>>53972235
Could a human worshiper of Chaos ever own land in the Eldar Empire's ancient capital? Seems like the Crones wouldn't like that

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>>53972290
I would imagine not.

Cronedar see themselves as demigods in the making and humans as either pets or food that might, in a few million years if they try really hard and stay true to the god, might just be capable of becoming primitive proto-people cavemen. And that is the really generous ones.

Craftworlders have managed to drop most of their master race mentality. It's taken 10,000 years of constant contact with the Imperium, divine intervention by whats left of their pantheon and the constant reminder of their own mistakes by the raids of the Dark and Chaos Eldar but they are merely annoying now rather than insufferable.

And despite all that the Craftworld Eldar often don't let non-Eldar out of the visitors sections of their craftworlds. The hyper puritan but still Imperial ones don't let you on the craftworld at all. It took 10,000 years to get to that stage.

Chaos Eldar would probably never allow non-eldar to step foot on the old homeworld without a permit. And unlike the Old Earth permits these would be a lot harder to get, exceptions made for slaves, food and toys of eldar citizens.

Also I'm suggesting that Dorn be made open season again unless Dornfag turns up to object soon.

Is there a human "HQ world" in the Eye of Terror?

>>53972762
>Is there a human "HQ world" in the Eye of Terror?
That would probably be an Omega Legion or Daemon Breaker operation from what has been said in past threads. Daemon Breakers would be going full Faust and attempting to beat Chaos worlds into codifiable occult secrets and pin them down like that, Omega Legionnaires would be operating like canon Alpha Legion if you believe they're loyalist and working as deep cover fallen fighting other factions in the eye under some pretext. It would be a really crazy mission to establish contact with one of these forward positions, but its necessary preparation for any major sally through the Cadian gate.

>>53972950
Nevermind, I totally misunderstood in this post>>53972950

There hasn't been any discussion of a Lost and Damned HQ world, or much of a headquarters for Luther or the other Fallen leaders.

>>53972950
Sorry I was meaning a homeworld for Chaos Humans.

Midgard or Skalathrax or some shit.

>>53973029
I would assume that Luther and most of the original Fallen have some planet to themselves somewhere in the Eye, either given to them by the Chaos Gods or plucked from somewhere in realspace and dragged through the Warp. Luther really doesn't get along with the Cronedar and the Chaos Gods know to keep their best toys separate or else they're going to get broken.

Bump

>>53975160
How well do The Fallen and the Blood Pact get along considering that the original The Fallen helped with the fall of Ursh? Has Doombreed gotten over it or is he still salty?

>>53979066
Doombreed will fall in line with Khorne whether he wants to or not. Luther isn't necessarily in line with Khorne, and Khorne is pleased to get the occasional shot at the uppity shit. Their factions are both undivided, and tend to bleed together with recruiting and support slaving, but slaughter each other as well as any Chaos worshippers. On the other hand, they both want to prevent Crones and lesser warbands from poaching their troops, so cooperation is hardly rare either.

>>53979066
I'm imagining that the Fallen and the officers of the Blood Pact get along reasonably well as both are professional soldiers, as much as Chaos can get professional.

Mostly it's just Doombreed and the really old Fallen that have the problem and a when they have to work together it's the younger ones that have to try and curb the grudges and act as intermediaries so that they can actually get shit done. They all venerate the same god, even if only one of them does so to the almost/total exception of the others.

Then Be'Lakor or Lady Malys stick their oar in and fucks the delicate balance up and then they are at each others throats again. Often this is a contributing factor to the end of Black Crusades.

For Khorne's part he finds it very entertaining, this old and still livid hate is a fine old vintage to him.

>>53972762
Would the Altansar Chaos Eldar be the same given that they are young rebels?

>>53979332
Is Luther still alive by 999M41?

one last bunp

>>53981899
Yes. He's the Big Four's favorite Fallen, after all. He's a crazy paranoid old nutcase whose one flaw in his elaborately contrstructed physical and psychological defenses is he still feels guilty on some level for putting his little brother in a coma. Someone showed a picture of what they thought he might look like without his armor and he look like some kind of Space Marine Gollum between the minor mutations and the wild-eyed look.

But that's only when he's on whatever planet he calls home. Otherwise he's still the most terrifying Fallen known to the Imperium.

>>53979066
This >>53979332. They get as long as well as you would expect Chaos to do, but that may be because Chaos has incredibly low standards.

>>53972762
>>53980047
One good (bad) thing about Malys is that she's able to tone the Eldar supremacy way down enough to the point that she doesn't immediately alienate non-Eldar followers of Chaos. She's pragmatic and Undivided, caring more about the spread of Chaos than anything else, and that's the reason she and not someone like Arrontyr is at the forefront of the Black Crusades.

The problem is typically Luther can't hold it in, and his paranoia of the Galactic. Eldar. Conspiracy. is still rampant. In these situations Malys can't help but provoke him further, as emotional gratification is one thing she is not good at controlling. At some point it goes beyond even Erebus' ability to talk things down and the alliance ends.

Other times things go smoothly and it's something like Malys running out of drugs/getting bored that end things. These are not mutually exclusive.

>>53983422
>gets bored, starts poking the insecure mon'keigh for a laugh or two

>>53983422
>Galactic. Eldar. Conspiracy.

Implying there isn't

laughing_farseers.jpg

>>53983422
Perhaps one of the raids on Savlar was to get MOAR DRUGZ! so that The Lady didn't sober up and the 9th Black Crusade implode.

>>53972762
In past threads someone floated the idea that some Iron Minds fell in with the Crones in the early Age of Strife, but eventually all died when their realspace facilities broke down some millennia in. This was brought up alongside the idea that Crones would view current Man of Stone humans as the dull peasants of the Men of Iron and Iron Minds, who they essentially saw as the brittons to their rome. The Men of Iron and Iron Minds had a few treasures worth chronicling, won a few petty victories against the Old Empire, and the Eldar found that with proper attention they could be made civilized, but Men of Stone were far beneath them. Then again it could just be Crones playing mind games to bother humanity with the trauma of the Age of Strife.

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>>53985469
The Men of Iron and the Iron Minds were not, at least in this AU, interchangeable.

The Men of Iron were your robot drones. Capable of Independence, possibly a bit smarter than a pleb human, hardy and durable and capable of independence.

But they were, later ones more than the older and more primitive ones, ultimately slaved to the Iron Minds who were an order of magnitude greater. The Iron Minds were god-like in their scale to the point of being unrelatable to or with the common 99.999% of humanity plebs and even the older Men of Iron.

Men of Gold being created as intermediaries.

Iron Minds were the ones calling the shots towards the Dark Age, or at least convincing the humans to call the shots that they wanted calling and pulling the strings of the people who thought that they were pulling the strings and them being none the wiser.

Iron Minds were the ones who made the Cthonian Ring and must have been spinning matter out of total nothingness to do it.

No Iron Mind survived the AoS. The Mad Titan claiming to be an Iron Mind is delusional. He is an upper end Man of Iron to be sure but that's a whole level down. Elmo is a prime example of a lower end Man of Iron and probably the last pure example of his kind as Oscar is the last pure example of his.

The Old Empire Eldar, or at least their holy shit level kings and queens, would have been some of the few beings of that era that could have communicated with the Iron Minds as something approaching equals, though who of them was the greater is not something that could be judged easily, if at all.

>>53986199
Castigator is not claiming he is an Iron Mind. He claims he is taking revenge in the name of the Iron Men and Iron Minds for the genocide that humanity inflicted upon them. He essentially sees himself as robot Kratos: the gods created us and then discarded us as tools? Time to kill the gods. Of course, things are a bit more complicated since the Iron Minds in this case basically were gods compared to their creators.

I keep imagining the Iron Minds and humanity having a relationship reminiscent of Halo or Schlock Mercenary. The A.I.s can think circles around the humans, but despite this they still feel they can't just leave them behind out of a sense of duty, programming to help humanity (or at least value human life), and because on some level they are still family. Dumb family, but family.

I'm reminded of that one Schlock Mercenary strip where the A.I.'s do a whole bunch of things behind the (A.I.-distrusting) captain's back, and then when the captain finds out and asks "Why!" the ships A.I. responds "see, those kind of questions are the reason you meat-types are still in charge around here" despite it being abundantly not the case. Would attach it but can't find it.

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>>53983567
>>53984478
Compared to Abbadon, Lady Malys is much more flexible strategist, and copes with failure or changes in plans much better than Abbadon. Unlike Abbadon, Malys’ Black Crusades don’t really have do-or-die goals, but more of checklists of “things we’d like to do”. As long as the Black Crusade doesn’t get stalled at Cadia, raping the fields, salting the people, and burning the water of numerous Imperial Worlds counts as a success and anything else is a bonus. (It helps that she tends to have salt-the-earth retreat plans as opposed to Abbadon’s “leave my allies out to try while I fuck off to the Eye of Terror”) Additionally, despite her mania, drug problems, etc., she is often the only sane man among the Cronedar (or, at least, the sanest person in the room), and one of the most capable in terms of long-term planning.

On the other hand, despite being a superb tactical genius, on a personal level Malys is completely ruled by her emotions. Her characteristic mania and her desire to lead from the front means that she has often overestimated herself and ends up dying. Several times. Despite being able to plan out strategems months in advance that still manage to baffle the most tactically inclined minds in the Imperium, when not dealing with something that she personally finds interesting she bores quickly and has the idle behavior of a child that enjoys torturing small animals for fun.

It’s possible that Malys getting herself killed is what turned the tide for some Black Crusades, as she likely respawns in the Eye far from the front lines and in the time it takes her to get back Be’lakor, Luther, Arrontyr, the Taskmaster, and literally everyone else will be squabbling for control.

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>>53984478
Another reason why Luther might not like Malys (beyond the GEC) might be the mark of Chaos Ascendant. The Mark of Chaos Ascendant so far seems to have only been given to two people in this universe: The Beast, who was the Beast, and Malys, who is the Everchosen of Chaos. Despite having blessings from all four Chaos Gods (enough to take his Mark III S brother in the middle of a sperg rage head on), Luther doesn’t seem to be an Emperor-level threat like Malys or the Beast, implying he probably doesn't have the mark of Chaos Ascendant. Luther’s biggest asset is in the mass number of Fallen whose loyalty he commands, not his power level. Luther is pissed that the Mark of Chaos Ascendant went to some skanky space elf bitch who simultaneously looks like she has had too little and too much recaff as opposed to him.

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High Marshal Arrotyr, wearing his late Eldar Empire armor covered with point defense modules

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>>53987398
Also keep in mind that Undivided Chaos Eldar are really rare. Eldar tend to be obsessive by nature so when they find a god they like they devote themselves to it whole body, soul and mind with no reservation. This level of obsession is obviously what created and draws them to Slaanesh but it's much the same for any god.

It takes a special kind of eldar to spin all the plates at the same times and failure will result in far worse than mere death. But the results and rewards of managing it, of being an Undivided Chaos Eldar, are equal to the difficulty and the danger.

It was once mentioned that during the WoTB there were maybe a few dozen at most. But they more than most just don't stay dead for long. So slow though they are created they are cumulative. By 999M41 there are hundreds of them, and even when killed they won't stay down. These are the things that require multiple squads of Grey Knights to put down.

The only thing that stops them from bashing everyone's heads together until they get in line is that they are among themselves also fractious.

Then Lady Malys turns up. She is as above them as they are above the regular Crone Eldar. She only has to slap them into shape. It is up to them to slap their subordinates into shape. If they don't then bad things happen.

To stop a Black Crusade, especially the later ones, you have to take out Her Ladyship and enough of the other Undivided that they can't maintain the momentum and the lesser monsters turn on each other.

>>53988436
Fucking awesome. It's like John Blanche if John Blanche discovered colours other than orange, yellow and brown.

>>53972762
>either pets or food that might, in a few million years if they try really hard and stay true to the god, might just be capable of becoming primitive proto-people cavemen
What do they think of CSM, considering that - since they're so few relative to Cronedar or Lost & Damned - they usually get all the coolest toys from their gods?

>>53987405
>Luther’s biggest asset is in the mass number of Fallen whose loyalty he commands, not his power level.
Luther is upset that ultimately he's just the more cooperative but less trusted alternative to Arrotyr, who needs to be argued into cooperation whenever Malys hopes to get the support of the Scions of the Old Helm. Arrotyr's particular devotion to Khorne inclines him to circle the Eye of Terror incinerating anyone he personally thinks is getting too full of themselves, and occasionally launching spite driven solo campaigns into the Shaa-Dome, against whatever pilgrimage is the Conservator is gathering to go harass Isha, to ruin some nest of sorcery in the webway edges of the Eye, or very rarely, to go piss napalm on Cadia. To have the Scions be anything but a liability on a Black crusade Malys needs to buy Arrotyr's loyalty with weapons, deference, and choice targets, or else he'll remain the team killing asshole that Khorne loves him to be. Sometimes he'll even jack up his price in trophies and glory half way through a war, just to fuck with Malys, and show Khorne is above her. This usually is a counterproductive, self defeating move, but he's perfectly happy ruining a Black Crusade to get a chance to shoot everyone around him and his forces.

Luther is an ambitious, paranoid xenophobe that wants Malys's job, but that means that when Malys sets up a Black Crusade Luther has to fall in and earnestly help, because all the gods are in on it with Malys. Unlike Arrotyr, Luther has to impress all four gods in whatever plan he'd use to usurp Malys, instead of just turning the whole thing into a slaughter as soon as his own ego and THE BLOOD KING OF THE GALAXY'S demand it. Also the Fallen are greater in number and more strategically and tactically flexible than the Scions of the Old Helm, both in void and personal combat, though they are less deadly by a similar margin.

>>53987405
>gif
jesus fuck what happened

>>53989161
Willow's girlfriend got shot. Willow hunted the man that did it down. She then magically strung him up and flayed him.

>>53989026
REEEEEEEEEE FUCKING OVERGROWN MON-KIEGH!

They aren't happy, but as it's their gods doing it they won't do too much about it.

>>53988625
Undivided Eldar aren't that rare. About 35% of the Croneworlders follow Chaos Undivided. If the Eldar were that obsessive, they never would have been able to worship multiple gods and once and would have effectively been monotheist. That said, most of the individuals are just those who worship Chaos Undivided as a pantheon and just otherwise theologically keep their heads down. It's the Cronedar who actually try to spin all the plates at the same time, courting the blessings of all four Chaos Gods at the same time, that are rare and extremely dangerous.

>>53972762
>>53989161
>>53989297
The way Chaos Eldar see the rest of the world might be as follows

>Non-eldar rest of the galaxy
Heathens fit either to be treated as food or slaves or enlightened with the word of Chaos, whichever they are feeling at the moment. Non-people in every sense of the word.

>Chaos-worshipping non-Eldar
Slightly smarter almost-people, smart enough to see the true way. Still vastly inferior to the Chaos Eldar in every way. The Eldar are the true chosen race of Chaos and everyone else is a long way beneath them. It is the gods' will that everyone worship Chaos, Eldar and non-Eldar alike.

The Cronedar treat the Fallen or other beings that can match an Eldar physically like grizzly bears. They aren't people, but you don't go saying that to their faces or else you get your face ripped off.

The smart Crones will also avoid insulting pawn that might be useful. It's kind of stupid to go insulting Huron Blackheart to his face if you just hired him as a mercenary.

>Craftworld/Dark/Exodite Eldar
HERETICS REEEE (though apostate would be more accurate). Hated because from the Crone point of view they rejected the ascension of the old empire via Chaos (though the smart ones avoided saying it to the faces of the Dark Eldar before the wedding).

>>53989026
>>53989297
What if they don't see it as the Fallen getting the coolest toys, but being the toys themselves? Conveniently ignoring their own position in the whole affair, since they're WORSHIPPERS, not TOYS.
Gods are allowed to have their fun too, after all. And a Space Marine makes for a great doll even if Khorne insists his are action figures.

