>>56059361
Speaking of Necrons, who was it that had the high concept of them being post-scarcity, post-singularity, post-individual, and post-heroic, like a mix of Plato's Republic and the Borg on top of their already existing Victorian England/Space Egypt motifs after the biotransference? That was a really good line of thought. Was it Fulgrimfag?

>>56059406
Who the fuck knows. It's good shit though.

It results in ultimate authoritarianism and the Silent King shuffeling personalities like cards ina deck.

He is the kid playing Crusader Kings 2 MAXIMUM game of thrones mode, abusing console commands and still only holding a stalemate due to the warp, and by extension every truly living thing, not being hax0rable.

I'm going to try the remainder of the High Lords soon.

>>56060813
The reason is there was a debate the last time we talked about the Silent King (like thread 20-something, its on suptg) about how sympathetic to make him. One side argued making him too evil diminishes the Necrons' status as the Imperium one "reasonable" enemy and makes him little different from mustache-twirlingly evil Chaos. The other side said making Szarekh too sympathetic defangs the Necron Star Empire and was a bit too far from the established lore (namely the trillions of citizens thing).

Personally, I would aim for a Milton's Paradise Lost/Black Adam/Namor/Byronic figure level of sympathy. Enough sympathetic features that it's possible to feel sorry for him, but it's overshadowed by the fact that he keeps shooting himself in the foot and damning himself by his brutality and actions. This way we get to keep the Necron's unique "semi-reasonable" niche while still pointing out how bad they are.

Indeed, the Silent King almost perfectly fits the mold of a Byronic villain
> Obeys no moral code but his own
> Runs on knee-jerk decisions and gut instinct, despite his stoicism.
> World weary and cynical
> Is the only Necron that could still be considered "handsome", given that he looks like a swole Necrontyr dipped in Necrodermis rather than a skeleton (and thus is the only Necron to have abs).
> Will trample anyone who gets in his way.

Seriously, all he needs is the brooding, but I think that got out of his system in the War in Heaven.

I wouldn't say he's going full Joffrey. He's brutal, but he has a good side and is more pragmatic than that. Maybe more like Aegon I meets Tywin in GoT terms. Or like Settra or Ramses II.

>>56061655
Damn, knew I forgot something. Milton's Satan said it was better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. Szarekh might say that if one is going to be damned to hell, you might as well rule the place.

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>>56061655
It's also that he is Emperor in a time when that actually fucking meant something.

Emperor means The Ruler. There can only be one Emperor because that's what Emperor means. He is the one the one to whom the man you are bending a knee to bends a knee to. There are no Emperor"s", only Emperor's. Not plural but owned. Szarekh owns you, he owns you because you exist and he exists and he is Emperor and you are defiantly not.

When Szarekh acknowledged Oscar as Emperor of the Imperium it was to buy time or in mockery, with that deadpan who can tell if it wasn't both, because he knew that there could be only one and he just assumed that Oscar was playing by the same rules. Whether Oscar as a man of real civilization, his civilization, was or he was not playing some sort of political game is irrelevant. There can be one and only one ruler. The failure of the Triarchy in ages past had taught him as much.

And as for his goals? He sees them as noble. Chaos will consume the galaxy because unless it is beaten permanently Chaos can not be stopped. He has found a way to stop Chaos. It requires the extermination of all feeling things in the galaxy but the next cycle of sentient life will be free. There is no hope in the current cycle. Isn't it enough to die for a good cause? And what could be more noble than to die for a world free of damnation?

The blanks, pariahs maybe even some of the Tau will survive (maybe some things in the deeper parts of the webway). Is that not enough? Better that some survive than all be lost is it not?

Maybe some things that are can also be saved, hence the biotransferance experiments. Is it not good to sacrifice the few for the overwhelming many? Is that not the job of an Emperor to make those decisions and spare others from having to?

>>56061655
Better possible analogue in terms of "coming to the throne at a young age but not turning into an ineffectual puppet or Joffrey", legacy-building, ruthlessness, pursuit of impossible goals, and "Obey me goddammit"? Qin Shin Huangdi on less mercury. Meets Ramses II Seriously, Qin Shin Huangdi was even a Legalist.

>>56063206
And then being given god-cheats for the plebs.

Oscar sees his people as people. Szarekh sees his people as pawns, he might value them to the extent he feels that they deserve but they aren't as worth as him

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>>56063206
So far as I can tell the Imperium and Necron Star Empire are associated with various comparable but contrasting influences.
>Classical Rome and Greece - Ancient Egypt
>Napoleonic France - Victorian England
>Art Deco - Brutalist
>Moderate transhumanism - Radical transhumanism
>Colonizes and assimilates other societies - Annihilates or enslaves other societies
>Repentant - Rationalizing
>Ceremonious - Pragmatic

Haven't been in a Nobledark thread in almost a month. Is there any good writefaggotry up for Eversor's yet? I assume most of the other assassin classes can probably stay pretty close to canon, but crazy berzerkers seemed to run against it. I'm pretty sure there was a well received idea for a Gramaton Cleric style assassin right?

Also do Commissars still exist in a world where its frowned on to shoot you're own people as the first answer to a problem?

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>>56066091
Eversor Assassins still exist but in a more Grammaton Cleric manner with less gun and more knife.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjUrc72PFZg

https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Nobledark_Imperium_Writing#Eversor

110% loyal to the Throne, drugged up to the eyeballs, extensively augmented and balls deep in the Religio Mortis.

https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#The_Commissariat

The Commissariat still exists. It's people are officers of last resort, the tangible link between the tribalistic nature of the common man and the greater Imperium, advisors and knowers of things officers need to know but don't need to know every day and also will absolutely shoot you if the need arises and no alternative presents itself.

>>56065545
Is that what the Necrontyr looked like?

Are there any surviving organic specimens?

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>>56067835
There's no canonical picture of the Necrontyr, so there's very little to work with. From what we do know, given that Necrons are based on Necrontyr, Necrontyr were big (8 foot or so, it was suggested that the reason the Old Ones scales the Krork and proto-Eldar to their modern size was to match the Necrons in size) and kind of looked like Tau.

They could have been spikier, it's not clear whether the ridge you see on some is supposed to be biological or was part of their armor, and they seem to have a more humpbacked posture. The general consensus among fans seems to be that they had grey skin, don't know if there's anything supporting that.

We have no clue if Necrontyr had a fleshy nose. They could have, or they could have had a single nostril along the midline like lampreys.

>>56065545
The Necrons are also an interesting contrast to the typical Imperium and Chaos civility versus barbarism. The Necrons are essentially an example of "madness of order", showing what happens when you get a civilization with too much order. The Necron Star Empire is civilization, but at the same time it is civilization as a mockery of itself; civilization stripped of heart and all the things that make civilization worth having in the first place. In Necron society, the individual doesn’t matter. In Necron society, you are little more than a cog in a machine. Necrons don’t obey authorities because they are wise or just but because they are authorities.

The tyranids, on the other hand are simply oblivion. There is no choice of submission or death with them. They cannot be reasoned with. They cannot be bargained with. They cannot be intimidated or frightened off. There is only kill or be killed. Eat or be eaten. Chaos, Orks, and Dark Eldar are society at its worst, a society where the id is supreme, primal desires run rampant, and the only rule that matters is "I'm in charge because I'm stronger than you". The tyranids are, if anything, even more primal.

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>>56067835
>>56068460
Their females also had breasts. Clearly this is the most important information. /sarcasm

Okay, Maynarkh Dynasty, take two.

Of all the independent Necron dynasties, the Maynarkh Dynasty is perhaps the biggest threat to the Imperium. Even as far back as the War in Heaven, the Maynarkh Dynasty were known for their brutality and cruelty, acting as the Silent King’s pet monsters and wetwork agents. This behavior was no different under the Maynarkh Dynasty’s last and latest Phaerakh: Xun’bakyr, the Mother of Oblivion. Eldar Harlequins speak of countless atrocities and genocides, all perpetrated by Necrons in glowing colors of brass and orange. Indeed, the brutality of Xun’bakyr and the Maynarkh Dynasty was so great that just before the Great Sleep several Phaerons, normally so subservient as to the point of indolence, approached the Silent King to suggest that the Silent King take steps to make sure Xun’bakyr…didn’t wake up from the Great Sleep. It is rather telling that the Silent King actually agreed with this proposal.

The Silent King may have had more than one reason to try and kill off the Maynarkh Dynasty. Phaerarch Xun’bakyr was, to put it bluntly, infatuated with the Nightbringer. When the Silent King gave the order for the Drazak Dynasty to kill Llandu’gor the Flayer, he had to noticeably take precautions to avoid letting the information reach Xun’bakyr, given that any weapon that could conceivably be used against the object of her obsession would likely cause her to react poorly. Even when the C’tan were shattered and the Silent King ordered the Necrons to go into their long hibernation, the news was kept hidden from the Maynarkh Dynasty, who went to sleep still believing they were following orders from their C’tan overlords. The Silent King may have been able to directly override the free will of Xun’bakyr, but given her instability, he didn’t want to risk the chance of her slipping her leash.

>>56070138
The Maynarkh Dynasty was put in hibernation in their traditional lands, far on the other side of the galaxy from the core of the Star Empire in what would one day become the Orpheus Sector of the Segmentum Pacificus. This was a high-density stellar cluster filled with numerous stars, some of which were…encouraged to go supernova early with a little bit of help from the Oruscar Dynasty’s Celestial Orrery. The Silent King hoped that the constant bombardment of electromagnetic pulses from exploding stars would damage the Maynarkh Dynasty to the point that they would never wake up from the Great Sleep, or at the very least be so damaged that they could only awake into an addled half-life.

It didn’t work. Although the Maynarkh Dynasty was damaged, they still awoke from the Great Sleep along with everyone else. Xun’bakyr’s madness and obsession was, if anything, worsened by the damage from the Great Sleep, to the point that the Silent King could no longer assert any control over her. Xun’bakyr seemed to rapidly realize she had been deceived, having awoken in a time when the great immortal C’tan had either been killed or reduced to hiding and the Silent King was the one trying to give her orders.

Rapidly dismissing the ravings of the would-be king, Xun’bakyr realized that her dynasty now needed a new purpose. It didn’t take her long to come up with one. Xun’bakyr decided that the Maynarkh Dynasty would rededicate themselves to killing all life in the galaxy itself, a creative masterpiece of death and destruction that might even go so far as killing time itself, all to attract the attention of the Nightbringer and to demonstrate her affection for the object of her infatuation. She is rather oblivious to the fact that despite all his paraphernalia and death-associated trappings, the Nightbringer is mostly concerned with sating his own gluttony and power-lust and would rather like causality to keep existing (though in his own image of course).

>>56070162
Xun'bakyr Is obsessive and meticulous, in the long term focused absolutely on her deadly Idol, in the short term honing and perfecting some novel variety of star eater, 4D ionized shrapnel projector, or reality-pin to nail down certain doom. Xun'bakyr isn't a large scale threat only because she is so narrow in the scope of her ambitions. Her armies march along in the wake of the Nightbringer dealing death, and her scouts proceed him demonstrating their queen's new horrors. A blow from one will often be followed by a blow from the other, and together they make a horrible local threat and disaster within a sector, but beyond an additional horror following the Nightbringer's aimless killing spree they are not strategically significant. Xun'bakyr's universe destroying plans coming to fruition is an existential threat, but one that is sadly insignificant compared to many others. Although the rest of the Maynarkh Dynasty generally does not share her obsessions, the dynasty had always been composed of the worst sort of sadists, psychopaths, and war criminals and so jump at the chance to kill people in new and creative ways.

The first overt sign of action by the Maynarkh Dynasty was when the stars of the Caracol binary system went supernova during between Blood Pact and Imperial Forces. Both groups considered it the first shots of a surprise attack by some unknown third party. What they didn’t know was that rather than a military action, it was the result of a weapons test from one of Xun’bakyr’s harebrained schemes. The slaughter that followed was mostly unrelated. Mostly, in that the Maynarkh Dynasty was involved, and there was slaughter, but it had nothing to do with the two stars they had made go nova. Today, the Orpheus sector is nearly lifeless, haunted only by ghosts and madmen and ruled by an even madder queen.

Little bit from that other anon there that was really good.

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>>56070186
looks good, happy to have another Necron free agent.

Just had a thought about Oscar, there was some debate about the morality of his very long range passive telepathy. Because Men of Gold were made to be interfaces between a massive human population and an Iron Mind or a cluster of them, Oscar might be passively skimming their minds as part of his actual Man of Gold function, and lacking a network of psychic AI godlings to feed all the thoughts to he synthesizes solutions as best as his wetware psychic supercomputer brain can. I don't think this goes away from the tabula rasa idea we settled on early on, it would be an almost autonomic thing for him built into his capabilities, not dependent on actual programming.

Bamp

>>56070186
It i a thing of beauty

>>56070186
Hot damn. You took robo-Curze and managed to dial the batshit up to maximum omnicidal atrocity.

One can only imagine the foul mood Nemensor Zahndrekh was in on he day he found out she had survived the Long Sleep.

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>>56066348
Are Commissar Rangers a thing in this AU along with Aspects of Steel?

Could be that there is a Chaos Witch on some old research station that keeps summoning deamns or cloning Tyranids.

Her mission is to conquer one of the Imperium's planets.

Retired Space Marine in a dreadnaught hires some PDF whiteshields and improves them.

It's fucking dumb as hell but kids like it.

>>56074493

It's the only time (ONLY TIME) he was close to actually awake from his lunacy and batshit-insanity, and the occupants of the room actually had to evacuate in a hurry (more like kicked out by Obyron in a flash) as he began shouting and cursing the accursed name of the Maynarkhs to his long-dead gods.

Soon after that the mists of age kicks back in and the old skele-bot could not really remember about the event - accept for his burning hatred of the Maynarkhs, of course - those barbarically bloodthirsty barbarians upstarts wearing the coat of nobility STAINS what is like to be a PROPER NOBLE!!!

I don't understand the Silent King's motives, from which I can remember there being two:
>Return the Necrons back to biological bodies.
>Fight off the Tyranids.

Wouldn't they be much better suited to killing Tyranids in bodies made out of Necrodermis? Seems a little counter intuitive.

>>56076344
Would he be too bothered about the Tyranids?

The long term goal is to slap the Big Red Cadian Button, kill off anything that can feel, wait a few hundred thousand years and biotransfer back into warm bodies grown from prime genetic stock.

Either the bugs will have gone about their merry way before the button gets pressed or they will die along with everything else when the button gets slapped.

Either way the result is the same. Necrons arise alone and remake the galaxy into an form more pleasing to Szarekh.

>>56076344
That's the canon Silent King's goals. Here the Silent King has a wider eye with a view to kill off Chaos as well. He doesn't really care about the tyranids, but is more than happy to ram them into the Imperium.

Really, he probably couldn't be arsed about Chaos if it wasn't galaxy-destroying evil. I wonder what his reaction was on seeing Chaos cultists for the first time.

"I've killed pantheons before. I assume yours will be no different."

>>56076315
Silent King actually tried to get Zahndrekh back under his command.

Silent King took one look at Xun'Bakyr not responding to his commands and went "eh, I'll wipe her out right after I get rid of the savages."

Does Inquisitor Helynna Valeria ever visit Nemensor Zahndrekh?

>>56076344
There was some writefaggery suggesting that the Necrons were actively sabotaging anti-Tyranid efforts because they had nothing to fear from the Tyranids and smothering the entire galaxy in the Shadow in the Warp would accomplish all their goals anyway.

>>56077921
She would have had to at least once seeing as Zahndrekh was the one who freed her from Trazyn's Rubiks Cube, but seeing as she's all about xenos tech and archaeotech in this timeline she would probably have a million and one questions for the Nemesor, some of which might make Obyron's scythe hand start acting up.

>>56075804
It is now.

As is a cartoon about Fuklaw.

>>56061655
>>56061683
>>56063206

>Lets rewrite 40k!
>Still can't stop basing stuff on Milton.

Goddamnit /tg/

>>56079764
At least this time the BBEG has a better reason for being evil than being shanked and going to a creepy sweat lodge.

>>56077014
>>56078295
Not sure this is a valid plan for the Silent King. The Nids eat pretty much all biomass including atmospheres and oceans, so if they strip the galaxy there will be no squishy sapients for the Necrons to soul transfer into.

