File: 1533780270402.gif (593 KB, 294x266)

593 KB GIF

>Cronedar greeting the newly-arrived sacrifices with the song of his people
>this leads to melting ears and the occasional exploding head, none of which grant the victims reprieve from the agony of phonetic resonances that scrape through reality like nails on a chalkboard

How intelligent is the Hive Mind? Can it comprehend the idea of individuality?

>>63512037
>Sylvannas
Ugh.

>>63514057
I mean, when you need someone to represent elves that are the most reprehensible fuck-off horrible vile creations of nightmares and late-night mexican fast food who even the denizens of Commorragh don't want to be associated with, yet are still convinced they're the prettiest and bestest and correctest beings in the entire galaxy and everybody is just making too big a deal out of their plan to murderfuck everyone alive...
Yeah, Sylvanas kind of fits the bill.

>>63514249
Agreed, though I would imagine her physically more like a nosferatu from RVK. Warcraft elves are generally try-hards.

We need to flesh her out, also.

>>63512995
It produces swarmlords to target individuals it identifies as a heightened threat (more like slightly noteworthy obstacle) instead of replying with titan sized assets or some kind of orbital sniper organ from one of the hive ships, which implies a degree of recognition for individual organisms. On the other hand, its the Hive Mind deploying a purpose built hero-killer, not actually directly engaging with an individual and crushing it with warp power like a Daemon or Chaos God might. I'm tempted to say the Hive Mind might actually run off some kind of post-sapient blindsight, and its only particular synapse creatures that even give it the mental architecture and capacity to recognize individuals and respond to them accordingly. The Hive Mind thinks in terms of material in a system and material it will need to vomit out to digest what it's found, it eats environments whole, species are beneath it. Such a scope of calculation would only be impeded by maintaining individuality in digested resources, as with the frivolity of choosing to bite down upon a particular grain of sugar, and on the long treks between galaxies the Hive Mind conserves all it can.


In many respects I find the post-sapient AI swarm villains in lots of modern sci-fi kinda silly and contrived, seeming to be written as AM first then given a veneer of 'logic' that actually seem tangential to the whole idea. Our AU version of the Tyranids as 'the wolves of the supercluster', a garden variety intergalactic predator (or converging pack of predators with distinct Hive Minds) with problem solving capacities vast and incomprehensible to mere individuals but entirely to scale with its body and ecological niche seems more sensible. The Hive Mind didn't decide eons ago that it needed all the resources in the universe and that logically everyone else had to as well, the Hive Mind was just hungry, there was no decision, the course was natural.

I still think the similarity between Malys and a serious version of Cultist-Chan is kinda funny.

>>63514387
I didn't mean it's literally Sylvanas, I meant that if you're looking for a picture that conveys what the Cronedar are about, pictures of Sylvanas are a safe bet. As in literally safe; pictures that really convey what the Cronedar be about would likely be considered far too explicit for a blue-board like /tg/.
Sylvanas herself would be chickenshit compared to even low-level Crones, and maybe even polite by Dark Eldar standards. The main reason she's as big a deal in Warcraft as she is mostly comes down to author-bias and plot-armor.

Though speaking of plot-armor, the conversation last thread about how the higher-ranked a Harlequin is, the more "plot-armor" they might have because of their relevance to the galaxy's "story," it's actually safe to say this isn't exclusively a clown-thing. The higher you are on a god's totem-pole, the more 'plot-armor' you have because of their favor- though some of them will intentionally do this just so they can yank that favor away at the time when it's going to screw you the most (looking at you, bluebird). This means that fights between champions of different gods is literally a challenge of who's plot-armor is stronger.

This might also be a factor in why Isha isn't pushing Oscar to accept his role as a god of Humanity; assuming the mantle would mean becoming aware of his ability to grant such protection over individuals, and now that she knows Oscar better she understands that the revelation would cause him to look back over all his friends that died and wonder if he could have saved them if he'd ascended sooner, and essentially start blaming himself for all his friends being dead.

>>63515097
The possibility that the (potential) future prince of the Imperium could help his dad into his station as a deity by bringing some of them back, if not in full flesh then as Imperial Daemons/Saints. Actually sets up a situation where in a victorious Imperium Oscar might spend increasing stays in the warp with Isha (and himself) at full deific might, flanked by the saints of Imperial history whose souls (irreplably mingled with myth) could still be distinguished. Ynnead would be given time to ease into ruling a galactic government, and to prove himself as much to his father as to the Imperium, since Oscar would be reticent to set the precedent of a truly posthuman aristocracy he’d long worked to ensure didn’t come to be. He’d also not want the loss of Goge to play out again with his own child, but would also be increasingly willing to consider letting go of power after ruling for an age in human terms and a respectable time by the reckoning of the Eldar.

>>63517644
This is an idea I had been sitting on quite some time with regards to the whole Stranger-verse timeline I posted stuff on before. During the Second War in Heaven/Rhana Dandra Ynnead has absolutely no idea how to make good use of his powers. So he has power over the dead, what good is that going to do in this situation? But then he remembers all the stories he was told growing up, stories of the great human heroes that fought alongside his father to create the Imperium.