>>53989797
The Chaos Gods essentially see their entire worshipper base as toys/food. Their reason for keeping the Fallen DAs on a planet away from the rest of the Chaos Eldar is basically to keep their limited edition collectables from mutually ruining each other.

>>53989918
Well yes, of course they do.
I was saying the Crones see the Fallen as they are, while thinking themselves more than that, even though they're not in actuality.

>>53986199
Do we even know what the power level of the upper echelons of the Eldar Empire were like? Arrontyr was a high-ranking (if disgraced) military figure and Nimidia was the head of Shaa-Dome's Isha cult, and neither of them seemed to be any more powerful than a later Craftworlder autarch or seer. It doesn't seem to be until the Eldar Empire fell that the Chaos Gods started handing out boons that pushed the most talented among them into demigod-tier (which is when the stand-outs like Arrotyr and Nimidia get their power boost).

>>53989972
The gods didn't have to interfere in the Old Empire or hand out boons as the eldar were already doing what they wanted.

Also before The Fall the eldar could reincarnate. There wasn't an upper limit on how old they could be. In theory there could have been veterans of the Old One vs Necrontyr war still hanging around. Still levelling up. 65,000,000+ years old. They would have the advantage of experience and psychic gains if nothing else.

Also nobledark Evesor Assassin.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UoDKXozA0M4

>>53990149
The original suggestion for Arrotyr had him as a veteran of the War in Heaven. It was debated because having a bunch of 66 million year old Crones running around undermines Be'lakor's position as the guy who knows things everyone else has forgot.

Speaking of which we still need to decide what to do for Arrotyr. On the one hand his initial arc and descent into madness is nice and the replacement suggestion is a bit of "asshole in, asshole out" (though he could have been doing that as a result of the fucked up mental energy of the pre-Fall empire), on the other hand it would mean Arrotyr has been around almost as long as and has the same potential for knowledge as Be'lakor.

>Luther flees the to the Eye of Terror to escape the G.E.C.
>he eventually finds out about the crow's part in the raid
>Teal Tit loving every laugh

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>>53990822

>>53990553
he could be Arrotyr the second, grandson (or some other pretty near descendant) of the Arrotyr that fought the Stormlord, etc, seen as the second coming of his grandfather, who would have died maybe a generation before reincarnation actually became a staple part of Eldar life. Essentially the Arrotyr passed shortly enough after the War in Heaven such that the warp was still turbulent from Khorne's birth and usurpation of Malal. Arrotyr the first died and passed into that realm of souls, and though his grandson takes after him immensely its not clear if its actual reincarnation. Arrotyr the Second lives in the long golden age of the Eldar, himself reincarnating a few times, and he's shown to be both noble, dignified, and horrifically bloody-minded. This could be attributed to dying and his soul wading through the miasma of Khorne's birth, or just as easily to being raised in the shadow of his grandfather, but fighting puny Mon-keigh instead of the might of the Necron Star Empire. Either way, Arrotyr think's he's the inheritor of the Empire's war machines and warriors, and comports himself as such.

>>53991190
That's what the second concept was, but it would mean Arrotyr the Second never received the vision that Arrotyr I had that in the original concept was his seed of madness.

>>53972235
>lost and damned guide to share-dome real estate
Seems like the consensus of the thread that it would read somthing like
>oh shit, you weren't joking?
>let me laugh even harder.

Are there still titan legions?

>>53993339
Yeah, but they haven't gotten much lore

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>>53993339
I had an idea for the titan legions way back in like Thread 9, but I’m not sure it would work.

The Legio Titanicus has a reputation for being for a gutter trap for engineering misfits. Unorthodox Mechanicus tech-priests, xenophilic Eldar bonesingers, enterprising Earth Caste engineers; all can be found within the ranks of the Legio Titanicus. The Legio Titanicus is about the only place in the Imperium where you can find an bonesinger and a tech-priest working together instead of fighting. The reason for this bizarre arrangement is simple.

The Legio Titanicus doesn’t know how to build titans anymore.

It is not a widely advertised fact, but ability to produce new titans was one of the most crippling things the Mechanicus lost between the Schism and the War of the Beast. Smaller titans like Warhounds are still capable of being produced, but the designs for the Warlord and Imperator titan are now lost. This is the reason the Legio Titanicus has so many technological mavericks in one place. They are the only people willing to experiment enough to try and figure out how much they can cobble together replacement parts and kitbash a titan in order to keep as many titans functioning as possible. The Legio Titanicus was the first institution to experiment with wraithbone parts on non-wraithbone tech (though in like M39 or later). Thankfully, Titan machine spirits tend to be simple, if powerful, and their thoughts tend to be along the lines of “YOU WANT TO STICK A GIANT ALIEN LASER CANNON ON ME? I’M INSULTED THAT YOU DIDN’T DO THIS EARLIER”.

As a result much like mecha in mecha anime, the surviving titans have become increasingly customized, becoming increasingly distant from their original design and immediately recognizable to onlookers, much like famous real world battleships. However, this comes at a cost. Every higher-class titan lost in battle represents an irreplaceable loss, a heavy blow for the Legio Titanicus and the Imperium.

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>>53993856
The Imperium had a decent pool of titans as a result of the Great Crusade, but even that number is finite. As a result, the Legio Titanicus goes nuts over the possibility of recovering any functional titan.

The titans of other Imperial races haven’t been much help in this regard. The requirements for building Eldar titans are so arcane it’s amazing that any have been built in the first place. Their numbers follow the same trend as Imperial Titans. The Tau have only just begun experimenting with their own titan designs (thank you Sho’Aun), but they tend to be more massive mobile gun batteries than anything else. Experimentation with titan technology happens with these titans too, so you get things like Revenants with adamantium armor over its own frame on key areas.

Because no Horus Heresy, Titans are allowed to be deployed in groups (Warhound packs are back y’all!), and on the rare occasion that more than one higher-class Titan is required, the Titans assigned will often be assigned to complement each other. Human titans are often bulky and good front-line combatants, eldar titans make for good precision hitters and snipers, and Tau titans bring the dakka. Some specialized variants include…

Bulwark – A Warlord-sized titan that carries an adamantium shield as large as it is. Shield makes it insanely tanky on top of normal void shields, allowing it to survive up to and including an orbital bombardment. Can provide cover for other titans.
Dervash – Nimble four-armed eldar titan, that carries a set of monomolecular scimitars in each hand. Good for overwhelming force in critical areas, but a bit fragile.

Tl;dr: Imperium lost the titan blueprints, everyone PANIC!

This all sounds good, until you read the lore and it turns out that human Titans were invented by the Mechanicum to help them win the Martian Civil War. Titans are literally the one piece of technology which the Imperium in canon actually knows how to build more of.

>>53993867
Well, the higher ups of the AdMech could always 'lose' the designs not from any of the big nasty shit going on, but because they realized that they truly were a blessed gift of the Omnissiah and thus are afraid that keeping the plans around and making more will cause some szygy thing and unleash Voidy.
When in doubt, blame the Void Dragon.

>>53989116
Where did this characterization of Luther wanting to be the Chaos Gods' champion come from? All the characterization we've had so far indicates he only cares about human supremacy.

>>53993856
>>53993867
Doesn't quite work with the current consensus we have on tech level in this AU, which is slightly higher than canon Great Crusade tech due to shit not getting lost as well as some innovation and adoption of xenos tech (though this improvement is glacial as the Mechanicus hates progress and slows things down due to its near monopoly on tech). The Imperium has the tech to build Titans in canon, so no reason for the Imperium not to be able to build Titans in this AU.

>>53994351
It could be that he sees the gods as the key to man's ascent.

>>53994351
Mostly because Luther lets Erebus hang around, and between his human supremacy and Erebus's fanaticism it makes a lot of sense that he'd want to usurp Malys, or at least surpass her in power, which is essentially the same thing. If he didn't he'd be settling for subordination to an (((Eldar))) at a minimum, and quite possibly aiding her in the destruction of the Imperium on her terms. He might not want to destroy the Imperium, just purge the Xenos and everyone that he doesn't like, but if its going to be destroyed, the terms will be his.

I figure Malys would be about as good at manipulating Luther as she is at controlling Arrotyr, the Indigo Crow, etc.

How much pull did Malys have on Vect's management of Commorragh before their marrige?

>>53990844
Why is the Blue Cockatoo holding a piece of warpstone? Where did it get it from?

>>53994654
I would say before the marriage she would have had little to no say in the management of the City of Sins. The Dark City was his to rule and his alone, his pride would allow nothing less.

The current sharing of power must work both ways for them both to be satisfied and for the unholy union to take place. She has influence and authority (but on paper subservient to Vect) in the Dark City and he has authority (though legally subordinate to Malys) in the old homeworlds of the Eldar Empire. Both of them feel like they got the upper hand, pretend that the other got the better deal so they can make out like they were generous and neither believes the other.

Luther's ambition is, ultimately, to build the Imperium how it should have been. It would be nice if the Imperium as it is now could be salvaged and repaired. That's the main plan. Plan B, the one that he feels is more and more likely to work as the years pass, is that he's going to have to burn it all down and start again from the foundations.

The gods, he believes, are aiding him in his endeavours and so will have a place in the state religion of his planned "perfect" society. The gods think he's fucking hilarious.

>>53989297
Oddly it's the exact same way a whole bunch of Craftworlders reacted to Jubblowski and for the same reason.

The REEEEEEEEEEEEEE is universal.

>>53994351
10K years of "this is your brain on Chaos" and the fact that it went to an eldar of all people.

It might be not so much Luther wants it as he is mad an eldar got what could have gone to a human. So far in this timeline 0 humans have the mark of Chaos Undivided.

>Titans
Yeah, the thematic high concept was to have a nobledark "limited resources against the horde" scenario, where every guy you lose is one more you can't replace and the other guy seems to have two more of the ones that you took with you. Titans would be particularly well-suited for this because they're so damned expensive and hard to build. It's like Pacific Rim or Evangelion, you wince for every mech that falls because it's one less one on your side and the enemy just seems to keep coming. It also answers the question of "who are the most unorthodox yet not heretek parts of the AdMech". It also adds another "loss" to the Imperium's column.

But you're right that technologically it makes little sense.

>>53995691
I would agree with this. Malys and Vect have little direct influence over each other's realm until the wedding. Each is the lord of their domain, and their relationship is their "hobby", so to speak.

>>53997199
What does Malys think of the Mandrakes considering that they are in the godless "Other" camp of ohgodwhat?

>>53997922
Probably thinks the same as everybody else in the Dark City; stay as far away as possible from the freaky shits and don't make eye contact.

Is anyone doing a full story for the Indigo Crow? Also what's the plan with the Taskmaster, I only see a bit in the notes and a bit last thread?

>>53999104
I don't think anyone has yet said that they are, correct me if I'm wrong.

>>53999104
Someone was doing bios for each of the four major Croneworlders in turn, and had done Arrontyr and the High Conservator and it sounded like they had the majority of the Indigo Crow done.

The Taskmaster is by far the least developed of the four, which is surprising because the Crow used to be.

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>>53999104
As far as I can tell the taskmaster is the designated driver for all of the Crone Eldar Slaanesh cult, and is a business minded industrialist when it comes to providing for the cult's massive appetites, massive war fleets, and its lofty goals. I have no idea how one would write the administrator and logistics director of a hedonism-centric shellworld, but that seems like the aim.

>>53994757
Pink Peacock stole it from Malal's realm, a universe that doesn't exist

>>53990149
I'm so internally conflicted by gun fu - I love how ridiculous the choreography is, even if the /k/ommando in me's triggered with the force of a thousand moralfags at the lack of any sense on anyone's part whatsoever.

>>53999538
Isn't the Taskmaster also Malys' biggest threat for control of the Cronedar, because the Taskmaster thinks they should be in charge because the largest segment of the population is Slaaneshi and it's in the nature of Slaaneshi to always seek more.

>>54000651
It's still 40k even if it is relatively sensible nobledark 40k.

Also gun fu might be more viable in an assassin trained to the peak of possible performance. Also they are cybered up as much as possible and still pass for human and on all of the performance enhancing drugs.

>>53997199
This now begs the question

Are there big players in the Dark City that are non-eldar?

>>54003596
Bile and Lucius are around.

>>54003765
Bit neither are leaders of any faction in the Dark City.

One is a dude looking for immortality or a way to get the ultimate Bling Sword and the other is Mercenary Frankenstein.

>>53994757
>>53999662
So Warp-Srone is a thing in this AU?

I have absolutely no problem with that.

What makes it and what is it used for?

>>54005689
it hasn't come up so far, that's why I asked.
>>53999662 seems to imply the Indigo Crow got it from the Warhammer Fantasy setting itself, I guess because it now resides in existence like Malal, who we said can still reach the warp and galaxy through the Tyrant Star.

>>54005807
Unexistence I mean. I suppose Tzeentch might still favor Malal over Khorne, and sending some sorcerers through the Tyrant Star to barter could be a source of alternate-reality exotic materials.

>>54005807
Does anything orbit the Tyrant Star?

>>54005853
the Tyrant Star travels around by unknown means. Khorne also probably tries to fuck with it, probably using the corpse of Malal he's turned into his Khornate sorcerer, because the BLOOD KING OF THE GALAXY needs to make sure the other gods know their place.

Warpstone itself might be useful for accelerating FTL warp travel, making weapons, conducting rituals, experimenting on the webway, or any number of uses.

>>54006048
>Khornate sorcerer

That is absolutely the best possible job for Malal.

Khorne already has Skarbrand for the mindless berserker job, but a Khornate sorcerer really plays to the self destructive and contradictory nature of Malal.

>>54005689
Is Warpstone even a thing in 40k? I assumed it was a Fantasy-only kind of thing. No problem with including it here though.

>>54005853
The Tyrant Star seems to be more a phenomenon than a physical star. It's said to pop up out of nowhere so suddenly a system has two stars, possess the system's star, possess its MOON, and so on.

>>54006048
Malal isn't dead, just bloodied. Khorne keeps him around as his vizier and personal Tzeentch repellent, but at the same time Malal is still plotting his own shit off to the side. He's like a more competent (but still self-destructive) Starscream.

Probably the biggest area that hasn't been touched yet in this AU is Orks. Anything different with them aside from Brain Boyz, or is it mostly the same? I remember there was a suggestion that Tuska Daemon-Killa is still pretty close to canon, as it was mentioned although Chaos can manipulate the Orks it can't brute force corrupt them and so you still get the "crazy" stuff like Tuska's WAAAGH! into the Eye of Terror. Is there any details that are different about Tuska's story because of the changes in the timeline?

>>54009511
the Imperium might be working on sending more Whaggs into the Eye

>>54009884
That would require them KNOWING about Tuska, though.

>>54009917
No, they're doing it independently to prove the Imperial philosophy can better take win the orkish mind than the Crones.

>>54010359
That's nonsense.

>>54011220
I think that they were planning it but then they looked at the Kryptman Gambit and the level grinding that was taking place and NOPE.jpg

>>54011885
I mean, I can imagine they might try and deliberately steer Orks into the Eye of Terror, but the given justification is nonsense.

>>54011885
There is also the rather grim possibility of massive amounts of Chaos Orks and spore born Ork-Spawns.

Ork-Spawn that can germinate from spores.

Billions of them.

Let that sink in for a moment because I don't think Cadians would be happy about the prospect.

How many Black Stone Fortresses are there in total?

>>54005853
>probably not as it is not a real star and doesn't seem to do gravity properly.

On the other hand the idea of an unholy planet that it drags along with it has considerable potential.

Especially if it isn't a deamon world as such but is still somehow fucked up.

>>54011946
Seconded. Just because a few nobles and farseers want to be stupid doesn't mean everyone is.

>>54014952
Presumably this was the backup plan to the doomed to failure "lets try and tame feral orks" that has been previously mentioned.

Also "if all else fails throw it into the Warp" is not a viable contingency for failure.

>>54014880
Could work.

A dark world that is dark beyond mere lightlessness as the Black Star devours all light more than merely absorbing what falls in. The Dark Star is hungry beyond just gravity as those who die in its black light find their souls drawn not to paradise or damnation but inward to the hunger of the star. The eternal, lonesome darkness, falling forever deeper into the pit that is bottomless.

