Khornate Hive Question

I'm fairly new to Warhammer 40k, and in a week I'm going to be GMing a GURPS campaign, where the premise is that the party, (made up of three fairly seasoned players, also new to the lore), are going to be playing as a group of Underhive Gangers. For whatever reason, they've decided they want to play as a group of Khornate Cultists, recently corrupted after the splitting of the Imperium, and have the campaign be based around them spreading a Khornate Cult and eventually overthrowing the Hive World in an attempt to gain Daemon Princehood. I liked the idea of GMing a heretical cult better than a street gang, so we'll be rolling with it.

The only problem is that I'm new to the lore, and while I understand the basics and have read through the Lexicanum and 1d4chan, I'm at a loss for ideas. My question to you is, what would a fledgling Khorne Cult run into as they expanded on a standard Hive World, how common would other Chaos Cults be, how quickly would the Inquisition crack down on them, and what kind of mutations would they develop as they shed Blood For The Blood God?

Thank you for answering, I'm sorry if this is off-topic. If they manage to takeover the Hive World, I'm planning on having them fight to the death to see which is worthy of becoming a Daemon Prince, is that in character for Khorne? How do I roleplay a Khornate fanatic, and apart from Sorcery and cowardice, what does Khorne despise?

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>What would a fledgling Khorne Cult run into as they expanded on a standard Hive World
Normal gangs, aribites and the occasional "wipe" of the underhive where the Aribites of the hive TRY kill everyone there.
>How common would other Chaos Cults be
Honestly you'll probably need two of everything.
One for the underhive and one for the hive nobles
>How quickly would the Inquisition crack down on them
As soon as they spread to the middle have the Inquisition be a thing.
Make them a constant force that requires them to think about who they kill and actually have a strategy.
>What kind of mutations would they develop as they shed Blood For The Blood God?
Bigger teeth, spikes grow from their arms and back, claws and a desperate need to kill.
>If they manage to takeover the Hive World, I'm planning on having them fight to the death to see which is worthy of becoming a Daemon Prince, is that in character for Khorne?
Yes, but they should aim to summon a portal to the warp and have the hive be taken over and THEN have the two strongest members fight eachother.
>How do I roleplay a Khornate fanatic, and apart from Sorcery and cowardice, what does Khorne despise?
Wasting time. There is no peace, just time wasted between battles. Don't cheat in a battle. Remember that Khorne does not care where the blood comes from just that there is blood.

Pop over into the 40k RPG thread to get your hands on the Creatures Anathema pdf. It has some cool underhive beasties.
Also hrud.

>what would a fledgling Khorne Cult run into as they expanded on a standard Hive World

Assuming form the underhive, they run into other gangs, then arbites then planetary defense force.

>how common would other Chaos Cults be

reasonably uncommon, most gangs should just be regular scum. The average imperial doesn't know anything about chaos at all.

>how quickly would the Inquisition crack down on them,

Some one has to notice them. And then be aware of the danger. Then the planetary governor would most likely want to stomp them before the inquisition arrives. Because he doesn't wants them sniffin around.

>mutations

generally horns, bony shit. Fist fusing into a bony club. red skin.

>how to role play a khorne fanatic

You can go full honor, full slaughter a mix in between. Khorne guys usually start out with martial pride. And if you thinks someone is worthy of daemon hood at minimum they need to cause they entire world to fall to all out war.

I assume you have read about the blood pact. Even though they are khornate imperial guard they may be of help.

OP here, thank you all for answering, I'll keep it in mind. I'm thinking that once they've gathered a few hundred cultists and have expanded their operations I'll have them run into, or at least hear rumors of, a cult of a rival deity, do you think I should go with Tzeentch or Slaanesh? Maybe Nurgle? I was thinking Redemptionists should be a threat later on.

Assuming they managed to survive the Inquisition, how long would it be before Space Marines got involved, and assuming they didn't immediately go for orbital bombardment, how would they attempt to stop the cult? I was thinking near the end game, they might have to survive a dozen or two Callidus, Vindicare, and Eversor Assassins, is that too OP, or would the Imperium only send one or two to handle them?

