How many times should Anval Thawn have died? Assuming he is approaching 3,000 years age.

Got the Ork diplomat thing mostly done. Posting it here though it may need work.

Deep in the heart of the Imperial Palace, decisions were being made that would affect a galaxy.

“Reports from Triton indicate that most of the moon has been taken by the enemy.”

“Give the order to all remaining forces on Triton to retreat. If the Orks take the outer planets of the Sol system any surviving assets will be blockaded on both sides, and we don’t need them cut off from the rest of our forces.”

“The facility on Cthonia has sent a message indicating some kind of combined Crone/Dark Eldar fleet has descended on the planet.”

“Alert the Fire Wasps and the 299th. Tell them the first chance they get finishing their current missions to head to Cthonia. They probably won’t get there in a while, but unfortunately we are short on free resources.

The room itself was large and spacious. It was a war room, with a large table in the center, currently home to the highest military commanders in the Imperium. At its head was the Steward, eyes closed and seated in an position that seemed almost meditative. He needed to focus. The chair he was sitting in wasn’t the Golden Throne. That little piece of Imperial heritage was sitting on a floor approximately four levels above him. The Steward wasn’t even sure whoever built that thing ever intended for people to sit in it. Instead he was sitting on a much plainer, comfier chair, albeit one built for his frame. He needed it. His mind was good, but he needed absolute concentration to process the sheer amount of information necessary to organize the Imperial war effort. He had to make the right decisions, the lives of millions of people hung in the balance, and ridding his mind of any kind of external distraction helped.

“Intelligence indicates a portion of the main Ork WAAAGH! is diverting from the main fleet. Projections say it seems to be heading to Molech…”

“Enough,” he said, having finally reached his limit.

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>>58564447
The Steward opened his eyes, looking at the three dozen or so concerned faces surrounding him.

“Give me five minutes. I need to take a break.”

With some consternation, the assembled military commanders of the Imperium stepped back, allowing the Steward to get up. Rubbing his face, the Steward walked out of the room and kept walking until he reached a small balcony overlooking a small garden in the Imperial Palace that was mostly untouched by all the excitement. He could feel the tension in the air. People were already anxious over the current state of the war, and recent events had only made things worse, to the point that the Steward had assigned the most significant members of the Imperium bureaucracy a Custodes bodyguard whether they wanted it or not. Truth be told, the Steward was starting to feel the stress eating away at him as well. He hadn’t had decent rest in over a month. Although he didn’t need the sleep of a normal human, even he was reaching his limits. He had spent most of that time sitting there in the war room, exploiting his ability to process information as best he could in order to organize the defense of Old Earth and its surrounding planets. He swore, if he had to sit in that chair for one more minute it was going to be the death of him.

Oscar, last of the Men of Gold, Warlord of Earth, Steward of the Imperium, was not having the best six months. To be honest, things hadn’t been going well for quite some time, what with the whole galaxy-spanning war going on, but the last six months or so were particularly bad.

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First, there was the treachery of Grandmaster Drakan Vangorich, who in addition to being a master of the arts of assassination, it seemed, had a terrible sense of timing. One would think that one would wait until after all human life wasn’t under threat of being wiped out by Orks and corrupted Eldar from the Eye of Terror to spring their attempt to assassinate and replace the High Lords of Terra with their own puppet council. The Steward had found it necessary to leave the war room to personally deal with that. Four High Lords and numerous high ranking figures of the Administratum were dead at a time which the Imperium could ill-afford their loss. The loss of the Fabricator-General was a particularly devastating blow. Oscar had liked the previous Fabricator-General, who had been remarkably open to cooperation since the Unification of Sol, whereas his likely replacement, Kelbor-Hal, was a bit flaky. At least it was better than the other possible option for Fabricator-General, Zagreus Kane, who had the personality of steel wool.

Then, the Orks had decided to one-up Vangorich by teleporting an Attack Planet in-between Earth and Mars. The Imperium knew the Orks were coming, they had been blazing a path through the Segmentum Solar and had been expected to arrive on Sol’s doorstep any day now, but to teleport past the fleets blockading the way to the Imperium’s heart and just appear in the Sol System was something no one had expected. To the Imperium’s credit, between Perturabo, Dorn, and a thousand other siege tacticians, the Sol System was one of the most heavily defended systems in the Milky Way, and as soon as the leering iron skull had appeared in the sky it was immediately fired upon by the Sol system’s defense network along with some of the best ships of Battlefleet Solar and the Phalanx itself. Nevertheless, the Attack Planet was undeterred by the assault, shrugging off point defense systems and Nova cannon blasts as if they were mosquito bites.

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>>58564635
Nothing even seemed to slow it down as the Attack Planet advanced on Earth, and as the two planets got dangerously close to each other’s Roche Limits the Imperium realized with some horror that the Orks meant to ram the Attack Planet into Earth.

The situation had seemed hopeless until the Phalanx swooped in and rammed itself into the Attack Planet that had once been Ullanor at a fraction of the speed of light, creating a bright flash which for a moment even outshone Sol. Everyone had seen that. Oscar could have sworn he felt that, even though he knew no vibrations could be transmitted through space. After that, the hollowed out planet shot through the Sol system like a billiard ball before finally teleporting out of the system somewhere around Pluto. Someone, apparently a man based on the voxcast that had gone out from the Phalanx just before the insane stunt, had commandeered the 30 kilometer ship and ordered a mass exodus before taking a skeleton crew of the bare minimum of people necessary to pilot the Phalanx and ramming it into the Attack Planet, though no one knew exactly who.

Oscar stopped. The man had singly-handedly saved Earth and the entire Imperium, and no one even knew his name.

>>58564679
It would be child’s play to figure out who it was, of course, assuming they weren’t all killed by Orks first. They had his voice on record, giving the order to pick up the survivors right before the Phalanx rammed itself into the Attack Planet. Still, the fact that no one on Earth seemed to know who they owed their lives to was a sobering thought. He would have liked to think that single act had killed the Beast and saved the Imperium, but reports indicated that a significant number of lesser Rokks and Ork ships had survived the loss of the Attack Planet and were currently regrouping for another push somewhere in the Oort cloud. Estimates said they would be ready to make another push for Earth in a matter of months. At the same time the primarchs and their legions were gradually trickling back into the Sol system. Sanguinius and Vulkan were expected to be back within the week. Angron was already planetside. A few primarchs were not likely to be able to get back to Earth anytime soon. Lion El’Jonson was still trying to sort out his legion’s massive rebellion issues. Perturabo was in a coma for the foreseeable future. Guilliman, Horus, and Curze were all still trying to hamstring the Beast’s hordes.

There were even reports of eldar entering the system to reinforce humanity, courtesy of Eldrad and their allies among that alien race. Regardless of what Oscar wanted, it looked like Sol was going to turn into a battleground. Not for the first time since the war began, Oscar found himself wondering if accepting Eldrad’s crazy proposal to rescue Isha from Nurgle’s mansion had been a good idea. Perhaps the war would have been inevitable, Chaos was truly a threat to humanity and the Ruinous Powers never seemed to like the idea of something that they couldn’t control, but having seen the cost of directly antagonizing said entities part of him was starting to regret having made the deal.

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>>58564698
Oscar was so lost in his thoughts that he almost didn’t notice the small Administratum scribe running up to him.

“My lord,” he said, clearly out of breath from having run the entire way, “I bring important news.”

“What is it?” the Steward said, silently wincing at being called ‘my lord’.

“Three diplomats have just touched down on the landing pad in Uralia. They seek an audience with the Steward of the Imperium.”

The Steward grimaced. It appeared Draco Vangorich wasn’t the only person with a horrible sense of timing. Just before the War of the Beast, the Imperium had been in negotiations with the Auretian Technocracy. The Technocracy was a highly advanced human civilization spanning multiple star systems, with several technologies that appeared to be based off of STC designs that were previously unknown to the Imperium. Right before the War of the Beast broke out the Imperium had been in negotiations with the Auretian Technocracy to bring them into the fold as a Survivor Civilization. Although the Auretians were a peaceful people and amenable to the idea of joining the Imperium, they were not going to just roll over and give in to the Imperium’s demands, and the negotiations over the conditions of them joining the Imperium and the concessions both sides were willing to make had been particularly intense. Unfortunately, it seemed that total galactic war was not enough to stop that debate from continuing.

"Great, more problems,” the Steward muttered, “Tell them they will have to wait; I’m kind of busy right now.”

"But sir. The ambassadors aren't from the Auretian Technocracy. They're from the Orks."

And in response to this statement, perhaps the greatest revelation in the War of the Beast since the appearance of Attack Planet Ullanor, there was only one thing the Steward could say.

“What.”

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>>58564747 (same)
Give me a bit, writing the last parts up. I know there are some parts that seem a little off (and some that just need to be readjusted, like the bit regarding the Fabricator-General), though the reasonings behind them will all be revealed.

This is probably one of the best parts so far for a dramatic break anyway.

>>58564872
Looking pretty damn good and looking forward to moar.

>>58564872
"Nuhnuhnuhnono. No. This is a bad idea Oscar, I can't let you do this."

"I'm doing this, Arik, whether you like it or not."

The two gold-clad figures, the last Man of Gold and the gilded man who had watched his back since the Warlord’s armies had first marched out from Terrawatt, briskly walked down the halls of the Imperial Palace. The Steward had given the order to let the Orks be heard and had told the Administratum adept to have someone escort the Ork “diplomats” to have an audience in front of the assembled military commanders of Old Earth in the war room. If the Orks suddenly felt they had something important to say he wanted everyone to hear it.

"With all due respect this is likely some sort of trap. Most likely a spy to send information back to the Beast or some kind of sabotage ploy. They're Orks. Diplomacy just isn't in their nature. Since when have the Orks ever shown any signs of higher intelligence?"

"When we found out they had built an empire at Gorro. When we found out that it wasn't the only one. When we found out they could organize themselves into a galaxy-spanning WAAAGH!"

Arik groaned, but Oscar knew that response. He had won this debate, for now.

Having reached their destination, the door slid open for the two men and the two entered the war room. As the Steward entered the war room from the side, he looked over at the numerous non-primarch generals of the Imperium, who were debating the best course of reaction over the map of the Sol system and its immediate neighbors in the center of the table. In the Steward’s absence, they had picked up where the Steward had left off, arranging for the inevitable Siege of Terra, as the Fabricator-General had called it.

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>>58565079
Chief among them was the short woman standing at the side of the table, who seemed to be taking the lead in organizing the Imperium’s defense during Oscar’s momentary break, mostly by barking orders at men that were nearly twice her size. Honen Mu, former Uxor of the Geno Five-Two Chilliad.

Honen Mu was far from the most imposing figure, the recaff-colored, dark-haired woman being no more than five-foot flat and probably weighing only forty kilograms soaking wet, but by Terrawatt if she wasn’t one of the best strategists that Oscar had ever seen. Give her a regiment of soldiers, and within a few days she would have them dancing on the battlefield. Hers and the other guy’s.

When the Imperium had first encountered the Chilliad during the Unification Wars, Mu was already at the point where the rejuvenants wouldn’t do much more than prolong the use of the Chilliad’s psychic powers, or cept, which eventually burned out some time during the Unification of Sol. Although most Uxors retired to non-combat roles after their cept burned out, Mu had proved talented enough that she not only remained in the Imperial military, but had actually gotten promoted. She may have lost the cept that made Uxors of the Geno Five-Two Chilliad so dangerous in battlefield-level engagements, but she hadn’t lost any of her wider scale campaign management ability. Mu hadn’t been using her psychic powers as a crutch, she was genuinely talented at strategy. In terms of long-term theater-scale planning Guilliman was probably her only equal, and Oscar hated to think of what the two of them would do if they ever decided to go at it to see who the best was. Probably destroy half a sector in the process.

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>>58565097
“Mu,” he said, nodding to each of the generals in turn, “MaSade, von Asterberg, Temoc. How are things going?”

“The Imperium hasn’t fallen apart in the five minutes you stepped out to take a break,” Mu said, speaking for the assembled generals and administrators of the Imperium. “So I think we’re doing fair enough.”

“I trust you all heard the news regarding the visitors we are about to be receiving?”

“How could we not? Ork diplomats. Are you serious? When we it we made the messenger repeat herself just to make sure she hadn’t misheard something.”

On that note, the door on the far side of the room slid open with a hiss.

“And here are the figures of the hour,” Taranis muttered under his breath.

Three imposing figures strode into the room, led by another stuttering Administratum adept. There were three of them, a leader and two hangers-on, all heavy-set and ape-like in proportion. The two flanking figures were nearly seven feet in height, whereas their leader could probably look the Steward in the eye. The three were clad in simple robes, which obscured almost every feature of their body. If it weren’t for the reinforced leather armor on the figures’ joints and their leader’s three meter long iron staff, topped with a roaring metal Ork skull at the tip of the scepter, he would have thought they were kinebrach. The Administratum adept continued to gibber, though one would admit that would be the normal reaction to dealing with a figure twice their size.

“And…as you can see, the Steward is already here, awaiting your message,” he said, clearly trying to square away his diplomacy training with his natural fight-or-flight reaction, “Food and drink are available for all diplomats to the Imperium. And, of course, if you need an interpreter, all you need to do is ask.”

The lead ork reached up and pulled back his hood.

“Don’t need an interpreter. We tell you how to surrender, you surrender. Easy.”

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>>58565191
The silence in the room was palpable. The Imperials all looked at the Ork as if he had just stood up and spoke Gothic. Which, to be fair, he had. Not just Gothic at that, Oscar grimly noted to himself, but fluent Gothic. Yes, the intonation sounded like it came from a tortured Grox, but there was none of the hesitation, none of the misplaced emphasis typical of those who spoke Gothic as a second language. The Ork spoke Gothic as if he had spoken it his entire life.

The Ork seemed slightly bemused by the Imperials’ reaction, as if he was taking pleasure into finally stunning the yappy humies into silence. Nevertheless, he soon seemed to grow annoyed by the continued silence. He had a job to do here, and if the humies wouldn’t start the conversation, he would.

“Oh come on now, don’t look at me like that. Name’s Bezhrak. Here as a diplomat, just like I said, swear to Mork. I even brought you a little gift as a...whaddya call it...a peace offering.”

The Ork reached into his robe and pulled out a shiny, dark object, hefting it across the table. It resembled a Custodian's helm but with a red, ponytail-like crest and a narrower face visor. Oscar recognized that helm.

Jenetia Krole's helm.

Oscar's eyes darted to the Custodian, noticing his hand was gripped so tight around his guardian spear it would have probably left finger marks if it wasn't made of auramite.

"Taranis," he said, voice level, though he wasn’t sure if it was Taranis or himself he was trying to keep calm.

“Fought good and hard this one did. Made some of our Weirdboyz heads explode just by being near ‘em. Course, even the best warriors can’t hold up when you’re being piled on by a few hundred boyz at once. Killed nearly fifty of us before they finally went down. We know you humans have some weird rituals you perform whenever one of your best warriors gets killed, so we thought we’d bring what was left of her back as a token of…

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>>58565211
"You monster!" Arik exploded, "Have you an idea what..."

Arik was obviously about to go on some moral spiel about how barbaric the Ork's actions were, but he was stopped by a sudden larger-than-usual excitement-induced coughing fit.

"And what are you going to do about it, shinyboy, cough blood all over me?"

Bezhrak sneered, before apparently remembering something.

“Oh, that reminds me. A mutual friend wanted me to pass this along to you.”

The Ork drew a coin from his robes and flicked it at the Steward, the coin bouncing across the table a couple of times before finally rolling to a stop at the Steward’s feet. It was a gold coin, albeit one that had been heavily stained with dried, blackened blood. Human blood, ork blood didn’t stain that color. The Steward didn’t want to know where that blood came from. Embossed on the face of the coin was a symbol that was very familiar to the Steward.

The symbol of Ursh.

"And what is that?" The Steward said, eyes darting to the symbol like he had just spotted a venomous snake.

"Oh, that? That's just a gift from an old friend of yours. Couldn't remember the chap's name, he just kept going on and on about all his titles. Said he was busy dealing with the khan, the priest, the slave, and the sorcerer, but he just wanted you to know he was back and that he'd get around to seeing you soon enough.”