It was said that men, or something like men, once dwelt upon that world and to those who dare to look there are ruins still standing, empty now or so it can only be hoped.

>>54018221
And let's say that sorry, forsaken world with its un-sun has a moon of disturbing composition, of eerie green stone, orbiting above it. Oh what devious tricks Tzeentch has planned for the world that was.

>>54018306
There can be no plans for that world. It moves without purpose, it ends all it touches. In those crumbling halls beneath the black light of the sun and the sick light of it's moon nothing moves, nothing has ever moved. Not since before time. If it was indeed a part of Malal then it is anti-creation, formed as the throne of the ungod to Tzneetch's god. It is the place plans go to die.

What the Indigo Crow did to get a chunk of that wrongness is anyone's guess but as he, in the name of Big Bird, has just taken a piece of a rival god's domain as his own it's safe to say that Malal is pretty annoyed.

bump

>>54019683
Tzeentch needs not the star or world, Malal's black mirror and the prize he fished from oblivion as its destiny ended and the gods of another existence forsook their sphere for an alternate reality's imperian, no, Tzeentch wants only its moon. Strange exotic matter it is, that wells with madness and potential, and brings with the faint sound of scratching and squeaking. Whatever Malal drew forth from the far side of the warp through the pit of unreality he punched in spacetime contained many things, but one of them in particular is of value to his eternal opposite. Tzeentch can sense in Malal's bleak trove of things that never were a perfect synthesis between itself and it's current archfoe, Nurgle, and it wants everything it can know about that specific impossibility.

Tzeentch sent the Indigo Crow to take a sample of warpstone from Malal's dark marble, and the next part of their master plan will be to scry and see what manner of god or daemon creeps within its memory. Because that can't possibly backfire horribly and recreate a certain rival luckily unknown to this universe.

>>54019683
This cannot possibly end well for anyone involved.

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>>54021906
>>54021821
I foresee absolutely no possible unfortunate or unforeseen consequences of trespassing on a world older than the universe that was shat out of a dying other universe that orbits an impossible "star" that is a bottomless pit and manifestation of uncreation to retrieve a physics defying piece of rock.

Nope. None at all.

>implying that world is empty
>implying the sad, mad things that dwelt in the last moments of the previous dying universe moving sideways across dimensions aren't still sliding across that planet
>implying that it's intrusion into the galaxy hasn't altered the timeline since the distant past and erased countless civilizations by merely existing
>implying their souls weren't devoured and fall forever beyond the event horizon
>Implying that the Dark World was formed around the Black Sun and is not just the one thing it has found that it can't devour and so it just sits there being awful

This is why deamons freak out about the bloody thing. It's not just the Dark Star, although that's a big part of it, its also the crazy thing spinning around it.

Only a mortal would be stupid enough to go there and cunning enough to come back. Only Indigo Crow would be mad enough to bring back a souvenir.

>>54022539
More like Indigo Magpie.

>>54022539
Tzeentch can't resists the thought of such a tasty looking rat.

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>>54023020
No such chapter exists by order of the Inquisition. Especially if Trazyn the Infinite asks.

>>54023020
>>54023103

OK, can anyone do a picture of Indigo Crow in that pose? Either holding the Waprstone instead of the mug, or else with a taunt at Malal written on the mug? (t's not like the guy hasn't been tempting Malal already.)

>>54022539
This makes the Tyrant Star sound like something that preceded Malal.

>>54026695
Good point. Malal has a clear birthdate in this timeline even if that birthday is "old as balls".

>>54028175
Could be he just latched onto it sometime after his creation.

>>54026695
The star s Malal's vacant throne, the planet orbiting it is something that ran into it at some point.

>>53994351
>>53997176
It could be that they know how to make Titans, they just don't know how to make them fast any more.

Each one is hand crafted and can take decades. It also requires a senior Magos overseeing everything and his assistants have to be experienced veterans. It's also expensive as fuck. So the number of workshops that can actually do it is limited and it takes a long time.

Also the Mechanicus is in two minds about the Titans. On the one hand they are fucking awesome but on the other hand the machine spirits of them tend to be rather strong and are borderline A.I.

This combined with Titan Crews typically being an amalgamation of mavericks with little oversight who just love to "upgrade" and customize their machines often ends with the machine spirits becoming low end true A.I. in all but name and that makes the brass at Olympus Mons VERY nervous. Especially the ones who know what is in the basement and how insidious it's whispers can be.

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>>54029627
That plus this is how you get the unsettling Mars condemned soldiers of Stillness.

What is beyond the Gates of Vaul?

Has it ever been hinted at in Vanilla?

>>54022539
I wouldn't name the things in those ruins or confirm that there are things.

The number of people who have gotten close enough to see that there are ruins and return sane enough to report should be small.

This is, in Vanilla, a thing so abhorrent that deamons nope the fuck away from it.

>>54029946
Makes them seem like really big Dreadnaughts.

Also are dreads aloud to request custom work done to them.

Are Gork and Mork still alive?

>>54034702
I would say very yes.

And they are at war with Chaos.

>>54034844
Then how are there chaos orks?

>>54034862
Same way as there are Chaos Eldar.

Bunch of or is thought Khorne was ded choppy/Nurgle was well 'ard/Slaanesh was flashy and fast and had all the drugs and grog/Tzneetch promised moar dakka and new shit.

Orks follow fun. If they think Chaos is more fun then they get drawn to it. The Beast thought getting revenge on the Imperium was fun and Chaos gave him a boost for it.

Also Gork and Mork did not withdraw their support, so they were getting their entertainment from it.

>>54034974
The issue for the Gorkamorka is when Chaos Orks reach the point where they start listening to the big four more than the Gorkamorka. Gork and Mork are pretty chill, but putting someone else above those two is a big no no. Best case scenario you fall in with a bunch of corrupted Orks who are already lost. More likely you end up a leper on the edges of Ork society. Worst case you get fucking killed because ork society only has a few rules and you just broke one of the biggest.

Most orks don't care about learning from the spiky panzees (or whatever they call Chaos here) where the best fightin' is, but turning your back on the Gorkamorka is literally unorky.

>>54035334
Orks are pretty horde based. If one is falling that far then it's probable that the others aren't that far behind them.

Also help if it is warboss going spiky.

>>54035440
If the warboss is falling that's one thing. If it's a rank and file boy you have a much higher chance of the others turning on him.

Also Orks are like Chaos Dwarfs. They can't naturally be corrupted, so they have to choose to fall. Of course there are many things that Chaos has that even an Ork would find tempting, like Khorne making them killier, etc., as above, which is how there are Chaos Orks in the first place.

>>54035334
Something mentioned last thread was that it took the Gorkamorka getting dragged into the great game for a round that let chaos get a hold on even a few orks, and Gorkamorka only noticed following the war of the beast, but they definitely noticed, and they're just making a kunningly brutal, brutally kunning plan to get the four little spiky gits that swim in their wake.

>>54036530
That and the plague that Nurgle made in his neckbeard friendzoned rage that infected the orks at the spiritual level and made them slightly more sustainable to the whispers of Chaos.

Two people, man and woman, prone behind a low ridge atop a hill among some scraggly bushes. Hiding. The terrain, low dry scrub one step away from desert, does not offer much concealment unless you are skilled. They are skilled, and have cameoline.

Below them-
“Shit,” the woman, Sergeant Arn Kasparova, not that it will be relevant much longer, hissed. “Looks like a whole damned command section.”

A profusion of bizarre and unwholesome color. A- command tent? decorated in abstract shapes that suggested exaltation through pain and suffering. Coiled up mecha-centipedes on the scale of heavy tanks. A small forest of crooked ghastbone spires, suggestive of an antenna farm. A major force.

“Call it in now?” the man-Corporal Saram Ostokova, not that it will be relevant much longer, asked. She shook her head- no telling if they could pick it up. Sometimes the Chaos Eldar were utterly ignorant of any communication besides psionic. Other times they fought vox-war as well as the Mechanicus.
They would need to get some distance. They turned to leave.

The Mandrake behind them gave them a second to appreciate their situation before shooting them. A nonlethal weapon. Not a positive development.

They came to, kneeling, without visible or tangible restraints but still immobile, in a room. Riotous and baroque, seizure-décor. The eye could settle on details- twining figures in the heart of a gem, a burning tesseract-city, a newborn infant still placenta-wet crowned and enthroned- but refused to resolve any kind of whole. Only the other figures in the room could be clearly comprehended, drab in comparison, practically silhouettes against the background of nauseating splendor.

“What is to be done with this mad animal?” the first, head fully enclosed in radial quicksilver-fungus sensory apparatus, twitching on the edge of information overload, asked. Perfect Low Gothic, a performance for the benefit of the captives.

>>54038739
“I could debone them and fold them into glass jars as ornaments,” the second, naked with razor vines growing into and through him, cutting him with every movement to bleed in a continuous stream upon the carpet, offered.
“I could bend and break their minds into perfect little toy soldiers,” the third, clad head to toe in featureless vantablack bodysuit (or is it its skin?) studded with grinning maws like zippers, said.
“I could kill them and dump their bodies in a ditch out back,” the fourth, near transparent, organs and bones mere suggestive twists of light beneath invisible skin, silk drapes and gun belts only certain evidence of her presence, stated.
“Enough,” the first said again, completing the ritual debate. “I have decided. We shall give them mind-knots, and body infections, and set them free to bring ruin to their fellow animals.”
Arn and Saram both tried to commit suicide. Hollow molars filled with neurotoxin. A commonplace among soldiers fighting the Chaos Eldar. They could not move even that much. They could not flinch or scream as the cutting started. A hole in the skull, and a slimy convoluted something pressed into the wrinkles of the brain. Holes in the body, and rotten-looking ghastbone nodes slipped inside. Then, everything sealed back up, with not even a scar or drop of blood to show what was done.
Then, dumped back outside, their bodies no longer their own. They punched the right codes on the vox, knew the sign and countersign, the name of the voice on the other end, called in an artillery strike on the position they had just left (vacated only minutes before). Then, they started the long walk to link back up with the main body of the Godspire 1888th Infantry.

The 1888th was destroyed within the week.

Thoughts?

>>54038758
Suitably grim and harrowing.

Cadians have purple eyes. It is known.

Are there eyes only purple at the iris or is it a Freman edge to edge type thing?

>>54040249
Probably the entire iris, since the point is to screen out the unnatural sanity-blasting colors of the Eye of Terror

>>54040770
You'd expect them to have purple pupils, then.

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>>54021821
Yes yes, this is good idea plan Bird-Thin--- I mean Lord Tzeentch.

WHAT IF

The great rescue only got busted out because Eldrad pulled a switcheroo with Isha and Gork in a dress, and that's why all the orks are mad and working with chaos?

In this and Vanilla do Craftworld eldar use cybernetics?

>>54044532
"Grandfather Nurgle! Lady Isha is rather green this morning."
"Green? Then it means she has finally accepted my blessings! I'm coming my love!"
Moments later
"ELDRAAAAAAAD!"

>>54045132
Yes, but they're typically psychoactive and sleek as opposed to 'when I grow up I'll be a power fist' of the humans.

>>54045205
>>54044532
No. The Raid was done as a high speed smash and grab because nobody taking part was strong enough to even slow down a god if they managed to catch up with them and needed to get out before the big deamons turned up.

This would require getting Gork or Mork into a dress and you know they would not do something so unorky willingly. If the Craftworlders and Imperials couldn't take on Nurgle head on they would not be able to take on one of the gods or orkdom.

On the other hand I can see this being an episode of an in-universe kids cartoon popular with both elder and human children.

>>54023084
I'd not import character straight from WHFB. It would be low effort cheap.

But the idea of a deamon created as a joint project by both Tzneetch and Nurgle sounds good.

Especially if the Black Sun is associated with Malal.

The Horned Rat imprisoned in the balemoon of the impossible world of the no-star.

It is creation and mutation made manifest from a time when Tzneetch, Nurgle and Malal were the only three participants of The Great Game, a deamon of another era.

But The Game has changed and now Nurgle and Tzneetch are at each other throats rather than allies against Malal. Both want the power of The Horned Rat as it is primeval and powerful and taken from a rival, but neither want it freed as it is a self sustaining almost god in it's own right and would be disgusted at what it's creators have become.

Big Bird's opinion on Indigo Crow risking the release of that old monster to get his new pet rock is mixed on the one hand
>NIGGA YOU CRAZY!

on the other hand

>Nigga, you crazy good!

>>54046316
just making a joke to bump from page 10

>>54038758
Moar?

>>54045367
Are they compatible with mundane tech? Or do they have some thing that makes them weird.

>>54047374
Or it could be that The Indigo Crow has left a tiny hole through which Horned Rat is slowly seeping.

Which would be

>OH SHIT CROW, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!?

>>54050676
I think they are mostly wraithbone. There was some little writeup about a tech-priest and bonesinger experimenting in hybrid prosthetics in M41.

>>54051443
Did it got saved?

>>54052144
It's in four segments in this thread:

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/50119235/

So the thread has kind of taken a turn for the bizarre and obscure with the discussion of Chaos and whatnot. Anyone want to bash out some ideas for Dorn in the thread like we did for Lion?

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>>54054223
I tried and I have given up.

I can't do it. Work is unrelenting at this time of year and I'm just too tired to concentrate.

Also I'm not sure how to integrate it properly into the beautifully written work of fulgrimfag. Here is as far as I got.

The story of Rogal Dorn starts in the garrison town of Onto Rontus in the not too long annexed land of Calbi. Born to a mother of the local tribes and an officer father of the Merikan army his start was not as tragic as it could have been. Often such half-breeds were not the result of consenting unions but Donovan Dorn held genuine affection for Kosa and was, unknown to his fellow officers, married to her.

Dorn was one of a large family and had many siblings though he was ultimately the only one to follow in his father’s footsteps. Dorn left his loving tribe and family and all he had known and travelled to the distant lands of Merika to begin his training, as his father had.

He learned much in those years and was an excellent student and would have been on the fast track to high station but for his circumstances of birth. No soldier of the greatest nation on Old Earth would gladly allow themselves to be given orders from a savage of the north. Despite all this his tutors could not deny his talents.

It was not a thing he took undue joy in but the ways of war came very easily to him. Despite the unfortunate circumstances of his birth he became the very model of a Merikan officer. He was well versed in military doctrine of all sorts and knew something of the history of his nation, at least enough to spot the revisionisms.

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>>54054965
Although adept, or at minimum competent, at all aspects of war his true talents were found in siege warfare. In the tactical simulations and competitive VR matches Dorn was unbeaten.

Due to his knowledge of the locals and ability to speak at least one tribal language fluently Dorn returned to Calbi wearing a conquers uniform. He served as a lieutenant under the rule of Praefectus Adran, himself new to the post after the forced retirement of old Praefectus Stavart.

Praefectus Stavart had been very old and was unquestionably loyal to Merika but had dealt with the natives with some degree of fairness and even kindness when he could afford to. He was not loved by the locals, how could he be, but the elders were more than smart enough to know that his position as an intermediary between them and Merika was probably the best deal they could get in the circumstances.

For Stavart’s part he probably knew that as well. In his childhood Dorn had met him a few times with his father. He remembered him looking old then and unless he somehow genuinely had six sixty-seventh birthdays it was obvious that he had been lying about his age for a long time. In his way Stavart had cared about Calbi and it’s people as something other than a broken, subjugated state of Merika. He held on in the job until nearly ninety because he knew that Adran or someone much like him would succeed him. And he was right.

Praefectus Adran was not a nice man by any measure. His was the brutal rule of law and the authority of the Iron Fist. He wouldn’t be seen attending local festivals or events; they were there from the greatest to the least at his beck and call. They were savages and heathens and he was a man of the Greatest Nation and a paragon among them. Needless to say tensions between the conquered and conquerors increased.

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>>54054983
And that's as far as I got.