Apart from spreading carnage, what would they have to do before they gained the ability to summon Daemons? What would the cost of summoning Daemons be, and how many rank-and-file Cultists would they need to sacrifice to summon a Bloodthirster? How long would it be before the PDF started hunting them, and how would the Planetary Governor, (a *highly* decorated former Guardsman) respond to the spread of heresy? Would the spread of the Khornate Cult cause the spread of non-Khorne heresy?

>My question to you is, what would a fledgling Khorne Cult run into as they expanded on a standard Hive World, how common would other Chaos Cults be, how quickly would the Inquisition crack down on them, and what kind of mutations would they develop as they shed Blood For The Blood God?
Their first threats would be other gangs, mutants, any killers and psychos roaming around. The Inquisition will probably not bother until the cult starts leaking out of the Underhives, or takes control of every gang. Once you gain their notice, expect Arbites and maybe local enforcers. The PDF will also defend the Hive if it goes into a full uprising.

Other chaos cults would be rare, it would really depend on how corrupted the place has become, but they can't be too many or else the Inquisition would quickly find out.

As for mutations, the Black Crusade rulebook has a few examples. The most common ones for Khornates are claws, horns, fangs and supernatural strenght. Fleshmetal weapons and armor are also common, with wings being rarer. It is apparently a thing for Khornate warriors to rise in martial prowess at a supernatural rate, being extremely aggressive in combat and completely fearless.

>If they manage to takeover the Hive World, I'm planning on having them fight to the death to see which is worthy of becoming a Daemon Prince, is that in character for Khorne?
Khorne cares not for petty conquests, and daemonhood is a rare gift. Winning a battle against suicidal odds, slaughtering entire systems (exterminatus doesn't count) are the kind of things that would get you that much favor.

>How do I roleplay a Khornate fanatic, and apart from Sorcery and cowardice, what does Khorne despise?
Read the Tome of Blood from Black Crusade. But generally, humans are a product of circumstance, so the 'backstory' is the most important thing. One could worship Khorne for a variety of reasons.

What sort of cool bionics could you give a forgeworld based khorne cult?

Nurgle definitely.
The underhive is a place full of diseases, makes sense for Nurgle to have a cult there.
>Assuming they managed to survive the Inquisition, how long would it be before Space Marines got involved, and assuming they didn't immediately go for orbital bombardment, how would they attempt to stop the cult?
Probably by just killing everything that isn't already dead or a Space marine.
>I was thinking near the end game, they might have to survive a dozen or two Callidus, Vindicare, and Eversor Assassins, is that too OP, or would the Imperium only send one or two to handle them?
One Vindicare is good. Two seems like a bit much but the second could be backup.
>Apart from spreading carnage, what would they have to do before they gained the ability to summon Daemons?
When people start mutating it's a sign of "Keep up the killing" so when a good amount of cultists have mutated (Like 5%) you should try summoning.
>What would the cost of summoning Daemons be, and how many rank-and-file Cultists would they need to sacrifice to summon a Bloodthirster?
Live sacrifices in the form of a huge gladiator match.
>How long would it be before the PDF started hunting them
When signs of a cult start appearing the PDF should keep about 10 guys near any entrances to the hive.
>How would the Planetary Governor, (a *highly* decorated former Guardsman) respond to the spread of heresy?
Most likely try to keep it a secret and suppress them like crazy with overwhelming firepower
>Would the spread of the Khornate Cult cause the spread of non-Khorne heresy?
Yeah but only after you've gotten large enough to not care about that 10 man Tzeentch cult only for them to assault you a couple weeks later with 20+ men.

they NEVER send more than one assassin or maybe two
Six Eversors have exterminated planets and then held a Highlander style fight to the death which each other when everyone else was dead

A dozen assasination attempts is a very very large number especially for a bunch of Hivers. In Vraks they only sent a single assassin to try to nip the bud. They are extremely dangerous, expensive and rare.