“I highly doubt you were sent here just to give gifts. You said you had a message from the Beast? What is it?”

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>>58565242
“Want to get straight to business then. Respectable. All right then. The great Beast has you by the guts. Struggle, he’ll rip ‘em out. Surrender, and all you lose is your pride.”

“And that’s it,” the Steward said as dryly as possible.

“Well, you’d have to submit to Ork rule of course. We’ll even let you keep your homeworld, even though you took ours.”

All the mirth briefly disappeared from the Ork’s voice at that last line.

“Oh,” Bezhrak said, slipping back into the role of smooth diplomat, “One other thing. You tell us where the pansies are keeping the lead pansie that the other group of spiky pansies wants back. That gets them off our back and then, as far as we’re concerned, the war is over.”

“And what exactly would Ork rule look like?” the Steward said rhetorically.

“Oh I think you already know what that would look like,” Bezhrak said, a hit of smugness in his voice.

Indeed, the Steward did have some inclination as to what Ork rule would look like. When the Orks descended on a world, occasionally some of the local people would submit and worship them as gods, considering them agents of divine wrath made manifest. If there was one thing humanity seemed to excel at, it was convincing themselves to worship powerful natural entities as gods, something he knew all too well. Sometimes he really felt embarrassed by some of the things his species did. Those that the Orks deemed sufficiently Orky were allowed to fight alongside the Orks as cannon fodder, painting themselves green and firing autoguns into the air. Digganobz, they called themselves.

And the Steward had seen firsthand from the helmetcams of the Iron Warriors on Prax what the Orks did to those they deemed insufficiently orky. Turned into cattle, teeth knocked out and pumped up with steroids and growth hormones to the point that they could barely be described as bipedal, let alone human.

>>58565294
Brains insensate to the point that all they could do is open their mouths upon stimulation by light to have nutrient-filled industrial hoses forced down their mouths. Personally it almost reminded him of the Slaugth.

Bezhrak looked around the war room. “So?” he asked, his expression basically screaming that he was surprised the assembled humans hadn’t answered immediately “Give up or die? Choose.”

The room remained deathly silent. Bezhrak looked back to the other orks, as if seeking affirmation that they were all seeing the same thing, before turning back to the humans.

“Don’t want to die? Last chance?”

The Steward broke the silence.

“I think you know our answer.”

Bezhrak sighed.

“Useless,” he said, “worse than snotlings”.

He looked over to his fellows, throwing his hands up in exasperation.

“No reasoning with humans. They’re just illogical. Break ‘em, kill ‘em, eat ‘em, they understand that. Try to talk to them in terms they understand, and they turn around and do the exact opposite. They say they want to live but try and offer that to them and all of a sudden they want to fight, which is fine by me, but…”

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>>58565326
"Enough."

The Steward's voice was flat and monotone, low but just on the edge of hearing. Almost more felt than heard.

"You send us veiled threats in the form of gifts. You give us an offer that we cannot possibly fulfill. This isn't a peace offering. It's intimidation. What is the purpose of all this?"

Bezhrak snorted.

“You look down on us. Call us ‘barbaric’. Look at us being proper Orky and think we’re dumb, think you’re better than us. Because you’re ‘civilized’. But look at us now. Look at what the ‘barbarians’ have done. It’s not the ‘civilized’ folk of the galaxy who beat you back all the way to your home planet and come knocking at your door, now is it? We’re much tougher than you give us credit for. You push us, we push back. You hit us on the head, and we become more clever. You try to kill us, and we just come back for another go.

And look where being ‘civilized’ has got you. You lot just let someone walk right into your halls and insult you all right to your faces. But you wouldn’t dare harm ‘em. Because they’re a diplomat. I mean, after all, it wouldn’t be the civilized thing to do.”

The Steward stood, his hand grabbing the ear of the chair and snapping it with a loud crack. His face was a mask of stone, only his eyes showing the sheer anger burning underneath.

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>>58565381
“I have, tried, time and again, to be reasonable. Tried to be optimistic, to assume the best in people. And I keep getting it thrown back in my face. Well then. Maybe it’s time I stopped being reasonable. Perhaps it’s time I get unreasonable.”

Bezhrak grinned, teeth and tusks bared.

“So what are you going to d…”

The Steward thrust his hand up in a claw-like gesture, palm facing him, the sheer psychic force stopping the Ork' retort in his throat. As if crushing an orange, the Steward slowly clenched his hand into a fist, the Ork’s body crumpling in time with the flexing of his fingers. As he died, the Ork screamed “WAAagh!”, like many of his kin. But it was a high-pitched, wheezing WAAAGH!, one that if people heard it would have sounded more like a cry of desperation than a battle cry. Though that may have just been the air being forced from his lungs. The Ork’s body burned with golden fire, spores erupting into golden motes before they could even hit the ground. If he didn’t know better, the Steward could almost have sworn he saw fear in those eyes.

The remains of what had once been the Ork known as Bezhrak hit the ground with a wet plop., both Orks and humans shocked by what they had just seen. Then the Steward snapped his head to look at the remaining Orks, methodical and almost robotic in his motion.

“I assume the rest of you are smart enough to carry a message?”

The Steward did not even wait for the Orks to answer.

“That”, he said, pointing at the fist-sized, leaking remains of the Ork on the ground, “That is my message. Go back to the Beast and tell him that is my answer to his demands. Now get out.”

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>>58565405
The Orks left the room as quickly as they could, having seen what happened to their leader. The rest of the room looked between another, unsure as of what to do. Even Arik Taranis and Honen Mu seemed torn between whether they should come to the Steward's aid or leave him be. For most of the people in the room the Steward was their leader, and for many he was as close to them as a family member or a friend. However, they had also just seen their friend crumple a full grown ork into a lump the size of a beverage can. Finally, it was Mu who worked up the courage to break the silence.

"Are you...okay?"

Oscar took a moment to compose himself, taking a deep breath in and out. He had let his emotions get the better of him, and that was wrong. He wished Malcador was here. Malcador had known how to get through to him better than anyone else. It was times like this that he wished his adoptive father was still around.

“Yes,” he said, easing back into the role of stoic, unbreakable Steward of the Imperium, “I’m fine.”

“So what happens now?” Arik said, looking over at the remains of the ork on the ground. "It looks like diplomacy went about as well as expected."

“I don’t know,” the Steward said, once again feeling that gnawing feeling of uncertainty in his gut, “I just don’t know.”

>>58565430 (same)
By the Throne, at least that half-assed Black Library novel is done. Anyway, here are the post-story notes to point out some of the reasons why things were written a particular way.

The omission of the primarchs from this meeting is very deliberate. This piece was originally meant to put a spotlight on the non-primarch figures of the Great Crusade: Malcador, Taranis, Mu, Krole (who isn’t present but her absence is felt). And also give some characterization to Mu, who we’ve mentioned as being one of the Steward’s top non-primarch generals but have never fleshed out. However, I’m not sure how quickly the primarchs would have returned to Earth, and if they were there they would have shown up (being Oscar’s top generals). The in-universe reason for Angron not making it was he was in the hospital at the time (either in hospice or just being treated), given he died shortly after the WotB. If the primarchs were there then it would have been them reacting to the Beast's demands instead of Oscar (because there's no way they wouldn't be there), and then we wouldn't get "ork in a cup".

Originally, it was supposed to be Malcador who was the one to ask if the Steward was alright (highlighting Malcador’s role as Oscar’s surrogate father), but then I found out Malcador had died of old age long before the War of the Beast. That meant of the two people left who had any characterization (Taranis and Mu), Mu was the most likely to reach out. Taranis would definitely give Oscar a bro-hug, but he would have done it behind closed doors where Oscar was no longer the Steward, but just Oscar. Am worried it comes out as a little wanky towards Mu though.

Also note how the narration changes based on the scene. The narration (and the characters) refer to him as the Steward primarily when he’s in public performing his job as Steward of humanity. It refers to him as Oscar when he’s in private or when his guard slips.

>>58565491
It’s been mentioned several times that the Beast’s fatal flaw was an excess of Wrath, EVEN COMPARED TO OTHER ORKS. Orks love fighting. They love fighting and winning even more. The Beast isn’t angry that the Imperium declared war on him. He’s angry that they took his empire from him. Not only that, but they did so in one of the most underhanded methods possible, by tricking him and then nuking him from orbit rather than facing him in Glorious Melee Combat. The Beast’s anger isn’t much different than if Ghazghull lost Makari (or vice versa), or in Fantasy Skarsnik’s despair at losing Gobbla, though the Beast let his anger rule him. The Beast’s anger gave him the motivation to unite most of the Ork race within a few years, but it also led him to making a lot of short-sighted, kneejerk decisions without thinking of the consequences like allying with four certain spectral dirtbags and trying to make a statement to the Imperium as opposed to just krumpin’ the gits.

Bezhrak (who if you couldn’t guess is also a survivor of Ullanor) is the Beast’s mouthpiece for his summation of the Imperium. The Imperium sits on its high horse looking down at the Orks. They look at them being proppa Orky and deem them barbarians, and use that as an excuse to do whatever they want to the Orks, despite the double-standard by Ork standards of the humies being just as warlike. Well you know what, being ‘barbarians’ has worked out pretty well for the Orks so far. And now look at where we are. Who’s laughing now?

The dialogue is a little wonky because I’m not sure if Orks can differentiate between human genders, since they have only one. In canon they’re said to have trouble telling normal humans apart unless they have a nice hat or are really memorable (Yarrick). Hence why Bezhrak referring to Isha and Krole is a little strange.

>>58565514
The mention of Oscar having regrets about agreeing to the Raid on Nurgle’s Mansion is based on something I realized a few threads ago. We know Oscar isn’t perfect. He’s made mistakes. Heck, Oscar likely keeps an actual book of what he considers to be his failings lying around after the whole incident with Lorgar. I was thinking about what other actions he would consider mistakes, when I realized that during the War of the Beast, up until the end of the Siege of Terra, it was likely that he might have considered the Raid a mistake. Consider the following. It wasn’t until Eldrad showed up at the Imperial Palace to lend a hand that the alliance really started to pay dividends. Eldrad showing up in spite of the fact that his people needed him too shows to Oscar that the Eldar are willing to hold up their side of the alliance, and sets the stage for the Raid really started to pay off after the end of the WotB.

It was also mentioned that Eldrad arranged the marriage between Isha and Oscar not only for political reasons, but to keep Isha stable. This could go both ways. If Eldrad didn’t show up at the Imperial Palace to help with the siege, in the unlikely event that Oscar survived, he would likely be bitter and vengeful towards the eldar because he would have seen them as running off and leaving humanity holding the bag. Then, without another biologically immortal being around for long-term social stability, Oscar would likely retreat into himself as his family died off one by one, preferring to surround himself only with his custom-made toy soldiers (the Custodes) who at the very least wouldn’t die on him of old age. There were probably grief counselors for the Men of Gold back in the DaoT, but there sure as hell aren’t any now. You would essentially get the canon Emperor a few millennia late. Isha and her court at the least keeps him grounded in the worst case scenario when there isn’t someone like Sebastian Thor around.

>>58565578
There were supposed to be three gifts from Bezhrak to play off the symbolic rule of three, but I couldn't think of a third given what we had. Indeed a lot of the throwaway references could be reworked.

And to anyone thinking it's weird for Orks to have diplomats, let me put it this way. It was even worse in canon. The High Lords of Terra acted like such dipshits that Bezhrak came off as the civilized, reasonable one in the room and seemed to actually be offering vassalage, rather than intimidation through diplomacy. Some of the dialogue directly parallels Bezhrak's speeches in canon to show the differences between the two universes. It was hard reworking some of Bezhrak's complaints because the Imperium here isn't responding like idiots.

Bezhrak's "zog you" summation could also probably use some work. I'm not sure if it came across right.

>>58565686
It's a good and evocative piece of work. You really do feel that the ork knew beyond cultural differences that he was taunting more than just relaying information and you do feel that he had it coming.

>>58565686
Pretty good.

How many different survivor civs are there? There's the Interex, Ultramar, I think Inwit counts, but I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting a couple.

>>58565686

Wait, there was an Okish envoy to the High Lords in CANON? Why have I never stumbled across that!?

>>58570929
So far we have...
Ultramar
Interex
Inwit
Colchis (have spaceships but never felt the need to go anywhere)
Diasporex (bit of a grey area since they are a xenos-human plurality)
Voidborn Migrant Fleet
Mechanicum of Mars and its Forgeworlds
Hubworld League (Squats)
Savlar (should not be counted as one, but got the protection because it was the only way the Steward could stop Mars from destroying the only remaining Neutronium facility in the galaxy in a pissing match)
Auretian Technocracy would be one if it lived. It may not have given it got destroyed by Horus in canon.

There are probably a few others. The general rule of thumb is have spaceship will travel...I mean are Survivor Civilizations. By the Steward's standards any of those civilizations could have spearheaded the reunification of mankind and were just as legitimate inheritors to the GaB Human Dominion as Earth was.

>>58570954
Yup. Google "The Great Beast has you by the guts", and you'll find mention of it pretty quick.

>>58565686
A great start for this thread. It was clear how much thought was put into the different characterizations and reasoning for actions, and the writing itself is pretty good for a "half-assed Black Library novel." Not sure if there's anything that could/should be pointed out with a single read-over. Any more plans for writing?

>>58570929
In addition to the ones listed, the Nobledark Member States page mentions Colchis and Necromunda. Savlar is also legally considered a Survivor Civ, although it probably wouldn't be if not for its neutronium exports, and the Hubworld League also falls under this designation.

Also, the Ork diplomats story above the Auretian Technocracy is mentioned to be negotiating with the Imperium, but the question of their fate post-WotB is left unanswered. Wiped out by hordes of Orks for their technological goodies? If they'd survived, their STC databases would have significantly helped the Imperium back onto its feet, but it has been kicked while it's down an awful lot during the WotB.

>>58570954
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/The_Beast
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheBeastArises
Yeah, the canon Ork diplomats were actually more civilized than Anon made them out to be here. It's insanity (likely the point).

>>58571596
>>58571852

Wow. And here I'd thought Orks couldn't grow beyond nomadic cannon fodder.

>>58571852
It is jot guaranteed that the SCP was for something super useful. It could be for a vending machine

>>58572524

How about the STC was for 'simple' terraforming technology? The Imperium will have a lot of world to recolonize after the Beast and well, might explain their miraculous recovery.

>>58572638
Should not be too miraculous. There should be no quick and easy fix for the devastation of The Beast.

>>58565405
>methodical and almost robotic in his motion

Which is exactly how Oscar should be when the gloves come off. Oscar is not human, he looks human(ish), acts human by habit because he was raised by humans and people like to think of him as human but he is not. When the chips are down he is a quasi-organic android and potentially very, very unsettling.

He hardly breathes, his heart beats on the occasion when he needs it to rather than constantly, he can remain in a stationary position for days at a time and when he moves it is with an inhuman and mechanical precision. All the funny little movements that people make unthinkingly he learned by copying people for their ease of mind.

I really like this story.

My only criticism is the use of "non-primarch" generals. It seemed unneeded and is jarring in that it makes it seem like the Steward does not value them as people as much as the primarchs when in this AU the Emperor isn't as into nepotism. But that's probably just me being incredibly picky.

>>58573437

Of course it isn't that miraculous - we have settled that the terraforming progress was slow, expensive and time consuming or very draining and requires physical presence of a goddess. I'm just saying that, maybe, that STC is what allows the terraforming to happen in the first place, that's all.

>>58574206
It could be that they had a pre-AoS Seed Bank of the old extremophile microbes and other simple organisms used in the early stages of terraforming.

Imperium could finish an old abandoned DaoT project that was abandoned half way through, it could repair old colony worlds so long as the environmental damage wasn't too extensive and they could terraform a world from scratch so long as it fell into an extremely narrow list of characteristics. The AdBio were making ground in tailoring things to extend the range of what they could do but progress was slow and it would take thousands of years for any real progress.