They certainly count as “the dead”. So he reaches into the ether and resurrects the primarchs, the heroes from his childhood. The Imperium needs heroes in its darkest hour, and Ynnead can’t think of anyone more appropriate (aside from the Phoenix Lords but they’re doing their own thing with the reforged Khaine). Except he doesn’t quite bring them all back as they were. Oscar tended to exaggerate the primarchs’ feats when he told Ynnead stories about them, as was his habit of overly romanticizing the past. So in order to bring the primarchs back as he remembers them he brings them all back with a dramatic powerboost (read: the level of the canon demigod primarchs).

Also Magnus’ soul, being a psyker, is most likely currently chilling beneath the corona of the Astronomican. It’s anyone’s bet where Lorgar and Sanguinius are but Magnus knows enough arcane shit to know where to avoid being daemon chow.

File: Archaon.png (84 KB, 780x780)

84 KB PNG

>>63512458
>>63514249
Would there be Crone cannibals? One of the few rules Dark Eldar follow in canon is "no cannibalism". The only exceptions are that freak Urien Rakarth (who's so crazy he would be a Crone except he's too self-obsessed with his experiments to devote himself to any god) the mandrakes (which we've intentionally left as "what the fuck" but have put up hints at possible, conflicting origins), and the one time that guy was boiled into a living soup.

I'm thinking something like the Exhuman Predators of Eclypse Phase, who think that because they're above everyone else they can eat anyone else. They would be organized into "cannibal clans" or something like AoS' flesh-eater courts and not highly regarded by other Crones, not because there is any taboo but to them there isn't much value to it beyond shock value. Cannibalism is sometimes seen in human cultures as establishing dominance by dehumanizing one's foes but the other Crones see it as pointlessly edgy and boring to focus solely on it. Plus while eating mon-keigh is seen as okay the other eldar are seen as heretics, not food.

Plus social cooperation in general tends to be difficult in species where there isn't at least a little barrier to prevent rampant cannibalism.

Typing this makes me realize it sound a bit pointlessly edgy even for Crones, have a pic related as apology.

>>63517644
>>63518501
Just one thing, if we're setting Ynnead as child of Emps and Isha it would be very appropriate to go with the idea of mankind and aeldari having common origin.

>>63518721
Actually, that's interesting. I don't think Crones would hesitate in using fellows as 'consumable material' to whatever end, but outright cannibalism should be viewed as taboo. Also, there would be a difference between 'devour it's essence' and 'devour it's flesh', the former being part of some powering ritual and the latter derangement born from daemonic possession.

>>63521067

Er... no? The still-hypothetical offspring of Oscar and Isha is called the *Impossible* Child for a reason. Humans and Eldar can't hybridize. Lofn is *an* Impossible Child herself.

>>63521067
The Impossible Child isn't the result of humans and eldar being genetically compatible. We've said the biology of humans and eldar are very different. Eldar, despite their human-like appearance, are only superficially human due to both descending from tree-dwelling omnivores. They have a lot of biological differences. Their DNA is highly methylated and can be selectively expressed (which we’ve mentioned is a common feature of Shaa-Domean life). They have deer-like eyes without white sclerae, like Warhammer Fantasy elves. They have bladed jaw plates instead of teeth, their skeleton is made out of wraithbone and their metabolism excretes crystalline waste like birds, their muscles are helical with tendons similar to insects and they are said in canon to even be capable of regrowing limbs if given enough time. Humans and eldar “under the hood” are about as similar as dogs and thylacines (in the sense of looking very similar, but being biologically very different) and under normal circumstances are not able to interbreed.

What the Impossible Child represents is Isha as the goddess of fertility and motherhood deciding to override all of that because she wants kids. Which it is entirely within her domain to do so, much as flesh “shouldn’t” randomly warp because Tzeentch wants it to but it does anyway. Isha’s influence means that all of the biochemical boundaries “happen” to be circumvented in the right way, and the “billion to one” chance of producing a viable offspring rather than a stillborn monstrosity works out because Mother Nature is playing with pre-loaded dice. It’s a literal miracle from the gods that heralds the breakdown of boundaries between the species, one that took a long time to happen.

Additionally, although Ynnead being the Starchild is the most popular interpretation, it is a post-M41 thing. The Starchild being stillborn or Vect’s Magical Realm are potentially just as likely even if Ynnead is our preferred result.

>>63521067
>Crone-cannibalism
Agreed. They would be much more likely to use other eldar as raw material for rituals or fun rather than straight eating them. Snorting crystallized eldar babies? Yes. That thing mentioned on the Notes page about ceremonially eating…well just read it. Yes. Eating someone as PART of a ritual? Probably yes. But eating for the sake of eating would be considered just trite. Especially if they don’t taste good, have no hedonistic benefit, and you can just eat some mon-keigh if you want to eat talking food. The Daemon-possessed would get a pass, but the Crones might consider them a special case due to being closer to the gods.

Kaimon has been said to shove underperforming employees into hungry beast pens and fleshsculptor pits as raw material if he thinks they’re underperforming or don’t meet his standards, but Kaimon has been said to be a weirdo even by Crone standards.

