyal for their Inquisitor, do they betray him at the first chance or do they keep their own eyes open and find out what is happening around them...

  Thank you Luddite yet again, you gave me a direction for this campaign to evolve *grins*

i simply can not imagine a future that could be described without the words blaek, dark and desolate...

moekel said:

Bleak Inquisitor "A" loaned his dark team of acolytes to the desolated Inquisitor "B"

Is that better? =)