>>56082215
Cadia's Big Red Button will stop the Shadow in the Warp and the Hive Mind just as well as the Chaos Gods. Szarekh just has to make sure the 'nids don't eat too much of the galaxy before he does so.

There's a reason the galactic landscape at the turn of the millenium has been described as a four-way barroom brawl that happens to be set in the Imperium's living room.

I can't find who is, in Vanilla, the head of the Imperial Guard.

Has it not been stated?

>>56084552
According to Lexicanum, there are nine permanent High Lord position and three that wax and wane depending on what bloc has the most power at the moment. This includes the Lord High Admiral, Cardinal of the Holy Synod, Abbess of the Adeptas Sororitas, etc. I think the Ecclesiarch used to be in this position until some event like the Age of Apostasy or the Nova Terra Interregnum. Apparently it seems there isn't a head of the Imperial Guard in M41. The latest one recorded was during the War of the Beast, and named...Oskar Lowis.

Maybe GW just derped on having a high ranking member of the Imperial Guard around?

Okay, if I have to suffer this, everyone needs to as well. This song's been stuck in my head all day ever since the OP.

Spooky Necron skelebots
Send shivers down your spine
Doomsday Arks will gauss your soul and
Seal your fate tonight

Spooky Necron skelebots
Their hibernation breached
Wake from sleep into half life
From deep beneath your feet

We're so sorry Star Empire
You're so misunderstood
Oscar: We only want to socialize
Isha: But I don't think we should

Spooky Necron skelebots
Neither shriek nor scream
One edict as they wake to life
Obey the Silent King

Spirits of the Warp all ask
“Just what is all the fuss?”
But if they knew then they would scream
“It's death that’s come for us!”

Rogue dynasties aren’t that much better
Trazyn is just strange
Xun’bakyr’s a psychopath
And Zahndrekh is insane (Obyron: *sigh*)

Sticks and stones might break your bones but
Flayers make you goo
Spooky Necron skelebots
Wake from beneath you.

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I noticed that we didn’t have any of Arrotyr’s information up either on the Notes page or on the main page. It was mostly written up, but reading through I saw that there were a few things that had to be edited to make it fit into the timeline. I went through and tweaked it a bit with the suggestions, but I wanted to put it here because the bulk of it isn’t mine and I wanted to make sure it sounded okay to everyone else including the original anon if present.

https://pastebin.com/JqAjg7B7

The changes I made, in the interests of transparency
- The suggestion that was raised in previous threads of Arrotyr was a descendant of a War in Heaven hero instead of a veteran, at the same time strongly hinting that it is the reincarnation of the original. If it was the original with no reincarnation it would make him as old as Be'lakor, which means Be'lakor loses a lot of his leverage.
- Attacking Isha to razing Isha's temple, since the Eldar gods were not supposed to be in realspace per Asuryan's orders (plus we get that Ajax and Cassandra parallels), and it fits with the Nimina Demthring stuff.
- Imotekh as the nemesis instead of Zahndrekh, and moving the dates of their scraps to when the Necrons were up and about (put in Eleventh Black Crusade on a whim, it could be any later one if we want).

Here's a thought regarding the issue that was brought up about losing the theme of Arrotyr's fall originally being tragic due to being driven to madness by his vision. What if Arrotyr's entire line was affected by the vision like Fantasy's Curse of Khaine? They were all known to be great warriors, but they also all went mad before their time with visions of fire and apocalypse? This way it makes the vision have more of a direct bearing on Arrotyr.

>>56082215
They can wait the millions of years needed to re-terraform the galaxy after the Tyranids pass through. Hell, they can create solar systems with patience and the Orrery thing.

>>56086922
sounds good on the prophecy angle, and I'd thought it had always been the Stormlord, not Zahndrekh

bump

>>56086922
Those were all needed changes and they improve an already good work

>>56086922
>https://pastebin.com/JqAjg7B7
It is very enjoyable to read, thank you.

>>56084552
No name for the holder of that seat has been given for 999M41. Or even the existence of the seat. Seems we are free to make one up as we see fit.

>>56079269
I'd steer away from having the Angry Marines be a chapter in this AU. It's a reference too far and comes off as insufferably smug.

If you want a bunch of angry bastards in yellow and red running around and being CQC focused then have them be called the Templars Irate or some such and attach them to the Templar Movement.

Yes it's stupid name but still less so than Marines Malevolent.

Have we decided on what the Demiurg actually are?

>>56093804
>https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Nobledark_Imperium_Member_States#Demiurg

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>>56093864
>https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Nobledark_Imperium_Member_States#Demiurg

There is nothing there.

>>56086139
I love it. It' s so cheeky i cannot not imagine some cute Eldar children singing it while they run around a Wraithtree

>>56088384
It was Zahndrekh originally. It was suggested making it Imotekh because it makes everything Necron not-Zahndrekh related, gives an in for Croneworlder versus Star Empire shenanigans, and Imotekh being a master strategist who can predict the movements of his foes to a ludicrous level is his thing in canon (except the Orks. But dats bekuz even da Orks can't predict da Orkz).

>>56093804
There was some on the notes page, but there's a bit that's up in the air. From what I remember that was generally talked about.

- Race of nomadic traders and miners, organized into brotherhoods of which there are typically one on a small ship, several on a large one (from canon).
- Had to be incorporated into the Imperium on a brotherhood-by-brotherhood basis.
- In their natural born state are silicate vaguely reptilian people
- Are heavily into cybernetics, possibly because they are naturally sillicon-based, some suggested Demiurg patriarchs (though do they even have genders or are they like orks?) are literally one with the ship a la Pilot from Farscape.
- May be an Eldar uplift experiment
- Gave/sold the Imperium ion cannon technology as a housewarming present.
- Yriel's first mate is one.

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>>56092991
The closest thing we have to Angry Marines in this timeline are the Blood Angels 1st Company or the Flesh Tearers. There's no Black Rage in this timeline, but the Blood Angels have a tendency to go a little...cross-eyed at the idea of treason.

The War Hounds maybe, but they seem more professional soldiers (like Sparta meets Rome meets modern soldiers) than mindless berserkers. They are also struggling against the inner beast, but their idea of angry when it comes out is more of "burn their city, pave it over, and salt the earth" kind of thing. I don't know. Angron was really passionate and prone to fits of rage, but Kharn was all about not letting your anger eat you alive. Blood Angels are more paladins, which means they are much more passionate when it comes to compassion but at the same time more emotional when it comes to anger.

I agree about what you said regarding the Angry Marines. Alternatively, the Angry Marines are something made up by whoever made the cartoon (based very, very loosely on the Blood Angels and War Hounds). This has done nothing to help Fuklaw's blood pressure.

>>56095380
So Fuklaw was/is real but the AMs aren't? Sounds good to me.

Maybe Fuklaw was stationed with a regiment of Baalite soldiers. In that regiment was assigned Black Rage marines.

War correspondent (these are a thing?) or a rememberancer finds his antics to be highly entertaining. Rememberancer retires or finds safer work or whatever and pitches his idea to a local entertainment company and they love it.

20 years later the cartoon is a well established cultural tradition with films, numerous spinoff series, toys, books and a few high budget films.

Fuklaw finds out and flips his lid. But a portion of the proceeds go to the PDF pension fund so he tolerated it. Barely.

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>>56096042

Maynarkh Dynasty and Arrotyr up on 1d4chan. Anything else missing?

>>56098454
Thank you.

Does anyone remember what happened with Order of the Old Tree?

There wasn't a Preatoria section back then so I never put it on at the time. Plus someone kept trying to insert their incest fantasy into it and I was kind of put off by the whole thing and stopped writing.

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Lukas Bastonne, the Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Army, is a man both blessed and cursed with a supernaturally good memory. Or at least he is cursed and the Imperium is blessed.

He is the youngest of the High Lords by a good hundred and fifty years but that one remaining purple Cadian eye has long ago waved goodby to notions of youth or innocence or joy. He was bright enough to have skipped the duties of Whiteshield in the Cadian Army and could have transferred straight to officer school with all the perks this would bring, such people considered near as nobility on Cadia. He refused this honour on principle, a man without perspective is not a good officer, a man who hasn't started at the the bottom has no right to ask of those people to do that what he could not have been asked.

Brilliant as he was this state of affairs was only temporary and he quickly climbed the ranks on merit and aptitude, his merciless memory serving him and others very well. But that perfect memory came at a price and that price was that it was a perfect memory. He remembers the face of every corpse that was once a friend, every horror shat out by the Eye of Terror, tortures beyond counting, lifetimes of death and destruction. He used to tattoo the name of every soldier that fell under his command. He ran out of skin a very long time ago.

Lukas Bastonne as of 999M41 is not a happy man. Gone are the days that he doesn't wake up to the sound of his own screaming and he drinks like a fish. Rumor has it that he has gone through eight livers. Unsightly as his drinking habit is none can deny his competence at his job and even pickled in gin he has not lessened in his diligence. His job is all that keeps him getting up in the mourning.

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>>56100595
He is a man of no humour or good cheer. He is a man who knows the value of life though knows that for the Imperium to survive that life must be spent, spent but never wasted. He will not ask others to do what he would not, but he is Cadian and they live on the doorstep of Hell. The worst nightmares of other worlds are the every other day on Cadia.

He does not wear the full ceremonial garb to the meetings of the High Lords, or any other meetings. He is from a world where pomp and ceremony go to die. He wears a field uniform at all times, he feels naked without it. He carries his las-rifle at all times because he's a soldier damn it. He rose through the ranks for fear of the incompetence of others. those names tattooed belonged to people to whom he owes it to ensure that the lives of his people are spent, not wasted. That was his driving ambition to get where he is. Now there is nobody above him bat the Emperor, now he can maybe comfort himself a little knowing that lives that are lost mean something, that his friends weren't just discarded.

Under his less than tender command the Imperial Guard is operating at a level of performance as efficient and powerful as it ever has done. He would see all worlds, not as copies of his homeworld, but as strong as it in their own way. Different worlds forge different men and different men slay different monsters and no matter what Chaos and Orks and Necrons and Ffucked up intergalactic Locusts throw at the Imperium somewhere is a soldier that can kill it.

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>>56100767
Of his family nothing is known, Cadia has no shortage of lost war orphans. Lukas Bastonne was on some birth issued dog tags about his neck though Lukas isn't a normal Cadian name although his purple eyes are a native trait so it's possible that one parent or grand parent was an off-worlder stationed on to the Gateworlds. Not that it matters, not that it matters at all.

The other High Lords endure him with either hostility, pity or fear but he does not care for their friendship or approval. They know their job, he knows his. And under his command the Guard and the Imperium will march on.

>Is it alright?

>>56100957
I like it, but I'm concerned about how the High Lords are turning out as a group.
They're supposed to be part of the Illuminati and similar shit, aren't they? Or at least some of them are.

>>56101375
Which ones?

>>56101375
Not that guy, but I thought the Illuminati were the way they were because they were interested in gaining power through other means? The High Lords and the Alpha Legion are the main buffer keeping them from fucking things up too much in the Imperium. Except in the cases when you have someone who is a member of both the Hydra and the Illuminati and trying to play things as a double agent.

I don't know. It's all very confusing.

>>56062970
Did Szarekh and Oscar ever meet face to face? I thought they did once before things went to shit but looking at the notes it seems not.

I was going to point out another thing. Oscar and Szarekh aren't as different as they might seem, and these differences would have been less pronounced when the Silent King first showed up in M40. Consider the following: both are incredibly powerful beings, bordering on demigod status (Oscar due to being a Man of Gold, Szarekh due to having all the power of the Star Empire at his fingertips), who have achieved that status by being a fusion of the organic and the artificial, and rule over a massive empire and know firsthand how hard it is to make the decisions required of that. Other than Isha and Eldrad, Szarekh is one of the few beings in the galaxy who could possibly understand what Oscar has gone through firsthand.

Also consider the timeframe. It’s M40. Oscar’s long-term social circle at this point consists of his wife, Cegorach, Bjorn, Eldrad, Galadrea, Trajan, and a handful of others. I’m not sure if he even known Khaine. I mean, he’d obviously know of Khaine, but given what happened the last time Khaine interacted with a demigod and the last time Khaine interacted with Isha’s husband I would assume the All-Mother would conspire to keep Oscar as far away from the Bloody-Handed One as possible. Magnus is dead. Vulkan is dead. Ferrus Manus is dead. Constantin is dead.

>>56102925 (cont.)
It’s been mentioned Oscar has had trouble building relationships in later years because of the fear of loss. He’s not gone to the full-blown “baseline human life is worthless” view of his canonical counterpart, but it’s been mentioned he’s been afraid of really opening up to people after his OG family started dying. Sebastian Thor had to bully his way into the Emperor’s inner circle. The possibility of anyone being a positive social influence at this point in his life, even the bloody king of the Necrons, is an avenue worth pursuing.

So Oscar goes to parlay with Szarekh, hoping that all the things Isha told him about "Oscar, this is a bad idea. I'm serious, those people are psychopaths" is just an exaggeration from the days when the Eldar didn't rule the roost. And the Silent King introduces himself with a very Oscar-esque...

"Pleased to meet you. They call me the Silent King. Well, they call me that, but I haven't been doing much of that in these last few millenia."

And Oscar thinks he might just be a little bit less alone in the galaxy. Only for it to be ripped away like a cruel joke. It doesn't matter whether Szarekh was humoring Oscar as part of the political game or did mean anything he said (or, more likely, at best saw him as a Vercingetorix to his Caesar, a worthy and honorable opponent yet still a barbarian). It still rubbed even more salt in the wound when Szarekh made his ridiculous demands.

>>56103022 (cont.)
Of course, this would be where the contrast between the two becomes apparent. Oscar believes in the inherent value of individual lives. Szarekh believes that when when you set out to right a wrong, it doesn't matter how many more bodies one ends to the pile as long as the scales balance out in the end. Oscar made a conscious choice to follow his path in life, because he was fed up with seeing his people wallowing in shit when they could be so much greater. He doesn't see things in hierarchical terms, heck the Age of Apostasy shows he would step away from the whole thing if he thought it wouldn't explode. Szarekh, despite being an uploaded mind, grew up in a dog-eat-dog world where you were either ruling or you were ruled. He might not even be able to conceive of a world that doesn't operate in terms of a political food chain.

I don't know. This sounded better in my head but putting it down it makes less sense and seems to conflict with canon. Trashbin?

>>56099456
I looked for the Order of the Old Tree section, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I saw a mention of it but I assumed that was part of the Dragon Lords. I don’t remember the incest parts of it (probably for the better).

bampan

>>56102658
I just meant that the ones so far, other than the AdMech representative, don't seem to lend themselves to conspiratorial stuff.
They're all people who do the jobs that need to get done, horrible as some of those jobs may be.
Though maybe I'm misremembering the idea that some of the High Lords (unspecified) are doing shit with Emperor Control Devices (for the good of all, of course) and trying to figure out the big mysteries and whatnot and that's all a step down.

>>56102658
We arent sure, its a very secretive organization

>>56105072
It was Mechanicus factions in the Illuminati that wanted to use Golden Man coding devices to variously upgrade, control, blackmail, and experiment on the emperor. In my mind that fits with the AdMech leader's attitude perfectly.

Also, I've got the impression that the Illuminati have as many cliquish, navel gazing theorists as it has active and effective conspirators, and is actually somewhat closer to an extra surreptitious galactic Freemasons than one would think.

>>56103111
Sounds good to me.

I've been thinking about Oscar's personality and mindset, and the Imperial Court and Imperial Family that have been mentioned in passing a couple times. I assume the Imperial Family actually refers to just him and Isha, and the prospective Impossible Child, but I wonder what the courtiers Oscar and Isha would keep around would be like. Between Oscar's reservations about attachment to the ephemeral and Isha's deific status I think there would be a high proportion of Eldar among them, and at least a handful of Xenos of great note on a more temporary basis. I'm already picturing her majesty's harlequin troop, and the various notable priestesses and advisors she would keep on hand out of ceremony. Oscar might occasionally cherry pick a Magos thats been cast from Mars for his own retention, as much for projects as for the fact that he knows they'll last a significant time.

>>56105671
Oscar and Isha have alsl down the ages adopted countless orphaned and outcast psyker children.

Let's say they have had 5 kids and keep the until 18. In 10,000 years that's 2,777 children. That's tens of thousands of grandchildren.

>>56103172
It was fairly far back in the 1st attempt to do the planet of tea and crumpets.

