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So is the writeup of Old Earth intentionally left empty or is it that nobody has written it up yet?

I'm planning on doing at least some sort of blurb on it but not if it's intentionally left out of bounds.

>>53559262
There's been a ton of stuff on Old Earth in past threads, particularly how its slowly becoming honeycombed with massive human development through its geology and hive-scale development across its surface, and tons of ships and stations in orbit. The whole Sol system is the Imperial capital, and ridiculously developed, so the restriction of Old Earth to humans doesn't really bother anyone when you can visit the moon palaces of Saturn and whatnot and accurately feel like they've been to the metropolitan heart of the Imperium.

People were talking about the Hydra having a foothold on the Cthonian circlet last thread, it there any more to that?

>>53560152
The Alpha Legion has no official influence, holdings or investments on the Cthonian Ring.

The Hydra does not exist, by order of the Inquision, and is just a tinfoil hat delusion made by bored mid-hivers with too much time on their hands looking for someone to blame for their own. Neither do the Yechudim control the interstellar exchange market.

Ave Hydra.

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>>53559430
What features are there on Old Earth by 999M41?

We know that the Navigators all fucked off some centuries previously to the Jovian Orbitals for privacy.

There is the Hall of the Astronimican under the Himalayas.

There is the Imperial Palace in the great city of Moskgród (presumably once called Moscow).

There is the tomb of Sanguinius still standing by the river.

Is there still a Hall of Justice or are the Adeptus Arbiters less centralized?

It's safe to bet that the Administratum is less centralized so won't need an office building the size of a large Hive to function, that could be what the Imperial Palace mostly is.

What else is there? If we are allowed to make additions that fit the fluff?

Given the increased prevalence of shit like orbital tethers I'm going to put forth that Old Earth has The Daisy Chain. No that is not it's official High Gothic name, it's just what everyone calls it.

The equator of Old Earth has orbital tethers at regular intervals all the way around it, each one having a substantial station and dockyard at the top, each a lesser hive city in their own right. The usual way they have grown has been to start by dragging an chunk of space rock into geosynchronous orbit and building from there. Usually this involves building out sideways in wings making the whole thing look like a giant metallic flower from a distance. The stations are connected to each other by a high speed rail line going between them in an unbroken hoop encircling the globe at over 22 thousand miles altitude.

Standing population of the Daisy Chain is estimated to be in the hundred billion range. Each Daisy is a nation unto itself and a vibrant hub of trade and commerce, seen as the gateway towns to Old Earth itself. Typically ships and shuttle craft no longer actually land on Old Earth any more as even with a minimal gate toll the tethers are cheaper.

The Daisy Chain is as close to Old Earth as Xenos are allowed to legally get without a permit.

>>53561231
the Imperium can rebuild orbital tethers of all sorts, but has lost the means to produce neutronium and the craftworlds can't produce the wraithbone equivalent that the Old Empire used for their megastructures. That means the Daisy Chain is entirely possible, but the Imperium would have had to scavenge enough spans of neutronium to build it and transport them to earth orbit. Sol would probably be the second best place to find neutronium, following Cthonia which presents a difficulty to salvage, so it wouldn't be too improbable, but probably only some time after all the ancient archeotech and space junk in the kuiper belt and oort cloud and surrounding systems have been appropriated. There would also be a chance of finding a good amount of neutronium lying around on the sea beds or earth, from fallen DAoT infrastructure.

My guess is that the daisy chain would have to be built in a long era of relative peace and plenty, decently far into the Imperium's history. By the 41st millennium it would probably be so built up that it more resembles a fuzzy torus like ring, mega-hives built up around the supports, and millions of miles of hanging infrastructure and weaker theaters hanging between it and the surface.

>>53561619
How much actual fighting went on in the Sol System during the Civil War?

If it was lots then the Daisy Chain was probably built after that date because since then there has been no large scale conflicts in Sol that I can think of.

>>53559262
There was a partial write-up of Old Earth, it just never went up because it had the old countries of Old Earth as extant when it had been previously established the WotB wiped them out (and inadvertently established the more homogenous Old Earth seen in M41).

>>53557919
>PREVIOUS THREAD: ( >>)
Good job...
>>53338185

>>53562516
I liked the idea floated around...was it last thread?
That the old nations are technically still around, but not the cultures or anything, they're more the names of administrative districts than anything else.

>>53562953
It reminds me of Kent.

It's a county in south east England. It has always been Kent right back to when the Romans arrived, lands of the Cantii tribe.

Who were the Cantii and what were they like? Who gives a shit.

Page 10 bamp

>>53562953
It was like five threads ago. I think.

That said >>53563161 could work. The names are known but their meaning and the culture of the people who once claimed them are but dim memories, known only to Oscar and maybe Bjorn.

>>53566879
You could probably dig up some facts in historical texts, but even that's just dry, cold data and not 'this is how these people lived'.
...makes me wonder if people try to do historical reenactments of various battles (and get them horribly wrong, of course)

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Pictured: A Tau regiment of the Imperial Guard supported by Astartes from the Emperor's Warbringers Chapter battle a swarm of Tyranid, part of the campaigns against Hive Fleet Leviathan.

>>53561619
They could probably build space elevators the way current proposals suggest, by hanging a line off of a counterweight in geosynchronous orbit.

>>53569966
The trick is finding a material strong enough to hold its own immense weight.

>>53569088
Are there any human worlds in the Tau Empire and should there be any Chapters that recruit from them?

How does the Imperium in this AU feel about scavenging on Space Hulks?

Also can they and do they take the time to free people infected by but not born into Gene-Stealer cults?

Also Zoat. Are there Zoats?

Tactical Dorn Bump

>>53571729
It's been mentioned the Cronedar like to mine Space Hulks to make their ships and fleet, due to the hulks being in the warp a lot.

Very little has been said about Genestealer Cults. The Imperium fought "the Genestealer Wars" in M36 which were a pretty big affair (likely genestealers on a galactic scale), and thought they were the main threat and killing most of them was the end of it. Then the tyranids showed up.

Given that the Eldar have genestealer screening technology and the Kroot joined in M39, it should be possible for them to screen for genestealers. However, the problem with genestealer infection isn't the infected you see. It's the infected you don't. With very few exceptions, genestealer infectees are from the underhives, and like to hide away after being infected. They're not the sort of people who will willingly go to the hospital for examination. Later generation hybrids yes, but by that point you have a serious infestation problem.

Zoats nothing.

>>53567180
Imagine people making films about the Unification Wars with all the historical accuracy of 300 or The Patriot.

That reminds me of something I was thinking about regarding Arik Taranis. Taranis, despite all he did, was still not a primarch, and was buried in a nowhere grave in Terrawatt among thousands of others. His grave is no site of importance like Sanguinius, Horus, to Lorgar. Arik might be known to extreme scholars of history in the same way someone like John Hamilton was known in America before the musical: an interesting person to those who know about him but otherwise literally who? The only notable recognition Taranis got in recent years was in 789.M40 when a film came out purporting to show the "true story" of the Imperium. In it, Taranis is portrayed as a bumbling sidekick and comic relief, like Baldrick on Blackadder.

The only reason the Emperor hadn't decried the film it would have made him too sad to see it.

>>53574501
Although there are uncountable numbers of films and shit about the Unification War, Great Crusade and War of The Beast there can only be a certain number of characters that people give a shit about. For every Lancelot there is are a hundred Lamorak and Kai.

There has never been a film out that featured Bjorn for the simple reason that nobody apart from the Fenrisians and a small group of eldar give a shit about Bjorn.

Ollanius Pius is barely remembered and he kamikazed a Rok from landing on the Imperial Palace. He is responsible for saving the Imperium. The only people that remember his name by 999M41 are Oscar, Isha and Lion should Lion ever come out of the coma.

Of all the well known public names there is only one that has remained conspicuously absent from the big film releases; Eldrad "Unreasonable Royalties" Ulthuran. Attempts to make films without informing the grumpy old bastard generally result in Eldrad kicking expensive executive doors in and yelling something on the lines of "heard you wear talking shit about me like I wouldn't find out!"

It's not a pleasant experience and Eldrad just does it to fuck with people. He's a dick like that.

>>53559430
Old Earth being restricted to humans is more a matter of privacy than anything else. Old Earth is a pretty big deal to humans and holds a lot of spiritual significance, regardless of religion, and they don't want a veritable horde of xeno tourists coming in and messing everything up like drunks spray-painting a holy site.

That said, Old Earth does have non-humans on it, just not very many. Annual permits are issued for non-humans to visit Earth. As is the case for some places today, foreigners (by which I mean non-humans) can rent places, but they can't buy property (then again, few can buy property on Old Earth). Ambassadors from the Craftworlds and non-human civilizations get a pass. You get tourists and students who are able to articulate well enough that they won't go getting drunk and disrupting cultural sites. Merchants and traders who want to sell wares (though it's generally a bad idea trying to sell tech in Mars' backyard). And of course Isha and the Handmaidens get a free pass because it would be stupid for the fricking Empress to not be allowed to set foot on the throne world.

Most people don't care that Old Earth is restricted in many ways, the Sol System is "good enough".

By the same token, the Imperium tries to afford the same respect to worlds like T'au, or to a lesser degree the Craftworlds. Ask permission before you land on a homeworld, unless it's an emergency.

>>53570818
Technically, there is no Tau Empire any more since they've been incorporated into the Imperium, though they probably have some level of autonomy like Ultramar and other similar states. Given the semi-free movement within the borders of the Imperium, it's almost a certainty that some humans have settled in Tau Space.

Though the Tau are fiercely proud of their military and rightfully so, the Space Marines are still the premier ground forces of the Imperium excluding the ultra rare heavy hitters. Getting a chapter assigned to your planet imbues it with prestige as it means it is one of the few worlds in the million worlds of the Imperium important enough to require that level of protection, so I'm sure the Tau agitated for at least a few chapters to be founded on some of their key worlds after they were admitted into the Imperium.

>>53574501
That's pretty harsh on Hamilton :( Anyone who knows anything about American colonial history knows his contributions to the Revolution and the Constitution, and of the Founding Fathers, John Jay is probably the most "literally who" of them.

I doubt people would see Taranis as a fool though. Even if they didn't know the specifics of his life, I doubt most people would assume the founder of one of the most legendary Imperial institutions is anything other than a certified badass.

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>>53561231
The Imperial Palace is probably a borderline maze. It was designed by Dorn and Perturabo, with adjustments by architects repairing shit for 10,000 years afterwards, and Perty probably made it was labyrinthine on purpose to confound any attackers. In addition to being the home of the Emperor and Isha that they barely ever spend any time in, it houses the offices of the High Lords of Terra, parts of the Administratum, a museum dedicated to mankind's history (this is actually from canon) containing everything from the fragments of the first human built Warp Drive to Jaghatai Khan's shitty outdated warbike he used during the Unification Wars, and the biggest orphanage on Old Earth. At the least. It has large halls, but winding side passages that make it ridiculously hard for defenders to not have at least one escape route handy.

The primary temples of the Oficio Tacitum (Assassins) are said to still be on Old Earth, though obviously they wouldn't set them up in the old salt wastes of what was once the Mediterranean because that would be just too obvious.

>>53561814
Sebastian Thor was said to have had to fight his way to the Imperial Palace to get Vandire's eldar guard to step down. Thor basically said "I've wired the palace to blow, and I told the people outside I was going to see Vandire dead regardless of what happens to me. The only question is whether you live or not." The eldar took the smart way out.

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>>53575599
I was actually going to say John Jay, but I thought that no one would recognize who that was if I brought him up (ironically).

>I doubt people would see Taranis as a fool though. Even if they didn't know the specifics of his life, I doubt most people would assume the founder of one of the most legendary Imperial institutions is anything other than a certified badass.

When you're playing the Watson to the Emperor of Mankind, and the people making the film thinks it "needs a comic relief to make people like the film more", the committee turns you into the bumbling comedy relief. Much like how 300 exorcised all of Themistocles' slimier elements to turn him into an everyman hero. No one besides the marketing department ever said the film was accurate. The nerd rage from Imperial historians was probably enough to make Khorne go "whoa".

It would be a step up from being a spear carrier, which Taranis would have been reduced to in most adaptations.

It's also a good thing Constantin Valdor wasn't around by M40 or there would have been words.

>>53575599
Perhaps he's portrayed less as a bumbling sidekick and more as the brawn to Emps's brains?
Thus completely neglecting the fact that A) he was a scientist himself and B) Mister Man of Gold is not some wimp himself

>>53575599
>Technically, there is no Tau Empire any more since they've been incorporated into the Imperium

There is in the same way that there is an Interex.

Also I don't think anyone has ever tried to claim or suggest that there is free movement across borders of the Imperium by Imperial demand. Worlds may allow free movement if it suits them but they are not compelled from on high to do so.

How far down can you realistically go before the bedrock starts to get malleable?

>>53576107
There is free trade, but only on the greater Imperium side. As in "we allow you to trade openly across our borders without any Rogue Trader skullduggery like most unaffiliated civilization". Rogue Traders are important because you never know what goes on behind closed doors and trading with and some race may be secret Chaos worshippers. This way just one dumbass who makes a bad trade deal is likely to suffer as opposed to an entire sector if you had unregulated trade.

Interex, Ultramar, Hubworld League, Tau, etc. have full rights to do whatever they want as long to improve the prosperity of theit people as it doesn't involve Chaos worship, Emperor worship, or shooting at other Imperials.

A good way to think of the Survivor Civilization, Craftworlds, and other xenos is like Catalonia in Spain. In some ways they are Imperial and in others they are clearly not.

>>53574331
Zoats could be either a desperate bunch of surviving refugees traveling before the Hive Fleet in their strange but primitive ships, dedicating themselves to warning others of the impending doom and urging them to tool the fuck up.

Or at least that's how they sold themselves to the Imperium when they first met.

In fact they are not so clean cut from the 'Nids.

They are survivors of the Hive at least, but not from this galaxy.

They don't know where they came from, not anymore. It doesn't matter to them.

Some millions of years ago the Zoats, the original Zoats, knew their day was done. Their galaxy was devoured and they the last pocket of meat were soon to be gobbled up. So they took what they could of themselves and turned the mutagenic properties of the Star Locusts against them.

They infected themselves with a virus that when they were eaten would spread to the rest of the hive fleet an lie dormant until such time as the Hive found a new feeding ground and began to multiply again.

When the Nid's got to the milky way and the Norn Queens started to spawn a new generation the Hive Ships that were infected by the Zoat Virus some five million years previous started to spawn Zoat. At least one batch of Zoat survived though many were purged.

The new breed of Zoat don't know much of their progenitors, their was a limit on how much knowledge could be programmed via virus. In truth they are not Zoat, they are the final spiteful act of the Zoat incarnate.

Maybe one day they will be Zoat again, or at least some sort of Zoat. They are havign to build up from step one again.

They have a deal going with the last remnants of the Scythes of the Emperor. Their hate is equal. They haven't met Kryptman yet, but they would be friends. They have hate in common.

>>53579107
If Kryptman ever met the Zoats he'd want to reverse engineer their virus and make the Tyranids mass produce him so he can devour them from the inside out.

>>53580306
Assuming that the reborn Zoat even know how to make that virus again it is perhaps then as well they have not yet met. The Imperium probably couldn't cope with more than one of the mad bastards running around.

Also if we do go this way with the Zoat it does raise the point that the Zoat are the only other extra-galactic species, are a stark reminder that failure is not an option and that they have in effect out gene-stealered the gene-stealers.

Also that Zoat are not truly Zoat in a way. They are 'Nids mutated to look and think like Zoat. They are not a people so much as a bio-weapon built in the image of a dead people, one last fuck you to the Great Devourer.

Also their origional ships were probably hijacked hive-fleet bio-ships which indicates that they have at least some ability to interface with bio-tech in the manner of a 'Nid. Also they can use 'Nid weapons, though they might prefer not to.

They would present the Imperium with a dilemma. They are 'Nid but not 'Nid. They are sapient and sentient but they have no art, accomplishments of their own and literally exist to do nothing but fight and die and take as many of the 'Nids with them.

They would be a bizarre cross between pitiable and frightening. There would be dissenting opinion on whether they are people. Te Zoat would point out maybe they are and maybe they are not but it is unimportant so long as The Hive lives. Maybe they can try and rebuild the Zoat as people again, but not today. Today is a good day to die.

>>53574501
This raises the biggest question of all.

Is Emperor porn legal?

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>>53579107
>>53580306
>>53581212
The Zoats could even be the original tyranids, the organisms from which the beings that now threaten to eat the galaxy are descended. They are six-limbed beings that bear a striking resemblance to the tyranid groundplan. This brings me to an idea I had thought about, but had not been sure I wanted to pitch.

Ages ago in a galaxy quite a ways a way there was once a race. A technologically advanced race, not on par with the Old Ones but maybe equivalent to the Necrons. Masters of flesh and biotechnology. As all races do after a certain point, they began to think seriously about the bigger things in life. Mortality. Inequality. Understanding their fellow being.

And so the race came up with what they thought was the solution. Upload everyone’s mind into a single interconnected network, free from the constraints of flesh, from which bodies could be created on demand. On paper it seemed perfect. No one would die unless they chose to. No mind would be forced inhabit a body it did not want to. Everyone would instantly be able to see the perspective of anyone else, creating universal empathy. And the network was ever increasing, ever growing, so not only would the race benefit, but they could bring their gift to everyone in existence. There would be no more death, no more disease, no more hatred. For anyone.

