The intro adventure features a spaceport on a typically ruined world and a Temple that serves as the main point of the story. In the book the town is pretty bland but there is an inkeeper of sorts who creeps people out and has rejuv treatments. Nothing more is done with him, so I thought i'd jazz that up and use the Dark Eldar in suitably small numbers. I also thought it might be fun for the players, as they inexorably leave for the temple (they don't need to return), to escape a Dark Eldar raid they couldn't otherwise defeat, a bit like the scene at the start of Serenity where the Reavers attack the town.

The innkeeper is called Theon (or possibly Theron, proofreading notwithstanding). I figured he might be supplying souls to an outrider group of Kabalites (two pc's couldn't go toe to toe with an Archon or a full raiding party, and maybe not even 2 kabalites armed with splinter rifles!). That's how he gets his rejuv treatments.

So really I'm wondering how to make this a fun encounter without overwhelming the players. The Dark Eldar shouldn't be able to attack the Temple otherwise the adventure comes to a crashing halt. It's a chaos temple anyway so they would probably not care or woudl rather just avoid it. Maybe it can defend itself, the book describes weird creatures, Horrors, flying over the Temple.

I would suggest that if you really want them to run from it, and not fight it out, you have to go a lot bigger than a tiny, tiny handful of dudes (I see options for two or possibly three).

Yes, I know an archon is a badass. I'm sure you can make two or three dudes bad ass enough to stomp a party of even mid to high level player characters.

But your goal is to make them run and hide. For that you need numbers.  Think more like thirty or forty dark eldar, with three or four vehicles in support, or one big vehicle in support.  The point of the raid is to overwhelm, not to showcase one guy with Godmode active that results in a TPK or players feeling railroaded and small in the pants.

An interesting thing came up.

The players know about Dark Eldar, because I have told them in telling them about the setting. I have no problem with that; 40k isn't an occult setting, the info is out there and I welcome players that make the effort to learn it.

But would heretics necessarily know 'its the dark eldar'. Or whoever.

I decided not, though I'm not sure why. It seemd rather trite to say 'it's the dark eldar' presumably 'doing their dark eldar thing'. I'm not sure this worked.

Based on the fair number of books I've read set in 40k, I'd say that it seems highly likely that the players (heretics or not) would not consider 'Dark Eldar' as a thing.   RT largely refers to Cabals of Eldars that are clearl DE, but the term itself doesn't come up.

With a high enough Forbidden Lore: Eldar skill (or whatever) you might be able to let the players grasp the fundamental difference between the two, but 'Dark Eldar' itself seems like a purely Meta-label for the purposes of selling army books.

Quote from: Spike;554997Based on the fair number of books I've read set in 40k, I'd say that it seems highly likely that the players (heretics or not) would not consider 'Dark Eldar' as a thing.   RT largely refers to Cabals of Eldars that are clearl DE, but the term itself doesn't come up.

With a high enough Forbidden Lore: Eldar skill (or whatever) you might be able to let the players grasp the fundamental difference between the two, but 'Dark Eldar' itself seems like a purely Meta-label for the purposes of selling army books.

That's fine, but I think I'm just going to tell them it was the Dark Eldar. I won't go into huge detail about DE society (even though this, like everything else, is common knowledge that players can easily find if they don't already know). This is because it's just too unwieldy trying to describe and create a sense of mystery that actually works. Strange vampiric aliens may seem cool, but when noone really knows what's what you run the risk of just leaving the players cold, even if it's reasonable.

Of course having an npc respond to them, when asked who these people are, "it's the dark eldar!" seems very twee. A bit like a cop asking who mugged you and you responding "it was Caucasians officer!" It seems a bit overwrought and just...weird.

Not really sure how to play it, but I think that trying to pretend the pc's don't know who exactly the DE are (and that isn't really germaine to the story anyway) while the players do or at least can know (at least one of them has learned about them, if not from the info i gave them when we stared with 40k, from their rooting aroudn the web). It's very easy to tie everything up in silly knots as a GM when trying to preserve or create an aura of mystery.

As it turned out the two kabalites that attacked them didn't stand much of a chance: their attack rolls were useless. I chose not to use the splinter rifles (they started armed with thei rknives and didn't even get to change weapons before dying) because the Toxic effect is brutal (pass a Tgh test at -40 or take an extra d10 damage!). On the other hand chainswords with the Tearing quality are fucking harsh! I think the fight was evenly balanced, just poor rolling on their part. As a result they now have a Splinter Rifle, which leaves me wondering if such weapons are useable by 'foreigners' (iirc, it's not so esoteric you couldn't just pull the trigger - but then who knows the DE are the sort that would booby trap their toys).

Well, like I said, give 'em a cabal name.  Instead of saying you were mugged by dark Eldar you were mugged by the Cabal of the Precious Ponies (I charge for the cool names....).

Like I said: A difference between craftworld eldar and non-craftworld eldar is a sort of 'known thing', but the exact socio-political differences (pathfinders, vs craftworld vs 'dark' eldar of commorragh etc) should be something a bit more arcane.

Like, um... (try the seventh metaphor on for size...)... explaining OD&D vs 4E vs 3E to a guy who mostly plays WFB.  He might realize there are real differences there, but don't expect him to really understand the ins and outs or accurately guess a random slob's favorite edition, eh?