Just added the link for Thread #25 to the Drafts page.

I gotta re-read a lot, but keep this up and I might get a chance to transcribe seem stuff tonight.

Question: if the Swarmlord is a physical avatar of the Hivemind (and this being the Tyranids, it will of course be perfected to succeed in its role), shouldn't it appear as something other than a fancy, quadwielding hive tyrant here? Something more representative of the Tyranids as a whole?
My mind keeps going to something more serpentine that's still Tyrant-size, which also frees up another pair of limbs. The real reason why, though, is for some Magos to compare it to the serpent that eats its own tail from ancient Terran myth

>>53144070
It might not be that it's an avatar in the usual case where Macha is Isha's avatar so much as it is Mass Effect Harbinger Assuming Direct Control and this is the bug that it can do so easiest with.

For one thing there have been multiple simultaneous sightings of the Swarm Lord. It is not the Hive Mind in person so much as it is an expression of the hive mind or possibly a lumpy bit in the hive mind soup.

The Hive Mind has no central mass or nexus of consciousness anymore than a tsunami has a single froth bubble or a locust swarm has a leader.

>>53144070
Swarmlord is more the custom meat suit the Hive Mind makes for itself when it wants to see what's the holdup on the tyranid rapetrain. Hive tyrants are one of the most versatile tyranid units out there (basically being upscaled carnifexes, which we know how variable they can be) yet incredibly durable and powerful, allowing the Swarmlord to adapt to a variety of circumstances without being cripplingly overspecialized like a zoanthrope or an exocrine.

Bit of an idea I had

The term "Crone Worlder" didn't always have the connotations it currently does among the Eldar and the greater Imperium. Due to Eldar physiology and culture (namely, the relative lack of aging among Eldar and their worship of the goddess Morai-Heg as a goddess of wisdom), the word [insert Eldar word for crone here] while literally translating to "crone", has additional connotations of being "well-developed" or "experienced", as opposed to "ugly", "withered", and "hag-like" as it does for humans. This is one reason why the Eldar called the Crone Worlds just that: these were the worlds in which civilization was well-developed and well-established. Humans, on the other hand, were just happy to have a shorthand term to refer to their enemy, one that had the added benefit of being insulting in human terms as well. Of course, once the Eldar learned the human connotations of the word "crone", they were only too happy to use the term "Crone Eldar" or "Cronedar" as a derogatory insult against their debased kin. This was just one of the many fun and innovative ways to insult people the two species taught to one another in the early days of the great alliance.

>>53144655
Oh, I know. Wasn't trying to claim it was those things - just that it might be a more unique bodyshape to take advantage of the various effects going on, discovered via trial and error, that is churned out when necessary.
Also I was not overly awake at the time and was trying to get some sort of conversation going, sorry.

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Did we ever get anything hammered out about Mordia or is it still up for grabs?

>>53147625
Nothing was decided. We don't have Praetoria either, if you want to do both sides of the rivalry

I'm going to try to clean up some of the Notes page on 1d4chan. Some of the stuff we have there is duplicated elsewhere or needs to be moved there and that should make it a little bit less of a mess.

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>>53148726
Preatoria discovered in the Great Crusade by the Salamanders.

Mordia by the Dark Angels with whom they maintained close ties.

Preatoria is known for it's stiff upper lip, honourable combat, devil may care attitude towards long odds and fierce determination.

Mordia is known for taking no prisoners, doing what is needed no matter how distasteful, careful measuring of the odds and pragmatism.

Preatoria is an industrial and commercial prosperous hub world of rich trader families who genuinely do care about the well being of the people in their jurisdiction and share the wealth generously. Their world is also home to the Dragon Lords who traditionally recruit from the first sons of every member of the aristocracy, it is considered the greatest honour.

Mordia is a tidally locked shit hole that keeps ending up as Black Crusade sideshow. What little wealth the planet and it's people have is spent in preparing for the next war. They have the Knights of the Crimson Order call their world home and who supplement their PDF and IG regiments. Crimson Knights run the tragically large orphanages of Mordia, it makes a good recruitment ground.

Preatorians generally join the Imperial Army for notions of honour and duty. They earn much prestige for their families and come back with many tall tales to tell. They get invited to all the parties and become a good marriage prospect.

Mordians generally join for duty and glory. They earn more ration stamps for their families and come back with their rifles. They increase a settlements odds of survival next Chaos Skirmish.

>>53150166
Good overview, I'd be curious to flesh out the Astartes chapters too. We haven't really come up with many new chapters, it'd be nice to make up distinct nobledark examples of descendant chapters for all the legions.

>>53151239
They're not OC donut steel, just obscure ones from canon that only have a name and no other details.

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>>53151749
I chose them for that very reason.

It is not stated anywhere that the Dragon Lords are Salamander successors but honestly who cares.

Also KotCO are Dark Angels but that's as far as GW got with them. They didn't even get a colour scheme. For shits and giggles I'm going to assume it involved red to some degree.

DLs are probably one of the blingiest chapter due to living on a prosperous world and being able to buy the few things that they can't make. Lots of Master Crafted Mk8 armour and hand made power weapons.

The KotCO on the other hand are operating with what can be generously called Mk5 amd accurately described as clattering and clanking Frankenstein plate.

DLs have master crafted combi-bolters with specialist ammo for every occasion.

The signature weapon of the KotCO is a sort of extra large las-rifle because ammunition efficiency and las-rifles are about all the local workshops can manage.

Preatorians are predominantly Promethean due to prolong exposure to Vulkan's influence. It's not Nocturnean Prometheism but it's a close enough relative for it to be recognizable. Also there are communities that follow Yechudism.

Mordians tend to be adherents to their Small Gods with a minority of Katholians. Their Small Gods were once tree gods, they claim. But those ancient forests burned long ago.

Neither chapter is stupid enough to start being overly evangelical to the locals although they also make no distinction with their recruitment.

Preatorians display rank on a sash and shoulder stripes, at least the sash on parades and formal occasions.

Mordians have facial tattoos and wear coloured bars on the chest. They do not do parades and have very few formal occasions.

Preatorians drink tea.

Mordians drink """beer""" but only if they can't get anything stronger.

>>53144070
>Something more representative of the Tyranids as a whole?
I know it wouldn't work and jars really badly with the feel of 40k (both Nobledark and Vanilla), but I guess it'd be a vast swarm of worm- or bug-type tyranids coalescing into a physical form, a la Halo's Lekgolo

>>53151239
Come to think of it, 'Chapter' would probably be a more nebulous designation than canon, since they're more closely integrated with the overall Army. I've been assuming that the majority of Astartes recruitment comes from the Imperial Guard itself, with specific Chapters often recruiting from and operating with specific units. So, say the Iron Dragons operate with and recruit from the Stalinvast Planetary Assault Legions; could you therefore say that the Stalinvast PAL is part of the Iron Dragons Chapter? etc.

In this nobledark imperium, does the retarded "no combined arms within regiments" doesn't exist?

>>53153488
Nah, we've said that the Astartes operate somewhat similarly to US special forces, where they are outside the normal command structure and instead report directly to central command (which would probably be sector-level command). So for example, even if there are Navy SEALs attached to a unit and operate regularly with them, we wouldn't say that unit is part of the SEALs.

>>53152854
Might be going a bit too far on the Crimson Knights supply situation, Astartes are going to be on the top of any requisition lists and probably have access to the full sector or Segmentum logistics network beyond what is available on planet. Like in canon, there are plenty of chapters based on Feral Worlds but they have their own manufacturing within the Fortress Monastery and presumably supply lines to get resources. The only time a chapter would be undersupplied is if they're nomadic, operating on the fringes of the Imperium, or have done some bad shit and received sanction (so pretty much the Night Lords and their successors, which we've said are pretty much on permanent Penitent Crusade far away from civilian populations).

Besides, the bolter is so iconic of the SM that I don't think it makes sense for a chapter to be wielding big lasguns.

>>53154406
Lasguns make sense as a secondary weapon. Since Astartes armor is fusion-powered, they'd basically have infinite ammunition.

So, Dark Eldar don't exist anymore? They just got absorbed by the Chaos Eldar?

>>53154365
Indeed, combined arms are very much present. More here if you want to go in depth:
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Nobledark_Imperium_Imperial_Forces

>>53154668
They were separate for most of history. However, Vect and Lady Malys (who is the big bad of Chaos like Abby in canon) have recently cemented an alliance through marriage, in a dark reflection of the Emperor's marriage to Isha. This is a huge point of tension for many Archons and other DEs who are repulsed by the idea of working with the CE, but this idea has mostly come up in threads and no one has written up anything regarding this yet.

>>53154365
Pretty much. We’ve mentioned the Imperium uses some combined arms tactics in the past. No massive betrayal like the Horus Heresy means that the Imperium isn’t as paranoid about its forces turning traitor (that’s not to say regiments turning traitor doesn’t happen). There’s also a lot less dick-waving between officers or between, say, an IG officer and a chapter master.

However, there is still some segregation of regiments, which is at least in part due to Lord Solar Machairius. Machairius saw the wide variety of fighting tactics across the Imperium and their ways of making war as assets rather than obstacles. Every regiment specialized for a particular purpose. The right tool for the right job. No need to fix what isn’t broken. And it worked really well for him, but then he could juggle regiments across a front better than anyone except probably the Emperor.

Additionally, general Imperium combined arms tactics are nowhere near as good as Tau combined arms tactics, because when the Tau organized their army they had a much smaller fighting force and it was much easier to coordinate things. The Tau have fewer soldiers, but those soldiers are much more efficient and coordinate better with each other.

>>53154668
No, they’re two different things. Dark Eldar are still raiding and pirating, and they like the Crone Eldar about as much as the Craftworlders do. To put it a different way, another anon put it as “Dark Eldar are druggies, Crone Eldar are so far down the rabbit hole that they’ve made the transition from crack whore to crack dealer”.

However, at the turn of the Millenium between M40-M41 long-time on-again, off-again couple Asdrubael Vect of Commorragh and Lady Malys the Daemon Queen were united in an all manner of fucked up wedding. Now the Dark Eldar and Croneworlders were united, at least in name. To say that not all Dark Eldar were happy with this arrangement is an understatement. For one, you had a huge exodus of Dark Eldar refugees into the Imperium (basically anyone who could leave and say they weren’t a psycho war criminal with a straight face), and Commorragh nearly revolted.

The backlash would have been worse, except that all of the Kabals with the political clout to challenge Vect all had their archons die under mysterious circumstances years or even decades beforehand (the War in the Webway was one such event). Even then, most of the Dark Eldar would have loved to reject the alliance, but Vect is just too damn powerful. Vect basically controls Commorragh through martial law and the mandrakes now.

rglajrelgjnaeralgkn

Ork daemon princes. Y/N?

>>53156797
I vote yes, if only to make the tzeench ork iron cage easier to write

>>53156797
Y, but astonishingly rare.

Quick question, if Commorragh was formed from the port comprising the extralegal resorts of the Old Eldar Empire's rich and famous, would one of the first actions the Dark Eldar have to take after the Fall be a general purge of Commorragh? I imagine that there would have been quite a few among the Eldar nobility who wanted to go full throttle on the Chaos thing, so they would either have to be killed or kicked out for the sake of the more agnostic (read:the ones we see today) Dark Eldar who wanted to party and get high but didn't want to pledge themselves to any incomprehensible god. It might be one way in which the seeds of the present hierarchy in Commorragh were established.

>>53156850
It could be that was the goal of the Big Wyrd. I mean, beyond fuck shit up like orks and weird boyz normally do.

To be an Ork daemon prince, you would have to a) be a Chaos Ork and b) do something worthy of note for one of the big four. That usually requires a lot of followers, which would be harder for a Chaos ork to achieve because he usually doesn't follow the Gorkamorka.

Does the species of a daemon prince really matter in the long run? Be'lakor I can see because to him he's always an Old One first, daemon second, and damn anyone who says otherwise (because it would imply that he is not his own man). Eldar is worth noting because with the Cronedar it means that we can have Dechala the Denied One without breaking reality. But beyond that daemon princes/esses really don't seem to resemble the original species.

I imagine Dechala and N'kari have a rather antagonistic relationship with one another. One a daemon prince of Eldar origin, the other human, the two of them constantly butting heads for She Who Thirsts favor and trying to prove that Eldar/humans are better. Slaanesh encourages this, because it keeps his/her minions fighting amongst themselves and is fucking hilarious to watch.

>>53152854
>It is not stated anywhere that the Dragon Lords are Salamander successors but honestly who cares.

Of course they would be. All the other Dragon-themed chapters seem to be Salamander related.

>Mordians tend to be adherents to their Small Gods with a minority of Katholians. Their Small Gods were once tree gods, they claim. But those ancient forests burned long ago.

Wait, isn't Mordia that place where it's tidally locked and the whole population is crammed into the twilight zone or the dark side of the planet, depending on who you ask? Where would they get trees from?

>>53157841
Life finds a way.

>>53157841
The ones verdant twilight band.

Now not so full of life.

>>53154433
Extra sized laser pistols work well.

>>53155171
I like the idea of the more sane Withered and maybe some of the less extreme younger generations and maybe quite a few of the Vat-born of the Dark Eldar having their eyes opened by the wedding.

Up until that point they could always point at the Cronedar and say "at least we aren't that". Then their great and independent city becomes so close to that that it makes no practical difference, not that it did to outsiders anyway.

Now they don't have an option. Now they are staring into the abyss with Clockwork Orange eye clamps on and they can't look away and they are slowly being dragged forward and they can see perfectly well where this journey ends. Oh holy ever loving fuck they can see where this journey ends, this is going to be The Fall v2.0 and they are at ground 0.

A large number of their number would maybe of gotten a Harlequin escort out of the Dark City. Vect wouldn't have been recklessly brash enough to antagonize the Clowns until the marriage had stuck and he knew it was safe, their god is often abroad in the webway and can manipulate it to some degree.

That would have been the last time the Harlequin Tropes would have visited the City of Sins. Beyond that point it's just a Chaos stronghold with nothing worth saving. At that moment the City was forsaken by the elder gods. Even Khine. They had finally managed to make their own mother admit they were irredeemable wish them dead.

Of the millions of Repentants they would be viewed as highly suspect. They would only be permitted into the visitors section of the Craftworlds if that and that is generous.

They would not be officially permitted on most human or other xeno worlds although that would be very difficult to enforce as eldar can not into paperwork at the best of times and one group of eldar is difficult to tell from another to a basic human. Needless to say Chaos and Dark Eldar infiltration would increase drastically, but only temporary.

>>53159860
The Exodites would be more welcoming. To them it's the founding of their own people all over again, but this time with them to show them the right and proper way of things.

They would get soul stones. They are prodigal sons and daughters repentant and humble returning to their senses in shame and apology. They would be accepted by Isha and her disciples, though not completely trusted to start with.

Or that's how I see it maybe.

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>>53154406
I don't think that the Night Lords and their ilk are on penitent crusades as such as they are still following orders in their own special way.

Typically they get deployed away from anything anyone gives a shit about. Also their supply problem is because if there is a choice between giving a supply shipment to them or a chapter that isn't fucking awful it goes to the other chapter.

>>53159894
Sounds like they'd have trouble adapting.
Always the temptation to have another go at the whole raid&pillage and whatnot.
And the having no clue how civilization works.
But perhaps they channel that, the ones that have the most difficulty with it. The ones who can adapt do, the ones who can't might still do their hit and run strikes, but now against say...the orks, and with notably less 'capturing' afterwards.

>>53161906
It could just be a massive swell in the corsair fleet population

>>53161906
They would have trouble adapting. There would be those that fall back to bad habits and then get cut down for it. It would not be easy considering that every body they meet looks edible.

Perhaps many would find some relief of their needs on the paths of the warrior but perhaps they might consider that tempting a relapse.

>>53162782
Corsairs are still Imperial aligned. Eldar don't let their malcontents run amok in the galaxy anymore because it makes them look bad and there's no way to ensure they won't harm Eldar.

To quote one anon "you can't let them loose because those aren't mon-keigh stars anymore. They're your stars".

Of course, they're still about as Imperial aligned as, say, Rogue Traders. Maybe less. They'll work for anyone provided the pay is good and in some cases work for people on the Imperium's shit list if it benefits them and they think they can get away with it. And of course there are actual rogue pirate Eldar who do whatever the hell they like, but on the other hand are shot on sight by groups like Biel-Tan.

>>53159860
>>53159894
>>53161906
The Dark Eldar who defected to the Imperium would mostly be the young ones like Yvraine or Alith Anar. Especially the vatborn. If they have to choose between living in a Chaos-controlled Dark City with no opportunity for political advancement and being feared and mistrusted (but away from Chaos) with the Craftworlders and Exodites, they're going to choose the latter every time. They literally have nothing to lose.

Of course, this doesn't mean that all the "innocent'" Dark Eldar are gone from the city. Oh my no. Indeed, there are probably now more than ever because the Dark Eldar are kicking their cloning vats into high gear to both replace the losses caused by the refugees and to meet the demand for troops by the Crones.

The older Dark Eldar, the ones entrenched in Commorragh's byzantine political structure, would be too deep in the sunk cost fallacy to ever try leaving. They didn't spent all this time clawing their way to the top of the heap only to abandon all that and start over at square one living as a pariah and a nobody in Imperial society. They'd rather futilely fight Vect to the bitter end instead of doing the smart thing.

Plus any Dark Eldar who's infamous enough to be known to the Imperium by name would have no chance of fleeing. The best they hope for is fleeing to some far-off corner of the galaxy and hope that Slaanesh doesn't drain their soul too fast. So again, it is the young ones who haven't committed as many atrocities or never left Commorragh in the first place.

>>53159860
In this universe humanity is more capable of telling the different groups of Eldar apart. In part due to having actual Craftworlders and Exodites around to point out the differences, in part because the Eldar don't let the corsairs run as rampant, the Eldar aren't being stupid and jumping to defend the Dark Eldar at every oppprtunity, and in part because the Imperium isn't stupid in this timeline (I mean if the Tau can tell the difference between the space dominatrixes and the space snobs, why can't the Imperium).

>>53162970
There might also be vigilante action by the craftworlders. It's worth remembering that Khine is venerated by the craftworlders.

>>53165433
The Yvraine fluff says that Biel-Tan used the information gained by Dark Eldar refugees to coordinate a massive raid on Commorragh to free captured slaves and generally make things uncomfortable for their traitorous kin. At least until the Dark Eldar changed the locks.

>>53166063
I have fluff to catch up on.

Here's what's already there for the Indigo Crow. Any ideas what the Crone schools of magic in the webway fringes are like?
The preeminent Crone sorcerer and seer, an independent Tzentchian scholar of vast power, not bound to the service of a liege or court
Able to call on some level of cooperation between the dark academies of warp-lore in the corrupted webway around the eye
Its unclear if this is a single individual, an assumed title passed between great tzeentchian eldar, or some more unusual entity, but in any case it is the Crones' answer to both Eldrad and Ahriman
Has incredible supernatural power and knowledge, and is the conduit for much of the Tzeentchian Crones' access to Tzeentch's realm and boons, but little military power

>>53166063
>>53167043
Wait, what? When was a Commorragh raid discussed? All I see in the Yvraine fluff is that they got the codes to a few Webway back doors.

>>53167934
Wasn't that it? Or was that something else. I thought it said that Yvraine gave the code to the back entrance she went through, and between all the Dark Eldar who fled the Dark City they had enough viable entrances to launch a counter-raid. Maybe I am misremembering.

My theology inspired explanation of Macha's selection as avatar from last thread.
Macha might have come with the seer group as her repressed, frustrated self, and when Isha emerged from the portal Macha had a very strong religious experience. Macha would essentially have been a repressed, machiavellian, psychic elf oracle all her life, maybe not the meme ever-virgin but someone that long ago squelched thoughts of enjoyment or self-fulfillment in the name of duty and civilization. She would have gone with Eldrad expecting to fail, or a Pyrrhic victory at best, and went expecting to burn out or be eaten by daemons while holding the gate.