It would be a very soft taboo given the nature of Crone society, but it would be a taboo nonetheless. And you probably would get a few weirdos doing it anyway.

One has to wonder if this taboo against cannibalism even with the Dark Eldar has anything to do with lingering historical memories of the Mon-Keigh.

>>63521419
Hmm, right. But I remember the boundary breakdown being mentioned to happen on spiritual level, when the souls of man and eldar would not seem so different of each other. As consequence, it would be possible make hybrid babies.

And with Isha wanting it to happen, that will heighten the chances on a galactic scope.
>>63521450
>One has to wonder if this taboo against cannibalism even with the Dark Eldar has anything to do with lingering historical memories of the Mon-Keigh.
Extra flavour to the Eldar's history.

>>63521645
Spiritual level doesn't mean that it can't also happen in tue flesh. Isha is a goddess of fertility, she's already a spiritual event in the flesh.

>>63521067
Cannibalism still being taboo among the Dark Eldar but practiced, in a refined and sophisticatedly cruel and refined way, by the Croneworlders could be a source of cultural divide between the two and a source of conflict between them after the Dark Wedding.

>>63518501
Or he's aiming for Demigods but ends up with them as they were in life and is confused by it. How, he asks, can such normal people possibly help? Then Perty finds a writing desk and makes some new plans for Cadia. Then Ynnead knows.

Just looking over the geography of the eye piece from last thread, and I noticed there was a debate over how the system Shaa-Dome is in works and wanted to get that resolved before I try to put it on the wiki.

Specifically we were debating whether Shaa-Dome orbits the black hole at the center of the Eye that used to be the eldar's sun, whether the black hole orbits around them because the Crones think they are the center of the universe and the Warp makes that manifest. It seems there is universal agreement about the currents focusing on the planet rather than the black hole due to spooky eldritch reasons that is implied (but intentionally unconfirmed) to be due to the core of Shaa-Dome being connected to Slaanesh's Brass Palace (who is all about all-consuming hunger).

>>63521800
Slaanesh is also all about vanity.

Some anon mentioned the Men of Silver earlier and, at least for me, that's a point of interest.

We should go more deep about transhumanism.

Sometime in the future I'd like to base a 40K game on this setting. I'm digging it outright.

>>63522858
Men of Silver come in two types. First was the Unification attempt to use Oscar to make Men of Gold hybrids, this failed because of Dark Age copyright protection in his genes.

Second is a gutter media conspiracy theory about the Order of the Old Tree trying to breed a race of superhumans from the Praetorian aristocracy.

>>63518721
Crowned are pure edge, they revel in it. Like Requim vampires.

>>63518721
Would Cronedar be in favour of outright possession or is it too close to subservience?

>>63526487
They are in favor of it. To them, it's being intimate with and a vessel of the will of their gods. Think of how Lorgar saw the Gal Vorbak in canon. They want to be the gods' bitches but see everyone else as only worthy of submission. They see themselves as the link between mortal and god who are destined to rise to full godhood (read: daemon princedom) upon completing their holy task.

It's why daemons don't bother with them and they can survive in the Warp unaided. They're already promised to the gods upon death and they're so eager for it they just seem unappetizing to daemons, who want their prey to squirm a bit. So daemons find it more profitable to feed on the carnage they leave in their wake than eat them outright, because they're going to get their souls anyway.

>>63523962
In general I'd attach them to that sort of rumor, also brought up with Fulgrim's paradise dome, Fabius' bile's experiments, Lucius the silverblood, and secret Horusian agendas Fulgrim and Ferrus established in the time of the Great Hunt.

>>63523962
It's not that the Old Tree is against the idea of breeding better people, it's just not what they are commissioned to do. Also if they did want to make a race of people they could do it a lot faster than centuries of family tree tending.

>>63522858
>>63523962
>>63527185
>>63528227
It would be really interesting to play more with Imperial transhumanism, and this sketches out an interesting possibility for (arguably inaccurate) historical archetypes perceived by current Imperials where Ferrus and Fulgrim are posed as somehow fathers of Imperial cybernetics and bio-augmentation, at least in terms of its mainstreaming transhumanism in a Horusian paradigm. Essentially just reading too much into their friendship, and reading too much intention into the later situations that would arise from their various inventions, achievements, and discoveries.

>>63523962
What about AdBio's experiments?

>>63530664
What about it? AdBio are being crazy and doing weird things for strange reasons isn't news. It's what they do. They are the Imperium's main producers of cackling mavericks and eccentric gigglers. They make no secrets of what they do because they don't see why they should and if they are trying to make superhumans or custom children they wouldn't be bashful about it at all.

AdBio acting normal is far more suspicious.

It's difficult to make conspiracies when the accused admits openly to the weird shit in the basement.

>>63521419
>the “billion to one” chance
For scaling reasons, please use a different phrase. There are billions of people on a single hive world, millions of worlds, and ten thousand years: a mere billion to one chance would have happened a lot by the end of M41!

