Owlcat Games has shared the first development diary for its upcoming game Warhammer 40k: Dark Heresy with press, and revealed that a truly out there villain from the original Dark Heresy tabletop RPG will make its return. The Tyrant Star is an impossible entity, a stellar body that appears and disappears in the skies of worlds within the Imperium, spreading madness and killing billions – and it’s going to be your job to deal with it.
Just like Owlcat’s first Warhammer 40k CRPG, Rogue Trader, Dark Heresy is an adaptation of an out-of-print Warhammer 40k RPG of the same name. The new development diary confirms that it will take place in the TTRPG’s Calixis sector, a dark corner of the Imperium of Man that Games Workshop portioned off for the creators (originally at its own Black Industries imprint, and then at Fantasy Flight Games) to fill with horrors.
The Tyrant Star was one such nasty, a truly Lovecraftian phenomenon that was described in the core rulebook. This threat is so massive that you might this it could only ever be a setting detail – how do a group of PCs fight a star? But uncovering the mysteries of the Tyrant Star was a key plot line for the Haarlock’s Legacy campaign. If the players made it to the end of the third volume they would even come face to face with its true master…
Owlcat has proven ability producing colossal original stories – one reason that Rogue Trader is one of the best Warhammer 40k games on PC – so we doubt that it will be simply rehashing the Haarlock’s Legacy story. It might remix the details (40k’s approach to canon is quite malleable), or the new game could be set after that campaign, and reveal what the canonical ending was – nothing good, knowing Warhammer 40k.
The development diary confirms that Dark Heresy will be completely separate from Rogue Trader, despite sharing a game engine. Rather than an ostentatious merchant prince(ss) with near infinite wealth, you’ll be a down at heel and extremely deniable Inquisitorial acolyte, pursuing covert investigations into the hidden corruption within Imperial society. Owlcat promises a “gritty detective style story”.
Like Rogue Trader you’ll have moral choices to make, only this time the moral axis is between Puritan and Radical – sticking to the letter of the Imperial Creed, or making pragmatic use of the weapons of the enemy, at risk to your soul…
Owlcat can’t resist a mini-game, and in this case it’s going to be the ‘Investigation’ mechanic, that lets you “investigate crimes, analyze evidence, and dispense verdicts”. And apparently feedback from fans has lead to revisions to combat encounters and the class progression system.
Did you play the original Dark Heresy, or are you enjoying either of the current 40k RPGs from Cubicle 7? Have you sunk hundreds of hours into Rogue Trader? Come and share your table stories in the Wargamer Discord community.
There’s another exciting 40k RPG on the horizon – check out our interview with Dominic McDowall-Thomas, CEO at Cubicle7, about the upcoming Horus Heresy RPG.