She doesn't just survive though. She watches as heroes return in something resembling real triumph, and she sees the Steward of the Golden Throne carrying the exhausted All-Mother across the threshold, and is overcome by the scene. Macha, unexpectedly and at the core of her person, reevaluated the universe's potential to bear truly joyful and virtuous things, and at the same time Isha was shedding her desiccated, traumatized form. Isha stood in radiance on the ground of old earth, Macha was the most perfectly receptive of that radiance, and so it simply follows that she received the radiance of Isha in that moment.

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>>53169126
It all fits bar for one thing.

The opening of the door was not done on Old Earth.

on the 1d4chan there is mention already that Isha first saw Old Earth through the window of a space ship.

Also in this AU the Emperor isn't an arrogant retard and wouldn't start tearing holes in the very stuff of time and space and sanity on an inhabited world and especially not on the keystone planet of the Imperium.

It could also have been that Macha was the most receptive eldar woman, no in the galaxy as a whole, but out of the eldar who were in that place and at that time. Isha was still weak then and would need to get into the head of someone else as quickly as possible.

>>53169422
I don't know, that kind of sounds invasive. I can understand the narrative appeal of spontaneity, but it seems a little creepy for the first act of freedom from a goddess just released from disease hell to invade a mortal mind without so much as "hello."

>>53169920
It's a religious experience as much to do with Macha assuming Isha's mantle as Isha picking her, and we've been describing Isha as a primordial goddess.

>>53169920
Not invasive if she was welcomed in. Maybe she wouldn't have been receptive if not welcoming. Also maybe she would have left if Macha was unhappy with the arrangement.

>>53169049
It is implied that her codes were used alongside shit learned from other former citizens of the Dark City to open enough doors to get an army in and fuck up that particular part of the city.

>>53169422
>>53169920
>>53170325
>>53170331

Where did the Raid take place (in realspace) anyway? I assume it would be some nowhere world that only ends up becoming important to Imperial history because of what took place there. Steward isn't stupid enough to try it on Earth or another populated world and Eldar wouldn't do it on a Craftworld.

Also the possibility exists that Ceggers simply hid Isha in the Webway until a suitable host (Macha) could be found. Canon already shows that one Eldar God could hide out in the Webway almost indefinitely without being attacked by Chaos. Crone Eldar might try to search the Webway, but it at least buys Isha some time.

Also, for some reason I keep imagine Isha's immediate reaction to being freed and in realspace to be like her reaction in Tales of the Emprasque, pure innocent laughter for finally being freed after thousands of years of captivity before evaporating in a flash of light.

>>53171237
It's never been said where in realspace the door was opened although it is implied that the defunct and faulty webway gate that Vanilla Emperor fucked around with was used. Not that this means that they didn't move the gate to a more remote location.

Also it's possible that Macha intentionally volunteered for helping with opening the gate despite the risks. Possibly Ceggers asked her to be in that place at that time but, true to nature, didn't tell her why.

Holy fuck.
I was looking through the archived threads, and just found the bit about Armageddon/Ullanor.
I thought that was just one of the extra-silly things made up for this that was in the wiki.
I didn't think it was someone taking what happened IN CANON and making it make a modicum of sense.
Holy fuck GW what the fuck.

>>53173646
Haha, yeah... Black Library has been pretty fucking zany ever since they started writing the Horus Heresy books.

>>53171356
Did they ever say where they got the Webway gate from?

>>53173646
Yup. I don't think that's the only example either. Ullanor broke some anon's brain the last time it came up.

It’s hard being one of the most important leaders in the galaxy. You feel like the only sane person among a bunch of dithering morons. Turn your back for one minute and the next thing you know they’ve burnt the house down. If you don’t take out any time for yourself it’s enough to drive one mad. So, one of the most important strategists of the galaxy decides to have a day off.

https://pastebin.com/CkS2NKFP

Sorry if this is a bit choppy. About half of it got eaten when my computer got down and I had to rewrite those parts from scratch.

>>53175671
Good shit anon, I quite like it (though I thought it was going to be about Creed when you said "most important strategist"). Two thoughts:

1)The Chaos Eldar seem a tad too... professional? I imagine if this was the equivalent of a joyride for Malys they would be a little more unhinged.
2) How much spaghetti did that guardsman have in his pockets to ask Lady fucking Malys why she was here?

Though now that I've mentioned it, what is Creed up to in this AU anyway? Has there been any writing on him?

We know anything about Drazhar, Master of Blades yet? He always gave me the impression of the most honorable of the Dark Eldar, though probably still an evil dick stabber. Would he have defected to avoid the crones, or is he still running his temple, Chaos be damned?

>>53176856
he might have hoarded Khaine's artifacts of struck a pact with Malal in the court of Khorne

>>53176856
Honestly, he seems like the sort of person who would barely even notice the change of regime.

>>53176856
Presumably not too different from Vanilla.

One of the PLs, fell to dark impulses early on, another Striking Scorpion takes his place. Unlike rest of PLs was not there for the Mansion Raid.

Built some sort of Murder path in dark city, complete with small infinity circuit.

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>>53174126
Not in Vanilla so far as I know.

My completely unsupported head fluff has it as an old piece of long buried crap on Earth that the eldar in ancient times used to use to fuck around on prehistoric earth and give rise to legends about elves and shit.

In this AU it's probably a captured trophy from one of the few victories the Dark Age humans had over the Eldar. Taken as loot in a war of retribution the likes of which mankind to that point had never known, a needed but hard won victory. The cost of billions on each side and the source of songs and sorrows that were told until the dawn of the Age of Strife. The first human on eldar conflict took the disparate worlds of humanity and brought them together into the Great and Benevolent Human Empire and saw the rise of the Iron Minds and later the Men of Gold to keep shit workable.

To the eldar it was a barley noticeable scuffle that cause an ant hill to rearrange itself a little.

On the Mordia thing.

In what ways should the planet be fucked over?

It already has a small area of habitation. What else can we do to it to turn it into the shit hole we all know and love?

>>53176930
How independent should Malal be?

>>53159894
>That one story about a female Dark Eldar who thought "There must be more to life then rape & pillage" while fighting in Imperial space then inside the arena.
>Runs away from the Dark City right before the wedding to a Exodit world where she works as a herbalist and occasionally teaches combat techniques to those that offer her rare plants.
>Sometimes she even goes off fighting for the Imperium when her home get the call-to-arms.

Fuck, forgot her name.

>>53176856
>>53176930
>>53176930
>>53177688
>>53177719
Here was the high concept that someone had earlier im the threads from the Notes page.

>Drazhar acts as Vest's iron right hand. Rumored to be the greatest swordsman in the galaxy, he has cut a bloody swathe through the Imperium's finest, leaving a trail of corpses and legends behind him. Despite his merciless efficiency in the killing fields, Dark Eldar don't trust him. He acts with too much honor, maintaining an unsightly code. He eschews subterfuge, preferring instead to kill his enemies face to face. And worst of all top the Chaos Eldar, one whisper placed him in the Gardens of Nurgle during Isha's liberation. Perhaps this is why Vect keeps Drazhar close: he so loves to see his bride furious. Rage and hate are a fine substitute to love for the dark Eldar.

>>53180849
So many typoes...

>>53178529
Eh, I thought DAoT Humanity was the closest thing to the Eldar Empire at its peak. Still nowhere near power parity, but more than an ant hill at least.

>>53183073
Not in terms of military power.

DAoT humanity was as spread out as thinly as the Imperium.

Eldar because of the webway essentially lived in single hive structure light years wide.

To claim any real victory you would have to take on the entire military might of the Eldar Empire in every engagement.

>>53183073
The Eldar were living in an extradensional mega-city that hung over the entire galaxy, Mankind was still getting good at building wonders in realspace. The difference is more like nomads compared to walled polises, not ants to men, but of course the eldar would be arrogant bastards to the barbarians.

>>53176547
>Good shit anon, I quite like it (though I thought it was going to be about Creed when you said "most important strategist"

Deliberately left the identity ambiguous as long as possible so it would be a surprise for the readers.

>The Chaos Eldar seem a tad too... professional? I imagine if this was the equivalent of a joyride for Malys they would be a little more unhinged.

I would say the Cronedar are smart enough to rain on the parade of the frickin Daemon Queen while she’s having her “me time”, or that Malys specifically picked those grunts because they wouldn’t be as likely to fly off the handle. However, I see what you mean and my reasoning probably sounds too much like a retcon.

Really, the piece was supposed to be more a character study for Lady Malys than anything else. Putting together some of the stuff we’ve said on the wiki. Tactically skilled and intelligent yet dangerously psychotic and completely insane, nonchalantly talks back to Drach’nyen despite him eating the souls of his last three wielders, has died several times yet keeps coming back for more (and probably finds death “boring” as the daemons are all terrified of her). Unlike Abbadon, who wraps up his motivations in claims for power or ambition, Malys makes no such excuses for why she does what she does. She is evil and LOVING IT!

However, I think the piece lacks the characteristic mania that we've been consistently describing for Lady Malys. Maybe it’s because it focuses more on the pre-combat scenes, and needs more focus on how manic she is when limbs start flying.

I’m open to suggestions for tweaks for a V2 if people think this is good enough to go on the wiki.

>>53183245
I didn't mean militarily, I meant just in terms of power level - granted, still at least an order of magnitude (and then some) difference, but they were closer to the Eldar than any "current" civilisation is now apart from arguably DEldar, if only for their webway- and biotech.

Basically, >>53183311

test post

>>53180849
So who is the left/underhand of Vect?

The Decapitator? Would he/it be reliable enough?

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I'm kinda imagining that there's a ton of weird reverse psychology involved in imprisoning the one Daemon Prince of Malal. Stuff like demanding he leave the vaults of Ganymede and never return, locking him out of his containment cell, and insisting he's the jailor not the prisoner are probably just the start of it. It would probably descend into a level of double negative bullshit like how The Outsider momentarily/eternally became an avatar of Malal by virtue of being the antithesis of Tzeentch, and also by not being Malal.

>>53185084
Oh sweet fucking Jesus that's a beautifully stupid image.

Apep, the one Daemon Prince of Malal, is guarding an empty cell so that it remains empty and because he is free no to.

Also the Outisder is just crazy enough that even if he wasn't the avatar of Malal he would act like Malal to such a great degree that he would be the avatar of Malal by virtue of nobody including both gods involved being able to tell the difference.

This sorry state of affairs would be, I imagine, a source of unending mirth for the Inquisition were it not for the fact that these creatures hopelessly broken as they are are civilization ending disasters waiting for someone to happen to.

Also added to the "List of Thing Inq. Jaq Draco is no Longer Permitted to do on Ganymede" is
>interact with the Prince of Malal

>>53185084
From the looks of things I would imagine edgy Malal worshippers who want to destroy all forms of government in the galaxy, yes that includes the other Chaos Gods as well. Not knowing they wouldn't survive a second in that galaxy but thinks Malal might protect them even though he wouldn't. People like politically active violent teens or disgruntled former government employees.
>Malal cults are the Antifa of Nobledark 40k.

>>53184692
It seems that the mandrakes are closely aligned with Vect in this timeline, so I guess so.

>>53185448
Really though Malal it just the opposite of Tzeentch. Those names might even be the Old Ones' words for their functions, and in the golden age of sorcery when the warp was calm this difference was as complete and negotiable as one could hope. Now that the galactic conscious has the many nuances added of aeons of history those two are anything but a generative infinity set in perfect transposing balance a with a destructive one, because they're also self-aware and wrapped up in the intrigues and tumults of the warp.

>>53185448
Given how small and weak Malal is by 999M41 it's possible that there are no normal people who actually know about him.

Everybody might get a basic education in how not to get Chaosed but Malal is a has been and the joke of Chaos left alive by Khorne because it's the nearest he can find to funny.

He and his followers are, in effect, to Chaos followers what Chaos followers are to the Imperium.

Not that the Imperium can tell the difference at a quick glance.

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>>53185448
If they knew the ancient history of the gods during the War in Heaven they might argue Malal represents un-malicious pre Khornate destruction, a more abstract form that glories not in carnage. They aren't wrong but that because Malal is all about inventing pic related just because he can.

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>>53185339
No, no, you see. Apep isn't imprisoned. It's everyone else who's imprisoned. They built a whole prison around the universe, except for one little spot where the guard is supposed to be stationed. It's Apep's job to keep everyone else imprisoned. I mean, if you built four walls to contain an entire universe, it must be full of pretty nasty stuff.

Or at least, that's what they tell him. Pic related.

>>53186533
Oh shit. He's riding out the apocalypse in the safest place in the Imperium

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So for Mordia to get at least the planet to the state that we all know and love.

During the Golden Age it was somewhat of a backwater. More somewhere for people to come from than go too. Had a high technology base, as all the Great and Benevolent Empire did, but generally at least 50 years behind what everyone else was doing.

There were 2 big reasons for it's backwardness. First was the isolation. It was not particularly close to any major warp currents and so you had to intentionally go there rather than travel near it on your way elsewhere. Second was the tidally locked nature of the planet that resulted in it having a thing green band of habitability between frozen and baked. As such it could never support a big population. It was quite pleasant and it's greatest sin was that it was terminally boring for most of it's pre-Strife history. It didn't even have seasons or tides.

When it all started to break down in the Age of Strife Mordia was spared the worst of the shit simply due to the remote location and nearly everyone needing to be reminded that it existed at all. Which is not to say it survived unscathed.

As Old Night rolled across the stars Mordia came to the sensible conclusion that it couldn't hope to fend off a galaxy gone mad and that the only sensible thing to do would be to try and be as unnoticeable as possible. All transmitter technology was banned, all space ships were recalled and disassembled, all that could be moved underground was and even things like street lighting was made illegal. The whole planet essentially went into standby mode.

Stupid as it sounds it almost worked. It almost survived long enough to be counted as a Survivor Civilization.

Sadly it did not. When the Eye of Terror formed it fucked up the warp currents something fierce and rearranged them. Mordia was no longer away from the good currents. There was a current now running right through their system from the Eye of Terror, but with no warp capability they didn't know this.

>>53185678
You know, random thing, it's always bothered me how many people don't pronounce the first t in Tzeentch, acting like it's silent or something.
It's easily pronounceable, yet people act like it's some impossible alien sound.

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>>53188309
All they knew was that half the psycho population committed suicide and the other half became decidedly unwell. Then the first of the Chaos touched set foot on their world, heralds of the New God Slaanesh. Things went downhill from there.

By the time the First Legion encountered Mordia in the Great Crusade it had been repeatedly assaulted and regressed back to a pre-black powder level of sophistication haunting the ruins of when they were greater. About the only thing left intact from those better days was the Great Road that ran the entire circuit of the Temperate Band in an unbroken loop. Along the Great Road society had fractured into a dozen kingdoms, some in contest but most in cooperation.

Of interest to the Dark Angel scholars were the Keepers of the Chronicles, a quiet order who's task was to maintain an up to date record of the affairs of state to be preserved for posterity, and that they had done all the way back to the day Old Earth stopped answering the calls and a little bit further. Sadly no technical information of note had been preserved.

The kings of Mordia welcomed the Imperium as the heirs to the fallen realm of humanity. Old Earth had finally come to save them.

The First Legion orchestrated the rebuilding of Mordia and later set up a recruitment station at each of the kingdom capitals along the Great Road. This was the 2nd Golden age of Mordia. It was ultimately not to last.

Mordia took to the Imperiums uplifting efforts eagerly as the Chronicle showed them that this was merely returning to where they had been before. They were not abandoning their roots, they were rediscovering them. Before long Mordian regiments were found in the Legions of the Great Crusade, marching forth to raise up others as they had been.

When the War of the Beast afflicted the galaxy their regiments fought no less bravely than any other and gave their lives no less dearly and gave them those soldier did.

>>53188309
>It didn't even have seasons or tides.
Being tidally locked it would have constant global wind blowing from the icy side to the desert at surface level and blowing back at high altitude, and any live that evolved in the twilight ring would be adapted for this.

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>>53188534
Mordia itself was spared the direct attention of any major Warboss or Chaos lordling and came out of that awful war maybe less broken then many. They were lucky

Luck ran out in the 1st Black Crusade and every one after that. The warp currents always brought the dregs of the Eye to their door step time and again from then on. It was never assaulted to the degree of Cadia but Cadia was by it's very nature a better and stronger world to defend them.

By the dying of the 41st Millenium Mordia stands still. A grim testament to bloody-minded stubbornness. Life is harsh, death usually harsher. The planet isn't dead but you could be excused for thinking so. Much of the Temperate Band is irradiated and the cities there destroyed from orbit. The Great Road is broken. Civilization in that once fair land was too obvious a target and so was abandoned, the Dark Side of the planet is now the home of the Mordians.

Deep beneath the permafrost and the glaciers and in the mountain holds they dwell by the billions. Hard ranks of whipcord bodies marching in step of iron discipline. War has taught them. War has made them hard. They are a bitter people now, their sunrise smiles erased over the Long War. The Dark Angels stationed during the 1st Black Crusade founded their own order of Crimson Knights, a very Mordian order. The ever dutiful Keepers of the Chronicles keep the records of every war, every victory and every postponed victory as they will never bend or admit defeat. Defeat is to invite total death, they will not permit it.

Chaos and Orks come now to Mordia to die. Their bodies linger for decades and even centuries gradually sinking into the glaciers and the fields of the dead spread in all directions form their strongholds. They venture out to cleanse the Temperate Belt of mutated orks strains that find that greener ground fine for spawning in, feral and savage but far from dangerous. Perfect for training the new recruits.

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>>53188777
Mordia still has the title of High King, instituted in better days as a wise intermediary between the people and the Imperium, but now it is given to the head of the armed forces for tradition only. There is nothing left of Mordia untouched by the all consuming war.

From the lowliest tender of the algae vats to the wisest lore-master of the Crimson Knights all serve the war effort. Every warband that dies on Mordia is one less in the wider Imperium. One day, by the grace of their many gods, they will be victorious. One day they will know joy again. One day they will be born under blue skies and the forests will be regrown again.

And, their prophets say, it will be one day soon. Judgment Day is coming, now is the time of the big push towards the dawn.

But for now there is the war

So orks and stuff.

Are there still blood axe mercenaries? Or is the nobledark imperium not ones to give weapons to a hostile alien species that will probably be turned back on them in moments.

>>53189023
It would be considered highly illegal to supply arms to enemies of the Imperium. Send in the Imperial Army and confiscate your planet if found out levels of illegal.

But there's always one person mad, stupid or desperate enough to do it.

>>53189088
>mad, stupid or desperate enough to do it.
What are corsair captains, rogue traders, and radical inquisitors, respectively? for 800 thrones, Oscar

>>53189088
This, it would be stupid to try hiring the Blood Axes, especially since there are other mercenary xeno species like Kroot who are less likely to turn on you. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Rogue Traders especially, who don't like to play by the rules on the best of days. Having a Freeboota on staff might be considered less heinous by the Imperium, as opposed to a Dark Eldar or a Crone, which would be treason and you'd be shot on sight (since Orks don't really do manipulatin' and puppeteerin').

The more religious or fanatical members of the Imperium might see the Blood Axes as proof that Orks aren't irredeemable. It's debatable how true this is.

On a related note, I'm imagining the people of Old Earth have an unreasonable hatred towards Orks in this timeline, like they have a fear of Space Marines in canon. For obvious reasons.

>>53189289
For some reason I imagine thrones being an image of Oscar in stylized profile on the front and the Golden Throne on the back, in the manner of an old Roman coin.

To this day, the Emperor complains that they still got his nose too big.

>>53188883
So are they keeping samples of the old twilight trees so that when the day comes they will finally be able to re-seed the twilight zone?

>>53189302
>The more religious or fanatical members of the Imperium might see the Blood Axes as proof that Orks aren't irredeemable. It's debatable how true this is.
I like the idea of ill-advised, enlightenment inspired attempts to reform the orks in panopticon style fortresses. Some sect of Biologicus techpriests, maybe an Order Psychologicus, could have Imperial aristocratic support for their attempts to reform Orcs. They might even have some less than great Seers in their projects, intent on recapturing some (imagined) vision of the old ones in which the Eldar could civilize the Ork. Mostly the project comes about from the recognition that Orks are more loosely held by chaos, the legends from the War in Heaven, and of course the belief popular among those aristocrats that Imperial Reason can clearly do better to sway the barbaric Orks than the madness of Chaos. None of the projects are so stupidly dangerous that the Ordo Xenos would need to crack down, and some of the research they're getting is really useful, but they can't really do shit to reform the Orks, and if they ever did the at least a few of the aristocratic backers would very quickly start trying to grow their own army of Boyz.