There was more but it was an incoherent mess and I got depressed at the whole thing and slapped the delete key with the intention of starting again.

At some point genuine tribal unrest turn into riots and Praefectus Adran orders mass executions.

Dorn is still well loved by the locals as they see him as their man on the other side and look to him to for salvation. Dorn is also well loved by the rank and file and quite a few of the officers.

There are a few days of communications black outs due to "faulty equipment" and some "regrettable accidents" that see some of the officers dead and Praefectus Adran commits suicide after a long period of depression. When asked how he managed to shoot himself in the back of the head with a shot gun acting Praefectus Dorn tells the investigators that Adran had been "very depressed.

Nobody believes it but, due to the difficulties in the still mysteriously faulty communications equipment, it does buy him enough time to root out more loyalists of Merika, secure his alliances with the local tribes and when the order comes from the capital to stand down and come back for questioning he declares independence.

The next day his is met by a freakishly nondescript man of average height and build, no distinguishing features, hard to estimate age, unremarkable clothing and an oddly neutral and hard to place accent. Claims his name is Alpharius Omegon and he comes representing the Imperium. Tells Dorn that his timing is awful and had he been able to spin his out for a few years, five at most, the Imperium would have been in a position to lend considerable military might to his Rebellion. As it is they will offer what less obvious help they can but the Imperium can't get dragged into a direct and total war with Merika at the current time. Dorn and a few of his elites get what must be some of the very last Mk1 Astartes upgrades, administered by local bio-druids for reasons of deniability.

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>>54055393
Recently Merika had been supplying and training terrorist organizations in the lands conquered by the Imperium and Oscar had found out who was behind the seemingly random attacks. The aim was to disassemble the Imperium back into little nations for Merika to Manifest Destiny all over and Oscar was most unhappy, most unhappy indeed. But his forces were all tied up dealing with Ursh and the Pan-Pacific Empire so he couldn't act directly and was having to use Dorn and his rebellion, and later Fulgrim, to fight by proxy.

Not that Dorn would know the specifics of this until quite a few years after Unification Day.

Dorn holds out for long enough for Fulgrim Doe to raise his rebellion and make contact.

By this point Imperium is finishing off the last enclaves of Ursh, Lorgar is decapitating the Despot and Merika is in deep shit because of the multiple rebellions, the pissed off Imperium and the only neighbor it has left with whom it is not at war is Hy Brasil who hate both of them and are just going to sit back and watch.

Fulgrim "negotiates a deal of inclusion with very good terms" with the Imperium after he is appointed President of Merika and "abandons the unprofitable campaign to uplift and civilize the northern provinces". Calbi becomes an independent nation, Dorn appoints an Assembly of Elders to govern the nation and steps down from and decommissions the title Praefectus of Calbi. Though he does remain the head of the armed forces. The Elders and Dorn, or representatives of them in the case of the more elderly Elders, are present at the swearing of allegiance to the Empty Throne of Earth.

When Steward Oscar looks to the other worlds of Sol and to the stars beyond he names Dorn as one of his primarchs to the surprise of Dorn though not the people of his home nation who saw it as only right.

And then Great Crusade, WoTB, Reconquest and death on the walls of Cadia during the 1st Black Crusade of which I hadn't got around to thinking much about.

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>>54055844
During the Great Crusade I imaged he went slower than most of the other Primarchs bar Lorgar but his diligence over speed, though criticized at the time, proved it's worth in the WoTB as the worlds he brought into the Imperium weathered the storm consistently better than others that weren't the work of Perty.

At some point he gets it into his head to grow his trademark mustaches. Some time later he has to have one of his eyes replaced and it sort of looks like a monocle.

Does not take part in the Raid. He was not the greatest personal combatant and also tended to be better at static defense than actually running around, so a quick Raid was not his strong suit. Also due to the buggy Mk1 enhancments he suffered from desensitization problems which gradually turned into a mild case of masochism.

Never married or had any children (that he or history knew about). Did have a large number of nephews and nieces and cousins and more distant kin. Quite a few of his family survived the WoTB, he was quite lucky in that regard.

Bump

>>54056053

Looks like a good base to start from, at least

>>54056053
Alpha Legion with a hand in the roots of the Terra's Children and Imperial Fists gives them pretty good access to high tier offensive and defensive soldiers and officers to recruit/cherrypick from for since before the start of the great crusade, and vice versa with those two legions having access to imperial intelligence services at the highest degree

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>>54056053
Sounds good so far. I like the addition of the Alpha Legion, gives them more character while maintaining the mysterious feel in their bio.

Agreed about Dorn's lack of involvement in the Raid. Having Dorn take part in such an event would have been a waste of talent. Like Perturabo, he would have been better suited to fortify the other end to blow the shit up out of anything that tried to come through.

I think the Reconquest was in pieces, and much of it after the War of the Beast. Cadia discovered in the initial expeditions to try and figure out how the Chaos Eldar had come out of the Eye of Terror. Stabilization of borders to a level where the Imperium could function. And then finally the Macharian Crusade after the Imperium had stabilized enough to fund a counter-offensive, a big push that reclaimed most of its old territory despite most of the primarchs having passed away before it ever began.

Don't feel bad about not getting it done. I have a piece of writefaggotry I've been trying to get done for weeks now but life keeps getting in the way.

Bump for Dorn!

So is Horned Rat called Horned Rat in this AU or is that just the human name for him?

Do the Chaos Eldar have a currency?

In the Dark City it's slaves/food. Chaos Eldar don't need that, not actually need, so what do they base the trade on?

Has there wver been an instance of a Chaos Eldar genuinely respecting a non-eldar?

>>54066803

See Arrotyr. To call that a 'respect' is quite a stretch, but that's as far as you can go for a Chaos Eldar

>>54066803
Possibly, in a Ghazghull/Yarrick sort of way. Malys seems to get along well with Erebus based on the previously written fluff, seeing as she will actually hear out what he has to say and they share an interest in spreading Chaos. Malys also seems to like Luther more than Arrontyr, because he's more competent, but that isn't saying much.

>>54065976
I would assume some kind of barter system. When you need something, you haggle with your neighbors to trade what you have for what you want, whether it be food, materiel, slaves, favors (Fair Folk style). Do people need to eat in the Eye? If not, the supression of bodily functions and the only intermittant need of transactions might cause all non-barter based systems to break down.

We have anything decided on Fyodor yet?

>>54070422
Yes. He's basically a vanilla!40k hardass Inquisitor ported directly into Nobledark. He caused a massive schism within the Inquisition that few outside the upper echelons knew about but threatened to tear the Inquisition in half. Fyodor is currently on the run from Imperial justice while trying to create his own vision of the Imperium. Isha sicced the Space Sharks on his ass in exchange for full recognition of their rights to the Nicor after a botched assassination attempt using Fyodor's personal death cult.

It's on the wiki.

>>54070422
He didn't start a civil war, as such. He did though start a purely secular schism in the Inquisition.

More importantly he nukes a few worlds and as such killed several billion children and children by adoption of Isha.

Isha, under no no authority and needing no authority but her own, has commisioned the Space Sharks to hunt the fucker and his followers down. Take him alive for trial if they can, she told them, but not if it's too much effort. Of his followers? They may use their own judgment on the worth of live capture.

Sucks to be Karamozov right now. If Isha catches him first he will wish the Space Sharks did.

>>54071015
>>54070955 here. What he said is a little closer. It wasn't an outright civil war, but it was a pretty big deal because it was an internal struggle among who watches the watchmen, which is not supposed to happen.

The Inquisition always had bad apples that went too far (Eisenhorn comes to mind), but this was the first time someone had actually managed to organize the primarily monodominant (Fyodor's not an Amalthean in this timeline) radicals into something large enough to threaten the whole institution.

>>54071544

Hey, has Eisenhorn been used in Nobledark, or were you just referring to canon?

>>54073079
In this one it's been mentioned that he has also fallen from grace.

Much like Vanilla he made some shady deals with devils and like Vanilla he fell by small amounts at a time.

Currently he is doing good(ish) with enslaved deamons, his Inquisition status revoked and wanted posters out.

Wargames general, a /tg/ discord that focuses on GW games is more than happy to host nobledark discussion, and recently added a channel for writefags to post their work for praise and comment!

https://discord.gg/RGNHrS2

>>54068448
I like how Erebus is shaping up to be the Anti-Lorgar of this AU.

>>54073271

So very similar to canon, gotcha.

Oh, Gregor, you had so much potential at first.

>>54075893
Clarify? All I know of Lorgar in canon is he fucked off to the Eye after the HH and has done jack shit.

>>54076170
In this AU he brought more worlds into the Imperium peacefully than any other primarch, mended religious unrest with words, negotiated with foreign governments, wrote an educational book for the common people about the dangers of Chaos that is more or less compulsory reading in the Imperium, decapitated the last Chaos corrupted leader of Old Earth and was all in all a very nice man. He was as close to a man of peace as a Primarch could be and much preferred to use his voice to his blade, a weapon with which he possibly caused more harm to Chaos than any other primarch. Then they discovered in the War of The Beast that, yes actually, he can fight and the olive branch can be used as a club.

In many ways Erebus has mirrored him, but on the opposite side.

>>54076316

Ooh yeah, mirroring. Clearly I need to hit the wiki again too.

>>54076316
Kind of interesting in their one meeting so far in this AU, Lorgar tried to offer a hand to Erebus and help him, exhorting him to reject his cancerous faith. Erebus basically said his belief was too strong for his faith to be shaken by the likes of Lorgar, and spit in his face. In front of a bunch of Word Bearers who, like Erebus, were Space Marines and were not as humble as Lorgar. Erebus had a bad day.

Erebus is also doing a lot more than canon Lorgar OR Erebus post-WotB, going around being the herald of the gods and rounding up the various forces of Chaos to Get Shit Done.

>>54071544
Who should be leading the other side of the Inquisition Schism?

>>54080389
>Erebus had a bad day.
He was offered after that the possibility of a deathbed repentance.

Though his injuries were not life threatening the deathbed could be made available at a moments notice.

Logar might have been as close to being Mr Rodgers as a Primarch could be but he was still a Primarch, and Erebus had fallen to Chaos and refused to be helped.

It's doubtful any other primarch would have given him the option to make amends.

>>54073271
It's also worth noting that he is hated by EVERYONE.

Chaos hate him because he enslaves deamons to do his will against their own desires and keeps using them to fuck up Chaos cults.

The Inquisition hates him because of all the shady shit he did that came to light at his trial in absentia on top of his summoning and binding of deamons.

The Deamon Breakers hate him because he's summoning deamons rather than banishing and/or killing them. Also he destroyed a book they wanted (the Necrotarch), the only other copy of which is in the Black Library.

The eldar hate him because he stinks of Chaos and need no other reason to shoot on sight.

But for all that it seems that Eisenhorn is still "loyal" to the Imperium in his own mind. He runs from Imperial forces thrown at him if he can rather than fighting and only intentionally targets Chaotic forces.

bump

>>54084353

>It's also worth noting that he is hated by EVERYONE.

Woooow. Think he might actually have outdone his canon self, and not in a good way. Well, this is NobleDARK after all!

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>>54087858
In Vanilla his fall was assisted in a large part to the internal power struggles of the Inquisition itself and senior Inquisitors having a personal grudge against him and everyone generally being corrupt as all fuck. The all hated him, or at least started out hating him, for stupid petty reasons.

In this AU the -][- is far less corrupt for the most part which is why Faydor Karamozov is so exceptional.

So this time Eisenhorn must have fallen for different reasons.

Possibly just curiosity. Surely there is nothing wron with learning excessive amounts of deamon-lore. The Grey Knights all do and they seem pretty on the ball. And surely it can't be too bad to put all this sorcery into practice in extreme circumstances to prevent something worse, it's not unprecedented. And it's obviously better to have Cherubael bound into a dead cultist than wandering around free doing God knows what, it is the job of the Inquisition to frustrate the forces of Chaos after all. And if Cherubael is bound and hanging around he may as well make himself useful. Nothing wrong with that, it's like watching a wasp land on a nettle. Someones going to get stung and it's no great sorrow who.

Next thing you know your running through the mid-hive jumping from moving train to moving train with a deamon close behind you as your only friend, a stack of stolen forbidden text transcripts in an asbestos back pack with the Arbiters sirens getting closer whilst you mumble through a mantra of dimensional twisting in the Unwords of the Black Sun because the customs inspector at the space port is a retired Space Marine you once knew and he slapped the panic the moment you got off the shuttle.

And this is by far not the first time that this has happened. All you can be grateful for is that this time you aren't a Night Lord Neophyte training exercise.

On the wiki seems like we now have a small conflict between whether to use Hammerhead Bill or the Eldarian Creed.

My answer? Why not both.

Both of them were Eldars, went through almost same events, follows the same Path, and born at the exact same time on two opposite ends of the galaxy.

It seems too much a coincident, and they both know this.

Both armies share a tense rivalry over who's the best tanker, and enjoy many race offs and competitions whenever their paths crossed, primarily over tank-sniping, racing, manuevering and running over the poor bastard on the other side of the line.

tl;dr A friendly dickwaving contest between Rommel and Patton.

>>54088409
They're supposed to be the exact same character, just with some tweaks to explain why Rom'mel ended up with a name like he did among other things. They need to be merged if anything.

>>54088452
No, we should leave them separate. We have a bad habit of streamlining character's for the sake of is, and really it makes more sense that coincidences happen in this AU than it does that everyone is unique and the first of whatever they are, even ten thousand years in.

>>54088496
This does make sense.

The galaxy is a big place and eldar live a long time. That two are similar at the same time is an inevitability.

Is CREEEEEEEED still a thing?

>>54090825
Yes.

>>54082556
We never really figured out how the Inquisition was organized. The other “side” of the Inquisitorial Civil War was essentially everyone who thought Fyodor was a lunatic, up to and including Boaz “200% Ahab” Kryptmann. It makes sense that Inquisitors would have a lot of latitude, but at the same time someone would have to herd cats at least at the level of the major Ordos. Even if Inquisitors have a lot of freedom to do as they wish, someone has to keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t start becoming corrupted.

There was a suggestion that the High Lord representative of the Inquisition is a rotating position, based on whatever the current largest threat to the Imperium is, sort of like the Iron Hands. This is partly so the High Lords have an expert on hand for whatever the current crisis is (e.g., Black Crusade, Necrons, etc.), but also because there are non-human Inquisitors and this way you don’t get an Eldar stuck in there for hundreds of years (which neither the High Lords nor the Inquisition wants). However it was never really finalized.

It’s been mentioned that among the younger generation of Inquisitors, two major up-and-comers are the Tomb World-raiding Necron-expert Inquisitor Valeria, who was caught breaking into Solemnace by Trazyn the Infinite and lived to tell the tale, and everyone’s favorite not-a-Dalek Ravenor, who unlike his mentor looked into the abyss and didn’t blink. However, it was decided that both of them were far too young to have the experience needed to lead the Inquisition, so the Inquisition is probably led by someone else, but anyone with a brain knows that Valeria and Ravenor are going to be the two big names to look out for in the future assuming neither of them die. The power blocs are already starting up, but Valeria and Ravenor are actually pretty friendly with each other and neither would mind if the other ever became in charge.

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>>54092385
Possibly the current Inquisitorial Representative is Hector Rex.

In this AU a failed Grey Knight that was shunted into the inquisitions service under venerable Inquisitor █████ ████████ of the Ordo Malleus. If there is one thing the Inquisition loves it's well trained and clever soldiers, the formidable and refined psychic power being somewhat of a bonus.

It is realized soon that Hector is quite clever and so Inquisitor █████ ████████ takes him on as an apprentice.

Much of his career would be much the same. He banishes deamons, prevents the formation of deamonworlds, builds a retinue and so on and so forth all the while adding notches to his hammer for ever greater deamon broken, ever battle won, ever cult uprooted, every ritual stopped, every world saved. Also notoriously good at playing cards.

The Grey Knight's loss was everyone's gain as he has kicked more ass than he ever could have in that life.