There was an order of Bene Gesserit concubine-nuns. Praetoria was traditionally patriarchal in it's social structure. There was much inbreeding and infighting and lack of stability in the aristocracy.

To this end the Order of the Old Tree were sent to Praetoria. Each spire lord was offered one of these cute, fertile little bed warmers as a "gift" from the Imperium for the loyalty and contribution of their world down the ages.

As they were all off-worlders it added a flood of new genes into a very stagnant pool. The children were all legally of the union of the lord and his lady, the concubines would never be on the official genealogy.

Because every lord had one and every lord's heir would be appointed one some anon kept trying to insist that they developed feelings for their mothers and were assigned blood relatives.

So far as I can remember. Maybe I'm exaggerating or failing to remember accurately.

>>56106893
Would that not defeat the purpose of the order, to prevent genetic stagnancy and incest in the Praetorian ruling class?

>>56107207
Yes. It also stank of magical_realm.

The original idea was just Bene Gesserit in the Nobledarkness.

>>56100957
I like it. He is an example of flawed suffering for the sake of the many.

>>56096042
>>56097326
So what should the Blood Angels think of the Fuklaw cartoons given that the Angry Mariens are a parody of their venerated Death Company?

In this AU how much does the average pleb know of the Great Crusade and War of The Beast?

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>>56105072
Oh, that's misremembering. The idea there was the Illuminati were incensed of the idea of a creation of humanity leading it and was looking into ways to control/make Men of Gold (including snooping around Cthonia, etc.). The High Lords and the upper levels of the Administratum think that's bullshit, as they've met Oscar in person quite frequently and see him as a person (a rather annoying person in the Fab General's case, but still a person). So they and the Alpha Legion are the major players in shutting them down and keeping them from getting to the Emperor (besides the Custodes and Handmaidens, of course).

IIRC the Golden Throne is a device designed to write personalities for the Men of Gold, but it wouldn't even work on Oscar now because he's already got one and it is supposed to be used on ones that are still blank slates. Not that the Emperor ever sits in the thing anyway.

Then it was suggested that maybe that's an extreme faction of the Illiminati, and others are more just interested in gaining power through digging up what people don't want them to know, whether it's the Men of Gold, the Iron Minds, the Void Dragon (they don't know, but that hasn't stopped them from snooping to some degree) and anything else the AdMech has hidden on Mars, Xenotech, Necron tech, etc.

And then it got confusing and I lost track of things.

>>56106893
I see. I see the reason it got creepy real fast too.

>>56110199
Some. Big chunks of it aren't hidden, but it is overly mythologized. However, we know they don't know everything. People don't know Horus was seriously considering staying out of the War of the Beast, until his encounter with Chaos showed him that's exactly what Chaos wanted. Instead, they see him as an Anansi/Coyote-like figure who tricked the Chaos Gods over and over again to prevent them from going full force against the Imperium. The further out you go, the less detail you get things in until eventually its seen in a mythic tone.

>>56110754
It's not the Golden Throne that is the psy-graft machine.

The psy-graft was an old artefact with a wiped hard drive. Not unknown in the Imperium, in vanilla the space wolves had one. They were irreplaceable and imperfect.

Golden Throne is a bunch of basalt slabs covered in gold foil. Everyone assumes it is solid gold as if it wouldn't have been weighed in.

>>56110754
Alright then. Sorry, my memory isn't the best - must've jumbled together a few things, again.
And even if I hadn't, what I had been saying was more 'some of the rest should be more inclined to that stuff' rather than anything about the currently written stuff, which are all good. But that won't be necessary, I suppose!

>>56111554
I thought the Golden Throne was something he either took from Ursh (they had no idea what it was, all they knew it was a DaoT artifact and it wouldn't work so it wasn't Chaos corrupted out the wazoo, maybe the Urshii stole it from Persepotropolis), or he found it somewhere in the basements of Terrawatt or Uralia.

The shiny chair doesn't work. No one knows what it does and assumes it's broken. The Warlord/Steward picked out the Golden Throne to represent the future Emperor (at that time he wasn't thinking it'd be him) because it was big and baroque and impressive and symbolic of the Great and Bountiful Human Empire and otherwise only useful for a doorstop.

>>56068460
What if the Tau are the necrontyr?

>>56112366
no, we've already decided against that, and its kinda nonsense anyways

>>56112083
The great spire of the Imperial Palace is located in the heart of the city of Moskgród. Moskgród was not the capital of Ursh but had been the heart of many older empires and later absorbed into Ursh.

It's possible that if the Throne does contain the broken down remains of a psy-graft machine it may have been used by older Age of Strife nations to preserve the wisdom of it's leaders down the ages.

Presumably it worked up until it got 0 maintenance for decades/centuries because Ursh can not into goo tech.

>>56112366
What >>56112498 said.

There is some convergent evolution going on there though. Albeit with differences. Necrontyr are like three feet taller than Tau, have that nose slit (which in this AU we're interpreting as a Jackobson's organ given the way the Tau work in vanilla) instead of a nostril cavity like the Necron/tyr, and lack the Necrontyr's ungodly pain tolerance and faster reflexes.

Of course, Eldar and humans aren't that much different, until you notice the hyper-efficient digestive tract, crystalline bone structure, helical muscle fibers, etc.

Tau and Necrontyr, Eldar and humans, and Jokaero and kinebrach all seem to have a wolf-thylacine thing going on. They look similar but then when you look closer there are serious differences between the two.

That said, there are some hints that this is going to be the big reveal for the Tau in vanilla for 8th edition. So hold onto your butts.

>>56112891
As the guy who suggested the Kaldor Draigo idea a while back, one of the ideas for the dark secret that would make Draigo panic and try to rush to realspace as fast as possible is that the Golden Throne might not be as defunct as people think. Chaos found out about this and is planning to exploit it when they go for the killing blow, paralleling how vanilla!Cypher is trying to return to Earth or how vanilla!Earth has that gaping back door in the form of the defunct human Webway gate.

>>56108279
Given this is the AdBio/AdMech, wouldn't their idea of fixing the problem be just to plant people trees on Praetoria (or in-vitro growth, in the case of the AdMech)?

>>56113502
the AdBio is both full of a wide variety of weirdos, and actually more attentive to the fleshy ones they interact with than the AdMech, seeing as they too are fleshy. It might have been a nod towards not totally freaking out and disrupting the society of Praetorian nobility by making them use gestation trees, or Praetoria might have just got lucky and the order that took up the task didn't favor that method. There was some mention of the Order of the Old Tree had some overlap with the worship of Isha, and that their name is more a reference to the cultivation of family trees than the AdBio people trees.

Though it might be an interesting addition that many of their order are born from a gestation tree they brought to Praetoria, made from pan-imperial stock and engineered for wisdom and beauty. It would be an interesting way to make them more alien to the Praetorians, and more separate from succession and legitimacy matters, but they would remain totally human and Imperial.

>>56114669
>>56113502
I thought it was a group of Sisters, not the AdBio

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>>56114740
This. They are a non-militant branch of the Adepta Securitas with suspected links to Isha and very definite links to the most assuredly militant Sisters of the Bloody Brier.

>>56114669
It might be that they were originally founded by some AdBio initiative to prevent genetic mono-cultures from forming in isolated populations in the Imperium. The High Council of Bio-Druids gift the adepts starting this undertaking one of their gestation trees, their most wondrous mundane miracle of the flesh, to get the whole program off the ground.

Typically the Order of the Old Tree originally oversaw young imperial colonies. Typically a colonization effort will be done by one planet and will attract a disproportionate number of people from one particular community who typically share a fair few common ancestors. This makes them all a little samey. It's not that they usually have to worry about degeneration from the inbreeding as such, not unless an additional bottleneck has happened, it's usually a matter of immune systems. The galaxy is full of infectious shit.

One gestation young tree can produce a crop of maybe a dozen healthy newborns per season cycle. Then they have to have at least one fallow cycle for health reasons. A fully mature gestation tree can have up to eighty child-fruits hanging from meat and bone and leaf branches like strange apples with adequate nutrition. A gestation tree to get to full size can take as much as two-hundred years under optimal conditions.

The secret of creating gestation trees is known only to the Bio-Druids. To dispel some rather disturbing rumours Isha and her Handmaidens did inspect the whole process and found nothing particularly harrowing.

As the years went on the Order of the Old Tree found that it's services far outstripped what they could produce, even with a vigorously healthy and fully mature tree. This was when they started running orphanages.

>>56115396
They had always preferred to make female humans with their trees to be let loose into the environment for the simple reason that they and, far more importantly, their offspring were far easier to track. They needed to see how their ever so carefully crafted variations and combination spread and interacted with the baseliners in the event that they would need to prune out detrimental mutations.

But with so much work to do, indeed an entire galaxy to tend, they needed more numbers than craftsmanship. It was at about this time that the original members of the order started to die off. Most bordering on all of the new members had been fruit of the tree and as such this is when the Order became a sisterhood. Not that this concerned the old or new members of the Order, to them parts were just parts, cut and stitch and paint with double helix splice. The transition in this regard wasn't really noticed. What was more noticed was that they were growing increasingly distant from Molech and it's High Council.

It was not a violent or even an upset separation. It was a gradual thing with no recriminations or ill feelings. It was just that anyone who had even seen that planet were dying off and they had increasingly little in common. As a sign of good will Molech let them keep the tree.

With the tree in their possession they could still add new pigments to the bloodline mixes that they required but they needed more. Thankfully the Imperium is not short on blood.

>>56115632
On many of the worlds made impoverished from wars they set up orphanages to take care of the children that society could now not do so funded by grateful nobles they had helped. The younger orphans, those too young to ever even remember their homeworlds and with nobody to remember them, were sent across the galaxy to find new homes far away with loving families from societies of extremely different stock.

In this way they did their part and more to keep the gene-pool from stagnating.

Little by little their influence and contacts grew into a vast galaxy spanning web and always that influence used to contacts called favours in to assist the Imperium which only grew their roots deeper. But for all that they were still only a small order consisting of a few thousand members in a galaxy of quadrillions that they saw as their responsibility. They were spread thing to say the least.

Then along comes Praetoria and a visit from one of the Handmaidens making them aware of the state of the aristocracy there. Typically they didn't bother with the nobility and the upper crust of society. They dealt with humanity as a whole, title meant almost nothing to them. But they saw the predictions. The increasingly insular ruling families had, at most, a dozen generations left before things started to get ugly. In the years before total collapse of the system increased incompetence and mismanagement brought about by the inbreeding would result in much suffering and the turmoil and civil wars brought on in the inevitable collapse would result in the world having to come under direct rule of the Administratum. This would then infuriate the peasantry and result in a world constantly resentful of it's leadership, perfect breeding ground for Chaos cults and other undesirables.

And thus the Order of the Old Tree set it's sights on that great hub of trade and culture.

>>56115940
We all know how that turns out, Order of the Bed Warmers, mothers to the next generation of aristocracy. Aristocracy stabilized biologically. Mentally stabilized and loyalty ensured by watching all of the noble houses from the inside and "pruning" branches that they deem irredeemable.

Next generation of the nobility raised by the Order or at the very least with a lot of Order influence. New batch of lordlings all also receive fertile pretty little playmates. Pretty little playmates who would see them dead for disloyalty to the Imperium and as agents of the Throne (technically) not easily put aside. Some of these pretty young women were children of the tree itself but as the order grew they were an increasingly small minority. Most were just off-worlders raised from infancy by the Order, trained and taught and to an extent remade by the Order.

The Order was not cruel to those that they made into their own. They could be accused of grooming them for sex but sex was only a part of their job and they were not, the overwhelmingly vast majority of them, unhappy in their lives. The door was always open should they want to leave.

Praetoria becomes effectively the home of the Order of the Old Tree, their hidden garden housing the tree. Young Sisters serve the nobility, old widowed sisters serve the poor using their pensions and patronages of the nobility they served in youth to set up hospices and soup kitchens and shelters for the homeless and hopeless. In so doing they were never again short of recruits or popular support.

As the years past it became clear that as far as the vast masses of the hives cared the Order was the better part of the noble houses and if ever it came time to choose they would name those black dressed ordained women their queens and ladies and topple the rest from their thrones.

>>56116219
It wasn't an entirely one sided deal in the acquisition of power. Those centuries prior digging deep roots of favour and influence in the galaxy at large to say nothing of their presence to a lesser extent in the nobility of other worlds gave them a great list of contacts to call on. The houses that they served (had infiltrated) soon found that they had mutually beneficial trade deals going with economic entities they could never have even approached before. They quickly out competed the houses that had not welcomed in the Sisters to their homes.

More trade flows through the orbitals of Praetoria and the world grows richer.

>>56116219
What the fuck, who let the magical realm back in

>>56117193
>Bene Gesserit are magical realm.

>>56117215
You don't think ol' Frank tugged it to the thought of being a space count banging hot space nuns?

>>56117614
No. For the most part they were not shown in a positive light.

Also I got the feeling he was more into warrior women.

>>56116219
This escalated really quickly.

>>56110199
Another thing to mention about the average pleb and the War of the Beast is the people of Old Earth absolutely HATE orks. With a capital H. The Orks were the primary cause of all the destruction on Old Earth during the War of the Beast (well the Crone Eldar and daemons were there too, but the orks are the ones who get remembered because it was the War of the BEAST after all), and just like how the people of Terra are terrified of Space Marines in canon, the people of Old Earth remember what happened during the War of the Beast as well.

>>56119619
Aristocratic child rearing is usually pretty unsettling, particularly when nuns are involved

So to get the discussion...back on track, I was wondering in this timeline how dreadnoughts came about. More specifically, I was wondering if in this timeline Centurion armor came first (instead of around M36 as in canon) and then dreads were reverse-engineered from that design.

Dreadnoughts are highly effective on the battlefield, but as 1d4chan notes they present a kind of chicken-and-egg problem in that you can't reliably use them without a steady supply of crippled soldiers, but without them the effectiveness of a typical Space Marine chapter drops.

Having Centurion armor come first means that Dreads solve the problem of "what do you do with a super soldier who still wants to fight but is too crippled to move". You put him in Centurion armor modified as a life support system and send him out onto the battlefield, of course.

It wouldn't be a very pleasant practice. But it would have been come up with during the Great Crusade when the need for Space Marine bodies was starting to outstrip supply. Astartes are never cheap, but in that age of expansion they were a premium.

Of course that raises the question of what criteria does someone become a dread in the first place. We've mentioned that many marines who become unable to serve often go into Administratum positions since it's at least something they aren't completely unfamiliar with. Yakov went into acting because he considered it a greater public service than paper pushing after his lungs got burned out from tyranid spores. Bjorn and Tankred are dreads, but Tankred basically had to go through a wood chipper before that happened.

>>56121170
They already had mind-machine interfaces and life support machines so it was really just the combination of already existing technology

>>56121170
I don't think injured Space Marines becoming civilians/administrators is common; on the contrary it's probably extremely rare. Even if an SM is relegated to a non-frontline role, he can still serve the Chapter as starship commander, neophyte instructor, etc. Yakov we said was an rare case in that he had the looks, charisma, and acting ability for it and he still had to be semi-bullied into taking the role (that producer must have known an Inquisitor or something).

As for dreads, there is no shortage of candidates; when you fight the deadliest enemies of the galaxy every day, it's going to be inevitable that SMs are going to be crippled. In canon, the supply actually far outstrips the available dreadnought hulls which is why only honored veterans get to be dreads, and even if production of dreads is a bit better in this AU there's still not enough for all the mortally wounded SMs.

>>56121170
Centurions could have been developed or reintroduced by Titus as part of his big project.

>>56119619
Not really.

Have you ever read the books Risen Empire and Killing of Worlds by Scott Westerfeld?

In it there was a faction called the Plague Axis that existed across all borders of human settled space. Their job was to undo the homogenising effects of sub-light space colonization and the genetic bottlenecking of earlier attempts at genetic engineering.

they did more or less exactly this, which is where I think that Anon was getting at least some of his ideas from rather than a straight copy-paste from Dune.

So it's Plague Axis + Bene Gesserit but with the end goal of all the manipulative shenanigans being continued stability rather than trying to breed Superman.

Is there a 40k version of Halloween?

Would an abhuman be acceptable as High Lord of the Navy?

>>56110754
IS the name Alpharious still in use by 999M41?

>>56127301
I think the AL memebers still call themselves Alpharius to their enemies as a manner of sowing confusion. Wasn't there some story involving the Hydra that showed a Hydra operative using the name?