>Assuming they managed to survive the Inquisition, how long would it be before Space Marines got involved, and assuming they didn't immediately go for orbital bombardment, how would they attempt to stop the cult?
That depends on a myriad of factors, how important is the world, how close is the nearest chapter, which chapter is it and what is their effective strenght, are there chaos space marines involved, how badly beaten was the imperial guard, etc. Most battlefields don't have SM on them.

How they deal with the group depends on the war itself. If it is a hive city, they will besiege it because Strike Cruisers don't like orbital defense lasers. If they are out in the open, but still within range of orbital defenses, they'll fight on the ground and strike only key targets. Most chapters will not spend their marines on symmetrical warfare, and will only strike where the damage inflicted justifies the projected casualties.

>I was thinking near the end game, they might have to survive a dozen or two Callidus, Vindicare, and Eversor Assassins, is that too OP, or would the Imperium only send one or two to handle them?
One or two. Even in the Siege of Vraks, probably the largest conflict in Imperial history which involved a single planet, only one assassin was deployed.

>Apart from spreading carnage, what would they have to do before they gained the ability to summon Daemons? What would the cost of summoning Daemons be, and how many rank-and-file Cultists would they need to sacrifice to summon a Bloodthirster?
They will need to learn the necessary rituals. If they can somehow get Khorne Daemonkin involved it gets much easier, since those are able to summon just by killing shit because their armies are structured in accordance to the Scriptures of Slaughter. Even the weakest Bloodthirsters will need tens of thousands of sacrifices. The stronger the offering, the less you will need.

Honestly, I'd just run this in DH 2e rather than GURPS, and say that they should all take the Hive World homeworld (unless the cult's founder arrived from another world), and the Outcast, Mutant, or Heretek backgrounds (barring a decent backstory reason for why someone involved in one of the pillars of the Imperium wound up in a Chaos cult in the Underhive).

The book Enemies Beyond has rules for daemonic summoning, daemon weapons, daemonhosts and possession, dark pacts, etc.

The Subtlety system in particular is something that'd be very useful for a game like this; you can use it as a barometer of how much information the authorities have on their activities.

The PDF would be well trained and equipped if the governor was a competent officer. They'd use real life military tactics and adapt to different situations, and call for help if needed before it's too late. They'd still have a lot of trouble stopping a swift, well-planned insurrection, if the cult can destroy their command centers in the Hive and take the palace before they can organize a response, the city will be practically theirs and the PDF will be forced to besiege the city.

OP here, thanks for answering!

> Khorne cares not for petty conquests, and daemonhood is a rare gift. Winning a battle against suicidal odds, slaughtering entire systems (exterminatus doesn't count) are the kind of things that would get you that much favor.
> Read the Tome of Blood from Black Crusade. But generally, humans are a product of circumstance, so the 'backstory' is the most important thing. One could worship Khorne for a variety of reasons.

Hmm, I'll keep that in mind, it'd be interesting to have the campaign morph from spreading a Hive Cult to slaughtering whole planets with a vast warband. I'll be sure to check out the Tome of Blood.

I don't know, probably just ordinary bionics, but spiked, bladed, and maybe Chaos corrupted.

I'll keep that in mind, my players would shit bricks if a Nurglite zombie outbreak popped up.

Like I said, I'm new to the lore, and wow, a handful of Eversors could probably wipe out a Marine Company in no time flat.

Good to know, I figure Space Marines would get involved once it reaches the scale of a full-on uprising, since there are only 40,000+ Hive Worlds in the Imperium, and potentially hundreds of billions of lives, not to mention the rest of the sector, would be endangered by it.

We're much more familiar with GURPS, but I'll look into it.

I was thinking along the same lines.

One of the players will be running a charismatic cult leader, one will be doing a typical kill-maim-burn berserker, and the last will be playing as a marksman obsessed with killing as many high-ranking officials and priests as possible. I don't foresee any problems with the first two, but does Khorne find sniping from a long distance away dishonorable?

