Part One: The Imperium of Man
Mike Mason: If Warhammer 40,000 is about anything at all, it is about the struggle of mankind in the dark distant future. It is the story of man’s fight for survival against a galaxy of horror, shadow and corruption. Where better to set a roleplaying game?

Those familiar with Warhammer 40,000 will know that in the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium, mankind stands against a tide of foes from within and from without; be they vile aliens, mutant abominations or the unknown terrors of the warp. We wanted to ensure that Dark Heresy would encompass as much of the majesty and spectacle that is Warhammer 40,000, drawing together as much of the flavour of the setting as possible. We also had to ensure that Dark Heresy, being a game, was eminently playable.

A key concern was to be able to offer a game that could be played to support differing playing styles, whether it be fast-paced, deadly combat, political intrigue and hidden conspiracy, or the slow-creep of horror. Whilst most gaming groups might turn to different game systems for a ‘change of pace’, swapping rules and books in order to change the mood of their games, we wanted Dark Heresy to be able to accommodate them all. Thus you’ll find deadly combat rules, mechanics for investigating gossip and knowledge and procedures for Fear, Insanity and Corruption.

Back to the setting. Why the Inquisition? Well, who better to delve into the things that hide in the shadows, confront the alien and heretic, and purge the unclean? Of all of the many organisations that comprise the Imperium of Man, the Inquisition alone has the power, authority and imperative to travel between worlds, seek out trouble and deal with heresy wherever it is found. Inquisitorial agents are not bound by the ties that hold the rest of the populace down, able to draw upon resources unthinkable to most; finding and fighting the enemies of the Imperium is their job. In some cases, acolytes of the Inquisition might have even more freedom than their Inquisitor masters, able to go undercover and infiltrate under-hive gangs, cults and criminal organisations in order to pursue their master’s agenda.

Keeping to our original tenet of wanting to include as much of the flavour of Warhammer 40,000 as we could, we wanted to cover some of the iconic Warhammer 40,000 careers; giving players the opportunity to not only play hive gangers and Guardsmen, but also arbitrators, tech-priests, adepts, psykers, assassins and members of the Ecclesiarchy. Whilst we envisaged that most gaming groups would comprise of a mix of these careers, we also knew that there would be Game Masters and players alike who have long dreamt of running a hive-scum campaign or a game based upon a close-knit cadre of PDF troopers or the like. Whilst the official setting does presume that player characters will be acolytes of the Ordos Calixis, the rules are flexible, enabling GMs to take their game-stories in tangent directions. I think GMs intending to do this very thing will be pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to mould the game into whatever they want it to be. Newer GMs and players will, of course, have everything they need to start roleplaying from the get-go.

Part Two: Career Paths
Dark Heresy’s character generation system allows for a great amount of variation and customisation. Whilst it, and much of the ‘base’ game system will be familiar to players of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Dark Heresy is very much it’s own man (so to speak), being an evolution of the WFRP ruleset. Key additions include the development of Corruption and Insanity Points, tweaks to Characteristics and the Stat Line (including the addition of Perception), fine-tuning combat to allow for such things as Overwatch and automatic fire, and not forgetting a full rules for handling Dark Pacts - although this course of action is not for the faint-hearted!

Whilst the Career system will initially appear familiar to Warhammer Fantasy players, it also is remarkably different. Andy Hall, designer of the Career Paths chapter explains:

Andy Hall: There’s always been a grey area regarding how the subjects of the Emperor progress within the confines of their occupation. Indeed, it was unknown if a populace who has grown up in a dogmatic, socially stagnant state would even be aware of anything beyond their hereditary roles. Of course the point is, that for the vast majority of the Emperor’s subjects, that is exactly the case. They will grow-up spending their lives in whatever role the Adeptus Terra has ‘fashioned’ for them, day in, day out, before shuffling off the mortal coil - content with their lot in life and blissfully ignorant of the dangers surrounding their little piece of the galaxy. But then such a person would never appear on an Inquisitor’s radar in the first place.