>>56126866
Most of the prominent naval families are either Voidborn or have prominent Voidborn ancestry (receeding hairline, tendency towards leucism, etc.). I'm not sure if the Voidborn are technically extinct through interbreeding or if there are any pureblood Voidborn left (this being 40k, I suppose the answer is probably "maybe, the galaxy is a big place, but if you have to ask the question they probably aren't common".

>>56127848
Have there ever been attempts to reunite the Void Born? Their could be a lanky space Aragorn.

>>56059361
>(OP)
Whats the name of the artist, reverse image search brought up nothing.

>>56128663
Dunno. They weren't even united that much before Horus, different populations of Void Born arising in different regions of space or migrating to different systems in periods of lull storms like the ones where the AdMech sent expeditions out like they were going out of style.

After Horus' death they split things between them, because that's the Void Born way, but most of them still have contact through the Imperial Navy. The Luna Wolves, Sons of Horus, etc. still interact with one another, it's just there's no one in charge. Sons of Horus arbitrate disputes like Harlequins do for the Eldar in canon (I assume the Harlies do here too, but less so because the Craftworlds would go straight to Isha as an arbiter).

Might make a good goal for the head of the Navy or a historical event pre "modern era" (last century of M41). Question is why would they want to unify under one leader. Horus got them to do it for the same reason the Steward could for the rest of humanity: unification.

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Update on the Eldrad drawing. Not done yet, because I couldn't find much time to work on it, and it still needs some shading and has errors that need fixing.

Also, is Fulgrimfag around? I remember him/her saying they had finished up some new writefagging last thread.

>>56124829
So it's not just a Dune thing, got it.

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>>56125645
The closest thing we have is from Fantasy which is Geheimnisnacht. Meaning 'Secret Night' for the second moon 'Morrslieb' comes closest to the planet. The Dark Elves proforms blood sacrifices with slaves and Khaine priest wonder the streets killing any they find during the night. The Empire gets attacked by monsters and Chaos cultist coming out in full force. Skavens try to bring the moon comes crashing down onto the planet using incantations.

>>56130212
Any such tradition would probably vary from world to world. Case in point Geheimnisnacht is a cultural phenomenon that developed from having a massive violation of reality for a second moon. Not to mention how hard it would be to coordinate due to Warp travel and plain old relativity. Sanguinala is really the only holiday we have so far that is celebrated Imperium-wide, and that's mostly because it holds meaning to the Imperium as a whole and is largely secular. I'd bet ten Thrones that there are probably a few Eldar holidays that are observed Imperium-wide (or at least known about by all) due to the cultural exchange.

>>56124829
Wouldn't it make more sense to just arrange marriages from across star systems? Bunch of...say...Fenrisians looking for wives/husbands feeling like they'd have better chances in a foreign land than at home.

Yes, it's creepy and smacks of endangered species studbooking and mail order spouses, but it's less so than...that above. Bring a large enough group over and you're guaranteed to have at least some match-up even if others can't find anyone they click with?

Countries actually used to do this quite a lot historically when they wanted an area settled but couldn't get a stable population going.

Dunno, the idea of Bene Geserit IN 40k is interesting, just a lot of potential magical realm pitfalls.

>>56130742
Well we've already written the Order of the Old Tree in, and it fits with all the other slightly too lewd societal developments we've added because they all come down to the influence of the fertility goddess that's queen of the Imperium.

>>56131193
Where? We've written that they exist and they solved the inbreeding problem, but I don't think we elaborated on how other than this part that's being debated right here.

>>56130742
Craftworlders could have a Hathor style Great Day of Drunkenness commemorating the day one of their old deities gave them the idea for alcoholic beverages. Hoec maybe. It's a day where the path system is relaxed and everyone can have a party should they wish.

Enforcers really fucking the tradition because it gives them a shit load of work to do.

Humans have adopted it on many worlds associated strongly with the eldar. Valhalla for example. But not Cadia as the tradition is not strongly observed on Ulthwe and also it's Cadia and you don't get time off duty for a piss up.

>>56131866
Would that be Cegger's bag? Although if it's whoever reputedly gave them the idea for alcohol, that might be tied to agriculture, and hence either Isha or Morai-Heg of all people. According to the latest White Dwarf Isha was seen as the goddess of fertility and plant life while Morai-Heg was seen as a more primordial manifestation of the earth itself.

Also, an interesting thought about Hoec. Hoec is said to be the god of the Webway, right? We know the Webway is alive. Is it possible that Hoec isn't an Eldar god, but the mind of the Webway itself, anthropomorphized a bit in folklore after the Old Ones vanished?

Alternatively, Hoec was always a minor god of travellers and roads, and the early Eldar just kind of lumped him in that position when they needed to explain what god was in charge of this fantastic thing the Old Ones made.

>>56132284
It could also be that he is the patron of way stations and the eldar liked to greet each other with a friendly drink in the old days.

I was really just trying to steer it away from being another thing given to Isha for the sake of variety.

>>56132885
>steer it away from being another thing given to Isha for the sake of variety.

Good point.

>>56130742
I can see your point about both magical_realm and the practicality. The order of the Old Tree's method of doing it's other advantage is that it also allows them to remove the head of the head of the House should the House be found wanting in terms of loyalty.

But as we haven't actually shown that there was any period of unsound loyalty prior to the Order's arrival that's probably not too much of an issue.

But then get's asked what's the point and what differentiates them from just a dating service?

>>56134972
Maybe play up the fact that outsiders find the actions of the Old Tree to be a bit disturbing, to emphasize that the intended reaction isn't supposed to be magical_realm. The nobles of Praetoria find it creepy that their lines are being tracked and selectively bred like animals. They also know that without the efforts of the Old Tree they would be suffering from massive effects of inbreeding right now.

I think the main issue right now is that the order of the Old Tree is either breeding waifus or something.

Another thing to consider is the Order of the Old Tree doesn't have to be Securitas. This isn't vanilla, where every female-dominated organization has to be tied back to the Sisters of Battle. They could be a sect of AdBio who decided to mix their teachings with Ishan philosophy. Use themselves to produce the next generation. The AdMech/AdBio have always had weird morals, and this seems like something they would do along with being in-line with the other surreptitious things the Old Tree have been described as doing. Outsiders see it as a little weird, and some wonder who is the real power behind the Praetorian throne.

Finally, it should be pointed out that nobledark doesn't have that sharp noble/pleb divide across the board that vanilla does, leading to large amounts of inbreeding and Blackadder-level shenanigans in the commanders. It ranges from complete social mobility on some worlds to stricter social hierarchies like on Praetoria.

>>56130142
Nice. I remember Fulgrimfag saying that too,

>>56128871
Am OP. No clue, got it from last thread. Used it because it fit the theme so well. Tried reverse image searching as well, got nothing.

>>56132885
>Today the holiday is a New Orleans funeral-style celebration to live life to the fullest in the god's memory
> The Eldar play the Eldar equivalent of bagpipes during the event.

>>56136095
Said I had time to write, not that I was finished. I was gonna do it last night but got invited to a halloween party, working on it tonight

>>56137342
As >>56130142, I apologize for jumping the gun there. Was just a bit too excited and didn't check the previous thread to confirm. When you spend all your free time on the Internet, it's a bit easy to forget that other people usually have a life.

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>>56136095
But muh sexy space nuns.

>>56137342
Getting hyped

bump

There was talk some time ago of Ephrael Stern. She is not a descendent of Magnus the Red because Magnus was an evolutionary dead end mule.

Ephrael Stern was though born from a psyker (latent) mother and a navigator father.

In the Vanilla her abilities triggered when she was exposed to the psychic agony screaming of her sisterhood who had by Chaos cultists been stitched into a living cage of merged flesh alive and awake.

In this AU, especially with all this talk of AdBio weirdness I'm going to suggest that the cage was made as an experiment by AdBio exiles who were driven out and hunted by the High Bio-Druids of Molech for being all manner of awful.

Ephrael Stern was a latent psyker like her mother with the 1 in billions Navigator Old One fragment magnification effect that buffed up Magnus. When the trauma and stress flipped her from latent to active it was like handing someone the shotgun of God.

Unlike Magnus it's manifested in nothing but physical buffs and resistance to other psychic attacks. Theoretically the Power Armour actually does nothing now as she can move faster and stronger than it does.

Her appearance has a polarizing effect on the lesser soldiers she serves with. On the one hand it's always nice to have someone who by themselves is classed as a WMD. On the other hand you have to wonder what they are throwing you against that would require it.

>>56140080
The Securitas aren't even nuns in this timeline. I would conflict with the Emperor's edict of "no militarized religious institutions".

>>56144204
I'm not sure if that Magnus was sterile as much as he was too psychologically damaged to have children. It was said before he met the Emperor he felt he had no family, "only jailors". He was treated as a walking WMD by the Despot and nobility, feared by anyone else, and while Khan might have known him before he left Ursh, it would have been only as a child or second-hand seeing as Magnus left Ursh something like sixty years before Khan did (I think, there may have been some timey-wimey stuff going on in the Himalazians IIRC). The only person that gave little Magnus any love was his mother Ada.

So while he may have recovered from his trauma enough to have his impromptu family, he may have been unable to have anything other than platonic relationships with people. Plus there's the whole psyker thing. Magnus never mentioned to Lorgar he had psyker powere because he didn't want Lorgar to have that burden (though he did tell him enough to protect him from drive-by daemonic possession). So what would he thought of having a kid that, by all accounts, would be a psyker?

>>56144729
How strong should Stern be?

>>56128871
pretty sure it's boris vallejo

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>>56144273
They act more like the German SS and STASI combined who are politically driven fanatics that are loyal to the Emperor first and foremost. The main branches are the paramilitary that works for the Inquisition and help the Imperial Army. The other branch is the mass surveillance and covert operations police that hunts down renegades or traitors. Every other branch a part of Orders Sororitas are smaller insignificant organizations tacked on for very specific purposes.
There is probably a unironic Orders Forma

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So I've been writing on what void combat is going to be like in the Noble Darkness of M.41 and want to check if this sounded like Age of Sail fighting.

>One Tech-Priest turned up his speakers to say,"Pull the cables using the engines then turn the shell to face the breech!" The rates around him was a stupid bunch when handling loading the shells, they were pretty good in accuracy but not much else. Several people rolled the shell over the hooks laying on the floor. Then two more hooks attached to cables came flying over the shell to have them strap onto the other hooks on the floor. Once the cables were firmly around the shell, the girl on the machine pulled and pushed some levers or switches and buttons to have the crane start pulling the shell above the floor. When the shell was hanging over the surface, the sailors got to work pushing the shell while another guided them on which direction it should be facing. After the warhead was facing the right way, the crane slowly slid near the breech of the macro-cannon with the help of the rates steadying it as the shell entered the weapon.

>Now, the Crone ship sat quietly farther away from Cadia and bow pointed at the cargo ships. It was relatively above the area assigned to guard and all the main batteries were aimed at the direction of the cargo ships. If the Imperials couldn't be fooled by Eloch, they would fire their macro-batteries after rotating to shoot once they got into range moving toward the area. If they were fooled, the Imperials would slide to fire at the targets instead of the Tendril sitting at their blindspot. The Imperial light cruisers both had no maco-turrets and just broadside cannons. Meaning, they had no way of effectively defending themselves if an enemy fired from above them, as they would need to rotate their entire ship while being shot at.

>>56145154
Slightly stronger than a Grey Knight slightly less than a deamon prince.

>>56136095
So we moving the Order of the Old Tree to straight up AdBio now?

Also the gestation tree, given it's limited usefulness, could be used as how they replenish their numbers but not how they influence the baseline stock of the Imperium. I'm disinclined to get rid of the tree not because of the name, a previous anon pointed out that it could be a reference to established and healthy family trees and that sounds way more fitting, but because the idea is strange and slightly inhuman just as the AdBio should be.

It could be an in-universe conspiracy that the Order is trying to breed:

>Naturally occurring Astropaths

>A stable population that is 100% compatible with the Space Marine augmentations

>A new type of Navigator

>Men of Gold or something like them

>A strain of human that is genetically compatible with eldar to blur the species line Galactic. Eldar. Conspiracy.

>A strong, resilient but docile and obedient slave caste or specialized humans for various tasks

And various others that range from improbable to outright impossible. They have always been very upfront in their matchmaking and that all they are selecting matches for is stability of society and good health of the subjects.

>>56128871
>>56136095
>>56145457

It is Julie Bell & Boris Vallejo - Alien Visitor

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>>56146891
One thing to keep in mind is that the Imperium has access to ion cannon technology now (and the AdMech have greater impetus to have it out there so they don't get one-upped by the Demiurg). There were some suggestions as to how naval arms work back in Thread 25. Basically you have heavy weaponry, like shell-based macrocannons, that hit like a truck but take a lot of effort to aim and reposition, and light weapons like ion cannons, lascannons, and railguns that can be easily repositioned because they fire a directed energy beam or accelerate tiny amounts of particles to relativistic velocities. So you get a lot of opening salvos composed of macrocannon fire followed up by railguns and the like as ships get closer. Kind of like what you see in the Tau trailer for Battlefleet Gothic (though the gravitic launchers are more a Tau thing).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StCXrBMl648

Also, since the Imperium is Art Deco in this timeline, wouldn't their ships look more like flying space locomotives? Or, to continue the Age of Sail analogy, ironclads that aren't total shit?

I know Eldar craft mostly travel by use of solar sails, both the Craftworlds and their warships make use of them. They're also said to use some kind of distortion method that makes it difficult to get a straight shot at the ships. I'm going to hazard a guess and say they might work by some kind of probability manipulation, though Lexicanum says they're just holo-fields that are somehow able to confound even automated sensors and non-visual detectors.

>>56149839
The look and style of the ships would vary from shipyard to ship yard.

I like the idea that the ones from the Luna Lagrange Docks look like the Chrysler Building and the Titanic.

Craftworlder Eldar ones look like sails and rigging over a giant yacht made of bone and ivory.

Hubworlder Navy look like locomotives. Big and bulky and unforgiving, things that look upon the universe unkindly with no pretense of diplomacy.

>>56149400
>A stable population that is 100% compatible with the Space Marine augmentations
>Men of Gold or something like them

LaughingFabulousBill.holopict

They're Bene Gesserit in space. Of course people are going to have conspiracy theories about them.

>>56146524
Just to point out (am >>56136095), there's no reason for all of the female-dominated organizations in canon to be tied back to the Sororitas. Some of the Orders in canon, like the Order Dialogus, work better as Iterators. Same with the Order Famulous, which is essentially the canon version of the Order of the Old Tree.

>>56145154
>>56147748
There was a suggestion that her power might fluctuate a big like an Orkish WAAAGH! effect. Kind of like the Jedi Exile in KOTOR II, gets stronger the more ambient psychic energy there is to supercharge her. Not necessarily supporting this idea, just mentioning it.

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>>56149995
Yeah, things would definitely vary across the Imperium. As was mentioned in the thing in Thread 25, "that said, this being the Imperium, things can range massively from one side of the galaxy to the other. Nova cannon does not always mean the same thing on the same ship, even though the Imperial Navy took pains to standardize the term. You can find a ship with plazma-based Nova cannons and ammo-shooting macrocannons or railguns alongside one with typical Chicxulub-caliber Nova cannons and lazcanon lance batteries in the same fleet, let along the same part of the galaxy."

I assume Tau ships look the same. Interex ships are probably outwardly Star Trek-y. The only description of them in Horus Rising is as follows:

"The ships were big. Visual relay showed them to be bright, sleek and silver-white, shaped like royal sceptres, with heavy prows, long, lean hulls and splayed drive sections. The largest of them was twice the keel length of the Vengeful Spirit."

Because of the way Eldar work, there was a suggestion that when they do have to fight, they use carrier tactics to supplement their normal hit-and-run methodology. Send a ship that is big enough to have it's own Webway gate and have it spew fighters onto the enemy. Only really used in desperation or if you have other ships backing them up because the Eldar prefer guerilla tactics otherwise.

Way before that, in an earlier thread, it was suggested that Crone ships hit harder but aren't as graceful as DEldar or Craftworlder ships, because they have the resources of Shaa-Dome to back it up, and may even be cannibalizing Space Hulks for parts.

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>>56150058
>LaughingFabulousBill.holopict
Because we all know what an unqualified success the New Men were.