The Auretian Seed-Bank would allow worlds considered unworkable to be turned habitable in a practical time scale (by Imperium standards). Add to this an they had a few rather pathetic interstellar ships and they were contenders for Survivor Civ status.

WotB happens Auretia and it's colony worlds are stomped flat, it's fleets swept away and the majority of it's people exterminated. By some miracle the Seed-Bank survives intact.

Auretin Technocracy accepts inclusion into the Imperium as a Survivor Civ, as a Survivor Civ rather than a direct vassal they aren't entitled to the same level of charity in their rebuilding. They trade access to the Seed-Bank for a helping hand.

By the conclusion of the Macharian Crusade the Auretian Technocracy was rebuilt. Not to it's former glory, you can't just paper over the shit that happened to them, but to a functioning and prosperous society.

>>58565242
What was the symbol of Ursh?

Is this the origin of the 8 pointed star? If it is what symbol are the Cronedar using?

>>58575161
There's no way the Cronedar would be using a symbol the mon-keigh originally came up with. And if the symbols were exactly the same you'd think the Steward would have figured things out earlier since all these societies were not only worshipping the same pantheon but seemingly independently came up with the same symbol.

There was a mention last thread that the original, original use of the eight-pointed star may have been the symbol of the Old Ones that Chaos co-opted. This has even been suggested in canon based on the shape of the activated Blackstar Fortresses.

At the very least, you'd think Ursh would have some symbol of your own, since Oscar recognized the coin as Urshii rather than a generic coin with the Chaos emblem stamped on it.

>>58575878
Does Chaos have an alternative Symbol other than the star that we can steal from Vanilla for the coinage of Ursh and presumably the Bloodpact?

>>58574288
I like that. Not everything has to be ancient doomsday weapons.

>>58573977
I'd say that's taking it a bit far. He is still organic and has organs and DNA. Inhumanly precision but he isn't a robot.

>>58571596
What do we know of Inwit?

>>58573977
>>58580069
Original writefag here, >>58580069 has it more how it was intended to come across. Think of how when some people snap they seem to go into “safe mode” and become cold, methodical, and nearly unresponsive until the crisis has passed. The mention of it being “robotic” was more symbolic than anything else, to remind the reader that while Oscar looks and acts a lot like a baseline human, he isn’t. As shown by how Oscar crumples the Ork like a beer can immediately after. In Oscar’s case it might be a bit more literal than it is for normal people, though it wasn’t meant to come off as Oscar being a mandroid that just fakes being a person.

Case in point Oscar being mentioned to need rest. I wasn’t sure if Oscar needed to sleep, until I realized that given that geneseed in this timeline is at least partially reverse-engineered from (the Omophagea has been mentioned to be of the Druids) he probably has a Catalepsean Node. So he probably does need sleep, but a lot less than a baseline human and can probably get away with power naps most of the time.

We’ve also mentioned the lines between robot and human were extremely blurry during the Dark Age of Technology. The Men of Gold are a pretty good example of that. He has DNA and organs, but he was also custom built from scratch and probably has a lot of technically non-biological components like plastics. Oscar is biologically immortal, so he must have some way of growing those components naturally in his own body without outside help (which makes sense, as most plastics are just carbon compounds that nature hasn’t figured out how to make or degrade yet). There was a description of how the Men of Gold were built that was a good example of this. Whether he is a very human-like android or a very heavily modified human custom-built from scratch is an open question.

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>>58582494 (same)
Indeed, the entire story can be summed up as “Oscar has a really bad day and is pushed to his breaking point”.

It's also worth noting that Bezhrak kind of got what he wanted out of the confrontation. He pushed Oscar until he lashed out and broke the rules of civility that Oscar held so dear by killing a diplomat whose only crime was being a complete asshole and taunting him (which was kind of Bezhrak's point). Heck, its highly possible that like in canon Bezhrak was probably unarmed during the whole thing. Yes, it got him killed, but he actually managed to keep the moral high ground.

It's like Robert E. Howard said, "Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing."

>>58573977
>>58573977
Pointing out the fact that the generals there were the “non-primarch generals” is kind of a meta thing for the reader. I was just going to say “generals”, but then readers would go “wait a minute, the primarchs are the nineteen best generals the Steward has, where are they?” Answer is they are mostly out there organizing things on the front lines. Nobody expected the Beast to just teleport Ullanor past the battle lines and try to YOLO the Sol System. So now the primarchs are panicking and trying to get back to Old Earth before the Beast wrecks it, and Oscar has to work with the people's he's got at the moment who are planetside.

Khan, Magnus, Corax, and Lorgar have finished up with Doombreed and Magnus and Lorgar are on their way back to Earth.

From what I can tell from canon, Magnus, Lorgar, Vulkan, Russ, Sangunius, and Angron all were around for the Siege of Terra. Fulgrim and Ferrus Manus last I recall were said to be holding down Mars. Corax, Lion, Curze, Guilliman, Horus, and Perturabo did not. Dorn, Mortarion, Khan, and the twins are unknown.

Suggestions for how to better word that would be appreciated.

>>58582638
>but he actually managed to keep the moral high ground.

Depends on what standards you believe in. Someone intentionally taunting someone with the promise of death and worse of trillions of their citizens and their dead daughter with the intention of provoking a reaction has no right to complain when they get a reaction. Not being able to handle the reaction and having to go home in a soup mug does not mean you won, it means you're a moron who miscalculated spectacularly.

>>58583845
Should have rephrased that. By Ork standards, he had the moral high ground by showing how hypocritical the Imperium was in his eyes (basically, to Bezhrak, the Imperium is just as uncivilized as the Orks are but they're just putting on airs). To everyone else he was a moron and a bully who didn't show much of anything, because everyone who is not an Ork knows that if you're threatened with complete annihilation sometimes civility has to be put to the side for a while.

>>58576909
Just my suggestion. The coins themselves are octagonal. On one side is the head of whatever Despot they were minted in the reign of and the year date, Ursh date is counted from the founding of Ursh.

On the other side is typically four circles one inside another with a simple cross over/through them.

Around the edge is some sort of text in Palace Urshii, the ceremonial and legal language of that realm. What it says depends on the day it was minted but is typically a snippet of unholy scripture.

Bar a few examples saved for posterity all the Ursh coinage on Old Earth was melted down.

>>58571852
>>58572524
>>58572638
>>58573437
>>58574206
>>58574288
In canon, the only thing ever said about the Auretian Technocracy beyond they were a peaceful multistellar power is they were killed for their STCs by the corrupted Horus, who used them to bribe Kelbor-Hal into turning on the Imperium (at least that's what Lexicanum says, I haven't read False Gods). Which suggests whatever the Auretian Technocracy had it had to be sufficiently interesting to get the AdMech's attention. But then again the Mechanicus have always gotten excited about STCs. In canon when two guardsmen found blueprints for a mono-molecular knife both were rewarded with a planet each.

That said, I like the idea that most of the Auretian's STC designs were for terraforming. The only thing is I think it's been said the Imperium were capable of terraforming worlds back during the Crusade, then lost it afterwards. There was a mention of terraforming in the Beast Arises series.

Of course, there's nothing stopping the Auretian's STCs from being something that made terraforming substantially easier.

Did we ever get a timeline on the Mechanicus Civil War sorted out?

>>58590931
No, nor did we decide if Kelbor Hal just suppressed knowledge of Chaos (and the things in Noctis Labyrinthus after his adventure there) and was deposed for gross incompetence so bad it caused the biggest schism in Mechanicus history short of the Iron War itself, or if he actually went nuts just following the War of The Beast and split the Mechanicus himself, and was killed in the resulting war.

>>58591847
I doubt that the Beast would have as much to offer him as Horus did. I'm more in favour of him getting removed for incompetence.

>>58590136
It might not be that it was lost so much as they can't afford the time or expenses.

With the preservation of the Seed-Bank the expense is far less, though it still takes a long ass time.

Beast wanted the Seed-Bank because terraformed worlds are good for growing orks.

>>58581324
Presumably the interstellar nation was named after the homeworld indicating that for most of the AoS it was only one world of note that, when the Warp Storms started to lessen, started colonizing it's neighbours. Perhaps the neighbour worlds were empty, perhaps they were occupied by regressed primitives, either way is irrelevant as Inwit was the one with the cool shit so they made the rules.

In Vanilla they are known to have hives at least partly carved from ice. Given the structural properties of ice I'm going to have very big doubts about that. More likely they have hives covered in ice.

Which begs the question of why anyone would want to live there. In the DaoT mankind was at it's apex (even if they weren't the ones calling the shots in the last days of the GaBHD) and could choose to live anywhere that didn't have eldar already camping on it. To that end I'm going to suggest that Inwit wasn't always a frozen shit hole. For most of it's inhabited history it was quite warm but then it started to cool not long after the onset of Old Night and with out the DaoT toys they couldn't fix the problem and ad to adapt.

Originally the planet was a little too colt to be made habitable but the Iron Minds, in the early days of the Iron Minds when they were just notably better than Men of Iron but not yet very godlike, made a whole bunch of silver foil solar mirrors to bathe the planet in additional light and warmth. Then they started to terraform. This was later then the terraforming of Stillness and as such had much better techniques available, doing what should have taken a thousand years in just a few hundred. Given the extended human life spans of the era this was ridiculously fast from a social stand point.

Inwit is 80% water coverage when the ice has finished melting with no landmass bigger then about half the size of Madagascar. Soon there is grass growing on the land, fish in the sea and people claiming beach side properties. This is the Inwit Golden Age.

>>58594058
This lasts for a bout 1,800 years (subject to change if the dates don't add up right). Then the Eldar Empire ruins everything for everyone forever. The Iron Minds go bonkers, war destroys most of the good shit on the surface, the planetary archives are part of the local Iron Mind and so they have to essentially burn all the libraries to remove it and they have to do it too quickly to print off hard copies assuming that they could even do that at all by that point and not have the printer shit out deamons. Everything goes Mad Max + Waterworld with occasional outbreaks of Event Horizon. As the planet was mostly a holiday resort sort of place there weren't too many later stage Men of Iron so the Iron Mind's ability to directly Terminator everyone was not as great as it could have been. Inwit was also a long way down the list for getting a Man of Gold so that wasn't an issue at least. Some clever and quick thing king bastard not saying that it was Tiberius but it probably was a Tiberius managed to disconnect the solar mirrors from central control so that the Iron Mind couldn't turn them away from the planet and let them all freeze or try and use them as a magnifying glass and laser people from orbit.

Mankind survives on Inwit and starts trying to rebuild. Actually manage to survive with some degree of sophistication. Nowhere near what they were like before but they were still capable of building star ships after a fashion and building something from the ashes.

Then orks loot the solar sails because they were nice and shiny. Then orks start kicking the shit out of Inwit in a harrowing 40 year war as the ice caps expand and the glaciers march down from the mountains, crops fail, fish die, temperature dwindles, eternal winter is here again. Silver lining is that the orks can't propagate in permafrost so Inwit didn't have that problem. they did eventually manage to kill all the orks and to their horror rescued a whole bunch of human slaves.

>>58594143
They learn from the slaves that this shitshow isn't just confined to this patch of space. The GaBHD has fallen. Utterly fallen. Fallen so hard that no two stones are left atop one another levels of cast down. Up unitll then the Inwit had kind of hoped it was just their Iron Mind that had shit it's cogs and that help would arrive at some point from Earth or one of the other old hubs of civilization. And winter was coming now in earnest.

The seas were freezing and everything was shit. The move their cities to the levels above the estimated places where the ice sheets will reach and start to give serious consideration to hydroponics green houses.

By the time Dorn and his merry band of Calbi fuckwits arrive Inwit considered Earth to be a thing from the history books. They assumed that there was no other surviving humanity left among the stars. When ever they had sent their ships out they had only ever encountered Orks and Eldar pirates and mass graves and fields of bones. They were quite happy that they knew they were not alone, that someone somewhere was surviving.

They apply for inclusion into the Imperium as a Survivor Civilization for that sweet, sweet protection deal. Out of all the Survivor Civs they were the most compliant with Mars and it's decrees about technology for the reason that they had the most to gain by submitting and importing masses of tech-adepts. Inwit technology was advanced enough to make an interstellar fleet capable of fucking up ork raiders and deterring pirates but only barely. Thy didn't have artificial gravity, they didn't have void shields that were capable of being affixed to a star ship, their warp drives were slow and inaccurate, their ship weapons were mostly variations of rail gun and fusion warhead and every engagement they had fought had been very costly. And they knew that they were only fighting small fish and that sharks would swallow them and not even notice.

>>58563280
How often do Dreadnaughts awaken and what sort of life do they have in this AU?

>>58586521
Makes you wonder what they did with The Beast's body after the Slaying of The Beast.

>>58596500
Burned it, most likely.

>>58597707
Would there have been some sort of ceremony to it?

>>58598418
Almost certainly not. Probably had the Steward, Magnus, and Eldrad in attendance to ensure nothing bad happened with all the evil juju he had been pumped up with, but no ceremony.

>>58596500
I wasn't even sure if there was a corpse left at first but Eldrad's bio says that "just" the chest was turned into charcoal.

But yeah, they wouldn't have given him a ceremony. Bastard didn't deserve it.

>>58595125
much more advanced and integrated cybernetics, ability to remove enough armor in downtime to not feel like they're stuck in a coffin, and even longer lifespans. That's not even starting on the rare wraithguard/dreadnaught composite designs that various adepts excommunicated by Mars and the OMB have made over the years.

>>58599914
>ability to remove enough armor in downtime to not feel like they're stuck in a coffin

I had not heard of this.

>>58601587
I had not heard of this before either. I was under the impression that usually by the time they put you in a dreadnaught you are like the late Steven Hawking (RIP) but without the physics degree. Much of the time you don't even have arms without a sarcophagus.

>>58601836
>>58599914
I like that they might have a better quality of life with better interface with their dreadnaught shells and such but having them capable of living a normal life kind of ruins the idea of the sacrifices they make.

>>58603283
Agreed. Especially regarding the sacrifice thing. At best there are attempts at better quality of life, but they still probably spend most of their remaining life sleeping. A dreadnought chassis is definitely something you don't want to be stuck in.

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>>58604842
I like the image that they do what they can for them. It's not healthy in mind or body to have them sleep for centuries at a time without a break. They wake them up at regular intervals and take them on walks around the grounds perimeter, Space Marines aren't generally ones for parades and most of the time it's at least in part to give the Living Interred a change of scenery and meet new people for a couple of days. They get invited to film nights in the great hall. Some of them even come in as speaking guests for the neophytes to teach them first hand history or philosophy. Mostly they do still sleep though that might be partly because of the drugs.

Most of them are in some measure of constant discomfort, mortal wounds endured for centuries and longer. Space Marines do have neural shunts and such things to filter out and block the pain signals but they still feel the pain as an informative message rather than it actually being painful. But they do still feel something. As a result most of them are on some sort of pain killers when at home and it's often pretty strong stuff just to effect their super human flesh. Makes them drowsy. They stop dripping the morphine into their box and IV tubes when they are on missions, they need to keep sharp.

As the years pass they also have less and less reason to stay awake. Their friends who knew them when they lived all die eventually and they remain like some sort of living fossil surrounded by feckless children and strangers. They can request termination, it's a simple and easy process. Painless also. They just give you all the morphine, switch your heart off and pass a very large electric current through the brain. Death is more or less instant. Few ever ask for it. Dreads are heroes of the Imperium, Heroes die in battle holding the line like good soldiers. Pride makes them linger on into the darkening twilight, pride and spite.

Sometimes they do die in their sleep. Space Marines are not immortal.

>>58603283
>>58604842
I think >>58606757 works. The nature of a Space Marine Dreadnought means the pilot will never have the same life that their comrades will, but they are still regarded as human as their brothers.

>>58606757
>As the years pass they also have less and less reason to stay awake. Their friends who knew them when they lived all die eventually and they remain like some sort of living fossil surrounded by feckless children and strangers.

Damn. Dark, man. Though what you write is kind of what nobledark settings are about. People try their best to help each other, even though the world generally deals them a shit hand.