>>63532711
Perhaps it happened, then.

what if

mew two

>>63535590
why
I mean, I could kind of see it as a daemon of Tzneetch, but then it would end up warped into something we wouldn't recognize as mewtwo. After all, the whole point of Mewtwo is to basically be a pokemon with humanity, while the whole point of daemons is that they lack humanity.

>>63535881
I dunno I couldn't think of anything to post to drag this up from page 9.

>>63535590
>>63535902
Yet another AdBio's deviation.

Here's a fun thing to think about: Let's say that everything with regards Ynnead goes well for the Imperium, Humans and Eldar become one race, Chaos gets fucked. How would the various Humans and Eldar of the imperium deal with this? How would the other races(Tau, but also others too)deal with it? How would the hubworlders deal with it? The Ad-mech? The craftworlds? I imagine Ulthwe would be happy with the new arrangement, Colchis and Bel-Shammon would be estatic, Saim-Hann wouldn't probably care all that much either way, Ill Kaithe would REE as hard as the Ad-Mech would REE about tech-heresy or whatever, but other then that I haven't really thought about some of the possibilities here much.

>>63536309
>the Ad-Mech would REE about tech-heresy or whatever
They'll be far too busy REEEing about the Void Dragon to spare any attention for Ynnead.

>>63536309
>Humans and Eldar become one race
Careful there, become soulbound would be more appropriate to say.

>>63535942
Because they didn't learn their lesson from the Maerorus project.

>>63536309
We mentioned the Crones might try to capitalize on it by breeding an army of hybrid cannon fodder. But that's defeats the purpose of the question of Chaos hypothetically getting BTFO.

Debatable if the Crones exist if the Dragon is camping the Eye and controlling the Soul Forge and who knows what the gods are doing.

File: 733960_sleepingeel_kasrki(...).png (7.5 MB, 3000x2455)

7.5 MB PNG

>>63535902
How about potential guard-stories? Campaigns and missions within the setting too small to have affected the big picture, yet still notable for being unique and/or interesting.

>>63536309
Nobody is forcing them to interbreed, it's just been made possible.

Tau are half convinced that humanity and eldar are just distant breeds of the same thing already.

>>63537103
Well I mean interbreeding and the assorted waifu potential thereof does sound fun to me, but I was mostly amused at the idea of some hubworld guy/gal swearing up and down that they would never consider an Eldar to be "soulbound" with humanity in general or hubworlder humans in particular.

>>63536878
>All the wonderfully inventive ways the Imperial navy have figured to use ships when they don’t expect to survive
>times vampires got to be a problem
>Imperial Army missile artillery and its use
>foolish ostentatious aristocratic “macharaian doctrine” commander vs inept but Blood Pact supplied lost and damned forces

>>63537185
Hubworlders are grumpy about everything, it's what makes them happy.

>>63529839
Imperium as a whole isn't pro-transhuman even if some people in it are.

>>63533975
It hadn't. That's why everyone who knows is freaking the fuck out about Taldeer.

>>63538814
They aren't grumpy about everything. Mostly just elves.

>>63537185
Then after our proud Destroyerman doffs his armor and finds himself doing repairs and tending injuries beside a diligent and pretty enclave Eldar, he revises it, and recalls he's a short man, not some ticking Demiurg like the AdMech would have it.

>>63539968
Yeah, which is why they would be reading an intention and plot into what is actually just the natural penetration of its technology through its society. Ferrus and Fulgrim had no expectation or inkling of the classes or Servitor that would arise, the way Imperial Guard conscription and veterans' care would end up spreading and normalizing augmetics through out the population, the way the availability and compatibility of rejuveants would shape the rosters of Imperial government, and the work of the Ordo Mutatio that resembles the Order of the Old Tree on the grandest scale and the increasing acceptance of using advanced cogitators slaved to human minds by the AdMech. Even the notion that "Horusians" were a thing around the time of the Great Crusade, or that Horus had some plan or specific agenda rather than a prediction about the trajectory of human development, belies a historical misconception, something that suggests a whole legacy of no-name Imperial historians and scholars overreaching more and more in their conclusions as that era passed into myth. It's mostly by the very strong institutional memory in Sol and other cultural centers that this isn't actually the historical consensus.

>>63541956
if she is diligent in her duties and polite in her manner then he would, maybe, consider that they aren't all bad and maybe some of them have made up for the sins of their people. Grudge exception should be applied to such people.

>>63535590
>intentionally breeding psykers

I see no way this could fuck up.

>>63536878
Nova-Beastmen taking a city is campaign to liberate a planet from Chaos. Authorities expect them to have culled the population and quickly dispatch an investigator from the Arbiters to convince them not to genocide the locals, Judge is delayed and expects to arrive to see mass graves.

Beastmen have gone Full Qun. There is a mass re-education effort going on to convert the locals to be Good Prometheans. They strongly request a transfer to garrison duty to continue with the effort, this is now a holy cause to them.

>>63539968
>>63542130
Come to think, transhumanism is a major obstacle to the G.E.C.

The chance of it actually happening could prevent figures like Amallyn sleeping ever again, so very likely there would be galactic-wide covert ops to drive it away from human mentality.