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>>53585465
Naturally, something went horribly wrong. What should have been an interlinked network of independent minds collapsed into a single morass, differences between individual thought patterns blurring until only the most universal impulses remained. Eat. Grow. Reproduce. The subroutines designed to bring in fresh matter to power the network and grow forms for resleeving individual minds corrupted into the biotechnological equivalent of gray goo. The race had tried to achieve the singularity, and instead all they had done was go past an event horizon.

The only people to survive this singularity, which had suddenly become one in a very literal sense, were the people who refused to upload their minds to the network in the first place. They suddenly found themselves on the receiving end of a quadrillion gaping maws of what had once been their entire species, mutated into unrecognizability.

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>>53585465 (cont.)
>>53585486 (cont.)
And so they ran. And when they could not run, they fought. Always one step ahead of the network that had once been the summed minds of their brothers and sisters. They fought the tyranids in their home galaxy. They fought them in Andromeda. They fight them here. Everywhere they go, they bring the same message to the same message to every race they encounter, in the hopes that they will heed their warnings and either flee or militarize to the point they can fight the tyranids.

“Run, for in our foolishness the gift of our people has coming for you.”

However, I’m not too sure if this is a good idea, as it seems to retread a lot of the themes of the Eldar (big idea went horribly wrong, only survivors were those who rejected it) and the Orks (mutated into a literal invasive ecosystem that knows only war and would be unrecognizable to its forebearers). Latter could apply to Necrons too. It also takes away from the mystery of the tyranids. The original ideas was kind of an “origin story” for them, but do the tyranids really need an origin story?

On the other hand, it provides an interesting contrast to the idea of a future Imperial singularity caused by the likes of Ynnead, the Void Dragon, and the like. Singularities don't always work, and doesn't mean everything is going to be okay forever.

>>53585523
On a related note, trying to look up Zoats on Google brings up pages with the header "What Are Zoats and Should You Be Eating Them?" Rather ironic, sounds like a tyranid web article.

>>53585523
The only other big ideas we've had about the tyranids is to make them behave more realistically predatory, inasmuch as they're an (or a pack of) inter-galactic predators that have been closing on our galaxy from their last major feeding frenzy eons ago, and while they're well adapted to predation on a galactic scale the swarm is still desperate, hungry, and vulnerable since its committed its energy and matter to the kill. It's original burn and course set it towards the galaxy long before it could accurately observe biological affairs within, perhaps before the light of the war in heaven could have reached them, and were committed to attacking the galaxy back when it was dominated by the Old Ones and their relatively early psychic-biological infrastructure. Now that they're starved and closing in they face a galaxy that has become decidedly more hostile as a psychic environment, and has developed species like the Necrons and the Imperium that make significant use of applied engineering and physics based weapons, as well as the horrible local wildlife like Fenrisian Kraken, the biosphere of Catachan, Kriegers, Nurglite life forms, etc. that manage to outstrip them in horrific adaptations. In essence, the Tyranid hive mind(s) are a pack of coyotes sticking their snouts in what they think is a gopher den, but is actually filled with horrible cybernetic tarantulas.

To add to all that, its pretty likely that hydrogen grazers would be more viable than tyranids, so its fair to assume that either hydrogen grazers exist, tyranids might hunt them, and prey on galactic fauna in times of scarcity, or that their origin is less than natural.

>>53586048
I think tyranids are outright stated to be artificial in canon. That their genetic structure and biology is too "well-designed" to be natural among other things, and either someone built them to be weapons and lost control of them (at which point they became part of the galactic ecosystem) or some race somehow evolved into them (similar to how it was mentioned here the Necrons could do the exact same thing as tyranids if they put all their effort into grey goo and scarab swarms and put eating and reproducing above all else). It was one of the lines of evidence people have used to propose the tyranids in canon are the Old Ones' half-assed reset button.

That said, I do like the characterization of tyranids as "galactic predators who thought they found an easy meal and found the galaxy a bit tougher to chew than expected".

>>53585591
They are centaur lizards

>>53575957
How would the primarchs be remembered and depicted?

>>53586808
There is nothing in the 2 alternate origin theories presented in this thread that is mutually exclusive.

why_not_both.jpg

>>53589299
Some of them have been discussed.

Horus is remembered as a heroic Coyote- or Hermes-like trickster, his more oilier aspects and ambition ironed out. Part of this is because he only ever voiced his contrary opinions to the Steward behind closed doors.

Sanguinius is remembered as Objectively Best Primarch, despite the fact he had feelings of insecurity and powerlessness and rage issues (which are never brought up in the public perception).

Ultramar and the Administratum just love Guilliman. For Ultramar, he is the law-bringer, the civilization shaper. The Ultramarines call Guilliman their spiritual liege because he is a figure of veneration for him despite having never been a super soldier, been born in Ultramar, or even fighting on the front lines during most of the Unification Wars and the Great Crusade.

Khan is remembered as one of the founders of the Khanate to the Pastoral Worlders, and is known but not as revered elsewhere. I assume the same goes for Russ.

>>53590857
I agree, there is nothing stopping the tyranids from being a failed hive mind that went feral and became a galactic-scale predator over millions of years whose survivors engineered themselves to pop out of the Hive like parasitic wasps out of ant eggs as a final fuck you to their kin.

I was just more concerned that the "origin" retreads too much of what we see in the Orks and Eldar. It might also take away from the "galactic predator" concept, which is good. Although I was the anon who wrote the idea, I have no problem if the "failed hive mind" idea gets discarded.

The one thing is we do need more on tyranids and it is hard to do so. There are no "natural" changes to their history like the Imperium or Chaos, and they don't have any individual figures. So all that can be done is describe the units they use (most of which have already been done so in canon), or the battles they fought in.

>>53591821
The image of Russ in the common Media of the 41st millennium could be the ultimate Honourable Savage Viking. Axe in one hand, keg sized beer mug in the other and a different woman every night. A riotous, loud and jovial marauder combining the most desirable parts of man and beast.

Truth was he was a never unfaithful to his wives and held great reverence for the sanctity of marriage. His small tribe of daughters was just the result of both his wives and himself being active for the better part of five hundred years.

He was also prone to bouts of depression and although he could laugh up a storm was more known for brooding and gnawing at old wounds. His sense of humour was fairly gallows and tended towards self depreciation.

But that's hard to make sit-coms out of and the only Space Wolf left who remembers him spends most of his time asleep so who honestly gives a shit.

>>53581212
It makes you wonder what culture the Zoats would develop.

They have essentially be wiped to a clean slate.

>>53585465
>>53585486
>>53585523
>>53586048
>>53586808
>>53590857
>>53591925
Threadly reminder that Nobledark is a 40k modification, not a total conversion. The only thing we've consistently had of the Nids is that they're a complete wildcard, predicted by neither psyker nor daemon nor farseer - and that, in turn, they're finding the Milky Way to be an unexpectedly chewy meal. Giving them a concrete origin, especially linking them to more xenos, feels too much of a step away from what we're given in Vanilla, like when we tryed to rewrite the War in Heaven.

The annoying thing is, I really like this idea, too.

>>53593803
The nids have always been linked to the Zoats in canon. The Zoats showed up in the tyranid vanguard force, back when the tyranids were space dinosaurs as opposed to alien locusts. Then GW realized the alien eating machines didn't need diplomats, and the Zoats were squatted.

Other than that everything you mention has a point.

>>53594103
Would it help to leave their origins unknown and this be an AdBio speculation?

>>53595398
The only issue would be if they could get information from the Zoats' mouths themselves. Of course, if the Zoats are being reborn from the tyranids, they might not even know their own origin.

Being custom-built bioforms also wouldn't explain the tyranids weird lifecycle, where it is thought that rippers are essentially larval tyranids that metamorphose into the necessary organism during war/someone annoying you when you're trying to eat lunch, and then hatched as is to eat the landscape during late-phase invasion.

>>53595654
Zola should maybe be extremely reluctant to give up information about themselves.

Is it because they don't know? Who can say.

Are Saruthi a thing in this AU?

Because if they are and have fallen they could be a major player in the non-eldar Chaos factions.

>>53594103
Then they got reintroduced as being Hive Fleet Colossus

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Is the penal legion still a thing?

Has anything been written about Savlar and it's Chem-Dogs?

Also Colonel Schaeffer's Last Chancers

>>53599277
Nothing has been written about Savlar. The origins behind it would have to be changed somewhat from canon, since in canon it is a quintessential example of grimderp (planet is so toxic that you couldn't get miners to settle there if you paid them, so they made them a penal colony and worked them to death in the toxic smog instead, etc.).

While the Imperium may be willing to put convicts in some absolutely shitty situations, I don't think they would go so far as to put them in a situation that is a guaranteed death sentence akin to fetching nuclear waste from Chernobyl

>>53603576
might be fun to have Savlar be a really messed up survivor civilization, genetically Men of Stone like the rest of the galaxy's humans and abhumans, but on the far end of the spectrum from the human baseline, to the point of almost being Xenos. The Savlar would be heavily augmented, divergent humans somewhat more adapted to the death-world's absurdly hostile environment. Their culture would be techno-barbarian and hedonistic due to the harsh conditions and high rate of attrition in their society, and only kept from actual Chaotic corruption due to necessary pragmatism and cooperation, in as much as diverting resources in the name of Slaanesh or Khorne is a death sentence due to natural hazards. The absolutely absurd toxicity of the world could come from DAoT extraction or synthesis of exotic material, which could also explain survivable humans living in the system, and would be more of a justification for the Imperium to back excavation activities in such a horrible place, under the name of archeology instead of mining. The Savlar themselves would be almost Fremen-esque waste wandering junkies, stuffed with drug glands and anti-toxin adaptations, prone to charge into battle with deadly tech they prize above their own lives and wreak madcap destruction like inverse Kriegers before they can be shot down.

>>53604353

That sounds like it has potential!

>>53604353
Survivor civilization would go a long way towards explaining how Savlar became the way it is. Imperium can't touch Survivor civilizations beyond no Chaos and no war with rest of Imperium, so they can't do much to Savlar unless the people of Savlar want it.

The only thing is that to be a Survivor Civilization implies that Savlar has space tech.

I would suggest dialing back the "would be Chaos worshippers if not for the environment". The Imperium wiped out Survivor civilizations that worshipped Chaos, even before they knew what it was, simply because many civilizations who worshipped the Chaos Gods openly were offended at the idea of anyone other than the Ruinous Powers telling them what to do.

Maybe the Savlar are hedonistic because of their brutal world. Go ye warriors, and drink, have sex, and do drugs, for tomorrow you may die.

In the interest of new material, here is a spitballed idea regarding the immediate aftermath of the Tau Empire’s Schism. As in, their attempts to try to crush Farsight and his separatists only to find out they were dug in too deeply and thus lead to the standoff situation that persists to 999.M41. Had trouble thinking of a name for the campaign, until I found out the infamous Damocles Gulf is literally the boundary between the vanilla Tau Empire and the Farsight Enclaves. I tried to keep the campaign to the general idea we set out in previous threads of “Taiwan fighting mainland China, and winning”.

The Damocles Gulf campaign is an important marker in Tau history, representing one of the largest battles in Tau history before the Tau joined the Imperium and one of the few instances in which Tau fought against Tau. After the rebuilding of the Tau Empire following the A.I. rebellion and the Fourth Sphere of Expansion, the political winds had shifted once again and the Ethereal council was once more considering the possibility of developing closer ties with the Imperium. Imperial culture had become well-known to the Tau in the millennium since the two empires had first met, and some Ethereals recognized the resonance between Imperial ideals and the Tau’va, as well as the potential of using inclusion into the Imperium as a vehicle to spread the Greater Good. However, these ideas created a political backlash and a series of counter-proposals across the Tau Empire. These proposals ranged from the reasonable, such as seeking to ally with the Imperium without fully joining, to the insane, such as a mass migration of pro- and anti-Imperium Tau across the empire to form separate pro- and anti-Imperial states.

>>53606054
Eventually things came to a head, with a contingent of traditionalists coming to believe that the ideologies of the Tau’va had already become too compromised by outside influence. Riots and violence erupted across the Tau Empire, eventually resulting in a sizeable minority of the Tau Empire including several Ethereals and high-ranking commanders including Commander Farsight leaving to form their own empire. The remaining Ethereals were outraged by this breach of Tau honor. Perhaps more importantly, the schism had led to the spilling of Tau blood by Tau hands, something that had not happened in history since the age of Mont’au and the days before the Tau as a whole had come to accept the Greater Good. This was something that could simply not go unpunished.

In response to the violence and aftereffects of the Schism, the Tau Empire raised a massive retaliatory strike force, headed by several Shas’O and at least three Ethereals. However, Farsight’s counterpart among the reformers, Commander Shadowsun, was not among their number. Although Shadowsun had fought against the reformers in the initial days of the schism, including with Farsight himself in the riots of T’au, she was not part of the retaliatory fleet, having been called away to the eastern front of the empire to defend against a splinter fleet of Hive Fleet Kraken. This may have been one of the reasons why the Damocles Gulf campaign went as badly as it did. Although the commanders were well-trained and their forces outnumbered the traditionalists by nearly six to one, they were still going up against the Tau Empire’s greatest living military strategist, and without a general of Farsight’s caliber on the side of the reformers the retaliatory strike may have been doomed to fail.

>>53606062 (cont.)
Perhaps the biggest mistake was following the traditionalists into the northwestern frontier of the Tau Empire, the area where Farsight had spent most of his military career. As a result, Commander Farsight and the traditionalists had a much better idea of the terrain than the reformers did, including the best places to defend or set ambushes. During the Damocles Gulf campaign, Farsight once again proved how he had earned his name, only fighting in areas where he could nullify the numerical advantage of the reformers, or flanking around the main body of the fleet to strike at supply lines and attempt to cut them off from the empire. When forced to fight in the open, he would often employ unorthodox tactics that caught the more conservative commanders of the reformers off guard, such as jumping his ships into “knife-fight” range so that enemy ships could not fire at them without firing on their own soldiers at the same time. Although victories by the traditionalists seemed to be randomly distributed across the Gulf, they would prove very important for future political events, for these victories were often concentrated around easily defensible points that would serve as the effective borders of the Farsight Enclaves.

>>53606075 (cont.)
The Damocles campaign was ultimately declared a failure. The Tau Empire had the forces needed to wipe the separatists from the stars, but Farsight’s forces were too heavily entrenched beyond the Damocles Gulf and it would cost them at least ten reformers for every traditionalist, a proposition the Ethereals were not willing to entertain. Not to mention, repaying the traditionalists’ violence with more blood would only strengthen the separatists’ claims of being in the right. Instead, the Ethereals decided to play the long game, considering that after a few generations the majority of the traditionalists, including most importantly Farsight, would be long gone. Unfortunately, this has not been the case, as the traditionalists have somehow managed to create their own functioning system within the Farsight enclaves, but Farsight has somehow managed to stay alive for far longer than any Tau would be reasonably expected to live.

>>53606094 (cont.)
This is just a preliminary version, to be rewritten as needed. However, I can already see one major problem with how things are now: Shadowsun swore a blood oath to kill Farsight, and there was no way she would let herself be sent away if she thought Farsight was going to be killed in the Damocles Gulf campaign.

The point of sending Shadowsun away was to explain why the Tau Empire weren’t able to beat Farsight despite their numbers advantage. The idea was that the commanders the Tau sent weren’t on Shadowsun or Farsight’s level, sort of like how Hannibal was able to rampage through Italy because the Romans didn’t bring their A game and wasn’t stopped until he fought against a general of comparable skill in Scipio. They were decent generals, but they were still up against Commander “I invented this maneuver during breakfast and it will be in the history books by dinner” Farsight. The point was more to show off how badass Farsight is than anything else. Shadowsun could have probably fought Farsight on a comparable level, and then won due to the numbers advantage.

>>53606110
She would've won, but it was more important to not let the entire damn empire (even the damn rebels) to get eaten by fucking bugs YOU HAVE HORRIBLE TIMING FARSIGHT

>>53606707
He's got great timing. Attacking while your enemies' best commander is otherwise detained is excellent strategy.

>>53606110
It reads fucking sweet

>>53604353
>>53606028
I like the sound of this.

It's more probable that Savlar was the site of Dark Age industry in making exotic compounds and such rather than just obtaining raw material. Something about the planet making it suited for the process.

Savlar has not native life forms and when man first set foot on it had almost no atmosphere. The atmosphere is has now is a side effect of the old industry. That it turned out breathable, if barely, was just a coincidence. Savlar is now home to extremophile and borderline extremophile life forms of the sort typically found growing next to volcanos on less awful worlds.

Native population of Savlar is descended from the people who used to work there and got stranded in ancient days.

Genetically they are more or less pure human but like Fenrisians there is very minor deviations. They can handle drugs and toxic substances far better than most people.

Bio-mods to help deal with the environment are common on Savlar and in the regiments raised there.

>>53609038
Given the unfortunate chemical composition of Savlar it might actually look pretty fucking fabulous from orbit.

I'm going to suggest that the chapter Rainbow Warriors are from Savlar.

>>53603576
How extreme a situation would the Imperium be willing to send in Last Chancers?

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>>53610011
I'm down. I imagine the entire vibe of Savlar's forces is something between the Krieger's exaggerated WWI, warboys, and Eclipse Phase's scum faction.