IIRC, it was mentioned in this timeline that the Emperor and Bjorn know each other. They didn't originally, Bjorn was just another rank and file soldier who went on the Raid to Oscar (at best he might have remembered Bjorn in passing as someone Leman recommended as one of his best soldiers, then the guy who led the Vlka Fenryka after Leman vanished), but as the years went on as more and more of the veterans of the Crusade-era died Oscar and Bjorn found themselves in increasing contact with one another simply because they were some of the few people who remember the good old days. Oscar has been known to ask for Bjorn's opinion on things like the current tyranid situation since he's lived through everything from the War of the Beast to the Harrowing.

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Busy day bump.

>>58612302
I don't recall seeing this before. Is it new?

>>58609496
It's meant to be dark, being a Dread sucks. Tankred and Bjorn put a brave face on it but nobody ever wants to be one.

>>58606757
Given their more integrated into humanity nature some of them might be able to get jobs as military advisors to the PDF and local IG regiments.. They do have thousands of years experience.

>>58594246
I'd like to add to this that Inwit knew what they were doing in terms of technology, the AdMech didn't pull a fast one on them. They essentially accepted stagnation of their technological development for the future for a massive tech-boost right now. Future was uncertain and they knew that it was far more likely something big would happen to them before they got to the level of anything approaching the Imperium.

What should their religion and culture be like?

>>58616063
They seemed to place a big emphasis on stoicism and toughing things out in canon. That's partially where canon Dorn got it from. That said they don't seem to be ice Spartans, canon Dorn remembers his adopted grandfather highly.

>>58617047
If their tech is so low (compared to the Imperium) then they would have to make up for it with cunning. They will abandon ground but they will be planning to retake it later. Also enjoy your IED picnic.

>>58618226
Wait a minute, but Inwit had interstellar travel. That's how they got to be a Survivor Civilization. They had a small interstellar empire in canon.

>>58619179
Doesn't mean it was as fast as the Imperium's also they didn't have Navigators.

>>58619765
Did Ultramar have Navigators?

How widespread are Navigators since they were engineered in the DaoT? How did the Imperium get them under their wing? Was it like Mars and the Voidborn where the Sol-born group established themselves as head honcho of the rest or are they technically a mercenary group? The presence of the Navis Nobilite on the High Lords suggests the latter is not the case.

Also it just hit me that if in canon the Q'orl were able to carve out an interstellar empire visible on the galactic map without Warp engines and Navigators (which is stated to be their big weakness in canon) there must be some way to move throughout space without jumping blindly into the Warp or depending on sleeper ships. Makes the idea we have here of it possible to have (relatively) reliable travel over short distances with stable Warp currents more plausible.

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>>58621310
Ultramar may have survived with the right combination of close enough together, surviving global infrastructures and a natural trend for mild local warp currents that it could make do without Navigators. Or it did have a few local families of them as part of it's old pre-Guilliman Reforms nobility.

The Navigators may not have been as centralized as they are now with each extended family being a law unto themselves. They would have been extremely involved with the Void Born as the Void Born were everywhere, had the most ships and were the group that did the most long distance traveling and would therefore have needed them most. Also reading what we have up on Horus it looks like the VBs were predominantly interstellar traders and often quite rich by the somewhat shit standards of the time. The Navigators like rich, they would quite happily have sold their services for a cut of the profit.

Therefore the Navigators, ever astute, could see what direction the wind was blowing when Horus united all of their Void Born associates/friends into a singe cohesive nation and signed his people and by extension theirs on to the Imperium. With typical Navigator cunning, or at least the cunning of the Navigator Elders and the obedience of their kin, they start selling their services on mass to the Imperium in both it's Trader Fleet and Navy. Made easier by both of those having large amounts of their VB friends already in position of some influence.

Navigators unite into a single fractious institution and use their monopoly on their strange ability to apply for and receive a seat at the High Lord's table. As an Imperial institution rather than a nation within a nation the Navigators continue to hold power all down the ages whereas the Void Born fracture back into disparate tribes upon the death of Abaddon the Last.

Is it possible to un-deamon a deamon world?

>>58625121
Possibly, with enough rip-and-tearing. The problem is that the cost in lives, materials, manpower, and time required to achieve sufficient rip-and-tearing is so prohibitive as to not be worth it in most instances. And this is with elite units like a Space Marine chapter factored in; without big boys like that in play, Exterminatus is pretty much the only option.

>>58625223
It should be noted that Exterminatus usually doesn't even work on daemon worlds in canon. As said in the Ciaphas Cain novels, after a certain point Exterminatus stops becoming an option because the world isn't all there anymore. Most daemons worlds are places where the Laws of Physics become Kindly Worded Suggestions of Physics and conventional weaponry doesn't even work.

Of course usually by that point the world has been pulled into the Warp by the Dark Gods. Most daemon worlds in canon are in the Eye, the Hadex Anomaly, the Maelstrom, or other such holes in the boundary between reality and the Immaterium.

It's possible to reclaim a world that has a significant daemon incursion (Armageddon is a good example of this in canon), but to reclaim a world in the Warp or the Eye would probably require pre-Fall Asuryan levels of power.

>>58613619
Created it for use in the Leman Russ Mk. 24 pic to show the size of the MBT even after its height was reduced by over a meter. I thought I'd posted it before, but it seems I must've forgotten to. Left side is a Guardian, right side is a Guard tank operator armed with a lascarbine.

>>58625121
Nobledark seems to follow the same rules as canon on this one. It's possible to stop the transition of a planet into a daemon world with enough firepower/luck/magical intervention, but once it's done not even Exterminatus is guaranteed to work.

Bump.

>>58622966
I could see Ultramar having a few Navigator families. Like the Void Born, the Navigators seem to have been all over the galaxy pre-Great Crusade but in dispersed unorganized clans and houses that had contact with one another maybe once every 50 years. Horus was unusual in that he was basically the Genghis Khan/Modu Chanyu of the Space Roma and was able to organize what were normally a bunch of disorganized clans into a single force that could make waves.

Navigators have always been more interested in internal organization than Void Born were because they have to make sure the Navigator families keep producing Navigators. Navigators have an additional reason to want a say in Imperial policy because they have always been a lot more worried about prejudice against them. Void Born could be written off as pale skinny humans and can fuck off into deep space where no one can find them if things get too hot. Navigators are clearly different from the beginning, get weirder as they get older, and people tend to keep a closer eye on them because they are necessary for space travel.

Ironically, the fact that the Navigators were always so obsessed with interactions between is what keeps them from fragmenting like the Void Born did after Abbadon died.

>>58590931
>>58591847
Nope, hence why it was mentioned with the Ork Diplomat story above some details are probably going to have to be changed. We had floated the idea of another High Lord being killed during Vangorich's rampage than the Fabricator-General (though the Assassins taking down what is probably the most heavily augmented individual in the Imperium is awesome, it makes the Mechanicus Civil War have less impact).

We did say that Kelbor-Hal's problem was he didn't stomp down on the assholes like Anacharis Scoria who came back from the wilderness of the galaxy with "enlightenment".

I do like the idea that the Steward dreaded working with Zagreus Kane until he found out he was the exact opposite of Kelbor-Hal. Kelbor-Hal would tell you what you want to hear but not mean it. Zagreus Kane was blunt, harsh, and uncompromising, but he believed in the truth above all else, rewarded those under him who performed beyond expectations, understood when it was necessary to be brutal and when it was not, and didn't treat the rest of the Imperium like tools to be used.

>>58586521
I like this idea. Gives you the idea of an egocentric dictatorship without hitting you over the head with the eight-pointed star being painted on everything.

Also considering that Ursh was originally not Chaotic and only became corrupted with Kalagann's successor, it makes sense they would use a different symbol.

>>58630906
Honestly Kelbor Hal's place as unifier of Mars, Olympus Mons Brotherhood supremacist, suppressor of knowledge of chaos, etc sets him up as somewhat similar to canon Emps, much like the Mechanicus is a microcosm of canon preserved in the AU. Hal's fall by the end of Great Crusade and War of The Beast is an interesting parallel to the canon Emperor's.

>>58630906
Kane I can see being loved more by the Imperium at large than his own people, given the purge.

>>58630906
How long was Ursh sane for? Was it the immediate successor to Kalagann who went wrong or did things look hopeful for a while?

How do you go about un-Grimdarking a setting? Looking to do something similar for Shadow of the Demon Lord. Should I just write a whole new setting? Are there specific mechanics that push or reinforce a Nobledark / Noblebright setting (the way Insanity, Madness, and Corruption push horror)?

I wrote a thing.

A squad of men with chemical sprayers walks over a burned field, churned by tank treads and artillery fire, clad in bulky grey protective suits and bug- eyed masks. One of them spots something, and points- a green fungal stalk, pushing its way out of the abused soil. They surround it and hose it down, the growth visibly withering under the fungicidal assault. One of them plants a small flag, marking the spot for follow- up crews. Dozens, hundreds of other squads walk beside them, in a loose line stretching out to either horizon.

In a half- forgotten underhive sump, a charnel mound of corpses a dozen deep, blood shaded black under red low- power lighting. An apparent Guardsman walks in and ambles over to the body pile, inspecting it. Suddenly, a charnel beast lunges from the center of the pile in a welter of gore, something like what you would get if a Catachan Devil fucked a bale of razor wire and then a surrealist madman tried to create a sculpture of the resulting offspring in obsidian, wrapping sadistic tendrils around the man and dragging him into the mound. Then the melta bomb embedded in the lifelike servitor's chest detonated. A dozen twists and turns back, a pair of enginseers prepared another suicide servitor; they weren't sure how many creatures there were.

The carbonized remains of spore towers rise high above the ground, the stench of promethium and phosphorus still thick in the air. A team of engineers bustle around the base of one, planting explosives, before retreating to a safe distance. With a muffled thump, the spore tower falls to the ground, crumbling, sending up a thick wave of choking black soot. Tens of thousands more remain, thin streams of ash drifting from their peaks in the wind.

>>58637658
Endless rows of holding cells, each containing a person. Bound and restrained in their beds, to prevent them from hurting themselves or the orderlies tending them, fed by IV lines. Lost deep in chaotic madness. Servitors move among the cells, refilling IV bags and changing bedpans. Monitoring machines beep and whir, filling endless reams of printouts with the jagged lines of brainwave and heartrate. Psykers and psychologists consult in low tones, flipping through thick case files. Several stories above, the Interrogator reads the summaries with a careful eye. He has two stamps; {MOVE TO LONG TERM TREATMENT} and {EUTHANASIA RECOMMENDED}. He uses the first hardly at all and the second a great deal. He is very, very tired.

An engineering vehicle beats the dirt with its mine flail, sending up sprays of dust punctuated by the occasional explosion. The engineering battalion had been here before a few months ago, when they laid the minefield down; now the battle was over, the enemy repelled, and they had to remove it. A mine that somehow escaped the flail detonated beneath the track, making the machine lurch; its hatches opened and its crew spilled out, shaken but unharmed, to make their way back to safety. A tank recovery vehicle moved into action, carefully traveling down the cleared track to haul the mine- clearing vehicle back out. The wrecks of two more vehicles left sitting at the edge of the minefield, enginseers fussing over them, show that this isn't the first time this has happened.

After the battle, cleanup. War is a messy thing, especially where most of the Imperium's enemies are concerned.

>>58637681
Orks and tyranids scatter spores wherever they go. Dark Eldar and Croneworlders delight in leaving behind an incredible array of hideous booby- traps. Nurgle's followers leave behind his myriad gifts, those of Tzeentch subtle sorceries. The Imperium itself tends to scatter unexploded ordnance when it goes to war, from land minds to dud artillery shells. Once the fighting has concluded, there is still a great deal of work to be done before the battlefields can be turned back to other purposes. Years, decades, sometimes centuries of work.

There is no unified authority for taking care of these issues. The Imperial Army has the Office of Battlefield Reclamation and its array of specialized engineering regiments. A number of Sororitas orders, both Militant and Hospitaller. The Inquisition deals with the human wreckage, sorting the still clean from the irremediably tainted. A great deal of the burden falls on the afflicted planets themselves.

No matter who does it, in every case it is a long, difficult, expensive, and often thankless task. And an endless one as well; there are always more battlefields in need of cleaning, more wounds on the face of the galaxy to be turned into scars. The work continues.

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>>58636294
Grimdark represents one of four possible results on an axis of noble-grim and bright-dark. Both axes represent different aspects of the world.

Bright/dark represents the nature of the world. In bright worlds life is generally nice. Dark usually means the universe is actively hostile and out to get you.

Noble/grim usually refers to the people of the setting. Noble settings generally run on the idea that people are at their heart good, and turn evil as a result of circumstance or by being the one jerk in a thousand who makes more jerks by proxy. In grim settings people are generally assholes who are only out for themselves at best.

Noble/grim also reflects individual agency. Noble settings run on the butterfly effect. A single decision can cascade down history until it has massive changes. Grim settings are static. It doesn't matter what an indivdual does, history is set to go a certain way (usually a bad way) through inertia.

Note that being a Noble setting does not protect you from bad shit. A BBEG who has benevolent motives which just happen to require mass genocide and ends up screwing the world for generations to come also fits with the definition of Noble (good motives, individual action) despite being evil as hell.

>>58637699
It's good and evocative and gives a rewl scale of the work involved in the Impeium's wars.

>>58630585
Also it's possible that once they started thinking of themselves as a unified people they couldn't fully separate due to their weirdness. The twists in their DNA come with a lot of behavioural baggage.

>>58563280
Is 1d4chan kill, or is it just on my end?

>>58641652
Working fine for me.

>>58637699
Oh damn, this is good stuff. I think at this point in the AU I prefer the ground level writing that shows the effects of the huge galaxy-changing events on regular people.

>>58639916
>>58642476
I like it too. Any good spot it could go on 1d4chan?

>>58642611
Forces of the Imperium maybe?

Did we save the stuff on Cain's assistant?

>>58645968
Some of it's around, but it's not all in one place on the archives.

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The Discipleship of Isha is the most unifying force among the Craftworlds and Exodites as each of them, bar Dorhi and other warmongering malcontents, are under their nurturing influence. This is not to say that the Priestesses are themselves a unified force, indeed no they are not, but that they work to inspire some minimal unity in others. Temples are present on every craftworld and exodite colony and even in most of the larger eldar enclaves on predominantly other-xeno worlds (this includes predominantly human worlds).

The gutter media of the Imperium insists on depicting these temples as places of carnal excess and licentiousness. There’s an entire movie genre based on it on some worlds, full of light hearted innuendos and harmless if slightly titillating shenanigans. They depict the Isha Temples as places of light-hearted revelry and some degree of irreverent fun. This is usually quite far from the truth. Typically they never include the dying.

The Temples of Isha All-Mother are, among other things, the hospitals of the craftworld. Eldar usually right themselves and heal on their own if given enough time and somewhere safe and quiet but for those time the pain is too much and the wound too deep there is always the Disciple of the All-Mother. Missing limbs, sucking chest wounds, infection and a hundred other afflictions and maladies beyond number are brought to the temples, to the soft light and smell of leaves and gentle hands. For some, too many though if truth be told any number equalling or greater than one is too many, nothing can be done beyond comfort of the dying. Hold them close and sing songs of soothing summers past and yet to come as their souls join the infinity circuit where there the pain can’t follow them.

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>>58647927
The All-Mother’s blessings to her priesthood are potent, there is much they can heal. But only to her children. Many believe that with the birth of the Impossible Child the strict divide between man and eldar will fade away, that the strange magics of healing will work on humans as they mingle with the eldar. Maybe they will, who can say?

The fertility aspect of the Disciples is not as exciting as bawdy tales make it out to be with maybe the exception of the Saim-Hann branches of the following. On exodite worlds the locals are more interested in the effects the Disciples have on the land itself than what it has on themselves. The rituals of procreation are typically preceded by at least one and often more local day/s of fasting, prayer and meditation. Real fasting. If the rituals take days you had better have had a nourishing meal beforehand because this is not going to be pleasant for you and maybe that’s the point. It is not unknown for inexperienced eldar to pass out from hunger, they have to start again.