>>63538103
Have we gone over the basilisk, manticore, and deathstrike at all? As the Imperium’s main artillery I can imagine they’d be as culturally iconic to the average Imperual as the regional pattern of lasgun, and would have seen at least as much development as the Imperium’s ships and tanks. We’ve mentioned artilery in doctrine, but what about the actual weapons?

>>63541956
By the way, did we ever decide if we were keeping the grudgekeeping fluff that was suggested? I know it wasn't completely finished but I noticed no one commented on it one way or another.

>>63547319
I don’t remember it, anyone down to repost it?

File: Book of Grudges.jpg (1.29 MB, 3220x1884)

1.29 MB JPG

>>63547633
Didn't want to clog up the whole thread by retyping it.

https://pastebin.com/czw4ZbUa

Basically the tradition started out when the pre-Hubworlders began settling the Hub in highly isolated holds and homesteads. Started out as a system of debtkeeping because you often needed something and weren't in the position to immediately pay it back and cooperation was key to survival, evolved into a full-blown philosophy similar to Buddhist karma. Further expands on why the squats are so pissed with the eldar from their point of view beyond their ancestors breaking a mutual defense pact and not even apologizing for it.

Lost some of the notes I had when writing it.

>>63546804
I remember there is something written up in one of the threads about Earthshaker cannons, which were about the biggest ordinance infantry could use without scaling up to a tank. Use more frequently this timeline because ogyrns aren't treated like shit as much, among other things.

There was also some talk about combined tank doctrine, which involved using eldar hover tanks as flanking and scout tanks.

>>63545001
Bonus points if it's a highly culturally diverse hive unknowingly built on top of the site of ancient Chaos blood rituals (maybe even a former Blood Pact site). As in, Kirkwall in Space.

A question. Since C'tan are able to eat souls, would it make sense for them to be able to eat daemons as well? I'm writing a thing featuring the Nightbringer where it is potentially relevant.

>>63550800
I'd imagine so, though actually the concept of the material C'tan being able to eat immaterial souls in canon is odd enough

File: Inquisitors summons Avata(...).jpg (70 KB, 1280x720)

70 KB JPG

>>63550800
I would say so as well, daemons are made of the same energy as souls and therefore in theory just as edible. Though we've said even the C'tan with major Warp reflections still have a massive weakness to Warp energy due to their dual nature.

C'tan eating souls could best be explained by the idea that they're eating energy, souls are energy, and if you can rip that energy out from the Warp using its fleshbag host it's all kosher. For Nightbringer he probably has more options, even though he can't go scrounging around for wherever Khaine threw his scythe in canon probably (unless the ship on Pavonis is his scythe).

So do high ranked male Imperial Officials have eldar mistresses?

File: 1544053673046.jpg (917 KB, 2000x1500)

917 KB JPG

>>63551318
Far more likely to have human mistresses. Craftworld Eldar tend not to be attracted by material wealth.

>>63549817
To complete the imagine it should be reclaimed from the Severan Dominate

I have a question for you folks.

Been watching some lore vids; is the Speh Marine recruitment/training process still the same or have y'all tweaked a bit? Same for the Grey Knights.

File: still_thinking_its_a_good_idea.jpg (90 KB, 682x1100)

90 KB JPG

>>63551318
There was a time when some governor allowed an eldar miss to be his top advisor, due to her 'distinguished skills'. It turned out she was heiress of a rabble-level kabal (damned refugees!), attempting to build her family's new dominion. Meticulous timing allowed her to turn said governor into a puppet overlord, seceding from the Imperium and establishing a despotic rogue regime. Some corsair warbands of dubious reputation even joined ranks, and soon there was rebellion for over ten systems.

Imperial envoys were about to be sent but then, over a detailed report supplied by a family recreant, the Inquisition moved first. War raged for almost a year, the commorrites were defeated and about to evade capture until the Ordo Xenos eventually rounded them.

All family members were moved apart and sentenced to lifetime of service on agri-worlds. The denouncer, cousin to the heiress, was forgiven and granted service in the Inquisition. However, years later she allegedly tried similar action with a young inquisitor, her efforts leading to no success at all.

>>63552472
The augmentations are the same, but recruitment has deliberately tweaked to remove the ridiculous grim darkness of kids murdering each other with spoons battle royale style to find the best recruits. As per the wiki, recruits are generally given their augmentations from the ages of 19-25, and therefore probably recruited at around 16-17. The average Ultramarine-style chapter picks the best and the brightest from local military academies and such, though recruitment practices can vary widely from chapter to chapter. I believe we said there is an element of consent as the recruit and his parents/guardians have to agree to it, though in practice I imagine the recruits never refuse, or they could be forcibly taken in times of crisis.

Though this is more humane than canon, it’s still morally grey at best. At 16, no kid really understands that to be a SM is to live a grueling, spartan life of unending bloodshed that almost always ends in a bloody and painful death in the battlefield.

>>63552943

SO Grey Knights no longer have to through a near impossible st of trials?

And are memory wipes still common among the enlisted?