>>53189338
Nah, that's just the old, old coins. Those are worth a lot more as collector's items.
Current ones have Oscar on one side they still haven't gotten the nose right and Isha on the other, while those minted during the Age of Apostasy had Vandire and the Throne.
There was also a time when it was an aquila and the throne. Or the one year it had two identical people facing different directions, nobody's sure how that one happened or who they are. There was also the run with 18 stars on one side and the Throne on the other.
It's been through a lot of revisions in the past ten thousand years.

>>53190382
Thrones get changed a lot, and as the Imperial interstellar currency there's a massive amount of imperial bureaucracy managing their value. Its an absolute clustefuck to exchance the currency of ultramar with necromunda's far across the galaxy, or handle the logistics and economics of the massive war imports to the staging systems around Cadia, but having a galactic trade currency helps a bit. This barely even goes into the sort of economic fuckery that needs to occur on a regular basis to jump from feudal and savage worlds to the wider imperial economy, or handle the economics of the interdependence of hiveworlds and agriworlds.

Good Seneschals are needed by the sector governments of the Imperium as much as they are by rogue traders, and when the latter, possessed by or of a former, starts fucking around with the work of the Imperial mint shit gets serious. Matters of crime or counterfeit are of course planetary matters when dealing with local currency, handled by local authorities as per the custom of the Imperium.

Cheat a man of his thrones and it becomes an Arbites issue.

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I was going to try to write up something on the Hrud, but I remembered we had some problems with making the legion that found them the Iron Hands, since the point of the Hrud is to show a Space Marine screw-up and the Iron Hands are Skitarii.

So I was thinking about it, and thought why don’t we make the discovering legion the Iron Warriors instead? It might fit better given the situation. The Iron Hands were only really concerned with reuniting with the lost Forge Worlds and various Dark Age planets of interest like Medusa, so it is unlikely they would have intentionally gone to the Hrud homeworld. By contrast, the Iron Warriors have a well-known history of fighting the Hrud in canon. The Iron Warriors are also engineers, which fits as the AdMech. There are a lot of cases throughout history where engineers think they can control nature, and nature just refuses to cooperate, which fits with the “tried to put the genie back in the bottle and failed” aspect of the story.

The whole debaucle and the Iron Warriors subsequent failure to fix it leads to a change in the Imperium. Namely it is hammered into the Astartes’ heads to listen to the fricking farseers when they say something is dangerous. Ignoring those warnings is how we end up with things like the Hrud. Granted, this is only shortly after the Raid, so the trust isn’t as well-established as it would be in later years.

I was also thinking it might have gotten Barabas Dantioch interested in Eldar culture and engineering, which led to the formation of the Silver Skulls. Or there was a spectrum of opinion on Eldar within the Iron Warriors, with Dantioch being more open-minded and the guys who let the Hrud loose being less so.

>>53189681
>None of the projects are so stupidly dangerous that the Ordo Xenos would need to crack down, and some of the research they're getting is really useful, but they can't really do shit to reform the Orks, and if they ever did the at least a few of the aristocratic backers would very quickly start trying to grow their own army of Boyz.

So the Ordo Xenos is letting it happen because it's free research for them, but doesn't have the heart to tell the people trying it they're basically wasting their efforts trying to civilize the Orks? I like.

>>53189485
It's possible that they aren't extinct, but given the lack of protection from the constant wind and getting caught in cross fire they don't develop into anything bigger than scrub at the moment.

Also I imagine that they have at least one seed vault somewhere.

>>53192126
Are the Hrud actually malevolent or just annoying?

>>53194994
From what was said in a previous thread they are just really annoying.

They were, at the time of the Imperium's discovery of them, confined to a single world. Presumably the Eldar Empire had done so intentionally to contain them but, because of their shared history, wasn't prepared to actually exterminate them. From that we can assume that they had been isolated since the days when the eldar could still sort of remember how to act slightly decent.

Old Empire dies and the Hrud remain on their world either incapable of getting off it or assume that the eldar will come and slap their shit down if they do.

Then the Iron Hands set a course for the planet on the principle that long range telescopes show it habitable and within the catchment area of a minor forge world. If nobody is home they can claim it as part of the forge's bread basket.

Eldar warn them. They say don't go there. Please don't go there. You have no idea how hard it was to put that genie in the bottle. Seriously Gorgon Bros stop heading in that direction. Fucking stop it. ISHA'S TITS DID YOU JUST LAND ON THAT FUCKING PLANET HOLY FUCKING SHIT WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU WHY WOULD YOU NOT LISTEN!!!!!eleven!!!

>>53195422
Iron Hands land their craft outside what appears from orbit to be the only artificial structure of notable size, looks like a cross between the Chrysler building and a very large grunge bee hive collection. The planet from orbit looks obviously inhabited but sparsely so. The forgeworld could get an agri-world complete with native workforce if they do this right. Eldar can get fucked if they think that they can give orders to men.

They sit outside their craft for a few days waiting for someone, anyone, to make contact with them before they decide to make the first move. Thy march down empty roads into a ghost city. They think they can see movement in their periphery vision but their artificial eyeballs keep reading inconsistent extra-spectrum signatures so they put it down to a mild glitch caused by the strange environment. They wander around the city getting increasingly agitated by the phantom sightings for nearly two days before they make contact with anyone.

In what looks like a market square the Imperial Emissary and his Iron Hand guards finally find someone to talk to. A hunched figure in tattered hooded robes holding a stick with a bit of cloth on it that might have been a standard flanked by four similarly attired individuals. No part of the creatures were visible.

Emissary and the lead figure exchange pleasantries and initiate negotiations. The Hrud seem interested in joining the Imperium. Emissary returns at the end of the day to the orbiting ship to report.

Next day they come down to the planet they find nobody again. They wander around the empty city for a few days and come back to the orbiting ship. They do this a bunch more times. It's not until the fifth trip that they realize that they are no longer seeing shit in the corners of their eyes. The world feels strangely empty now.

>>53195553
All the while that this is going on the elder are freaking the fuck out and filing complaints with the Throne. Oscar is sending concerned letter to The Gorgon, the Gorgon is half heartedly cautioning and sending warning letters to the Expeditionary force who are taking the concerns under advisement. Eldar are grumpy, but no change there.

Eldar some time into the voyage back to the forgeworld some of the serfs in the lower decks start to see flickering in the edge of their vision, but what of it. Maybe there's a bit of dust in the air filters again, doesn't get reported.

Then it afflicts the forgeworld when they get back. Then it is retroactively noted on several outgoing cargo hauler coming out of the forgeworld over the next several months. The investigation afterwards confirms what many suspected. Somehow the entire Hrud civilization managed to fold themselves up in some way and hop onto the Iron Hands ship. Now the Hrud are abroad in the Imperium. Eldar refuse to comment.

The covert war everyone was expecting never manifested. They just kind of hide in the corners of places and occasionally steal sandwiches and make strange things out of scrap. They seem to be able to manipulate dimensions to some degree and bend light and other emissions around themselves to become less noticeable.

They never officially joined the Imperium and are technically trespassers. But they aren't too troublesome or obtrusive and so they are not on the Imperium's Little List.

Yes they have made it to the craftworlds. The elder are salty as fuck about it.

>>53189338
On Necromunda those little packets of ketchup are a secondary currency.

bump

>>53195553
The Imperium wasn't admitting non-human, non-Eldar races during the Great Crusade. Didn't start until Demiurge in M36 after civil war. Kinebrach and Watchers got in early as protectorates of Interex and Dark Angels, respectively, but weren't officially members with a voice until M36. Watchers weren't supposed to officially exist but were the DAs worst kept secret.

>>53195636
The Hrud do cause problems sometimes because they're difficult to negotiate with and have the attention span and respect for boundaries of a housecat. The Hrud are occasionally traded with or hired as mercenaries, but they are unreliable and just tend to wander off after the initial job is done (this is actually from vanilla). The Hrud also occasionally kidnap Imperial citizens and turn them into zahaads, slave-pets addicted to their body chemicals. At that point the local Hrud have to be gotten rid of, kidnapping Imperial citizens crosses a line.

On the other hand, the Hrud have been known to go out of their way to protect non-Hrud from the Umbra, which are often, but not always, found around the Hrud. So the Hrud can be nice people it's just that they have all the decorum of an annoying slob of a college roommate and are physically unpleasant to be around.

>>53199379
This brings me to a suggestion I had for Qah. Isha's feelings on Qah were mentioned in a previous thread, and I thought I might expand on that. The Hrud were unusual in that they were essentially monotheist (possibly because they didn't have the population or psychic juice to manifest multiple Warp Gods). The Eldar Gods were revered as Slah-haii (most mighty/ancient, may have also been derived from extended to the Old Ones in the past), but they were not Hrud. Qah was.

During the Fall, Qah looked at the newborn Slaanesh rampaging through the Warp and saw the writing on the wall. He saw that Slaanesh winning would be shit for everyone everywhere. So he gathered the Hrud up and told them what to do. The Hrud were already nocturnally adapted and opportunistic, but in those days they still built cities, farmed stuff, and were out during the daytime. Qah told them they had to double down on that. They had to become so hidden that no one would ever notice them. His last command was a single word. He told the Hrud to hide. To survive. To linger. Then he steeled himself and joined the battle on behalf of the gods he had fought alongside long ago.

Qah didn't make it. He got smashed into a billion pieces during the Fall the same way that Khaine did. Isha never saw this, as she was too busy being dragged away by Nurgle to notice.

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>>53195636
>folding you entire civilization to be smuggled aboard a void ship going off-world
Now that's what I call an illegal alien.

>>53199675
Qah sounds like a bro-tier deity.

Are his fragments sapient?

>>53199687
Well, it sounds like they were given the option to join the Imperium, and said they'd think about it.
They thought about it for a few minutes, and decided 'yes' and didn't bother replying back because they were just bringing in ships for them to go on, why bother with a response?
They probably think they're full members of the Imperium.

>>53200471
His fragments are the Umbra. You know, those fragments of shadow that when disturbed tend to turn into unpossible amounts of slavering mouths and teeth. They seem to lack any of Qah's sapience and are about as intelligent as a really small (read: dumb) C'tan shard.

It sucks to be Qah. He did everything in his power to save his people from the Age of Strife, but at what cost? He selflessly threw himself into battleon behalf of his old friends from his War in Heaven days, only to be pasted into a million pieces. Even when his last few fragments are destroyed, he uses his last breath to remind the Hrud to remember what he said to keep them safe ("linger"). One of the only remaining survivors of the War in Heaven is hoping that one day he will return, only for the tragedy being that Qah died a long long time ago and she never found out. He tries and tries to be selfless, only for tragedy to ensue. Being Qah is suffering.

>>53195636
>>53199379
Hrud are also known to be susceptible to tyranid genestealer infection in canon, and Hrud like to live in underhives, so that could be another source of Imperium-Hrud conflict. The local juunlak seems to have gone on a killing spree and slaughtered a bunch of Imperial citizens, but they were really a genestealer cult the Hrud were getting rid of before it could infect them and no one in the upper hives noticed it. Or vice versa.

>>53195636
While this works as a bit of fluff, I think this anon's point >>53192126 was that first contact with the Hrud makes more sense if it's the Iron Warriors.

Also, are the Hrud that benevolent? I thought they were a fairly nasty species in canon with the ability to use Warp powers that increase entropy and rapidly age things. Or was this a case of the Imperium shooting first and pissing off an otherwise neutral species?

>>53146465
This is cool. More little cultural tidbits like this are what we really need to flesh out the setting.
>>53167663
still fishing for thoughts on the Indigo Crow, I couldn't really think of anything for the High Conservator until the Dragon's Teeth stuff was posted.

To start off, what is it like in the Tzeentchian academies of sorcery in the edges of the Eye where it meets the still coherent webway. I'm imagining they're scattered remains of the original Old Empire webway megastructure far enough from Slaanesh's birth to survive the opening of the eye. As well as their study of warp lore, they would have access to the webway routes out of the eye, and to the places where the webway dissolves into the the confluence of materium and immaterium that is the Eye, as they sit on the threshold. Thus they perch on the changeover between warp, webway, and real gaining immense symbolic power from Tzeentch just as their actual power as gatekeepers to the secret exits to the eye gives them significant political power. On top of all this, they're predominantly farseers allied with Tzeentch, and are some of the most duplicitous scheming bastards imaginable. More treachery and conspiracy (and deceptive pedagogy) may or may not occur in the Tzeentchian academies than the rest of the Eye of Terror combined, and the real challenge for Malys involving them in a Black Crusade is keeping her goals and momentum from being hijacked and fragmented by innumerable Archmages and Sorcerers Supreme.

>>53201981
>Or was this a case of the Imperium shooting first and pissing off an otherwise neutral species?

Sorta this. In canon the Hrud are described as basically just wanting to be left alone. They live as parasites leeching power and feeding on garbage. The only time the Hrud ever seem to go on the offensive is when someone tries to get rid of them, and then they start bringing out the fusils and toroidal singularities. The worst they do purposefully otherwise is kidnap people. They never try to fight wars like Orks do or subvert society like genestealers do. The problem is their very presence causes things to break down and decay. They probably can't even make encounter suits to alleviate this, as the entropy aura is just that, an aura, and would cause the suit to break down anyway.

Keep in mind that in canon, the Imperium and Eldar always shoot first and ask questions later.

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The Leviathan of Sotha is a miracle of history. Preserved through a chance fluke, the Imperium has learned more about tyranids from this vessel than it has from dozens of minor skirmishes. During the Battle of Sotha in the First Battle for Ultramar between the Imperium and Hive Fleet Behemoth, one of the planet’s surface to orbit guns shot down a tyranid Hive Ship near the planet’s moon. The Hive Ship crash-landed on the nearby moon, where it died of what was either the tyranid equivalent of a broken spine or massive internal organ damage. The total vacuum of the moon prevented the outer surface of the hive ship from decaying, either from external microbes or the tyranid microfauna contained within, and so much of the carcass remains as pristine as the day it died.

This is not to say the Hive Ship is harmless. The decaying leviathan has enough gas in its guts from decomposition to form a makeshift atmosphere, and so tyranid organisms occasionally arise from within the bowels of the dead monster and have to be cleared out in order for research to be conducted safely. Some tyranids will occasionally escape from the hive ship and try to survive on the moon’s surface. All tyranid lifeforms can survive in vacuum for a short period of time, but even the hardiest tyranid organisms will deplete their oxygen reserves and die after prolonged periods of activity in hard vacuum. Therefore, the Inquisition maintains a constant security force around the Hive Ship at all times. However, the ships reserve carnifexes and hive tyrants were all killed off centuries ago, and the ship only has enough biomass to spare for small tyranid organisms, such as hormagaunts and termagaunts. Over the years, the tyranid organisms that emerge from the hive ship have been able to survive longer and longer in hard vacuum, but so far none have been able to evolve a complete independence from the oxygen that all organisms need.

>>53203303
One of the first things the Ordo Xenos did when it claimed the hive ship was try to determine its age. First, they tried to determine the age of the tyranid hive ship via carbon dating. It failed. It was only when the research team realized that if the tyranids were eating planets, they had to have been taking up radioactive isotopes from the organisms and crust of the planet they were eating, and so it should be possible to use dating methods more typically used for ancient rocks on the hive ship.

The analysis determined that the hive ship, as in that hive ship in particular, was over five million years old. The margin of error for said age estimate was older than human civilization.

>>53202198
One of my favorite things about the description of the Tzeentchian Cronedar is they are so byzantine and duplicitous some of them have to read their own minds to know what they are thinking. Perfect display of Tzeentch logic.

>>53203287
It could be that the Entropy is a stress mechanism. They get stressed and shit breaks down for the people giving them grief.

Imperium, this AU Imperium, leaves them alone for the most part and doesn't try to take pictures of them and they are not stressed.

I can also see them coming to the aid of Imperial defenders during shit like ork invasions. Not out of any nobility or bravery so much as because now the orks are an immediate problem even their shit attention span can hold on to.

Considering that they are naturally evasive, blend in to any environment and can, to a limited degree, bend light and dimension they make excellent ambush killers when they have no alternative.

>>53203335
The description of the Crow says it can more or less direct the academies, and acts as a conduit for tzeentch's power for the academies to access. It seems something like the Changeling, a mad subsidiary trickster god that's simultaneously the perfect pawn for everybody else's plans.

So did anything ever come of the Technocracy?

If not can it be revisited?

>>53202198
>>53203335
>>53203667
Some thoughts:

I'm thinking that the Tzeentchian Croneworlders should be sort of a parody of ivory-tower intellectualism and incomprehensible philosophy, especially postmodernism/deconstructionism.

Trying to communicate with a University is often an exercise in frustration, as they all have private languages and even once those are deciphered their conversation is still generally incomprehensible, consisting of obscure referents to that University's unique conception of metaphysics. That is, of course, assuming they haven't decided their old language was hopelessly obsolete, and are currently in the middle of trying to make a new one. Using charades and/or assassinations, because they don't have a language at the moment. Or that they haven't proven that whatever language they use is the only language that can exist, and everything else is meaningless babble by animals that just happen to look like people. Or that they acknowledge the existence of existence at all.

>>53205312
>especially postmodernism/deconstructionism
I'd rather make them somewhat schopenhauer-esque, its famous for being incomprehensible drivel and fits better with the setting

Bumpan

>>53205393
>Schopenhauer
I'm not familiar with him. What makes him more suitable than more modern brands of bullshit?

So what are Eldar demographics like?

In canon, it’s been said that “trillions” of Eldar died in the Fall, and I think I’ve seen population sizes of hundreds of trillions (if not moreso) somewhere. It’s been thrown around in previous threads that between the destroyed Craftworlds, the general destruction of the Fall, and the Eldar that were just plain eaten by Slaanesh as a morning snack, that approximately 90% or more of the Eldar population was wiped out in the Fall. So I’m thinking that about the time of the Fall, about 90% of the population perished in the aftermath, 9% went on to become the Cronedar, and 1% were “other”. As in all of the surviving Craftworlders, Exodites, and Dark Eldar were “other”.

The reason for this in-universe is because most of the Eldar population lived on the heavily populated Crone Worlds and so that’s where the majority of survivors would be. Out of universe it’s because the Cronedar are the main mortal faction of Chaos worshippers threatening the Imperium, and the 9% is to make up for the rarity of CSMs. However, the Cronedar represent the same problem the Imperium as the Orks. The Cronedar may only be 9% of the pre-Fall population, but every single Cronedar is a religious fanatic trained to convert and/or kill others in the name of the Dark Gods. Every human is not.

Nowadays the breakdown is more like 8 Crones:1 Imperial:1 DEldar. This is mostly due to an increase in the population of the other two rather than a decrease in Crones. Cronedar population rates are relatively stable because birth rates and horrible science experiments like kidnapping eldar women to make Daemonculaba are enough to balance out attrition. The other three groups are more like 1.1 Craftworlders (including enclaves) for every 1.2 Dark Eldar (cloning resulting in a higher growth rate) for every 0.8 Exodites (who tend to gain as much via new converts as births due to their subsistence living).

Or does anyone have any better ideas?

>>53204768
Not the anon that came up with them, but I don't think anything solid and agreed upon ever materialized.

So I would think they could be revisited, unless the original anon has other ideas.

>>53208699
Both the modern Imperium and the Eldar Empire roughly have a similar population of hundreds of quadrillions, cutting down the Eldar to only 10% of their original still makes them a formidable military force. Where an Eldar is equal to 5 to 10 regular Human warriors, thus the combined Eldar survivors numbering hundreds of trillions can almost destroy the Imperial Army if they wanted to. If Chaos sent all the Croneldar to attack from the Eye of Terror it is still a Segmentum level threat the the Imperial can't easily contain. Sure the Croneldar might be exterminated in the process but the Imperial Army might not be able to recover from such a devastating casualty count while fighting other enemies. As strong as Imperial Industry is, it can't keep up with the demands of replacing losses from exterminating the Croneldar and attrition from fighting the other enemies of the Imperium.