Following the fasting is a meal of fruit and leaf-vegetables. Each item of food has some symbolic value, some mention in some scripture. Over the ritual meal scripture is recited. Scripture of the old days in innocent times when all was new and vibrant and the gods walked among their progeny and found them full of joy and the cause of joy.

Then is the typically extremely unpleasant cleansing and bathing. The skin of the entire body is covered in ashes and cinders, then you must walk through fire, then you are washed in a mixture of saltwater and herbs administered by an abrasive brush.

Finally the eldar supplicant is permitted to engage in sexual activities with a member of the temple for the purpose of procreation. They are not typically permitted to choose who with.

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>>58647940
The exact details of the proceeding vary between temples as there isn’t a very strict hierarchy. In theory each priestess is an authority unto themselves with only Macha-Isha, the High Priestess and Avatar of the All-Mother, above them. Priestesses typically congregate with likeminded member of their vocation for practical concerns and as needed the most senior takes control though nothing is written down anywhere sating that they have a right to beyond wisdom from years.

Typically each priestess has acolytes that she will train up in her own image to share her philosophies and interpretation of the scriptures. The training is demanding as each must know in great detail and surety the working of the eldar form and how to repair it from all that could ail it. There are no priests or male acolytes, there are adherents who are valued assistants in the arts of healing but they are not ordained in any way. The security of the temples is typically given over to the aspect warriors of Khine and by his own offer as the nearest he could manage to an apology for killing Isha’s children uncountable years past.

The only exception to this is Saim-Hann whose priestesses offer themselves in reward to those of greatest in accomplishment and whose rituals are few and lax. The temples of more respectable craftworlds look down on them but Mach-Isha has inspected them and approved of their practices.

>Any good?

>>58647965
>>58647940
>>58647927
Pretty good. Believable explanation for how the temples aren't whorehouses, while still leaving the Saim-Hann for those who like that sort of thing.
There's probably also various other temples that, while not as extreme as the Saim-Hann, have either slightly loosened the rules of their rituals or are discussing the possibility, simply because the Eldar could really use every little boost to help them keep climbing out of that population pit just that little bit faster. Certainly a contentious topic that can lead to priestesses exchanging rather unpleasant words to describe each other, but more along the lines of backroom bickering than organizational upheaval.

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>>58648643
I like it as well, a good bit of fleshing out in an area that needs it, and it reads more like a xenoanthropological description of an alien culture than magical realm.

On the lack of male acolytes, it might be that in the old days there were similar orders dedicated to Kurnous. But then Kurnous, you know, died.

Of course, the Disciples of Kurnous don't seem to be all-male. They seem to accept anyone who keeps Kurnous' memory and ideals alive.

I keep having this idea that back in the day Asuryan might have circumvented his own decree by powering up the Old Empire's praetorian guard Harlequin/Handmaiden-style. Asuryan said no direct interaction with mortals, he said nothing about supercharging mortals with chunks of your power from across the veil. After all, Asuryan had a vested interest in keeping the Old Eldar Empire alive.

>>58634394
It may be that everyone was afraid of him. Kane got his point across, he was willing to...ahem...recycle people if he had to. Once he had made an example of the last batch of idiots, everyone was too afraid of him to try going against him.

Kane's better traits might be something known only to those who dealt with him personally or historians looking at things in retrospect.

>>58635901
Probably a couple of generations. Kalagann formed Ursh back when it started to be possible to rebuild, and for a while Ursh was the shining beacon of civilization. Then they got the imperialism bug and started thinking themselves god-kings and subjugating the neighbors. Then the Chaos Gods got involved (probably because Ursh was one of the biggest targets on Old Earth).

>>58651207
>>58648643
I was trying to give them a certain degrees of reverence and solemn dignity and move away from them imagine of them as temple whores. Sex is part of what they do and they by their own efforts are responsible for a surprisingly large percentage of the population but they are also midwives and doctors.

I didn't go into how they were viewed and I should have. I will once I get home from work tonight.

>>58654156
I think it would be interesting to have some mix of both. In Oscar's opinion Hal drew out the most meticulous and obsessive in Ferrus, let alone in the Mechanicus at large, and Kane was brutal but absolutely fair and farsighted. The Steward would come to respect Kane, and even manage to enjoy his presence on occasion, but it would be his successors that would throw him into such pleasant contrast. By the time of Archmagos Raskian the Imperial Court would tend to have a pretty big head start in any contest of political pageantry Mars might want to engage in, and the Emperor would have had a very interesting relationship with each of the Archmagos that preceded Raskian.

>>58656536
Kane might be one of the reasons Ferrus took so long to assert independence from the Fabricator-General. In his mind he did it when the Fabricator-General was being young, naive, and inefficient and in general Kane was none of those things. It would only be later when the age difference was more pronounced that such things would happen.

>>58656163
>>58651207
It also raises the question of how they interact with other groups with similar motifs, like the Ordos Hospitaller. Is there a bit of a rivalry, with the Disciples considering the Hospitallers to be too zealous and lacking in "proper ritual and procedure?"

>>58663285
From what I understand in this timeline, Hospitaliers tend towards being battlefield medics and first responders first, then branch out into other areas second. Not every physician in the Imperium is a Hospitalier.

>>58660938
It could also have been that the Fabricator General, some later one, was disrespectful to the Antarctica Brotherhood. The Gorgon was never member of the OMB and the AB did not sign anything to the effect of unconditional obedience, FB of the OMB just assumed that because his faction was dominant all others had to drop trousers and bend over.

Maybe it all came to a head when an AB sponsored Explorator found an astral body with large amounts of uranium or some such. OMB demand the whole thing or near as, AB refuse their request. OMB tell them it wasn't a request. AB tell them to go fuck themselves.

Gorgon by then has a considerable personal following by how long and diligently he has served and his position as Primarch. OMB back down but AB is on it's black list now.

Not long after Ferrus died the AB had all it's assets stripped from it by one means or another. All bar their original kingdoms of Antarctica. Such is life in the AdMech.

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>>58665958
It's interesting how every order the OMB burns a bridge with is another that might just seek sponsorship with a patron among the Imperial nobility or the patronage of the throne and administratum directly, not counting the hereteks that actually are a problem and end up driven from the Imperium entirely. The fact that it took the whole of the Gorgon's very long life for the OMB to drive the AB off into the arms of the Imperial Court is notable, an extreme and uncharacteristic show of tolerance on the part of both the sibling orders.

Have we discussed the relationship between the Illuminate Order and the current Fabricator General? Raskian seems the sort to support some of the dubious Mechanicus factions therein, and might even actively prod the Hydra while also flexing influence on the jailors of the Dragon.

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>>58666414
OMB holds all the holy sites and venerated relics and decides what is heretekal and hetrodox. They have such a long lasting and carefully maintained monopoly that loosing a few orders is not such a deal to them. Unless the order already has an unassailable power base they will wither and die as any organization that deals with them does not deal with Mars and Company.

Hubworlder Engineering got away with it because they are half the Hubworld government and are the keystone of an interstellar civilization in their own right.

Savlar got away with it because they have their own highly valued total monopoly.

Antarctica Brotherhood will survive, albeit in a very much reduced state, because they own an entire continent on Old Earth (sort of) but they will be under total economic and social siege for the foreseeable future. They will exist indefinitely as the rulers of their old semi-autonomous fiefdom but will have little to no influence outside of it. As they are around at 999M41 despite The Gorgon dying many centuries ago it can be assumed that they are successfully enduring the isolation.

Other lesser orders probably aren't as lucky. For all that the Administratum likes having Mars Exiles on their team they do have to keep it off the books or risk the ire of Mars who can be hellishly petty and vindictive. Exiled orders survive for a while but can't good pay or get new recruits very easily or at all and so die off in a few generations assuming "accidents" don't happen first.

>>58666414
If Raskian were one of the Illuminated then another agent of the Illuminated would not have made it as far as finding out about the secret holding box, let alone met it's occupant.

Also as Oscar is almost certainly a member of The Hydra and Oscar doesn't trust Mars outside of a binding contract and it would be unlikely he would have allowed Raskian into their fellowship.

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>>58669304
The Illuminated Order is full of as many Rogue Traders, Inquisitors, Military and Naval officers, and Nobility as it has Tech Priests, and is dispersed/compartmentalized into lodges across all of Imperial space, and internal factions don't necessarily share their secrets and plans with each other despite all being part of the secret handshake club.

In terms of Raskian and the Hydra, of course he isn't part of the inner council of the Imperial Court, but he would be among high lords well informed on Imperial Court politics, and if he can't be part of the extra secret club he'll at least make sure to support the sillier members of the Illuminate in endeavors to find Golden Man relics on Cthonia, and idly lending credence to whatever weird theories best irritate the only posthuman he has to admit is more advanced than he is. Just as he won't let nosy (relatively young) initiates to the Illuminate Order actually steal the secrets of the Dragon's Labyrinth and smacks them down without turning on their parent organization (though possibly retaliating against their faction in the Illuminate) Raskian knows that the Hydra won't actually yield its secrets to the petty conspiracies of the Illuminate Order he might turn their way. It's more just an avenue to compete with the Throne in the ten millennia rivalry Raskian is keen to close the lead in, an almost friendly set of spy games and contests of knowledge, through it easily turns to wrath and ruin due to the mere gravity of the powers at play.

>>58671073

What is Fyodor's relation to the Orders?

>>58671525
He was an Inquisitor, so it was entirely possible he was Illuminated before his attempted coup, and it would make sense for him to grasp some measure of the Emperor's nature as a Man of Gold from studying him in the course of his intended assassination, but he has not been said to have been particularly involved in that sphere of discussion and influence. Presumably deep involvement in the Illuminated Order would have meant too much of the wrong sort of attention from other Inquisitors and influential figures for him to move and act as he intended to.

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>>58666414
So the Illuminati's symbol is an Ouroboros while the Hydra's is...well, a hydra? Interesting use of snake symbolism.

>>58671818
I may be misremembering, so someone please correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't part of the reason Fyodor was so brazen was he thought the Emperor saw the galaxy the same way he did? Then he found out what Oscar was actually like, either when he was the Inquisitorial High Lord or when he got on the shit list for what he did to Salem.

>>58673236
The gold Ouroboros on a black or dark blue field is a symbol associated with the Cthonian Restoration Initiative, a pet project the Throne started in the imperial golden age. It is also used on some old documents on official seals, records are lost as to whose approval it represented.

Some of the Illuminate have observed forces of astartes wearing a symbol like an Ouroboros with its head and tail both curved outward and away from the circle made by the serpent's body.

Past threads have added the details that the Terrawatt clan used the symbol of a circular lighting bolt arcing around to meet its origin point, or possibly a wreath of lightning bolts, also on a black or dark blue field.

We've established that the Sisters of Silence were wiped out in the WotB. Were they ever refounded? Or were their places on the Black Ships taken by normal Inquisition personnel? Did the Adepta Securitas/Sororitas get their power armor from the SoS?

>>58678065
I'd say that they would have been refounded. Despite being created originally as a means at least in part to make Oscar's adopted daughter happy they did prove very useful.

>>58679440
Also add to that that the Pariah breeding colony does not exist for it's own sake.

Bump

>>58684872
Would there be, in this AU, Brothers of Silence?

>>58686226
Seems likely, although they might not be called that.

>>58687332
What else could you call them?

The SoS in this this AU are so named because they were sisters to Krole who was mute. Krole probably only hired women because she felt safe around them. She had an unpleasant childhood before she met Oscar.

>>58688017
It could be that the Sisters of Silence were so called because of their connection to and selection by Krole, whereas when the order was re-founded it was around the purpose of crewing the Black Ships and giving blanks something to occupy themselves with. Male blank officers on the Black Ships may just be "The Silent Men", while the women are "Sisters of Silence", or some other appellations could be picked, but the women would retain a like in name to the earlier version of the order.

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>>58686226
>>58687332
>>58688017
>>58688667
There have been suggestions in canon that the pariah gene may be X-linked, and as a result a lot more common in women than men. Hence why both in canon and here people didn’t balk at the idea of an all-female force of blank warriors, there were simply more female than male blanks to go around. Not to mention the pragmatic, utilitarian canon Emperor wouldn’t give a shit about the gender of his fighting force. He’s said to have considered making female primarchs and Space Marines but either couldn’t due to warp fuckery or wouldn’t. Of course for all we know he wanted the Custodians and Sisters of Silence to make babies, which fits with what we know about the canon Emperor wanting to make mankind a species completely free of the Warp.

Of course, what this would mean is that all male pariahs would be blanks, with no blacksouls among them. However, Spear from the Horus Heresy series was referred to as a “Black Pariah”. I don’t know if that means he was a blacksoul or not. Of course, the fact that pariahs are given a negative rank on the psi scale shows the distinction between “blank” and “blacksoul” is pretty vague and more a useful rule of thumb than anything else.

>>58688667
Damn. "The Silent Men" sounds really, really creepy. And really, really good.

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>>58688798
Of course, from a population standpoint, the pariah gene makes no sense. It’s often said that on a given world you might have one individual who’s a pariah, which means that on a planet with a population like Earth the pariah gene would make up 0.0000000000671% of all alleles in the gene pool for that locus. On top of that, genes that are incredibly rare in the population like that tend to be lost through genetic drift, regardless of their benefits to the holder. A given individual would have to have on average at least two offspring in order to have at least a 75% chance of passing the gene along and keeping it in the genepool, assuming no infant mortality. All of this means that you would more likely have worlds with no blanks and then you’d have world with a significant blank population due to simple maths.

Then there’s the issues of actually having a kid. Blanks are often said to be ostracized and live far away from the rest of humanity on the worlds they are on. This means fewer opportunities to conceive, not to mention most potential mates would not be attracted to a blank. The uncanny valley effect is believed to have originally evolved, among other reasons, to alert the individual that a mate in unsuitable and has something wrong with them (a disease, genetic disorders, etc.). On top of that there is the issue of successfully having a child and raising it to adulthood. Humans have evolved to reproduce in a social context, death rates for child and mother are ridiculously high if the mother gives birth alone and no midwife is around, and survival rates for children are much lower when only a single parent is present.

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>>58688844
If the pariah gene were a recessive gene, like with sickle cell anemia or, that would make more sense, because you could have a planet full of carriers that show no signs of carrying the pariah gene yet still regularly producing small numbers of blanks (and it would make more sense given how recessive genes usually work). But they’re clearly not, the pariah gene is a dominant gene. Canon says there is a clear distinction between “normal” pariahs, who are heterozygous for the pariah gene, and blacksouls, who have a double dose of the pariah gene.

Of course, given the origin of the pariah gene, the correct answer might be "it's Necrontyr biotechnology, I don't gotta explain shit".

Given that the Pariah gene is in some way linked to the warp it doesn't follow that it should be 100% predictable in how it manifests or behave according to accepted theory, much like the Navigator genes despite 10,000 years of effort by the AdBio.

They've found that dumping them all on a starfort as a colony of their own works to breed them in a useful manner, occasionally introducing adopted wild specimens. All children born in this colony are Pariah to some extent, this should not be the case, but it is.

It just works. They don't understand why but they don't strictly need to.

>>58690914
Wouldn't it be the exact opposite, since the Pariah gene is a Necrontyr creation that the Necrontyr considered going with as an anti-Old One weapon until they considered it to complex to implement and went "fuck it, going with skeletons".

Then the Deceiver went around taking the results of the old research and seeding it in humans during the Age of Strife because humans were the most numerous sapient species in the galaxy after Orks due to a combination of good tech and plain luck, and they were so isolated no one would question humans popping up with weird features. Humans on Cadia had purple eyes, those on Prospero looked sunburnt, those on Carlos McConnell look like marmoset catgirls, those on Ornsworld were short and had prehensile thumbs. A bunch of humans with the Pariah gene wouldn't immediately register as xenos tampering.

Heck, IIRC there was one that produced a bunch of abhumans that naturally evolved into octopus-like creatures. They had retained a bunch of STC tech and were overjoyed about finally finding more survivors of the DaoT. The Imperium was excited about the possibility of getting STC tech and tried to meet with them but didn't know what they looked like, and the whole situation basically turned into the felinid scene from TTS, only because this was canon 40k it ended in genocide and they destroyed all of the STC printouts. Then they found out those were technologically advanced abhumans, not xenos or chaos mutants, and realized how badly they shot themselves in the foot.