The job of Representative is given, seemingly at random, to an Inquisitor Lord drawn from a pool of the best few hundred based on time served, successful missions and the nature of those missions, spotlessness of record, psychological screening and not having batshit monodomiant or some other dangerous ideology that's going to get everyone killed.

Also the job being swapped every 10(?) years makes it infuriatingly difficult for the more slimy High Lords to manipulate the Inquisition from the top down. If it was one man holding the job for centuries then they would start to get drawn in to the backstabbery and maybe the other HLs would get leverage over them. With this their efforts are wasted as you spend years trying to get the dirt on one of them and they they just replace him.

>Heretekal Sects of the Dark Mechanicus
>Part 3 of ?

The Dark Mechanicus enclave of Arzach's World rarely clashes with the Imperium. It hosts no pirate fleets, sponsors no raids, wages no wars, devastates no planets. Perhaps a few far-flung explorator fleets have come to grief at its hands, but such is only an insignificant footnote in the bloody history of the galaxy. Still, the destruction of Arzach's World is a high priority for the Imperium despite this.

This is because Arzach's World manufactures and sells gene-seed, to whoever can pay. Mainly the Mk. III MP, of course, easiest to produce and maintain, but also dozens of home-grown varieties. The Magi of Arzach's World have produced many dangerous (to the enemy, even!) mutations of that baseline form. They ask people to use them, offer discounts if they bring reports and mostly-intact corpses back to them. A grand experiment, played out across the flesh of a thousand warbands.

Their primary consumer is, of course, the Fallen. The Eye of Terror is hardly a good environment for the delicate work of nurturing immature geneseed. But they will sell to anyone with money. Many lesser warbands try to break into the big leagues by acquiring Astartes. And on occasion, on the very fringes of the Imperium, under-resourced loyalist Chapters may find themselves approaching Arzach's World.

Their location is hidden. Nearly every Fallen warband in the entire galaxy has ties with them; they can afford defensive sorceries of near-absurd depth. Every sort of divination is foiled, all navigation is for nought. They deal with the galaxy through widely scattered deep-space stations.

The ultimate end goal of their experimentation in gene-seed is unknown, but from the slow evolution of their techniques over centuries it is evident that there is one.

Thoughts?

>>54093752
I like it, it's a creeping threat.

>>54092385
>The other “side” of the Inquisitorial Civil War was essentially everyone who thought Fyodor was a lunatic, up to and including Boaz “200% Ahab” Kryptmann. It makes sense that Inquisitors would have a lot of latitude, but at the same time someone would have to herd cats at least at the level of the major Ordos.
We discussed Fyodor having to be very careful when recruiting, even among the lunatics of the Inquisition. This was attributed to the difference in mindset in the Inquisition, where events like the Sicarius reforms and Imperial civil war, and the Emperor's personal pull (and the Imperial court's) in the organization have shaped the Ordos for thousands of years, as opposed to festering millennia of sectarianism. Also, there are certain forms of corruption that are actually broadly smiled upon, specifically the Dornian retirement of disloyal officers. Even a Monodominant Inquisitor needs to be careful, because if the proud Karskin (etc.) in his retinue catches wind of anything the least bit shady their rank won't protect them.

>>54093294
This sounds like a good summary of how >>54092385 should work. Maybe with the addendum that sometimes representatives are chosed based on expertise as mentioned above (i.e., Malleus if a Black Crusade happens, Xenos if a hive fleet, etc.)

>>54094519
It was mentioned that Fyodor had Death Cult assassins at his disposal which he equipped with Inquisitorial gar to make garage-kit Assassins. So that guy at least has one source of troops which are completely loyal to him.

Though actually probing the feelings of his fellow inquisitors would indeed be difficult, especially if they aren't as fanatical in their choice of retinue as Fyodor.

Maybe we should change the name of the Paternoval Envoy from "Fedor" seeing how that's basically the same as "Fyodor."

>>54096732
Why? It's not that similar. It's about as similar as Lorgar and Logan Grimnir.

Fedor Jiao also seems like it has a different cultural origin than Fyodor Karamazov.

>>54097979
Again, see >>54088496 and>>54089229

A reason for Isha to sic the Nichadrodons on Fyodor: On the Coup, that bastard actually kidnapped her and Oscar's adopted child as a bargaining chip/ taunt. He, or his lackeys trying to get off the failed coup alive.

To say Isha was pissed would be a gross underestimation. So was Empy.

>>54099242
Would that makes her more or less likely to go to the Sharks for assistance?

>>54099312

Yes.

>>54099411

For she is very tempted to do it by herself now.

>>54099419
>>54099411
I meant would one of her adapted children being used as a hostage dissuade her from a course of action that might put that child in danger?

>>54100861

Oh. I did not think of that. Maybe there was an extra Custode or Handmaiden dispatch to ensure they don't f**k up too much.

>>54101531
How many children over the years do you think that they have adopted?

>>54102442

That number might be in the hundreds, maybe more. Those adopted often becomes, while not great, excellent statemens, commanders, captains, religious leaders, etc.

>>54102719
There was a mention that a decent chunk of the Inperial Palace is an orphanage/preparatory school for all of the orphans they keep picking up. Obviously they aren't able to help literally everyone, the Schola exists and you have people like Tankred and Kryptmann who are known orphans who do not have a personal cobnection to the Royal Couple.

>>54103274
I don't think that they adopted that many at any given time. No more than 3 - 5 maybe. Keep in mind that the Royal Couple spend way more time traveling than standing still and settled. Anymore than that and the risks of them getting lost, or it seriously impacting their ability to rule because there are only so many hours in a day.

Also they tend to adopt psychics abandoned by fearful parents. Partly because psychics are better raised by other psychics and Isha can better bond with them because they are like little eldar children.

Now consider that Emps and later Emps and Isha have had a family of that size constantly for ~10,000 years, picking them up in early infancy and raising them to maturity.

That's not hundreds of people. That's thousands.

Now consider that they have children of their own. And in time so do they. And so on and so on.

The royal family, from Lady Krole of the Unification to 999M41, if it were all traceable would be millions.

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bump

>>54104626

>Also they tend to adopt psychics abandoned by fearful parents

This, this is perfect

>>54107107
For all that there is more tolerance in this AU than in Vanilla psychics are still considered dangerous, and not for no reason. There would be many abandoned, packed onto the Black Ships and never spoken of among the family again in polite company.

There would still be burnings and lynch mobs, just not as often and sure as shit not state sanctioned.

Given the numbers involved in the quadrillions strong population of the Imperium there are legions of children abandoned by their parents for this and other reasons and the wars create orphans on an industrial scale. The example of Oscar and Isha is followed by the various authorities as best they can but eventually the grim numbers make the sad game of triage inevitable.

For every Kryptman and Tankred and Creed who find a home legions die alone and forgotten. The difference is that in this AU it is seen as a call to war and war eternal against those responsible for rather than shrugged off as the way things are.

>>54108497
That brings up the one of the key differences for this AU, that with the guidance of a just and self aware Emperor, even the grim things that are inevitable inevitable in the setting are enobled. It's no less horrific a situation, but the difference is solemn duty instead of dogmatic malice. The differences in the scholas is pretty much the essence of the difference between noble and grim dark.

>>54109416
On that note, Monumnents on Old Earth might tend less towards towering statues of great commanders, maybe the occasional triumphal arch, but many more towards the style of WW1 and WW2 monuments, possibly even absolutely massive shrines akin to the tomb of the unknown soldier, or geoengineering sided stark walls of remembrance like the vietnam war memorial. In essence, every pillar of victory would be accompanied by an equally grand reflecting place, as well designed to remind future commanders of the past's mistakes and educate as it does commemorate the fallen.

Essentially the architectural version of the proverbial man the king paid him to follow behind and in victory always remind him of his mortality.

>>54106185
https://youtu.be/IzWsLaolyLw

>>54109541

>every pillar of victory would be accompanied by an equally grand reflecting place

Oh yes, all this is good ideas too

>>54109541
>>54112603
Expanding on this: the triumph and memorial are designed to complement each other, intended to be regarded as a single work of art. The overall nature of the monument is usually intended to reflect the nature of the campaign. A glorious victory will have a memorial that reflects the triumph, exulting the sacrifice of the dead; for a pyrrhic one, the triumph will gesture to the memorial, directing attention to what was lost. For defeats, the triumph may instead be a promise of vengeance, or simply absent. The memorial is never absent.

>>54113981
>>54109541
Do the eldar build monuments?

>>54115230
Possibly but if they are out of the visitors section of most craftworlds then who would know?

Eldar don't generally need to that much or often as their souls reside in the Infinity Circuit and although they are not alive they aren't really dead either.

Also they get their names put on Imperial monuments which are very much open to the public.

>>54104626
Lets look at this.

Lets say that they are raised for 16 years, get picked up on the Black Ships aged 2ish and transported and leave home 18 -19. Let's keep the 10,000 years of this to keep it neat.

That's 10,000 divided by 18.5. That's rounded up to 541.

Lets say it's 3.5 children on average at any given time in the Imperium.

That's rounded up to 1,892.

Oscar and Isha have over the years adopted ~1,892 children.

That's assuming that Isha doesn't want a large family, given that she is the All Mother, Mother Deity of the Eldar People she probably does. She could get the Handmaidens or her disciples to assist with raising them. That pushes the numbers up way higher.

Assuming that the children each have a similar sized family of their own then they would have 6,622 grand children

It's been 10,000 years. The number of people in the Imperium who could claim to have an ancestor or two that was an adopted child of the Golden Emperor and the All Mother is incalculable and unverifiable

Now take into account that they typically only adopt psychics and even then it's more likely to be the ones that are on the higher end of psychic because they are the ones who the tutors are going to have trouble with and who are most at risk if raised wrong

That's a lot of top shelf tier psychics being trickled into the general population who would otherwise be lost

The increased number of psychics and latent psychics and the spread of them could be in no small part due to the unintended transformation of Old Earth into the telepath homeworld and further exaggerated by the Emps and Isha's children in The Traveling Court

>>54092385
Valeria didn't survive Trazyn so much as he thought it would be amusing to stick her inside a multi-dimensional puzzle box and post her back to the Imperium.

Were it not for Nemensor Zakarov she would still be in the box

>>54115230
I think canon is they do. The suggestion by Phil Kelly is quite a bit of a Craftworld in Vanilla is made up of monuments, which is yet another factor making them look more populated than they are.

They try to avoid mourning, though. Mourning sends an eldar down that obsessive grief spiral, especially since all vanilla Craftworlders are at their core depressed and in despair. Which is why they have the Path of the Mourner (IIRC).

Makes you wonder how the pre-Fall Eldar handled grief.

We also know Tau build monuments, because canon Farsight had all his smashed when the Big Brother Ethereals tried to unperson his existence.

>>54115759
Holy shit that's a big family.
>>54117636
In this AU they might not be so prone to the depression loop. In this AU they have Isha back. This time when someone fucks them up they get sad, then they get angry, then they get even.

In this AU the eldar don't do emo poetry and cut themselves when faced with the cruelty of the Galaxy. In this AU they kick back.

>>54113981
> The memorial is never absent

The feels. They are real.

>>54119663
Well. Not quite never. On very rare occasions, when a victory is won without losses. Then there will be no memorial. Only a relative tiny handful of instances; usually thanks to some incredible scheme of some farseer. An Ork fleet anticipated and destroyed the moment it comes out of the warp; a Chaos tank army annihilated by atomic mines. Rare, very rare. Everyone really dangerous has some means of clouding divination. But it happens.

>>54118603

>In this AU they kick back

Well, in fairness, a lot of canon Eldar try; it's just that in Nobledark they have the resources to hit effectively.

Are there mega-corps in this AU given how much laxer the iron fist is?

>>54124645
What do you think a Rogue Trader dynasty is?

>>54124711
I was thinking more on the lines of static entities that develop power and eventually usurp the Imperial sponsored planetary governments in all but name without even the Writ of Trade to justify it.

Exactly how far could something like that be pushed before the the Imperial authorities decide that they aren't playing this game and step on them to restore order?

Would they if they were better than the governments they replace?

>>54125076
I mean there were mentions of maga-corps and guilds that run worlds as private property it all but name, so it is not out of the realm of possibility.

>>54124645
Well, Sreta Ulthran is basically running a Venetian Merchant Republic out of Ulthwe. It's not really a mega-corp as it lacks share holders and exists to primarily serve one family (The Ulthrans and Sreta in particular) and is nominally under the laws of Ulthwe, but it has pull and money that can be felt at a galactic scale.

No reason not to have more though.

>>54109541
Reminds me of something I was thinking of. I was writing something on the Pastoral Worlds, but I only have bits and pieces of it.

As a bit of context (since the rest of the entry is not done), the Khanate was the steppe nomads’ attempt to go from being seen as a bunch of barbarians to a legitimate nation-state. One key figure in this was someone nicknamed “the Iron Scribe”, who Jaghatai tapped for his ability to organize things. Jaghatai was a good leader, but he was a shit administrator, and to his credit he recognized it. Jaghatai realized that with the hyper-urbanization of Old Earth there would soon be no room for his kind of people, and so he set up a bunch of Khanate colonies across the galaxy that became the Pastoral Worlds. Basically agri-worlds but for sheep and grox. This proved to be a smart move given the War of the Beast, and even after the War of the Beast it was clear there was no room for the Khanate in the rebuilding of Old Earth. There was wilderness on Old Earth afterwards, but it was tamed wilderness, in the manner of national parks. Livestock were present, but they were raised in pens, not herded on the open range. It was no place for a steppe nomad.

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>>54128697 (same person)
Aaand forgot my name like an idiot.

One of the few things that remains of the Khanate on Old Earth is an obelisk inscribed with a message that the Iron Scribe had sent to Jaghatai. In it, the Scribe requests that Jaghatai always remember who he was and where he came from, even as he sought to build a brighter future for his people in the stars. Jaghatai apparently found the words of the message so profound that he ordered it carved onto an obelisk for posterity. This obelisk was discovered amidst the rolling irradiated wastelands of the Old Khanate, a miraculous salvage from the horrors of the War of the Beast. Today, it sits in a quiet, open plaza in one of the hives of Old Earth, the closest place one could get on the planet to its old home. This "Last Piece of the Khanate" is considered a relic of paramount historical importance to the people of the Pastoral Worlds, and is often the centerpiece of any pilgrimages Pastoral Worlders make to Old Earth.

>>54124645
>>54124711
>>54125076
>>54126459
>>54127564
I think additional mega-corps aside from the Ulthran Cartel have been mentioned before (in the Krieg fluff, at least). And then you have Demiurg Brotherhoods, the entire Water Caste, probably something with the squats, and more.

Rogue trader dynasties forming mega-corps that are centered on a certain planet is definitely something that happens in canon. I think in canon it also has something to do with the Calixis Sector.

It has basically been said that the Imperium does not give a fuck what kind of government you have as long as you follow The Rules. The Rules are distinctly lax, we've already mentioned the possibility of a pirate/space mafia haven that the Arbites would just love to raid but the inhabitants keep finding loopholes to avoid the hammer.

Warring corporatocracies would also be another contributor to the shadow wars, i.e., the low-level conflicts between worlds that try to sabotage each other without drawing the Imperial government's notice.

>Heretekal Sects of the Dark Mechanicus
>The Twiceborn
Unusual for the Dark Mechanicus, this sect has its roots in the Biologis and (very distantly) in the transhuman ideals of Horus Lupercal. Their beliefs and goals are simple; they think that the Materium is doomed to eventually be submerged in the Warp, and that Mankind's only hope of survival is to somehow become warp entities.

To this end, they seek out... lots of things. Daemon princes, and lore regarding them; how they're made, and how they sustain themselves. Powerful psykers. Mutants and Chaos Spawn. The Legion of the Damned. Psychneuein. Mandrakes. Anything that might give them insight on how the flesh might be transformed by the warp, and survive.
And, of course, any knowledge of the Men of Gold. (They'd kidnap Oscar if they could. But they know they can't.)