If their ancestor chapter is unknown it might work to make the Rainbow Warriors a Night Lords descendant that's adapted to Savlar over a couple millenia. They'd have found their brutality fit right in with the world's existing justice system, in which malicious actors are just kneecapped and left in the wastes at best, and were originally a good fit for Savlar because the latter was one of the few worlds that would welcome a chapter of Night Lords, and they wouldn't have had their own order of space marines otherwise. The Rainbow Warriors would mostly police the offworld port cities and the major dig sites for piracy and theft of incredibly toxic archeotech respectively, and even start to take prisoners instead of just executing on the spot because criminals can be put to work. The Savlar themselves and the local Mechanicus have plenty of mining or archeology interests across the planet, and aren't opposed to employing semi-servitorized prisoners taken by their astartes to work. Again, because Savlar is so hostile, the locals so rowdy and well armed, and the local authorities so violent, impressment on Savlar is considered right up there with any other result of being caught by Night Lords, but the locals actually consider it a mercy, and claim rehabilitation, as they do still provide for the nominal survival of the impressed, and their nominal education as they drudge for years uncovering the remnants of the DAoT.

>>53613804
That's good.

Also Savlar could be the one planet where Night Lords don't have to hide. On every other world their fortress is discreet if not outright secret.

It's not that they are anywhere illegal but because the general population would riot if they drew too much attention to themselves.

Not so on Savlar.

On Savlar the Rainbow Warriors have a fortress right in the centre of the capital city. And the citizens love them for it.

>>53614115
On most planets the Night Lords are viewed as crazed maniacs. On Savlar people look at the Rainbow Warriors and go "eh, they're normal blokes, nothing looks wrong about 'em to me."

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>>53614772
So how should the Chem-dogs fight, and are they actually penitents or are they just the Savlar militia and navy, with auxiliaries drawn from the impressed criminals?

>>53615351
The main force should be """professional""" soldiers with the sizable penal legions as backup.

Most penal legion goons are there by choice when the alternative was hazard work on Savlar.

>>53616190
So if the Savlar are a survivor civilization they would have had a few working interplanetary ships during the age of strife, that could mean they were in touch with a forgeworld in the system for their cybernetics, and a large pirate population in the system would be good fodder for pre-imperial criminal factions that the Savlar would be inter-meshed with and familiar with fighting.

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>>53616710
Or it could be that they aren't a Survivor Civilization and they had no space ships.

It was a bunch of people with a shaky grasp on how some of the more advanced equipment they had worked, trying to survive on an inhospitable world where all the shit used to make it possible had been broken centuries before.

People occasionally came to visit them for their industrial produce and would trade for desperately needed things like gasmasks, tinned food, more water and other such things that they had no ability to produce or obtain.

They were unconquered by outside powers when the Imperium came calling but only because absolutely nobody wanted the place. Everybody looked at the planet, it's people and the cost to benefits never added up. The people would fight tooth and nail for their shitty little toxic rock, the toxic rock would kill more people than the locals and anything that it could produce the locals were willing to trade for in exchange for very little because they were always desperate.

Also none of the short lived empires that arose and fell in the AoS ever offered it a place in their realms due to the cost in rebuilding the place.

When Great Crusade found Savlar and offered them a place under the aegis and care of the Aquila it was a good day for Savlar.

Admittedly they are now under the rule of another distant world and not masters of their own destiny but on the other hand it's a hands off style of ruling and the Imperium has managed to make things considerably less shit for everyone that lives there.

>>53614772
What sort of a chapter are the RWs in Vanilla and what should they be here?

>>53617241
If Savlar wasn’t a Survivor Civilization there is no way that the Imperium would let Savlar exist in anything close to its current form. The very first thing they would try to do is “fix” Savlar, either by rounding up the indigenous population and relocating them to a less shitty planet or housing them in self-contained arcologies until they could make the atmosphere less toxic. Mining and archaeotech salvage would be done by people in full-body containment suits, or by servitors at the very least, to minimize exposure to toxins. The current clusterfuck of Savlar "culture" would be heavily altered at least.

If all else failed they would probably just give the planet outright to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Highly valuable minerals and archaeotech are a much bigger draw to the AdMech, and toxic conditions are much less of a hazard.

If the Savlar fought back, the Imperium might end up wiping them out wholesale mistaking them for Chaos worshippers, especially given how similar the Savlar would be to previous planets that turned out to be Chaos strongholds.

>>53618212
Literally nothing is known about them. They were originally one of the 20 first founding chapters in Rogue Trader (1st Ed.), then GW decided to demote them and the Valedictors to later founding status. They never had any sort of character or culture established.

If you're wondering, nothing ever came about with the Valedictors in vanilla either.

>>53619361
So Savlar, in it's perpetual shit state, is a result of either

1. It is a Survivor Civilization having just about scraped into the catagory somehow back in the old days.

2. Is directly under the management of Old Earth and the Administratum and bad fortune keeps intervening when they try and fix the shit hole that is Savlar.

3. Things at some point got less shit but then went shit again. Possibly a Chaos Uprising or and Ork invasion.

>>53619726
Well if they have a local, equally shitty, scraped together mechanicus forge in their system they could probably manage a just enough of an interplanetary presence to decide their own fate, and it would be easy to expand a DAoT toxic disaster from planetary to system wide just due to industrial scale. A massive, hazardous Dark Age refinery operation would have tons of automation and augmentations in its supervisors, which could lead to the foundations of surviving Savlar peoples and almost-heretek cybernetica priests that Mars has to be bullied into supporting. The biggest question would be surviving the Men of Iron during the age of strive for long enough to even adapt as they did, especially because their system would be so heavily automated. Assuming their ancestors successfully crashed a system wide super-uranium refinery to survive the uprising, the Savlar would be secure in the protection of their horrible planets, free and wild but impoverished and under constant attrition. They might maintain a few ships through the long night, but mostly just to mine asteroids and skip between planets, the very biggest could repel the rare pirate, but the worlds themselves were protection enough to whatever could survive them.

Interplanetary trade for Savlar would be relics and material going to the forgeworld for the slow hereteknical improvement of the Savlar condition. Interstellar trade would be the rare big project that happened when a petty power from the age of strife rolled into the system and paid for the extraction of relics and material. Or they tried to not pay and got bloodied by druggies with death rays that they force to retreat back to their toxic world regardless, only to leave instead of fave an intractable invasion. The Imperium would need the Night Lords at a minimum to dislodge the chem-dogs from their toxic rocks and it's not really worth the price even for the imperium.

>>53619726
Basically this. The Imperium would do something to make life on Savlar better if it had the opportunity. Savlar has enough of a sense of self-preservation that it would probably welcome any attempts to make their lives less shitty, as opposed to Krieg where the dysfunction and stoicism is so ingrained by the time the Imperium figured out what had happened there wasn't much they could do about it.

Which Primarch should have discovered Savlar during the Great Crusade?

I'm thinking Corax.

>>53611349
Penal legions are a tricky thing in this timeline. It’s kind of strange, but penal legions had a real strong religious aspect in canon. As in “you have sinned against the god-emperor by sowing strife within the society of man, but you can redeem yourself by dying in his name”. Given the more secular nature of the Imperium here, I doubt that would be the case.

Penal legions might exist. Spending a huge amount of money and effort to keep a large number of people locked up and essentially doing nothing is a waste of resources for a galaxy perpetually at war. However, it’s been mentioned the real horrible stuff gets you servitorized. So penal legions would probably be composed of people who committed less severe crimes, not psychopaths and mass murderers.

Of course, the Last Chancers don’t seem to be normal even by 40k standards. You might get one hard-as-nails guy who thinks he can take the absolute worst dregs you can get without getting into future servitor territory and make use of their skills. Time will tell if he’s right or not.

>>53625066 (cont.)
Of course, this leads to two problems. First, putting offenders out there on the battlefield is going to be a pain in the ass to manage. They’re going to be less disciplined than regular guardsmen, and it’s going to be hard to motivate them to fight. Not to mention the other problems if you have criminals out in the open instead of behind bars. Whose idea was it to put a convicted embezzler in a place where they can steal military supplies? Isn’t putting a bunch of known members of the squat mafia in a penal legion just going to create a potential challenge to the legion’s authority?

The other issue is determining who goes to a penal legion in the first place. Laws are very much not standardized across the Imperium, and are mostly at the discretion of the world in particular. Killing as a result of a duel is perfectly legal on Fenris, but it’s murder on Macragge. However, the Imperial military is very much a pan-Imperial institution. This means the Imperium could be getting criminals sent to them for the penal legions whose “crimes” are ridiculous to every world but the one the person was arrested on (e.g., political prisoners on a shady world).

The only things that are specifically illegal across the Imperium are worshipping Chaos, worshipping the Emperor, or inciting violence between member worlds, which are really not the kind of offenses you want to see in people in a penal legion.

>>53625085
>>53625066
So Penal Legion probably not a thing in the Nobel Darkness.

Everyone just assumes the Savlar Regiments are.

>>53618212
>>53619452
Rainbow Warriors, like all Night Lords descendants, are under supplied and using beat up old shit. Unlike most other Night Lords this is not because the Administratum keeps putting their requests to the bottom of the heap but is because they prefer to use home made stuff over imports as a matter of pride.

The native Savlars heartily approve of this practice, because it gives them a job and instils pride in them that their produce is worthy of the astartes, and it only deepens the bond between citizen and super soldier.

Due to the ramshackle nature of the gear of the RWs and the simpler nature of their facilities they are the Refined Early Astartes breed of super soldier and are typically clad in something similar to Mk5 Power Armour.

The standard issue bolter has been replaced with what appears to be an overly large las-rifle of curious design due to the scarcity of ammunition.

The las-rifle has a variable output and can fire in a number of spectrums up to and including ultra-violet, though this drains the battery something fierce. Also they are excellent for vampire hunting, and the Inquisition makes much use out of the Rainbow Warriors for this.

They have maintained the dishonourable and distasteful, though undeniably effective, methods of warfare of their progenitors.

After each successful campaign a RW is permitted to add another colour to their armour. If one of these individuals is witnessed dressed like a fabulous fag-clown then you may be certain that they have a body count behind them usually reserved for nuclear attacks.

They are disproportionately active for a single chapter and their numbers fluctuate wildly, this is assisted by their breed and typical gear which are relatively quick and easy to produce.

>>53624670
Why Corax?

I have no problem with it but is there a reason for that Primarch in particular?

>>53626547
Savlar is probably an exception, as the people there see military service as a way to get off their shithole world. Of course, you'd think that you'd get just as many volunteers that it wouldn't be necessary

It was posted last thread an alternate origin for Krieg about how the weapons used had fucked them up at a genetic level that made them as they are.

Maybe that is what happened to the Savlars instead.

Thousands of years wading through toxic soup has made them more or less immune to most chemical weapons but at the price that they hardly ever see 40 years.

Attempts to undo this damage by the AdBio have not met with noticeable success in part because the AdBio are mystified at how they work at a genetic level at all or what has twisted them up so much.

>>53631140
>what has twisted them up so much
its clear what twisted them up so much, the AdCybernetica, which explains why the AdBio has its work cut out for it. Also, the so far the Savlar have already fit the description, but they aren't fatalistic because they're naturally short lived, but because the planet is so fucking hostile and they embrace that hostility with wild abandon. A lot of the comparisons have been to the Scum in eclipse phase, which are technically immortal, and the original theme was something like punkish junkies in an army. I figure its more that the Savlar hardly reach 40, partly from an ever increasing amount of toxin in them, but also because they tend to overdose on their anti-toxin painkillers, or lead suicidal charges in their thirties, or volunteer for a new augmentation that fucks up horribly.

They're just as fatalistic as Kriegers, but their outlook should be almost the opposite otherwise.

>>53631878
Makes sense. They live short, brutal lives and when given the choice they'd rather die for something that matters than slowly waste away or die of self-induced drug poisoning.

>>53629512
He would pity them and understand their point.

>>53631878
Should Savlar have it's own branch of the AdMech?

Not hereteks or anything, just an unpopular/poor order.

>>53634744
I could see some Savlar junkies managing to run a scam to get AdMech membership for money/legal protections/access to more exotic chems for better drugs.

>>53634886
I can't see them getting membership in the Mars Priesthood as such but I can see them sending for a siblinghood with the promise of good pay, their own workshop, first dibs on any old tech dug up and all the drugs they want.

Down side is all this comes with having to live on Savlar.

They would attract either the disgraced or the desperate or the mad.

>>53634744
>>53634886
>>53636200
AdMech don't have membership. The Mechanicus colonies (Forge Worlds) are all descended from long-lost expeditionary forces the AdMech fired off into the void before the Warp Storms abated to try and bring back lost technology. The AdMech generally recognize their own and the Forge Worlds all see Mars as the holy land and (usually) the people in charge.

That said, Savlar would be crawling with AdMech. A planet littered with Dark Age tech would be their dream find, and horrible toxic atmosphere are much less of a deterrent when you are augmented to the point you technically don't have to breathe anymore.

Pardon me, I don't have the "Your god doesn't give you the power to breathe in space? Well MINE DOES" caption.

>>53636440
Actually working old tech should still be rare as fuck for the reasons of balance.

Also the toxic smog and corrosive rain would not be kind to shit left out in the open.

>>53638540
>>53636440
any ideas for what was being done on Savlar in the golden age? I've been thinking it could have been a metamaterial refinery that made adamantium and neutronium.

Some speculations on the Necrontyr and Necron culture, based on what we have and inferences from canon.

In general, the Necrontyr are often considered to be similar to the Tau in many respects, including short lifespans, minimal warp presence, broad flat faces with little in the way of a nose, and slightly slower reflexes than humans. However, there are at least two major ways in which the Necrontyr appear to have differed from the Tau.

First is that the Necrontyr are big. Tau are said to be just a little bit shorter than humans, 5’5” on average. Necrons on the other hand are consistently shown being able to look Space Marines and Eldar in the eye level. There is no evidence that the Necrontyr went through a major “growth spurt” when they became the Necrons like we’ve suggested the Eldar did when the Old Ones first messed with them, so it’s possible that the Necrontyr were just that tall. Indeed, the Old Ones may have engineered the Eldar and Orks to be the size that they are so they were “about” Necrontyr size. It’s also not certain if that stooped posture is natural. It’s may not be, but it’s entirely possible that this is just how a Necrontyr stood.

The other major area in which the Necrontyr differ from the Tau is pain tolerance. Necrontyr are ridiculously resistant to pain. Even before they became the Necrons, the Necrontyr were described as being kind of tanky. Tanky as in “compensated for reflexes by ignoring the pain” as opposed to “super durability”. This pain tolerance is likely at least partially an evolutionary adaptation and partially a learned skill, because when your body is wracked with painful tumors there’s not a lot someone can do to you to make it worse.

>>53639275
This pain tolerance likely influenced the way the Necrontyr fought. The Necrons/Necrontyr in canon are known to consider loyalty and discipline to be a big deal, even compared to other races. Such pain tolerance and high discipline would likely lead to confrontations where Necrontyr warriors would likely have formed massive firing lines to maximum dakka, being durable and pain tolerant enough to ignore glancing hits that led most other races to consider this a bad idea. The infamous Necron "shoot and move" maneuver? That more than likely originated with the Necrontyr.

The Necrontyr cultural value of loyalty and obedience also seems to explain some things about the behavior of the Silent King. The nobledark!Silent King seems to be coming off like a Black Adam kind of figure. As in, in his own time and culture, he would have been considered a paragon of virtue, and he still has a number of virtuous qualities, but times have changed and his behavior now comes off as barbaric. Because of Necrontyr culture, the Silent King isn't used to having people talk back to him. Now that they're Necrons, most of his subjects can't even talk back to him. This fits of previous descriptions of the Silent King as having “no concept of give and take” and outright announcing his intentions to the galaxy and then being surprised when people suddenly have a problem with giving up a trillion subjects for biotransference or wiping out all sentient life in the galaxy.

Despite having arguably noble goals (kill Chaos and make the galaxy safe again, to which the destruction of current galactic life is either a mercy kill or a necessary evil) if extreme methods, he’s not used to having to consider he might be wrong or that people might have other opinions. As a result, he comes off as megalomaniacal and narcissistic instead of decisive and visionary.

>>53638974
I'd go with their main export in those halcyon days could have been Neutronium.

Getting Savlar up and running again would revolutionize the Imperium both economically and militarily.

Every world could have an orbital tether.

>>53638540
Agreed. Savlar probably doesn't have much in the way of Dark Age technology. But that isn't going to stop the AdMech from trying. Any world with a better than average chance of preserving Dark Age technology is going to have more tech-priests on it than ants at a picnic.

>>53638974
Probably the best explanation. Would explain some of the chemicals too. When the containment machinery broke down it would have contaminated the planet or made it even worse.

Isn't adamantium is a naturally occurring substance though? Nostramo's main export in canon was adamantium mining.

>>53639289
>Now that they're Necrons, most of his subjects can't even talk back to him. This fits of previous descriptions of the Silent King as having “no concept of give and take”

Part of the biotransference in the AU is that it wasn't total suppression of individuality even in the rank and file, just very strong mental standardization and re-programming, and the lords were preserved almost whole cloth. The obedience of the majority of the Necrons to the Silent King isn't through the control protocols, which he uses minimally, its also through their freaky post-scarcity immortal mindset. So this is to say that the Biotransference didn't prevent backtalk so much as the impetus for it, because every necrontyr is blessed with a perfectly strong and immortal body and clear unerring mind, perfectly informed by the whole history of Necrontyr philosophy, just like their king. The Silent King himself comes across as incredibly high handed and arrogant, but in fact he has a perfectly frank and accurate view of the Necron Star Empire's power and long term benefit, and intends to make full use of all of his considerable assets, and communicates this clearly.