Khorne enjoys face to face violence but he's just a cultist so it's all good.

dude no there are way more hive worlds than that
in regard to sniping khorne is a more melee guy but I think as long as the sniper is not hiding while sniping its good

>I don't foresee any problems with the first two, but does Khorne find sniping from a long distance away dishonorable?
He'd gain very little favor if that's all he does. Unless it was a sniper duel. Killing an unaware target with a single bullet is not even a fight, there is little violence or emotion involved. He wouldn't actively frown upon it, but he wouldn't pay much attention either.

Have you seen Fight Club? Do that.

This thread is the reason I love Veeky Forums

Much better than the shitfest that is the general.

desu if you're more comfortable with GURPS, just use it. It sounds like your game isn't going to depend on the system that much.

I'm actually GMing a game that's pretty similar to this, albeit with Slaanesh instead of Khorne. Honestly, if you want to run an entire campaign in a hive, I've found that reading the Necromunda rulebook as well as the Necromunda BL books helps a lot with generating ideas for factions and adventures and such. They also give you a good idea for what playing in a hive should feel like.

As for ideas about how Chaos and the Inquisition should work, I would recommend checking out the Chaos Daemons and Daemonhunters codexes. They've got some great fluff and insights into how those factions respectively operate.

I can post PDFs if you don't have any of these.

OP here again, again, thank you all for answering!

That makes sense, oneshotting enemies from obscene distances seems more Slaanesh than Khorne, luckily the player said he's fine with rapid-fire autoguns and makeshift explosives if sniping isn't Khornate enough.

I have not, I'll be sure to check it out. Also, isn't there a conspiracy theory that the main character Fight Club is actually Calvin as an adult, from the newspaper comic Calvin and Hobbes?

Glad you like the thread.

Slaanesh, huh? It's pretty neat you're GMing a game on the same premise, but with a different Chaos deity. If you don't mind, could you summarize how your campaign has gone so far? It would be useful to get another perspective on Underhive Heresy, and I might actually insert your campaign's cult into the game as a reference to this thread. I do not have any of those PDFs, if you were to post them, I would be forever in your debt.

Srry, some of these PDFs are too big, so I'm throwing them up on GoogleDrive. While that's uploading, have some more hive ganger art.

Not OP but somebody has to enlighten me, what the fuck is an eversor and how does one make one ?

wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Eversor_Temple

Many thanks friend.

Ok so the Officio Assassinorum has several flavors of assassins
the mains ones are the following
Callidus: use archeo tech to shape shift all chicks
Culexus Temple: blanks/psykers except times ten
Vindicare super snipers

The Eversor are not subtle
you hop a dude up on super roids and stims and have him killing everything that moves not telling friend from foe just full on rip and tear they explode when they die and are fucking terrifying
enough detail? i can elaborate

From Dataslate: Officio Assassinorum (pt 1)

>i can elaborate
sounds amazing, please do

pt 2

Final part

this good user did for me
as you can see eversors are fucking metal

Here you go, user:
drive.google.com/open?id=0B20ZFeyGKxcwR2x3b2hOMlRPR1U

The lore part of the Necromunda book starts on page 59. I also included some of the 40k role-playing books that you may find helpful.

OP here, I cannot possibly hope to thank you enough, just know that you have the undying gratitude of myself and my players.

Indeed. Makes me wonder why the Imperium hasn't assassinated Abaddon yet.

Always happy to help a fellow elegan/tg/entleman out. Was there anything in particular you wanted to know about the Slaanesh campaign, or just a general summary?

OP here, again, I appreciate this more than you can know. I'd like to hear a general summary of the campaign, but could you tell me a bit more about the Slaaneshi cult itself, so I could glean it for inspiration?

>Indeed. Makes me wonder why the Imperium hasn't assassinated Abaddon yet.
Because Abaddon is even more insane being the greatest swordsman in the galaxy and has a Primarch-killing claw + a sword that can 1-shot the Emperor.

because they can't get into the eye

So fucking metal, indeed

Sorry for the wait, I'm just pre-writing it on Notepad. Storytime is coming tho.

Oh no, take your time, I'm sure it will be more than worth the wait.