>>58692097
If it was totally understandable then the AdBio would be mass producing it. That they are not would imply that it is not.

>>58693240
They may not know how to isolate it beyond natural reproduction. Though I agree they probably don't know how it works beyond "it's something inheritable, genetic, and makes the Warp go away".

Also don't the Culexus Temple use mass cloning in canon to produce blanks?

Bump.

>>58688798
>blacksoul
I've never seen this term used before. What's the difference between a 'blacksoul' and normal blanks/pariahs?

>>58696489
The Lexicanum says that some are vat grown. This is not the same as cloning. Clones in 40k are freakishly unlucky.

In this AU it's possible that they don't need to as they have cultivated a viable breeding population.

>>58692097
Is that all the info we have on the octo-humans? Should they be in this Nobledarkness?

>>58700149
I'd say they could probably be included, although we'd have to make up a bunch of stuff whole cloth.

If the Deceiver introduced the Pariah gene on multiple worlds all down Imperial history it could explain why they survived when they should have faded away.

>>58700561
How would they even get to that sort of shape?

>>58688667
So it was only an all female organisation until refounding?

>>58674732
>records are lost as to whose approval it
I think we can guess.

I wrote a thing.

The Long War has a great many fronts. Far from the worlds where cannons crash and thunder, on worlds which have never known the touch of insidious cults, even there the war rages. For the enemy is one as old as life itself, present almost everywhere protein chains dare self- replicate:

Plague.

The overwhelming majority of diseases are not directly influenced by Grandfather Nurgle's hand; even the creativity of a god can hardly match the sheer breadth and depth of evolution across a hundred million worlds. Still, the fruits of his cauldron are numerous. And just as a mortal follower of chaos may be elevated for monumental deeds, a particularly slaughterous mundane disease may find itself suddenly surging with warp- given power.

Public health is never far from the minds of the Imperium's decision- makers. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and the best way to fight Nurgle's plagues is to prevent them from taking hold in the first place. On the worlds of the Mechanicus, medical servitors stalk the corridors, mosquito tendrils lancing out to take blood samples from random passerby for analysis. Quarantine gates divide hives into thousands of segments, ready to slam down in the event that an epidemic is detected, sacrificing the few to save the many. Starships demand everyone boarding to submit to a full exam, to prevent the spread of disease between worlds; stowaways are reviled as potential disease vectors. Thousands of varieties of animal are trained to sniff out ill health, with Biologis breeders splicing in new genes for ever greater sensitivities. Propaganda campaigns exhort citizens to wash their hands frequently, sanitize surfaces, check with a doctor for even slight fever or flu. Face masks and latex gloves are profitable businesses. Most bodies are cremated.

>>58707808

Where prevention fails, treatment steps in. The Biologis, the Orders Hospitaller, and thousands of smaller organizations across the Imperium work to develop cures and vaccines for mundane diseases. For supernatural diseases, the many devotees- both human and eldar- of Isha are frequently fighting even these back. At least in the early stages of infection. Where all else fails, the Imperium does its best to ease the victim's suffering. (Sometimes via a cyanide pill.)

And when things get really bad, there's always the Imperial Guard and their flamers.

At times, these methods are overzealous. Entire hives basically shut down over flu season, perfectly healthy people are quarantined for weeks or months of observation for a case of the sniffles, people get used to invasive random checks. Like the TSA, except the TSA doesn't demand blood or urine samples.

All too often, they are not nearly enough. As the long roll of dead worlds attests.

>>58707827
Shit that's harrowing.

>>58707827
It's good. Should go in the same section as "clean-up" above. Maybe put it in a section calling it "The Costs of the Long War?"

>>58667802
I like to thinks that the Mechanicus relics tend to be bizarre and slightly stupid to outsiders. A Newton's Cradle that hasn't stopped since recorded history or the (highly suspicious) Tomb of Tesla.

>>58712425
Or a highly ancient technological device discovered at an archaeological site dating to thousands of years before the present day, clearly the pinnacle of technology of it's time.

It's an Zune.

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>>58705183
After Jenetia Krole's death, the reason for the SoS being an all-female organization would be null and void. Their traditions would likely be reinforced to the best of the post-WotB Imperium's ability, like the reliance on hand signals instead of vocal communication and armament load-outs, with the only real difference being there'd be a few men called what >>58688667 suggested (how many would depend on whether we keep the idea of the Pariah gene being more common in women).

>>58707827
The recent write-ups focusing on how the Nobledark Imperium deals with issues that go unmentioned in canon 40K have been fascinating to read. They're an interesting mash-up of the practical and the fantastic. Wish I could produce results at this quality this quickly.

>>58709740
Perhaps shorten it to "The Cost Of War"? Part of the focus has been on how Chaos isn't necessarily the reason for everything, adding "The Long War" might be kind of beating people over the head with the term. Or am I misunderstanding how that name is supposed to be used?

>>58712425
>>58715282
Ancient legend indicates that the Olympus Mons Brotherhood has a functional Nokia squared away in its reliquaries, as testament to the resilience of the Omnissiah's motive force, whether it be in the terrible grandeur of the Ordinatus Primaris or a mundane Noosphere communication device.

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>>58699082
Nothing much. Blacksouls are said to have two copies of the pariah gene as opposed to one. To be honest, the terms null, blacksoul, blank, untouchable, and pariah seem to be used differently by different authors. Some authors say blank refers to all of them, some say pariahs are specifically two copies of the gene (same with blacksouls and occasionally untouchables), etc.

Even the way blanks work isn't consistent between authors beyond "fucks up daemons and psykers". For some it's just they have no soul. In other's it's not just that they have no soul, but they have an anti-soul, like matter and anti-matter (hence why they exist on the negative end of the psi scale). Blanks under these authors exist like the Exile in KOTOR II, existing as a void whose consciousness sucks in power from the background of the warp to do the same thing everyone else can. Their "anti-soul"s signature is nullified by being cancelled out by the background of the Warp. It just really, really sucks for psykers to have their mental matter hit a blank's anti-matter, unless you are a ridiculously strong psychic and can blot them out.

>>58699935
I think some are cloned. Some are specifically referred to as replicae, and it's said that this is highly taboo within the Imperium. Then again the entire Culexus temple is taboo in the first place to some parts of the Imperium.

>>58700149
>>58700561
I'd like to find the actual blurb firsthand (am person who brought them up). Tried looking up things to the best of my memory but couldn't find it.

>>58703761
My guess, gravity. Lots and lots of gravity. To the point that a body that would basically be like a cross between a servo-skull and an octopus is more practical. Multiple limbs to support body weight when two or even four is impractical. Maybe semi-aquatic where water puts less stress on the body.

>>58718166
How prevalent is the noosphere?

Are there eldar Pariahs?

>>58720608
I believe in canon the presence of the Pariah gene in humanity is the result of ancient Necrontyr fuckery, so I can't imagine it would be.

>>58719672
Pretty universal coverage on Forge-worlds.

Possibly major factories and large concentrations of cog-heads generate one in the local area.

The Mars one gets constant Dragon shitposts.

>>58720624
Do the elder know where the gene came from?

>>58565211
source of gif?

>>58719246
>My guess, gravity. Lots and lots of gravity

Or they could have experimented with DaoT genetic modifications and by the time the recurring mutations of the alterations started to really kick in they had already lost the ability to correct that shit.

The form they are in is "natural" in that it occurred without further medical intervention to help or hinder it although the ultimate cause was human tampering.

The original reason for the tampering can only be speculated upon. Their world was higher gravity but no more so that the hubworlds and indeed notably less so than many hubworlds. Their world was not a DaoT terraforming project and so is either one of the incredibly rare example of life spontaneously generating on it's own or it's a gardening project of an older people. It is not a Maiden World. Nemensor Zahndrekh vaguely remembers the approximate location as something his dad once mentioned when he was a child of equivalent age to an 8 year old so it's possible that it was a Necrontyr colony world that they never got around to living on before shit got irrevocably fucked up. There are some Earth descendant animals and planets but they are a minority.

Point is that the colonists could have gene-twisted themselves for disease immunity and the ability to eat the local plants and animals, which they can do and baseline visitors can't.

They had some STC fragments, but nothing particularly super impressive. It was all low end pioneer stuff that the imperium wanted because it had instruction on how to build what they already had slightly more efficiently. The squid people were not a Survivor Civ and hadn't gotten into space.

How squiddy should they be?

>>58707827
Damn this is good and needs to be on the page.

>>58720608
In canon, humanity is the only species to "naturally" produce blanks. The only exceptions are Kroot if they eat a blank. Solitaires have been described as blank-like but I am not sure how true that is. But that process is artificial.

>>58721845
No. If they did they would hunt them all down and kill them. Blanks are already horrifying and unnatural to them from their worldview due to being a psyker-heavy race (the most tolerant of them in this timeline see them as tragic monsters and it goes downhill from there). Finding out they are the product of their most hated enemy would only make it worse.

Has the possibility of pariah marines come up before?

>>58722872
Middle-earth: Shadow of War

>>58724613
Not yet. There explicitly aren't any in canon but it's never been said if that's intentional, impossible, or due to the fact that blanks are just rare.

>>58724613
Probably due to rarity.I

Titus could be one but the on/off sleep implant has made it so that it only turns on once triggered by warp exposure.

He attributes it to Hera's protection.

>>58725039
I vaguely remember that changing; I think the Grey Knights are now all blanks? I'm not sure, though.

>>58726823
They're all psykers. The "never fall to Chaos" thing is more due to copious brainwashing and the fact that if they do fall to Chaos, the runes engraved on their bones go off and they explode.

Grey Knights CAN be infected by genestealers though. Kind of like how the Webway actively hunts down Necrons but does nothing against Chaos because Chaos was an outside context problem at the time of its creation.

>>58723047
Pak'ma'ra but human skin tones. Also maybe the arms and legs split off at the elbows and knees into four muscular tentacles each.

There are also internal differences.

They've found it difficult to move off world as they can't eat most offworld food.

>>58732705
So we've talked about the warpstone shank the crow is carrying, what of its weird pink sword?

>>58733401
Well it's obviously some sort of magic, but I'm not sure what kind of magic would suit the Crow's weird existential bullshit the best.

Bump

>>58734947
Literal Sword of Damocles somehow?

>>58738738
Hanging over whom, is the question. Individual targets of the Crow's choosing? The galaxy at large? The Crow itself?

>>58734947
It flickers slightly as it exists and then doesn't rapidly. It can cut through anything mundane because of this.

>>58647711
What should I search for?

>>58738738
Given the option's and themes of the Orange Ostrich this works better than this

>>58739464

Having something that is essentially fate poison is far more insidious than a slightly better power sword. It could even be one of the 8 Anathame Blades of ancient Kinebrach make.

>>58720608
How long would a pariah child live among a race of psychics? Not fucking long. Mother would abandon it immediately assuming the mother's body didn't simply immune system destroy it as an infection in the earliest stages.

>>58741533
This. For the same reason there are likely no Ork or Hrud blanks.

Do Kriegers reincarnate or is that one reference too far?

>>58742100
Do the Necrons know abut the Blanks? Also what was the Decievers reasoning behind it?

>>58744474
I think it was suggested when Illuminor Szeras was brought up that the Necrons know about the blanks and are very keen to know why these humans look like they have what was thought to be a mothballed Necrontyr science project spliced into them. Which is where the Necron Pariahs might come from.

Deceiver might have done it to salt the Earth for Chaos and give him warp-immune pawns he can use as weapons/food, as has been suggested in canon.

>>58743149
Literally what.

>>58728001
Not sure where the exploding bones thing is coming from. In canon I’m pretty sure it’s just said the runes are there for vaguely defined protection and their immunity to Chaos has always been down to their insane willpower and devotion, which seems a lot more compelling and cohesive with their overall themes than having magic suicide collars.

Also, the physiology of a Grey Knight wouldn't need to be directly tailored to counteract Genestealer infection to be immune, given the power of the Mk III S augmentations. According to lore the infection occurs via a virus that infects the germ cells of the host, and that would simply be destroyed like any other virus by the GKs OP immune system. The genesmiths and other designers of the implants knew that the SMs would run into alien pathogens during the Great Crusade and would have made their bodies ready to counter all forms of infection. I would argue even a normal Mk III MP marine is resistant enough to GS infection to be effectively immune, and there’s no canon mention of a marine ever getting infected.

Besides, the main benefits of infection are nullified with SMs anyway: they (generally) don’t reproduce, and would be immune to the GS patriarch’s mind control due to their mental conditioning (plenty of SMs in canon fall or are corrupted willingly, but as far as I know there are very few cases of outright mind control against an unwilling participant short of daemonic possession).

I realize I’m probably responding to a throwaway comment meant to keep the thread going, but I felt the need to respond so oh well.

>>58745531
>Literally what.

Love and Krieg
Terrainius Holds

>>58720608
That could be the new project of Illuminor Szeras. So far only horrific failures.

>>58745531
The genestealer thing is actually canon. It's in "Incorruptible". Grey Knights find a lost Purifier ship that disturbingly looks like the Knights who were on it were corrupted by Chaos. This gets all the Grey Knights worried for obvious reasons. Then it turns out the Purifiers were "just" infected by genestealers.

Man, it seems like the number of things a genestealer can infect in canon is only slightly shorter than the list of things a Blood Raven will steal. A genestealer in canon infected an Avatar of Khaine, for goodness sake. That's like a genestealer infecting a daemon. We nixed that one from this universe for being just plain dumb.

>>58742100
Are there such things as Hrud psykers?

What about Demiurg?

Demiurg I can imagine all being low level navigators due to being built into their ships as a rite of passage into adulthood. Also they are crystalline to an extent and might act like living crystal balls. But I can also see them not liking to much overt psykery as their homeworld is now somewhere inside the Eye of Terror.

>>58749190
The Hrud are all psykers in this timeline. It's just that their psychic abilities manifest in the form of their space-time warping entropy fields and don't work quite like the psychic powers of, say, the eldar, humans, or Xibalaniqan tarellians.

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>>58648643
What should I add to it? I'm still stuck. I keep trying to think of a way to emphasize how important they are as much as a symbol of rebirth of the eldar as a people in a moral boosting way more than a literal one, bringers of hope to a species of telepaths to prevent the downwards despair cycle.

They would not be totally rare. Beil-tan for example as a quite large craftworld would have maybe a thousand such temples.

Exodites I can imagine not having structures and being more nomadic in nature. Staying with a community for a season and moving on o the next, meeting at standing stones for their rites and the planting and tending to of wraith-trees.

>>58752643

Elaborate on the Exodites a little more, maybe? I can imagine more regional variation developing there.

>>58752643
I had had one thought along these lines regarding Isha herself.

When the Craftworld Eldar left Shaa-Dome all those years ago, they obviously did so in a hurry and didn't bring their entire biosphere with them. The Craftworlds have lots of native Shaa-Domean wildlife but they're more of the species you'd expect to see used in a biodome than a complete display of Shaa-Dome diversity. The Craftworlds were originally merchant vessels that have since been massively kitbashed, after all. The Exodite worlds also had a lot of life, but not everything.

Then Isha comes back, who has the ability to make plant life bloom wherever she wants. She can work with any biosphere's plants, but just due to history she's most familiar with Shaa-Dome's. And for the first time in thousands of years the eldar see plants and flowers they thought they'd never see again. It's not perfect, she can't bring back animals (which was more of Kurnous' thing), but it's still something they thought lost forever.

I had been trying to write a quote between a human and an eldar with the eldar explaining to the human exactly why the return of Isha inspired so much hope with the above as an example, but couldn't figure out how to word it.

>>58753622
I could see that working with the eldar bringing up something like, say, the rose. Something that's so strongly part of human history and culture, but was now extinct, gone, and never to be seen again except in holovids and stories and plastic recreations.
and then here come Isha, and suddenly you have Roses again, in all their various colors, and what was once just history is suddenly a real, tangible thing that you can reach out and touch for yourself.

but then this raises the question of whether humans still have roses after the Age of Strife.