>>53639499
Nostromo could have been full of rare but not mind bogglingly toxic ore that needed to be smelted into ingots, and during and after the long night this would have been done in foundries smaller than hive cities. Savlar would have had golden age era automated foundries to make a forge world jealous built right into the planet, orbital processing facilities, and an in system proto-forgeworld for even more processing and adamantium forging, and even more facilities for doing some kind of crazy bullshit to adamantium to turn it into neutronium. All of this would have been variously crashed, blown up, left to the elements for ages, adrift in orbit, or otherwise put out of commission, all to the detriment of any habitability that might have once graced the system.

>>53639653
Whatever happened to that anon who was working on some stuff for the Star Empire that was "like Plato's the Republic + the Borg + vanilla!Necrons". That sounded really neat.

One interesting thing about how the Necrons view the death of all life in the universe as a "sad but necessary inevitability" is the fact that killing all life in the universe technically isn't in the Necrons' interests either. Necrons need live bodies for biotransference. However, Chaos and the shit it produces is a more pressing issue than fixing the biotransference right now, so the Star Empire is forced to take the position of killing the galaxy now and then wait until new life emerges to fix the biotransference. It's not the ideal situation (which would be kill Chaos, life intact, then undo the biotransference) but it's the best option available given the state of the universe.

Bunp

>>53639653
>>53642335

If the Necrons have perfect knowledge of the situation one would think the obvious solution to try would be to attempt to talk the other races into storing copies of their genetic code, upload everyone into necrodermis bodies, kill chaos, then biotransfer everyone's minds back into new bodies plus a couple of trillion or so extra clones for the Necrons to inhabit. From the Necron perspective no one has to die and the other races of the galaxy now owe them a massive favor.

Maybe the idea of them talking someone else into doing the biotransference is crossing a line for them. The Necrons are still salty over losing their souls or having them damaged or violated, which seems to be driving some of their actions. Or maybe Cadia is just the Big Red Button that it's easier to push as opposed to a carefully orchestrated upload plan that could take millennia.

>>53642335
I was floating those ideas, but I also need to finish fulgrim.

>>53644382
Also keep in mind that Necrons are arseholes.

>>53646668
This. Oh so much this

The Silent King has reached the stage where the difference between his attitude towards the "lesser creatures" is actually worse than what the Old ones had

The Old Ones would fuck with you but only out of curiosity or accident. SK will fuck you up because what use is being a living god-king if you don't remind the galaxy of it?

The Old Ones had the ability to repair the Necrontyr but saw no reason to do so, the reason SK gave for the war that is still being fought 70 million years later. SK might have the ability to starve Chaos and give everyone a great big helping of immortality, but why would he do that?

Easier to just activate the Pylons and kill everything everywhere with the unintentional exception for things that have no connection to the warp like Blanks and Slaugh (?). Possibly some Tau might get lucky also. That way he can set himself up the Creator and Destroyer and cultivate the galaxy anew from the first day, all life bowing to him and him alone

Also take a look at how he uplifted his people. Void Dragon gave him the ability of biotransference but never wanted it to be forced on people. He rebelled and got buried alive when he called the others out on their bullshit

VD also didn't want it to be used to make people more compliant and docile. He liked people as actual people rather than SK who liked people as pawns

Also look to the Dust Weaver. DW claims to have found a way to use nano-machines son to make bodies that feel not unlike being alive. SK had previously declared such a thing impossible to justify his war against the C'tan. A war that also continues ~70 million years later. DW is therefore declared a rebel, a traitor and a heretic who must be put down and whose findings that contradict royal decree must be destroyed

SK is a big reason for the Dark in the NobleDark. He started a war millions of years ago for selfish reasons, war frown Chaos was born, and the galaxy not known peace since.

>>53633483
I can see that.

Also Corax in this AU has augmetic lungs because of 30+ years of working in Ursh factories so he is not entirely unlike the natives of Savlar.

Also his forces have already been noted as involving a lot more baseline humans proportional to the astartes. Baseliners go in, map shit out then call in the Super Soldiers for a decapitating blow being the usual way of operating.

Possibly this attitude would also serve well for getting cultural knowledge if peaceful inclusion is a viable option. The opposite way of doing shit is the Angron way which is to land with your most brutal and badass looking friends to make a strong impression.

The Angron approach would not have worked in this instance as Savlar are notoriously difficult to intimidate even when sober, even when it's in their interests to back down they don't because they usually live until they are 35 - 45 and those years are usually not spent happy. There is little you can threaten them with that exceeds their day to day.

But Corax would have arrived as someone not unlike themselves from beyond the technicoloured smogs and fogs and seemingly as mad as they themselves.

>>53648967
Wouldn't they end up with Raven Guard descendants then rather than Night Lords?
Or should the chapter end up being something mixed?

>>53649458
In the Tankred story Nuceria started out as a World Eaters recruitment world before the jurisdiction boundaries changed for logistical reasons and it came under the administration of the Death Guard.

>>53646668
>>53647893
Fair enough. Though wouldn't that make the Silent King a bit too similar to the Nightbringer? Two entities that want to kill everything and set themselves up as god-kings.

I kept envisioning the Silent King as a sort of well-intentioned extremist sort. As in "Look, this is about the only option we have. We don't have any other means of killing Chaos. We don't have any ways to save meaningful numbers of you. We're sorry about this, but you're just going to have to die for the sake of the greater good and the future of all life in the galaxy. Kill quadrillions to save essentially everyone who will come after. Little to no malice, strictly business."

Nobledark in the sense that their motivations are noble and they really are bummed that they have to kill everyone (except maybe the Orks and the Eldar, who they see as ignorant children), but dark in the sense that their "noble" goals require mass genocide, there's very little that could convince them to do otherwise, and their disregard for others' lives is such that they'd rather flip the table than do the "proper" nobledark thing and fight on to the bitter end. Furthering the whole "twisted post-heroic mirror to the Imperium thing".

There's just a wee bit of hypocrisy there too, in that the Necron Star Empire would be the only major galactic power to be essentially unaffected by this plan. If the Necrons were going to be as heavily affected by the Cadian Pillars as everyone else, there's no way they would be considering this plan.

>>53651833

I'm with this guy, I much prefer the Silent King to be a sympathetic villain with perfectly reasonable goals but horrific methods. We already have a mustache-twirlingly evil faction in the form of Chaos.

>>53652587
He also demanded 1 trillion citizens for experiments into solving his own problem.

That's pretty assholeish.

>>53651833
I don't think similar motivations behind those two are a problem. They're ultimately pretty similar guys, but they're both megalomaniacs so their visions are mutually exclusive. It's like saying Dr. Doom needs a significantly different underlying aim than Lex Luthor.

In terms of Nobledark's bearing on the Necron's cultural outlook, being post-heroic is more a reflection of being post-biological and post-singularity, so that there's no suffering, poverty, fear on the battlefield, etc. under the Necron Star Empire because all of the subjects have their needs perfectly filled and satisfied. Likewise, as opposed to the daring soldiers and officers of the Imperium, the militaries of the Necrons have almost no individual "heroes", only supertech and immortal, unworried footsoldiers. The dark reflection of the Imperium is in that the Star Empire is orderly and rational, and has nominally well thought out goals, even though they unabashedly follow the logic of self interest and absolute praxis, the post-heroic outlook refers to the military expression of their society being composed of stoic, immortal, loyal robots down to the last member.

>>53652681
Seconded. We have chaos to be the Vampires from Requiem, but that doesn't mean our other major antagonist needs to be remorseful, and that's essentially the opposite of every bit of necron characterization that we've done so far. The Nobledark Necrons have been our unabashed immortal clarketech villains since the get-go, and their utter disregard for other peoples and the other high-handed features that make them the ultimate space imperialists.

They're the British or Dutch Empire to the Imperium's idealized Napoleonic styling

Does Void Dragon know that the Empress is Isha?

>>53652854
I wouldn't say they're super remorseful in the sense that we would think of it, but more in the sense of British or Dutch colonialism you mentioned.

Oh, your entire tribe has to be wiped out or forcibly migrated somewhere else? Sad to be sure, but that's just the cost of progress. Just enough remorse and empathy to recognize they're destroying something, but not enough to actually not do it because progress won't bring about itself.

Remember that many in the British Empire and the like actually believed they were doing the right thing by bringing "civilization" to the rest of the world. Overlooking the fact that millions of people were trampled underfoot and really the "civilizers" were the ones profiting from the whole thing. And those who didn't saw outsiders as savages not worth concern.

Chaos kills you out of a bloody outpouring of emotion and hate. Necrons do it because they don't hate you but at the same time you're in their way. To the Imperium this "nothing personal" attitude makes them come off as unempathetic robots.

To go back to the theme of civilization versus barbarity in this AU, the Necrons have become so civilized they've wrapped back around into barbarism by their treatment of their lessers in some kind of horseshoe phenomenon. It reminds me of a particular quote...

"Colonialism. The enforced spread of the rule of reason. But who is going to spread it among the colonizers?"

>>53653423
Seeing as he is able to see through the implants of most, if not all tech-priests, and the fact that Isha is Empress isn't really a secret, I would say yes.

He probably wouldn't try to contact her, since the two were on opposite sides of a war the last time he was freed.

Given that Isha is one of the few beings of conparable age to him (technically the C'tan were older, but didn't do much beyond existing until they got Necrodermis bodies) Isha might be one of the few beings in the galaxy the Void Dragon doesn't refer to as "child".

>>53653618
The point where you reach demanding the lives of 1 trillion people and think that allowing the other guy to choose who they are is a form of extreme generosity you have in fact gone Full Belgian Congo.

>>53653618
>Colonialism. The enforced spread of the rule of reason. But who is going to spread it among the colonizers?
essentially this. The Necron populace is perfectly logical and kinda sedate, but their ruling caste is full of eccentric wack-jobs that fit nearly as well as Croneworlders for a punchline to "the Aristocrats"

>>53655761
Silent King has definitely gone full Belgian Congo. But note that he bothered to even ask in the first place, gave them the choice of who to go, and pointed out a trillion was so low that if spread out across the Imperium no one would even notice it. He probably thinks he's being reasonable, when he clearly isn't.

Consider if it was Chaos making the same demand to the Imperium. They would demand a trillion citizens sheerly because it would make the Imperium suffer, and the only reason Chaos would even give the Imperium the choice of who to send would be to make the decision more agonizing on the Imperium's part. And then take a trillion more anyway just to make it hurt. Silent King just wants a trillion bodies because he crunched the numbers and that's about what the Star Empire needs for its experiments, he doesn't care where they come from.

Silent King and Chaos have radically different reasonings and motivations, but in practice they boil down to slightly different flavors of awful.

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Does the Astronomican shine as far in this AU?

Also as the Emperor isn't actually needed for the running of the Lighthouse have there been other lesser Lighthouses built?

>>53659891
There's just the one, I think. The fact that it requires thousands of psykers to work, even with eldar modifications, and the fact that it drastically shortens their own lifespan means the ability to make new Astronomica is low. The only planet that could have built an Astronomicon aside from Old Earth might have been Prospero.

It could even be that two Astronomica might be worse than one, as two identical bright lights in the warp might mess with the whole concept of "distiguishable landmark in the Warp".

It's never really been established how the Astronomican was started and how it was originally powered. The Astronomican didn't have Eldar modification until the raid (so less efficient) and if it worked like it does in M41 it would have depleted Sol's population of psykers within a few years, decades at most.

Astronomican in vanilla didn't even need psykers at first, being solely Emperor powered, but it's not clear if that's the case here. Nobledark!Emperor is weaker, but linking star systems is one of the things he was built for.

There was something about the Pharos being discovered in the Age of Apostasy and causing an enslaver outbreak or something.

Bump

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So are there any ideas for felinids and ratlings in the nobledarkness?

I know we have a bit on the felinids from a previous thread. IIRC, they were described as having a kind of quasi-Japanese or southeast Asian-like culture, coming from a planet that was mostly tropical and had a lot of volcanic island chains. Their diet was described as kind of being the opposite of the Tau. Whereas the Tau, being descended from herbivores, primarily eat grain flour noodles plus a bit of protein (which tends to be seafood) to support their increased brain matter, the felinids tend to eat a lot of seafood plus a bit of noodles, because while they are specialized to feed on meat they are still overall omnivores.

Since extreme hairiness is not something that would really be selected for in a hot climate, I would propose that the larger landmasses on the felinid homeworld are located in the temperate latitudes. The planet could be extremely rainy, so in the lowlands everything tends to be either temperate rainforest or tropical rainforest, depending on your latitude. The unusual features that characterize the felinids could have developed on the temperate continents (such as thick hair to keep warm in the cool, damp climate), but the island chains just tended to be where complex civilization developed, since you had a lot more opportunities for trade and farming/metalworking from volcanos. Night vision, enlarged canines, and cat-like ears and hearing come about because they’re highly useful features on a world that doesn’t have much arable land but lots of small animals you can hunt down and kill. It’s a toss-up as to whether it’s natural adaptation, mass gene splicing, or both. However, the sea ends up being the best source of food when civilization gets going again because it’s the best place to get a lot of protein fast.

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>>53664245 (cont.)
I assume that their homeworld isn't called Carlos McConnell anymore for the simple reason that the Imperium wouldn't condemn an entire subspecies of humanity to be the harem and private fiefdom of a horny Rogue Trader.

Ratlings I don’t think we have much. Is Ornsworld still wrecked in this timeline? In canon I know it was ravaged as a byproduct of Abbadon going for the Blackstone Fortresses in the Gothic War, but since the fortresses are more spread out is it safe or did it get ravaged for a different reason.

That actually brings me to another question. In the past I know we’ve said that abhumans are so numerous that they essentially form significant minorities in the Imperium comparable to some of the Xenos races, but I’m wondering how that happened. In order for an abhuman race to develop the population has to be in isolated then have enough selective pressure or genetic engineering to produce a heritable change from the human norm.

Abundance of Ogryns and Beastmen are easy to explain since there are essentially several strains scattered across a wide variety of worlds. However, other abhuman species seem to be restricted to a certain area or world. One of the only ways for them to be present on multiple worlds would be if they already had space travel pre-Imperium (which is possible for the ratlings, but probably not the felinids if they were found by a Rogue Trader).

The other way would be if they were restricted to a single world pre-Imperium, but have since spread to multiple worlds due to humanity's tendency for massive population growth and the fact that the Imperium doesn't care if abhumans set up colony worlds in this timeline. I think it's outright said in canon that there are ratling colony worlds, which is why the destruction of Ornsworld in the Gothic War was rage-inducing but not a death sentence to the ratlings. So the ratlings probably have colonies everywhere.

>>53664264
Could be that the cat people had no unified name for their world and due to an Administratium error his name got used in the official documents.

Or that was the name of the official founder of the planet in the Dark Age.

>>53664912
I am amused by the idea of an entire planet being named after a minor Administratum scribe/intern because he accidentally filled out the wrong line before having his first cup of recaf.

>>53666533
Happened to "Thyphus" the Pilgrim.

>>53666533
It's not like the planet had a name anyway.

At least not one more than one tribe could agree upon. Where as pretty much all the tribes of that world think Carlos McConnell was a pretty awesome dude.

Have felinids ever actually been described in Vanilla?

>>53664264
Nothing has been said so far I don't think of Ornsworld, though presumably it still existed and was presumably still fucked up in the12th Black Crusade.

What do the Arbiters do in this AU?

They have a High Lord but the Imperium is way more hands off in terms of ruling. With less will to enforce and the prominence of local law enforcement what is it that they do all day?

>>53670336
I think they were described like a cross between Commissars and Space Interpol. Providing training and oversight to the local police of a given world, as well as function in interplanetary civilian crime. The amount of local work the Arbites do depends on how extensive the planet's law enforcement is. They wear carapace armor and have heavy weapons because have you seen criminal gangs lately? I'm probably remembering this wrong.

>>53609038

Maybe, just maybe, Savlar can be the last place than can produce Neutronium in the universe. Not much, just a bit but more than as much Neutronium as found on Earth and Cthonia combined. Aka reason for Chaos to try and invade this place, and another reason why Savlar is left a Survivor civie, over fear of destroying this... last factory.

>>53668423
They're called felinids and named Homo sapiens hirstutus, so presumably they are cat-like and covered in thick hair or fur. They live on the planet Carlos McConnell. That's it. That's all that's known in canon.

>>53671036
I like that.

There is one factory left. Just one. It's operating at 5% of it's estimated original output. It's location, even it's existence, one of the most carefully guarded secrets in the Imperium.

There is a closed order of Tech-Adepts that run the place. They have been keeping it even that level of functional since the Age of Strife. They are descended from the technicians and maintenance teams that were there the day it all went to Hell.

The Olympus Mons Brotherhood once demanded their fealty. The Savlar Order told them in no uncertain terms to go fuck themselves. Mars sent them threatening letters demanding they surrender the secrets of their order lest the meet the entire Skitarii in warfare, even going s o far as to have Ferrus Manus himself deliver the letter.

Mars received a letter back of a crudely drawn Mars Priest taking it up the ass from an Aquila. The substance used as ink was identified as faecal matter.

Before things could escalate further Steward Oscar steps in.

He would rather have the insult of that awful world be ranked with the Interex and Ultramar than see the secrets of neutronium smithing lost forever.

To this day the Savlar Order remains one of the only institutions that can tell Mars to get fucked and mean it.

>>53672259
Above the main space port gat has to be, carved in slabs of corrosion resistant glass, this for all arrivals to see.

Savlar: Because Fuck You, That's Why.

