The Ullanor Crusade

As the 30th Millennium draws to a close, the Great Crusade reaches its crescendo. In the Ullanor Sector, a dozen star systems teeming with orks, the mighty and crafty Overlord Urrlak Urg has united the greenskins into the largest gathering of their kind on a scale never before seen by the nascent Imperium. The Legiones Astartes approach en masse for the largest campaign of the Great Crusade, to break the back of the greentide and end the greatest threat to the Emperor's realm. But already, the seeds of sedition and heresy are being planted...

This is a concept I've wanted to do for years, ever since I first found the Deathwatch RPG - a game set during the Great Crusade, before the Heresy, before Horus was even declared Warmaster. I'll readily admit I'm not super knowledgeable on 30k lore, I haven't read the Horus Heresy books or anything, but I still really like the idea of a Deathwatch game set back when all eighteen (surviving) legions were nominally loyalist and the Emperor was still alive and active. The Ullanor Crusade seemed like the perfect setting for such a game.

Obviously the Inquisition and the Deathwatch itself don't exist yet, but this campaign would follow a small strike force of Astartes taken from the many different legions and sent on special missions. The Luna Wolves, Ultramarines, and White Scars were the most heavily involved in the Ullanor Crusade, but I think fourteen of the legions were involved in some capacity; your characters can come from any of the eighteen legions.

I'll most likely be using a heavily modified version of Rising Tempest, with the first chapter replaced with probably Extraction from the core rules. If the game goes on long enough, and people are interested, I may continue the game into the Horus Heresy era, either continuing in Deathwatch or porting over into Black Crusade depending on which side the squad goes with.