Daemon Princedom is inadequate for their goals; they need a method that is not dependant on the favor of the gods, that can be reproduced at will. They haven't managed it. What they have managed are the twiceborn.

The twiceborn (from which the sect takes its name) are liminal existences, half of the materium and half of the warp. They can slip through the boundaries between the two nearly at will, and even- with great difficulty- remain suspended on the border, half in both. They are not daemons. They stay dead when killed. Their existence is one of perpetual flight, constantly switching between realms to avoid all the things that want to kill them in both.

To the Twiceborn Sect, these beings are part saint, part vivisection subject, and part commodity; the focus of their research and primary trade good. They sell these things to other warbands from their labs in the Eye, to support their roving fleets, dark mirrors of the Explorators, perpetually searching for knowledge and more test subjects.

Thoughts?

>>54093752
The writing is quite fine in and of itself. Not sure I like the implication that some loyalist chapters would buy geneseed from them; getting tainted geneseed from obviously evil hereteks is pretty high on the list of things that are so retarded they shouldn't even be considered.

Narratively, it seems to tread on Fabius Bile right? No need to invent an extra Dark Mechanicus sect, Mr Bile needs something to do in the down time between his experiments.

Speaking of evil biologists, what about Honsou? Does he get flipped to the loyalist side in this AU like a few other canon traitors like Kharn and Ahriman? Or is he still cooking up shit like the Daemonculaba in the Eye of Terror?

>>54129640
I like it. Best thing is you can imagine them coming to this conclusion via sensible reasoning.

>>54129640
>Narratively, it seems to tread on Fabius Bile right? No need to invent an extra Dark Mechanicus sect, Mr Bile needs something to do in the down time between his experiments.
Mr. Bile is plenty busy trying to somewhat-reverse engineer Men of Gold for Vect, using his own proprietary methods, and working for himself and Lucius on perfect transhuman immortality in his down time, and leading Vect's Haemonculus on whatever other projects his patron demands.

I think we have Honsou doing some horrible things elsewhere, the daemonacabula might have been one of his and Bile's early collaborations.

>>54129413
these guys would probably have a few extremist Magos, Inquisitors, and Farseers of the Illuminated order either aiding them and passing them off as benign hereteks. Even worse, a few might be in their pocket, trying to facilitate their access to Oscar.

>>54088496 seems kinda worthwhile again. We've set up a setting with a supposedly massive number and variety of weird horrors and secret orders within it. It makes sense that across the galaxy spanning theater there are several shady opperations brewing bootleg supersoldiers.

>>54129413
How do they feel about the Navigators?

>>54130826
Other way around. Bile spends most of his time making super-soldiers for Vect and making gene-seed for the Fallen. Reverse-engineering the Men of Gold is his personal project. I don't think any Crone Eldar or Dark Eldar would want the Men of Gold back.

The Daemonculaba was an Eldar thing this time around, created to boost the sagging growth rates of the Crones due to attrition and get around the long Eldar pregnancy times. So far we have no evidence that Bile was involved.

I also don't think we have any interaction between Lucius and Bile post-traitor yet. Bile is doing what he is doing and Lucius is doing his own thing, seeking the Blade of the Laer and getting C'tan vampirism among other things.

I would almost say make the Daemonculaba a Crone project to show that not everything fucked up in the galaxy is the result of Bile.

>>54133367
>Daemonculaba a Crone project

Presumably a post-fall invention that the Craftworlders were unaware of until some time after they came into the Imperium.

The Eldar supremacists wouldn't have kept in talking terms with the Dark Eldar if they knew the Dark Eldar were talking to Chaos Eldar if the Chaos Eldar were doing that, especially if they were using it to bolster their own failing numbers because that means that they would have to be using eldar women. And they would be preferring the purest of eldar women to get the most pure results so that means they would have been taking exodites as craftworlds are too well protected.

Dark Eldar would essentially have been damned by association and managing to be/do something that makes the Dark Eldar look worse for standing too close to you is truly an achievement.

>>54134294
Not sure how well the Dark Eldar and Crones got along before the wedding. The Dark Eldar see the Crones as a bunch of syncophants who are too brainwashed to realize they don't need gods, even if their leader is shagging the Queen Bitch of Chaos on the side. They like the Crones about as much as the Craftworlders and Exodites do, and Vect's on-again, off-again relationship with Malys made him a lot of enemies in Commorragh.

Of course, the Craftworlders and Exodites might just plain not care, seeing the Dark Eldar as pirates as best.

Bonus points if the Crones leave some kind of fleshcrafted changeling in the kipnapped's place to weaken the world at the worst opportunity, drawing upon the old changeling stories.

>>54134819
>Bonus points if the Crones leave some kind of fleshcrafted changeling in the kipnapped's place to weaken the world at the worst opportunity, drawing upon the old changeling stories.
I'd been thinking we needed to do something with the Tzeentchian changeling, Crones giving their own children mutagenic modifications and slipping them into Imperial world and Exodite Eldar populations. Most probably go full technicolor teleporting Eversor before they reach adulthood, and the few changelings that hold it together become some of the most unpredictable malignant actors in Imperial space.

One thing is that Crones, in the Shaa-Dome at least, seem to do decently to well maintaining a population the old fashion way. Just with high rates of childhood attrition from [Information purged for the benefit of readers], but even that is made up for by their enthusiasm at reproduction.

At very least they probably wouldn't be too picky about genetic stock for such a project, and the project itself would be more to the benefit of the Scions, Witch halls, and the Attendants. That is to say, the Slaaneshi Crones have enough of a breeding program as is that the Daemonculaba would probably be a project put together by some mix Arrotyr, Nimina, or the Crow's forces, and the Slaaneshies get to just watch, fap, and giggle at the competition.

>>54134819
>>54135335
So to pull this off they have to be abducting little girls, hormoneing them up to physical maturity at an accelerated rate and cutting out the parts of the brain responsible for psychic abilities as a precaution but keeping the rest intact because inflicting that sort of sustained and inhuman cruelty on a child is only fun if they can suffer.

And in their place maybe Mandrake children are placed. They were, pre-fall at least, the result of hot eldar on deamon action. If they typically kill and eat their parents upon maturation this would for them be the perfect deal.

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>>54135866
Doesn't even have to be little girls. It could be any Eldar female the Crones are able to get their hands on. Infiltrators work just as well when your loving wife turns out to have been replaced by an extradimensional horror and rips your face off.

The only issue would be detection. Eldar in canon have the technology to detect genestealers, so it's possible they would psychically notice their children/wives/sisters have been replaced by impostors. But then again this is the Cronedar. If anyone knows how to fool Eldar psychic senses, it's them.

I don't think we have a canon origin for the Mandrakes in this timeline. So far there have been three conflicting origins for them so far (inbred Warp-infused slave-pets of Isha-worshipping eldar nobility, eldar-on-daemon action, and something involving Vect having a personal connection to the mandrakes). So far the consensus was to keep their origins mysterious and in the "other" (i.e., not related to the Big Four Chaos Gods) category.

>>54135335
A higher reproduction rate never hurts when it comes to the Crone Eldar. They may outnumber their non Chaos-worshipping counterparts, but every extra body helps when you're up against the quadrillions of people in the Imperium, Necron Star Empire, or just the Orks in general (especially in recent years since their ability to influence the Orks is wavering). So while they have been able to keep their numbers stable through the pleasure cults, more is never a bad thing (for the Crones).

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>>54135335
Changeling may or may not be a double agent.

Ceggers brags that he once made it all the way through the Crystal Labyrinth and the Tzneetian deamon will attest that a small girl and a scruffy looking black dog did indeed once manage to get all the way to the Well of Eternity at the center despite all the cunning traps and riddles along the way.

It is always assumed that Ceggers was dressed up as a little girl because he is the sort of person who will do that sort of thing for a laugh.

But people always forget that there were two of them. Who was the dog? Was it Changeling? Was Changeling the little girls and Ceggers the dog just going along for the ride in heavy disguise?

Changeling doesn't know what it's true form is anymore and one of the things Tzneetch promises is that he will tell him what it is one day but whay ould a god need to do so? It could be that Changeling was not always of Tzneetch but was one of Cegger's creations back in the old days adopted by Big Bird after The Fall in exchange for protection from Slaanesh.

If that is the case then Tzneetch might also not know and is possibly going to use Changeling as a bargaining chip at some point with Slaanesh should there be an advantage to do so in which case it won't matter.

But if it is a deamon of Big Bird rather than Cegger it would explain why it knew the way through the maze, but not why it was helping the Cosmic Jester. Unless it's playing the long game, throwing it's lot in with the King of Clowns because it hates it's master and finding a new patron in the same way that other deamons serve the Soul Forge.

Are the Mandraks connected to Changeling? Who can say.

One thing and one thing only for certain, Tzneetch was not happy that something saw what was at the heart of his maze. Not happy at all.

>>54138254
The way you describe it the changeling and the Indigo Crow seem pretty similar. It's interesting that the Indigo Crow has an somewhat clear identity and MO but doesn't know it's overarching plan, the Changeling has what looks like a long term plan and MO, but no clear original identity, only hints.

It's already been said that the Crow is so mad it needs to read it's own mind to know what it's up to. It might be that when the changeling knows the changeling's plan to usurp the Big Bird it is by necessity not the Indigo Crow, Tzeentch's greatest asset. The Indigo Crow's nature is to not truly know what he's meddling with, but to serve Tzeentch's will regardless, so he only knows his plan when he doesn't know he's the Indigo Crow.

Maybe.
Possibly.
Maybe not though.

>>54139005
It seems that they can know what they are doing or why they do it but have trouble keeping both in mind at the same time.

>>54139005

Well. That certainly sounded Tzeentchian. Now I have a headache.

>>54133367
>I don't think any Crone Eldar or Dark Eldar would want the Men of Gold back.

Not unless it was on their terms. One of the possible outcomes of The Raid was that Oscar would get lost in the Realm of Chaos and Indigo Crow would jump up and yell "meant for that to happen".

>>54141174
In this AU Vect has been a big name since before the fall, and prominently appears in the raid on the Cthonian ring, working with unnamed Crones before Malys rose to prominence post war of the beast. Hiring Bile, whose hobby is also the study and recreation of Men of Gold, is probably not a coincidence. There might even be in universe conspiracy theories that Vect augmented Malys with his stolen Man of Gold secrets, and that explains what happened to the literally who? Crone captain he had with him for the raid. Malys' own fixation with the corrupted starchild version of the prophecy, involving the included horrid acts upon Oscar, might play into this.

The ruinous powers all like to say they had Men of Gold in their arsenals during the age of strife, and none of them can show any proof, undivided might tell similar tall tales about Malys or Bel'akor. Old Eldar Empire view of Humanity was one that gladly played up the nature of common humanity as Men of Stone; creatures halfway between ape and automaton, rebuilt to be suitable colonists and peasants only, and existing at the pleasure of the Men of Iron to be toyed with in the same manner they would intend for a human in their possession. They would only recognize the similarly immortal, super-savant and obsessively specialized Men of Iron as the "citizens" of the Vast and Bountiful Terran Empire, and assigned as much worth to that citizenship as Romans appraised barbarian tiles of honor and right. Around the start of the Fall they become xenophilic enough to start acknowledging the Iron Minds as civilized, but they still see Men of Stone as a sort of squishy bracewell probe that you can rape. After the Fall and into the early Age of Strife some of the worse natured Iron Minds fall in with the Crones, but all eventually seem to die of degradation to their realspace computer-minds, the longest lived of them kept going for a time by the earliest ancestors of certain Dark Mechanicus sects.

It occurs to me we haven't talked about Orks in a while. Do we have anything on them besides Ghazghkull?

>>54143987
read the attack moons lecture and report back on the state of Orkdom in cosmos incognita

>>54143987
Not really. We have Attack Moons and Wazdakka, but every time we try to talk orks it ends up being about whether Gork or Mork is best...I mean Brain Boyz.

>>54145343
Who are we to call the duality and dichotomy that encapsulates the Orkish condition and transfixes the Orkish mind arbitrary, simplistic, or otherwise undeveloped, for Eldar and Human are too transfixed by dichotomy, and these are likewise befitting Eldar and Human character. The Seer-sorcerer and Crone-cenobite in all permutations are as pervasive euphemisms and archetypes in the Eldar sphere, just as the Emperor and Tyrant pervade the Human sphere.

t. that Eldar philosopher that is consistently wrong on purpose

Aun'va, on the corporation of the T'au into the Imperium after the T'au Great Schism.

---

Tell me, Oscar... Do you know what it feels like to see everything you have stroved so hard for fall apart around you? Do you know what it feels like to see your ideals, your dreams, your legacy, slowly corrupted, twisted into a mockery of itself, into the very things you have fought agaisnt in the first place? Do you know what it feels like, to see all of that, and couldn't do anything about it?

I have.

I have seen Empires rose and fell. Flickers of light amidst the darkness, blinking out as pools of blood flowed freely into oceans, corpses pilling up into mountains as T'au devolved to Beasts and Brigands and tore at each other' throats. Fathers versus sons, kinsman versus kinsman, brother versus brother. All for base, material, selfish gains, as fleeting as [mayflies]. A Stagnant society, where all gains are losts in and by themselves.

Great T'au, Philosophers, Emperors, Generals, Disciples.

My Disciples. I have seen them rose, and spread my ideals of Peace, of Unity far and wide to all of T'au kind and beyond. The Greater Good. I've seen a People United, a Nation birthed from the Ash and Blood of the [Age of Strife.]

Then I went away. My children must learn by themselves, or they would never truly mature. Lo, and behold, what they did. I have seen them fell, to the very base decadence I've warned them about. That I've failed to warn them about. Greed, Lust, Wroth, Envy, Gluttony, Sloth and Pride. The [Seven Deadly Sins]. Progress gave way to Stubborn, Pride to Humble and Complacence took place of Vigilance. Lust for Power, and Greed for Control grew, inseperable, indestructible, the Greater Good became a mere tool for the mad scramble for power of mad T'au. We are no longer whole.

>>54146340 (cont)

Tell me, Oscar. Have you bleed? Have your ever bleed from very the blade of your own children, now turned to Dark Paths? You haven't, and that's something I'm glad for, Oscar. You will never be the same after that. Never. Where the flame of passion once drove my soul, now the burnt out tinders of an old T'au. Where kindness once filled my heart, now the bitterness of my own failure. I am dead, Oscar, and not.

I've seen your Imperium, Oscar, and what it represents. My own shattered dreams, tarred ideals, now given a living, breathing form. Countless races and species, arms linked in unison to stand defiantly agaisnt the darkness...

It wasn't perfect, nothing ever is, but it is as beautiful as I've once dreamt of. And dreaming of.

You have succeeded where I've failed, Oscar. And now you came, after countless times refused, not to rub salt in our wounds but to again give us the gateway to that dream?

I will pledge my eternal fealty to you on one, and one condition only, Oscar.

Don't let it all fall down, just like mine.

---

Needs refining. English not primary language, nor is I very good in writing.

Basically, the Aun'va is almost like the canon Emperor, just maybe less... Golden and Godly, while the Greater Schism is quite a lot like their own Horus Heresy here, with Horus as Farsight.

>>54146397
Bar slightly messing up past and present tense slightly it is very good.

It would, in universe, work best as a written letter to Emperor rather than the recording of a conversation as Oscar could very well tell him of all the shit that he has seen from WoTB, Black Crusades, the Civil War and innumerable other horrors.

It also plays into the possibility that Aun'Va is unnaturally old and possibly one of the original disciplines of Aun’O Da.

>>54146554

I was playing on the fact that Aun'va IS Aun'O Da, who had tried to take the backseat for a while just to see everything falls to ****. The Disciples some maybe his children, some not.

>>54146660

He's unnaturally old. Nobody knows how. Maybe he isn't actually a Tau, but some ancient (maybe from before the Age of Strife) that had taken a liking to the Tau. Maybe it is the worship of the Greater Good that funneled into Aun'O Da, empowering him enough to stay alive - however deaf the Tau were to the Warp.