>>63553164
Memory wipes are not practiced as standard. Why would you want to erase a lifetime of experience? Having a family they write letters to and friends and good times they remember keeps them grounded. It is not enough to fight, they have to have a cause to fight for.

>>63552943
On Cadia that Black Legion recruits slightly younger than most. On Cadia everyone is military from birth to death. Bar exceptions like the Grey Knights and the Night Lords the Space Marines are just an elite branch of the Imperial Army with some small degree of autonomy, on Cadia the living conditions and cultural difference between PDF soldier and Astartes isn't that great.

>>63552926
So do rogue traders duck eldar as well or what?

>>63553378
More likely to as they are more likely to encounter them on a regular basis. One of the big problems with long term relationships between human and eldar is the life span difference

>>63545714
It really isn't, it's just aother way (((they))) are manipulating humanity to be good little pets.

>>63541711
And the AdMech.

>>63554010
...explain?

Transhumanism would allow Man to match physically, and even mentally, the Eldar.

>>63554856
Nobody want's weak guard dogs or stupid sheep dogs. They want strong, clever and obedient. They have obedience because the sane humans are all kowtow to the throne of which their Everqueen owns a 50% share in.

Or at least that's the belief of the tinfoil hatters.

The plans of the average eldar in the street are more on lines with "I'll see if I can get some more copper pipe from the resyc-hub for the still", "If I have breakfast at work maybe I can make it to the early mag-lev and not end up sitting next to a window licker" and other such little things.

>>63553164
>>63553241
The trials are still nearly impossible and shit, moreso than regular Astartes testing, it's just that they don't habitually or intentionally kill the applicants that fail.

>>63552943
>>63553164
In an aspect of the contrast making canon more grimdark it's implied that the canon Emperor intentionally shot for child soldiers. The augments are mentioned as working for younger individuals but this timeline's Emperor didn't want a bunch of child soldiers and if you are going to memory wipe trainees what's the point of choosing the toughest pre-teens, they're all going to be paved over and made a blank slate anyway.

There is some hypno-indoctrination but it's not as severe as canon. More like a subconscious knee-jerk response to hate Chaos. Imagine if any time you got a whiff of Chaos corruption you immediately felt sick to your stomach, even if you didn't know it was there. By canon standards it's closer to the methods of the Soul Drinkers. Yes this does cause problems (though it's somewhat balanced out by the fact that most recruits have something to live for).

>>63555788
To add to this, Grey Knight trials are also a way to produce humans with the psychic dexterity of eldar. There are two ways to get that skilled with psychic powers. Either live and hone them for centuries before you do anything. Or, you can pack ten centuries of experience in ten years by throwing them through a meat grinder and hope they come out the other side. And that's before you get into all the special anti-Chaos wards and the like.

The Imperium isn't ritually sacrificing good people to make bullets though.

Grey Knights in this timeline also have an extreme monastic samurai-knight aesthetic, they are trained to be extreme ascetics (in the "zen" sense) so Chaos has nothing to offer them. Kaldor Draigo was especially good at this.

>>63555145
Well that's another thing about the Impreium's various secret handshake clubs. The conspiracy afoot is very difficult to agree on, "they" could be practically anyone, and the Imperium has undeniable external foes far more likely to behind any given plot than a secret internal enemy. Monodominants think "they" are the GEC, the Ordo Mutatio and protectors of the Human form think "they" are Horusian radicals or Heretek theologists, the Illuminate Order think 'they' are the Magos and Theologitects of pre-unification Sol, or the Hydra. The Hydra would say that all of the above listed parties fall into the category of "them"

>>63552926
Now I can't help but wonder if eldar have DEldar themed bondage gear for "special" occasions. Like is there a shady shop on a craftworld nobody admits to knowing about that sells spiky leather and whips alongside commissair hats?

>>63550969
Khaine probably threw it into the warp. The ship he was unearthed in by Uriel Ventris the former was a lesser vessel he had to adopt afterwards.

>>63560416
So in terms of a death god fight in the second War in Heaven, I think it would be pretty awesome to have some battle between the Nightbringer glutted from the dead of the war and finally with the Scythe and young Ynnead, attempting to solidify his place as the god of death and ensure he is not superseded by his most prominent rival/the reigning holder of that portfolio. It might be overly optimistic to think the Void Dragon would be so engaged and generous, but it might even provide a Sword to match its brother's Scythe.

>>63563691
From everything we've said about it, the Void Dragon a.) hates the Nightbringer and b.) loves building things, so it would probably be happy to provide a Sword. It will probably be made of pure neutronium and have an inertialess drive built into the hilt so you can swing it at relativistic velocities. (Fine print: use caution when using in an atmosphere.)

>>63562610
What a beautiful Grey Knight's auxiliary.

>>63565936
Do Grey Knights even have auxiliaries? As far as I can recall they're an elite strike team who only really tend to show up when things are going south, or acting as the banhammer for the Ordo Malleus and Ganymede. The only eldar specifically associated with them would be the Webway guides to help them navigate the Webway as part of their job.

