Following the events at Delta Rail Station, an unnatural blight spreads through Raqcity 7’s lower levels. This isn’t mere industrial decay—it’s a living nightmare infused with Nurgle’s perverse gifts. The characters must locate and contain the source before it consumes the entire hive, transforming it into the Plague Father’s personal garden of rot.
Key Themes
Escalating Horror: Each act increases the supernatural threat
Environmental Menace: The location itself becomes the enemy
Psychological Decay: Despair and false joy corrupt the soul
Limited Resources: Every decision matters in this hostile environment
Background & Mission Brief
The Situation
The air in Raqcity 7 has grown thick with a cloying, sweet stench that mingles industrial waste with something far worse. Citizens report grotesque ailments: skin sloughing like wet paper, coughs producing living worms, and a pervasive apathy that drains the will to live. Whispers speak of bloated figures in the depths, moving with unnatural slowness but disturbing cheerfulness.
The Source
The Dimensional Key’s brief activation at Delta Rail Station tore a microscopic wound between realspace and Nurgle’s Garden. This breach allows corruption to seep through like infected blood from a puncture wound, creating a “Plague Bloom” that feeds voraciously on Ishraq’s existing pollution and the populace’s buried despair. What began as subtle changes—a sweeter smell to the industrial waste, flies gathering in unusual numbers—has accelerated into something far more sinister as the tear slowly widens.
The Patron: Inquisitor Valerius
A gaunt, humorless figure operating from the mobile command post Purifier. Valerius cares nothing for local lives—only Imperial purity. He’s chosen the characters not just for their expendability, but for their unfortunate proximity and lingering psychic scent from the previous incident. Their exposure to the Dimensional Key’s energies makes them ideal, if unwitting, conduits for detecting and countering this escalating corruption.
Mission Objectives
Primary: Locate and contain the Plague Bloom’s source
Secondary: Eliminate all Nurgle cultists encountered
Tertiary (Hidden): Recover the Dimensional Key or capture Lord Juix alive
Timeline: Every hour increases the blight’s potency exponentially
Act I: Into the Sprawl
Opening Scene – The Purifier Deployment Zone
Read Aloud:
The ramp of Inquisitor Valerius’s command vehicle grinds down with the sound of dying metal, disgorging you onto a precarious scaffold. Below spreads the perpetual sprawl of Raqcity 7’s mid-hive, but something has changed. The familiar toxic air now carries a new undertone—a cloying sweetness like overripe fruit mixed with decay and something disturbingly alive.
The hive’s mechanical hum is punctuated by wet slurping echoes, unnaturally large flies buzzing, and a low gurgle that reverberates through ferrocrete itself. Sickly yellow lumens reveal putrid-green fungal growths blossoming like cancerous sores on walls, while bubbling effluent rivers pulse with an unnerving, bilious light. Human silhouettes shuffle with disturbing slowness through this transformed landscape.
This isn’t pollution—it’s cancer, spreading and twisting Ishraq’s very spirit into something unrecognizable.
Visual Horror: Fungal growths on all surfaces; effluent glows with sickly colors
Disturbing Behavior: Some civilians show blissful acceptance of their decay
Inquisitorial Pressure: Valerius watches from above, expecting results without excuses
Route Options to the Undercity
Option 1: The Maintenance Tunnels (“Choked Veins”)
Time: 60-75 minutes | Stealth: Moderate | Danger: High Environmental
Read Aloud:
These narrow tunnels were once the hive’s circulatory system—now they’re choked arteries of horror. The air burns your lungs with fungal spores, while floors slick with bubbling decay squelch under your boots. Unseen masses of slimy fungal strands brush against you in the darkness, and the walls pulse with a slow, sickening rhythm.
Every step deeper feels like entering a living, rotting organism—a journey into the Plague Lord’s own body.
Challenges:
Navigation: Difficult (3) Athletics Tests to traverse collapsed sections
Failure: 1d3 Fatigue + 1 Corruption from spore exposure
Entanglement: Grasping fungal tendrils (Athletics Strength Test (2) to break free)
Toxic Air: Challenging (2) Survival Tests to avoid concentrated blight areas
Encounters:
Plague Zombies: Former servitors with vacant, serene smiles
Giant Flies: Melodic buzzing, distended bodies carrying new pestilence
Bloat-Spiders: Arachnids swollen with Nurgle’s gifts, infectious webs
Time: 40-50 minutes | Stealth: Low | Danger: Very High Combat
Read Aloud:
These massive shafts plunge directly into darkness, ancient lift systems now silent save for groaning girders and the slimy drip of corrupted condensation. The walls are plastered with thick fungal blooms pulsing with internal light like vast, cancerous organs. Patches of green luminescence emanate from the depths, and gleeful cultist shouts echo up from below.
The fastest way down—but also the most direct into the enemy’s embrace.