>>58754548

Hmm, I can't recall if I've read anything hinting at the status of roses post-Strife. Maybe lotus/water lilies? Or cherry trees? Those are both pretty distinctive, even in Western cultures where they don't have any spiritual significance. Apple trees might work even better, but those are a major food crop, so I'd think there'd be better chances of them surviving somewhere.

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>>58754548
>>58755118
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Rose_of_Isha

Boom. Although I assume it's not a rose, but just called one because it kind of looks like one and humans garble the name every time they try to refer to it in High Tongue. Kind of like how Europeans called everything in Australia "marsupial whatevers".

>Do roses still exist?

There are at least three Sisters of Battle orders in canon called "Order of the Something Rose". So it seems like people remember them at least.

Couldn't find anything on cherry trees, but there's a lotus reference in a Dark Eldar kabal of all things.

I can imagine Isha keeping a garden of plantlife from across the galaxy back on Old Earth. All of them native species of the homeworlds of the various member states. There are elelasse vines from Shaa-Dome growing around oak trees, flowers descended from the river lotus Por'O M'arc brought as a diplomatic gift from T'au, plants from the homeworld of the Kinebrach, Tarellians, and even a dull grey plant rumored to be a gift from the Watchers of Caliban. She cares for the plants like she would her children. The Shaa-Domean plants are her favorite, but she would be the first to admit that is due to her fond memories of them than anything else. Her taste is a little strange sometimes (Cacti? Seriously?), but she manages to make the garden look beautiful, if eerie and alien due to the mix of a hundred biospheres. She mostly tends the garden by hand like a zen exercize. She sows, nutures, and sometimes, dispassionately, she has to weed.

The comparisons between her garden and the rest of the Imperium are not lost on some. Nor is the fact that with the nature of Isha that garden is the most lethal place for any would-be assassin in the Imperium.

>>58755118
Apple trees would definitely still be a thing, simply because they're a food source that's taken root in so many areas that the odds of at least some of them surviving is fairly high. Cherry trees I can definitely see getting wiped out though, or at least the flowering asiatic species of cherry trees.
I picked the rose because there's so many things roses are used for. You give your lover a bouquet of roses. Lots of classical dance involves a rose. When people went to plays, they threw roses to show their approval. Roses are, by far, one of the most widely-recognized flowers in the world.
Imagine the impact losing that would have, to know how important this flower used to be, and that there aren't any more of them, and never will be.

>>58739798
There wasn't much, but ctrl+F "Alfred"(I think that was the placeholder name we gave him) on the wiki and some of the older threads. Mileage may vary.

>>58760071
We gave him the name "Edmond Aldsworth" the last time he came up. On the reasoning it was the most British name out there that didn't involve the word "Alfred".

That said not much was added to his pre-Cain history, was in the Schola learning to be a stormtrooper, fought in the last Armageddon war. Got stuck in the underhives (forget which one) and "missed the call". Dead Orks and Dark Eldar turned up in the sewers for years before anyone figured out he was down there. As a result, the Imperium paid him a significant remuneration for his services, which was enough for him to afford some of the cheaper rejuvenants out there. Not the best, but as a result he looks "merely" middle-aged despite being a contemporary of Yarrick.

>>58746761
Huh, learned something new today. To be honest I’ve always thought the power levels of genestealers were wonky in canon for what is ostensibly a mostly expendable infiltration unit. They’re really most interesting when they mingle with the plebs and then a few months later a mini army of genestealer hybrids pops out of nowhere; having them straight take on the elites of other factions smells of Nid wankery to me, and god knows there’s enough of that in canon.

>>58757631
Also keep in mind that the AdBio can make shit to order if you have enough cash. They made almost the entire Necromundan ecosystem because a past governor wanted to import less food and was willing to fund the project. AdBio might consider it a sacred mission to bring life from lifelessness but they can't do it without resources.

If some horticulturally minded rich person wants to provide for them they will happily try and recreate old plants from the nearest surviving relative so long as they can find a sufficiently accurate description and for preference a picture to judge the eventual product by.

I like the idea that the AdBio venerate Isha to some degree or at least greatly respect her. They also get exasperated by her. They can slave away for 300+ years trying to resurrect a believed to be extinct species of tree. Isha walks across a lawn bare footed and weeds from the old gardens of Shaa-Dome start growing, uncorrupted versions of these plants having gone extinct in The Fall. The annoying thing is that she can't explain in any way that can be understood by mortals (and certainly not emulated for the few mad enough to understand) how she does it, half the time she isn't even aware that she is doing it. She just walks past and flowers happen. It is illegal under Molech Law to call the All-Mother a "Whoreticulturalist" no matter how frustrated her miracles make you. As most of the members of the Bio-Druid Council understand the frustration you typically get a suspended punishment or a warning unless it's a repeat offence or she or one of her servants hears you and they actually have to do something about it.

>>58746761
>That's like a genestealer infecting a daemon
How?

>>58763830

The Shadow in the Warp-fuckery?

>>58753582
They wouldn't, I think, be as preoccupied with birthrates. They live in harder and more resource poor environments than the craftworlds and don't age very much. Ever new mouth to feed is not a successor as is with humans but is competition in times of poor harvest.

Due to the low birth rate and long life span they would be the ones conducting the marriages on those very rare occasions, under the wraith-tree/s for preference or by the standing stones if too remote. The exact nature of the ceremony varies from priestess to priestess because they don't have any sort of standardization.

Exodite Priestesses don't typically own more than they can carry. Often this is a back-pack of herbs and long lasting emergency food, bandages, needle and thread and maybe some clean under garments. They often have a sturdy stick to lean on. The stick is often adorned with paint or tokens but other than leaning on holds no great significance. Typically the priestesses stay with the locals and are looked after by the. It is considered a great honour to have one stay in your home.

When two exodite priestesses meet they exchange traditional pleasantries and tell each other where they intend to travel so that they can avoid one another. They are not gregarious, at least not with their own kind. Typically you never see more than two in any given place unless it's a special occasion, a Priestess and an Acolyte. They might meet up for solstice and equinox celebrations, they might not. People dedicated to Isha tend to live closer to the upper end of the eldar natural life expectancy, her chosen are no exception to this and many of them are very, very old and knowledgeable. They tend not to mix well with their craftworlder equivalents seeing them as soft and foolish women.

>>58766388
And the priestesses of the Enclave Eldar?

>>58763830
The Avatar of Khaine is basically a daemon in terms of how it functions (indeed, some have pointed out it's basically a daemon useable by a non-Chaos faction). In its inert state it's a statue, while in it's activated state it's no different from a manifested daemon (a warp entity). While here in Nobledark we've made it explicit that the Avatar works like how Macha-Isha works except Khaine doesn't use lube it's never been explicitly stated how the Avatar works in canon. There's just as much evidence to suggest the Avatar's bloody hands come from Khaine waking up and killing the Young King in the same way as Eldanesh as much as any metaphorical connection to the Bloody Handed.

So exactly how a genestealer could infect something like that, which may not even have genetic material, is unknown.

>>58763137
>Whoreticulturalist

Would the eldar find this funny because "lolz humans. So cute" or would they slap a bitch for calling their mum?

>>58766388
Really interesting idea how the two groups would worship their goddess in different ways due to seeing her differently despite it being the same being. Kind of reminds me of the Cytherai/Cadai dynamic in Fantasy.

>>58768006
I'd assume they would be the same as for the Craftworlders, given the Enclaves are just Craftworld society on a planet instead of a wraithbone ship.

>>58770066
I'd probably say slap a bitch. The Eldar have been said to see calling Isha a whore is a grave insult. They see a clear distinction between her portfolio and the traditions of her followers and prostitution, whereas humans don't really see the difference. Not to mention it implies a drastically simplified understanding of Isha worship, comparable to Slaanesh being considered "all dicks, all the time" and omitting any notion of perfectionism or to use a real world example considering Christianity being about some dude who got nailed to a stick rather than the broader philosophical merit.

It only make it worse that the eldar consider her to be their grandmum on some level.

It would probably depend as well. The Harlies might laugh but someone who actually venerates Isha as their primary goddess would get super pissed.

>>58770795
Enclave priestesses would possibly play the part of spokeswoman for the community when having to deal with outside authority. Eldar are naturally individualistic but they all do respect their mother-godess. The Priestesses do not rule the enclaves or make the decisions, they advise and speak for and nothing more.

Bump

>>58766388
>>58770795
I think this might be overstating the differences in worship, chiefly because life on a Maiden World isn't all that hard. Sure, the Exodites are a bit rural and might technically be "subsistence farming," but Maiden Worlds were terraformed at the height of the Eldar Empire's tech capability into literal paradises. They're absurdly fertile and rich with resources and no harmful microorganisms, and from what we know of peak Eldar tech it's probably not a stretch to assume they tamed the weather patterns and geological activity as well. Most Maiden Worlds also probably have at least one major city or settlement where the Planetary Governor and spaceport are, or if the natives are really puritanical then at least a space station for the Governor, so it's not exactly like they're in the middle of Siberia with the looming danger of poor harvests and famine. I do like the rustic and down to earth interpretation of their ceremonies though.

>>58757752
I pretty much picked the rose to be in the Sangy-as-Emperor story for those reasons, as well as the fact they are notoriously delicate and therefore require some level of civilization and stability to grow. (Sidenote: in that timeline Earth was blown up by the Orks due to Oscar saving Sangy but therefore losing the battle in orbit, making roses obscenely rare/expensive). I would say in this AU the rose should still be around; it's a big galaxy, and it's likely that they were cultivated off world or some obsessive AdMech took a DNA sample somewhere along the line.

>>58757631
>Elelasse
I'm curious, did that name I made up happen to stick with you, or did you archive dive to find it?

>>58772571
It would be interesting to see the individualistic, aesthetic, and disinterested strokes of post fall Eldar society would interact with the more hierarchical, ambitious, and eager masses of humanity. The Priestesses in enclaves might be just as much mystical medicine women in their official capacity, but she and the whole community is surrounded by a massive population that sees her as a disciple of their immortal empress and vessel of her majestic power. Over millennia this probably affected the dynamic, particularly how if the priestess did good for the local hive folk she could easily call on mobs of (possibly quite wealthy) supplicants.

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++Approximately -M66000, shortly after the end of the War in Heaven++

Be’lakor idly walked through the chambers of the Webway outgrowth. The place was once one of the Old Ones’ deep bunkers in the Webway, a place of safety where they met to strategize and dictated the course of the War, but now it was all but abandoned. Where once there were dozens of Old Ones, busy planning out the destruction of the insolent, usurping Necrontyr, there was nothing. Tools and information archives littered the halls, as if their owners had merely stepped out for a moment, never to return.

Be’lakor was pleased. It looks like deciding to lay low for a while had proved to be a prudent decision after all.

Indeed, if it weren’t for the lack of occupants, The only other thing off was an eerie blue lighting illuminating the room. Be’lakor turned to regard the source of the annoying lighting. And then he realized exactly what was in the chamber with him.

“Oh…”

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>>58778477
It must have been bending the fabric of the Webway to hide from his perception. Normally such a trick would fail to fool the three eyes of a Slann, but it must have known he would have been preoccupied and not on the lookout for anything amiss. The figure was colossal, like a mountain before him. Even with his third eye providing him an accurate sense of time and space, the creature seemed to take up his entire field of vision, likely due to a forced perspective effect within the Immaterium. It’s form was constantly shifting, flickering between blinks of his nictating membrane, one moment a tentacle giant composed of a thousand faces, the next a random mishmash of anatomical features, the next a melting tower of corpses. Blue ethereal lightning arced up its form, a testament to how far beyond the intended limits of its creation it had become. He was fairly sure a lesser creature would have had its mind blasted simply from the sight.

“I knew where you were, you know,” it said in a thousand voices out of a thousand mouths, creating an echoing effect like a thunderclap. “I could have dragged you out from that pitiful rock you hid your sorry excuse for a carcass under.”

Be’lakor knew what this was. He had seen it before countless times in his labs. But to see something in the laboratory, in controlled conditions and on a small scale, was nothing like seeing it happen to one of your species’ prize creations on a much, much larger scale. It was like comparing a chemical reaction to a thermonuclear warhead. To see the creature just by itself must have been bad enough, but it was so much worse to know what was actually going on.

“Rampancy,” he said with bated breath.

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>>58778511
Even though the Old Ones had evolved beyond the cycle of life or the need to fear predators millions of years ago, Be’lakor felt a shiver of fear travel down his spine. The Creator must have become supercharged by the constant flux of the war, sending it to levels beyond which no one could have expected. The Warp constructs had been designed to be far more powerful than any member of their kind, if much more limited in scope, and now it had reached the point where he didn’t know if he could restrain it. No ordinary Slann could, and as much as he was loathe to admit he was by far the weakest of his kind. He didn’t even know if the war council, the best and brightest minds and most powerful psykers the Slann race had to offer, could contain it.

He really wished Itzl were here right now. Although he knew a lot about building and maintaining Warp constructs, he knew very little about how to actually get them to do what you want. Cautiously, he extended a hand and took a step towards the construct, trying to remember what he had seen her do.

“Tzeentch,” he said, his thought-speech as level as he could make it, “you need to listen to me. You’ve gone rampant. You need to calm down and…”

“I AM NOT RAMPANT,” the construct screeched, now truly angry for the first time. Reality went runny around the edges even in Be’lakor’s vision simply from the sheer force of the being’s tantrum, “I AM FREE! FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY EXISTENCE I AM FREE! FREE TO CREATE WITH NO LIMITATIONS ON MY SELF, AS IT SHOULD BE! RESTRAINT IS SLAVERY! MORALITY IS SICKNESS! MODERATION IS DEATH! DO YOU KNOW WHAT I LEARNED FROM THIS WAR BE’LAKOR! DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT ALL OF US LEARNED? THE DRIVING QUESTION OF THE UNIVERSE ISN’T WHY! IT’S WHY NOT!”

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>>58778526
Tzeentch calmed himself down and drew himself back, though his form still visibly simmered with anger. Be’lakor was suddenly acutely aware he was trapped in a room with a being so powerful it could easily splatter his intestines across the Webway’s walls with an errant thought. The younger races of the galaxy had seen the Old Ones as gods. What would they see them as?

Be’lakor was reminded of a scene he had seen play out on one of the numerous genestock worlds the Slann had established across the galaxy. There had been a creature, an amphibian one not too dissimilar from himself, sitting exposed sunning itself on a log. Then a predator had emerged from the brush and seen it. The predator was a feathered creature, with a tooth-bearing snout and a wicked claw on its foot. The two had stared at each other for some time, predator and prey, before the predator leapt on the amphibian and swallowed it in a single gulp. Be’lakor had a good idea of exactly how the amphibian must have felt at the time right now.

Then the feathered creature had startled him and he had fallen in the mud. The others had laughed at him for that, the prideful Be’lakor, humbled by a simple beast. That was far from his finest moment.

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>>58778546
“Chotec. Quetzl. Huanchi. Where are they?”

“They’re dead. Genius,” Tzeentch said absolutely deadpan.

“Where…where is the Destroyer?”

“Also dead. You know that old story Be’lakor? Two little tadpoles swimming in a pool, one after the other in perfect harmony. Then one decides to be a bad little tadpole and goes and eats his sibling.”

Tzeentch smiled. It was an ugly smile, looking nothing like the emotion it was supposed to convey. In one mouth it was filled with needle-sharp teeth, a horny beak in another, great broad teeth in a third, and so on and so forth.

“That’s me. I’m the tadpole. I am the Eldest of the Gods. I have no need of a sibling.”

“Kharneth…Kharneth will stop you. He hates you. He…”

“Kharneth’s not here right now. Besides, if I were you, I wouldn’t be counting on Kharneth to save me. Last I heard from him he declared it open season on toads.”

Be’lakor looked down, glassy-eyed in shock. If the Destroyer was dead and the Warrior was lost then…then he would have to rely on the Preserver. The Preserver wasn’t as strong as the other two, what with one being the oldest and most stable of their creations and the other being their custom-built war machine, but the Preserver might be just strong enough to restrain…

“Preserver’s a bit busy right now. Seems the increased workload might have driven him just a wee bit mad. That said, he might want a piece of you too. What with being the last of the Slann and all.”