>>63563691
That one potential timeline had a rematch between the re-forged Khaine and the Nightbringer, culminating in Khaine stripping him down to a single fragment that was sealed in the form of a Necron warscythe. Which he gave to Ynnead as he already had the Wailing Doom and his nephew (grand-nephew) needed a weapon to call his own, building on the themes of Ynnead representing the crossing of boundaries, death god motif (specifically Ynnead usurping Nightbringer's old role), and the second War in Heaven representing Ynnead's coming of age among other themes in the galaxy's Ragnarok.

Reducing Nightbringer to a single fragment and putting him in an immortal's care means he is liable to never get out, and the story seemed to imply the Nightbringer-as-a-scythe took a bite out of Slaanesh given how much Ynnead versus Slaanesh has been hyped in 40k in general.

>>63566236
She would be a webway guide or a seer in their service.

All please rise for the Hubworld national anthem

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ytWz0qVvBZ0

>>63566236
Grey Knights are not the personal hammer of the Ordo Malleus, they are their own thing that have every right to tell the Ordo Melleus to go fuck themselves but don't because the two institutions have a lot of overlap and have worked well with each other for thousands of years.

Ordo Malleus soldiers are the same as the other Inquisition soldiers taken from the soldier pool and retinues accumulated by individual inquisitors. They may have to go through additional psychological checks and tests but for the most part slapping cultists trying to summon a succubus in their basement doesn't require the Grey Knights. When the Grey Knight arrive it's because shit has gone wrong or a more conventional approach was never an option.

Grey Knights may maintain a minimal standing force on Ganymede on the principle that it's going to take less than half an hour to sprint back home through the webway (so long as one of them carries the eldar guide)if all out emergency is declared but ultimately the people running Ganymede are very good at building sturdy boxes to keep the curiosities secure.

Also they don't have the numbers to spare for a substantial guard on the place. The Grey Knights are dying order and they know it. Attrition is outstripping recruitment and at current rates they will achieve terminal attrition before 999M42.

just had a weird thought, that being Lucius is the Byron to other vampires' Dracula, the "Bela Lugosi's Dead" to their gothic organ hammering. If it were only up to him he'd be as firmly in the "imperial if pressed" group as Trayzn, but he has the Deceiver in his mind and knows he'll be reliably traitorous in pursuit of selfish goals.

>>63568265
Lucius might not have a Deceiver chunk in his heart.

Consider that in 10,000 years despite levelling up along the usual progression of vampires the only driving force he experiences is his own will. It's like the chunk of silver in his hear was empty. There is one type of C'tan that has produced empty shards and those are empty because the vast majority of that C'tan is in an Old One containment facility.

If Lucius is this AU's Dracula equivalent than it's not unreasonable to assume that Lucius is the only known Mag'ladroth Vampire. It also means that should Void Dragon get out of his cave he will have a champion.

>>63545001
>>63549817
Have them straight up murder the previous Governor for gross criminal incompetence for allowing a shit load of unsanctioned psykers to rise up and take out the head of the local religious branch and kick off the whole fucking civil war. Also the Inquisition has gotten involved, the Inquisitor is in their opinion a moron.

Further adding to this shitstorm is one of the original Pre-Fall Chaos Eldar trying to open a miniature Eye of Terror using an ancient eldar artefact.

>>63566236
Slaanesh will also be on Void Dragon's little list. Void Dragon was friends with Vaal (even if Vaal hated Void Dragon). When Mag'ladroth finds out what's happened to his friend he will be most unhappy.

>>63512037
Sylvy best girl

>>63557902
And the Cabal. It's never been proven that they totally disbanded with the death of Gahet, only that many sighed on with the Inquisition and the ones that did so believed that they had disbanded.

The problem is that they might have been allowed to believe this and that the ones who didn't join the Inquisition just kept on going and used the opportunity to aid A&Ω in the setting up of the Inquisition by funnelling experienced agent to them.

It's hard to tell if a secret organization ends because any lack of detectable activity just means that they are really good at being secretive.

>>63568067
If the order gets beneath effective numbers they will have to allow Anteus and his merry band back in.

>>63568302
Killing a wyvern would certainly mesh with his adventure taking the Emperor’s Children beyond the forefront of the Great Hunt after what was either a play to steal the blade of Laer or being given a mission to retrieve a significant sample of vampire sliver.

>>63573377
At that point it's probable that the Imperium didn't know about Vampires and possibly didn't know about C'tan. Lucius was probably investigating Medusa and the stories of the Wyvern that haunted it. How he learned what it was is anyone's guess at this point.

>>63574498
He heard dragon blood could make him and his soldiers immortal, it might even have been at the advice of them on Ganymede, and went hunting for the dragon he was pointed at.

>>63574969
Would Ganymede have known about them that far back?

>>63566236
All post-999M41 events are not happened yet.

>>63576359
it was the storehouse for the Great Crusade's weird and dangerous finds, they might have heard rumors and have been happy to pass them on to see the immortality obsessed officer on his way instead of trying to take the demon sword.