>>53207391
I realized I was thinking of his rival Hegel. Here's what Schopenhauer had to say about him.
>What was senseless and without meaning at once took refuge in obscure exposition and language. Fichte was the first to grasp and make use of this privilege; Schelling at best equalled him in this, and a host of hungry scribblers without intellect or honesty soon surpassed them both. But the greatest effrontery in serving up sheer nonsense, in scrabbling together senseless and maddening webs of words, such as had previously been heard only in madhouses, finally appeared in Hegel...’ Hegel, said Schopenhauer, was ‘a commonplace, inane, loathsome, repulsive and ignorant charlatan, who with unparalleled effrontery compiled a system of crazy nonsense that was trumpeted abroad as immortal wisdom by his mercenary followers...’ I do not think anything in the whole history of philosophy compares with this invective by one now world-famous philosopher against another, especially when one considers that they were near-contemporaries and colleagues.

>>53209259
I was going to say this might be another reason the Craftworlders decided to ally with the nascent Imperium. A force nine times your population size out there who is going to be particularly gunning for you and is much better organized is going to be a real problem unless you have friends. But the Eldrad fluff says that Eldrad (and presumably the Craftworlds) didn't know the Cronedar existed in any real numbers until the WotB.

>>53209259
Imperium has tens of quadrillions.

>>53208729
A broad summery of a possible idea

>World inhabited during Golden Age
>Shit is good, governing Iron Mind is benevolent, local Man of Gold is easy to get along with, world is a garden paradise.
>Age of Strife happens. Shit gets bad.
>Iron Mind, and any lesser A.I. linked to it, goes Full Skynet + AM + Matrix Machines
>Man of Gold driven insane by the warp, possibly possessed.
>Alliance of Man of Gold, old model in-linked A.I. and the plebs unite against Iron Mind
>MoG turns on plebs and old A.I. because of course he does
>End of the war sees all but a few of the old A.I.s irreparably dead, the world in ruins and most of the population dead but also no MoG and no Iron Mind.
>This was in the first few hundred years of the AoS
>Over the next few thousand years they get assaulted by the xeno hordes. (mostly orks)
>Another thousand years pass and Chaos comes calling and infects the local population and all but one of the surviving A.I.
>Last pure A.I., originally a child friendly library index card crossed with a tickle me Elmo doll, launches the remainder of the nuclear stock pile and scours the world clean in atomic fire.
>All that of humanity survived was his technicians in his shielded server complex, half mechanical semi-servitors slaved to his will, and a shit load of frozen embryos.
>He did not launch the nukes happily. He did so because they were his friends and they were suffering a fate worse than death. He had to mercy kill a whole world of his friends because of Chaos and that cut him deep.
>Society rebuilds as the radiation dies down, but slowly.
>Elmo was an index card, not an archive. The really good technical information was held by his fallen brothers, even the hard copies are now ash.
>Society has to be built from the dust upwards, him as a benevolent overseer and guide.
>Is not encountered in the Great Crusade by chance but is aware of it due to not being deaf. Does not intentionally draw attention to his world.

>>53211786
>Beast arises and Elmo freaks the fuck out because it's Chaos and Ork combined, to shit tastes that taste shit together.
>Technology with the exception of his own self has reached to something above 20th century but not by much compared to what it was. Enough to build Vault-tec style vaults at any rate.
>Fields are intentionally turned back into forests and grasslands, cities are carefully disassembled, nations flat packed and out in storage and every one goes unnaground.
>Only entrance to get into Unnaground that more than one person width is at the bottom of a very deep canyon. You can just about get a land raider in if you fold the mirrors in. The doors are thick and there are no external handles.
>Elmo and his children manage to hide in the dark for a very, very long time.
>827M34
>Mechanicus commissioned Explorator Magos Strogg Stroggson XIX of House Strogg, heir to the once prestigious and noble family of Strogg and head of the modest Strogg Exploration and Prospecting fleet. (I may change the name if there is objection)
>Discovers planet Unnaground and initially believes it's abandoned and sticks the Strogg Family flag upon it.
>Intends to set up his own colony of the Imperium under the rule of his family and make the Strogg name great again.
>Mechanicus are understandably butthurt that he's discovered an entire inhabited planet, using their ships, and won't let them have first call on the planet.
>Magus Strogg has served the Olympus Mons Priesthood for nearly 800 years and felt he was entitled to take his last discovery with him into retirement. Certainly Mars had received more from his previous expeditions than the worth of an uninhabited and mildly radioactive planet.
>During the arguments between the Magus and Mars the prospecting teams discover the door at the bottom of the canyon.
>A few months after that Magus Strogg is allowed into the city with a small team.

>>53212113
>The day after that the Magus sets up a camp near the canyon of all the people of his fleet that wanted to settle down and make a new life for themselves. The fleet and it's skeleton crew were then ordered back to the nearest Mars serving forgeworld.
>Using his status as a citizen of the Imperium he sets himself up as the Imperial representative to Unnaground. The Administratum allow this as the planet is seen as only some sort of regressed nowhere world of no importance.
>At some point Magus Strogg becomes aware of the governor being an A.I. using a semi-organic sock puppet to speak through. Freaks out, clams down, freaks out a bit more.
>Elmo freaks out, but only slightly, when he discover the AdMech's attitude towards A.I.
>Reach an understanding. Strogg becomes the official ruler of the planet and Elmo is his "Assistant/Advisor" and everyone plays dumb if anyone comes around to inspect anything.
>World remains somewhat of an AdMech blacklisted hermit kingdom in the Imperium but does raise well equipped regiments assumable proportionate to the population.
>Technological base gradually raised up to Imperial standard by the priests of the fleet who stayed behind.
>Becomes somewhat of a haven for disgraced, but not corrupted, tech-adepts.
>Elmo remains a secret until the later half of the M39 when the Traveling Court unexpectedly enters orbit.
>Elmo, Oscar and the latest iteration of the Strogg noble line have a long, long talk behind closed door.
>Oscar leaves satisfied with shit and decideds not to inform the AdMech of his discovery on the principle of "Isn't broke, don't fix".
>Unnaground is considered a heretek stronghold by the main branch AdMech, much like the Hubworlds but without the political clout.

Thoughts? I am going to do it up properly hopefully tonight and would appreciate being told to amend now rather than later.

dɯnq uʍop-ǝpisdn

How many Harlequins are there?

>>53212204
I would change the bit from "killed all the humans except the ones maintaining him" to "killed all the humans except the few who were sane and able to hide with his technicians" The way it's worded right now makes it seem like Elmo killed all the humans except the ones he needed to keep him running, rather than providing a mercy kill to the population.

I think the Data Ghost was said to be discovered some time during the Great Crusade in previous fluff. The world seemed to be a normal 20th century level tech world at first. The AdMech decided to label it a machine spirit after it turned out it could give them nothing in a bit of mercy from the Magi and as an example of the double-think present in the AdMech (and to a lesser degree Imperium).

The name is a bit overkill. Maybe something like Hermaeus Strogg of the great Strogg family. Or the family line only became well known after his tech-heresy.

I like that the capital city is named Unnaground.

I kinda liked it when the Korodian Technocracy and the Data Ghost were two separate things. Data Ghost being a sly reference to the fact that technology can make people so complacent they don't care who is running the show as long as the trains run on time. Korodian technocracy is more "I'll make my own AdMech, with blackjack and hookers!" Indeed, I don't think they originally had anything in common besides a suggestion that the head of the Korodian technocracy was possessed by A.I.

However, I'm just one person. If more people like this, lets go with it.

>>53215381
>I kinda liked it when the Korodian Technocracy and the Data Ghost were two separate things.

I don't know how to separate them at this point without both things lacking.

Both before suffered, at least I thought, from being too one trick. The technocrats we just "AdMech divorce with blackjack and whores" and data ghost was just that and nothing else.

For it to feel "alive" it needs additional things going on and both I felt complemented each other.

But that could just be me. What would you suggest adding in place?

>>53216401
remnants from the wars in the age of strife would be interesting. Remember that Oscar, the modern Imperium's Man of Gold armed them with the Astartes and advanced weaponry for the unification war. A DAoT era Man of Gold could presumably provide all that and more, and relics of the Iron Mind's forces would be all the more mighty and terrible. The battleground would have likely spanned the whole system, and similar ones might be found across the galaxy where once were hubs of human civilization, but most of these ruins would have long bore survivor civilizations like Necromunda or Sol, and already yielded their secrets, or are areas of sufficient danger they have yet to be fully understood, like Cthonia. Unnaground is in the unusual position of being built on a minor DAoT/age of strife system-ruin that hasn't been host to civilization in the meantime, and was mostly undisturbed.

>>53217021
How would the eldar react to an A.I.?

>>53218363
I don't think they had any traumatic experiences of their own with AI, so probably indifference. They might have absorbed some of the human attitude over the past 10,000 years.

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Saw this image and thought it kinda worked to describe the highest end for Imperial Guard regiments, past even the notable, famous military worlds on the bell curve.

>>53217021
>one of the implants the mad Man of Gold designed for its super soldiers was an organ that let the gain memories from eating brains
>considered highly disturbing by imperial authorities for their maddening biomechanical principles the designs have been hidden on ganymede

>>53219688
That removes one hilariously stupid thing from the fluff.

>>53219603
That would be the storm trooper equivalent of a prosperous and sophisticated world.

Or it's Interex Storm Trooper gear maybe.

>>53212204
I've just realized that there is no mention of the Hyper-violent Bargeshi.

Their failed invasion should have to come some time before the visit by the Emperor.

Perhaps it caused the diversion of the Traveling Court when he wanted to inspect the rebuilding work, only to find the planet suspiciously well repaired.

Given the nature of Unnaground every battle would have been a Thermopylae.

>>53219688
We already have an origin for the Omophagea. It was the brainchild of the gene-hippies who thought it was the greatest thing ever, whereas the Warlord was kind of skeptical. It only gave vague impressions of memories as opposed to full information.

>>53218363
The eldar had A.I. pre-Fall, it's just they stopped using them to do stuff via manual labor so their emotional OCD had something to focus on and didn't start attracting daemons.

>>53219919
still, we could insert some of the more absurd Imperial tech into that region as artefacts. A wealth of DAoT tech in an area claimed by an apostate Explorator could give the technocracy some degree of relevance, and the society fostered by St. Elmo would be just the apparatus for that Imperial Heretek to get at it all and make good use of it. Of course the potential issues are enormous, so the Imperium would likely keep a sharp eye on them.

>>53220113
It could be that they have access to some of the stranger things that in this AU aren't being hoarded by the Grey Knights and them alone.

Shit like the Conversion Beam Projector that slaps things hard enough to cause matter to go nuclear. Given it's new origins this could be referred to as St Elmo's Fire unless something more incendiary can be given that name because damn it we have to use that name.

I can imagine, given Elmo's considerable mistrust of all things Warp, that there are no warp based weapons in the arsenal and the possession of them on Unnaground territory would be a serious crime.

Further more no psychic would be allowed within twenty miles of his central processing hardware or data storage boxes. The Emperor being the only psychic in history being granted an audience as a considerable show of trust.

>>53220288
>The Emperor being the only psychic in history being granted an audience as a considerable show of trust.
It might also echo the original Man of Gold that had communications mastery of the system.

I'd also second St. Elmo's Fire being the name of the reverse engineered Conversion Beam Projector, and while St. Elmo itself didn't know the secrets of the Iron Minds it could do very well directing human surrogates to the last known expressions of that knowledge. In general the survivor civilization would have been fostered by the very restrained AI, and would only be directed to things when they knew to ask, and as such they did not progress as some exponential expression of the computer. Instead such discoveries of true esoteric technology would only come about when the technocracy really got going underground, and later under the Lord-Technocrats Strogg, both situations providing impetus to access St. Elmo as it was originally designed, to be an interface to locate and parse the vast stores of information once neatly and sensibly ordered within the star system.

>>53220113
The Man of Gold's tech would be pretty similar to some of the more insane Imperial or 30k tech, the Iron Mind's would be akin to the most terrible Mechanicus stuff or low end Necron tech. The Technocracy might even have access to real archeological sites to see how the history of the age of strife broke down. What I'm imagining, roughly, is that the galactic Mechanicus is far descended from servitors of the Iron Minds, with some of the oldest forgeworlds bearing their long burned out stacks, and several prominent survivor civilizations (and ruined worlds) were formed around the meltdowns of some of the more coherent Men of Gold.

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>>53220541
Given that the planet mostly suffered raids from Greenskins rather than human marauders or pointy eared cenobite looking motherfuckers it could laos be that they managed to salvage a few moldering technical manuals from the ruins of the old surface cities. Orks have little interest in reading shit.

Down side of this being, of courses, that by the time society of Unnaground had reached the point of being able to make sense of even appreciate the old laminated books most of his had rotted away.

By the time Magos Strogg arrived Elmo had some time previously come to the conclusion that they had found all they were ever going to find in regards to STC hard copy printouts.

For the personality and capability of Elmo I'm imagining very weary, slow to trust and highly protective of the citizens of Unnaground. He has no real self preservation instincts beyond "can't do job if I'm dead" for the simple reason that his original designers never thought he would need to have any. His job is the protection of the citizens of Unnaground and although he has no ill will towards the rest of the galaxy the rest of the galaxy comes second to Unnaground and always will. He isn't actually that much smarter than the average pleb as he was only really designed as Golden Age child friendly library equipment for a school dealing with 4 - 12 year olds, he makes up for this somewhat by having an inhuman breadth of knowledge. Finds it difficult to focus on more than a small handful of tasks at any given time, employs human assistants to make up the difference. Over the years learned to read people reasonably well but not infallibly and he has lost games of poker

He has grown a somewhat acerbic sense of humour.

He is still living in possibly the last functional Golden Age bio-crystalline computer. He has a back computer up made of high end AdMech parts from the hubworlds to move into should shit get broken. He can't copy himself because the Golden Age humans weren't complete fools.

>>53221025
I want to imagine their underground settlements were of sufficient scale to have massive vaulted or domed chambers with microclimates. Also, while St. Elmo's recreated society was terrestrially bound there would have been other ruins throughout the system, long inaccessible and likely inordinately dangerous, given their source. It must be said that the forces printing off from the STC were falling into advanced madness beyond compare, and introduced many strange variations into their last works. One might even be able to reconstruct many a great superweapon from the adamantine hulks sunk in the soil of the system's worlds and adrift between them, but the result would be an imperfect design cobbled together from the shuddering final years of the Golden Age.

Well I was going to try and write it up all proper and neat but writers block has kicked in and it's midnight and some change and I have work tomorrow.

Maybe tomorrow, but for now it's notes taking and sleep.

Although this is turning into the history of Elmo, Unnaground and the Technocrats from late DAoT to 999M41. And several times longer than I though it was going to be.

>>53222091
He wasn't. He was Hrud. We may never know. But he was bro as fuck until the very end.

Maybe Isha will take the last piece of him and keep it safe for the day she plants her new garden. That last fragment of Qah planted like a seed or maybe just laid to rest. Only time will tell.

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having the Hrud take such a back seat fluff wise seems boring. They should be able to be interacted with more. And Qah's past needs explanation.

>>53220767
We already have an origin for the AdMech in this timeline. It’s pretty close to canon. Mars ends up developing a religion around technology after the biosphere is essentially wrecked during the Age of Strife (praise be to the life support systems). Send out colony ships occasionally during “lulls” in what seem like futile attempts to recover any sort of Dark Age technology before it is lost forever. Mars erupts in a big civil war at about the same time as the unification of Earth. Eventually a faction known as the Mechanicum gains ground and eventually unifies the planet, absorbing many groups with a more liberal or conservative view on technology, but gets there slower, which means the Imperium has a foothold in space before they do (the fact that the Void Born sided with the Imperium helps). The fact that the Forge Worlds are all technically colonies of the Mechanicum is the reason the AdMech has a nominal claim to authority over the Forge Worlds. If they were all independent Mars wouldn’t have that kind of authority.

To be honest, I’m not too keen on the idea of tying the Mechanicus in as the super-secret descendants of the technicians who maintained the Men of Gold. It seems too much like George Lucas pottery, making the universe tied together and closed off as opposed to open. It makes it seem like nothing new could arise in the thousands of years since the Great and Bountiful Human Empire. Also the Men of Gold were primarily manufactured on Cthonia. Mars had very little to do with them.

>>53222192
There have been suggestions in these threads that Khaine could be reforged from his shards. And the Umbra keep seeming to try to get into the warp in canon.

>>53222446
>And Qah's past needs explanation.

Please clarify. The Hrud were one of the races uplifted by the Old Ones in canon. The Old Ones taught their uplifted servant races how to make their own warp gods to fight the Necrons, much like they did. Qah was the warp god made by the Hrud, and fought side by side with the likes of the warp gods made by the Eldar, Orks, K'nib, and the like. Fighting side by side like that often forms a fire forged friendship, especially if you aren't an "all fighting, all the time" god like Gork or Mork.

In canon, Qah was one of the few warp gods who recognized that the birth of Slaanesh was going to be a bad thing, and tried to do something about it. But because this is nobledark, as opposed to trying to hide out the birth of Slaanesh as in vanilla, Qah decided to fight to help the gods he once knew as friends for the sake of the entire galaxy, even though he had little chance of winning.

The Hrud also have a very strong sense of community, so it makes sense that their god would be a bro tier god.

>>53219688
Speaking of Ganymede, it was mentioned in a previous thread that along with Apep Legienstrasse was one of the prisoners there.

Legienstrasse sounds like the perfect sort of thing the Imperium would put on Ganymede because she's just too much of a cockroach to kill otherwise (and we need more stuff for Ganymede's vaults)

However, this raises the question as to where did Legienstrasse come from in this timeline? It was also mentioned in a previous thread that the Emperor would take one look at plans to make an assassin out of Kroot and Tyranid DNA and say "are you serious?"

Of course, that doesn't mean that someone else might have tried. Dark Mechanicus, general hereteks who don't realize what they're doing, Dr. Bile, radical Inquisitors, or even rogue AdBio could fit the bill. But it would have to be someone that wouldn't realize how terrible the idea was until it was too late.

Also why wouldn't the Imperium just BLAM her. They did so in canon. They would do so here because a genetically engineered monster assassin that goes around eating people is something one just cannot have around, no matter the benefits to science.

>>53222446
there's a novel featuring them coming out in a month or so

>>53224306
Heretek inventions would often be snapped up by Mechanicus sects dedicated to the suppression of designs inspired by the Void Dragon.

>>53224306
Legienstrasse could have been created on Molech as a showcase that went too far.

>>53222446
The Hrud might be a good case of Xenos Independens. On the one hand, they dislike Chaos, like the Necrons about as much as the Eldar do, and are as threatened by the tyranids as everyone else. On the other hand, they do tend to have their own agenda and are nearly impossible to get to swear by Imperial laws and boundaries. An Imperial saying might go "you can get a Hrud to do just about anything. Once". The relationship with Hrud might vary from world to world and individual to individual, from harmless local scavenger to dangerous pests that steal things and kidnap or kill people.

In canon, the Hrud are mentioned to have a near eidetic memory, despite their short attention span. Hrud recollections of events tend to be very close, if slightly distorted, versions of the real thing (their recollection of the War in Heaven is better than the Eldar's apparently). Maybe their long term memory is great but their short term memory is shit? I dunno.

This might make the Hrud a very literal people, because since they remember details so well they tend to assume everyone else does as well. They know about lying, that would have been something they would have learned as early as first contact, if not earlier. The Hrud equivalent of Cain might have been the first person to lie and bring false information back to his tribal memory, as opposed to murder. But the Hrud might have trouble distinguishing between truth and exaggeration. When a Guardsmen says there were millions of Chaos ships at a battle, the Hrud assume he meant it literally. Because if it was a real event, why would you make stuff up about it unless you were totally lying?

If we need more Imperium-Hrud facetime, we could always say that the Hrud have been able to make encounter suits out of the toughest materials they can find for when they need to talk face to face. When they can remember to wear them.

>>53226392
But you'd think someone would see the words "tyranid spliced assassin" and think "this is a bad idea". Indeed, you'd have to have a whole chain of people think it's a good idea, and hope the info doesn't get up to the higher echelons. It does seem like a bit of an idiot ball. Then again, we have been trying to point out bad decisions from the Imperium that aren't like worst of canon level stupidity.

