The Campaign Premise
A Galaxy Nearing War
The Shattered Imperium begins in the closing years of the 41st Millennium, shortly before Abaddon the Despoiler launches his Thirteenth Black Crusade.
The Cadian Gate remains one of the Imperium’s greatest defenses against the forces gathering within the Eye of Terror. Cadia’s armies, fortress cities, orbital defenses, and ancient pylons guard the passage, but the threat is not yet fully understood.
Across the galaxy, warning signs are increasing. Chaos warbands are moving. Cult activity is spreading. Weapons, relics, and navigational data are changing hands through hidden networks. Astropathic messages speak of broken gates, black suns, and worlds consumed by impossible storms.
Most people see only isolated crises.
Few understand that these events are beginning to converge.
Five Doors Into the Campaign
Players may begin at one of five locations, each offering a different style of adventure and a different view of the approaching war.
Gate of Arrival — Cadia
The Gate of Arrival introduces players directly to the defenses of Cadia.
Characters may arrive as soldiers, pilgrims, officers, investigators, smugglers, psykers, Tech-Priests, abhumans, mercenaries, or travelers seeking entry to the fortress world.
Early adventures may involve military inspections, missing supplies, cult investigations, sabotage, border attacks, pylon disturbances, political rivalries, or preparations for an invasion that Imperial authorities are not yet ready to acknowledge.
Scavenger’s Rest — Necromunda
Scavenger’s Rest lies within Necromunda’s dangerous underhive.
Characters may begin as gangers, bounty hunters, mutants, hive scum, deserters, smugglers, mercenaries, rogue psykers, or agents operating under false authority.
Early adventures may involve gang warfare, salvage expeditions, criminal contracts, mutant infestations, industrial sabotage, corrupt Enforcers, Genestealer activity, or lost technology buried beneath the hive.
Local weapons shipments, cult cells, missing personnel, and forbidden relics may eventually connect Necromunda to the wider war.
Krell’Sharr Platform — Kroot Trading Post
Krell’Sharr Platform is an independent station visited by Kroot mercenaries, xenos merchants, smugglers, voidfarers, human renegades, and representatives of factions that cannot meet openly elsewhere.
Characters may begin as Kroot hunters, T’au operatives, human mercenaries, Rogue Trader agents, escaped captives, bounty hunters, alien travelers, or members of temporary alliances.
Early adventures may involve trade disputes, bounty contracts, pirate attacks, hunting expeditions, forbidden cargo, missing ships, xenos diplomacy, mercenary recruitment, or ancient biological specimens.
Krell’Sharr offers the easiest starting point for mixed Imperial and xenos parties.
Hall of Supplication — Medrengard
The Hall of Supplication stands on Medrengard, the fortress daemon world of the Iron Warriors.
Characters may begin as Chaos warriors, cultists, mutants, slaves, renegades, prisoners, mercenaries, or Dark Mechanicum agents.
Early adventures may involve siege trials, warband rivalries, slave revolts, daemonic incursions, fortress infiltration, relic forging, political executions, or recruitment into the coming Black Crusade.
A Medrengard campaign may support the invasion, undermine it, exploit it, or turn against it.
The Imperator Illuminatio — Inquisition Vessel
The Imperator Illuminatio is an Inquisitorial vessel operating beyond ordinary Imperial authority.
Characters may begin as acolytes, prisoners, specialists, sanctioned xenos, Deathwatch operatives, Tech-Priests, psykers, assassins, or individuals offered service instead of execution.
Early adventures may involve boarding operations, cult investigations, interrogations, relic recovery, covert missions, daemonic outbreaks, planetary quarantines, or internal betrayal.
This starting location can quickly connect the party to any other campaign region.
The Gathering Threads
The five starting locations are separate entrances into the same changing galaxy.
A relic recovered on Necromunda may match an artifact held by the Inquisition. A Kroot mercenary may have witnessed Chaos fleet movements near the Eye of Terror. A warband on Medrengard may receive orders concerning Cadia. A missing Imperial officer may have passed through the Gate of Arrival before disappearing.
The larger campaign is shaped by four pressures:
The gathering Thirteenth Black Crusade
The destabilization of the Cadian Gate
A hidden Tzeentchian conspiracy
Growing conflict between Imperial, Chaos, and xenos powers
These forces connect adventures without requiring every group to follow the same sequence.
One party may discover the conspiracy early. Another may remain focused on survival, relic hunting, mercenary work, hive warfare, or voidship missions until the wider conflict reaches them.
The war remains a living background rather than a mandatory quest line.
Adventures Before the Siege
Players should have time to explore, gain allies, collect equipment, build reputations, and choose loyalties before the full invasion begins.
Adventures may include:
Exploring ruins beneath a fortress city
Hunting Warp-mutated creatures
Recovering lost Imperial technology
Escorting pilgrims through a war zone
Investigating disappearances aboard a voidship
Entering a space hulk
Negotiating with Kroot mercenaries
Stealing weapons from a rival warband
Exposing or joining a Chaos cult
Defending a settlement from raiders
Tracking a rogue psyker
Recovering a sacred relic
Sabotaging military infrastructure
Escaping Imperial custody
Investigating unstable pylons
Deciding which faction receives a powerful artifact
Smaller adventures remain important even when they do not immediately affect Cadia. A settlement saved, an enemy created, or a relic recovered may shape the campaign much later.
Player Freedom and Consequences
Players may serve the Imperium, oppose it, cooperate with it temporarily, or avoid it when possible. They may work with xenos, join renegades, bargain with Chaos, infiltrate hostile groups, or form alliances that would normally be forbidden.
Franz should not automatically block unusual choices.
Instead, those choices should produce believable consequences.
Known xenos may be denied entry to Imperial territory. Mutants may face persecution. Chaos-marked characters may be hunted. Loyalists may be punished for cooperating with heretics. Renegades may lose access to Imperial supplies. Criminal groups may exploit unpaid debts. Dangerous patrons may demand repayment for forbidden aid.
Consequences should create new choices rather than simply end the story.
A denied entry may lead to smuggling, negotiation, disguise, blackmail, or another route. An enemy may later become an uneasy ally. A betrayal may solve one problem while creating several more.
The Fate of Cadia
Cadia stands at the center of the coming war, but its fate is not fixed.
If the players do nothing significant, events may move toward the established destruction of Cadia and the breaking of the Cadian Gate.
The characters may change that outcome by exposing traitors, strengthening defenses, recovering lost technology, preserving the pylons, destroying key commanders, rescuing important leaders, misleading enemy fleets, or turning rival Chaos forces against one another.
They may also help destroy Cadia, abandon it to save another world, or replace the expected disaster with something entirely different.
Saving Cadia should require extraordinary effort, sacrifice, difficult alliances, and several major victories. It should never depend on a single ordinary quest.
Cadia’s fall also does not automatically mean the campaign has failed. The characters may rescue survivors, preserve relics, avenge the dead, establish new defenses, or continue fighting in a galaxy transformed by the disaster.
What the Campaign Is About
The Shattered Imperium is about individuals struggling within conflicts far larger than themselves.
It is about soldiers defending walls built by forgotten generations, outcasts finding purpose beyond the control of great institutions, and relics whose original meanings have been lost to fear and worship.
It is about impossible alliances, costly victories, corruption, loyalty, ambition, and the consequences of choosing who deserves to survive.
The Thirteenth Black Crusade is approaching.
Cadia may fall.
History may continue as it was written—or be shattered by the actions of the players.