>>56150058
>Same with the Order Famulous, which is essentially the canon version of the Order of the Old Tree.
I’m pretty sure this was why the Order of the Old Tree was a joint sisters/biologicus venture

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Is the anon that started doing the Praetorian history fluff still here?

If he isn't or it is abandoned I might try adding a chapter to bring it closer to the present.

>>56150981
On that note, is the new men project a failure for any reason other than a council of psychic supercomputers not being present to correct the human error?

>>56152971
No. Because Dr Bile considers genetic modification a form of modern art rather than a science and does his business in the Dark City.

Also the behavioral problems might be a result of being raised by Dr Bile's assistants in a Dark Eldar rich environment.

>>56152971
Quote from the anon who did the New Men

>The reason Bile’s New Men are failing is warp fuckery, like with ansible twins. If you were to do the exact same thing as with normal methods of splicing and in-vitro growth, you would end up with an odd but socially well-adjusted strain of abhumans. But since Bile is using Dark Eldar technology and the New Men are literally grown from pain and suffering, they turn out wrong (especially since they’re psykers).

>Deliberately wrote the New Men in such a way that they wouldn't be seen as innocents forced to be monsters, and yet avoid the implications of "genetic engineering bad, ooga booga". It also adds a bit of the arrogance and madness of Dr. Bile. A reasonable scientist would think "maybe I should create the race of psykers through nice, reasonable methods that don't involve anguish and pain, if for no other reason than I want well-adjusted individuals". Bile can't see the problem that's staring him in the face and until he does he's going to keep getting monsters. If he did things normally the results would be as emotionally normal as Oscar.

>Really the bigger issue is I didn't want the Imperium to get their hands on a population that without augmentations can reliably fight an Eldar or Sister and win. Or letting the Imperium know it is possible to make people like that. The quirky abhumans finally being free to live in peace would probably be one of Eldrad's Golden Age things, along with (non-canonical) best-case scenarios like Ynnead creating the biological singularity, or the Void Dragon slapping the AdMech until they get over their fear of inventing.

Bile's New Men are said to be intended to be to humans what the modern Eldar are to the proto-Eldar the Old Ones uplifted, and from there a stepping stone to the Men of Gold.

I think the failure is likely also due to them being raised in Commorragh, which is a stones throw from the raw Warp.

>>56153295
The possibility of New Men defecting to the Imperium was also discussed. The above issue was brought up, but it was pointed out that it wouldn't be impossible for a few individuals to defect Yvraine-style, and then find out they are sterile due to the same DaoT gene copyrighting that's on Oscar and the Space Wolves and being deemed a "failed batch" from Bile.

I.e., if you want to roll up a New Man/Woman character in a nobledark game of Dark Heresy, it might be possible, just be sure to take the necessary massive social drawbacks (and given the greater focus on diplomancing likely to be in a Nobledark!Dark Heresy game, that could be really lethal).

>>56153395
I'd assume that they all made their best effort to GTFO after Vect's wedding, going along with the multitudes of Vatborn and minor nobility that saw shit finally go past the point of no return. They really remind me of the lost generation from Eclipse Phase, and their stigma and persecution post exodus only increases it. Also, having their defection around the time of the wedding means they're involved in the culture shock of the rest of the Commoraghi that left the dark city, and explains the non-assimilation into the Imperium as well as putting them in the wider cultural event of the exodus, and probably eventually assimilated, while also late enough in Imperial history not to make a serious difference in End Times/Second War in Heaven.

>>56154591
Bile also probably made several more batches post-Wedding. Vect is on his ass to provide more troops for Malys' next Black Crusade to get Malys off his ass.

>>56154727
to be clear, Vect is on Bile's ass because its fun, and up his ass is exactly where he likes Malys

>>56155348
I'm not sure this was ever touched on, but Vect has Bile in a great spot. Vect is Bile's patron, which while many of the Dark Eldar are willing to acknowledge that Vect is the token human in several quadrillion with the twisted chops to make it in Commorragh, many Haemonculi (which are always a vainglorious bunch even in canon) would be furious that Vect would pick a human as opposed to an Eldar.

So on the one hand Vect has these Haemonculi throwing their gifts at him, trying to show Vect they are better than any mon-keigh. On the other hand Vect has Bile by the balls, because if Vect doesn't deliver to pay the rent Vect can just let slip Bile's location to a few key individuals. It doesn't even matter how good Bile is, all it matters is that it keeps the Haemonculi's minds on impressing Vect rather than, say, overthrowing him. Or maybe it does, because the fact that Bile can deliver makes the Haemonculi that much more frantic.

Of course, the coven that Bile belongs to (my guess: Thirteen Scars. They liked Bile in canon before he stabbed them in the back) probably loves this turn of events, their reaction being along the line of "that's our boy, look at him go" as he makes their rivals look like fools.

So, basically, Vect gets multiple mad scientists for the price of one.

Bump.

>>56154591
By their defection out of enemy ranks I would say that they made a difference to the war.

Also maybe some of them knew things about the Dark City. Could be useful if there is ever an attempt to cleanse the place

>>56158623
Given that they are just a better grade of cannon fodder I don't see them a having too much sensitive information.

>>56152134
If it's left unfinished it's fair game up to a point

>>56159006
They also probably didn't all defect. I mean many might have tried, but it's like with the Dark Eldar where Commorragh isn't a ghost town now because everyone left. The population of Commorragh is equal to the rest of the Craftworlds put together, being essentially the surface area of two astronomical units away from a star put together. And the Dark Eldar who did leave left because they have access to doors. I would think that Bike and/or whoever he sold the New Men to would be keeping a shorter leash on the New Men than a kabal or group of Commorragh dregs.

How exactly are the New Men different from regular people?

>>56161762
All latent psykers, 100% geneseed compatibility rate (possibly even the women, but the Fallen refuse to make use of New Men as aspirants due to to their other flaws so it's a moot point), strong as a Sister or an Aspect Warrior (probably a little weaker than the latter, as well as less agile), incredibly pain tolerance, immune to most poisons, and capable of surviving in condition that would kill humans without an environmental suit.

That said, they're also all leucistic or albinistic, with visible blue blood vessels on corpse-greyish white skin (probably due to using some other blood protein than hemoglobin). They also have mental problems that are like a cross between severe autism, PTSD, pack mentality, and sociopathy (they're not quite sociopaths, but they have trouble connecting with people other than New Men. This may be intentional on Bile's part).

Overall, it seems like despite humans appearing similar to Eldar (and indeed the survival abilities of the New Men are kind of Eldar or Astartes-like), humanity is evolving into something more Ork or Necrontyr-like than Eldar-like (though that's the baseline, the abhuman lineages seem to be going their own directions). Tanky as opposed to agile. I can see this realization being a source of unease among Eldar theoreticians, but at the same time despite having a bad control freak problem humans are much more Eldar-friendly than Orks or Necrons. So maybe third time is the charm?

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>>56162786
>evolving into more Ork or Necrontyr-like
>mfw

>>56163125
Well if you think about it Space Marines are essentially humanity's attempts to create an artificial Ork minus the spores. Because Orks are the usual adversaries for every other faction in both vanilla and nobledark, what really determines the viability of many tactics is "are they ork-proof". Of course it's hard to make anything completely ork-proof, but mostly ork-proof is good enough.

>>56162786
I'd shy away from 100% compatibility. Such a thing would be worth the AdBio copying despite the side effects.

It could be that they are born with some level of augmentation.

>>56164122
They're Bile's attempts to make the perfect Space Marine aspirant. In his mind the ideal "evolved" human would be able to take on any additional augmentations without issue of compatibility. This was why the anon who wrote the New Men mentioned that from a story perspective it's probably not a good idea to have many if any successfully defect, because then it tells the Imperium and the AdBio it is possible to make or alter people to have a 100% compatibility rate. Otherwise they can't tell if that's even something you can do without building a literal Frankenstein's monster.

Plus the Fallen never use them because they're afraid an Astartes-modified New Man would not listen to orders and rip their arms off (which is probably about right, given parts of their personality are based on the Afriel Strain). So the issue of Astartes-style New Men is thankfully not an issue.

The whole thing is more Bile's ego-trip than anything else, and highlights his failings as an individual. He makes what he considers to be human 2.0, and yet they all turn out to be maladjusted and poorly functioning individuals. Bile can't figure it out, because in his mind they're physically perfect and he doesn't see what's wrong. He fails to realize a person is more than a collection of genes, and until he does he's going to keep failing.

The Imperium doesn't notice because they don't know Bile intended a purpose for the New Men. All they see is semi-feral pale-skinned humanoids that rip Guardsmen in two.

>>56164600
It probably doesn't help that they're probably raised in pens and not taught how to be people except possibly by their surrogate birth mothers (if the birth mothers don't see the children as the source of their torment and project their hatred onto them) or by Bile if he wants to make some sort of trained cockatiel out of them. So even if they are born screwed up but potentially innocent, they may not have a chance to be anything more than killing machines or even communicate their needs beyond grunts and moans because they can't even speak Gothic (or Fenrisian, or High Speech, or whatever the fuck they speak in Commorragh).

>>56164705
Did Dr. Bile go through other makes of New Men before achieving this or has he just been varying on his original theme for all this time?

If so were his older models more or less human?

>>56166053
I'd say he's probably just tweaking the design right now to figure out why his creations are coming out as instead of as intended. Earlier generations of New Men probably had problems like exploding into a pile of organs, spontaneously dropping dead, or ridiculously bad luck, but now he's got a working design and (to him) all that's left to do is figure out why they're not turning out right. It's said once he realizes a batch has failed he rents them out as cannon fodder, only retaining a few of each model or version for dissection, testing, and breeding purposes.

The old versions would have already had a lot of genetic tampering, but Bile's basically thrown in every interesting allele he's come across since he started. Of course, the reason they're so inhuman is because their donor cells came from corpses, grown via machines powered by sentient suffering, and forcibly implanted in unwanted surrogates in a city that's a stone's throw from the Warp. And since they're psykers, that's bound to leave some sort of warp signature on them before birth. They're basically born broken from feeling the suffering that went into their creation. They're like PTSD ridden feral children. At least vatborn are "just" in-vitro grown from donated genetic material.

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>>56167399
So given all that the ones that do escape, what sort of a life could they live in the Imperium?

Most I would imagine just going off the grid, getting a job because they need to eat and being as unobtrusive as possible.

It could be for a few at least, an uplifting story of becoming human. Maybe one or more join the Imperial Guard and due to their augmentations get some measure of even.

It's not like they could be less stable than Angron.

>>56168779
Probably. They wouldn't be prone to Angron's rage spikes.

I'd imagine the majority would try to stay away from any AdBio or AdMech people, given that the only geneticist they'd ever met was Dr. Bile (never trust a doctor with a doctorate from Commorragh, kids).

It's also worth pointing out that the New Men aren't Bile's only project in this timeline. We discussed the possibility that he may have orchestrated the Maerorus project, and he'd love to get his hands on a sample from Oscar. That's just his personal stuff, not even counting what he's done for Vect or other patrons.

Sangy's feather on Old Earth (*cough*Blood Angels omnibus*cough*), Lady Celestine, and the dead Man of Gold on Ganymede (I forgot, did Oscar give him a viking funeral or just bury him?) are all prime targets for him.

++Thought for the Day: In unity, there is strength. In division, only death.++

>>56171535
>Blood Angels omnibus
You mean like the Rafen-Arkio shenanigans?

What do the Deldar think of Bile?

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So what should the High Lord of the various psychics be like?

>>56174695
To quote on anon on Bile, "dude went full Dark Eldar". The Dark Eldar see him as evidence that humanity isn't completely trash, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't stab him in the back like they would any other Dark Eldar.

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>>56150258
>There was a predator lurking in the shadow of the void while one Imperial light cruiser rushed headfirst into combat and another followed as reinforcement. Tendril was a Tormenter-class Crone battlecruiser that shifted the triple-barreled turret on its prow and bow to target the closest Imperial ship. When all the glyphs confirmed there was no way for the enemy to dodge the shots on the holo-display, Eloch licked her lips.

For the Crone ships, I was thinking about writing them to have actual turrets that can shoot above and below the ship. Unlike the Imperial Eldar, their ships would be tough as shit while sporting triple or quadruple barreled Starcannon turrets without illusionary defenses. Meaning the Crone ships are made to take a lot of punishment once their void shields fail if they have one at all.

With void shields, GW never makes it clear if they displace the damaging force or teleports it into the Warp. If it does just teleport the damage into the Warp, it becomes a real big problem for ships fighting near Crone Worlds. As a beam or explosion could be sent from the shields to a random point in the Warp, or worst, teleported into a ship it was protecting. Since only the Crone fleets fight each other inside the Warp, only the Crone ships have to worry about not using void shields.

What I'm thinking is if void shield fucks around with the Warp or something similar, they wouldn't use it. Crone ships would then have to just strap on layers of extra armor to compensate. Their thrusters and engines won't be powerful enough to match the speed and maneuverability of the other lighter Eldar voidships.

>Basically, I want to make Crone ships look like French WW2 cruisers.

>>56178266
I don't think a Crone captain would consider 'could accidentally damage something we're protecting' a valid reason to not use void shields. Although the other reasons you give for heavy armor are valid.

>>56176328
well, they'd be headmaster of the school magnus started, and have various duties as the prime human psyker while still playing second fiddle to various higher powers like Ahriman, Eldrad, and various other more magical mages. They'd probably actually be from Old Earth, and they'd have a lot of duties that brought them into contact with the Eldar side of the imperium.

>>56178266
It could also be that with the access to exotic materials the Eye represents they can make better skin and bones for their ships

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>>56179514
The nice thing about wraithbone is it's programmable matter, which means you can do a lot with it (just like Necrodermis). Of course that doesn't mean it's perfect. Though both Lexicanum and 40k Wiki say it's harder than adamantium or plasteel.

What exactly is ghastbone anyway? I know we've established it as "evil wraithbone", but how does it differ? Is it more ragged? Doesn't have wraithbone's innate Gellar field qualities (because, you know, Cronedar).

>>56178711
Magnus started a school? Where? I know Ahriman was basically Dumbledore on Prospero for a few millenia until the 4th Black Crusade and he started getting increasingly unorthodox due to the guilt and loss of his home.

>>56178266
I'm pretty sure it just kicks it into the Warp. General 40k physics seems to be when you need a place to dump stuff (waste heat, munitions) or bend space (teleporters, FTL travel), you use the Warp to do it. Though I could be wrong.

>>56172242
I like this.

>>56180082
I've assumed it has similar properties to the flesh of daemons, or is full of demons

>>56180082
Would Cronedar be as bothered about gellar field failure? They already have pacts to ptotect them.

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>>56180159
>Do they even need galler fields?
I was thinking the same thing if anything, all the gods except Khorne would prevent their daemons from just jumping in and killing their servants. The constant exposure to the Warp makes it a living nightmare for non-Crondar to be in during Warp travel, but to them its Tuesday.

There have been DEldar that have repented.

Have there ever been Cronedar who have become sane?

>>56182805
Probably not. With Chaos there is always a Moral Event Horizon (or, if you're playing Ravenloft, Act of Ultimate Darkness) that pulls you to the dark side pretty damn early on. In canon, most Chaos-corrupted traitors only have brief moments of lucidity (Horus, etc.), usually follower by them asking to be put out of their misery. The same seems true here with people like Luther. It's why the Imperium in both timelines is so explicit about avoiding Chaos. Once you sell your soul the Ruinous Powers don't allow backsies. The only canon legions that could easily repent are the Alpha Legion, who may or may not be closest loyalists, and the Night Lords, both because they refuse to associate themselves with Chaos like the other legions did. Not to mention Chaos itself tends to have an erosive effect on sanity.

Dark Eldar, by contrast, are evil, but not Chaos-corrupted. Their brand of evil is self-induced, and technically they could stop whenever they want (there are cases in vanilla where Dark Eldar have joined Craftworlds or become Exodites and gotten soul stones). It's just that they don't want to give up their hedonistic lifestyle, and in vanilla arguably the Dark Eldar are more successful than the Craftworlders. Slaanesh's thirst is a threat to them, but they'd rather keep on doing what they're doing and risk She Who Thirsts than live the more monastic lifestyle of a Craftworlder. Which says a lot about their priorities.

>>56180159
>>56181082
In that case the Gellar field effect of wraithbone becomes an even bigger issue, as it might prevent the emissarries of their gods from properly manifesting.