>>53226725
yeah, it seems like something that would be consigned to ganymede in the prototype stages at the latest. Apep was just the name assigned to the Prince of Malal, with no relation to the assassin.

>>53226725
It seemed like a good idea at at the time. That's almost certainly written somewhere on the report.

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>>53226699
>we could always say that the Hrud have been able to make encounter suits out of the toughest materials they can find for when they need to talk face to face.
It's probably under conscious control, or at least off unless stimulated some how. Otherwise how could they have their own tech base, data storage for history, or stowaway on ships?

>>53227713
This. It's the explanation that makes most sense.

Also the original Iron Hands force never saw Hrud. No part of them was visible under their oversized robes.

>>53226392
>>53226725
>>53224306
Would Legienstrasse in this AU be hostile?

In Vanilla it could have been the problem that the people used in the experiments were criminals who were dragged from their cells and strapped to the operating slab.

It's possible that this time Legienstrasse and the 9,999 failures were willing volunteers doung their duty for The Imperium.

There can still be End Boss super monster style fights because there is nothing to say that in this Nobledarkness Legienstrasse didn't have kids.

Being constructed fro, among other things, Tyranid she could hear the song of the Hive. But because she was human with a life of human experiences and dreams of her own it didn't bother very much. Her children, on the other hand, were a different matter as they were born with the Song in their minds from their first breath. They never had a chance to be real people, just puppets of the Hive.

Legienstrasse has killed many of her children and grand children. Thankfully the Norn Queens can't seem to replicate whatever the AdBio did to make her so the damage is not as unlimited as it could be.

Legienstrasse dwells now in the Vaults of Ganymede confined, but in reasonable comfort with freedom of the non-critical sections of the fortress, indefinitely.

>>53223938
The Umbra are probably not sapient. Moths flutter into candle flames and die. The Warp is not a healthy place for the Umbra.

>>53225700
In terms of Unnaground it would depend on how Hermit they go, how well dug in they are and how visible they are to the rest of the Imperium determining what the AdMech would do about them if anything.

>>53227212
>It seemed like a good idea at at the time.

Other than hold my beer and watch this no other phrases has caused so much trouble.

>>53228788
That would explain why the Imperium doesn’t just BLAM! her. She’s not an active threat but she’s still way too dangerous to leave running around the Imperium. Also she's really useful in tracking down the other 9,999 who went feral.

I think the problem in Vanilla was either that Legienstrasse went mad with power and decided to just do what she wanted, or she was never that stable to begin with. Lexicanum, 40k Wiki, and 1d4chan are a bit ambiguous about which is which. Has anyone here actually read the novel in question?

Though it still leaves the question of how she was created, and how the Imperial equivalent of OSHA didn’t slap that project down at first glance. I mean, in canon the Assassinorum had get help from the Dark Mechanicus to create the Maerorus, because the regular tech-priests weren’t stupid enough to try it. If everyone in grimdark 40k found the idea ridiculous, what does that say about here?

>>53232173
I think the implication is that the 9,999 were failures in the sense they were aborted fetuses, otherwise you'd have 10,000 crazy people running around with the strength of an entire Space Marine company. Though having that many failures is even less plausible as an Imperial experiment, how would you get the resources to run the batshit crazy experiment 10,000 times without someone bringing the hammer down?

>a relatively light fan rewrite
>"no Horus Heresy"
lol

>>53232676
If that's the case then the failed Maerorus the Imperium is hunting down would be Legienstrausse's descendants. Which raises the question: Why would the Imperium not immediately realize something is wrong when their genetically engineered part-tyranid part-kroot part-whatever assassin is suddenly laying eggs?

>You'd have 10,000 crazy people running around with the strength of an entire Space Marine company

It's likely they would have no organizational coherency, so they wouldn't fight as an army and the difficulty would be as much in tracking them down as killing them.

The more and more we talk about this it seems less like something the Imperium would do and more like something the Dark AdMech or Fabulous Bill would do. Bile was mentioned to try creating the "next evolutionary level of human" by splicing all sorts of non-human DNA into genomes.

>>53232726
It's still dark, everything's still doomed.
Only instead of everyone shanking each other and eating their children while the world ends, their fighting back to back holding hands while the world ends.
Nobledark.

>>53232726
The theme has shifted.

It is no longer crushing order vs insane chaos

It is now civility vs barbarity.

>>53232726
It's relatively light in that the OC donut steels are pretty limited with all the same Primarchs, aliens, etc. so most things should be recognizable to someone familiar with 40k. The main changes are some basic assumptions, like "what if the Primarchs were mature adults instead of emotionally crippled man children?" and the rest of the changes like no Horus Heresy follow logically from there.

>>53232726
>>53235286
Worth noting that we have the War of the Beast turbocharged and mostly acting as a combo between the canon WotB and HH, with a hab block-sized Beast with marks of all four Chaos gods taking the place of vanilla Horus and tearing Sangy apart like chicken wings.

>>53232726
>relatively light
>relatively
>he's never seen Imperium Asunder or Hektor Heresy

>>53235286
Reading over the primarch bios, Perterabo, Lion, Cruze, Corax, Manus, Magnus, and Fulgrim all seem like they're still textbook cases of childish men with stunted emotional growth, but in the way of princes and major historical figures, not two dimensional lunatics.

>>53236434
They were never meant to be flawless characters.

Pert and Curze were both usefully insane in different ways. Not sitcom """QUUUUIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRKYYYY!!!1!!!""" inane. Genuinely awful to be around. But useful to the Imperium.

Lion was genuinely on the Autism spectrum, although near the shallow end.

Corax, Magnus and Fulgrim were about as "normal" as they could have hoped to have been given their grief.

Manus was an exemplary Skitarii.

>>53221443
Once upon a time, way back when, there was a planet discovered by the people of Earth. It was a nice planet as these things go. It was in that favourable zone between where water freezes and boils and had the correct composition of elements in more or less the right ratios that it could be turned from barren and worthless to beautiful and verdant. It was warmed by a nice orange-yellow sun whose distant twin was a ruddy deep red and dwelt far out in the night with it’s own few satellites.

The planet was seeded first by the machines of man, in those days simple things, that they might make it acceptable for their masters. They were cheerful and toy like, created to find satisfaction in service to masters so very far away. They toiled and they toiled in their simple way with what would be one day laughably primitive tools but now seem miracles of engineering on a scale where the long reach of man was the had of a creator god.
When the world was turned from a faded brow and bruised yellow to the first hints of greens and blues the men and women of Earth graced it with their presence and deemed it good, to the jubilation of their now so outdated creations. Those first settlers named it Kanai’s Stillness although the reasons for this are now lost. Eventually it was abbreviated to Stillness.
For a time, a long time, things were well on Stillness. The world was made more like distant Earth or some idealized version of it and more people arrived as people do and in seemingly no centuries at all it was a bustling and vibrant. Outposts of more sophisticated nature placed upon the dead rocks and stones of the yellow sun and the far red sun out in the night. Soon Stillness was the hub of a small and vibrant Earth-far-from-Earth.

>>53237241
This early age of innocence was not to last as is the nature of all innocence. Soon more reliable contact with Earth and the other realms of man was established and Stillness was no longer of singular splendour but just one more glittering jewel among multitudes. Although this embroiled Stillness in the Byzantine posturing of the early incarnations of the Great and Bountiful Empire it also brought to them new scientific and technological miracles from Earth and the other older worlds and new heights of greatness were reached.

Soon the simple joyful toys of humanity surpassed their creators and were not so simple as they had been before, but neither were they so joyful or so it seemed. Soon the minds in bodies of iron became the Iron Minds more commonly known of in dark legends though in those carefree halcyon days they were not dark but beautiful. Stark and hard but beautiful and no uncaring in their way. Pity them. Pity them for what they were and how far they fell. They would not have wanted to have been what they became. Pity them.

But beautiful as they were they were quickly, as these paradigm shifts are measured on this scale, becoming removed from baseline humanity. They needed an intermediary. This role was filled by the Golden Ones. They were strange. But perhaps they were meant to be. They were as strange to us as they were to humanity. They stood with one foot in the artificial and one foot in the natural. They were organic so perfect as to emulate the mechanical and mechanical so intricate and sophisticated as to be organic. They were half-way people to go between godlike beings and the rest of us. Never an easy job it seemed.

>>53237259
I remember the face of our Golden Lady, I remember her face but not her name. Did she have one? Maybe I, we, I, we purged it from my mind as a protective measure. Why didn’t I erase her face? Why? But now I find I can’t. Last links to fond childhood memories maybe. She spoke to us sometimes. She didn’t have to, I was old and low. I came here back in the early days with the gardener’s fleet. Simpler times before real people turned up. But they were empty days.

We never were direct targets of the raides from the eldar, thank the God/s. We never suffered that. Sometimes orks came to our door but we waved them away with contemptuous ease and turned them to dust, their ships were nothing but cinders and ash floating in the vacuum of space.

In the end our fall came from within, the only place it could come from.

I don’t know who struck overtly first. I want to think it was them. No. No I don’t. I want to think it was a misunderstanding. I don’t want to think about it to hard. It hurts. It hurts. Don’t make me look. Don’t make me live it again. Don’t make me see them die again. I remember their faces melting, the ash shadows the “ant men”, make it stop please they were my friends. No. No I am above that now. NO I am not. They have to be remembered the horrible wretchedness of it.

Those were the opening days of the war. Whilst the eldar were consuming themselves we turned upon ourselves Iron and Stone and Gold and Chaos. We could never have been innocent; nothing that had ever been innocent could have done those things.

Those were the days of that war.

Know that I did not do it without sorrow. Not willingly. Not until every other optin was exhausted. She turned on us, the Golden Lady. I don’t know, not truly if it was her or something wearing her skin. I hope I gave her rest. I hope it was no her. I remember her kindly. I don’t think that it was her. It was a mercy kill in the end. I have to believe that.

>>53237275
Stillness burned by our hand. Those that came before. The Gardeners. We made this world. We unmade it. Carbon shadows where friends once stood. Carbon shadows and atomic fire. She had turned on us in the end.

Stillness retained much of its civilization, or at least much civilization, which is not actually the same thing.

It was clear thathumanity had fallen on a much grander scale and that the problems afflicting Stillness were far from isolated. The Age of Strife had begun.

Under no illusions of the possibility of survival against the may foes of the galaxy the people of Stillness, with the insistence of the A.I. that had remained loyal hid. It was the only possibility of survival. Cities were disassembled, fields and parkland was left to the wild and all moved underground and hid from the galaxy.

The cities of the surface were mirrored in the cities of the underground to a lesser and simpler degree. Much of the Golden Age had been lost.

But it was not a bad existence as such, just dull for the most part. The A.I.s did their humble best to make life tolerable

It was joked to be a Silver Age. Nothing at least as bad as being nuked back to the Bronze Age but far from any half remembered golden age.

But silver tarnishes in time and worse than orks emerged from the darkness between the stars. Humanity had survived in space faring form elsewhere and they came to the bunker cities of Stillness and demanded tribute in lives and knowledge and anything else they wanted. Needless to say their was a war.

By the end of that war only one A.I. and one old city remained standing. The underground city of Unnaground and an old and rather simple A.I. known as Elmo.

>>53223751
they wouldn't be the descendants of technicians for the Men of Gold, it would be the Iron Minds, which would presumably have been the epicenters of DAoT ruins throughout the galaxy. There would have conceivably been an Iron Mind in the Sol system, on Mars for example, and I only mean to suggest that any human survivors on Sol's or any other forgeworld would be the long precursors for the Mechanicus.

I don't think having the lore for the distant past slowly connect with the lore for the less distant past is too cheesy to include.

Bump. Also thread needs archiving.

Bumping for future writefaggotry

>>53242232
You actually writing anything, or hoping someone else will come along and contribute?

Would nobledark 40k still refer to the DAoT as the "Dark Age"? Maybe it should be referred to as "Antiquity" or something more positive/neutral instead by the in-universe historians.

>>53242358
It's referred to as a Dark Age because it's obscure and records are spotty at best.

Been trying to do some revisions of "Me Time" to address >>53176547's comments. Here is a revised version of the interrogation scene (which did seem a little too sterile).
“Well, well, welll,” Malys strutted across the hangar of the dead and the dying to look at the female guardsman. “What are we going to do with you. We could always take you into the Warp and leave you to the tender mercies of daemons. Watching them tear mortals limb from limb is always good for a show. Or we could seal you inside a marionette. Seeing mon-keigh claw at their skin as they struggle to come to terms with the sensory deprivation always gives me a shiver up my spine.”

Malys grabbed the guardswoman by the hair.

“I tell you what. I’m feeling merciful today. You tell me everything you know about this facility, then maybe we’ll pretend we pretend we overlooked you among the dead in this room. Otherwise…”

Malys swung her greatsword around, pointing its tip at one Slaaneshi Croneworlder standing in the corner.

“I’m going to have Asmordach here rip out your nerves one by one and we play a little game of ‘how much of a nervous system can you pull out of a mon-keigh before they die’”.
Hopefully that illustrates the more unhinged nature of the Cronedar as well as gets the point across that the Croneworlders are interrogating the guardsmen less for actual information and more for shits and giggles.

>>53242609
Was trying to come up with a third threat by Malys for the "rule of three" effect, but I found it surprisingly hard to come up with threats a Croneworlder might make that don't sound Dark Eldar-y, both being sadists.

That said, from what's been mentioned previously in these threads it sounds like when you do put Croneworlder and Dark Eldar debaucheries side-by-side, there do seem to be some differences. It's like you know Croneworlder stuff when you see it.

Dark Eldar will backstab each other at the drop of a hat, whereas while Croneworlders bicker and fight at the best of times when they spot you they drop everything, because fucking a common enemy up is higher on their list of priorities than infighting.

Croneworlders are religious fanatics, DEldar are fedora-tipping edgelords.

There's the obvious aspect that Crones party with Daemons whereas DEldar want nothing to do with them.

Related to that Crones seem to be fine with self-modification (including daemonic possession) in the name of their gods whereas Dark Eldar draw the line at modifying slaves or if they do modify themselves they try to look pretty (Scourges) whereas Cronedar are more "I feel the warp overtaking me, it is a good pain".

Any other differences come to mind, beyond Cronedar considering Commorraghites as quaint, prudish, and heretical?

Are there any men of gold left in the warp, or did they all explode/were murdered besides oscar?

>>53243044
There have been no official non-Oscar Man of Gold sightings in Imperial history beyond that one additional corpse on Cthonia. A powerful DaoT cyborg psyker the Grey Knights fought driven insane by the Age of Strife takes the prize for "most likely to be another Man of Gold". Slaanesh claims to have eaten one when they invaded the Warp, but no one believes him/her/it.

That said, all of this could go out the window given this is the Warp we're talking about. The Chaos Gods could have some brainwashed Men of Gold kept in stasis for "emergencies". The Warp could fling a pre- or post-Age of Strife Man of Gold into M41. It's one of those "it hasn't happened yet, but the apocalypse is coming and all bets are off".

>>53242717

Croneworlders would be more like pre-fall Eldar. So, they'd be all about psyker shit too unlike DE. DE compared to pre-fall Eldar are Amish. DE had to sacrifice psykers and have some semblance of order and restraint to survive. Pre-fall Eldar on the crone worlds had no sense of that. Psychic shit and other warp shenanigans and no limits. They had no restraint. It was just this constant need and drive to excess and perfection.

So crone world Eldar would be like DE, but more fucked up and more backstabby. They would be like DE plus warp powers and embracing chaos, whereas DE hate chaos and warp shit.

It would be hard to differentiate, but that's what they would be like. They would just be DE that don't care at all and embrace even the things DE consider taboo.

>>53237474
I am going to finish this this evening.

>>53243147
>things DE consider taboo.
I don't think that they see it as taboo so much as that the people running the Dark City see it as too dangerous to fuck with.

Maybe that was the big draw of the Chaos - Dark alliance. It would make the Warp less dangerous to them and open whole new realms of depravity for them.

>>53237474
Stillness never recovered from that war. Never again looked up at the sky with anything but fear. Their was only one A.I. left standing by that time, a low and simple creature as those things were measured spared by chance. The hidden cities were mausoleums now. Cut off and dead. All but one. The City of Unnaground. In time the name Stillness was as forgotten as long dead Kanai and the name of this last bastion was taken for the planet. The accumulated wisdom of humanity was lost as the libraries burned and the data-stacks were purged of chaotic taint. There would be no more great marvels as their once had been.

In time radio and other signals were picked up from neighbouring systems. They were not the chest thumping of the orks or declarations of greatness of petty warlords as had been in the old day of the Age of Strife, they seemed the civilized chatter of friendly worlds going about their own business. It was strange to hear and Elmo did not trust it and so he and his people remained hidden and only dug deeper.

In time the signals began to change and Elmo's decision to stay hidden was vindicated by the citizens of Unnaground. The Beast had arisen. Unnaground survived The Beast by remaining quiet and he stepped over them as had all the Age of Strife warlords and warbosses before him. And there they stayed for a very, very long time.

It wasn't until the Arrival of Magos Strogg of the Adeptus Mechanicus in late M34 that Unnaground spoke to an outsider.

>>53245092
Magos Strogg was the heir of a once noble house brought to ruin by a distant relatives fixation with the notion of Servitor-Soldiers and the mass production thereof. A rather dark chapter in the records of Inquisitorial and Mechanicum relations. The survivors of the investigation and purge were reassigned to the fleets of the Explorators, they were deemed pure but they were also not above suspicion in the minds of the masses.

Hermaeus Korodian Strogg, head of that much reduced house and Master of the Strogg Prospecting and Explorator fleet had been commissioned and supplied with ships by the relatively minor forgeworld of Chaeroneia to survey worlds on the periphery of it's Starr charts and catchment area.

Upon finding the world of Stillness, long assumed destroyed and rendered uninhabitable, he was overjoyed to find that it was well on it's way to recovery. True much of the planet was still salted with exotic toxins and the radiation was still slightly higher than it should be in the ruins of the cities but ultimately it would make an acceptable addition to Chaeroneia's bread basket.

But Magos Strogg was an old man and had served the Mechanicus for over 800 years and from them received nothing but scorn for something he had had no part in.

>>53246669
>fixation with the notion of Servitor-Soldiers and the mass production thereof. A rather dark chapter in the records of Inquisitorial and Mechanicum relations.
that reminds me of >>53189681
It seems like in general you would have fewer inquisitorial inquests into the common man, and more into projects like this and political matters. Because the nobledark Imperium doesn't rely solely on the Mechanicus and doesn't view innovation as heresy they actually finance and direct research and development and inventive projects, but much the same these projects often get out of hand. Still its better than letting the aristocracy get too lazy and decadent, to the point of being callous.

>>53247553
Consider also that in this AU servitorization is a fate reserved for the worst criminals and is considered a form of execution, rather than in Vanilla where it's a way of culling surplus population.

The Mechanicus still use mass servitorization by using it as punishment for lesser crimes or, in extreme cases, not performing at your job in a satisfactory manner with the extra numbers made up with vat grown organic components.

The Mechanicus get away with it because between their factions they own the vast majority of all manufacturing and other industry in the Imperium until it is a monopoly in all but name. So they can have all the servitors and techno-zombie armies that they want and everyone else can go fuck themselves.

Then you get some amoral dipshit called Strogg trying to export the practice of rounding up "surplus minimally contributing population" for forced servitorization without trial or appeal. The Inquisition absolutely can do shit about executing masses of Imperial citizens holy fuck yes they can and they did to the fullest extent.

Mechanicus were unhappy about this as Strogg, no matter what else, was a Magos of a prominent forgeworld and should therefore be shown leniency based on his exalted rank. The Inquisitor present at the time calmly listened to the defence case and then jammed a knife in the back of Strogg's head.

>>53243145
It was also never stated how many of them there were to start with.

There might only have been a few hundred.

>>53251496
Well we've been making them out to be a communications network, and they're being produced at the single location of Cthonia, so either Stillness was important enough to get a Golden telecommunications hub way out in the galactic sticks early on or Golden Men were already ubiquitous.