There's a fantasy flight book for playing chaos marines and I think their servants you could look to for inspiration. I forget the name but it's a fun system and will give you lots of lore.

Generally speaking they'll be starting off warring with and taking over other gangs.

They'll have to fight local mafia types as they go up the food chain too. Also running afoul of local law enforcement and corrupt enforcers.

Enforcers are basically police, planetary local organizations run by the governors government.

If they attract too much attention the enforcers might call in the arbites. Adeptus Arbites garrisons on hive world's are usually large. They make sure everything stays in line, and that includes the governor to an extent. Arbites are off world law, beholden to the imperium not the governor. They don't fuck around.

If things get bad enough the arbites and the PDF could go full purge. There's also the amusing possibility of local ministorum militias popping up if they find out its heresy taking over and if the hive is especially religious.

If you want to give your players an awful time a convent of SoB could even be on world.

Hope that helps some.

*Black Crusade

Another thing is the inquisition, of course.

There are a lot of ways to introduce them. For example; Acolytes could be there on a different mission and bump into some heresy early on. Acolytes would certainly be a threat but if they kill them all the inquisition itself may take a bit of time to react. Months to years before reinforcements arrive to finish the job.

Alternatively an acolyte group could come in, do reconnaissance and start working with local enforcers/arbites to ruin the players day at a more medium/large stage of the game.

If an actual inquisitor shows up thats big league shit.

I'll start with the campaign summary and then go into the Slaaneshi cult that is currently working in the hive. Sorry if this doesn't flow particularly well, but it's a very condensed summary.

So one of the first things I did when designing the campaign is to try and make it really Slaanesh-oriented; not just a hive campaign that happened to feature Slaanesh. Although Slaanesh is traditionally associated with sex and drugs on Veeky Forums, his predominate themes are those of temptation, seduction, subtle corruption, and wild excess. To this end, I've tried to incorporate these themes in the campaign as much as possible, even when Slaanesh isn't directly involved in the mission at hand. Ensalvement is also a major theme in the campaign. Slavery is legal in the hive, and people are taken from the underhive every day to fill quotas. However, the PCs have begun to find that many "free" people are just as enslaved, albeit to their own dark desires for power, riches, and fame rather than any human master.

The campaign takes place in a hive city that has felt the influence of Slaanesh for approximately ten thousand years thanks to some stuff that happened in the Horus Heresy. It's actually been subjected to several cleansings and purgations in its past due to the cults that seem to grow in the city like weeds, spreading their roots throughout society until the only option is to kill nearly everyone and recolonize the hive. However, these purgation events are sparce enough across the millenia that no one in the Inquisition has put figured this out yet, so the cycle continues unimpeded.

The PCs themselves are not actually Slaaneshi cultists, not yet anyway. However, all of them are prime targets for servants of the Dark Prince, and over the course of the campaign they've been and will continue to be tempted and corrupted in various ways. The PCs are:
>Elijah, a former missionary to the underhive who was seduced into chaos worship in his time down there. He eventually had an wake-up call and decided to turn his life around, so he now fights as an anti-chaos vigilante in the hive. However, those dark seeds of his past have remained with him and he may find himself drawn back into the life he left.
>Rhia, a former Administratum Adept who's also an unsanctioned psyker. She didn't realize her true power until she was put in a life-or-death situation and her powers manifested full force. Ever since then, she's been hiding out at a bar in the lower-hive and attempting to avoid any sort of official attention. Unfortunately for her, that outburst caught the attention of a Herald of Slaanesh, who's been stalking her ever since. It hasn't done much yet, but that will change as her corruption steadily increases.
>Tanda, a scion of a noble family who was kidnapped by her brother and sold to an arena to help pay some illicit (and possibly heretical) debts he owed. The formerly shy girl turned out to be exceptionally good at killing, and became one of the best gladiatrices of the arena, and was soon drunk on the fame, power, and drugs that this came with. However, she had a bit of a wake-up call after the arena became desperate for new combatants and began kidnapping innocents off the street to be slaughtered. She soon escaped the arena and has sworn off of that life and the carnal pleasures it came with, instead focusing on becoming a better person.