No, an Acolyte must have come into some form of contact with an Inquisitor in the first place, putting him (or her) into two broad categories: either i) they are already in a role that has precipitated an engagement with the Inquisitor, such as an assassin, scum or a soldier; or ii) the Acolyte is of a rare breed, those that have (perhaps subconsciously) shunned the dogmatic regime, having a desire to learn - curious about the universe and their place within it. Candidates of the second category have abilities that an Inquisitor is always seeking. You also have a third category, which is the mixture of the two; indeed most of the Career Paths in Dark Heresy are formed from this third category. A character will be an Acolyte because they are far above the ‘average’. They are probably vaguely aware of the dangers that the galaxy holds and do not necessarily blindly trust what an average Imperial Citizen takes on faith. As well as the philosophical, they will also have tangible field skills that an Inquisitor can put to use in the service of the Emperor.

It was this thinking that broadly informed us when deciding on which Career Paths to include in Dark Heresy. Many were left out of the short list and there was much debate before we finally decided on the final eight. The selection as published gives a good, broad base of differing skills and talents with each career representing a distinct type, often with a distinct viewpoint or position within the Imperium. An Inquisitorial cell containing a mix of these Career Paths should prove capable of dealing with most of the situations that a GM will throw at them. No doubt some, if not all of the ‘dropped’ Career Paths will make a return at a later date.

Part Three: The Inquisition
Mike Mason: A fair amount of speculation has arisen about how the Inquisition will be represented in Dark Heresy. For example, whether the game will focus purely on Ordo Hereticus investigations. I’m happy to put this speculation to rest by stating that Dark Heresy does indeed provide background and context for all of the major Ordos (Xenos, Hereticus and Malleus) plus provides insight into some of the specific secrets of the Ordos Calixis and their fascination with the ‘doom’ known as the Hereticus Tenebrae. Whilst the GM (and players) can decide which Ordo they serve, I imagine that for some groups a whole layer of mystery will be added by keeping the exact nature and politics of the group’s Inquisitor a secret. Some Inquisitors will, no doubt, be quite open about their allegiances and Ordo ‘membership’, however, others will find that secrecy is an essential tool in their dealings with their ‘employees’. Apart from investigating and confronting numerous threats, the player-acolytes, as the game progresses, may piece together information about their master, his outlook and goals. Sometimes the acolytes might not like what they find…

The setting of Dark Heresy is detailed across four key chapters: The Game Master, Life in the Imperium, The Inquisition and The Calixis Sector. Life in the Imperium provides an overview of the culture, organisations and various threats to the Imperium of Man, whilst The Inquisition chapter looks closely at each of the major Ordos, their allies, traditions and methods of operation. Making-up the largest chapter (in terms of word count) is The Calixis Sector, providing detail on the major planets, people and history of the sector, as well as, key power groups like the great houses, Imperial institutions and the Ordos Calixis (providing backgrounds for ten very difference Inquisitors). This chapter, particularly, is an excellent springboard in to numerous adventures threads and plots, and provides the bridge between the rulebook and the online Calixis Sector guide.

Naturally, being a distinctly secretive organisation, not every detail about the Ordos Calixis is revealed in Dark Heresy. Indeed, many new secrets, conspiracies and factions will be revealed in future Dark Heresy supplements.

Part Four: Skills and Talents
Skills in Dark Heresy were designed by Andrew Kenrick, whilst T.S. Luikart designed a plethora of Talents. Here, both of the guys describe how they approached the work.

Andy Kenrick: Writing the Skills chapter posed some unique problems, because it not only had to convey the rules, but also had to give an impression of the various Skills in terms of the setting. If the emphasis is placed too much either way then the chapter could have ended up as a dry list of rules with no connection to the Warhammer 40,000 universe, or, perhaps worse, a ‘flowery’ background chapter that obscured the rules for the skills themselves.

A good starting point was the skills chapter in the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay rulebook, which opted for short, punchy skill descriptions. I adapted this style somewhat, expanding the one-line description into a slightly more substantial paragraph that included examples where the skill might be useful, specific to the Warhammer 40,000 setting and the role the acolytes have within it.

Certain Skills are grouped into distinct types, for example Investigation and Interaction. Investigation Skills are the essential backbone for Inquisitorial scrutiny and clue gathering, and a guide to using such Skills details the differing complexity levels, test difficulties and time required. Broadly speaking, the Skills described range from the mundane Basic Skills like Awareness, Climb and Intimidate, to more esoteric ones like Forbidden Lore, Psyniscience and Tech-Use - all of which are highly desirable for any acolyte character to have.