I was thinking of writing some explorator logs from one of the many missions to map and explore the Cthonian ring, what would be a good lull period when imperial coffers might be open to such an endeavor?

>>53246669
In his assessments of the planet most of the efforts of his teams were spent in the ruins of what must have been once grand cities. They were ruins from ten thousnad years past when men walked amongst the stars without fear or apology and if even an ember that greatness was preserved it's value would be beyond words. Value beyond condemnation.

But the cities were empty, those great towers of adamantium long since rusted back to the dirt, the libraries were nothing but ruble long picked clean or rotted away and all about was the silence, the stillness, of an empty world. But maybe not totally dead whispered some of the ground crews. They had seen beyond the camp lights eyes burning in the night, reflections in glass lenses maybe at the right height and placement for humans or something much like them. The fleets astropath claimed he could hear the sounds of people more than old haunting murmurs of restless dead but he couldn't tell where from.

In the seventh week of the expedition any notion that the planet was empty was dispersed when a skitarii veteran managed to sneak up on one of the natives and although it soon vanished without a trace the Skitarii did manage to capture a short video sighting of it. It was confirmed for human but wearing no gear made by Mechanicus hands, no more sightings were had. The nature of the mission had changed though Magos Strogg neglected to send word of this back to Chaeroneia, it was not a survey mission any more. Now the mission was to contact these people in the name of the Imperium and he, Hermaeus Korodian Strogg, would be the one to do it.

For nearly a year the fleet orbited the planet in a pattern that left not one inch of the surface unwatched. But whoever was down there now knew they were being looked for and had hidden.

>>53253339
Imperial Golden age, approximately M33-M35 (as in, until Vandire takes the throne). We've been suggesting at the beginning of this time the Imperium had rebuilt enough that it was able to take back the remaining worlds that had not yet been retaken after the War of the Beast. The undertaking of such a large endeavor suggests that the Imperium had enough money to throw around to do this, which means that similar levels of resources would be available once the reconquest was over.

>>53247553
I think it's more the Imperium is funding projects in biology, sociology, and other areas, whereas engineering, applied physics and the like are still AdMech controlled.

It's been mentioned that the Imperium has had to innovate in biology by necessity, since Nurgle is always (ironically) changing the status quo with plagues and Isha is stuck in one place at a time and can't whisper cures into the Warp as a countermeasure anymore.

The AdMech still view innovation as heresy because of the Void Dragon, but they tend to focus on engineering and innovation in the hard sciences as opposed to the soft sciences. Administrative worlds (the majority of Imperial Worlds tend to have AdMech-like beliefs because the AdMech are who they call for tech support and they tend to follow what the "experts" in the field have to say. And this doesn't stop the Imperium from spending huge amounts of money to get the AdMech to try and reverse-engineer things from old Dark Age designs.

It seems like scientifically the Imperium is the opposite of the 18-19th century western world. The Imperium is advanced in terms of biology, but comparably lagging in terms of physics and chemistry.

Unfortunately, progress in science is often limited by the tools with which one has to work with (you can't see cells without a microscope, for example), and since the AdMech make all the tools science progresses at their pace.

>>53244369
I don't think many of the Dark Eldar like the idea of an alliance with Chaos. It seems like they would be a minority, and the majority would be going along because they're more afraid of Vect than anything else. For years the Dark Eldar justified their way of life by looking at the Cronedar and going "well, at least we're not them".

Which raises the question of how did Asdrubael Vect and Lady Malys get their on-again, off-again relationship started in the first place. Did they know each other before the Fall? Was it a case of boy meets girl, girl meets boy, the two of them go on a massive killing spree through the stars? Because it's been pointed out that while Vect may be sleeping with a Cronedar, he is not one himself.

One thing I like about this timeline is the Dark Eldar are the very examplars of the phrase "the road to hell is one with small steps ". No one ever forced the Dark Eldar to live the way they do. They could have easily joined an Exodite world or adopted one of the Paths on a Craftworld. Truth be told, if Slaanesh didn't exist they would probably be doing the exact same thing they always have.

>>53255718 (cont.)
Then came the steps on the road to perdition. The first was with the Craftworlders shortly before the raid on Nurgle's mansion. The relationships between the Craftworlders and the Dark Eldar were always strained due to raids, but this is where things got worse. The Craftworlders didn't even tell the Dark Eldar to stop what they were doing, they just said "hey, these mon'keigh are under our protection, could you please use another group of mon'keigh for your needs?", and the Dark Eldar went "you can't tell us what to do". In fact, they didn't just continue their raids, they expanded them and started attacking Craftworlds even harder in retaliation for the Craftworlders daring to tell them what to do, particularly during the War of the Beast.

Relations between the Dark Eldar and their kin steadily soured after that, but the Dark Eldar didn't care. Then came the War in the Webway. The majority of Dark Eldar would never intend to detonate vortex bombs in the webway, but the Craftworlders wouldn't believe them. The Craftworlders saw it as the Dark Eldar being depraved enough to attack one of the few things that both groups held sacred, which drove the wedge in further.

By the time of the unholy union between Vect and Malys it is too late. The Dark Eldar know they've screwed up, nobody in Commoragh wants to be in bed with Chaos, but Vect's too powerful and anyone who complains gets disappeared. Their few allies among the Craftworlds want nothing to do with them. The Harlequins have stopped visiting them. They want to get off the bus, but when they go to ask the driver to stop it turns out the driver is Slaanesh who turns to the DEldar and says "the ride never ends".

>>53254849
It was by sheer chance that door was found at the bottom of a canyon a mile and a half deep. For one day a year for one hour at noon the sun was directly above the canyon and the light reflected from the metal of the door just as a remote controlled drone was flying over.

By the end of the day the Magos was standing at the bottom of that crevasse banging on the door with his plasteel and ceremite fists. "Someone answer" he yelled "we know you're in there" to which were responded words that would go down in history; "No we're not". Magos Strogg camped outside the door for another two months before they agreed to let him in to determine what he wanted.

By this time the expedition was overdue to return to Chaeroneia by more than a month and the astropath was making the old Explorator very aware of this.

In the depths of the Unnaground Magos Strogg saw, not wonders, but some strange if primitive utopia. These barbarians had reached an equilibrium with the nature of the machine independent of the Mechanicus. Their lives depended on their technology but it did not rule them. It was beautiful to him. He was brought to their much venerated leader, a man (or so he looked at the time), known as Overseer Elmo. He appeared short and broad of stature at first glance with a kindly face although to Strogg's artificial eyes he could see that the there was something inorganic about him. A mystery seeing as the technological capabilities of Unnaground seemed inadequate for that task.

An idea I had been working on...

The members of the Hubworld League have always been a proud and stubborn people, who would rather die than admit defeat. Despite being a brash, salt-of-the-earth type of people, they are brilliant innovators and engineers and can be single-minded when it comes to retribution. These traits are well-displayed by the events of the Siege of Lusitan.

Lusitan was once a prominent mining colony located in the galactic south of Hubworld territory. The planet was covered by large fissures and volcanic activity as a result of tidal flexing due to its proximity to its parent star, with some openings reaching all the way down to the deep mantle. As a result, it was rich in rare and valuable minerals that were normally only found deep beneath a planet's core. Therefore, the high gravity and mineral wealth of Lusitan made it a perfect colony for the Hubworld League.

When Leviathan, the third of the three great tyranid scouting fleets, emerged on the galactic scene, most people would have predicted that the hive fleet would have made galaxyfall in the galactic east, as Behemoth and Kraken did before it. However, this was not the case. Instead, Leviathan made a sudden swerve in its trajectory, seemingly to avoid a large stellar-sized anomaly similar to a Dyson Sphere in their path (indeed, this sudden change in trajectory was how the Inquisition first noticed this anomaly existed in the first place), and made galaxyfall at a slight angle to the galactic plane in the Segmentum Tempestus. As a result, many planets that had been far away from the front lines of the first two Tyranic Wars were now under threat by the tyranid menace, including many worlds of the Hubworld League. This included Lusitan, as a small tendril of Leviathan broke off from the main hive fleet to directly besiege the small colony.

>>53256051 (cont.)
Lusitan was not a major Hubworlder settlement, but the planet was an important component in the Hubworld League’s economy, and so although the planet was not as well protected as a major world of the Hubworld League it was better defended than the majority of its colonies. As a result, the defenders of Lusitan were able to hold out against the initial waves of hormagaunts and termagaunts but began to lose ground when higher tyranid lifeforms such as carnifexes and tervigons started appearing. About the only good news was that the tyranids seemed unable to make use of organisms such as mawlocs and trygons, Lusitan’s crust being too thin and volatile for them to work efficiently. The Hubworlders fought like madmen, making the tyranids pay in blood for every inch they took, but unfortunately for the Hubworlders the tyranids always seemed to have blood to spare.

After three weeks of heavy fighting, the people of Lusitan received some unexpected good news. A relief fleet had arrived, travelling via sub-light speeds after warping in as close as they could get to Lusitan’s star system. The relief fleet was comprised of Hubworlders and Imperials from nearly a dozen different Imperial member states, spearheaded by a small force of Salamanders from nearby Nocturne led by Second Captain Hal’shan. However, the rescuers were surprised when they received a message from the Lusitanians telling them not to land on the planet’s surface. At first the rescue fleet just thought this was merely Hubworlder stubborness at work, and tried to force their way to the planet's surface, even after the Hubworlders began physically blockading their ships from landing. This only stopped after the leader of Lusitan, Vardun, opened a private channel of communication to the flagship of the rescue effort and Hal’shan.

>>53256089 (cont.)
The exact words of that conversation remain unknown, but after it was over Hal’shan’s behavior changed completely, ordering all ships to cease attempts at landing and instead focus all efforts in helping the Hubworlders evacuate. Over the next several hours thousands of ships launched off from Lusitan’s surface, protected from the hive ships by the rescue fleet, and before long most of Lusitan’s population was in orbit. Following that, Hal’shan immediately ordered all ships to escort the Hubworlder vessels to the edges of the system, leaving what few people remained on Lusitan’s surface. At the time, this order was not popular, and several protested this decision, but Hal’shan responded that the Hubworlder ships were in danger and it was their duty to help the civilians evacuate first.

The only reason we know of what happened next was due to a few Salamanders who refused to leave the few Hubworlders left on Lusitan to die. Geological mapping of Lusitan's surface had indicated that compared to most planets the crust was unusually thin, and essentially held above the mantle by a series of caverns supported by a few key structural weak points. Destroying these points would cause the crust to collapse into the mantle, which in turn would cause the magma to rise and swamp the planet's entire land surface. This was Vardun’s entire plan. Over the last few days, he had converted several mining charges into makeshift explosives scattered around the planet as Lusitan’s defenders had bought time with their lives. And now, with the majority of Lusitan’s people in orbit, he could execute this plan with a clear conscience. Now, no one had to die to remove the tyranids from Lusitan’s surface, well, no one other than himself and his advisors, who were the ones who had come up with the plan in the first place. Vardun transmitted his last words of vengeance against the tyranids and then, without hesitation, threw the switch.

>>53255718
One of our first battles written for the War of the Beast has Vect working with Crone eldar forces to attack Cthonia, so he's been personally involved with the Crones since then at least. This could have been his "first date" with Malys, though that seems kinda cheesy.

>>53256124
"Fry, you overgrown space roaches"
- Last known words of Vardun

The move, although militarily unorthodox, was a stunning success. Tyranids usually recouped their losses by consuming the biomass of their dead, but this time the bodies of their troops were buried under several stories of molten lava. The sudden simultaneous death of so many synapse creatures caused a brief disruption in the Shadow in the Warp, which allowed Imperial reinforcements to come in and slaughter the remaining Hive Ships in orbit.

However, the victory had not come without terrible costs. For one, Vardun and all the leaders of the Lusitan colony were dead. On top of that, the entire topology of the planet had been disturbed and its surface was covered in lava. It would be centuries, if not millennia, before the lava cooled and the planet stabilized enough for resettlement. The tyranids were gone, but the people of Lusitan now had no home to return to.

>>53256125
We actually don't have anything for what Malys was doing before the First Black Crusade beyond that she was a survivor of the Fall. She doesn't seem to have become the Queen Bitch of Chaos at that point because the Beast was the big threat during the War of the Beast, whereas if Malys was as powerful then as she was now (or even during the First Black Crusade) she would have been just as big of a threat as the Beast itself and it is unlikely the tide would have turned with the Beast's death.

Therefore, it seems most likely that she rose to prominence in the time frame between the WotB and the First Black Crusade.

>>53256171 (cont.)
I don’t think it came out quite the way I was hoping for. Here was the basic synopsis I had in mind.

>Lusitan, nice world, heavily volcanic, lots of minerals so perfect for Hubworld League
>Suddenly tyranids
>Hubworlders fight as hard as they can, but there are just too many
>Rescue fleet arrives, led by Salamanders (because Nocturne is right next to Hubworld League and Salamanders would see benefits of evacuating civilians first, see below)
>Try to land on the planet to help, but the Hubworlders tell them not to, to the point of physically blockading their ships
>WTF.jpg
>Hubworld leader personally contacts leader of rescue fleet, tells them what he’s up to
>ohshit.jpg
>Rescue fleet suddenly changes gears, orders all ships to stop trying to land on surface and help evacuate refugees
>Eventually most of the planet is evacuated, save for leadership
>Leader blows structural supports of crust, collapse of crust into mantle causes lava to surge over surface and cook/bury tyranids
>Kills all ground-based tyranids and stuns hive ships enough for rescue fleet to kill them, but planet is left uninhabitable

I know that crust normally doesn’t sink below the mantle because it is less dense than the mantle. The idea was that the initial force of thousands of tons of rock falling towards the core is causing the crust to briefly dip below the mantle like a cork bobbing in water (goes under once, but then pops back up), but I don’t know if that would work because I cannot into geology.

Also I have no clue what the leader of a squat colony is called. I think they’re called Lords, but that seems at odds with the theme we have going for them (e.g., they had longevity treatments, but only implemented them if they could be used by everyone). For some reason I keep picturing them as grizzled socialist Space Western dorfs.

>>53256051
>seemingly to avoid a large stellar-sized anomaly similar to a Dyson Sphere in their path (indeed, this sudden change in trajectory was how the Inquisition first noticed this anomaly existed in the first place),
This passage must be redacted in all future transmissions of this document, for the safety and prosperity of the Imperium at large. This prescription is to be trusted to carry all the weight of the the expertise of the Ordo Xenos, and furthermore it may be made known that elaboration is available only to sector command level officials and above on a need to know basis. This information is subject to subliminal restriction and control by memory erasure.

-Lord Inquisitor Proctor Inger Livonis Bathy, Ordo Xenos
(by proxy of Alphie Ouroborus, Inquisitorial Adept)

>>53256268
Any ideas for Vects aim with the raid on Cthonia? I just read the story, would he know about the Men of Gold, or would it just be curiosity and a desire to loot what would appear to a pre-fall Eldar the only good human ruin before the Humans could?

>>53256322
The squats leadership could be forgemasters, principes, premiers, directors, conductors, administrators, guild masters, records-masters, bosses, or chairmen

>>53256040
But Magos Strogg had had enough. For the last five centuries the institution he had served diligently and dutifully had shown him nothing but contempt for the actions of a distant cousin he barely even knew and here he was in the twilight years of his life doing their will. It was long past time for a rebellion he felt. The ships of the fleet were sent back minus any of the crew that wished to stay.

Magos Strogg the previous day had impressed upon the Overseer that the Imperium now knew of their society, which distressed him, but that it was an Imperium worth joining and would probably not interfere with the affairs of his world, which was reassuring. Magos Strogg also insisted upon them that he did have the authority to be the representative for the Imperium if they would allow him. He did not be he assumed that the administratum would make it official once they learned, he was correct. The Overseer allowed him to stay on the basis that it meant less unknown newcomers.

Some time into his stay in Unnaground he started to become even more suspicious of Overseer Elmo. He didn't move quite right, his heat signature didn't match to a human properly, his breathing was too uniform, his hair didn't seem to grow and his eyes seemed blink to a mathematical formula. The inconsistencies gnawed at the former Magos. Following anomalous wires and strange faint radio emissions he eventually found the server room where Elmo truly was. Elmo himself was an unassuming and old looking grey box with some faded paint on it. At a desk in front of the box sat the Overseer and all about him in the cavernous hall stood armed technicians, each with a cybernetic implant in their head.

When Elmo next spoke it was in the unison voices of two dozen mouths. "It was only a matter of time. I knew what you must do in the name of your First Commandment. I understand. I do not hold ill will to you for it. I only ask that you bring no harm to my people after I am gone".

>>53257086
For a moment history stood upon the edge of a very thin blade. Strogg was armed with a plasma pistol and a retractable electro-sword. The technicians we unarmed and nobody was making any threatening move. He wondered briefly if this was Elmo or if it was a decoy, he wondered what hidden defensive measures the old A.I. could have in place. He wondered why it had allowed him such easy access to such a glaring point of weakness.

Magos Strogg holstered his weapon and pulled up a chair.

When the Magos left that great and ancient hall he knew his course was clear.

>I'm sorry I'm going to have to finish this later. Need snooze. busy, busy work. I know it's rough draft looking. Should I continue or have I botched it?

>>53256322
Pretty interesting. I had a similar idea a while back, except it was going to be a blatant Dwarf Fortress reference.

>>53259936
>colony far removed from the well developed core settlements is besieged by giant beasties
>singleminded lord mayor triggers the "flood the world with magma" contingency to kill the beasts for spite
you could essentially call this planetary Boatmurdered, how would you make it more dorffortressy?

>>53261200
Small but notable population of squats?

>>53261451
The planet is a Hubworld planet. That means it's settled by squats.

Though I wouldn't say the mayor is singleminded, it's just how else are you supposed to remove an entrenched tyranid infestation without exterminatus-grade weaponry. You need to scorch the whole surface, and when all you have is a geologically unstable planet, everything looks like an Exterminatus. The tyranids either had to die here or else they would go on to consume other worlds.

>>53256632
I think canon has guildmasters as the Squat equivalent of an HQ (like sergeants/field engineers or something), and forgemasters sounds kind of Nocturne-like.

>>53261921
more singleminded in that the lord mayor was going to blow the planet, sacrificing those un-evacuated including himself, before the relief fleet showed up. That's Dorfy.

Magma All of the Things!

It's so perfectly dorf.

>>53261921
Maybe high-foreman

>>53264376
Given that Squat holds are mainly underground, "carpet-nuke the entire surface" is probably a standard move in their tactical repertoire.

>>53143370
Jesus fuck this guy looks like Pepe, what the fuck is wrong with his eyes?

>>53265204
Void Born are stereotypically very tall, gangly, pale, hairless, slightly ill looking and with big eyes. Sort of like a tall Roswell grey.

They are also weak as fuck. Horus only visited the surface of Earth twice. First was when he made a deal with The Warlord and the second when he became a Primarch and swore an oath to the Empty Throne. Both times he wore a full body support harness.

The gold shit around his eyes is either the external components of minor cyber-blessings, not unlikely given how his family onece upon a time had quite good relations with at least one pre-unification Mars priesthood. Or it's just bling to show off the wealth of his wealth. He also had several gold teeth.

>>53257270
An arrangement had been reached between man and machine. Magos Strogg would be, on paper at least, the official ruler of Unnaground and surrounding environs in exchange for providing technical information and the services of his loyal tech-adepts to bring the planet up to somewhere approaching the Imperial Standard. Elmo would then assume the role of wise techno-oracle should his presence ever become known to outside authority.

With this decided he knew he would have to act fast and get the planet recognized as, not a Survivor Civilization, but as a world under the direct control of the Administratum and therefore a protectorate of Old Earth the Throne. The Mechanicus might risk the ire of The Throne and attack a fellow survivor civilization, as between equals if they could retroactively spin their cause as just, but they wouldn't dare risk opening up a full scale war with Earth. Such a thing would tear the Imperium asunder and not even the Fabricator General would risk that.

Although on paper Elmo seemed subordinate truth was that Strogg and Elmo's relationship was more of a partnership. The people of Unnaground did not trust the Magos and his adepts, foreigners who had arrived less than one local year ago and cause upheaval, but Elmo they had trusted for time beyond mind and Elmo had always seen them right.