I've been running the campaign in a fairly open-ended style, wherein the PCs are generally allowed to do whatever they want. When they need money or xp, I keep a bunch of side missions written up, so they can ask for rumors and get some jobs to do. It's through these jobs that I've been telling the story, sprinkling in bits and pieces so the PCs get a sense of the bigger picture. As time has gone on, the overarching story has been playing a steadily larger role in each quest.

As for the story so far, ignoring the side-stories in the jobs, the PC's district of the hive has been steadily feeling the presence of a gang called The Fang, which, unbeknownst to them, is a front for a cult of Slaanesh. They usually show up with a few gangers led by a cloaked figure whose hand emits purple smoke and a musky, heady scent. The Fang has been sweeping through the district and collecting psykers and warp-touched individuals for a dark ritual they plan on performing soon. The PCs have been their target a few times, first as they tried to stop the cloaked figure from kidnapping people, and then as the Fang began hunting Rhia due to her being a psyker. Taking out this cloaked figure has proved to be tricky; if it places its smoking hand on someone else's exposed skin, their mind is quickly enraptured by intense pain and pleasure, putting them into a seizure.

There's also a noble named Kosan who's been running a Bernie Sanders-esque campaign to make the hive a better place. The PCs have begun picing together the truth, that he's actually a Lex Luthor-esque man and the mastermind behind all of the corruption in the hive and the man who's really in charge of the Fang. The PC's latest missions have started to feature this connection more, as they saved a noble who was shanghaid to a prison camp by Kosan due to being in the way of his plans. Kosan also sent a contracted hitwoman to make sure the noble's story ended in that camp, but the PCs managed to persuade her to let them go and just tell Kosan that she failed. Now that the PCs are looking to track her down to be a future contact and ally, they're going to find out that the Fang is hunting her down to extract repayment for her failure. This is where the connection between the Fang and Kosan should become fully clear to the PCs, as well as the increasing aggressivness of the Fang.

Now, in keeping with the theme of corruption, the Fang was not originally a cult of Slaanesh. Rather, it was more like an unofficial group of gangers and fighters who were working to keep the peace and maintain a functioning community in their corner of the hive. This brought lots of people under their banner in the poorly regulated lower hive. However, then Kosan sent them the cloaked figure, who is in reality a powerful renegade psyker who is dedicated to Slaanesh to seduce the upper echelons of the gang leadership. Now the formerly egalitarian gang has become far more aristocratic, with the leaders living lives of luxury on the backs of those beneath them. Kosan has been working to turn this psyker into an Isirith, a dark figure from the ancient myths of the hive world. However, the Isirith were real creatures, serpentine mutants who were former psykers transformed through a series of secretive and dark rituals, and renowned for their ability to corrupt even the most stalwart souls with ease. Most were killed when the Imperium arrived during the Great Crusade, but the rituals to create them were not lost, and now that Kosan has obtained them, he plans on creating several of them to aid in his efforts to corrupt both the hive world and the sector beyond.

As I stated before, the PCs aren't actually worshiping Slaanesh, but over the course of the campaign, I've been constantly presenting them with temptations that play into their character's weaknesses, and they're slowly slipping. The PCs will have the opportunity to stay on the path of righteousness, I'm not going to force them to be bad guys. But unlike most RPG campaigns, joining the antagonists is not only possible in this campaign, but actively encouraged. The PCs may end up defeating the Fang, and maybe even Kosan, only to find themselves replacing them soon after.

i kinda sounds like you are trying to force them to go evil

Not really forcing them to, but I'm strongly encouraging it. I'm not punishing them for being good guys, but the dark side keeps offering cookies.

I've never heard of that conspiracy theory, but Fight Club is basically how a khornate cult starts and grows. Also, a classic film.

This was an enjoyable thread.

Thats a pretty good plot you have set up there.

Fight Club is about self perfection, but I suppose there's also a primal violence element. I dunno, I'd say it's a blend of Khorne and Slaanesh.