In any case, only him, the Emperor, Isha and Eldrad know of the truth, and they aren't talking.

>>54146397
this made me try to imagine what it would be like from the tau perspective to interact with the imperium pre-incorporation, Oscar and the traveling court in particular. He probably would have at least been on hand at Ultramar for each of the Tau's great disasters, unless other matters were pressing, like the larger disasters the tau were swept up in. I guess I wonder what he and Isha's position in tau history would be, because Oscar at least would definitely have had a personal diplomatic presence.

Despite a pretty placid and scholarly personal character, we've written Oscar to also be the sort of leader that habitually drags the body politic behind him, like a cross between Alexander the Great and Louis the 14th. By the time the Tau are doing much of anything he's already a multi-millennia old statesman and de facto emperor of a good portion of the galaxy, and could, just as an example, turn every psyker in the orion spur (excluding his wife) into mind controlled puppet, if he really put some thought into it.

Have we had any writing from any perspective involving official meetings with Oscar? Most of it would probably be from unification wars and great crusade, but once the Imperial government has been solidified for even a few thousand years the sheer gravitas and inevitable grandeur of a meeting with the Steward would be mind boggling. Being some Administratum appointed governor from some minor world in segmentum Literally Where?, let alone a Tau diplomat, or Tarellian negotiator before them, and traveling to Old Earth for an appointment with the Steward for whatever cause, good or ill, would be possibly as terrifying as going to meet a chaos god, in their domain, except Oscar's domain is all more or less solid and demonstrable. No matter how reserved and scholarly, the one Man of Gold whose whereabouts are known is opposing hyperspace Satan through book-learnin more than by psychic might, and can afford a velvet glove for his iron fist.

>>54147215
There was one thing written about a psyker going in for a Soul Binding. Emperor seemed pretty chill and tried to put the applicants mind at ease for the process.

Most Tau would assume that the title is passed on from one man to another because there is no way that it's been the same man dealing with them for their entire history. Helps that to the Tau a lot of humans are hard to tell apart and Emperor is about the size of a large Space Marine.

The High Ups in the Tau Empire and the Ethereal Council would know what's up but not the true extent of it. They know that humans can live for a thousand years at the upper limit and elder can live far longer. The Tau brass also begrudgingly admit that psychic powers are a thing if only because they can't publically deny it any more so some of the Emperor's weirdness can be accounted for.

In much the same way that they used to disbelieve (and still do to an extent) the size of the Imperium until their own people tried to travel to the other side of it they disbelieve the nature of the Emperor. They accept that he might be a highly modified human or eldar with some magic tricks. They do not believe that he is an artificial godlike creature made by men at the apex of their civilization and several times older than their entire notion of civilization. And they REALLY don't believe anything they hear about his wife, that's obviously just notorious eldar bullshit.

But despite all of that they are still put in more mundane awe when ever the Traveling Court swings round that part of the galaxy as it on it's own is comparable to a fair portion of their entire combined military.

>>54146769
OR they are as mystified as everyone else, not least of all Aun'Va.

Has there ever been anything more said about the Hunter eldar?

>>54150959
No.

>>54146660
I don't see how it could be his fault, it worked well up until the universe took a load of enormous dumps on them.

Have the Tau banned A.I.?

>>54152686

The smarter, more vulnerable ones, yes.

The dumber ones are just smarter servitors. As susceptible as a servo skull to Chaos is aka if you etch a mark on it, etc. But mostly fine.

>>54152719
Does the Imperium still have servo skulls? Those're weird.

>>54152686
You know how the Great Schism, aka the Farsight Schism, is equivalent to the Horus Heresy for the Tau? AI was the Erebus/Lorgar of that situation.

I like to think Farsight's enclave has decided that on top of being T'au neo-classicists that romanticize the faults of the Greater Good system to the point of a kallipolis-esque legalist cult, they're also contrarians about AI. Farsight and the sycophantic Ethereals that have latched onto him probably refuse to concur with the Imperium and Mechanicus' conclusions about AI, and view the main Tau empire learning from the lessons of the AI rebellion as a sign of Mechanicus hegemony. They'd argue that machine intelligence is as fundamental to the Greater Good as intense cultural insularity between castes, Ethereals playing matchmaker with pheromone modulation, and the lack of megastructures throughout the galaxy visible from T'au proving the Imperium's historical records false.

>>54153007
They don't use bare skulls like canon. Instead you get an art-deco bust in likeness to the original human, with a partially servitorized brain and bits of skull inside, either floating or ambulating on its mechadendrites, maybe even with a biologicus or cybernetica made voice box instead of a scroll inscriber.

They aren't servitors so much as the Administratum equivalent of a dreadnaught, used to preserve certain savants and archivists that need preserving. Their collective demeanor is a mix of medieval catholic reliquary, Culture Drone, and the heads in jars from Futurama. If you're important in the Administratum or Inquisition you probably have a couple servo skulls floating around like gilded, stately cherubim. At some level they could be thought of as lesser daemons of Oscar, inasmuch as they are his motif in miniature, robotic immortal scriveners that dot the I's and cross the T's on the paperwork that runs the galaxy.

>>54153259
How much of the person remains because that has the potential to get real fucking grim real fucking fast.

>>54154039
An ededic memory for their archived works, but otherwise much like a scribe with alshimers.

>>54146769
I would say keep Da and Aun'Va just normal (relatively so in the case of the latter) Tau. Making them warp entities kind of defeats the theme of the Tau having unified themselves through hard work, blood, sweat, and tears and veers into the "universe taking too much of a dump on the Tau" again.

Also, having Aun'Va and Da be the same person kind of fits in the same problem of overly streamlining mentioned in >>54088496. We already have a dearth of Tau characters.

>>54152686
After the A.I. rebellion the Tau got rid of their hyper-advanced supercomputer A.I., primarily because those A.I. were trying to shoot them. A few of the less advanced but sapient A.I. sided with the Tau, just as what happened with humanity, but these A.I. are still around in the present day.

The drones and less advanced A.I. are still around in force. The Tau know along with plasma it's one of the areas they excel in and the question now is how far you can go with drones before you hit full Skynet.

I wonder if the Tau suspect there was something suspicious going on with their A.I. rebellion. The Tau are rationalists. They know that despite the irrational fear of A.I. by many humans, neither Tau nor human A.I. went full Skynet the moment they were turned on. There was nothing intrinsic about A.I. that would make them behave that way. So there must be some other factor at play. It's might be not so much the Tau have scrapped A.I. and become Luddites as they don't want to build a super-AI again until they know what happened and how to prevent it from happening again.

>>54153081
Or they'd say that the A.I. rebellion was the Imperium's fault to keep the Tau down. Ever read the Halo/Mass Effect crossover The Last Spartan? The range of human attitudes in that is exactly the kind of attitude you can see the Tau having here.

Either that or they've added some obvious rule patch where "a machine may never rule Tau". One of Farsight's elite warriors is an engram after all.

>>54153259
I think it was mentioned that the Mechanicus' personal servo-skulls tend to be as in canon because despite the more noble ethos of the universe the Mechanicus want to be as orthodox as possible and rebuff any efforts to change. They're still one of the "blotches of grimdark on the overall nobledark fabric" despite the fact that the AdMech are a little nicer in this timeline (there are as many decent tech-priests as fanatics) and have a reasoning behind some of their dickishness this time around. It doesn't justify all of their behavior and there is some corruption but they are at least a little more sympathetic.

>>54155244
This raises the question of how much the Tau know about Chaos and how much they share with the common plebs.

It was mentioned that Kais got into some trouble when he dumped his helmet-cams memory onto the T'au equivalent of the Internet to show the public that their strong suspicions were correct, there were deamons and things that go bump in the night. More importantly he showed them that they could be beaten.

>>54156696
Kais would do that, and the Tau government would mostly do their best to reassure everyone about the AIs and distance themselves from it, and essentially just point to whatever imperial resources are available without really helping them get disseminated. The Tau Warp skim themselves, and would insist daemons are just odd hyperspatial aliens that live in hyperspace. They would insist their more or less empirical interpretation of the Imperian was more correct and accurate in describing the wrap's nature than the Imperium's eerie, millennia old, super-science incorporating psychic occultism, and chalk up tales of horrors of the warp to more mundane spacetime anomalies caused by the Imperium's ancient, inefficient, incomprehensible Warp drives, which the Tau still are at a loss to account for the superiority of. They essentially fly entire fleets through Be'lakor's domain on the regular, and if the old fucker has noticed he certainly hasn't shown any sign of giving much of a damn, so the Tau are yet to realize even their save, kiddie pool dips in the warp take them through pandemonium's desolate outskirts.

>>54156696
Probably just as much as the average Imperial citizen, given that the Ethereals aren't as Big Brother-y in this timeline.

Kais may not have gotten in trouble for showing that daemons exist, but for showing particular daemons exist and the paraphernalia surrounding their summoning. Much like how governments don't like it when TV shows and books show how a nuke works or how to perform a crime. Or there's the fear that a vid image of a daemon could prove dangerous Weeping Angel style.

>>54158218
>Or there's the fear that a vid image of a daemon could prove dangerous Weeping Angel style.
this one is really only a problem for people so deep in sorcery that there's really no helping them, but if you can shapeshift DO NOT take on the form of the Indigo Crow, his form is his function is his thoughts, and you just straight up become the Indigo Crow, and he might by some strange law of transposition briefly become you, with all your thoughts and soul, etc.

The act of the Indigo Crow shapeshifting makes it the Changeling, and since the Indigo Crow is you at this point, and you are the Indigo Crow, shapeshifted, and so also the Changeling, the changeling briefly exists at two places at once. Because one of the Changelings is the Indigo Crow is cannot be the Changeling, and the whole superimposition of contradictory states collapses into one thing that is the Indigo Crow and something else that has forgotten itself from the universe, form soon transforming into nothing to fit their forgotten identity.

More than a few cheeky Daemon Breakers and ambitious Crones have winked out of existence in this manner, and its not clear if the Crow knows about this phenomenon.

>>54158565
>something else that has forgotten itself from the universe, form soon transforming into nothing to fit their forgotten identity.
...huh. If the Outsider learned of this, would it try to turn into the Indigo Crow in order to erase itself?

>>54155244

Maybe Da became Warp entity after his death? Kinda like a ghost formed by the worship of the GG, now latching onto Va in a symbiosys. Kinda like Valten isn't Sigma so much as Sigma reborn, with certain traits inherited but not all?

>>54159396
nope, that would require acknowledging itself, and having the warp-sorcery power of transformation, which it could only achieve through breaking its paradox loop, so can't be a step in breaking its paradox loop. The Outsider already exists as a self referential uncertainty that reinforces itself by erasing itself, so accepting itself enough to admit it has to expand its knowledge and power to the point where it can erase itself is already too much for it and requires it take on a metaphysical state contingent on itself already being reached. Essentially, there is no number of Tzeentchian paradoxical answers that can solve a Malalic paradox, and vice versa.

>>54158565
Aren't the Crow and Changeling thematic opposites? One with a stable form, but an unstable mind, and the other an unstable form, but a clear mind and goals. Plus one is "loyal" to Tzeentch while the other is shanghaid into doing Tzeentch's bidding because Big Blue Bird is holding his true name and form hostage.

>>54159833
Whatever is keeping Va alive, I think it is something that can be isolated in a way. It was mentioned Va is discreetly keeping Shadowsun alive and healthier than even Tau rejuvenants would allow because the Tau need heroes, and passing it off as "well I guess that's what rejuvenants + stasis does to a Tau".

Basically, if you add up every second Shadowsun is out of stasis the number comes out too high, even with rejuvenants, but no one is obsessed with minutia enough to do so.

>>54159848
Would make sense given how Malal and Yzneetxh were each created from what the other was not.

>>54162837
both are masters of all, Tzeentch is realization infinite possibility and Malal is everything that doesn't exist, an endless chalice that runneth over into a bottomless well, an eternal spring that fills an endless thirst.

Nurgle was meant to cultivate, refine, and maintain in the space between them, the all-loving all-laughing groundskeeper of the mind. Up until the beginning of the War in Heaven this was for the realm of souls a paradise of psychic accord, milder and more fecund with wonder than even the primordial millennia of raw, unmitigated sorcery with only the Old Ones like Bel'akor and his ascended order, Tzeentch, and Malal.

The Old Ones then proceeded to get in a fight with the only other Power in the galaxy, the Necrontyr and the Boltzman brain patrons they'd just finished downloading into living femto-mechanical fractals supercomputers they called bodies. This ruined everything, in realspace and the warp, and started the cascading applied psionics/applied physics arms race that created the warp as the galaxy knows it. With Bel'akor quite possibly at the head of the project, a weaponized God-concept was conceived of and synthesized. Part of this process was the uplift and weaponization of powerfully psychic primitives to fuel the new god, as well as fight the Old Ones' wars, first the Eldar, then the Orks. The horrific excesses of the War in Heaven, killings, pillages, and ruinations perpetrated by both sides, were in part engineered by the Old Ones, themselves too now bloody handed in spirit, to birth Khorne. Said to be of the same godly flesh as the two giants that sprung forth upon the opening of the first Orkish mind and to bleed the same molten iron as the specter of murder that had risen among the thoughts of the early Eldar, the red god turned the tide in the Old Ones favor for a time. It has been forwarded that the Maelstrom, like the much younger Eye of Terror, is what remains of the wounds of Khorne's birth.

>>54163657
Khorne was the Old Ones scourge. Legions of brass, horn, and bloody red flesh marched from the Maelstrom across a quarter of the Necrontyr worlds. He was not then always the monolithic, armored thing of visions, Khrone was a manifold horror. All once he was in the fire of Orkish artillery swinging his ax down upon a Cryptek, and a flaming bolt running down voidships even as they fled by inertialess drive, and in the heart of the Necron Empire slaying at a whim, and in hateful battle with The Outsider and Dragon flickering from the hearts of stars to warp and out again as each side shifted to preferable footing. It was in this time the Skull Throne was made, out of Khorne's horrid thoughts and plans and deeds no less than the trophies he took, and even still it grows ever more wretched. In this first glorious campaign Khorne utterly triumphant. Though the reverberations of their war god's birth were so bad as to disrupt even the Old Ones' usual psychic infrastructure, it was not thought such an impediment to the war effort as to interrupt key opperations. Khorne's warpath had exploded from the warp into the galactic north, and the offensive had been supported from a buffer of Brainboy, and ultimately Old One, controlled Ork whagghs advancing after the Blood God, and yet more armadas of Eldar vassals and thralls attacking from the galactic west.

This set the apparent course of the War in Heaven, but the mechanisms of that same cursed birth were taken up by the Nightbringer, and put to dreadful use as the shadow of fatalism fell across the galaxy. The Deceiver was among the Old Ones in secret as often as it danced with the now gleaming aristocracy of the Necrons. The Dragon and its Necron assistants gloried in making each other yet more mighty with every new particle invented, and The Outsider, robot of infinite function, moved stars and wrought stark fortresses vaster still at the other star gods' bidding, and the Necrontyr aristocracy's whim.

>>54164268
The Maelstrom's ill effects were persistent and vastly more potent than expected, and while the Old Ones still easily traversed their empire their vassals and auxiliaries could no longer be counted on. Reports came of Necrons in synthetic Ork flesh were hunting Brainboyz deep behind the front, and more disturbing reports came of bleak megastructures transfixing the bounds of reality to the Necrons prefered physical laws. The Gorkamorka, giants from the minds of the little goblins of a curious fungal world, had blossomed unseen, and were in check only because they had so many kunning, brutal goblins to give bright ideas. The Eldar fiddled obsessively and grew anxious, and asked too many displeasing questions, and the gods of sorcery were no better, growing ever more dark and neurotic in their ways.