>>53672259
All the Savlar techs would have to do is "accidentally" drop a spanner in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the factory would be beyond repair. And if the Imperium know anything about Savlar psychology, they know that the Savlar operate on spite. Theoretically, the Savlar techs could be the richest single organization in the Imperium with their neutronium production. But remarkably, for a planet of despondent murder junkies, the Savlar techs don't want money. A form of bizarre altruism or religious mania maybe, but they ask for random ingredient lists that invariably include food, water, and medical supplies as the only constant. It is in fact the most probably random and inconsistent list known to the Imperium, mathematically speaking. This has the benefit for the Savlar adepts of masking whatever ingredients the neutronium may require, and it benefits the Imperium that the ingredient list is relatively cheap on the grand scale.

The Mechanicus for their part are infuriated that the backward Savlar techno barbarians are holding on to this remarkable piece of technology. Though the Savlar techs are more rough speaking master blade smiths of the mountain than crazed Mad Max junkie, the Mechanicus imagine the w blasphemies happening to the last neutronium plant. Though they would never dare cross the Emperor, many Magos are agitated that the precious neutronium plant is not being reproduced across the galaxy and are contemplating unholy means to take the plant for the good of mankind.

>>53673581
Of course, they could ask the dragon. They might have in the past, some magos in his latter years letting curiosity get the better of him, but whatever came of it is invariably locked away for safety and sanctity sake.

>>53673411
Maybe make it a little more classy. Like have it in High Gothic. More to make the big-wigs angry than anything else.

Man, it's like defiance of authority is raised to an art form on Savlar.

>>53653768
On the other hand, it DOES seem to have an odd way of perceiving things, considering how its thoughts on Vaul and Cegorach.
Does it even consider what happened a war, even?

>>53664245
So what, Felinids are a colony of weebs that decided that since they COULD create genetically spliced catgirls, they DID? And then that backfired when all the best girls are catgirls and you can't unsplice them anymore because everything's fucked

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>>53672259
>>53673581
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

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>>53675261
He defiantly perceived the War in Heaven as a war. Just not one where he was a participant.

Sure, he made a whole boat load of what might have appeared to be doomsday weapons, but never as actual weapons.

A long range mega gravitation inverter. Charge it up, point it at a thing and press the ominous red button. It makes a portion of the objects gravity turn into anti-gravity usually resulting in an explosion and if you point it at a star can cause a supernova and irradiate whole swathes of space. He said it would be useful in future mining endeavors. For when you want to mine a black hole.

And other shit of that nature.

Vaul he considered a fellow inventor and a bit of friendly competition. Isha was a concerned mother who was trying to defend her children from his brothers and he was willing to admit that his brothers were awful people. Ceggers was a merry fellow with whom he had quite pleasant dealing, occasionally he would "borrow" things but he would almost always return them. Khine was... he was Khine, if you left him alone he would be left alone.

He had no specific beef with any of them and he always assumed, and still does, that they had none with him.

>>53675418
Or it's possible that when the planet got cut off they intentionally used the technology they still had whilst they had it to try and adapt to their environment and up slightly their chances of long term survival. If so it worked, they survived.

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>>53674097
Just found this. Probably what the poor sods assigned to guard duty have to deal with.

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>>53675982
Really?

Are we really daring to go there?

It could potentially be done right though with a huge possibility of it being pure cancer.

It would also require some considerable trimming of the story to get it to fit whilst still keeping the recognizable basic theme of the character.

>>53676655
I was referring to the void dragon in the window, asking to be let in.
Yeaaaaah no. One /tg/ fanfic is enough for this AU, thank you.

>>53675261
He probably saw it as a war, but only against the assholes who were hurting the fleshy ones that gave them awesome corporeal bodies. Everyone else is just at the wrong place at the wrong time. The Necrontyr made the C'tan bodies in exchange for them fighting with them against the Old Ones. That was the deal.

The Necrons claim that their discovery of the C'tan was a chance encounter whereas the Eldar claim that the C'tan were drawn to the Necrontyrs' hatred, but the Eldar have been known to radically exaggerate their history to make it as dramatic as possible (see: The War in Heaven), and sensing emotions doesn't seem like something a bunch of warp-insensitive gasbags that were only interested in munching on stars at the time could do.

The Void Dragon did have a temper, based on what the Eldar legends say of him, but that may be more because he has no sense of proportional retaliation and will bring out the heavy stuff if you make him mad. So he fought at least one person in anger in the War in Heaven.

>>53675954
Basically this.

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>>53675418
Probably more they were on a planet that had lots and lots of small game in the rainforests but not a lot of arable land. So it was really useful to have features that allowed you to track down and hunt small game, even if you had to climb up trees and tear it apart with your bare hands and teeth. If only we had some sort of native Earth murder machine to use as a template. Oh wait.

When the felinids decided to stop being hunter-gatherers and actually start rebuilding civilization, this turned out to be a problem because instead of your diet needing to be like 30% meat as in regular humans, it now had to be like 80%. The easiest way to get such large amounts of protein to feed so many mouths would be to get it from the sea, either that or herd large animals, which isn't as easy in a rainforest.

In truth, the felinids are probably as much marmoset-y as cat-like, with features like opposable big toes and flexible ankle to grip trees like a monkey or a squirrel, because when you make a primate cat-like you tend to get marmoset-like, but in the darkness of the 41st millenium no one probably knows what a marmoset is. It's like calling Fenrisian wolves wolves when you can just as easily make comparisons with chimps, extinct bear-dogs, and grizzly bears.

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>>53677726
So they may be something not unlike a Wookie.

This assumes that there is only one strain of the mad bastards.

There could be some that are more human on the tropical islands and the wookie ones on the larger landmasses as you get towards the poles.

The islanders tend to be fishermen and the ones in less pleasant climates eat, among other things, auroch. Both are dangerous, a quality the Imperial Army is grateful for.

Both (assuming only 2) strains have a nasty habit of trophy taking. Teeth, finger bones and vertebrae made into adornments is the most common means of this expression.

They tend to operate at peak efficiency when broken into squads and distributed among other regiments of non-Felinids. Organizing them is very much a case of herding cats. They generally get along with nova-ogryn better than nova-beastmen and get along with either far, far better than Fenrisians due to conflicting territorial instincts.

They generally have an edge at trap setting, ambush and are considered a poor mans answer to real assassins. They are shit at holding a position.

There are stories of a rarer 3rd variety, whether it is a kind in it's own right or a recurring mutation is debatable. It is the Saber-toothed Felinid. It is a high speed and hairy Nova-Ogyrn.

Due to their digestive system being optimized for meat they are possibly the only abhuman type that can sustain itself on nothing but raw ork, though to them it does not taste good.

>>53678999
>Saber-toothed Felinid
>Tiger/Ogryn hybrids
Jesus christ that's amazing.

>>53678999
Wookie-like in appearance might be a bit too far. After all, they’re called felinids, so they must have been cat-like enough for someone to notice the connection.

I was thinking something like this. If you passed a well-dressed, well-groomed modern felinid on a hive city street, you probably wouldn’t notice that much was off at first glance. As was suggested in the previous thread, felinids have hair everywhere but their faces, hands, and the soles of their feet, so their faces look mostly human. Their eyes are very cat-like, though, and their ears are pointed and protruding. Their canine teeth are also enlarged, though this varies between individuals. Felinids from the continents having bigger canines. They may be able to open their mouth wider than baseline humans, in order to use those canines to take slashing bites out of things. The lower incisors may be specialized for grooming like some primates.

Felinids tend to have a bushy mane of hair in both males and females, and very little facial hair. The mane is as much cultural as genetic, and is/was useful for keeping things from biting your neck. Their hands and feet both have retractable claws, the one on the thumb being particularly nasty. The feet are kind of like those of some ancient human relatives, where the second toe is enlarged to partially take over from the function of the big toe, which has become opposable. Felinids can wear human boots, but prefer their own footwear for comfort. The ankle joint can flex, allowing them to use their feet to clamp onto trees. The tail is mostly used for balance while moving through the forest or climbing.

All in all, somewhere about halfway between feral catmen and catgirl, distinct enough that they aren’t fetishbait but similar enough that you can see why baseline humans would still see them as “mostly human” and be attracted to one.

>>53679791
The islanders are probably more technologically advanced than the tribals in the temperate rainforests. Enough that the Imperium didn't treat them like the Ogyrn and the Beastmen as people in need of genetic fixing, but primitive enough that they were still classified as a feral world when they were found.

Culturally though, New Guinean/Japanese wookies probably sums them up perfectly. Though I would assume there are some felinid colonies that have been established since the discovery of their world and the fact that the cat is now literally out of the bag/gravity well.

>>53679756
>Saber-tooth felinid
>Felinids are cat-like
>Ogryn have canine tusks
Holy shit he's right.

An idea I had regarding Tzaangors, who are about the only group of 40k Chaos Beastmen with recent lore.

When the Imperium started their project to uplift the Beastmen, the forces of Chaos scrambled to acquire as many planets of Beastmen as they could easily find. Tzeentch in particular has always showed an unusual amount of interest in the Beastmen compared to the other Chaos Gods, perhaps because the unstable genetic structure and tendency towards mutation in Primeval Beastmen fits well with the ever-changing nature of the Architect of Fate. In addition to individual Beastmen that have fallen to the influence of the Ruinous Powers as is typical of any race, the forces of Chaos also include Tzaangors, are Beastmen, or possibly humans mutated to look like Beastmen, who have been even further altered by the Lord of Change. Tzaangors typically show the avian features typical of servants of Tzeentch, such as beaks, feathery wings, and talons, but have horns and shaggy fur more typical of Beastmen.

Despite their groveling, servant-like nature, Tzangors are far from weak, often being both physically powerful and intelligent enough to comprehend many of the magic rituals that they come across. However, Tzaangors have been engineered to instinctively be submissive to any greater daemon or high-ranking servant of Tzeentch, in spite of any physical or arcane prowess they might possess. Nevertheless, this has not stopped an abused or ambitious Tzaangor from occasionally offing an overly confident or insufficiently paranoid follower of the Lord of Change. Tzaangors are normally found perched on the Webway colleges of Tzeenchian Cronedar or the non-euclidean spires of Tzeenchian sorcerors, always on the lookout for new victims to harass.

Basically ½ Igor, ½ gargoyle servants of Tzeentchians. Act as both lab lackies and watch dogs for followers of Big Blue Bird. May not necessarily be Beastmen, but are similar in shape that many probably are.

Hey, keep going!

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>>53675954
>>53677478
The Necrons and C'tan did use the Void Dragon as their beatstick in the War in Heaven. Void Dragon was one of the strongest C'tan in terms of raw power (tanking shots from Blackstone Fortresses) only rivaled by Outsider (probably equals before, now the same because Void Dragon can exploit his Omnissiah-ness and Outsider has gains from eating most of the other C'tan) and Nightbringer (who may have been his equal already but was already exploiting his association with the fear of death to outstrip the other C'tan and make sure no one could challenge him). The other C'tan did have to gang up on him to shut him up, after all.

The C'tan may have been using the Void Dragon as their brute and never really factored in that there was actually a pretty clever, if completely discombobulated, brain there, seeing him as dumb muscle that invented things. The Void Dragon was already mentioned to have been considered weird by C'tan standards due to how readily he took to corporeal form (going full body mod on his originally humanoid frame to produce the draconic figure we all know today) and how he treated the Necrontyr. So they use Void Dragon as their beatstick until Cegorach gets him to realize 2+2=4 and it bites the C'tan in the ass that the Void Dragon is merely ditzy (if one can call a chrome star dragon ditzy), not stupid.

>>53684566
I could easily see that working in with >>53675954
They come up to him, ask him what one of his randomass machines does, take it to make use of it, and then proceed to use it on things other than the intended target, only occasionally having him do any actual work himself because hey he keeps making superweapons.
Then comes the ass-biting and they see what he comes up with when he makes something designed to murder shit as its primary purpose.

>>53684566
>only rivaled by Outsider (probably equals before, now the same because Void Dragon can exploit his Omnissiah-ness and Outsider has gains from eating most of the other C'tan)
the other characterization we have for the Outsider is being robotic in persona, even relative to the other C'tan, and being self-denying and obedient even before becoming insane and attempting to delete his own consciousness. It's godlike robot butler vibe fits pretty well for it to be the pointman for C'tan operations. In an older thread it going insane and eating all its siblings was possibly at the suggestion of the Silent King, giving it orders to kill the other star gods, or it might have just snapped and killed them for ordering it around all the time, it could easily be both, and the act itself is what made the Outsider insane and obsessed with a paradoxical goal. It can't tell whether or not it was self aware before it went insane, but it definitely wasn't wracked with the internal turmoil it faces now, inside its sphere.

Sob are there going to be Primaris Space Marines in the Noble Darkness?

I remember a thread we had some time ago about a chapter that recruited from a world of half-Ogryn. They were the HUEG MARINES, founded and often descended from St Gav.

They could in this AU be a chapter that recruits from a Nova-Ogryn world or Imperim wide population of Nova-Ogryn. Given the rarity of Ogryn with gene-seed compatibility the Sons of Gav (name pending) are the only chapter that can do this without depleting the useful recruitment stock.

>>53686969
I would shy away from references to other /tg/ things as inserting shit into the Nobledarkness seems to be frowned upon so we don't just end up importing shit loads of OCDONUTSTEEL!!!

I would say also say no to the Primaris Space Marines as they are not needed.

If you want the occasional HUEJ dude turning up then it could be a very rare mutation that sometimes afflicts astartes space marines, thus having a thin but even spread across the breadth of the Imperial Army.

>>53673581

I have an idea:

The Savlar Death race: aka the Savlar being a-holes by only agreeing to sell their neutronium batch to the first person who can buy the -entire- batch at the time, organized whenever they feel there is enough Neutronium to send everything into a mess.

The contestants are -everyone-, no matter what allegiances. Only thing matters is if you can gather all the materials on their buy list and return first -alive- with them.

Considered the human's Iron Storm (was that the name of the San-heim's race?), and the Savlar's middle finger to the San-Heims. Both side took it as a challenge, thus many San-heims join too.

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>>53688414
That is a beautiful idea.

They store up the produce of the neutronium workshop untill they have a sizable amount, then they nail a list on the outside of the workshop gates.

This is how new neutronium gets on the market.

The list is ridiculously varied and makes no sense and they expect it to be fulfilled to the letter without deviation. The shit they ask for is not only weird but inconsistently weird.

If they ask for a specific amount (only ever using native Savlar units of measurement, obviously) of Valhallan brandy in an arsenic bronze container then you bring them what they ask for or you can go fuck yourself.

Do they just want to get drunk? Is the arsenic, copper or alloy of the two used in the making of neutronium or the maintenance and repair of the machinery? None can say.

All that is known is that the Savlar Order know that the ball is in their court because they are the only ones making new neutronium.

It is suspected that they do this only to spite the Olympus Mons priesthood. It's a means of exerting their dominance in this relationship in the most annoying way possible as just their way of showing how much they appreciated being fucked about with when they first met. It didn't have to be like this, Mars made it like this with their asshattery. And all know that in a contest of who can be the biggest ass you never challenge Savlar as they see that unlike you they have nothing to loose.

>>53688916

One of the weirdest shit that had been asked for had been a lasgun straight out from Cadia, a whisker of hair from an Eldar or felinids, and one time, a Martian toaster. It was a very big batch of course.

This was one of the few events sometimes Oscar, Eldrad had to join when they had to secure the batch. They also sometimes ask for THE HERO OF THE IMPERIUM to do it in their place.

>>53686969
That was the Sons of Antaeus. They aren't Ogryn, they just use Mark III S geneseed and the dropouts end up being huge dudes. Geneseed doesn't function on any abhuman subspecies either here or in canon. Void Wolves were either a weird exception due to Sol Void Wolves having intermingled with Earthlings for years, or the years of interbreeding only later made it possible for Void Wolves to recruit from the Navy.

>>53688414
That's what I was thinking, isn't this the exact same as the Iron Storm?

>>53690155

Yes, but HUMAN'S!! XD

Aka it's intentional, and creates great quest materiels cause it's now more on bargaining, intrigue and fighting than racing. Also, a dick waving contest between the 2 most 'rudest' people in the galaxy is fun.

>>53690369

Make that 3. Mars, Savlar and San-Heims

>>53690369
I would say to not call it the Death Race but the Savlar Scavenger Hunt.
Closer to what it is, and it's unassuming despite what they want tending to be a pain in the ass. And likely causing a bunch of deaths as people race to get them to be first.

>>53690155
I think it's likely, given that we know the gene-seed doesn't work on abhumans, that the astartes and basic soldier branches of the Void Wolves were baseline humans recruited by the Void Born. The Void Born themselves making up the Navy of the Void Wolves and often supplementing the Navies of the other Legions due to having all the expertise and a lot of the ships being loaned from Horus as the King of Empty Space.

What should be the relationship between the Rainbow Warriors and the Savlar Order?

In this AU Space Marines don't typically rule anything very much and it is clear that the Order is the ones pulling the strings on Savlar by effect of being the only people to remain relatively sober for days at a time.

I'm guessing that the RWs are not exactly subservient to the SO as the AdMech would loose their shit if the SO started to officially own soldiers, let alone Space Marines. Never mind that the SO have never once shown much of an interest in anything past their colourful clouds.

On the other hand the SO, though not doing it themselves, almost certainly have the loyalty of any other tech-adept on their shit planet. To this end the RWs are almost certainly getting their gear from brotherhoods associated with the SO, which puts them in the bad books with Mars.

Also the RW policy of ALL THE WARS ALL THE TIME! is at odds with the SO policy of STFU AND LEAVE ME ALONE!