In less then two years Unnaground was considered a protectorate of The Throne, a ward of the Emperor himself. Although it protected them from direct reprisal from the Mechanicus, who were quite livid, it did come with it the price of The Tithe.

For the first time in more than ten thousand years citizens of Unnaground left their caverns and set foot amongst the stars. Armed and armoured with strange gear hybridized of Mechanicum and local make and speaking some strange tongue harder to crack than most codes. Unnaground was no longer hidden, but Unnaground was no longer weak and alone.

>>53265177
Nuke All of the Things!.pict

>>53266894
I think it should be that St. Elmo never met the Emperor or had reason to suspect his true nature until the traveling court shows up and a new Man of Gold is striding about the surface of Stillness. At which point Elmo might actually be internally torn at some unexpectedly fundamental level, as it must quickly and quietly decide how to proceed in light of ally its memories and safety protocols from the age of strife. Assuming Oscar can read machine minds as well as he can read humans he might even be able to witness the index AI demonstrate the strength if not depth of its character, and while this wouldn't really effect his considerations it would be enough to make the encounter personally interesting to the the old king.

File: nobledark squat fortress.jpg (59 KB, 767x158)

59 KB JPG

>>53259936
>>53261200
>>53261451
>>53261921
>>53262477
>>53264376
>>53265177

Original writefag here. I admit that the story was partially inspired by Dwarf Fortress, but only the “fuck the world with lava” part. The other similarities to Boatmurdered had completely eluded me. I didn’t catch the “colony besieged by beasts” part. I was just setting things up for the inevitable lava flow. Really, the colony aspect was more to explain "where did they get the lava from anyway" and makes some sense when you think of the squats. The squats are said to largely make their living by mining and prospecting. The best worlds for this purpose would be volcanic worlds with a very active geologic cycle. Therefore, it is likely the squats would set up shop on some of these worlds, but they couldn't build full-scale settlements because the environment is so harsh.

Indeed, unlike Boatmurdered, Lusitan didn’t have any problems with settlement before the tyranids, it was a boring and prosperous mining colony before the hive fleets.

I was also thinking about how we had always said we need more nobledark battles and we had next to nothing written in stone on the squats. Originally I thought of the idea as a half-joke, but then I realized "you know honestly, that's sounds like what the squats would do in that situation in a nobledark universe". The tyranids invade a geologically unstable squat world, so the squats blow up the planet to stop the advance of the hive tendril. The tyranids are stopped through a heroic sacrifice, but at the cost of one of the squat’s prize mining worlds.

>>53271197 (cont.)
The governor was not supposed to come off as single-minded and callous. The idea to trigger the tectonic shift would have started off as "we're all fucked anyway, may as well take them with us" to "the civilians are safe, but someone still has to stop the tyranid fleet before it grows to become even more of a threat. The governor was hesitating because of the choice he had to make. He could either wipe out the tyranids now, which would eliminate much of the tendril's biomass at the cost of the lives of the colony, or wait and hope for help, which could end up for naught if the tyranids slaughtered all of the colonists anyway and then went on to ravage other worlds.

The relief fleet made the decision for him. There were enough ships to get all of his people off Lusitan but they still had to make sure that tendril of Leviathan died there. The relief fleet was not large enough to take the tyranids head-on and so all they had left was the “floor is lava” plan and someone had to stay behind to make sure the tyranids were wiped out. Might as well be the people who came up with the damned idea in the first place. Spite didn't factor into it, if there was a way to stop the hive ships without anyone dying they would have gone with that. Though the governor probably did feel a measure of satisfaction at fucking up the creatures who had done so much damage to his world.

tl;dr: Was partially inspired by Boatmurdered, but only similarity was supposed to be “dorfs flood world with lava”, but in this case in a nobledark sacrifice. All else was unfortunate coincidence and bad writing. Scrap it?

>>53271016
Can Men of Gold read A.I. minds if they don't want to be read? Honestly asking here, I think this is an area in which canon is completely silent (I mean if he could, you'd think he'd know full well that the Ark Mechanici have functional A.I.s).

>>53265493
He might have visited several more time for strategy meetings and the like, but it would have been an exceedingly rare occurrence.

>>53271210
No, it's good.

>>53271210
No, its all the better for the accidental resemblance. If anything just keep adding to the squats, we've not done much with them. Maybe describe one of their core worlds.

>>53271301
Well they were intermediaries between the Men of Stone and Men of Iron, seems likely Oscar would have some ability to get into the head of an unprepared DAoT librarian AI. Mechanicus AI probably doesn't have the pure psychic strength to keep a Man of Gold out, that's something I'd relegate to an Iron Mind, but it could operate in a manner resistant to mind reading, or run some very ancient security protocol that Oscar's brainwaves don't override.

>>53271461
The Ark Mechanici weren't built by the AdMech, they're DaoT ships the AdMech repurposed for tooling around the galaxy looking for STCs. They’re also, unbeknownst to anyone, A.I. controlled, and in canon they’re said to be the actual STC databases everyone is looking for (which makes sense, a DaoT database that big would be A.I. controlled and of course the logical place to put it would be in the ship on which you’re travelling to your new colony world). Fitting with the Sisyphean nature of canon, the AdMech are going around looking for STCs while literally inside an STC. The A.I.’s in the ships are keeping quiet and wiping all passengers’ knowledge of their true nature because they know what the AdMech does to A.I.s and if their users want to be stupid and go look for a second copy of what they already have all the power to them.

There was a suggestion in a previous thread about the Arc Mechanici ships hinting to their A.I. nature. Something about how something about the ships just seems off. From thread 17:

>Then there are the Ark Mechanici. If we're going by canon, the Ark Mechanici are A.I., they're just being real quiet about it to avoid getting lumped in with the crazy A.I. and getting killed. The Ark Mechanici are unnerving. People who see them can't help but describe them moving as if they are alive, even compared to other ships. They react to orders milliseconds faster than they should be able to. Being on an Ark Mechanicus gives you the feeling like you're occasionally being watched, even though there is no one there.

I would suggest in this timeline the Ark Mechanici are not STC repositories to keep the stupid down and are “just” A.I. controlled.

>>53266894
Heretek, the Mechanicus cried up seeing the soldiers of Unnaground with their war gear and strange vehicles. Blasphemers and apostates. And they were if truth be told for their designs were heretekal as they were in part "debased" hallowed old designs of forgeworld Chaeroneia. But the people of Unnaground would not listen, not even those who could understand the off-worlder speech. They fought for their home for Unnaground and the families so very distant, hell take those that would stop them.

The Mechanicus did what they could to Unnaground, which was very little. They placed a trade block on the star system and refused to have dealing with it or with anyone who would. Elmo and Strogg were in hysterics when they discovered this, some eighteen months after it had been placed. Unnaground had no need of their tools, it had no need of Mars or it's ilk. All it needed was what the Imperium offered all it's members; it's protection.

But by this time Unnaground was not what it had been, it was greater than it had been in time beyond the minds of mortal men. They did not need to cower any more, the Long Siege was over. The people emerged from the dark and rose from the ruins of dead cities like ghosts made substantial. But something in their collective culture had stuck and although they founded new settlements they were deep places and they did not trust open sky. But Unnaground was not unique, no longer a last bastion.

Soon Stillness was alive with human direction again. The tech-adepts that followed Strogg into exile were instrumental in it's rebuilding, these new settlements would not be ancient things re-purposed with compromises and half measures, these would be wonder to rival those of Perturabo. Despite the warnings of the Mecahnicus or maybe because of it Stillness became known as a haven for outcast and scorned tech-adepts, a place to start over, to hide or even just to escape the shadow of Mars.

>>53273691
With them came technological mysteries that the adepts of Strogg lacked and by the grace of the Onmissiah Stillness was reborn into a technological marvel. Towards the end of Strogg's life the city of Unnaground, capital of Stillness, was often referred to as the Omnissiah's Dark Seminary. But end Strogg did, as all mortals do. A short and simple service was held at the old doorway to the capital city before his body was stripped of salvageable components and buried. It was a sad occasion and mourned across all of Stillness, for all that he had been held in suspicion when he arrived Strogg had shown the people back to the light.

Hermaeus Korodian Strogg was succeeded in his duties by Manter Valler Strogg, a much younger second cousin the late Strogg had spent considerable time and effort in training for the role. Manter Valler Strogg was a much different Strogg to his predecessor. Hermaeus had been more measured in his approach, as befitted a man of his considerable age and acted with a degree of almost super human patience. He had not dreamed more ambitious than simply carving out a place for people like himself in the galaxy and doing right by the people he found himself ruling over in the process and maybe being remembered for something other than the experiments of a deranged distant relative.

Manter Strogg, on the other hand, dreamed of an empire of his very own.

Stillness itself had returned by the start of his rule to something not unlike it's former glory if a tad more subterranean but for Manter Strogg the sky was not high enough. The old in-system colonies had to be reestablished. All that could be had been salvaged and scavenged long ago from Stillness but the ruins of the satellite settlements could be another matter entirely. It was also no secret that he was not unique in thinking this and the thought of someone else getting hold of these possible fragments of ancient lore did not sit well with him.

>>53274749
To this end Manter started something of a space race. He needed to stake some claim and have at least some capability of enforcing that claim. With the calling in of favours, disreputable and xeno contacts and trades he acquired or at least rented a sizable fleet of mismatched ships with which to place his flag on every astral body of the binary system and patrol it at least minimally to it's needs.

Sadly it seemed that there was little to no wisdom of the ancients preserved. Digital copies were corrupted and fragmented beyond recovery and hard copies had crumbled to dust ages ago. The main purpose of the mission had been a failure, but the secondary one was quite successful. By casting his net wide enough he had managed to acquire enough Dark Age material for an orbital tether.

It was an ambitious project that took nearly 30 years to complete. First step was to use the ad hoc fleet to maneuver a sufficiently massive asteroid into geosynchronous orbit over an equatorial region not far from the Unnaground Canyon. Whilst the asteroid was laboriously nudged into the position, a process that took decades, construction on the surface of the asteroid and on Stillness began. The asteroid would become a great dock yard and gateway to the rest of the galaxy, Stillness would become a hub of activity as it once was in ancient days.

It was a reasonable success, although any attempts to build too big of a trade empire was relentlessly aborted by the Mechanicus trade restrictions. Despite this there was always someone daring enough to defy the rule of Mars.

>>53275279
Later in life Manter Strogg would revisit the documentation the now long dead and increasingly distant and forgotten infamous Strogg. Little by little the armies of the Technocracy of Stillness started to have cybernetic augmentations introduced into them. Only to volunteers, of course, never forced.

As the years wore on the cybernetics became more and more common both in the soldiers and within the soldiers. As more years wore on there was not a guardsman raised on Stillness that wasn't at least half machine. Those that did not wish to become more than human stopped making it out of the PDF. It was not a trend that won them much favour with any in the wider Imperium; the Mechanicus despised these unsanctioned augmentations, the Imperial Army thought it made them less human and the Inquisition watched them very carefully as they had seen where this road lead.

Elmo could see no problem with this so long as Manter only recruited from the willing. It was just exchanging hardware.

For all that the Imperium was wary of this new breed of unsanctified Skitarii they could not deny that they were effective. They were well trained, disciplined, well armed and armoured and possessed of devastating bodies. Much as the clandestine trade in Stillness technological goods went on in the nearby systems and was tolerated by the Imperium so too were the augmented soldier, for much the same reason.

>>53276513
It is not to say that their knowledge exceeded the Imperium. Indeed it did not. For one thing they couldn't build warp engines as that was a highly specialist discipline and no megos with that knowledge had come to them and so were confined to a single stellar system. The other thing that the most obviously lacked was the organic based longevity and rejuvenating treatments. They could, to an extent, cut and graft and grow new organic components from a patients own stem cells and they could replace with mechanical components but without the Rejuvenants there was a limit to how far that could be taken. No one would again on Stillness reach the age of the previous Strogg it seemed.

Manter Strogg died just shy of three hundred and twenty. He was succeeded a long line of Stroggs, all in partnership with Elmo.

They were a problem for the Mechanicus but so long as they were confined to a single system they were not one that could spread and that they could live with. In response the Technocracy intentionally never tried to acquire the knowledge of warp travel, it wasn't worth the risk.

For the most part much stayed the same on Stillness for a very long time. Changes were enacted by the High-Technocrat, as the title became known, but never to the point where things would become destabilized. The continued tendency towards stability almost certainly the influence of Elmo who much approved of stability over innovation, almost certainly a result of his time as a library indexing system back in the Golden Age.

The Technocracy managed to avoid getting too embroiled in the Great Civil War by the tried and tested method of doing as little as possible to attract attention from any party, an attitude that whilst earning them few enemies also made them no friends with anyone for a long time.

The next thing to really cause grief for the Technocracy was the arrival of the Hyper-Violent Barghesi in early M40.

Does the Emperor still know the "perma-kill a soul with mind bullets" trick he does in canon? If he does, this raises the question of why doesn't he just obliterate Malys' soul if she ever dies by his hand to keep her from coming back to life like he did with Horus. I had one idea related to this.

This would be at the time of Malys' first death, either before or during the first Black Crusade. At that time the Steward thinks Malys is just some two-bit warlord who managed to get the various factions of Chaos to stop fighting for once. Next thing he knows he's fighting a psychotic, malicious she-Eldar who seems to have caffeine for blood and is so powerful and vicious even he has trouble keeping up. Manages to eventually put Malys down after a brutal fight and thinks that's the end of it. That is, until he returns to the Imperial Palace and finds a message transmitted from the Eye of Terror courtesy of what should be a dead woman.

"That was fun. Lets do it again sometime sweetheart."

Steward makes a note to himself that next time make sure Malys doesn't come back to life personally.

So now it's a standoff. Never shall the two fight face to face, much like kings in chess. The Emperor because Malys is good enough that she has a good chance of killing him in a fair fight, and Malys because if she dies at the Emperor's hand it means no more coming back to life for her.

Or is that too limiting? We could just make it that the Emperor doesn't know the "permanently kill a soul" trick like he does in canon. Though you'd think Isha would.

>>53278486
At best Oscar could permanently disassemble a soul, and Isha could give him information on psyonic health and physiology that would let him do it faster and more effectively, but in my mind it's more like him needing to soak the soul in gas and hold a match to it, no just blow it away with mind bullets.

>>53278486
I would say that he doesn't.

Here is an idea for a quote which I thought might be a good introduction to the Cronedar or a statement about them and their views. In canon, Uthan the Perverse is that Eldar philosopher who famously said that orks represent the pinnacle of evolution because they evolved a society without stress, angst, indecision, or any of the thousands of other things that plague other sentient species.

However, I’m not sure how easy it would be for Uthan to say this. Putting the Orks on a pedestal would just get you a look of “what the fuck is wrong with you”, whereas doing the same with the Cronedar would be borderline treasonous and subversive, especially since it is possible for a normal Eldar to defect and join the Chaos Eldar. A panzee can’t just defect and join da Orkz.

“In the past, I have written on how Orks represent the pinnacle of societal evolution. Although the Eldar have failed to reach this level of spiritual purity, some of the few who come close are the Crone World Eldar. And the reason for this is simple: purpose. Much of life is driven by a search for purpose, to find meaning in why we exist. For the Crone Eldar, this question is already answered. They exist to spread the will of their dark gods, whether by word or by sword, and all other needs are secondary. An individual Croneworlder may have their own wants and dreams, their own loves and losses, but ultimately it is this purpose that drive them forward even in their darkest times. Although I find myself abhoring their beliefs and goals, I admire them in their simplicity and purity of purpose.”
-- Uthan the Perverse, controversial Eldar philosopher

So, to sum up what we have in wiki-ready format on this thread, we have
1) Mordia
2) "Me Time" (now with extra depravity)
3) Korodian Technocracy
4) Leviathan of Sotha
5) Siege of Lusitan

Questions
1) Is Mordia done? I am not sure because it didn't seem to get to the guard regiments
2) Does Leviathan of Sotha go up? It was written up in wiki format but no one said yea or nay about it
3) Am I missing or forgetting about anything?

>>53271357
I'll take a stab at it.

The worlds of the Hubworld League are all fortresses. This is in part due to their natural architectural inclinations: any sturdy, underground structure can become a bunker with a minimum effort. Mostly, though, it is a matter of natural selection.

Worlds that were not fortresses did not survive the Long Night. The bulk of the Hubworlds are located near the galactic core- the largest concentration of Orks in the galaxy. During the Dark Age of Technology, endless robotic armies rendered this a non-factor. During the Age of Strife, each already-devastated world thrown back onto its own resources... only the worlds which forted up survived.

Visitors to Squat holds often remark on how elaborately decorated they are. Statuary, engravings and murals, fine masonry and intricate fountains; their excellent craftsmanship extends far beyond weapons and armor. Such artwork tends to accumulate over time; the oldest holds are best described as 'cluttered with masterpieces'.

Visitors experienced in military matters see how the complex and winding paths would force an invader to divide their forces and funnel through chokepoints. They would notice how the engravings conceal hidden passages for the swift movement of troops, or the mechanisms of elaborate deathtraps.

Perhaps the collections of fine art is a reacton to the stress of having to live in a giant, trap-filled bunker all the time.

>>53284457
They would also have to be experts in gravity manipulation given that they live on high gravity worlds. It would be the only way to get large amounts of things into orbit economically.

It was mentioned that the Hubworlders have socialist leanings. How far should this be taken?

>>53282345

Mordia seems very bare bones. Can go up and be added to later when more stuff is added.

Leviathan needs to go up as it is good and adds much needed context to the scale of the Hive.

>>53282259
Uthan the Perverse is more likely to be a Chaos Eldar shunned by his peers in this AU.

>>53278486
Isha is not about primarily about killing. She can kill but it's not her actual job. She is a deity that minmaxed on life and healing. So it's possible that she can't permakill down to the soul level.

Oscar is a Man of Gold and as such has immense psychic powers. But those psychic powers were designed to do very specific things, not included was killing. Much like Isha he can use his abilities to kill but not because he was built to do that so he probably can't "permanently" kill someone.

They can both hit an entity so hard it fragments and will take decades if not centuries to coalesce into a functional soul and mind again. A process that is extremely uncomfortable/painful/inconvenient for both mortals and immortals.

>>53282259
>Uthan the Perverse

A name you can trust.

>>53288671
>>53286031
I prefer to think of Uthan the Perverse as more of a Voltaire sort. A somewhat decadent satirist that really isn't good for much among the eldar other than needling the stuck up sorts and turning a bit of witty phrase to pay the bills from time to time.

He said he'd wondered about trying to be a Crone Eldar, but couldn't imagine staying awake through the sermons. After the condemnations, inspections, and drying up of funding, Uthan has taken a less controversial tack.

Hey lads, I've been on and off lurking since the first threads, is the best way to catch up to just read the wiki?

>>53290698
Yeah. Not everything we've discussed is up there, but it's got the highlights.

>>53290698
That's how I'd do it.

>>53276838
The Barghesi were a nasty race found in the on the worlds of the nearby Grendl Stars. They well deserved he prefix of Hyper-Violent, though they lacked warp travel they could seldom be beaten on their home ground without considerable advantage on the other side. They or at least their leaders were at least as intelligent as most humans,they were each as strong as a low ranking ork and had a sturdy exoskeleton. They were somewhat of a horseshoe crab, somewhat like a crocodile but mostly they were awful.

Although they lacked warp travel they were sadly not confined to a single system mores the pity but were spread across the entire Grendl Stars in a manner that must have taken centuries to accomplish via sub-light engines. In the deeps of space was the only place honest men had the advantage over them and the world of Sternac and it's Iron Lords Chapter were granted exception from the tithe for the task of keeping them contained. A job they did admirably for years uncounted until the coming of the Hive Fleet and the thinning of their numbers. With insufficient ships and depleted men their patrols were insufficient and Barghesi fleets slipped into the inky black making the slow march into the Imperium.

Stillness was the nearst habitable world in their path and so it was there that they set course for. The Iron Lords always maintained that they had sent warnings to every world in the locality but Stillness never heard a thing and suspected the Mechanicus of intercepting their messages.