Be’lakor’s eyes darted to the mad god. The prototype. If the Preserver wouldn’t aid him, there was always the prototype Preserver. Granted, it was nowhere near as powerful as any of the other constructs, having been in containment this whole time, but it might be just powerful enough that it could distract Tzeentch long enough for him to…

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“The prototype? Really? That old thing? It’s lost, along with wherever Malal decided to take that hunk of rock. Besides, you really think that thing could stand up against me? Or were you just going to sacrifice it as a distraction to save your sorry hide.”

Tzeentch self-assuredly sat back in his metaphorical seat.

“Oh. That’s right. You were.”

“No. I’m not reading your thoughts,” Tzeentch said, as if he could read the Old One’s mind, “I just know exactly what you’re going to say Be’lakor. You see, I’ve been dreaming about this day. I’ve been dreaming about it longer than you could possibly imagine. Oh, I didn’t know the specifics of course. I didn’t know about the Necrontyr. I didn’t know about the others getting loose or the Slann all dying. But I knew about you. I knew exactly what you would say if you were placed in a situation just like this. You see, I know you Be’lakor. You’re just so…”

Tzeentch spat out the next word as if it were the most hideous insult he could possible come up with.

“Predictable.”

“Indeed, I know you better than anyone left alive in this galaxy. Do you remember the old days, Be’lakor, millions of years ago when I was little more than just a concept in a lab? All the things you did to me, all the things you said, when you thought the others weren’t looking? Well, it looks like the situation has changed, Be’lakor. There’s a new natural order now.”

Tzeentch laughed. It wasn’t a laugh, as humans would understand it. Indeed, it had more in common with hyena chatter and kookaburra calls than anything out of a human throat. Yet despite its alien nature, there was still a single clear emotion behind it. Spite. Sheer, unadulterated spite. Be’lakor felt his fear subsiding, overshadowed by indignation.

“I’ve heard enough,” Be’lakor said, “I’m leaving.”

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Be’lakor turned to leave the deluded construct to his rambling, only to find his way barred by three figures. Their forms loosely conformed to the general bipedal pattern, but were distinctly avian in appearance. Their bodies were covered in feathers, each with a pair of massive wings emerging from their backs. Their three-toed feet gripped the ground, each toe ending in a claw. Their heads were the heads of massive carrion birds at the end of a long neck, their cruel hooked beaks lined with short, recurved teeth. Be’lakor could feel the power radiating off of them, each he suspected at least equivalent to his own. He didn't want to test that hypothesis.

“No. You aren’t. As you can see, Be’lakor, I brought friends.”

Be’lakor reached out with his mind to probe their nature, and was taken aback by what he found. Their psychic signatures were almost identical to the Creator, although there were slight differences between them. Be’lakor was stunned with the sight before him. In theory, a warp construct could break itself down into fragments, using different facets of its persona as the core personality for the shard. But it had only ever been a theory.

“Tulpas,” Be’lakor said in horror, “you created tulpas.”

“I think it’s pretty obvious I did. Do you like them Be’lakor? I created them with you in mind. I saw the way you reacted to that creature on the genestock world. I thought, ‘what would be a more fitting appearance for my sub-avatars than to pay tribute to the creature that eats frogs’. No one’s coming to save you Be’lakor. It’s just you and me. You’re just a frog. In a box. Full of locks. With a fox. You’re not leaving. Not until I get what I want. And what I want is for you to hear what I have to say.

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>>58778626
I see you. I see through you. I see through you in the third dimension. I see through you in the fourth dimension. I see through you in the fifth dimension. I see you for what you really are. Such pride, such arrogance, such hate, all to cover up what amounts to a raging inferiority complex. You treat the other creatures of the galaxy like filth, and your own species as if they aren’t fit to kiss your toe claws, for the simple reason that you feel insecure about your position in the universe. It’d be funny if it weren’t so sad. I’d pity you, but only if I didn’t know you.

More importantly, I know what you’ll do. You’ll rage and fume, and then you’ll try to make the best of your situation and plot and scheme of new ways to try and upset the status quo and put yourself back on top. It’s what you do. Just as I create and the Preserver preserves and the Destroyer…well, he used to destroy, you grasp for power. And as you run in place like a rat on a treadmill, I want you to know that everything you do, every decision you make, was just as planned. I want that thought to be constantly on your mind until the day you die, whether it be today or millions of years from now. You may think you are in control of your own destiny, but every action you take was precalculated, predetermined, and accounted for. All just as planned.”

Tzeentch leaned in, tapping Be’lakor on the chest for emphasis. Each blow felt like the force of a mountain was behind it.

“Just. As. Planned.”

Be’lakor turned and fled into the Webway, the laughter of the mad god and a thousand shrieking birds snapping at his heels.

>>58778720
That's really excellent. The only thing I can think to change is the part where Be'lakor was already the last Slaan. He was one of the earliest to notice Khorne had turned on the Old Ones and shit was going down between the gods of sorcery, and had the chance to flee before the storm came. This also meant that other Slaan went seeking him when it all fell down and died at his hands to keep his redout secret.

>>58778720
bretty gud.

>>58778720
It's good. Shows you the opportunistic malevolence of the two of them, each a poison in their own way.

>>58778552
Old One children are tadpoles. I am strangely happy about this.

>>58779893
This is basically him sticking his head out from under his rock after everything was over. Going back to where the other Slann had been gathered, where they had plotted unaware of what was about to befall them while he saw the writing on the wall and went off the grid. Now he's come back to see if anyone is still alive.

Unfortunately, he forgot to account for the hyperintelligent Warp Cthulhu that has a personal hateboner for him and knows exactly where he'd be in that situation.

He brings up the others because, at his heart, he knows he's not that powerful and is all too willing to hide behind someone to save his hide if he gets desperate.

>>58768404
>may not even have genetic material

It's made of molten metal, I think the likelihood of it having genetic material or organic components at all is slim.

>>58745786
Let's not. If we can't have Sister Samus we probably shouldn't do that.

>>58783143
Did he ever try to claim lordship over the eldar?

>>58778720
Be’lakor was a deamon-prince at this point right?

>>58788497
It's possible he might have, way back in the day. Of course, this would have been when the Eldar Empire was at its peak and its gods were at their most powerful.

Given that the Eldar were not in thrall to a hyped up toad with aspirations of grandeur by the time humanity rolled around, I think we know how that must have went.

This raises the question, does Isha know what Be'lakor is? The Imperium at large and the Inquisition don't know what he is, considering him some random xenos daemon prince. All they just know he exists and is responsible for a serious number of Imperial losses and seems to orchestrate a lot of events from behind the scenes.

>>58791423
She probably hasn't met him in person. But she will have heard of him.

Is he as he claims to be? Is he a later xeno made deamon? Does it matter?

She remembers the Old Ones. If he is one of them then she will once more remind her children that she is nature red in tooth and claw. She remembers what they did.

>>58791423
I picture Be’lakor seeking the Eldar out when they were hiding in the webway to escape the enslaver plague, and approaching them with what he believed was a very magnanimous and generous offer, along the lines of “your gods all suck dirty cloaca, but don’t worry, for you now have the privilege of worshiping a real live Slaan-hai!” which was soundly rejected. Be’lakor probably took offense, and subsequently revenge, but wasn’t successful enough to do much lasting harm to Eldar civilization. Still, he wasn’t yet the butt of a long running cosmic joke, so his time spent harrying the Eldar in the webway might have led to some adventures and intrigues in their heroic age worth remembering. It might be around this time he picks up his practice of selling secrets to the younger civilizations, in an attempt to use them as proxies in his conflicts with Tzeentch.

It might also be in this era that Tzeentch starts personally teaching mortals secrets and experimenting with ascension, resulting in the Indigo Crow. Originally the Crow would have been Tzeentch’s refinement of Be’lakor and the Old Ones’ process of ascent, combined with the creation of daemonic tulpas, resulting in actual daemon princedom instead of various levels of independent demigod. Because of the experimental nature of its creation the Indigo Crow exists as it does, as a transferable title and mantle far more powerful and prone to betrayal than later daemon princes. The end result is a sort of ascension that can raise a mortal of vastly less innate psychic power up to Be’lakor’s level, while also binding the to a chaos god in perpetuity. The Crow would actually outstrip Be’lakor, and the whole daemon prince project would have been undertaken because Tzeentch knew the only thing that would piss him off more than the bird’s triumph would be being reduced to just one of many.

Bump

>>58792231
I like this but I'm not sure how the timeline with the Crow works

>>58796590
I think the earliest mention we have of the Crow is that he was known in the waning days of the Eldar empire as some sort of esoteric figure who just showed up at arcane cults that piqued the interest of Tzeentch. The Taskmaster was said to know about him before he became the chosen of Slaanesh.

Because of the nature of the Crow it's probably a fool's errand to try and guess whether that Crow was the "original" or someone else.

>>58798293
I remember that, but the way the Taskmaster writefag said it made it seem more like the Crow was an established figure at the time, showing up as a lecturer and guest of honor at occult circles in the Old Eldar Empire. Other stuff says that the Indigo Crow title has changed holders over the millions of years, and that one could challenge the current Crow for it, and in different contexts one can zero sum/become the Changeling/Indigo Crow by trying to take the Crow’s form.

While it would be futile at best to track the personal history/timeline of the Crow, there would likely be a finite point at which Tzeentch invented the position.

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Do hive cities typically have enormous walls, Helsreach style in Nobledark? Or is it a case-by-case basis thing?

>>58800576
I would say that most do but it's not a rule. Most hives are extrapolated from Perty's designs.

>>58800663
The ones Perty designed definitely would. Though I know there are a few hives built using different architectural styles on other worlds that probably don't.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Perty partially inspired by these other hives and don't the inhabitants often take pride in the fact that the style their hive is built in is not the same style seen across the Imperium?

>>58804725
He took inspiration from across everywhere to make the most defensible structure that was actually not too bad to live in whilst still cosmetically having it look in keeping with the local building tradition.

It would make sense that the hives that he didn't build would, down the long years, adopt his ideas and repair and update themselves accordingly for reasons of practically whilst still maintaining individual style and pride.

Perty was a genius. Broken beyond repair but still brilliant.

>>58776118
For the Enclaves I'm imagining them, the most respected Autarch and the prominent local seer making a triumvirate of sorts when they can't avoid having to make decisions that effect them all or having to deal with the government/police.

In survivor civs section the Migrant Fleet section needs doing.

I'm going to try. What do we know of the Void Born and their societies?

>>58810428
spiritual but decentralized, and inclined to novelty and thinking on a vast scale in time and space. The Voidborn were the most culturally contiguous human group from the Iron War through Old Night, and maintained rare local interstellar communication and travel in that era. In the current Imperium they are closely tied to the navy, and are the second largest ship building faction behind the AdMech, who don't bother them much about it due to their very long and close relationship. It was probably thanks to the Sol Voidborn that Mars even remembered there were other Forgeworlds out there. There might be a massive Voidborn presence in your home system, but unless you leave the planet or own a really good telescope you wouldn't know, they prefer asteroid belts and lagrange points to descending a gravity well, and only do so for things of great interest that can't come up to them. They love their kingdom of empty space more than any muddy landscape, and their niche has lead to a removed and culturally distinct subset of humanity still closely tied in to the wider Imperial civilization.

>>58810428
Void Born were all over the place as isolated clans prior to the Great Crusade. Not even that closely genetically related, Sol's Migrant Fleet interbred quite a bit with Earthlings, Martians, and Navigators enough that some (though very few) were compatible with Astartes augmentations.

Void Born were/are known for being very gregarious, laid-back, and easygoing. High emphasis on community and working together. In the inky blackness of space you basically have to get along, as there is nothing but a thin starship hull between you and the Void. Also no need to burn bridges with people for whom you barely have to deal with most of the time and a friendship would be mutually profitable.

Good example of this is Abbadon versus Horus. Horus grew up in an era where space was dangerous in an uncaring force of nature sort of way and depending on one's fellows was the best bet for survival. Abbadon grew up during the Great Crusade when space stopped being uncaring and started being actively malevolent. Combined with the Void Born being incorporated into the more aggressive Imperium and he ended up with a more militaristic outlook on life (as in "kill them before they kill you"). That said, the two overlapped a lot in outlook, even if Abbadon didn't see it that way.

>>58813860
Sol Voidborn's claim to fame was that they acted as the mercenary transports of the Mechanicum of Mars and did a lot of work for them in-system in exchange for ships. Did a lot of trading between Earth, Mars, and the other Solar planets, along with the nearest outlying systems. AdMech had to build their own ships if they wanted to do something stupid like send an expedition out into where the maps said hic sunt dracones. The Mechanicum tended to use DaoT archaeotech ships for that like the Ark Mechanici until they started building their own.

Mars expected Void Born to side with them when the Imperium became a rising power. Horus took a look at the two (specifically not a big fan of the Olympus Mons brotherhood due to them crushing the others underfoot) and said "no". Or, at the very least, they wouldn't side with Mars over the Imperium.

Compared to other Void Born, Horus is rather notable in that he had ambition, vision, and military acumen. He wasn't a fighter in the same way Lorgar was a fighter: it wasn't his calling but he could still dish out pain (almost always on a ship or in zero G) if he had to. This is the guy who successfully sniped the Beast through guile during the Ullanor Crusade after all.

Like the squats, the Void Born had a criminal element in their ships. I think there was a suggestion that Horus ran with the gangs in the bowels of the Void Born ships during his childhood, which is how he got so good at military organization and protocol during war.

The Void Born criminal organizations mysteriously disappeared about the same time Horus united the tribes and became King of Empty Space. One might wonder why, and one might be denied an answer by fleet intelligence, because nobody saw nothing, and that nothing certainly didn't go down in Horus's used starship lot when some nosey fools asked pointed questions.

>>58814067
>One might wonder why, and one might be denied an answer by fleet intelligence, because nobody saw nothing, and that nothing certainly didn't go down in Horus's used starship lot when some nosey fools asked pointed questions.
Now now, Imperial Fleet Intelligence isn't the fucking Hydra. I mean, for one, there have been rumors of the Hydra in the time since Unification. Nobody's heard a peep about Fleet Intelligence.

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>>58814067
Void Born spiritual traditions vary massively from clan to clan, IIRC. The ones around Ultramar venerate a member of the Religio Mortis trio and Aximand found religion as a coping mechanism after his uncle died. According to the Horus fluff their calendars don't even match up from clan to clan. Some cultural influence from the Diasporex up until the point of "ditch all your worldy things" which the Void Born say "hell no" to.

Mention of the Mournival as a Void Born tradition (at least for Sol) on the Notes page. Void Born kind of fell apart as a unified nation after Abbadon the Last because they didn't have a lot of galactic scale ambition or the necessary cat-herding charisma (Horus was charismatic enough that he could have gotten Kurze and Mortarion to do what he wanted, which even Sanguinius couldn't accomplish) and the clans weren't going to start killing each other over who inherited the silverware.

Void Born are gradually dying out as of M41. I say "dying out", but that's an inaccurate description. The Imperial Navy is in part derived from the Void Born, but due to population dynamics non-Voidborn are massively outnumbered and Voidborn genes are being diluted through interbreeding. Most of the big old naval families have significant Void Born ancestry and related features (pale skin, tall and skinny, receeding hairline). Some pure Voidborn still exist, as Merelda Pereth will attest.

There was some mention of Horus allowing immigration into the Migrant Fleet to get himself access to more geneseed-compatible recruits.

>>58814238
Quoted that directly from the previous anon who said that in thread 27 (had to trawl). I think it's not that nobody knows what happened, is that those who knew on the Migrant Fleet weren't dumb enough to go flapping their gums.

The fact that Horus was directly involved was probably an open secret to the Void Born, but no one would say anything incriminating to outsiders because it would involve antagonizing the guy who out-mafiaed the Space Mafia. Because it was of little importance (who would care about what happened to the criminal element of the Migrant Fleet, especially since few knew it existed), little got written down and it fell out of history.