Furthermore I think that we need to flesh out what the prominent religious beliefs of Savlar are. It's easy to say that they would be generic tribal but the one constant on that shit hole has been a Mechanicus outpost that, whilst annoying, are not Heretek, Heredox or Dark Mechanicus. But they are an order born on Savlar on the day all the things broke down and have had since the first day of the AoS all the way to 999M41 to enjoy living in what amounts to Hell on the day they couldn't find the matches.

To this end I'm going to suggest that the prominent religious belief be The Church of the Broken God. Yes it is Omnissiah worship as they see the Omnissiah as the universal mechanism that underpins all things (some theological arguing if this includes The Warp). It is also clear to them that it is broken because this is sure as shit not what a properly working universe should look like. God isn't dead, He's just broken.

>>53690412

And even more as the many... more unscrupulous nobles and traders often try to off their opponents.

>>53692315
This belief has over the thousands of years seeped into the population as sure as the silver poisoning. A population that the RWs recruit exclusively from.

Although doing a survey of the RWs Chaplains and the priests of the tribes could be used to try and extrapolate something approximating the beliefs of the SO it is not likely as the exchange of beliefs has only ever been one way and unintentional. The Savlar Tribes and the SOs are not required to have anything in common with each other on societal, cultural or religious grounds.

Indeed everything about the inner workings of The Workshop (probably not even it's real name) is conjecture at best, even it's size given that it almost certainly extends some way into the mountain.

It is also unsure exactly how many SO there are. They don't accept new members from outside so there must be at least enough to form a stable gene-pool, assuming they aren't using non-standard methods of reproduction.

>>53692315
It could be some kind of psychotropic religion. That many chemicals on one planet, some are bound to give people religious visions akin to peyote and from there it's only a short hop, skip, and a jump to religious people doing controlled drug use to have religious visions.

The reason it's not Slaanesh worship or hijacked thereby is the Savlar would be suspicious if their god told them to do more drugs. The Savlar are like the Dark Eldar, they don't like anyone telling them to do anything, even their god(s). They'll listen to them, but they'll do their own thing.

This just serves to further enrage the AdMech, or claim the Savlar don't have a comparable religion. After all, you don't contact the Omnissiah through drug usage. They would know.

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>>53694406
For Savlar drugs just happen. None of their gods have ever told them to do more of the things. Several have looked at them with concern and told them to go easy on LSD Vodka. An anti-drug campaign on Savlar would be impossible as some of the more fragile off-worlders can get mildly high by standing out in the open in a breeze.

There is a stable market on Savlar for drugs that counteract the substances they absorb naturally just by standing on Savlar. It's everywhere like the Spice from Dune but instead of allowing you to see the future and bend space it allows you to see "visions" and die young.

Are there gods real? Probably not. Probably. Admittedly they are only witnessed when getting buzzed but there is a an unaccountably strange consistency with the visions.

If their gods are real then they are small and answerable to natural forces and without any pretense at omniscience. Gods vary from one part of the shit planet to the other but all hold a place for Death. Death is the one constant. All things are drawn to Death in time. Even the gods. But maybe Death is not so bad. He is depicted as The Smiling King, he does not hunt you, he waits for you with open arms and a smile like a friend.

The Omnissiah is the canvas upon which all this is painted, if it is sapient and sentient it does not care or notice something as small as a mortal man. And that is good.

Should the gods of Savlar be actual things or not?

>>53698046
no, or if they are they're hardly distinguishable from unhealthy Daemonettes with drug problems potent enough to show even for a daemonette

>>53695471
>if it is sapient and sentient it does not care or notice something as small as a mortal man. And that is goo
this would bother the Martian Order's high leaders nearly as much as anything else, because their leaders know it to be completely incorrect, and the Omnissiah is deeply interested in everything at the scale of mortal men. The mars priesthood can never reveal this to the Savlar, but they would seethe and grouse about how the Savlar aren't even aware of the holy secrets of the Omnissiah.

>>53699068
I suspect that the handful that know about what is chained up in the basement would be relieved that the Savlar Order obviously does not. Because they definitely would tell as many people as they could about it because fuck you that's why.

The overwhelmingly vast majority of the AdMech see them as heretical in every way but the official decree and were it not for them setting up in the last neutronim factory would have nuked them from orbit.

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>>53698895
Daemonettes are too classy for Savlar, even crack whore ones.

If they are real they are more likely to be the low things from out in The Endless Wasteland where no gods dwell.

Possibly they are the deamon equivalents of Qah or the eldar gods that survived and fled. Not actually Chaos, not very dangerous but not actually very useful either. They can interact with people tripping tits on Savlar because the nature of the people has spent thousands of years seeping into the very rocks itself to the point where it's psychic flavour is not unlike The Wasteland so it's a bit like home turf. The Drugs make the people more likely to notice them as their perceptions fuck up.

It is technically Warp-Craft but not knowingly, intentionally or Chaos so even if the Imperium was ever to pay attention their would be a limit to the depth of shit they would officially be in.

Or they might just be some rather consistent hallucinations. It would not be the strangest thing in the Imperium.

>>53569088
That is not what is depicted in that image at all.

http://ukitakumuki.deviantart.com/art/Hammerhead-Down-40K-315545763

>>53700801
No shit. That description is meant to adapt the piece of art to fit the themes of this universe, the original bit just wanks the Tau even harder than in canon.

Bedtime bump!

How dense should the population density of psychics be on Old Earth?

>>53575785
So Daisy Chain is probably a thing built after the Civil War.

The Assassin Temples are most probably scattered across the surface of the Earth with many in deep vaults.

Also is the Liechtenstein-Vault still a thing by War of the Beast?

It was said to be one of the last "nations" (if you are feeling generous) to join the Imperium and well after the Great Crusade started.

They were described as a Vault-Tec Vault of more than 10,000 inhabitants living in a Dark Age Vault that have technologically regressed but held at a sustainable level just slightly shy of the Imperial Standard.

The people were insular, isolationist but not overly weird beyond being a race of people living in a nuclear fallout shelter for thousands of years.

They had numerous doorways in the mountains with which could be got access to their underground city but they were all single file narrow doors. Any larger door having been intentionally collapsed some time ago.

If they maintained the Vault's security until the War of The Beast then it would have been a natural place for many to congregate as it was notoriously difficult to get into uninvited.

Of course the vast majority of people that actually knew about it would have been Vaulters themselves so as a percentage of the population they would have gotten off with the least number of casualties of any nation.

Also I can imagine that as Malcador entered his twilight years and handed over his responsibilities to younger men he would have taken Liechtenstein as a hobby.

There was an intercom near at least one of the doorways and he would use it to try and convince the locals to open the door. Not using his immense psychic power, because that would be a violation of their minds, but by his voice and just having a chit-chat with them.

>>53705944
On mot worlds it's 1 in 1,000,000. Notably more than Vanilla because there aren't as many witch burnings and wholesale cullings.

On Old Earth it's somewhere between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 100 depending on region. A lot of it is because one of Old Earth's biggest industries is psychic training and the Black Ships are always bringing in new catches.

Many of those brought by the Black Ships settle on Old Earth because there is little to no actual prejudice against psykers there, they raise a family and the children f 2 psykers are way more likely to be psykers.

Add to this that almost all of the survivors of Prospero relocated to Old Earth. That's as many as maybe tens of billions of psykers all dropping in on Old Earth and assimilating into the population.

Keep in mind that this includes mostly the low end of useful so it's not a planet of Jedi Masters. But this doesn't take into account Latents who are as likely to have psychic children as a psyker but are not active psykers themselves.

Old Earth has, in effect, turned into the Human Psychic Homeworld.

bunf

>>53706873
There was something about the person to open the doors was the old overseer, who was an old man and wanted to do something more for his people before he died. If the barbarians killed him no big deal, he was alone and old and the fortress was still safe. He found the Steward on the other side.

I assume the dramatic irony would be they would open the doors, find the world wasn't a Mad Max-style anarchy like they thought, have about 20-50 years of good living and then get ROFL-stomped like everyone else by the War of the Beast. It's debatable whether they could have survived it (the Orks probably wouldn't have left Earth after killing the Steward), but they would have weathered it better than most.

>>53709732
Were there/should there be any other little enclaves, remnants, micro-nations and isolated islands that got overlooked?

>>53709783
There was Sammarino or something, among others.

What's it like when Crones and Tyranids meet in battle?

>>53710023
One side is a hideous mutated horde of twisted flesh driven by will inhuman will and an insatiable hunger.

The other side has chitin.

>>53710023
>>53710046
The tyranids would be as completely out of context for the Cronedar as the Imperium. The only advantage is that the Cronedar are primarily based in the Segmentum Obscurus with influence in the northern Pacificus, Solar, and western Ultima. So tyranids are not as much of an immediate problem as they are for the Imperium.

However, the Cronedar would have certainly had to deal with them by now, especially since part of the tyranid "strategy" is to plug up the Eye of Terror with so many hormagaunt butts it blocks out the Warp and between the Shadow and the tyranids eating everyone else kills the Chaos Gods and presumably, them as well.

>>53711308
"Mister Swarmlord, how many hormagaunt butts does it take to plug an Eye of Terror?"
"Let's find out."

>>53709783
Do we need anymore?

Maybe an island as we already have a city-state and a cave.

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>>53669046
From what know about the earlier threads during the 12th BC it was taken by Chaos with Warp Hunter (Night Lords defectors) warband and Crone Eldar began trying to reverse engineering the Hand of Darkness to use the deconstruction technology on all of their ships. The Imperials retook the planet but the native population was dead by then where they had to fight to reclaim the artifact and ship it back to a vault in Sol.

Also in the 9th BC Bile had encouraged Chaos to start a war to steal as much geneseeds from the Imperium as possible to further his research into the New Men. This was also done in part due to the fact Fallen Marines were increasingly becoming horribly mutant abominations that can't even wear power armor. So they need new and refined geneseeds that the Imperium was using post-Vandire to reset the mutations back to Grand Hunt Era.

I added some of this to the draft page.

>>53712676
We can assume that by 999M41 Ornsworld has been resettled by the ratlings from those that were off-world when the exterminators arrived.

Ornsworld is not the place it once was. So very much was lost and they are only even really starting to rebuild.

It's like a Scouring of the Shire but far more complete.

>>53712676
That pic is silly.
It's missing skulls in the likes category. Also skulls, skulls, skulls, skulls, skulls, skulls, and skulls.
But that's true of any character in either warhammer

>>53713619
As was mentioned above, there are probably several ratling colony worlds, seeing as ratlings are by far one of the most politically adept and numerous abhuman species.

That doesn't mean Ornsworld being wrecked to the point an Exterminatus had to be called in didn't hurt. The devastation of Ornsworld hurt the ratlings as much as the devastation of Sol during the WotB hurt humanity as a whole.

>>53714906
I'm still imagining the AdBio turning up in their tramp ships with grubby green robes, dirt under their finger nails and spliced up to the custom job eyeballs with far away looks on their faces.

The exterminatus was carried out by nuclear weapons so the planet is more or less intact with various species of simple organisms still surviving. They have, in effect, a canvas wiped almost blank but with the foundations left intact and still in better condition that Krieg. The Ratling Lords are all pouring all of their combined wealth into funding a project of regenesis with substantial donations from every other ratling with cash to spare and considerable donations from the general Imperial populace.

With infinite funds, no way they could make it worse and Carte Blanche they are going to have SO MUCH FUCKING FUN!

Molech might be the show room and testing ground but this is going to be the proving ground and cornucopia bread basket when they are finished with it. You think Rynn's World and Valhalla are prime agri-worlds? You haven't seen jack shit yet. You think Necromundan farmland is a miracle and acme of the gene-wrights art? BITCH PLEASE, WERE BARELY WARMING UP!

One head of the Aquila is a Phoenix and Ornsworld is proof of why. From the ashes of ruin will grow The World Tree

Saw this filed under random stupidity in on the notes page, any ideas to elaborate?
>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.

>>53716890
I think it stands well as a stand along bit of silly.

It says it all really. Eldar believing they are legitimate heirs to the Old Ones with no idea what that means, Imperial aristocrats with more money than sense and some biologicus with more INT than WIS.

All of them come to the idea of using the Orks as cannon fodder and joining forces to enact a project that will never work.

Inquisition watch on, only mildly concerned. They are presumably testing in a sealed environment with a very effective kill switch. If underground flood the pens with promethium, if in space flush them out. It will never give one aristocrat infinity goons and upset the stability of the Imperium because it won't work. Orks are Orks.

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>>53717407
You know, no Old One ever really seems to have told the Eldar the Old Ones intended the Eldar to inherit their stuff after the War in Heaven. The only people claiming as such are the Eldar, and all indications showed that the Old Ones were kind of expecting to, you know, survive the War in Heaven, and I doubt they thought their servant races would survive in any scenario where they themselves would not.

What I'm saying is, either the Old Ones were even more bastardly than we already knew, or the Eldar are lying or exaggerating something like pic related to give themselves legitimacy in their claims to rule the galaxy (which wouldn't exactly be unheard of).

bampan

>>53717407

Until it does (or at leat, they think it does)

Cue

FFUUUUUUUHHCCKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!

False Men of Gold

The Emperor has made no secret of his origins. The Emperor felt that in explaining who he was, and where he came from, he could curb the disturbing tendency of the Imperium to worship him. Surely, by explaining that he was simply a Man of Gold produced by human scientists in a time long past, that his humble origins would encourage humanity to aim higher, that in a sense they were the source of such power, and not the figure head which ruled them. That they too could build, or perhaps even become Men of Gold themselves with enough knowledge, determination, and time.

Unfortunately, this also means that there have been a plague of imposters. Even before the Emperor had finished uniting Earth, back when he was the Warlord, there were opportunistic charlatans that pretended to be fellow Men of Gold, or even the Warlord himself. One particularly notable incident was during the Warlord's secret visit to Hy Brasil, in one of the attempts to peacefully integrate Hy Brasil into the Imperium, the Warlord had to undertake the visit in secrecy due to a spate of anti-Imperial hysteria that had struck the nation. In a secluded tenement, the Warlord himself was speaking to the Hy Brasileans, when he heard a commotion outside. A golden man in rather shiny and ostentatious golden armor had climbed atop a box in the street and declared to a disinterested crowd that it was he, the Warlord, come to liberate the Hy Brasileans from their sorrows, if they would but follow him.

As luck would have it, an unexpected rain storm rolled in but a few seconds before the increasingly irritated crowd of patriots got ugly, washing the fresh paint from the man and his tinfoil armor, revealing his fraud. He got away with only mockery and some rotten tomatoes instead of lynching.

>>53720523
Nonetheless, the suspicious Hy Brasilean representatives now used the excuse of the golden man in the street as 'proof' that they had no way of knowing the Warlord was who he said he was, thus ending another diplomatic attempt at integration. Malcador would later lament that he wished he had found a better term than ‘Man of Gold,’ since the crowds expected Oscar to be a literal giant golden statue. But the damage has since been done.

Two years after the Steward had conferred the position of emperor on Goge Vandire, there was a wide scale outbreak in the Segmentum Obscurus in the Sitrall Sector. This man hadn’t painted himself gold, but he was very tall, very charismatic, and very emphatic that he was the Steward returned, to overthrow the unjust rule of Goge Vandire and his corruption. The fact that this had occurred but two years after the transfer of power led to widespread skepticism, but nonetheless in the Sitrall Sector, the impostor Man of Gold had found a fertile base to foment unrest- one of Emperor Vandire’s recent reforms had removed protective subsidies on a minor independent navigator guild, leading to mass unemployment as a larger out of sector navigator guild seized their opportunity to supplant the native business.

Emperor Vandire, at this point not yet insane (Though rather irked at every time the High Lords of Terra started a sentence of, “I’m not sure if that’s in line with the Steward’s ideals, perhaps we-” and then having that High Lord pontificate on his own pet cause FAR from any ideals the Steward might have had) at first ignored the Man of Gold. He presumed, reasonably, that people would know that the Steward, if he had any objections with the way Emperor Vandire was running things, would have gone through official channels rather than preaching in a backwater sector. Surely, the people would understand that, this craze would die down, and the Emperor could get back to far more important work.

>>53720540
But they didn’t go away. And there was a minor fleet of warp capable trade vessels that were sympathetic to the idea that things wouldn’t be so rough were the proper Steward in charge.

It wasn’t a war, thankfully. But the lunar defenses nearly slaughtered the first space based protest when they warped in, unannounced at the edge of the Sol system and set course for Terra. Emperor Vandire, already extraordinarily stressed from an unrelated incident, nearly ordered them all killed before the Grand Admiral of the Solar Guard gently informed Vandire the strange ships were unarmed, they were broadcasting for communications, and that Vandire should remember the example of the Steward and think before he gave an order to spill innocent blood.

Through gritted teeth, Emperor Vandire acceded to the demand of the fleet of seven ships for a screen to screen meeting between this ‘returned’ Steward, and the High Lords of Terra, Emperor included. When the screen came on, Vandire relaxed. The man who spoke to him did not look even slightly like the Steward. For one, the Steward wouldn’t be wearing a ridiculous wig of blonde golden locks. When Emperor Vandire pointed this out and demanded the idiot give up to the arbites before a team of astartes boarded his ship and dragged him out, the false Steward stated simply that he had reincarnated “from the very cosmic essence of the warp” after Emperor Vandire had attempted to assassinate him, and this was his true, purer form. Emperor Vandire could hardly believe his ears. And more importantly, couldn't believe that no one else was howling with indignation at how unbelievable the lie was.

