I'm reading through the published adventures available for Cubicle 7's Wrath and Glory Warhammer RPG. Litanies of the Lost is a book containing four adventures that can be run independently or as a continuous campaign. The framework requires the IMPERIUM keyword, and the first adventure is for Tier 1 or 2 characters.
This review contains spoilers.
The second adventure is called Vow of silence. It's got a great setup with three different stories happening:
Player characters get the mission, go to the planet, get ferried over to the island, and the rest of the plot is up to them. It's a dungeon crawl, except the dungeon is under military occupation. They can stealth through it, or march in with guns blazing, or hang back and study the premises for a few days, or whatever they can dream up.
As a Game Master, you have the bare minimum to manage. You need to keep track of the map of the monastery (there's one included) and where the player characters and NCPs are at any given time, and you need to keep track of a few NPC motivations. Mostly, though, this is one of those adventures where you don't run so much as react.
The one thing about the adventure that feels a little jarring is the xeno race that's occupying the monastery.
Is it the Aeldari?
Nope.
The Drukhari?
Good guess, but still no.
T'au?
No.
It's orks.
I understand that it's possible, and that some orks have different strategies than the stereotypical WAAAGH!! And these orks have actually crashed on the planet. They're not here by choice, and they have no obvious way off the planet. So it does make sense that an ork clan, prone to stealth and a little actual strategy, might camp out in a monastery they happen to crash near and not kill everyone in sight while they try to figure out what to do next.
But, two things:
To make the orks even less fitting, their occupation of the monastery is confusing. It seems that they took over the monastery and killed most of the monks, but for some reason they've allowed some to not only live but to freely wander around the monastery. I don't ever want to experience military occupation myself, but I imagine there's no benefit to letting your conquered population idly wander around the prison you've created. It's never clear why the orks let any of the monks live, much less why they're peacefully co-habitating with them.
I haven't run the game, though, so maybe I'm over-thinking it. Depending on your gaming group, players may not find this situation odd. I honestly don't know that I could run it as written, though. I like my rambunctious 40k greenskins, and these don't conveniently fit into my limited stereotype.
My solution: I'd use the Drukhari. The adventure kind of begs for the sadism of Drukhari. I can absolutely see the drukhari letting the monks live, at least long enough for each one to be questioned and tortured. Allowing the surviving monks wander the grounds is a little sadistic in itself, because it mimics normal life and maybe even inspires hope in the monks, but of course their drukhari masters know the truth.
This is a drukhari adventure, there's no question in my mind. In fact, I'm so convinced that it's a drukhari adventure that I sincerely wonder whether it wasn't written for drukhari and only got swapped for orks because the Wrath & Glory core rulebook doesn't have drukhari stat blocks.
Aeldari stats are close enough for me, though, and if I run this adventure it'll definitely be with drukhari.
Despite my refusal to accept the antagonists of this adventure, I really like this one. I love that the relic is a thighbone (that's almost as good as the ball bearings plot hook of the Tora Armis books). It seems like a nearly no-prep adventure to run, it's got lots of opportunity for scheming, roleplay, subplots and paranoia and subterfuge, and any play style your gaming group decides is fun. I'm eager to play this one.
All images in this post copyright Games Workshop.