The tumult in the warp brought by Khorne's ever wrathful subsidiaries, the wanton realspace destruction of incalculable scale, the putrefaction of the Old Ones' spirits, the proliferation of Gods of Death, all first perturbed, then terrified, then broke Nurgle. The preserver shook off the yoke of the Old Ones, and sook to make them again what they were in its youth, and vowed to cherish all and relinquish nothing to the void. The Changer of Ways and The Final Word had likewise been tainted by the ends the Old Ones had set them to, and yet more woe came of this. Warlock Malal had been turned loose to obliterate idea and concept and soul as an annihilating storm, and sank into a malaise of nihilism and self loathing spite, and Wizard Tzeentch's vast creative faculties had been attuned to the sole work of plotting the Old Ones' campaigns of ambition and intrigue, and settling their grudges with the Star Gods. Around this period Bel'akor vanished from the Old Ones' councils and their campaigns, but his kin were hardly so perceptive as the proud first of their most exalted cabal.

>>54164383
That would explain why Be'Lakor is so pissed all the time. He is the last Old One undefiled with strange tech and, he would claim, the first true godly being whose title as the greatest thing ever was usurped by upstart warp creatures.

His long term goal; return to being the overgod of Chaos.

>>54139677
Quantum all knowing idiots.

>>54056053
How should Dorn react to psykers and xenos?

>>54166882
Suspicious of both from the start but not without reason and not to the point it becomes unprofessional. He did have psychics in his army from early on but not usually in front line positions because he was convinced they would become possessed under too much pressure. Imperial Fists only getting Librarians after 1st Black Crusade.

As for xenos he didn't trust anyone he didn't know. This extended to the other Primarchs and Oscar originally. They earned his trust in time same as the Eldar, though he always considered them unpleasantly weird.

>>54164383
Following Khorne's first youthful bout with the galaxy, the tide of the began to swing the other direction. Though the Blood God's maiden slaughter was a terrible blow to the Necrons and those few frail Necrontyr that remained, and carved a livid path of hell longer and vaster than the Orion Spur deep into the Star Empire, it was not conclusive. Neither the Old Ones' mystic ministrations or the harsh sutures that were early Necron Reality Pins could hope to tend the cosmic wound, and even after the offensive's conclusion the Maelstrom beld freshly wrought Khornate forces into the galaxy. Still, the Star Gods and their Princes of Matter were industrious and swift thinking, and Khorne's slaying of the last of the Frail as the Necrons' bunker worlds and starshades where being studded with their newly devised soul stripping defenses did naught but hasten the Necrons' preparation for true war, and heighten their calculating fury. While his new-made princes and daemon captains dredged up hell and tried ever to spill it across the Materium with flagging success, Khorne's mind turned to the other, clearly lesser gods, and his own glory.

Though Bel'akor had absconded to parts unknown the first ascendant psyker's disciples, princes of power in their own right, still strove to direct the course of the war. While the cultivated standing Whaggghs and their Brainboyz remained a buffer between the Old Ones' Dominion and the Star Empire's forces, it grew clear that what had once been an opposing force to the Necrons was now appearing a poorly devised league of Orkish rabble. The poaching and theft of innumerable Brainboyz reverberated through the massive storm of reality-bending Ork thought, and those that survived Necron cullings were ever more imposing creatures, ever sharper, and ever more formidable psykers. The Gorkamorka grew more ferocious and uncontrollable, and the Whaggh itself was studied, modified, and synthesized in the next generation of Pylons.

>>54168813
Khorne was beseeched and commanded by the Old Ones to collar the Gorkamorka and lead it into battle in the galactic north. The Old Ones promised easy sport, and Khorne set upon them in view of all the gods, the Lords of Sorcery, the Solution to Entropy, the court of petty Eldar Personas, the Creeping thing not fully seen, and all the lesser, natural Daemons, even the shadow of death and the specter of doubt and the beastly question, and their pale waxing ilk. There was no easy sport to be had. Should Khorne bring Gork low and fix him in the chains of arcana the Old Ones gave him, Mork would come from behind and rend him down, and tear his brother free. Turning on Mork, Khorne might hew off a colossal arm or foot, but no sooner would he than Gork take him by the godly throat and wring him of godly breath. The wrestling and raucous butchery of giants rocked the galaxy, and when Khorne could not bind the Gorkamorka apart as the Old Ones had asked, he strove to bind them together in the magical chain. When finally the Blood God turned to the assembled Powers of the Immaterium in triumph, scarred and battered, and bid them see that he was might incarnate the bound Gorkamorka resumed its brotherly fighting, and in the first blows against each other shredded their magical bondage and clashed and thundered away into the deeps of un-reality. Thence forth the Heaven of War the Old Ones made came to unravel. Khorne's wroth became yet darker and more bitter, his pretensions to supremacy over all foes and all things became his sole mission. Brainboyz were hunted openly by Khorne's captains, and he gloried in their skulls as gladly as he did to hold the gleaming head of a Phaeron. The buffer Wagggs mobilized in all directions as their brutally kunning bosses were each in turn enlightened by their giant patrons, and the attack worlds and kinetic kill roks that would drift deep space ever after as the mightiest of space hulks lit their innumerable engines.

>>54169558
Gears turned in Tzeentch's wretched mind, and it moved to shift the way of things yet further. As Nurgle fattened the warp with accumulated creations and Malal ran roughshod over mundane existence the Bird saw a chance to establish a new order, where it's sorcery was unchecked and paramount, and its eternal rival's magic was sequestered, tapped, or dearly sold into the portfolios of other Powers. It took little coaxing to turn Khorne's fearsome wrath upon Malal, but the vision of the subjugation of all three gods of Sorcery for all time was quick to kindle in the Blood God's mind, and burned there eternally. For its own part, Malal seemed glad to give Khorne the Un-throne and the winding pit that lead to the end of all things, glad to be rid of them and knowing they would bring the Blood God only trouble.

Whether Malal fell on his sword of nothingness, or bent and swore in fealty to Khorne, or simply vanished on the spot, or wandered down the abyss into non-existence like so many things he had sent before him, is a matter of scholarly argument. The Not-king of Never-was ceased to be, and Malal the vassal, Sorceror of Annihilation, began to exist. His domain was divided up, Khorne taking Destruction, Nurgle claiming and meddling with Entropy, and Tzeentch had his bounty of Paradox and Dissolution now to compliment his wealth of Solution and Causality. Tzeentch at this time held his wand of wonders and Malal's sword of nothingness, and Sorcery itself was his, an infinite fountain now without the ever deepening well. Malal's sorcery lived borrowed life, or sprung from the bleak pinprick of oblivion it retained, but Tzeentch's power grew undisputed, quickly surpassing the Old Ones' combined might, and only bolstered by the backlogs of creations Nurgle could provide. This duo's attentions fell upon the venerable reptiles even as they continued to conduct the War in Heaven on a backwards footing, and the Old Ones found their magic ever more costly.

>>54170145
For his own part Khorne was also pleased with this new order. The Un-throne was remade into yet more of his vicious domain, and while the war went poorly for his one time masters, the War God's fortunes in the conflict were understandably lush. Necron pylons laid down a path into the Old Ones' domain, Star Gods and rueful Phaerons tore into their palatial monasteries, and where Khorne's daemons were summoned all were slain save the mightiest Necrontyr and Sload. The Old Ones trembled, died by their implacable, morbid foe's dread radiance, by the brassy axe of their greatest weapon of hate and arrogance, and died as they sold themselves with debt to the mad lord of witches or passed into the realm of the preserver, and died begging to deaf ears when Bel'akor was found in desperation secreted away in the formless wastes. The Eldar cowered in the galactic west and tunneled into the foam between real and warp to hide in the protection of their god-constructs, the last great marchers of the Brainboyz died on the warpath across the galactic north and east as daemons, ol' masterz and the ded'hard flash-boyz hunted them from all sides. Strife amongst the Star Gods and the Princes of Matter and Energy was all that stopped the sealing of the warp over all of the Star Empire, and their short, cataclysmic civil war was the last word in the War in Heaven. Whatever Old Ones and C'tan survived the orders the Silent King had given to the Outsider were brought low in chains and executed by Khorne. With The Nightbringer disarmed by the lucky triumph of Khine and entombed by the little quiet king, and the Gorkamorka apparently reduced to aimless brawling in grief for their slain boyz as the Orks seemed to languish without their captains, Khorne deemed himself mightiest, and did not wait for the assent of the gods that remained.

>>54170730
As the Domain of the Old Ones was erased from the milky way and the Necrons went down into their sepulchers, Khorne was crowned by his vizier Malal, and named BLOOD KING and first commander OF THE GALAXY, a title of his own invention.

>>54170777
This needs to be put on the 1d4chan..

It really, really needs to be added.

>>54170777
>>54170730
A question.

Did Be'lakor have his own ragged court out there in the Wastelaned?

>>54172917
In this story he seems to dessert the other Old Ones while the getting is good and turns away the ones that find him when things go to shit, if not outright killing them to preserve the secrecy of his escape. In essence, no, he decided it wasn't worth the effort to save his kin, and blames the chaos gods for this.

Is Skarbrand still a thing in this AU?

Malal seems to be embodying the mindless all-destroyer thing which was the space occupied by Skarbrand.

On the other hand Skarbrand could be one of Malals last deamons that still hold true o him rather than Khorne directly.

Not that this is the same as obeys Malal. He still tries to kill him on sight, but that's because he's meant to rather than Vanilla where Khorne beat him till he got brain damage.

>>54174757
Write it up and so it shall be. Unless you write out your ass, in which case, no, but give it a shot.

>>54174757
I see no reason why he wouldn't be.

>>54174757
Didn't Skarbrand become a mindless all-destroyer after Khorne strangled him so hard he got brain damage?

Although, it could be in this timeline it was Malal rather than Tzeentch who tried to trick Skarbrand into killing Khorne in an attempt to free Malal from the BLOOD DICK OF THE GALAXY's control.

>>54172917
He has a court, just not of Old Ones. Be'lakor has a court of various Warp entities, most of which were independent beings (i.e., not fragments of the Big Four like daemons) who signed up with Be'lakor because the choice was either that or extermination by the Big Four. So he doesn't have the numbers or cohesion that the Big Four and their favored mortal servants can call on, but his followers are a lot stable and a lot more diverse.

Be'lakor resents the Chaos Gods for the created upstaging their creators, but in truth he was always kind of a dick, as indicated by how he uses his font of forgotten lore to torment people instead of making the galaxy a better place (and, to put a cherry on top, completely fails to see the parallels between him yanking mortals' chains and the Chaos Gods yanking his). Any reasoning is rationalization of his dick behavior on his part.

>>54168345
>They earned his trust in time same as the Eldar, though he always considered them unpleasantly weird.
Which he probably said to their face, because this is Rogal "blunt as a boulder" Dorn, after all.

Also thread needs archiving if anyone has time.

>>54178284

Already archived.

>>54178284
Makes you wonder what he thought of Oscar's marriage, or his new wife.

I imagine that in all seriousness he would have offered his condolences which would have baffled or amused the eldar and exasperated Oscar.

>>54181523
>offered his condolences
to Oscar or to Isha?

>>54182208
Both most probably.

Oscar because he now has to put up with not only a foreign wife but also a xeno one and one powerful in her own right, whereas Dorn was in the Malcador camp of gender roles. It also meant that he would have xeno in-laws.

He would have offered his condolences to Isha based on the Oscar being essentially a well designed robot who was weird.

But on the positive side they were both psychics and Dorn was very much in favour of psychic apartheid for some actually sensible safety reasons.

Orkimedes a brain boy?

>>54185187
No. Just a really clever Mek currently in the service of Gazzy.

Brain Boyz are way smaller and make up for their lack of Brutal with extra heaps of Kunnin'.

>>54185648
No, they's the biggest, with Whaggg for blood, and they's the greenest too

>>54185648
Neva been agreed pon wot da Brain Boyz look like. Both Makari and Gazzy been suggested to be Brain Boyz. If dey's all grot-like then unorky sorts would've figgured out wether or not Makari's a Brain Boy in da first place.

>>54187862
It could be that they are not single organisms. Much as Gork and Mork are Kunninly Brutal and Brutaly Kunnin' so maybe it is with the Brain Boyz as a reflection of this.

Gazzy and Makari between them make up 1 complete Brain Boy. One half made of cunning brutality and the other half made of brutal cunning. If separated they would both be diminished.

>>54188329
makes sense, very intuitive with an understanding of Orks from outside of the setting, but not really at all from within. For all their wit and wisdom, the Imperium is still an empire, and one that sees itself as synonymous with capital 'C' Civilization. What they know of Orks leads them to conclude that Gork and Mork are analogous to competing warbosses, interchangeable and archetypal, and thats when the scholars even grasp the Gorkamorka as something other than a unitary entity. The Imperium thinks that because its a corruption of Low Gothic they can parse Orkish just fine, and don't grasp the true difference between brutal kunning and kunning brutality.
They wouldn't ever guess that the Gorkamorka actually describes a burly Grot and a sneaky Ork, or that there's something to the Gorkamorka's nature beyond the (non)duality of Orkish thought, like the proverbial Duality of Man.

Essentially, the Imperium and other Civilized Powers are certain that Brainboyz would be either clever little goblins or ingenious Warbosses, and would never investigate the nuances of Orkish oral history, or even Eldar legends of Brainboyz, seriously enough to note that they are always plural, even in singular leadership positions. An imperial schollar reading an Orkish declaration that "Da Warboss Back Den Waz Da Brainboyz" and chalk it up to bad grammar and the indelicacy of Orkish language, not an accurate statement as to the nature of their leadership.

Also, I propose the next thread's theme be the spread of High and Low Gothic, the Influence of Eldar language, and local dialects, as well as Imperial currency, the Arbites that will pound your ass for defrauding Imperial legal tender, and the regulations they use to do it. Someone earlier in the thread talked about how the Imperium fights Chaos and other horrors with the printing press, the judge's stand, by the elevation of the common mind, etc, even more so than by sword and bolter.

>>54189437
the Emperor intends to defeat chaos by reforming the galaxy's age old powers and treating its many psychosis, and will proceed with this plan of "treating" chaos like the maladjusted, antisocial behavioral pattern it is. That includes putting entire worlds on antipsychotics, and carving up their culture until it suits the rest of the galaxy's inhabitants, or ending the whole affair if it proves too toxic to fix. The bolters and swords are just the material conclusion of this thought, and if he judges it necessary the Steward will make your world a part of history and nothing else, like he did to Ursh.

>>54189437
Are we going to have a universal, at least for the aristocracy, currency for the Imperium?

>>54190040
Thrones were mentioned to be a thing, and while financial crimes with local currency in the Imperium are left to local governments the Arbites crack down hard on any fraud or laundering of thrones, and stealing them in general is proverbially unwise. Thrones are the currency of choice for interstellar merchants like the voidborn, navigator houses, galactic (non-planet owning) aristocracy and Rogue Traders, and the imperial government. Planetary and stellar governments, not to mention sub-planetary aristocracy and the masses, tend to like local currencies. The Throne is backed by Imperial fiat, some local currencies may be directly exchangeable for livestock or minerals.

>>54190232
Knowing planetary law enforcement, it could be anything from being sent to a soft white collar prison with a golf club and movie night for laundering Thrones. Or a broadcasted hanging on a different planet for doing the same thing.

>>54193269
You misunderstand. The planetary government's punishment for crimes involving thrones are irrelevant. The value of a Throne is based on the credibility of the Imperial government and its word. Fuck around with the Imperium's coin and you attack the Imperium's word and credibility, and even a sector governor will get run down by Arbites if they try to manipulate Imperial currency. Commit all the crimes you want with your local coin, its monopoly money in the grand scheme of things, even if it wrecks that local currency that can be kept isolated from the greater Imperial economy.

Don't fuck with the Thrones though. The Astra Militarum is paid in Thrones, and Thrones buy their voidships and lasguns, as the Mechanicus is also paid in Thrones. The Administratum does its accounting in Thrones, the Imperial Courtiers and Rogue Traders count their fortunes and investments in Thrones. Inquisitors file their expenses in Thrones. Do not fuck with the Throne, do not fuck with the Thrones.

>>54196422
Do they allow psychics into the adeptus arbiters?