How common are the Jokaero?

Would a normal human freak out on seeing them or would they just be considered a bit odd?

>>56183526
well for that problem I'd refer you to >>56180152. Its similar to Wraithbone in that its programmable matter, but made to be warp conducting and daemon friendly as opposed to the inverse.

>>56184929
they're weird, and unlike Panhumans and Abhumans, Eldar, Tau, Tarellians, Kinebrach, etc. which are all Xenos Familiaris they're considered Xenos Independens, the same category as the Hurd, and the insular, violent, but somewhat reasonable Q'orl.

>>56184964
That's why I was wondering if maybe a side effect is it's a little bit weaker because THE WARP OVERTAKES IT, IT IS A GOOD PAIN, thereby leading Crones to cannibalize Space Hulks and strap on extra armor as suggested by >>56178266.

++Thought for the Day: Cowardice only hastens your death. Survival lies in defying the darkness.++

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>>56189400
>I guess the Emperor really did protect him.

Has Bile ever worked on xenos?

>>56191258
Only on private commission.

Vect provides him with a lab and living expenses so long as he keeps providing disposable super soldiers. The production of super soldiers with which he pays his rent allows him to keep working on his Human Mk2.1 project.

But that doesn't allow him much spare change at the end of each month with witch to actually live a little and there is no point in setting up shop in the City of Sins unless you get to enjoy your time a little.

Most of the drudgery of making ends meet he has gotten down to a highly efficient art form to the point where the vats and tubes can be tended by his assistants and slaves for extended periods of time.

To this end he invests his considerable free time on private commissions and training up apprentices, both lucrative fields for the old Houses of Twilight and the Kabals. It also helps that despite his best efforts to fit in Dr. Bile is considerably less backstabby than his fellow denizens of the Dark City. His creations seldom turn on their creators and even then only as a flaw rather than an intention of the design and he never takes apprentices hostage. This isn't out of love of any of the point eared little shits but out of professional pride.

Sadly sanity is determined by the majority and this sort of attitude has gotten him declared by all as insane. Most Dark Eldar consider him unpleasantly weird because they are all subconsciously waiting for the other shoe to drop and can't comprehend that there is no other shoe. Undoubtedly this has cost him work. On the other hand it is also what drew Vect to him, the combination of reliability and pissing everyone else off a little.

>>56176328
>>56178711
They wouldn't necessarily have to be a prime human psyker so much as they would have to be well versed in theory and good at organizing shit. In the same way that the head of the Imperial Guard doesn't have to be able to solo Greater Deamons, just good at leading those that can.

Greatest attribute would be accommodating the varying teaching stiles found across the Imperium, especially oddballs like the once mentioned wandering Jedi + Apprentice types whilst maintaining high standards of training without sacrificing safety.

Merelda of House Pereth, Lady High Admiral of the Imperial Navy, is the only abhuman serving on the High Council of the Imperium. She is a Void Born and quite typical of her kind; Abnormally tall and thin, skin unhealthily pale bordering on translucent, long dexterous fingers, bone white hair and big dark eyes. She is the descended from a line of space farers that have served in the Imperial Navy since the days of King Horus and much further into the inky black before that. Her list of victories in the name of the Imperium is legendary having seen heavy action in two Black Crusades and a War for Armageddon.

She knows Empty Space, that realm to which dear Horus was once king, and to her it is home. Indeed it is so much her home that like most of her kind she can't set foot upon Old Earth without a full body harness to take the weight.

Her understanding of trajectory, gravity, light speed delay and three dimensional theatres of battle is in the very top of what the Imperium has to offer. Eldar and Demiurg who ply the starry seas for a living do not understand it as she does.

In her time, to the disbelief of many, she has fought everything from orks to chaos to strange hostile things without name beyond the edge of the maps. She has been from one ragged edge of the galactic disc to the other and fought from Hub to Rim. Most unbelievable to most are her claims of boarding action battles. How, they ask, could a creature incapable of standing up for extended periods of time possibly fight in any meaningful way? It was this suspected dishonest that almost had her rejected for consideration of her job when her predecessor retired.

>>56194529
It wasn't until the Emperor himself confirmed that he believed her. He had seen Void Born in anti-boarding actions, scuttling in the zero and micro-gravity like great pale spiders across the walls. Void Born ships have no floors or ceilings and are built by shipwrights without a concept of "down" and "up". Even to veteran Chaos Marines, brains addled by centuries on Deaomn Worlds, the notion of attack from 6 cardinal directions was too much to instinctively know unless raised in it from near infancy.

Indeed there is something unsettling about watching Void Born swim through their ships of almost inhuman design, it is not a way man was meant to be but it is so.

Since assuming her job as Lady High Admiral of the Imperial Navy there has been nothing if not a mild resurgence in overall capability. She was Void Born born and raised and for a thousand generations and more the people of the deeps have not suffered incompetence well or often at all. Traditionally the greatest virtue of the pale-folk was always considered to be thrift, space is big and empty. Those that waste, be it fuel of lives or (horror of horrors) ships typically are the first to be disposed of in extremis.

This abhuman hardness got a lot of people worried, very worried, and not without cause. Although Merelda is not a cruel woman she is also not a forgiving one and although she holds no one to standards that she would not hold herself she holds herself to very high standards. This is the Navy, she would remind her critics, the first and most formidable line of defence of this Blesséd Imperium. It is not a social club for high society fops and inbred fools appointed for notions of nepotism.

There has been in the years since her appointment a notable increase in the number of Void Born transferring from the Merchant Navy to the Imperial Navy, all fairly and above board with not favour shown to the.

>>56194735
But Void Born are innately and instinctively better than normal men when it comes to the finer points of void warfare.

Much as the Fabricator-General the majority of her time is not spent upon the surface of Old Earth, visiting only when needed or when called for. Most of her time she spends in the ancestral capital of her kind, the Earth Luna Lagrange Point.

There in the dockyards once called home by Horus, Home still of House Lupercal among many other venerated names, she holds office. There she marshals her kind and orchestrates the training of generations of officers to captain ships as yet unbuilt to. Horrors lurk between the stars and she takes pride in that she commands the worst of them. Though she will never wear the Corona Nox, will never be the Queen of Empty Space, she is as near as any can be. The responsibility is greater as the Imperium sails to Judgment Day than in any days before.

The dockyards at thunderously busy and so are her people. As they scuttle and glide through the hallways, habs and foundries of the Lagrange Sprawl she sits at the centre of it all dictating the turning of the wheel.

The Sons of Horus have taken note of her. She is one of their faithful, adherent of the Old Gods of Empty Space. The secret faith known only to the pale-folk and shared with no outsiders save a few and most trusted.

Of the woman herself? She is hard to read. Often her people are compared to spiders, pallid, with long limbs and big dark eyes. She is if anything an exaggeration of this. When people look up into those dark eyes they see nothing but the bottomless deeps of space looking back at them. She seems to look upon her fellow lords and ladies dispassionately in the extreme to a degree considered unnerving even to the Navigators. She speaks when spoken to or when needed and never else. It is suspected that she is almost as unnerving to her fellow countrymen as she is to everyone else, abnormal even among abhumans.

>Any good?

>>56195149
I dig it

>>56194529
Waitaminute, the timescale seems off. 12th Black Crusade happened at the turn of the millenium in M41. We have no clue when the 11th Black Crusade happened. That would make her, at minimum, over a millenium old. I don't think baseline humans typically even live that long on average, much less pure Void Born (Horus died before the first Black Crusade).

>>56195149
It's like some sort of scary double Void Born.

++Thought for the Day: We are heirs to a tradition that has lasted unbroken for ten thousand years. It is our duty to carry it on into the future, as every generation before us has.++

>>56196369
She could have been the one leading the campaign against the Blood Pact’s pre 12th black crusade incursions, or mopping up their remnants afterwards, instead of participating in the 11th

>>56198078
Or participated in the Badab War, which started immediately in the aftermath of the 12th Black Crusade.

>>56198078
Would the Imperium be able to use arms buildup levels in the Blood Pact's sphere of influence to roughly gauge the approach of Black Crusades, or is the Despot so erratic that its not really indicative, because they'll go to war with or without adequate stockpiles, and they build up massive arms stockpiles even without the impetus from Malys?

>>56198600
I think that the Despot has learned from his mistakes. It's the reason why Deamon Princes are better than greater deamons and the subject of their jealousy. Greater Deamons are, in a way, as old as their patrons. Over the millions of years they become set in their ways to say the least.

Doombreed on the other hand is far more dangerous for still being inventive. It's all of human vice and capability magnified by an unholy nature.

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>>56198777
I wonder if Luther and Doombreed are ever willing to cooperate outside of Black Crusades, or if they're both too wrapped up in delusions of their pre-unification grandeur. The Blood Pact would probably be a much more hospitable place for the Fallen than the realm of scary fairies, but Doombreed might still maintain an abiding hatred of Astartes, regardless of alignment.

>>56198985
I imagine that they have to be kept away from each other most of the time.

When Luther is going Full Chaos they can work together in an overly formal and careful manner. But every once in a while Luther gets his shit back together, realizes how far he has fallen and what he has become and goes to war with Doombreed.

Doombreed strikes back, Luther goes back to being batshit but now he hates Doombreed because Doombreed is attacking him. Once that happens they both have enough old Unification grudges to settle that nothing matters.

Erebus has to keep them seperated at all times.

The Chaos gods find all this quite amusing.

>>56198985
Luther fought against Doombreed in the Unification wars, right? It was mentioned Lion got noticed for (among other things) his actions as a squire in the major theaters of the Unification Wars, which would have meant Ursh (since the fighting in Merika was limited). Lion was Luther's squire.

Bump

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>>56198777
You know, for years I feared you. Your return. You were the monster that haunted my nightmares. But I realized something. A monster is only scary as long as it has power over you. And you…*chuckles*…you no longer have any power over me. Look at yourself. Do you think that your god gave you trinkets and collared you like a dog because he was impressed by your combat prowess? No. He gave you those because he knew without them I would turn you inside out and rend you out of the fabric of existence like the little immaterial tumor that you are.

Ursh was feared in its day. It may have only ruled over one planet, but it instilled fear in every man, woman, and child on that planet. And what of your so-called Blood Pact? You call it Ursh reborn, but all I see is an undead shadow, a misbegotten clone of its parent half-trying to ape its progenitor’s glory days. Who fears the Blood Pact, despot, who? You may span multiple worlds but I see more people afraid of the misguided children of Franj than I do of you. You are no superpower.

And that’s what you fear isn’t it. That which is already coming to pass. Ursh relegated to the twilight of history. The blood at last being exorcized from that cursed soil. The scars finally healing with generations having grown up without fear of the last. You…*laughs*…no one will remember you. Not with any sort of emotion, or feeling of fear when they hear your name. No one even remembers your name besides the Steward, the Grey Knights, the Inquisition…and I. The Great Khan is gone. The Stormcrow is gone. I am the last child of Ursh. When I am gone there will be no more like me. And perhaps that is a good thing.

-- Apocryphal conversation between Magnus the Red and Doombreed during the primarch’s last battle during the Age of Apostasy, circa M36.

>>56205476
Actually, now that I think about it, what the hell was Vulkan doing during the Age of Apostasy and Imperial Civil War. We know Magnus was busy preventing Doombreed from feeding on the despotism and tyranny and turning the Imperium into Ursh reborn. Ferrus Manus we can assume was busy doing the same "only protect the Forgeworlds" plan he did for the War of the Beast (or possibly prevent a second schism as Forgeworlds either openly support Vandire or Thor and who the hell knows how Mars sided).

But what about Vulkan? We know Vulkan is basically a paladin, he would never side with Vandire or turn against him the minute he saw any sign of tyranny. He would always stand up for the people over authority. But what was he doing during the Imperial Civil War, and why was it Thor who spearheaded the resistance?

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bump with this thing i found

>>56198985
I know we mentioned Luther and the Fallen Dark Angels have their own world within the eye, if for no other reason than for the Ruinous Powers to keep their favorite toys from ruining their collector's value. The Fallen might even have several, especially as the non-WotB traitors might not get along with the originals, the Fallen DAs might not get along with traitors of other legions, and the Fallen might not get along with each other if they worship different gods.

I keep thinking someone mentioned Luther's particular world as being a land of darkness, mists, and castles like the Tzeentchian Raven Guard in...was it the Dornian Heresy? But I can't find where that was suggested.

>>56206481
I shoulda paid more attention back in my high school Russian classes.

Wrote a thing on Crone World naval designs.

Although ultimately descended from the same source, Eldar and Chaos Eldar warships are radically different from each other, the products of extremely different philosophies of war.

Eldar ships are designed for speed and stealth, to avoid conflict when victory is not assured and wait, unseen, for opportunities to exploit. They are the ships of a conservative people, who cannot afford to waste their ships or lives.

Crone ships are designed by a civilization which possesses vast industrial capacity and regards war as an ends in itself. They rely on armor and heavy weapons over speed and stealth. They have no solar sails, being too vulnerable and difficult to armor for a ship meant to plunge into harm's way, and while they possess holofields, they do not use them for stealth. Quite the opposite; the Crones use holofields to enhance the already-ludicrous ostentation of their hulls.

Speaking of those hulls, the profiles of Crone warships tend to evoke serrated knives; sharp-edged, angular, menacing, and focused. Crone warships lack the large 'wings' which often characterize Eldar and Dark Eldar designs. While they do possess wings, they are comparatively short and stubby, and are usually designed to fold up against the hull during certain maneuvers- for example, ramming.

The comparison to knives is more than superficial. Crone warships are literally sharp-edged, intended to be plunged into the enemy.

In summation, Crone warships are slower and much less stealthy than Eldar vessels, but are much more durable and much more eager to close with the enemy.

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>>56206990
Me too.

Google translate is giving me nothing but nonsense. All I know is it's about Lofn.

>>56205566
Vulkan was extremely old by that point. He had long since given up the life of a warrior to become a philosopher king.

Possibly he was trying to mitigate the worst of the awful shit going on within the system. He was still a Primarch amd as such it would have been unwise for Vandire to make the first overt move against him.

Vulkan would also not have made the first overt move for fear of destabilising the Imperium.

Then Thor turns up with an army headed by Oscar and they are forcing the issue and have decided that instability is better than tyranny.I

With peace no longer an option he sends out the call for all good Promethean men to rise up and sends forth his Salamanders to the cause.

Vulkan personally would probably not have been in much shape to fight.

>>56207114
Sounds good. It emphasises their savagery and aggression.

I've put up the writing of the head of the Navy and Guard along with a very slight alteration to the story of the Void Born Admiral so that it matches up the timeline.

>>56208023
>benevolent pyromaniac space pope counterbalances vandire within his limited sphere of influence
that sounds about right

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>>56209445
It could have been that he was planning something more drastic but unsure of who he could trust and how far he could trust them.

Then Oscar comes riding in on Full Warlord mode like the day they first met but on a far grander scale.

It would have been one of the few occasions where good old Oscar actually wore the golden battle plate and it would have been all the more terrifying for it's rarity. It would have been a clear indication that shit was definitely happening.

Whatever subtle and socially responsible and probably a lot more peaceful plans Vulkan actually had would by that point have been made totally irrelevant.

Is there anything stopping craftworlds from amalgamating into one big craftworld?

If not I have maybe an idea for a fleshing out of one of GW's name only craftworlds.

>>56208023
Do we know when Vulkan retired? We know he lived until like M38, but it was never explicitly stated when he took his retirement. I had been under the impression that Vulkan retired after the AoA, the fact that he was getting old and the Custodes dropping dead was an "oh crap" to everyone, who didn't even know Mark III S super soldiers even had an expiration date, leading Constantin to have to rather hurriedly train replacements for himself and the rest of the Custodes.

Of course Vulkan could have retired because his body could have taken more punishment than a league of Cadian rugby players, and even a Mark III Astartes isn't invincible.

>>56210766
Biel-Tan unable to put up with Ulthwé.
Iyanden being unable to put up with Saim-Hann.
No one except for Iyanden being put up with Alaitoc.
Dorhai being unable to point up with anybody.

Of course, Lugganath has no less lofty goals, so that might not even stop a Craftworld from having these goals.

>>56211122
I don't think that it was a matter of him deciding one day that "time to hand over the power armour and take up gardening". I think it was just that he started to turn up to less and less parties in person and started delegating more and more of the actual hands on duties to the man who would replace him.