As with every aspect of the game, it was important to make the skills feel as though they belonged in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, and not any other setting. I think we pulled this off - when you look at your character sheet and see skills such as Psyniscience, Medicae or Forbidden Lore (Xenos), you know you can only be playing Dark Heresy!

T.S. Luikart: Black Industries more or less publicly let on that Dark Heresy’s RPG engine was ‘built’ using Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay as a starting point. While that is true, Dark Heresy is an entirely different beast than WFRP. Sometimes, the smallest changes to mechanics can create a world of difference in how a game plays.

Case in point: let me tell you about one of my favourite Talents. It’s called Hardcore. Well it was called ‘Hardcore’ at any rate. That’s what I called it. BI made me change its name. Apparently, Hardcore means different things to different people and Dark Heresy is poised to make its way into a fairly wide number of countries (and languages) so it ended up being called Combat Master. So what does Combat Master do? No matter how outnumbered acolytes with the Combat Master talent may be, their opponents get no bonuses for outnumbering them. If you’re brand new to Dark Heresy that may not sound like much, but trust me, if you were an old WFRP player, your jaw may have just sagged a bit. Combat in WFRP is all about taking advantage of an opponent (or being taken advantage of!) and outnumbering a foe is one of the surest ways of bringing an enemy down.

Not always in Dark Heresy.

A simple change, but one that can make a ‘combat character’ far more effective in holding off masses of heretics, xeno scum and cultist hordes as befits the bloodstained glories of the 41st Millennium. There are a wide number of other Talents with similar small changes that result in an extremely different game. Spoilt for choice is what your PCs are going to be.

So remember many months from now, when your acolyte is getting swarmed by dozens of feral warriors, you look your GM in the eye and tell ‘em, “No combat bonuses for them, I’m Hardcore!”

Part Five: Psychic Powers
My name is T.S. Luikart and I’ve been involved with Dark Heresy pretty much from its inception … this would be the point where most game designer’s notes start waxing on about how they became involved in said project, offering up various endearing personal anecdotes showing how much they love said RPG, etc. However, you guys have been waiting for this game so long I suspect that even if I announced I was a devout worshiper of the Architect of Fate and that playing Dark Heresy would invariably lead you to drooling damnation, you would likely still read on. Thus with the understanding the Changer of the Ways now has a trifling lien on your soul, let us talk of psykers.

Psykers for those few of you new to the Warhammer 40,000 universe, are those souls who can channel the power of the warp - that unseen dimension of emotion-charged energy that lurks beyond the skin of realspace, into a wide variety of supernatural effects. By force of will, psykers can start fires, move objects, read minds and divine the future. Their unnatural abilities bear a heavy cost though - by drawing upon their psychic powers they become a potential conduit into the physical universe for both uncontrolled energy from the immaterium (one of the warp’s many names) and a number of dangerous predatory entities that lurk within the warp.

Psykers have few friends, with good reason. Even their closest allies have to accept the fact that they may one day be forced to put a bolt round through the back of the psyker’s skull and if (Ha! When!) that day arrives, a second’s hesitation born of undue sentimentality could mean doom for an entire world. With all this in mind, I set about laying the groundwork for how psychic powers would operate in Dark Heresy: they would be dangerous to face but also dangerous to use.

When psykers invoke their powers, they roll a number of dice varied by just how powerful of a psyker they are and aided by the force of their wills. Yes, it is possible to be powerful in psychic ability, but weak willed. A very dangerous prospect, to be sure. If they beat the Threshold of the power they’re invoking, it activates. Many psychic powers grant a range of additional effects if the psyker’s roll beats the Threshold by a significant amount, allowing a powerful psyker to get far more out of a given ability than a lesser one can. It also ensures that psychic abilities remain useful throughout a Player Character’s (PC) entire career and since psykers get access to only a handful of abilities (and what hard choices that can make for!) this was an essential component of the system. I tried my best to make every Psychic Discipline tree desirable and my fellow designers helped to do a whopping good job of making them all amazingly useful. I’m especially proud of the Divination Discipline. Traditionally, I’ve noticed Diviners tend to get the short end of the stick in RPGs. Wait until you see what Divine Shot and Precognitive Dodging will do for you.