Challenges:
Ambushes: Multiple cultist attacks from ledges and alcoves
Verticality: Challenging (2) Athletics Tests during combat on narrow platforms
Failure: 1d6 Wounds + 1 Corruption from blight-infused pools below
Cultist Traps: Disease-laced explosive devices and infectious gas bursts
Encounters:
Nurgle Cultists: Fanatical, sore-covered zealots singing hymns to Grandfather
Bloated Hounds: Mutated canids with toxic breath and disease immunity
Plaguebearer (Optional): Minor daemon if early escalation desired
Act II: The Spreading Blight
The Manufactorum’s Heart
Read Aloud:
You emerge into what was once a place of grinding industrial toil, now transformed into Nurgle’s perverse garden. Massive machinery lies choked with fleshy, tumor-like growths that pulse with wet, heart-like beats—dying yet vibrant with obscene new life. Rivers of effluent glow with sickly-green luminescence, thick with writhing organisms that seem to writhe in contentment.
The walls weep viscous fluids, leaving viscous, iridescent rivulets that trace paths like infected veins. The air vibrates with constant humming, wet fly buzzing, and the faint gurgling of ‘happy’ decay. Figures shamble through this nightmare with disturbing slowness, their distended bodies and vacant faces displaying an unnerving, blissful detachment.
You’ve found the blight’s beating heart, and it pulses with terrible, infectious rhythm.
Mental Erosion: After 1 hour, Challenging (2) Resolve Test or gain 1 Shock + Fellowship penalty
Fungal Entanglement: Moving growths can immobilize characters for 1 round
The Blight’s Source
Scenario A: Players Have the Dimensional Key
Read Aloud:
Deep within the blighted landscape stands a makeshift shrine of industrial detritus and human remains. Nurgle cultists perform foul rites here, their giggling and humming creating a disturbing melody as they mutilate bodies and offer themselves to the blight. The very air around the shrine writhes with visible corruption, and the ground pulses like living flesh.
Challenge: Combat with fanatical cultists
Epicenter Effect: 1 Corruption per round within 10 meters
Cultist Resilience: Shrug off wounds with wet gurgles, displaying unnatural endurance
Containment: Key can seal the tear (consuming itself) or shrine destruction requires Challenging (2) Lore (Forbidden) or Tech Test
Failure: Warp surge causes 1d3 Corruption to all within 5 meters
Scenario B: Lord Juix Has the Key
Read Aloud:
Lord Juix stands at the corruption’s heart, surrounded by elite cultists and possibly a Plaguebearer. His features are more distended, his smile wider and more chillingly serene. He speaks in a wet, gurgling voice about the ‘blessings’ of decay and freedom found in surrender to entropy. The Dimensional Key pulses in his grasp, blessing key industrial sectors and transforming them into living conduits of Nurgle’s energy.
Challenge: Multi-stage encounter
Navigation: Enhanced environmental hazards where machines pulse with life
Elite Guards: Combat with zealous bodyguards displaying joy even while dismembered
Juix Pursuit: Uses corrupted environment, laughing wetly as he attempts escape
Act III: The Descent into Bliss
Escalation Around the Epicenter
The area becomes intensely dangerous as Warp energies manifest strongly. The air feels like a warm, wet blanket clinging to skin and lungs.
Environmental Escalation
Plaguebearer Incursion: 1-2 daemons manifest, humming in their terrible language
Structural Collapse: Sections explode in corrupted energy bursts, creating new organic pathways
Failure: Temporary Willpower/Fellowship penalties, overwhelming urge to “rest” in decay
The Chase (If Juix Escaped)
Read Aloud:
Lord Juix flees deeper into the undercity toward his hidden sanctuary—a vile retreat of stolen luxuries and zealous cultists. The chase leads through increasingly grotesque environments filled with buzzing flies, cloying rot-and-incense scents, and the sticky squelch of organic growth underfoot. Juix seals pathways with bursts of fleshy fungi and directs streams of glowing filth to impede your progress.
His voice echoes through the corruption itself, offering “comfort” in surrender and “peace” in decay.
Final Confrontation
Read Aloud:
Juix’s sanctuary is a place of perverse beauty and utter depravity, adorned with morbid curiosities and decay symbols. The air itself seems thick with his presence. He has blessed himself further, his body secreting potent contagions. As combat begins, he offers to ‘bless’ you directly with his touch, promising deliverance from your fear of death.
Tactics:
Attempts to trigger larger Warp events as last resort
Uses environment against players
May try to directly corrupt characters with touch attacks
Collapses into bubbling organic sludge if destroyed, potentially reforming
Aftermath & Consequences
Success Conditions
Primary: Plague Bloom contained/destroyed at source
Secondary: Lord Juix captured or eliminated
Bonus: Dimensional Key recovered for Inquisitor Valerius
Failure Consequences
Uncontained Blight: Spreads consuming Raqcity 7, leading to Exterminatus
Juix’s Triumph: Transforms Ishraq into daemon world, characters branded heretics
Investigation Opportunities
Valerius’s true agenda with the Key
Extent of Juix’s cult network in Ishraq’s elite
Key’s legacy effects on exposed characters
Hive population’s reaction to escalating corruption
GM Notes & Resources
Pacing Guidelines
Act I (1 hour): Establish new horror and route choice
Act II (2 hours): Core investigation and first major confrontation
Act III (1.5-2 hours): Escalation, chase, and final battle