Now, at this point, accounts differ. Emperor Vandire would later say he was quite aware of hesitation from the High Lords of Terra. Questioning looks, glances among them, and sidelong glares at Goge Vandire. In Emperor Vandire’s mind, they were measuring him up. They believed the blatant lie, because they were desperate to be rid of Vandire. Or maybe they were contemplating how many Imperial citizens would believe it, so they could push off Vandire, and get this idiot in charge as their personal puppet. But at that moment, Vandire proved his ability, and laughed it off, showing his lack of fear to the sharks that were waiting for his weakness.

From the journals of some of the High Lords, what few bothered to record events that day recorded none of this, describing it as a blatant fraud that was amusing. The Speaker for the Chartist Captains, sitting closest to Vandire, did write with irritation that he got hit with some spittle from Emperor Vandire when ‘[Emperor Vandire] started cackling with somewhat disturbing vigor.’

In either case, the fraudulent Steward was offended, and attempted a retreat vowing revenge, but at this point the Solar Fleet had the ragtag fleet surrounded, and a boarding team of arbites brought the false Steward into custody. Any doubts as to the fake’s identity were resolved when the arresting arbites were not incinerated, and a grousing Vulkan was sent for to confirm that yes, this wasn’t the Steward, no matter how much you might wish it to be. If the real Steward ever heard of it, he never commented on the incident. To the real Steward, that had had to deal with thousands of impersonators over the years, it was probably as noteworthy as water flowing downstream.

Unfortunately for the Imperium, this proved an inspiration for Emperor Vandire.

>>53720596
After the second appearance by a false Steward on Ultramar thirty years later, the Emperor convinced the Grand Provost Marshal of the Adeptus Arbites to classify any acts of impersonating the Steward as Grand Treason for undermining the public’s confidence in the rule of law, and subsequently instigating rebellion against the rightful order. Ten years later, another impersonator was found, this one a psyker even. But not powerful enough to beat the Emperor’s assassins. He was executed. The year after that, another. And another. And another. Gaggles of Steward impersonators, it seems, were popping out of the woodwork.

Of course, this wasn’t wholly a spontaneous event.

By this point Emperor Vandire had succumbed to his base instincts. Paranoia, egomania, and cruelty rule him, and by extension, the Imperium. But he was smart. He knew that eventually, news would reach the Steward, and when that happened, the Steward would come back, and all of those little worshippers that treated the Steward like a GOD (Say, there’s an idea. They want a god? The Emperor could give them a god!) would go running back to him. They’d throw out their rightful Emperor just because some bastard born of a test tube said so.

So he’d give them Stewards. Hundreds of them. Cram the whole galaxy end to end in handsome, tall, noble, kind, wise, wonderful visionaries promising a better future. And then reveal them all for what they were as fake liars, begging for death as the Emperor dispatched justice and broke these false gods on the wheel for the masses to watch.

There would only be one God Emperor in the Imperium, and his name was Vandire.

>>53720646
Thus, when the true Steward was finally brought back, at first people didn’t believe it. Somebody new claiming to be the Steward returned to save us all from the tyrant’s reign, what a surprise, how long do you think this one will last with a pain worm running down his throat? But then this Steward started winning. Slowly, people regained hope, and Vandire was overthrown.

Ever since the Age of Apostasy passed, fake Men of Gold have been significantly rarer. Though impersonating the Emperor is still technically considered high treason on the law books, the Emperor is wary of executing people just because they imitate him. Despite his attempts to change the law to ‘Impersonation of a High Official,’ the judges of the Adeptus Arbites have been famously resistant to altering their law books, especially over something as serious as pretending to be the guardian of all mankind. That seemed a bit close to a blasphemy law to him. If somebody agitates for bloody rebellion, prosecute them on that, not that they dressed in yellow clothes. On the other hand, imitators with a ship and a costume have visited remote, feral worlds, claiming to be the Emperor and demanding tribute. In those cases, the real Emperor comes down hard.

Interestingly, no one has yet been recorded as trying to imitate Isha for fraudulent purposes. Sure, harlequins will take the role of Isha in plays and rituals, and in historical dramas someone has to play the goddess, but otherwise, no one seems to see a high potential for fraud or gain in pretending to the be the returned goddess of life for the Eldar. Although, Isha had heard once of a brothel in Necromunda offering services for a prostitute to pretend to be the Avatar of Isha for customers, but despite what she thought was a very tantalizing offer for a great price, no one ever took the brothel up on it, and it was discontinued. The Avatar of Isha knows she shouldn’t be, but she feels disappointment nonetheless.

>>53720705
What's the closest the High Conservator of the Attendants of Isha has gotten to Macha? It would presumably be a really horrible experience, to have a horrible desiccated-corpse daemon princess that was your yandere stalker come marching out of the warp at the head of a regiment of plague marines.

>>53721422
Hm, good point. I just wanted to make a cheap 'no one wants to fuck macha lol' joke.

>>53720705

Have Oscar ever tried to dress himself up in a costume, for... experimental reasons?

>>53721422

Well, there was one time back in the old thread. She (or a he, who knows) received a frightened punch so hard it died instantly. It had learnt its lessons

>>53721503
Maybe, I don't know. Just wanted a reason for the Age of Apostasy to not be over as soon as the Steward showed up and said, "Hey guys, it's the Steward, Emperor Vandire is a fuck up, let's stop with all the statue building and genocide stuff, okay?" With people jaded and bombarded with constant false men of gold getting publicly slaughtered, the populace at large would be very skeptical of any one declaring themselves the true steward.

That being said, I imagine that Oscar has tried dressing up. He probably does the standard trope of 'king going in disguise to go among the peasants to see the real story' kind of thing. But the trips are probably all too short, because the Imperium is in a state of existential war at all times, and the Emperor can't be away for long.

>>53721614
that was its very first meeting with oscar, during the raid, and the Conservator has most definitely not learned her lesson.

>>53721614
I remember that. Some Nurglite Eldar approached her when she went off on her own when she and the Steward were on some primitive planet. The Nurglites, having gotten Isha all alone, tried to convince her to escape with them from her "abductors" and return to the "safety" of the garden.

Since this was the equivalent of trying to convince a rape victim to return to the rape cave you can imagine how well that went. Isha punched her hand and forearm through the nearest cultist to start. Isha may be in a semi-mortal avatar, but she's still a frigging goddess (pun only partially intended).

When "they" found her, by which I assume "they" was the Custodes and Handmaidens, she was in a fetal position surrounded by the bodies of her would-be attackers, her dress covered in pus and blood, and she wouldn't leave until Oscar arrived personally to take her back to the ship.

>>53722081
Learning is all about change. She sure as shortlist about doing that

>>53721754
I'm not sure how well-known Oscar's origins are. The Illuminati in this timeline, are at least partly composed of people who know Oscar's true nature and are incensed that a creation of man is in command. They are opposed by a counter-conspiracy among many high-ranking Imperial individuals and the Alpha Legion who also know but don't give a shit. Oscar has always been clear that he is mortal, and does tell people about the whole Man of Gold thing, but not sure it's public knowledge.

Oscar or Man of Gold fakers are well established as being a thing. They range from relatively harmless sortswho claim to be "the Emperor's lost-lost brother, Chuck" to try and get a free meal ticket to would-be god-kings. The most convincing of these "Man of Gold sightings was something the Grey Knights encountered in the vanilla codex that produced the most productive point of evidence yet in favor of its MoG-ness: bullets. It didn't try to claim superiority, it was just a DaoT person-shaped thing with psyker powers and control over tech that just shot at people. Some think it was a temporally displaced Man of Gold from the Age of Strife. So this fits well.

Oscar has been established as having shown up near the end of the civil war. This is not so much becausr everyone lay down their arms when they saw Oscar but rather that the revolution had already made it's way to Sol's doorstep. Oscar either showed up and threw Sol's defenses in disarray from conflicting loyalties, allowing Thor to get to the palace without being slaughtered, or Thor fought his way to the palace and Oscar showed up soon after Vandire was dead.

That said, there were probably still a lot of people who didn't believe that Oscar was back, and him taking the Golden Throne didn't help. So there was probably still quite a bit of fighting. It's just Oscar showing back up was the tipping point for the revolution.

I like a lot of this, though. More fleshing out as to what happened during the Age of Apostasy.

>>53722400
What thread was this? I can't find it.

>>53721502
I think it would be that nobody wants the priestesses finding out. They might all be about lots and lots of free love but only until they get married, then they are very strictly monogamous. They might see a whore pretending to be Isha as insulting because it mocks the sanctity of marriage.

Or worse the Harlequins find out.

On the other hand I can see novelty Priestess robes being one of the Imperums sexy nun costume equivalents.

>>53723853

That can be a way for these organisation to earn extra incomes. Cheap, kinky nun outfits.

>>53717714
Or it's possible that all of the uplifted soldier races were promised the galaxy, a promise the Old Ones had no intention of keeping and the eldar are the only ones who remember the promise.

It's not out of the question that the Old Ones were planning to terminate all their projects once the Necrontyr were extinct and start all over again. They were not nice people.

Or it could be something that the eldar themselves have made up during the days of the Eldar Empire with the grandness of the Eldar Empire as all the proof that they needed, obviously the promise had been kept.

What would be interesting is if the Harlequins, the custodians of early eldar history that they are, never once made any indication that the Old Ones ever made any such promise to anyone. It is just a folk-belief that the eldar in their arrogance took seriously.

>>53723795
An early thread, 4th or 5th maybe, beyond that who knows without serious digging.

I'm imagining the event taking place relatively early on in the alliance between Man and Elf. 1st Black Crusade is over and the trial by fire for the Imperium is won.

Also nobody had really seen what Isha could do. She was not on the front lines in the WoTB or the Black Crusade because the elder didn't go through all that to loose her again. So as far as any one knew, human and elder, she was no a fighter or built to fight. All the elder could remember of her was the fading days of the Eldar Empire when she was at her weakest and forbidden from acting directly. Then they only knew her as a kidnap victim, withered and sickly.

I'm imagining a sort of Helms Deep sort of situation where she is looking out over the battlements of the fortress she and the locals were hiding in at the growing hordes of Nurglites. Locals can't do shit, they are at the bows and arrows levels of technology. The spokes person steps forth from the horde and asks her to come home to the ever-loving embrace of her true husband.

Isha gets the thousand yard stare and the blank expression and before anyone can stop her vaults over the castellated parapet and starts sprinting towards the spokes person the moment she hits the ground.

Spokes person has his arms open wide to embrace her in the name of his god. Defenders are horrified, they think she might actually be so psychologically damaged to the point where she is going to embrace him, some mental contagion left in from the Mansion for just this eventuality.

Everything is made clear when she punches a hole tight through the spokes person and uses his corpse to beat to death the people standing closest to him.

>>53725607
The horde died. They were in utter disarray. Out of all the prepared for eventualities being bodily torn apart by Isha was not one they had considered. They didn't know if they were supposed to run or fight. If they killed her would she be devoured by Slaanesh? Go back to the Mansion? Reincarnate into another host? Dissipate and truly die?

and all the while Isha was slaughtering them with tears pouring down her face and the memories of her time in the Mansion reflecting in her eyes. The humans of their ranks were not even animals and the few eldar were not her children, not anymore. She spared none, not even those who tried to run from her.

That was then. By 999M41 if such a thing was to happen again she would not be so broken inside as to weep, she is as a person stronger than that now. The memories of her time in captivity are not as recent. She sure as shit wouldn't be found curled up and unresponsive afterwards either.

She doesn't go anywhere unarmed anymore either.

>>53725674
guess this answers my question as to the closest the attendants got, still wondering if Nimina herself had shown up subsequent to creeping on Oscar in the Garden of Nurgle and getting splattered across a mountainside.

>>53725607
Thread 13, actually. Here's the quote.

>I'm imagining what would happen if, whilst out inspecting the border worlds, Isha encountered Nurgle cultists.
>Maybe it's an ambush orchestrated and spearheaded by the Nurgle Eldar. Their mission is to take Isha back to the husband that "deserves her more" or some such sentiment.
>There would be at least a moment of Nam Dog. An eternity of horror and abuse only capable of being inflicted on and inflicted by a god. Time doesn't work right in the Warp. It literally was an eternity. Some nights she is still there again.
>Then the screaming starts. Then the mad sprint into the ranks of her most wretched and unforgivable children and for a moment they might think that she has come home to them in joy. But only for a moment because then the first one get punched so hard their head practically disintegrates on impact.
>When Imperial forces finally catch up to her she's kneeling in the paste that was once her attempted abductors, her white dress is torn and red and she won't say a word until the Emperor comes to take her home.

So, how does the Empress react to her sister getting tortured to death by the Blood Ravens chapter master and soulstoned? Do the Blood Ravens still exist in this AU? How about Gorgutz?

>>53728173
Blood Ravens: yes. They are specialized in independent deep recon behind enemy lines (essentially a chapter of Solid Snakes) to explain their magpie tendencies. Their abundance of psykers is also useful in this, since mind bullets don't need reloading.

The canon Dawn of War stuff obviously didn't happen. Some anon back in an early thread wrote up the Dawn of War scenarios to fit this AU with Eldar, Tau, and humanity cooperating.

>>53728173
>Taldeer
Taldeer's alive. Also Macha may not be direct descendant of Eldrad but a cousin or something. Eldrad remembers they were related by doesn't remember how. Azariah Kyras is still a filthy traitor though.

>Blood Ravens
Chapter of counterespionage experts and commandos. Basically a bunch of Solid Snakes. Thousand Son descendant because they get the weird jobs where it's a good idea to have some knowledge of what you're dealing with and mind bullets don't need reloading. Have a tendency to kick your door down, beat you up, and steal all of your stuff. Officially denied to exist by the Imperium, so they don't get a lot of official help or get sent into places with no backup and have to steal stuff to make up the difference.

Nothing about Gorgutz so far.

Are there big divisions in the AdBio?

AdMech has so what would AdBio be?

Bump

>>53729690
Basically the old divisions between the genesmiths and hippies are there under new names. Genesmiths believe everything in a body must run like perfection, and anything that doesn't work as intended must go. Harmonists (hippie descendants) believe in unity and harmony with nature. They tend to make higher quality (but less efficient) products, but tend to be lacadaisical and easily distracted even for AdBio.

>>53729690
The AdBio is already a Terran order that the Imperium has forced on the Mechanicus as part of the terms of their union, and the Mechanicus is as squeamish about them as the AdCybernetica. Both of those orders get more patronage from regional Imperial interstellar-trade/planetary nobility than from Mars. The AdBio gets a lot of patronage for rejuveant research and abhuman studies, and lots of work for navigator houses, the AdCybernetica are pretty popular with the Imperial Military when they can get their services.

>>53733732
>>53732154
So how far should the AdBio be allowed to go before the Imperial authorities start to step in?

Legienstrasse was obviously several steps beyond the horizon where you could even see the line that shouldn't have been crossed from but she was a one of a kind bad idea that got a lot of people in a lot of trouble.

But what can they get away with?

>>53733868
apparently this isn't too far >>53716890

>>53733901
That isn't too far because it's obviously never going to work.

>>53734260
It's also not AdBio. It's too rich in money, too poor in sense Imperial aristocrats and naive or overly optimistic farseers.

>>53733868
We're still trying to figure out how the hell Legienstrausse got approved in the first place. It would require a long line of people to look at a proposal for a part-Kroot, part-tyranid among others assassin and say "sure, why not?"

>>53735118
Indigo Crow with a stamp?

>>53735756
There would be a lot of counter-checks on such a project. It would have to be approved by supervisor after supervisor. That's a lot of work for the Indigo Crow (think of how much he would have to fake).

That's why there was a suggestion that Legienstrausse was a failed project of Dr. Bile.

Fun fact: the link to the archived thread 17 in the drafts page is a copy of thread 18

>>53737824
That's why it's Indigo Crow.. he's a professional at this sort of dickery.

>>53735118
Or they said "hold my beer"

Hi, I'd like some help.

I'm interested in creating a 40k army, although I have never played the game and don't know who's good and why.

Who should I choose?

>>53741667

In this AU or not dude (dudette?)

>>53741687
Gonna show noob to whole new level here.

AU??

>>53741692

Uh... this is... ahem, an Alternative Universe of Warhammer 40k, with a healthy dose of sanity and nobleness. It's still dark, but heroically so.

>>53741700
Sounds like a good world to live in although I don't suppose I have a preference without some more info. Whichever is the most accessible really, I don't want to go shooting down a back-alley before I've understood the world as it started. Unless of course, nobody plays the old one anymore.

>>53741692

In this timeline, the Emperor is NOT a God, only a very strong Man of Gold (demi-gods produced by humans in the age of Strife) The Primarches are also no longer his clones. They are man (or as close as they can get, ahem, Magnus and Horus and Sanguinus), with their own flaws and weaknesses but they are no longer whiny man-childs that rebelled. Instead, the Horus Heresy is replaced by a 100x War of the Beast.

The Emperor (call him Oscar) is married to the Eldar Goddess Isha, (a reward, kind off for saving her from Nurgle's Garden in a joint force operations with the Eldars).

The Imperium of man is no more, just the Imperium: a Coalition of Survivor Civs (Admechs, Interex, Squats (Hubworld League), Prospero (was), lots of other stuffs) and many 'good' xeno species (Eldar (the Rescue of Isha), Tau, Tarrelan and a whole load)

I suggest you read this on 1d4chan.

>>53741742

Read here:

https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Nobledark_Imperium

(Note: it's a being constructed page, please refer to the category page to find all infos)

>>53741753

As for myself, I preferred this more. It's saner, less grim. I suggest you read thru the Primarch section (still need to finish a few more guys) especially the part about Sanguinus.