It was a gradual thing as his eyes dimmed and his hair greyed. Eventually he just stopped going to war altogether.

Maybe that was a few hundred years before the Centuries of Silence. In those years leading up to that time there was the Civil War. He could still walk unassisted at that point but he was in no shape to fight.

He deteriorated up until the Centuries of Silence. Due to his super augmentations it took him ~200 years to die fully. He spent those dim twilight years compiling his teaching into a new volume of the Tome of Fire but he didn't want to be remembered like that and his disciple burned a shit load of records of the end but kept his teachings.

Any one have any idea about who should be head of the Merchant Navy and Traders?

>>56213364
No direct ideas, but they should always be lobbying Oscar to reduce the number of writs of trade in circulation

>>56059361
it looks like the alien has diarrhea haha

>>56213497
Why? Would they want fewer Rogue Traders or would they like them because it increases the power of the merchant fleet? Or does it?

I like the "constantly pestering" angle though.

>>56214579
Is there anyone by 999M41 really left beyond the border to trade with?

>>56215583
There is, the Imperium firmly controls the south western galaxy with influence reaching over the core and to the north and east, about 3/5ths to 2/3rds of the galaxy in their sphere of influence, from Sol in to Ultramar and Tau in the east, up to the gates of Cadia in the northwest, and through the hubworlds and into segmentum Ultima in the northeast. Chaos and the Crones run roughshod over the galactic northwest around and beyond the Eye of Terror, the Necrons have reestablished themselves in the galactic north east, and segmentum Ultima also has lots of petty Ork interstellar holdings spawning new horrors and possibly Brain Boyz. In between all of these major powers beyond the Imperium there are lots of minor Xenos Independens states, even some that are human or abhuman, from the original galaxy covering expansion of the Great and Bountiful Human Dominon. So yes, there’s lots of external powers for Rogue Traders to cut deals with, with the added bonus that one of the merchant navy only trading with Imperial member states.

The head of the merchant navy might think too many writs of trade have been issued over the millennia, leading Rogue Trader dynasties to conduct their uncontrollable, sometimes shady, business in the Imperium proper.

>>56215972
So you still need a Writ to trade with the Survivor Civs but you just need a ship and a crew to ply the trade lanes of the Imperium propper? Sounds good to me.

>>56216373
Well, and a navigator. Or somehow get access to the webway. Another reason that Sreta Ulthran is one of the richest people in the galaxy.

>>56216373
Survivor civs are members of the Imperium and get trade with the merchant navy, it’s to trade with independent polities

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>>56217428
But given the time and the big threats they must be getting thin on the ground by 999M41, all the reasonable ones who could trade either having joined for protection or been exterminated by things that they were too weak to defend themselves from.

Also the Imperium has a habit of turning up when the other party is bollocks deep in orks and offering support if they join. Most join as even eldar going Maximum Smug is still more or less preferable to orks.

Which means that the power of the Writ is diminished by 999M41 due to lack of reasons to need it. Almost everybody beyond the border are insane monsters of one stripe or another.

Not that this will matter to the old money Trader Dynasties who acquired obscene opulence when the going was good and have bought out all the rights to all the shipping lanes and set up interstellar mega-corps and the like and have adapted well to the changing galaxy.

Which briings us back to the position of Speaker for the Merchant Navy and Rogue Traders. Part of me wants it to be someone like Crazy Hassan but that personality would probably be poorly suited to such an exalted and accountable position. Also we had Horus as not unlike C.M.O.T Dibbler so lets not make that a second time.

If we go all the way to back to 1987 and Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader we could resurrect Abdul Goldberg; A man of dubious reputation and adventurous spirit who started out as a lowly holder of a presumably ancestral Writ but as head of a family fallen on very hard times. He's a collection of dubious virtues, gold teeth and an adventurous spirit, very charismatic in his exuberant way but as head of a very minor house of limited actual power beyond being the man who puts petitions to the Emperor and what ever other benefits he can get with the big chair. Presumably he got the job because all the other mega-corp level assholes would rather see a nobody appointed to High Lord than a rival.

>>56217770
Anybody else like how it was the Genestealer cults that first started fucking around in the Imperium, until a few years later that GW slowly introduced the Tyranids as a bigger threat.

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>>56217942
GW will jump on anything that looks like it will make them mad cash.

>>56216373
What >>56217428 said. Survivor Civilizations and other semi-autonomous powers get open borders and free trade with the rest of the Imperium (they can shut down goods coming in on their end, but the Imperium won't put tariffs or block goods from leaving the world).

It's one of the carrots the Imperium uses to get independent civilizations to join it: free trade without having to go through Rogue Traders and intermediaries. Rogue Traders serve another useful function in that if an independent power turns out to be Chaos worshippers or otherwise corrupted, the only people at risk are the dynasty trading with them. You know how in canon one of the reasons the Imperium is so leery about working with anyone (besides the rampant xenophobia) because they're worried about becoming dependent on an alien power? Rogue Traders address that same problem: only the people who have been thoroughly vetted (i.e., trusted enough to get incorporated) get free trade with the Imperium. Everyone else has to go through intermediaries.

Another thing to point out is unlike in canon, where the Writ of Trade and Inquisitorial Degree basically means Rogue Traders and Inqusitors can do whatever they want because the only person who can tell them otherwise is on the lich loveseat, here the Emperor can and will use his power to take out a Rogue Trader dynasty. Take a look at "Eversor" where a Rogue Trader who decides to get involves trading Chaos shit gets a titular Eversor to the face.

>>56217770
I like the idea of a Rogue Trader who realizes the Rogue Traders' job is quickly going extinct and they are going to have to adapt if they want to survive. I also like the idea of a human from a less European-inspired culture.

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>>56217770
>>56218253 (same)

That actually reminds me, other than Oud Oudia Raskan are there any other old-fashioned High Lords? So far all of the others have been either movers and shakers (Abdul, Fedor [technically]) or are relatively neutral (Lukas, Irthu, Merelda). Aveliza might be, being relatively rigid about THE LAW.

>>56217942
We have that in this timeline actually. First contact with the tyranids was the genestealers, Imperium thought they were the main threat, managed to win against them, and thought that was it. It was a noteworthy war but not game-changing. Then the tyranids show up and it turns out they're following the paths that the genestealers created years ago, all the way to Old Earth.

IIRC, the fact that genestealers did make it all the way to Old Earth is one of the few things that have been suppressed by the Imperium in this timeline, so as not to start a general panic. The genestealers didn't get to the *Awaken my masters* phase, but the fact they were even there is disturbing.

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>>56218253
So the current representative of the Merchant Fleet is, I'm going to suggest, a Tallarn. Ot at least very strongly Tallarn influenced. Rumors abound about him. He is not the least known of the High Lords. In fact he his the most known and everyone has extensive information on him, sadly quite a lot of the information everyone has is contradictory.

His mother was Tallarn, that is almost certain. A beautiful princess of one of the city-kings most suggest although which of the grey-haired old women he has as advisors is his mother he will not say and neither will they. His father less is known about other than was an inter-stellar trader. He was of the Goldberg family, a trader dynasty on hard times somewhat reversed in recent years and as such beneath the notice or care of the other old-blood families.

One of his eyes is green and the other is yellow and nobody is sure which is the artificial/graft one. One rumour has it that his father was a Fenrisian tradesman from one of the younger colony worlds, yellow is a "normal" eye colour for those people. Some say his princess mother was married off to his father to secure an off-world trade contract, others that she ran away with him for adventure among the stars. Or the yellow is a graft and the green one is natural, green is an extremely common eye colour on Tallarn.

Others say that he isn't Tallarn at all but from one of the Seven Sanctuary Cities of Nocturne. Certainly he in fluent in the City-Nocturne language, among about a hundred other languages, and is well versed in the Promethean Creed though he does not follow it.

The Writ of Trade he carries the Emperor remembers signing twelve and a half years after the Unification of Sol officially became the Great Crusade. It was to a man called Horatio Jeffers of Gredbritton, which is not to say that the family hasn't legally changed it's name at some point down the long years or indeed it could have passed to another family perfectly legally.

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>>56218726
Of the man himself? He is a family man, that is known. He has at least one wife, always referred to as a singular and carefully never by name, though who among his entourage it is is not known. It is known that he has plural in both sons and daughters but again it is not known exactly who among his extended and extensive family they are. It is known that his mother is still alive but his father is not, though not who they are. Unless he's been intentionally and subtly giving consistent "slips" of information down the years that have no basis in reality. It's possible.

He is naturally hideously intelligent and further augmented by minor cerebral augmentations of dubious legality across the Mechanicus legal jurisdictions. It is known that he can speak at least a dozen languages fluently in addition to High Gothic and claims to be able to speak over a hundred with varying degrees of mastery though the extent of this is unverified.

He has sworn to, at and by god and gods of any number of faiths. It is unknown which if any of them he follows the creeds of and which he believes in. It could be none or it could be all of them somehow. In much the same way he has celebrated the festivals of many faiths although it's more than likely that he just likes celebrations.

His age is difficult to say as it's possible that his predecessors as head of the family, not necessarily his father, was also called Abdul Goldberg. Or he has inherited the name upon becoming head of the family. Or he really is as old as he claims (which varies quite a lot) and is just really well preserved. Given the way in which rejuvenents vary in effectiveness between people it's not totally outside possibility that he is in fact just shy of 800 and only physically of early middle years.

He is not psychic. That much if nothing else is certain, he's just really good at reading people and lies so well that he can fool or outright block a casual weak surface scan.

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>>56219028
He always keeps a loyal psychic around with him at all times to detect and trace if anyone tries to scan him. These psykers, all sanctioned and legal, are also invariably part of the family though whether they are married into the family or there is a strong psychic gene in the Goldberg is hard to say. Certainly if they married in there is now so it's probably pointless to wonder in any case.

Of the man's rise to power what can be said? He managed to appear on the record books of as many of his competitors and fellow traders as possible so that the name was never too forgotten, positioned his family to appear big enough to fill the vacant shoes as the previous holder of the position started to look ill but still looked small enough to bully around and it didn't hurt that his family were old money. Or at least old IOUs.

It also helped that he had enough ships under his name and the name of his family to appear like a large but broad dynasty rather than a tall and rich one that nobody else wanted or the small and forgettable one that they actually were. Most of these ships were bought exactly to appear exactly as that and the mortgage is still being paid on most of them, high millage old buckets that they are.

And so the Goldbergs got he job. Not because anybody wanted them to have it but because they all wanted each other to have it far less. An ineffectual, weak and poor house would be easy to ignore if they got a position among the High Lords of the Imperium. They would have all the theoretical authority but no power to use it, the other Trader dynasties and meg-corps would have a new era of unregulated greed unbeholden to any so long as they didn't do anything to incur the wrath of the notoriously hands-off Royal Family.

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>>56219218
For the most part they have been right though they are not worried and maybe they should be that the Goldbergs are not squandering their new position. From that ever so lofty position Abdul Goldberg can see the overt web of trade across the width, breadth and depth of the Imperium and has access to reports that can strongly hint at the more hidden web of undeclared trade. More importantly he can spot the gaps that his family can fill with their freshly acquired ships. Gaps that are being filled methodically.

The Goldbergs are setting the groundwork to be on the rise again for the first time in possibly thousands of years.

But what do the other High Lords and Ladies know of this? Fedor Jiao of the Navigators has just been deposed under suspicious circumstances, presumably Hector Rex of the Inquisition knows or at least someone in his employ knows, Merelda Pereth of the Navy probably suspects a power shift due to her contacts across the Void Born and Abdul knows that Irthu Haemotalion knows because Haemotalion generally knows or at least suspects everything. But they don't care, the business of business is not their business. The only ones who would care are the other big trader companies and they are habitually dismissive of the Goldbergs.

But what of it? Old Uncle Abdul has seemingly no real personal ambition beyond seeing his family prosper as all good patriarchs do. And professionally he is fiercely loyal to the Imperium as it is the greatest bastion of civilization that is and ever has been and trade is the backbone of it and trade is what flows through his veins as much as blood.

Indeed if you want something, he has it, or will have it soon or can introduce you to someone who does. Usually a nephew of some description, he has seemingly and endless supply of nephews. But always remember to have exact change.

>Is this acceptable?

>>56219447
A few grammar issues, but otherwise it looks pretty good. My question is, does Abdul Goldberg interact with Sreta Ulthran's cartel? If so, how are their business relations? After all, she's the "Merchant Queen Of Ulthwe," if not a Rogue Trader, per se, and appears to be an influential player in Imperial economic affairs. Or is the House of Ulthran one of the groups ignoring the Goldbergs?

Also, do we have any named Rogue Traders (other than Abdul) yet? I don't think we've brought over any from canon 40K, only referenced to Rogue Traders as a general organization.

>>56219905
I'd say they probably ignore them, also as eldar of Ulthwe they get Survivor Civilisation Rights so they might not need to strictly adhere to Imperium trade laws

>>56219905
>Forgetting about Prince Yriel, the Rogue Trader to beat all Rogue Traders

>>56219447
Sounds good. Wish there was some other Middle East themed world out there than Tallarn, but to be fair we have no named Tallarn characters besides maybe that one tank commander in canon.

Thread archived.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/56059361/

++Thought for the Day: A life spent in service to yourself is worth nothing. A life spent in service to civilization is worth everything.

>>56222887
>>56219905
So should it go onnthe 1d4chan?

What sort of person should the Spokesman for the Collective Synod be?

>>56225863
It has been added.

>>56226505
The wha?

>>56228186
High Lord of Religious Affairs.

The Imperium itself might be a secular institution but somebody has to be in charge of monitoring and regulating.

Spokesman for the Collective Synod could be like High Priest Ridcully from Discworld. Or are we getting too much Discworld influence?

>>56229906
not that I've noticed

>>56218036
That was before srs bsns

>>56222887
There are no other such worlds at all?

>>56231457
Well, in addition to Tallarn, both here and in canon there's Prospero (Spess Egypt) and Colchis (Spess Levant, though here it's like that plus a very peaceful Holy Roman Empire). Maccabeus Quintus could be another, but it could be another bait-and-switch (high concepts are good, but ones whose breadth can't be fully encapsulated in a single sentence is better). Tau in this timeline have some Middle Eastern influences on top of their canon Far East stuff, particularly in their early history.

And of course on Old Earth we have the Nord Afrik Enclaves, Gyptous, Achaemenidia, and Persepotropolis, but that's cheating since that is the literal Middle East.

Imperium as a whole takes cues from Imperial Persia and China here in addition to Rome and medevial Europe (the Persian part is specifically how the Imperium handles it's subjects and semi-autonomous regions: I.e. "don't make me come over there"). And its Empress is literally out-of-universe named after a Mesopotamian goddess even if their personalities are complete 180 of one another.

Still surprising that there's no SPESS Persia or SPESS Babylon in canon.

>>56222887
Prince Yriel was trading in a roguish manner long before he got a Writ of Trade.

Can he really be considered a RT if it means nothing to him and made no difference to him?

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>>56233841
>Can he really be considered a RT if it means nothing to him and made no difference to him?

If he did give a shit, then he wouldn't have been Rogue Trader material in the first place.

>>56218726
>Seven Sanctuary Cities
>of Nocturne

Ah shit, I knew there was something I missed when I did the fluff for Medusa.

>>56059361
Why does the archive link not work?

>>56086079
That's the point, no one knows what the fuck their doing because there is no one around. It is a ghost of an idea that there is a higher rank, and everything somehow still works because Orks.

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>>56229906
I can see it to an extent

https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Hughnon_Ridcully

But to adapt it to fit as a High Lord the idea would have to be tweaked. Somewhat. Faith in something larger than yourself does act as a Chaos and Deamon deterrent so he would believe in something hard even if it is just in the rightness of the Imperium.

He shouldn't be of the Katholians, we've used them quite a lot and we don't want the setting to be to focused on them in particular. If anything it should be one of the more pagan faiths that accepts the possibility of other gods but considers their god/s to be the best. Or at least the one you are stuck with.

Given that the Ridcully brothers were built like bears I'm tempted to make him a Catachan who "follows" the gods of blood and wood. Why has he become the Spokesman for the Collective Synod? Same reason Mustrum Ridcully became top wizard; fucker is unkillable. He's also a lot brighter than he appears which is just as well because he appears to be some sort of bear in a kevlar cassock.