Now the dangerous stuff; when any of the dice rolled to invoke a psychic power come up as an 9, a Psychic Phenomena occurs - roll d100 to find out what terror has been unleashed. Everything 74 and below is bad, but not fatal. 75 and above necessitates a roll on the Perils of the Warp table and the potential for very bad things to happen…

The Perils of the Warp chart would be the one wherein the psyker can seriously injure and/or kill himself along with everyone around him (for instance, all the other acolytes in the vicinity) in a furious burst of Warp energy. The various entries on the Perils table are the work of many designers; I’m fairly fond of Blood Rain though Mass Possession is good for a laugh. For the GM, I mean.

In the end, it wasn’t enough that Non Player Characters should fear the psyker - every other PC (and the player behind him or her) had to as well. I suspect that some groups might have serious discussions about whether or nor they’re willing to tolerate the presence of a psyker… which is just as it should be.

Part Six: Adding Some Grim Darkness to the Far Future
Alan Bligh and John French are a double act, writing team who designed Dark Heresy’s Insanity and Corruption rules, as well as producing the guidelines for Dark Pacts. Here, Alan and John describe the process they went through.

Alan Bligh and John French: The 41st Millennium, to misquote a popular saying, is a good place to have an adventure but you wouldn’t want to live there. It a place of grim struggle and unimaginably savage conflict, a place where living nightmares come crawling out of the darkness to feast. It is also a place of far more subtle but no less dangerous perils, where ambition, intrigues and temptation all hold their own terrible risks, and where the forbidden is forbidden not just because the powers-that-be say so, but because some knowledge is so dangerous it can not only burn your soul, but perhaps spell the death of millions if unleashed.

Dark Heresy is a game centred at its heart around those who fight the shadow wars against all the terrible dangers that threaten to overwhelm mankind from without and within. We call these ‘lucky’ few, be they sanctioned psykers or underhive scum, the Imperium’s best or just caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, acolytes - a catch all term for the myriad servants and agents of the Inquisition. One of our challenges was to come up with a unified framework by which all the horrors of the dark and murderous cosmos, both insidious and cataclysmic could work their spiritual and mental ills on unfortunate acolytes.

A Number of Very Bad Things
In the milieu of Dark Heresy there are many truths and horrors that can shatter people’s minds and contact with them can (and does) change people in ways that can be horrifically obvious or insidiously subtle. In designing Dark Heresy we were very keen to reflect the very bad things that the universe could do to a fragile human mind, coming up with three broad categories:

• The affect on the mind of confronting horrors and terrible truths.
• The corrupting effects of contact with Chaos and the warp.
• The fall of a character through voluntary damnation.

Together these three categories make up some of the unique flavour of playing Dark Heresy and the effects they could produce in characters were some of the features we were most exited about getting to grips with. Our answer was a new threefold mechanic linking together Fear, Insanity and Corruption. One of the ideas we were most keen on was that these three aspects would be inextricably linked and progressive, in fact almost ‘telescopic’ in effect. For example, a frightening event or encounter would have immediate consequences in the ‘here and now’ of the game, but, after the encounter was over, it might in turn lead to lasting psychological trauma and perhaps even permanent erosion of the character’s mind. Depending on the nature of the experience, the Acolyte might become tainted with the corrupting power of the warp. The system’s structure we have used has the effect that shock is relatively common, trauma moderately so and long term disorders rarer.