>>53741743
Dark Age, not Age of Strife.

AoS was Mad Max + Metro + Event Horizon.

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>>53672259
>>53673411
Now that's a Nobledark I want to play! Is this going on 1d4chan?

>>53743200
It will be doing as soon as I get home.

What would be the viability or possibility of an all-psyker regiment in this AU?

Or one just consisting of differing breeds of abhumans for different tasks?

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>>53699203
>The overwhelmingly vast majority of the AdMech see them as heretical in every way but the official decree and were it not for them setting up in the last neutronim factory would have nuked them from orbit.

Moreover, the Savvies are fully aware of this and have been tweaking their dogma for centuries to find new exciting ways to put a bug up the Martians' ass.

Have we anything proper about Doombreed and his duel with the 4 Primarches yet?

>>53741667
Since you are seem completely confused, and I'm sorry but the other posts were not the most helpful:
This thread is not for regular 40k at all. Ignore anything you see here in regards to the actual game.
It's a big 'what if' thing we're doing that is not actually part of the actual game.
Now, if that's up your alley, then sure, read up and whatever. But it has nothing to do with Actual 40K
Also, to answer your question: never choose your army based on what is currently good. What is currently good will change. Take the army you like the appearance/flavor of the most, because that's the one you'll be spending hundreds of dollars assembling and painting, and trying to do so multiple times just to have 'the good one' is a fruitless and costly endeavour.

>>53745585
Not yet beyond after his defeat he went off to found/revitalize the Bloodpact.

>>53707496
Planet of spoon-benders and card-guessers. I like it.

Casinos throughout the Imperium have 'no Earthers' signs.

>>53746311

>I ain't no Earther, I'm Prosperean!

I have an idea: can a Kinebranch sword (or any cursed sword) hurts the Tyranid hivemind directly? They do have a presence in the Warp after all.

Maybe not very much, like a pinprick when you kill a terma, like when you stub your toe with the Carnifexes but damn will it hurts when you kill a Swarmlord with it.

Imagine Kryptman's collection of these.

>>53747470

Cause I'ma imagining a final battle of sort for Kryptmann, his ultimate dream:

>the main brunch of the Hivefleet makes landfall (if Kryptmann survived that long)
>Just as the nids close in on Ultrmar, ready for Macragge 2.0 (or already are landing) Kryptmann rams his ship into the Hiveship
>floods the bioship with EVERYTHING, all diseases, chems he had ever concocted, while he whips out his Kinebranch sword, begins carving the Hivefleet ship from the inside. Not enough to kill the Hivemind, no, never but the cursed blade amplified his anger and hatred and shit so much that it hurts the hivemind enough to break the synapse connection for a few minutes that allowed the defenders a chance of victory.
>Died cleaving down Carnifexes after Carnifexes, and on the stop of his heart the MOTHERLOAD of Exterminatus-grade explosives he had went KA-BOOM.

>Also, for sheer awesome, Ol' man Zandrekh might be there too. One last hunt and that.

>>53747470
He wouldn't have a collection. He would just have the one. Any others of that nature he would have handed to other professional bug-hunters that they might inflict MAXIMUM DAMAGE.

>>53747625
It would be a good way for him to go.

But that is after 999M41 and therefore is in the heap of merely possible eventualities. In his dying moments, that one last incandescent moment of hate and glory, he would have made the Hive notice him.

I can't even imagine a reason why Old Man Zandrekh wouldn't be there for one last hunting trip with his old human friend.

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>>53744494
one of the former was probably assembled by magnus at some point at great expense. Prospero might have fielded something like that before the rubric, which in subsequent history would be part of the legion of the damned. In general, yes, but very rarely, and that role is usually just filled by all-psychic Marines when the investment is bothered with.

This is essentially Macharian doctrine brought down to the unit level, and its already been mentioned to be a common thread among aristocratic officers and rogue traders to have a Macharian style retinue and bodyguard force. These sorts of forces will essentially have any Sagittar, ratling, Savlar, Stillness-ite, Nova-ogryn, Voidborn, eldar corsair, etc of local note that can be signed on to the crew.

>>53748030
"this" being the second idea you listed

>>53747803
If Kryptman expected to die before the main fleet arrived he'd probably just rig up a single explorator ship with the biggest guns and bombs he could get and head off into the extragalactic deep to meet it.

>>53747803

The Heartseeker- or the Bane of the Hive

The first and greatest sword forged by (now) Forge Master Wu-Ko-Gu to Lord Inquisitor Boaz Kryptmann, it carried much of the venerable Kinebranch's grief and anger and hatred to the Tyranids that devoured his home.

In the late 39th millenium, when the Hivefleets again scour through the Eastern fringe, the star system of Felusa, a jungle world settled by Kinebranchs, was a planet directly on the path between the fleet and Macragge. As the Hivefleet still remains far too concentrated for a proper interception to be possible, and Felusa was marked as one of the worlds to be evacuated.

Unfortunately, a warp storm at the wrong time meant that the evac fleet couldn't arrive, and the world was left to the Swarm.

Fortunately, Kryptmann was nearby and flippin' his shit in prepare for the Fleet as usual. Intercepted the radio message, and suddenly PTSD-ing about the day Tyran burnt Kryptmann ordered his crew to race to Felusa.

They arrived almost too late. The fleet had already made landfall, the garrison crippled by he sheer weight of the fleet and the civillians pushed back to the last city on the planet. Pulling a very risky manuever, Kryptmann manged to extract as many survivors as he could, but it was too few. Barely a few hundred thousands managed to be crammed on his ship. It was almost a repeat of Tyran, with Boaz replaced by the (then) young kinebranch smith. Watching his world gets devoured, burnt from Kryptmann's ship, his fists became adamantium hammer, the flame of his anger as the forge further fanned by meeting a fellow-minded person, on that day he forged the Heartseeker, the sword that will one day be plunged into the heart of the Hivemind and only when it had tasted the seering pain he felt then he can finally have his rest.

He was still on Krypmann's retinue, continueing forging the blades that will hurt the Hive.

>>53748800 (cont)

To this day, the sword continues to be Lord Inquisitor Boaz Kryptmann's primary weapon that he uses to fuck'up 'nids. It's balance is perfect, it's blade shape enough to cut through all Chitinous scales and mutated flesh that the Swarm can throw at it, the grief and anger and pain infused into the blade only further amplified by the Old man's rage and anger means that whatever struck by the sword will feel pain. Some say the sword is so infused with rage that whoever holds it will be consumed by an all-consuming rage and desire to exterminate all 'nids but that isn't much a different from the sorts normally found on Kryptmann's retinue (and him)

The blade is inscribed in curses and ruins and chitin pieces from every hive fleet it had played a part in fucking up. The blade is old, but like Kryptmann and it's forger it only gets more dangerous and lethal with time and until the day it's finally plunge through the Heart of the Swarm, none of them shall rest, sword, kinebranch or a crazed old human.

I've tried to start the section on Savlar on the 1d4chan page in the Member States section.

I can't finish it tonight. Too late, work tomorrow. So tired.

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High Conservator Nimina, of the Attendants of Isha, chambermaid to Nurgle

Next is arrontyr

>>53745585
>>53746083
An anon said they were going to, and then disappeared. A little bit was suggested on the details but that was about it. I would say it is probably open unless someone wants to chime in otherwise.

>>53753919
Is she supposed to look like a crazed, half-depressed ex with running mascara and bags under her eyes? Because that's what I see. And it looks awesome.

>>53755180
More or less. She was described as trying to seduce Oscar into staying with her and Isha in the garden when he came to rescue the latter, and generally has the festering, unhealthy relationship vibe through her story. I wanted to make it clear that she was once appealing and very dear to Isha, but that was only when she was stuck with Nurgle. In the millenia since she's let herself go even further, sinking into fetid Nurglite delusions as she tries to bring Isha back.

Im trying to decide how skeletal arrontyr should be

>>53748800
>>53748922
Nice.

>>53755555
Just my two cents, but I might try aiming for a mix between the Witch King of Angmar and the Terminator, but on fire. When you normally look at Arrotyr the only thing amiss is the fact that his armor is superheating the moisture in the air and smoke is billowing from the gaps, then you knock the helmet off and you get the full Ghost Rider experience.

The issue is going to be distinguishing Arrontyr from Khaine, who is usually represented as a magma man, and Khorne, who is normally depicted as a figure of skulls and flame.

>>53748800 (redo a little bit)

The Heartseeker - or the Bane of the Hives.

In the late 39th Millenium, when the Hivefleets again scoured through the Eastern Fringe, one of the first star systems hit was Felusa, a tropical jungle world primarily settled by the Kinebranches. The world was deemed to be insignificant enough to not be defended, the Hivefleet still far too coordinated and numerous to be intercepted, and thus a convoy fleet was assigned to pick up the civillians and deny the Tyranids a star system.

Unfortunately, due to a freak warp storm the rescue convoy failed to arrive. Fortunately, the SOS signal was caught by none other than Lord Inquisitor Boaz Kryptmann.

Reminded of the day he lost his world, his family, the old Inquisitor ordered his ship to full spead ahead to Felusa. When they arrived, it was almost too late: the paltry PDF was swatted aside by the sheer bulk of the Hivefleet, the survivors retreated to one last city.

Even through his crazed, raging haze Kryptmanm knew he was outnumbered, yet he was not one to give up so easily. On his mouth a non-stop mantra of 'Tyran', he pulled an extremely risky manuever and managed to land his ship, cramming up as many people as he could and fled the system (but not before leaving behind a lot of nasty gifts.)

Out of the 20 thousands that they managed to rescue, there was a young Kinebranch by the name of Wu-Ko-Gu, son and apprentice to (dying) Forge Master Wu-Ko-Ga. As the old Forge Master laid dying in his son's arms, he taught his apprentice the final lesson. To forge a Kinebranch Cursed Blade.

As the ship slowly reached for the star system's border, Wu-Ko-Gu began forging. The fire of his rage became the forge's flame, further fueled by the searing memories of his burning homeworld and the soul of a dying Forge Master, burning white hot. His fists turned into adamantite hammer, hammering down with mono-molecular precision, guided by his rage and the words of his dying father.

>>53757081(cont)

And thus on that day, the Apprentice became a Smith, his first and greatest Masterpiece forged from the fragmented pieces of his father's anvil, his rages and sorrows. On that sword he inscribed his Grudge to the Swarm, and the name of the sword - the Heartseeker, the blade that shall be plunged into the Heart and Mind and the very Soul of the Swarm, making them feel what he had felt.

As soon as the sword was finished, the Master breathed his last breath, the son's eyes locked with the Inquisitor's eyes (who had went to inspect the ruckus) and found a fellow-minded soul. The Smith then pledged his swore of vengence upon the Tyranids, and gave the Heartseeker to the Old Inquisitor.

Ever since that day, the Smith became the Adept then the Master then the Forge Master, but still he remained in Kryptmann's retinue.

As of 41st.999 he is very old now. A kinebranch usually live long but not this long. He had lived for more than 2000 years, his body is old and his hands weary, yet from his forge still out came the famed Kinebranch blades, sharp and cursed so that every Tyranid they put down will be felt. He is old, but he will not rest until the Heartseeker had been plunged through the Hivemind's heart - and he can say so for sure that neither will Kryptmann.

>Kryptmann and Zandrekh and Wu-Go-Ku goes on a hunting trip.

>>53757208 (cont)

>On the sword itself:

-Level: Masterpiece, Magnum Opus, Legendary, etc.

-Forged out of the fragments of an Adamantium forge, cursed with the hatred of TWO Forge Masters.

-Perfect balance, mono-molecular edged. Inscribed on it the sword's name (and grudge) in runic letters: Heartseeker.

-Ignore rule 'Feel no pain' and 'It will not die', AP-10 (or something, I don't play the table top sorry) and Str-10 weapon ONLY to Tyranid units. To other species, acts like a normal (if not excellent quality) Kinebranch blade.

-Some say the sword's user will be overwhelmed with an all-consuming desire to RIP'N'TEAR THE 'NIDS!!!!!! and charge straight at the swarm in a berserker/kamikaze charge. Some say that the Old man had already been overwhelmed. This was NOT the case tho, it's just that he found his perfect weapon.

Aka. On wield, the user can be overwhelmed by rage and do a berserker charge. If managed to successfully 'tame' (more like overwhelm for Kryptmann) can be used normally and amplify the user's hatred and spite and rage to further fuck up the nids.


So, good?

>>53757311
Needs a point cost if you want something you can actually field on the tabletop.

>>53757613

I don't play the tabletop so I can't really tell, but I think it should be on par with Bjorn's lightning claws? As while this is quite OP and a hero weapon, it's only really so agaisnt Tyranids. Useful, but situational.

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>>53712676
Following a lead based on ancient Eldar Empire records where the Eldar refuse to utter the true name of aliens who they fought. It was said that the aliens could use technology that rendered Eldar technology almost useless. Malys devised a plan on studying then using the artifacts scattered throughout the Gothic Sector to mass produce and integrate these weapons onto Crone ships. Slowly and secretly Chaos built up a force to bypass Cadia then swallow the Gothic Sector where they summoned a Warp storm to isolate the sector. This was done after several Cronefleets were in position and a diversionary attack started on Cadia.

One such artifact was the Eye of Night which is said to drive machines mad by emitting beams of light that could hit kilometers away. Using sleeper cells, the Cadian garrison force on a planet with the vault holding it, they leaked the location then started a rebellion when a Cronefleet blockaded the world. Ornsworld, the homeworld of the Ratlings, was depopulated when the Warp Hunter warband landed to kill off the tiny garrison force while Crone Eldar witches began excavating the planet for the Eye of Night. Warp Hunters who loved the sadistic extermination of the planet after they refused to surrender, went out of their way to personally make sure "Let no livestock, pet, or citizen live in those settlements" for the Ratling towns. Attempting to reverse engineer the ancient xenos technology with psyker witches and hereteks in the middle of their experimentation were interrupted by an inquisitorial led Imperial Guard force by Ordo Xenos, they reclaimed the artifact after many losses. Battlefleet Gothic was able to clear the Chaos blockade of Onsworld long enough for the Inquisition to smuggle the Eye of Night back to Sol after multiple failed efforts to destroy the artifact back on planetside. The Imperial Army is unsure if the research on the technology ever left the world.

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>>53758402
At the same time as the Fallen Marine assault on Ornsworld began, the forces of Chaos arrived on the Imperial world of Purgatory to extract another artifact from the weak defenses of the Adaptus Mechanicus. The Hand of Darkness was an artifact that could disintegrate anything it touches when powered by the Warp. The Black Crusade came to study then copy how such a technology can exist by violently extracting from the Imperials. Although there were a few Cadian regiments present to protect the vault holding the Hand of Darkness, they could only delay the capture. With a change of plans on the fly, the Crone Eldar planning the operation forced the human Battlegroups on the planet to protect the artifact to ship it off-world rather than go off looting. Battlefleet Agripinaa tried to intercept and prevent the evacuation of the Crone Eldar off-world to no avail as the Cronefleet proved too powerful while defending the void space over the planet. The Eye of Night was never seen again outside of the Eye of Terror as the Crone Eldar covet the weapon to study then copy the technology which the Imperium never recovered.

>What do guys think?
This is what I have written so far about the 12th Black Crusade.

>>53757208
That is fucking awesome.

>>53758449
It is good.

It is also a much needed win for the Chaos to keep them as the dangerous foe they are meant to be.

What would be the civilian population of Savlar be numbered at?

Also is there any arable land?

page 9 bump

>>53760380
There must be some arable land or they wouldn't have survived the AoS.

But the planet being shit is an important part of Savlar. So not much.

Enough to just about support the population of a few tens of millions at most maybe.

>>53754227
Did the Bloodpact worlds exist as an independent things before? A fallen survivor civilization maybe.

Also in the Eisenhorn books the Necrotarch(?) book was taken to the Saruthi by Chaos worshipers fleeing Earth. Perhaps it was transcribed by Doombreed who incorporated the strange corrupted xenos into his empire.

>>53763673
Just because it's arable doesn't mean the food that grows there isn't shitty, of course.
Enough for them to survive, but it's not something mankind was honestly intended to eat.
Probably classified as mildly poisonous were it on any other planet or something, I don't know.

>>53765544
It's like those jungle parrots. If you eat some clay before you eat the fruit you don't get poisoned. Usually.

>>53765836
And eventually you get used to it.
But not the taste. It always tastes like crap.

>>53750710
Skip work. Finish Savlar.

>>53758402
>>53758449
Honest question, no offense intended: is English not your first language? I ask because there is some very strange phrasing. For example, "Attempting to reverse engineer the ancient xenos technology with psyker witches and hereteks in the middle of their experimentation were interrupted by an inquisitorial led Imperial Guard force by Ordo Xenos" is grammatically incorrect, a smoother sentence might be: "The attempts to reverse engineer the xenos technology using hereteks were interrupted by a force of the Imperial Guard led by the Ordo Xenos."

There's also some things like verb tenses occasionally changing. Again, not trying to be pedantic, just thought you might like to know.

>>53767113
I'm on it.

>>53767292
No, English is not my first language and it took me about 5 years to read or write coherently. I know I have a tenancy to write run-on sentences with odd placement of commas.

>>53767113
I've done a thing.

Needs the Rainbow Warriors things put on it.

I'm pretty sure I missed some shit out but I'm too tired to spot it.

someone make a new thread

>>53770782
Do it yourself

Sad trombone.

Had this been archived yet?

>>53775366

Yep:

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/53557919/

it was archived a bit early so it's a few threads from the top now.