He also does not choose sides in the ecclesiastical debates and although he believes it of great importance that all Catachans keep the faith he isn't all that interested in spreading it off-world.

The Collective Synod itself is made up of the heads of religions of all the religions that have official heads and the most well respected members of those that don't. Whilst it does give religious institutions a say in the day to day running of the otherwise non-religious Imperial Government it also makes them accountable for keeping their followers away from Chaos and also keeping the no militarized religions law. Also they spend so much time arguing between and among themselves that they aren't much of a concern with the rest of the High Lords as although not!Ridcully has theoretically as much say as any other High Lord he only remains a High Lord so long as enough of the Synod either supports him or at the least doesn't object to him.

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>>56236198
It's also important to keep an eye on population shifts of the faithful and as the Imperium and it's various branches generally don't ask what you believe unless it has a reason to having the people who do know this sort of thing in easy reach generally comes in very useful. Sudden unexpected shifts are often come about due to gene-stealer infestations, Chaos missionary work or extremist uprisings that could rock the boat.

It also gives the Imperium some level of authority in the common mind over such groups if the head of their priesthood actually holds an office in the Imperial court.

To this extend not!Ridcully is merely required to keep them all in line and if he see them get out of line report it to the relevant authorities. As such the Spokesman for the Collective Synod must always be impartial, unbribable and honest. Also possessed of great patience and endurance as with the hundreds if not thousands of big (or big enough to get a seat on the Synod) faiths the debates could become quite protracted.

Does this sound about right?

>>56236386
yeah, sounds good. The Collective Synod's relationship with the beneficent Empress of the Imperium might be worth some thought too, since their various faiths must contend with the fact that the nominally non-religious government of the Imperium is co-ruled by an embodied goddess from a pantheon older than all of their traditions.

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>>56236520
Oddly enough I can see most of them not giving a shit.

She's old and she's an alien. That makes her an old alien. With exceptions like Colchis eldar and human faiths have tended to remain separate.

That the eldar worship her is just one of those alien things that aliens do and you just have to live with. Also she isn't in the Synod so it's not a huge issue and although the ambassador of Colchis is they are only one voice among many.

Also of note the Priesthood of Mars has no representative because they feel it would be beneath them.

>>56236658
>the Priesthood of Mars has no representative
The fuck do you call the Fabricator-General, then?

>>56237308
A High Lord in his own right rather than having to be part of a large council of people effectively sharing a High Lord seat.

>>56237308
I think what they mean is the Mechanicum don't have a representative because in their mind it would imply they are "just" a religion as opposed to a universal concept, when in reality the Mechanicum get a seat because they make all the things.

>>56236520
>>56236658
I think we have it that eldar god worship is a minority belief in some parts of the Imperium (like humans in fantasy worshipping Khaine).

To the rest of the Imperium who don't know the truth and aren't either Eldar pantheon worshippers of Baalites they probably see Isha as some pharaoh-esque Space Pope, who takes on the identity of a deity and possibly powers through warp fuckery (basically they think she's the Everqueen). Yes the current Empress has been around for 10,000 years. So has Eldrad, and the Eldar aren't falling over themselves to worship him.

Other faiths might fit the Eldar gods in as benevolent (but non-divine) Warp entities or angels. Space Buddha Lorgar himself supposedly reconciled the existence of Isha with his Katholian faith by coming to the conclusion that she was a benevolent being sent by God, but who was just as fallible and unaware of God's master plan as any mortal.

Many oldschool Cadians don't believe she's a god because she's 1) in realspace, 2) looks mortal, and 3) not actively malicious. It's worth noting that Old Cadian uses the same word for "god" and "daemon", the closest distinction being made is "god" sometimes being translated as "BIG daemon".

>>56236198
>He shouldn't be of the Katholians, we've used them quite a lot and we don't want the setting to be to focused on them in particular.

Amen to that. Thank the fricking Emperor/Empress.

>The Collective Synod itself is made up of the heads of religions of all the religions that have official heads and the most well respected members of those that don't. Whilst it does give religious institutions a say in the day to day running of the otherwise non-religious Imperial Government it also makes them accountable for keeping their followers away from Chaos and also keeping the no militarized religions law.

This. So much this. Also making sure other religions haven't been subverted by Chaos worshippers, though not to the extent that it leads to the Shadow Wars (though people don't always listen).

hopeful bump

>>56234601
Medusa might also have similar things, it's not a unique concept

Any suggestions for a name? What are common Catachan names?

On the Catachan and the Catachan faith.

All we have so far is that the Catachans typically practice their faith by yelling their hate at an alter.

Lets take it further than that. Back before the Imperium made contact in the Great Crusade they were scattered with much in terms of isolated communities due to lack of fast communication.

Also Catachan is one of those rare exceptions where there are both humans and abhumans that have existed side by side for extended time. We know that there are Catachan native Ogryn, I'm also going to suggest that there are also Catachan native pygmies. Given the ratlings we can assume that the Imperium classifies pygmy as abhuman.

Pygmies are island populations. Baseline humans and ogryn are inland and mountain dwellers. Catachan has only one landmass but it's a very spread out equatorial landmass with many inlets, inland seas and bays so the air remains moist and it rains often enough that bar the beaches and the really tall mountains it's all jungle. It's also tyranoformed some point in the past. Presumably some ancient Hive Fleet of pre-history was going to scoop everything up for digestion but was interrupted. It is assumed, given the estimated pre-human spaceflight era this must have taken place in, that the Eldar Empire exterminated the space elements of the Hive but couldn't be bothered about the ground elements. Or they were just curious about what they would do long term. In any case that was all ancient history and they went feral long, long ago.

In any case Catachan was greenhouse Hell long before man first set foot upon it. Given that it was Hell they must have seen the planet as it's probable that it was not a colony of the Great and Bountiful Human Dominion. More likely that it was settled in the early days of strife by ships blown off course needing somewhere with a breathable atmosphere to wait for a rescue that would never come.

>>56245051
Given that there was only ~8,000 years since the common ancestor of the three branches of humanity on that world it can be assumed that the Ogryn were the result of imperfect gene-splicing using a stranded ship's medical facilities. Pygmies could possibly have developed in that time normally in a limited gene-pool.

There are no native Catachans that dwell excessively on the beaches of the main continent. Despite the abundance of edible shellfish such attempts at settlement have not ended well. It is in fact safer in the forests, under the trees. In a similar manner mountains above the tree-line are not safe as it is also far too exposed.

When the early Imperium discovered Catachan in the Great Crusade they had regressed to a pre-black powder state of technology. It was not a planet from which any sort of real industry could be easily built.

At that time all of their gods were local and tribal. Since then with the increased ease of communication the gods have merged with similar ones across tribal boundaries. The people of Catachan never really fought against each other due to the ever present threat from the wildlife and the native ork population. Not long prior to the War of The Beast the major amalgamated tribal traditions formalized their scriptures into a coherent book and formalized their religious rights under the carful instruction of the Godless Prophet Jahariko, last of the eastern Taproot tribe.

For the most part the people of Catachan don't worship their gods and live in defiance of most of them. Their gods give them commandments and they sometimes get obeyed, more often they get told to go fuck themselves. Their godless priests are there to rally the people in the name of defying the cruel gods in a constructive manner. Depite their gods being assholes they have little overlap with the Chaos gods, which differentiates them from Cadia.

The pygmies of the islands have their own traditions that are mysterious to everyone but them.

bump

>>56243951
Yeah, but both planets having "Seven (specifically Seven) Cities of Sanctuary" where whatever force that regularly upheaves the planet is not as bad?

>>56245051
Would they really classify them as abhumans? Ogryn and felinids are as different from humans as Neanderthals are, and I think ratlings probably differ more from other humans than "are short". Given the extreme phenotypic diversity of humanity in the galaxy, what makes an abhuman versus a baseline humans? LIIVI is considered a human here despite being like 6'8", there are the Fenrisians and Cadians, etc.

Also in this timeline the Catachan wildlife aren't tyranid inflienced. Instead, the tyranids stole DNA from Catachan (like they did with the Eldar, and the Fenrisian Kraken), particularly during the Genestealer Wars, to make their troops more killy. It was raiding the genetic pantry so the best stuff was at their disposal and not on the other side of the galaxy when they needed it during all out war. Obviously they didn't get everything, they missed the Barghesi, Phyrr, and some others, but they got some pretty nasty shit.

>>56247243
They classified the hubworlders as abhuman. Admitedly they classed them as such as a prank but that nobody bar the hubworlders objected shows that even if they can freely interbreed is not an issue.

And they are extremely notably further away from the average height than LIIVI and between them it is 100% inheritable and stable. So they could be classed as abhuman.

>>56247553
Hubworlders also lookes a lot different from baseline in terms of bodily proportions. Pygmies are just scaled down.

So we can assume that ratlings have other anatomical divergences even if they are just internal.

It could be a belief of the under educated within the Imperium that pygmies are abhuman.

Catachan still has a native Ogryn population, so there is still that.

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>>56244637
Anything violent sounding and Swedish (or based on a fruit) if you want to base it off of Rambo.
Some examples of real Catachan names are
>Greiss
>Straken
>Thorn
>Dell
>Tiho Anders
>Gator
>Black
>Harker
>Caten

>>56249169
Violent Swedish plants. Sounds good.

So would Halvar Sharkbane be an acceptable name for the Spokesman for the Collective Synod?

Is Catachan-chan part of this AU.

>>56249032
Official pictures of ratlings seem to show they look like stereotypical hobbits. As in abnormal proportions with large feet.

>>56247553
Subspecies means notable anatomical differences but can still interbreed. Species separation is often defined by inability to interbreed, and even that is wonky in many real life cases (llamas and camels, despite being radically different and having last shared a common ancestor millions of years ago, can produce fertile offspring, same thing with false killer whales and dolphins).

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>>56253956
Speaking of which I'd like to put forward a suggestion for ratlings. In vanilla it's said that ratlings evolved the way they did because of inbreeding and the fact that they lived on worlds with bountiful harvests and "soporific climates". That's not how it works. Evolutionary dwarfing is usually caused by a lack of food, not abundance. Low food makes it advantageous to be small because you can survive on less, whereas abundant food encourages gigantism. Also if inbreeding were the cause the ratlings would have a lot more problems than being short.

This actually fits a lot better with what is known of the behavior of ratlings. They’re gluttons, because they come from an environment where no one knows where you’re going to get your next meal, and in the past their ancestors had to hoard anything that could be useful so they tend to steal things. They’re excellent chefs, because in the past their ancestors had to learn how to make an edible meal out of shit.

So what happened? About the time of the Age of Strife Ornsworld was in the grip of an ice age. Viable land area was reduced, food was scarce, and populations were scattered. About a thousand years before the Imperium arrived the Ice Age ended and Ornsworld got really nice. Large portions of the planet went from being iced over to being really nice (basically the Shire). The ratlings, normally used to extreme frugality, exploded in population due to their newfound access to this extremely fertile land.

Either that or Ornsworld is a series of islands (debatable), or large portions of it are mountainous and the Shire-like portions are the fertile valleys between mountain ranges like some kind of Space Austria or Space Switzerland.

>>56254185
I like the former ice-age Austria Shire. It sounds like it could be an ideal mix of comfy and grand.

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>>56252770
I think Reri Hesperax is a part of this AU as a cybrid Dark Eldar assassin/plaything made by Bile for Lilith Hesperax. She is supposed to represent the Dark Eldar version of the Eldar-Human hybrid in that she looks almost Human due to the excessive amount of cybernetics and genetic tampering in her creation. Maybe she was meant to go so far as to assassinate the Emperor if need be, but who knows, Lilith never ordered that hit yet.
Also no, Catachan-chan is not a part of this AU.

>>56254185
>Space Austria
Man I better go to Ornsworld for skiiing before the Warp Hounds burn it down.

++Thought for the Day: Death is the fate of all living things. When you die does not matter; it is how you die that is important.++

>>56247243
>LIIVI is 6'8"

Someone post that manlet height chart, I think he's considered a giraffe at this point.

>>56256321

Yeah, 6'8" is on the tall side of average for a Space Marine, humans that tall do exist but they can look a little freaky next to other people.

>>56256408
I think it was said he was from a low-gravity world and Taldeer is the Eldar equivalent of being five foot flat (something like six foot flat or 6'2"). She's short for an Eldar, which was a point in her favor when Sreta tried to marry her off in a political marriage (to someone who hadn't even been born yet, IIRC).

Thankfully, no one in the future seems to have told the Eldar about Napoleon complexes which would only cause the need for more body bags.

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>>56256408
I know SM height is wildly inconsistent in canon, but I'm pretty sure it's generally accepted they average out at a bit over 7 ft, and are about 7.5 ft in armor. Here's a picture I like of SM proportions imposed over a picture of Shaq (he's a 7'2" basketball player for all the non-sports people) that shows scale pretty well.

>>56258984
How tall is the Emperor here? Seeing as the Men of Gold were meant to act as a link between humans and the Iron Men/Minds, it probably wouldn't do for them to be the size of the Emperor in canon where he's towering over the 12 foot primarchs.

I keep having this idea that among Oscar and the primarchs, Magnus was the tallest due to his weird biology, Vulkan was slightly shorter but bulkier because of the extra swole he got from the Mark III S geneseed (also fits his character, Vulkan was a bulkier fighter that preferred to fight with sledgehammers while Sanguinius and Lion were swordsmasters), Oscar was slightly taller than most of the rest of the augmented primarchs, though only slightly tall if that by Eldar standards (so he's not towering over Isha), and the rest are kind of assorted from there.

A&O might have been shorter than the rest of the primarchs as a whole, but then again it could be because they were unaugmented humans fighting alongside Thunder Warriors, Canis Helix soldiers, and Space Marines. Unless they were wearing powered armor that made them look bigger, which confuses things. Just as planned.

How tall are Canis Helix soldiers compared to Space Marines? I would assume about the same size.

>>56260189 (same)
Okay I'm an idiot. I thought I'd check the old writing to see if the Emperor's height is written down and Malcador's log literally says he's about eight feet tall (2.5 m).

Also should we make a new thread, or let this one die and then make a new thread?

>>56258984

You're right, I screwed up the first number. 6 and 7 both start with S... but yeah, I've always seen SMs averaged just under 7.5 feet.

LIIVI is not too strikingly tall, just a little noticeable.

>>56260390
>just a little noticeable
I'm 6' 2" and I'm taller than about 90% of the people I meet. 6'8" isn't space-marine huge, but would definitely stand out in a crowd.

>>56260189
A&Ω were described by various sources as a bit on the short side, Space Marine Huej, one person, two people and various other contradictory things.

Therefore they were either all A&Ω or none of them were or it was somewhere in between. All that can be said for sure is that they had something to do with the founding of the Inquisition and the Alpha Legion. Nobody says anything about them having anything to do with the Omega Legion of the Hydra because nobody has ever heard of them.

Of course very few have heard of the Alpha Legion either but they have been allowed to exist in the history books in a vague and passing sort of way for their ill defined actions in the Unification and Great Crusade although actual details beyond "existed, did stuff" is hard to pin down.

There is only one extremely obscure document regarding the Omega Legion and that was the official recommendation sent by A&Ω to found them. It was rejected and the subject never raised again. The document is not restricted, merely extremely old and obscure.

You have to be quite high up in the running of things to know that Hydra is even a thing to wonder about.

fuck me i gotta go to class

don't die

>>56263771
Exactly, given the contradictory documentation, A&O could have been regular humans in power armor, short Astartes, or who knows what. The only person alive who knows for sure is the Emperor, the Inquisition, and maybe Bjorn and a few others if they ever saw the two in person (big emphasis on if, aa opposed to sending an intermediary).

>>56267172
We are 5 posts to bump limit. Anything good is going to be in the next thread.

>>56267270
It's unlikely that the Inquisition knows. In vanilla the Inquisition doesn't know much about it's own founding and their is a minor ordo who are tasked with finding out (and another tasked with keeping it forgotten).

In this AU all records were deleted by order of the Inquisition. Ave Hydra/Hydra Dominatus.

Bjorn is even less likely to know what the fuck was going on. He was just a Dog Soldier at the time, one among a Legion among Legions. He was chosen to go on The Raid, it is true, but that wasn't because he knew stuff or was politically astute. He was chosen to go on The Raid because he could run fast and punch hard.

Emperor would be the only person left with an idea of what was going on. He would have known who he bestowed the title on but not the ins and outs of everything they did, hand off type of ruler that he was.