Fear, Insanity and Corruption in Action: The Man with No Face
Mesmer is an acolyte, part of a team investigating a series of murders on Baraspine where cult activity is suspected. Mesmer is helping to search a reputedly haunted and abandoned hab-stack at the edge of the underhive. He enters a wrecked hab to find a man in tattered preacher’s robes standing in the corner with his back to him. Mesmer challenges the preacher, who then turns to reveal a ragged wound where his face should be, and holds out blood-drenched hands as the sounds of ghostly crackling flames fill the air…

In game terms, this situation calls for a Fear Test. Mesmer’s player fails the Test and rolls for the effects of Shock, with a modifier to his roll imposed by the severity of his failure. This results in Mesmer immediately collapsing from shock and an amount of inflicted ‘mental damage’ in the form of Insanity Points. Because the Insanity was brought about by a warp entity (the faceless preacher is in fact an Astral Spectre), Mesmer receives a number of Corruption Points as well. Depending on Mesmer’s relative level of Insanity, he may fall into a traumatised state that impairs him for hours or even days afterward, and might even gain a long term disorder appropriate to his experiences - such as vivid nightmares or a profound phobia of pictures showing people turned away from him, fearing when he looks away, they will turn to watch him with their empty faces.

His fellow Acolytes find Mesmer seconds later unconscious on the floor of the hab, muttering and shivering with unaccountable bloody hand prints on his face. The team’s sanctioned Psyker determines with her warp senses that something has passed this way moments before. Clearly more is going on in Baraspine’s slums than the activities of some petty cult…

Acolytes have two ‘hidden’ characteristics right from the start that track their slide into madness and warp taint respectively: Insanity Points and Corruption Points. The number of Insanity and Corruption Points that a character has determines what (if any) other effects also come to bear upon the character, as well as helping to determine their chance of developing permanent disorders, malignancies of the soul or even spontaneous mutations. It is of course possible to recover to some degree from mental trauma given the opportunity, however warp taint is a different matter and having gone so far into shadow, the temptation for some will be to embrace the darkness…

Importantly we wanted the effects of Insanity and Corruption to be characterful and profound, but not overwhelming or overly mechanistic. Our aim with this system was to provide GMs with a valuable and flexible tool set. A bespoke system easily modified to suit the flavour of your games and broken down into convenient blocks, which can be used (or not) as you wish, placing control in the hands the GM (and to some degree the players too) over what occurs to the acolyte’s mind and soul as a result of the horrors of Dark Heresy.

Damnation the New Old Fashioned Way
One set of options we came up with that you’ll find in Dark Heresy, (which I’m sure will surprise some) allows for acolytes to enter into their own pacts with the Ruinous Powers and other agencies of darkness. These pacts are not, I hasten to add, ‘marks of chaos’ or fealty in the usual sense, but rather secret Faustian bargains, achieving some heartfelt end such as vengeance, forbidden knowledge or even as an attempt to gain some measure of control over the inexorable corruption of their very souls. Dark Pacts represent another optional layer of the game, an added realm of high-stakes opportunity and a huge risk for your characters; a roller-coaster ride with an inevitably bleak outcome, but guaranteeing a great adventure along the way!

By the Quality of their Enemies will you Know them
One of the other sections of the design of Dark Heresy in which we were very heavily involved in was the Aliens, Heretics and Antagonists chapter, which also of course was inextricably linked to the Fear, Insanity and Corruption system. This chapter is intended principally to provide budding Dark Heresy GMs with a plethora of useful Non Player Characters, creatures and entities from beyond for use in their games. The sections entries are closely linked to the worlds and encounters common within Dark Heresy’s Calixis Sector (rather than offering a somewhat clunky and less useful ‘A’ is for aardvark, ‘T’ is for Tau approach), and should offer a wealth of options. There are literally dozens of entries here featuring everything from the Astropath to the Heretek, and the Scribe to Servitor Drone by way of potential antagonists. While the aliens include a variety hazardous (or useful) flora and fauna ranging from the familiar such as the Grox or the Brain Leaf, to singular new creatures such as Dusk’s deadly Nightwing. The last section in this chapter deals with the denizens of the warp, ranging from Unclean Spirits to the savage Charnel Daemon, and we couldn’t resist fitting in a couple of the warp’s most terrible creations in the shape of horrific and malevolent Daemonhosts and the appallingly dangerous Psychneuein. While the entries in this section are by no means exhaustive of the huge range of possibilities inherent in the Warhammer 40,000 background, it’s our hope that with these examples and the full range of creature Traits this chapter provides, that GMs will have all they need to create their own NPCs, xenos and warp entities and be able to excise their own creativity to the full.

Well that wraps up these brief notes from us detailing our efforts to make sure Dark Heresy lived up to its title and we hope that you enjoy the dark delights we have laid out for you.