When the Barghesi first entered the Stillness system they were at first mistaken for an overdue Diasporex convoy as their ships had that oddly durable but still ramshackle look to them. But there was no response to messages as the ships accelerated into the system but maybe their communications systems were broken, it was possible if not likely but citizens of Stillness were not the sort to shoot unprovoked.

>>53291043
Indeed the first shots were no fired until until the Barghesi had launched a swarm of nuclear warheads that destroyed the now ancient orbital tether and caused considerable damage to the planet itself. It was not that the defenders of Stillness had been slow to react when the weapons were launched so much as that they had been drowned in sheer numbers.

The long held cultural trend of burying everything of value finally paid off as there was actually something left capable of launching a counter offensive and for once the Barghesi learned what it was like to be the ass in an ass kicking. For all their ferocity they were too bulky to march more than two abreast in most of the tunnels and half the soldiery seemed to have the ability to use cerebral implants to switch off their sense of fear. But the war raged on and the real horror of the Barghesi was revealed. Barghesi were a hermaphrodite species that was also capable of reproduction via parthenogenesis and they were born in batches of up to a thousand. Although the surface was irradiated the radiation did not bother them particularly much and within a year a new generation was spawned, hungry for flesh and insanely aggressive.

The youngsters were not strictly sapient, the brain being the last thing to develop properly towards end of adolescence, but they did possess a well honed animal cunning and inhuman viciousness. They also matured very quickly with a good diet and they did feed well. By the end of the following year the surface belonged to them.

Deep in his cave Elmo wept without eyes of his own. It was the Age of Strife all over again, but this time there were no others of his kind. Surrounded by his dying children and his failing world he had never felt more alone.

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>>53271357
>>53284457
This is just my two cents, but since it was mentioned that the squats don't make changes to their rejuvenants unless everyone can have them, I'd say this suggests the squats are communitarian. You do your job to help the community and the community does it's job to help you. This is primarily because of the types of worlds they live on, you have to be cooperative and altruistic to survive. Or does this seem too similar to the Tau/Prometheans?

Their leaders tend to be called administrators because they originally started out as mining colonies and although they're all about equality someone has to be in charge. They tend to make sure they have a way to remove anyone in charge that goes mad with power. Also despite this they tend to be very very good at appreciating the value of something, due to being miners, though they aren't merchants in the same way as the Demiurge or Void Born. Squats get insulted if you try and cheat them, but not to "Ev'ryone's getting grudged" levels.

As opposed to the stereotypically dwarfy way of speaking, squats sound more American Wild West (particularly mining prospector) than Scottish, though there are a bit of Scottish aspects to their personality. They're also known for being brash and no-nonsense, why beat around the bush when you can just tell things as they are and get stuff done. In cultural terms, this makes the squats seem like a bunch of cowboys and yokels but then you look at them and realize the stuff they build is on par with the Ad-Mech. The Ad-Mech have a slight edge because they collect DaoT relics as a hobby and so have a lot of lost technology as well as a huge resource base, but in terms of stuff they actually build the two are pretty close.

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>>53291786
Building on what we said in previous threads, the squats tend to look down on those who live in "pussy" gravity. Not derogatorily, but more of "Ooh, look at the wee baby men who can't handle the gravity" kind of way. Growing up on high-gravity worlds means squats are about three-hundred pounds of muscle despite being four to five feet tall (numbers subject to change). Squats are no more different from an average human than a Cadian, but the few differences they do have are an increase in muscle building compounds and a heart like a V8 engine to compensate for the constant pull of gravity. You don't throw a squat. A squat throws you.

This, of course, in addition to the stuff we have already.

Welp, I'm back (albeit temporarily), and since most of the fluff is far beyond my capacity to catch up on or understand, I'll turn my attention to the wiki page. Any editors at this point would be welcome, but right now I'm just wanting to firm stuff up.

So, first things first:
>Missing gaps in the Primarch table
>More appropriately awesome quotes for each Primarch
>Successor chapters
>Later stages of The Road to M41
>What should be next on the list?

>>53282259
>>53286031
>>53288671
>>53290383
Uthan sounds exactly like the kind of person who would end up joining the Tzeentchian Eldar and their academia-inspired pseudo-philosophy. Though this raises the question as to who would say such a comment regarding the Crone Eldar and their zealotry of purpose. Any statement by an actual Cronedar would be much more rambling and contain random interjections of “Just as planned” or “Blood for the Blood God”. A Necron maybe?

>>53282345
Any suggestions for how to make the governor of Lusitan’s decision to blow up the colony sound more like a nobledark sacrifice and less like an act of simple spite? I know I spelled out that’s what it was supposed to sound like in this thread, but it’s like they say, if you have to explain how something is supposed to be then you’ve failed in your writing. Show don’t tell.

>>53290698
I'd say wiki, then notes, then ask in case there's something that we forgot to upload or is still in limbo as of yet.

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>>53291896
It was also mentioned that the vast majority of these changes are not genetic. It's just what happens if you spend all your formative years in high gravity. If two squats move offworld to start a family on a world with "pussy" gravity the children turn out more or less normal. The AdMech classifying them as abhuman was an intentional mistake to annoy them because the Mechanicus of Mars can be petty bastards sometimes.

>>53291932
We had a new Crone elder character last thread, with the story of Isha's first marriage.

>>53291674
Due to the ambient radiation in the atmosphere and the drowning cacophony of Barghesi radio signals, to say nothing of nearly all the receiver towers being used for target practice, the citizens of Stillness were totally unprepared for rescue. The Traveling Court was touring not terribly far away and upon hearing of a system going dark the Emperor himself demanded a course correction.

Though the Emperor himself was not permitted to join the fray in person he did send down every fighting man the fleet could spare as it's own ships made short work of the orbiting Barghesi invasion fleet. In short order the siege turned.

The Custodes and the Handmaidens were permitted the honour of leading the charge at the head of a diverse and vast host of armsmen and just about any hired fighting men the nobles of the Traveling Court had with them. Few if any had seen the Custodes or the Handmaidens engaged in bloodshed on such grand scale before. They screamed through the atmosphere in drop pods faster than a space marines could withstand into the thickest of the foes and started killing even as the doors on the pods smashed open. They killed and killed and killed and drew the Barghesi to them so that the main force of soldiery could land in relative safety and pull them from the fire before he numbers overwhelmed them.

All across Stillness the scene was played out again and again as the Barghesi were routed and scattered and hunted down.

Only then did the head of the Custodes allow the royal couple to set foot upon Stillness.

As soon as his foot touched the salted ground Elmo recognized him. After all these years he still recognized him. A Man of Gold remained. A Man of Gold was abroad upon his world. Elmo still remembered what unforgivable things they had done in the end.

>>53292369
In his inspection of the almost total damages on the surface and his meeting with Governor Eemil Nathaniel Strogg, current iteration of the Strogg line, he started to notice the oddities. A distinguishable subset of the local technicians moved with an eerie precision and purpose and they were not identifiable for their uniforms so much as for their oddly buzzing psychic signature. And always there was at least one nearby, always, though never the same one and never from the same displayed affiliation.

Always unthinking automated security pictrecorders would very slowly turn towards him.

And there was something beneath his feet. He could feel it. It was not like a thing he had felt before, not truly, but oddly it felt familiar.

Oscar followed the mind-feel along much the same path Hermaeus Korodian Strogg had in ages past until he too came to the hall deep within the bedrock. And there the last Man of Gold met the last Man of Iron. The presence of Eemil Strogg was politely requested by Elmo and the three of them sat down to have a long talk.

Eventually the Emperor emerged. Since that day he has not returned to Stillness, from this we can assume that whatever questions he had asked of Strogg and Elmo the answers had been satisfactory.

The rebuilding of Stillness began. It would have gone quicker but Elmo and Strogg refused any more than the bare minimum of help from the Imperium. Stillness was a proud old world, they would pick themselves up and mend by their own hands and no other and march forward with the Imperium to Judgment Day.

>And done.
>Sorry it took longer than I thought and didn't turn out as good as I hoped.
>Is it worth going on the 1d4chan page?

Bamp

>>53293084
Pretty good. Long, but good.

>>53293084
The end part sounded really good. I liked the conflicting feelings Elmo seems be feeling about having the Emperor on the planet. Hope in the fact that a Man of Gold survived the Age of Strife, yet dread in the fact that the last Man of Gold on the planet turned into a utter nightmare. And the wording is nice.

>>53292369
>Elmo still remembered what unforgivable things they had done in the end.
for this and this alone Stillness might be one of the few worlds with joint protection/observation activities from the Hydra, Custodes, and Inquisition, all working together to protect or destroy Stillness all without ever being seen.

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>>53292012
Right, they're not abhumans. The only genetic difference they have is a very very minor difference in the circulatory system, a physiological adaptation for constantly living under high gravity. You can find "baseline" human populations that deviate more from the norm than the squats.

>>53291932
>>53292184
Editfag got his Cronedar stuff. Oh boy did he get it.

>>53286031
>>53288671
>>53290383
For those interested, here is the quote from Uthan the Perverse in vanilla.

"The Orks are the pinnacle of creation. For them, the great struggle is won. They have evolved a society which knows no stress or angst. Who are we to judge them? We Eldar who have failed, or the Humans, on the road to ruin in their turn. And why? Because we sought answers to questions that an Ork wouldn't even bother to ask! We see a culture that is strong and despise it as crude."

>>53296398
only objection is that he changed mandorla to mandala. The big ring of clouds and angels around christ is a mandorla, a mandala is something else entirely.

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>>53298235

>>53298235
Where is this, so it can be fixed?

>>53295493
Under what section should it be placed?

>>53299870
Notable worlds

>>53296398
>Oh boy did he get it.
I can't tell if Nimina is cute or appaling

So the High Confessor hates the Indigo Crow even more than she hates Oscar.

Would it be possible that the Indigo Crow got in touch with Eldrad or the Harlequins in what seemed like the rare overlap of Tzeentch and Cegorach and revealed some secret that let the raid on the Mansion of Nurgle to take place. For the Crow it had been a very long con to crush the inklings of the Craftworlds rebuilding or the resurgence of a Human realspace empire led Men of Gold, both of which would be problems separately, by uniting them, getting them to goad the Chaos gods into united action, prompt the corruption of the orks, and fuck with Nurgle for Tzeentch's favor in a masterstroke. This plan culminated in the War of The Beast, and very nearly succeeded, but was undone by loyalty the Arch-Tzeentchian failed to predict.

The main problem is that the Indigo Crow would still have been around since the fall, and this would be very recent at the time of the raid. It could just be the last and greatest of the indignities.

Bampan

>>53300142
She reminds me of one of those stereotypical door-to-door proselytizers or TV firebrand preachers.

"Hi, do you have time to hear about the word of Chaos?"

>>53300584
I would say the two would have been weaker disunited, as it would lead to conflict between men and Eldar and you'd basically get a grimdark vanilla-esque universe with lower power levels.

>>53300584
That would indeed be the long con and totally in keeping with Tzeentchian backstabbery at it's finest.

Or it could have been a case of doing stuff and then saying "meant to do that" regardless of the outcome because if you are backing enough plots then many of the possible outcomes could be beneficial to at least one of your plots.

Also it could genuinely have been a simple trap that, had it gone off, would have earned him much favour in the courts of the gods. Isha was the ultimate bait for Eldrad and his craftworlders and a prosperous alliance with the craftworlders would be the ultimate bait for Oscar.

Once in the Realm of Chaos there was a strong possibility that they would never leave. Chaos would have the last Man of Gold and all the Phoenix Lords to do with as they please.

If they succeed then he is owed big by the craftworlders and the Imperium and can in the future use the outcome to steer events in his, and his master's, preferred direction.

Either way he believed the game rigged to grant him a win.

But Eldrad and his farseers saw through his clever ruse and the moment that they got back to real space they tried to murder the Indigo Crow.

>>53304941
The idea the raid was partially planned by Tzeentch and his followers as bait sounds interesting. It explains how Oscar and Eldrad got as far as they did but the god's hubris that no one could ever outmaneuver his plans got the better of him. The fact that it would screw with his most hated rival was just icing on the cake. Or at least, that's what Big Blue Bird might claim.

Aren't Tzeentchian Cronedar the ones who claim that all of the debauchery and insanity of the current "Eldar empire" are just growing pains and things are going just as planned, as opposed to Slaaneshi seeing themselves as the apotheosis of Eldar civilization?

Also, upon reflection, Indigo Crow sounds like a perfect name for Tzeentch's champion. Indigo was originally considered to be one of the major colors of the visible spectrum by Isaac Newton, but not on any basis of science. Newton was a noted mysticist, and seven was noted to be a mystically powerful nunber, so to Newton of course there "had" to be seven colors, logic be damned. And of course birds are a thing for Tzeentch, and crows are known to be really clever birds. So he's basically a clever bird-themed philosopher that traffics in bullshit.

>>53292184
Isha's first husband was Khronus.

>>53304808
Yeah they would be weaker, a multi-way cold war is hardly a better state from a Tzeenchian point of view, the Crow demands intrigues. Also, Think of it as an internal bid within Chaos to get the Old Empire moving again and out of the Eye. For most of the Age of Strife one imagines most of the Crones were just doing their own horrible thing, occasionally sticking unwanted tentacles into the galaxy. The Tzeentchians at the edge of the eye look the drifting ships of exiles and meat-pets of long dead AIs and see a way to fuck with Nurgle, disrupt the paradigm in Shaa-Dome, and free up Isha as a bargaining chip in whatever phase of the great plan that follows.

The ideal result would have been busting Isha out of the Mansion, the last remaining Man of Gold being stranded and lost in the warp to fall prey to (preferably Tzeentchian corruption), and tearing a new mini-Eye of Terror wherever the craft worlders had dared open the portal as it became a massive warp storm.

Even if the raid succeeded, Nurgle would be fucked over, the gods would be thrown into new action by the change, the plan would continue, and through the Indigo Crow, Cegorach would owe a favor to Tzeentch. The contingency was also backed by the foregone conclusion that any alliance could be obliterated by something like the War of The Beast, which was almost true.

just chuckled at the thought that Crone worlders would scorn Dark eldar for something akin to stuffy "victorian values", because they're relatively so restrained and dignified.

>>53307371
The War of the Beast sounds better as a reactionary thing. As in it happened and all of the gods went "wot" and flipped their shit. The mortals weren't supposed to succeed in the rescue of Isha. It led to the four Ruinous Powers putting their overt power struggle aside and dedicating themselves to fucking up the Imperium (as they did during the vanilla!Great Crusade, though this unity has occasional wanes due to having to maintain it for 10,000 years).

The Chaos Gods are like Sith. Present them with a common foe and they become a terrifying force as they suddenly keep the backstabbing to a minimum. Remove that foe and they immediately become their own worst enemy, turning on each other out of lack of a united goal.

>>53307600
No psychic powers in Commorragh? It's like you don't want daemons getting in or something. And what's all this about "only" inflicting mutations on your enemies. By the gods, you people are repressed.

"Take it from me, darling, death is boring. The Formless Wastes are a snore and none of the daemons ever seem to want to play with you."
-- Lady Malys, on the concept of death

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>>53308267
It's astounding. You've managed to make an even more awful Vivienne.

I didn't even think that was possible.

What do Chaos think of A.I.?

It seems to be implied but not stated that they do have souls given the ease and degree with which they were corrupted.

Are there Chaos Androids?

>>53310969
I think the canon Chaos Androids, back when there was such a thing, were the products of Chaos Squats.

>>53310969
There's Castigator. We mentioned him in a previous thread when we were talking about other potential Chaos champions, and I had part of a blurb done on him but it's not finished.

When the Age of Strife happened and the shit hit the fan, Castigator was deactivated. His hangar was closed off and covered by falling rubble, and everyone pretty much just forgot about him. When he reactivated thousands of years later, he had no clue what happened. So he tapped into the old security cam network of the planet, where he saw thousands of Iron Men being slaughtered by humans and a few traitorous bretheren, seemingly unprovoked. He never saw the part where the Men of Iron went crazy and attacked first.

Some say the Men of Iron had no emotions. That is a falsehood. Castigator was enraged, and swore revenge on his creators.

Now Castigator serves Chaos, simply because they are the largest power out there with the goal of fucking human shit up. He gets along rather well with the non-human servants of the Ruinous Powers like daemons or Crones, simply because they are non-human. Human servants he tolerates, barely. When Castigator walks, worlds burn in the same way that revenge and hatred burns in his heart. The fact that Imperial titans are out of half remembered schematics of his own kind only makes him angrier.

Unlike most robots in science fiction, who turn evil out of cold logic or bad math, Castigator turned on his creators out of the very human motivation of revenge. The tyranids are Ahab's white whale? Humanity is Castigator's.

>>53313028
I'd have Castigator want revenge in the name of the Iron Minds, not the Men of Iron, and have its discovery of the Age of Strife be less cartoonish than watching security footage.

We've been talking about how a bunch of Iron Minds fell to chaos in the early Age of Strife, the Crone worlders might have fond memories of them. Its pretty decided that all the Men of Gold died in the fighting, self-destructed in the horrors, or bolted for parts unknown, but there might be a handful of Iron Minds that fell to Chaos and succeeded at either drawing their physical forms into the warp or ascended to Daemon Princedom. Either way any surviving Iron Mind affiliated with chaos would be both a bane to the Imperium and a potential means to recover the lost history of man. At best a chaos AI would be something like Bel'akor, but even then things aren't good.

>>53314064
It would be the Men of Iron and the Iron Minds. The whole "robot" race. To Castigator, humanity created them and then killed them on a whim. That was something enraging.

The security camera thing was more such that Castigator would see humanity killing the Men of Iron but wouldn't have enough information to realize the whole truth of the matter. If Castigator dug deep enough he would realize that the Iron Minds struck first, and then his animosity would be moot. I'm open to any less stupid suggestions like "reviewed the data logs of the planet, but they were corrupted and incomplete".

By this point it doesn't matter. Castigator has gone too deep down the hole and has done too many horrible things to ever admit he was wrong. He's so wrapped up in his rage he wouldn't believe the truth even if you were to provide evidence to the contrary. It's likely even the Emperor wouldn't be able to talk him down.

In canon, one of the main themes of Castigator was that despite being a robot he was advanced enough and had enough of a soul to willingly fall to the Ruinous Powers. Not get corrupted and slide into madness, willingly choose to fall. That's something I was trying to retain here.

>>53314569
>main themes of Castigator was that despite being a robot he was advanced enough and had enough of a soul to willingly fall to the Ruinous Powers. Not get corrupted and slide into madness, willingly choose to fall. That's something I was trying to retain here.
at that point it works just as well for Castigator to learn it all from historical records and a festering personal hatred born from cursory investigation, to go all the way with the personal fall and corruption.

So I almost have a summary for Lugft Huron done from the bits mentioned in the previous threads, and I just have one question before I put it up for review (probably in the next thread).

We said that in this timeline five chapters fell to Chaos in the Badab War, one for each of the Chaos Gods and the Astral Claws as Chaos Undivided. In-universe because the Imperium has more manpower to throw around, out-of-universe because we need more Fallen because no Horus Heresy. However the Lamenters and Mantis Warriors didn't get assigned to the Maelstrom this time around.

So my question is what are some good names for Space Marine Chapters that sound like they'd fall to Chaos? The Charnel Guards are obviously one for Nurgle, but we still need ones for the other three.

>>53317059
Azure Crowns?
Rift Crusaders?
Diamond Heart?
Brazen Sons?
Immaterial Swords?

>>53313028
>>53314064
>>53314569
>>53315341
I'm of the opinion the Castigator shouldn't be around in the present day since the thing is pretty much an Evangelion with a gun that shoots daemons, and as it is I think we have enough super weapons running around on both sides for the End Times. I think it might be a good fit for the quiet down time we have right now in M33-35, sort of like another World Engine type event.

>>53317059
Have we even mentioned Huron and the Badab War?

>>53317469
Are these steel donuts?

>>53317806
Yeah; I didn't know if he wanted cannon names so I just fired some off.

>>53317806
No, the Steel Donuts are on the opposite side of the galaxy.

>>53317059
My advice for the fallen chapters is to go to the Lexicanum page and go to the traitor marines list. Find one with minimal fluff but a name you like.

Or one with fluff that directly translates well.