>>63576359
>>63577427
The Wyvern entry says the Inquisition doesn't know exactly what they are beyond there is some kind of consistent report of weird silver draconic creatures that pops up every once in a while like the Loch Ness monster. Both of the wyverns mentioned to be encountered by the Imperium (Asirnoth and the one the Steward pulped) are in Tesseract Labyrinths on Mars. The inner circle of the AdMech do know what they are, but

I remember we suggested Lucius tracked down a coven of C'tan infected Lacrymoles and tried to get the secret out of them but decided "screw that" when he realized their free will had been tampered with. He found out that wyverns were similar but had no real controlling will to them and tracked one down against the suggestions of the Lacrymole coven to get immortality on his own terms, even if that was the more dangerous and untested route.

Also Great Crusade is about when C'tan vampires would have first been made (aside from maybe Orikan) due to the initial Deceiver-backed experiments by that Magos.

>>63578253
Yeah, the Golden Pyramid's influence stretches back far from its real inception due to Orikan's time-travel, but it did come after the Necrons began to wake. In the early eras of the Imperium they Lacrymole courts of Strigoi were the most prominent vampires, with Nosferatu almost as rare as Lamia before the Nightbringer was released.

>>63521747
Another thing that might drive a wedge between Dark and Crone Eldar is how they see torture. Crone Eldar don’t need pain to live. Dark Eldar on the other hand do. As a result, Dark Eldar are likely to see torture as an art and take pride in their work, because the better a job they do the more efficient the processes in the more they are rejuvenated. Crones, on the other hand, because they’re all about instant gratification, are inefficient and liable to just wander off and they lose interest.

To the Dark Eldar this would be disgusting, not only are they unskilled charlatans about it they are just plain wasteful, like somebody eating a single slice of pizza and then throwing entire the rest of the pizza away.

>>63514960
I think in some ways this Swarmlord is a representation of exactly what you’re saying. Normally when a hive mind entity gains an appreciation of individuality this is immediately grounds for cessation of hostilities as the entity can now empathize with those it once fought. Except in this case, nope, the Hive Mind has an avatar but when it shows up all it goes is “all right, where’s my dinner?” Because hunger and survival instincts are just as much of an individual desire as higher cognitive thought. The blindsight metaphor works particularly well.

If we ever need to expand on the tyranid we could do something like StarCraft did with the zerg specialist breeds/some of the tyranid “special characters”. Oddball one-offs or elite versions of the regular forms that the hive keeps reconstituting because it proved so effective. Imply that there is some kind of shared mental continuity between the two but they aren’t the same individual, the Hive Mind is just reconstituting some of the features that made it so effective and gifting the bioform with parts of the visual memory for threat recognition and planning.

Either that or something like what canon is doing with the Hive Fleets or StarCraft cerebrates, but less sentient

>>63582127
One would think Nosferatu would be little bit more common earlier since the Nightbringer did not get out until around the time of Por'O M'arc. We've mentioned one of the things that drove a wedge between the Emperor and the Silent King is that is Szarekh knew some of the Tesseract Labyrinths had failed and knew that some of the C'tan shards were at large in the galaxy but while Szarekh made moves to recapture them (often to the Imperium's detriment) he never told Oscar they were out there. Granted, the Imperium already knew about C'tan vampirism by that point, but was more the sentiment than anything else.

File: nightbringer.jpg (102 KB, 553x455)

102 KB JPG

I have written a thing about the Nightbringer. I'm uncertain about parts of it, but here it is anyway.

https://pastebin.com/MC0zEMwL

>>63583664
Fucking brutal.

>>63582243
Nosferatu Existed before Nightbringer was let out but not in such huge numbers because they were all naturally or accidentally spread. Nightbringer has been intentionally cultivating them since it's release.

>>63583664
Nicely done. It shows the lethality of the two factions without anyone getting nerfed.

>>63572189
They won't unless they change their policies regarding being an exclusively psyker order considering that Anteus might be the only psyker (if he's still alive) in his nomad company.

>>63583664
The story started out good and ended up great.

Is the Jubblowski story still happening?

>>63587654
Yes. Trying to.

bumpo

>>63563899
Khaine already has a sword. It was made for his hand a long, long time ago. Currently it is being held by Shas'O Farsight, but that's okay. It might as well get used by someone whilst he waits for his chariot. It would be a terrible thing for such workmanship to remain idle and the Dawnblade was never meant to be idle.

Maybe Void Dragon is going to build a sword. But who would it be for?

Oscar swings a telekinetic wedge of MIND BULLETS that is shaped like a sword and ignites the air by friction to make it look like he's holding fire.

Lion will wake up soon and he's the greatest swordsman in the Legions, but he already hasa legendary sword of Kinebrach make.

Ceggers goes into battle with no blade in his hand because his tongue cuts sharper. Also he's more likely to kick you in the bollocks and shank your neck open with a broken beer bottle while you fall down.

So who of the gods is left for him to give that blade to? He needs no blade, he's a fucking dragon with a surplus of doomsday devices.

If he makes a sword it's going to be Isha that wields it and it's going to end up thrust right between Nurgle's eyes and twisted when she annexes his territory to replant her garden.

>>63591795
>If he makes a sword it's going to be Isha that wields it and it's going to end up thrust right between Nurgle's eyes and twisted when she annexes his territory to replant her garden.
That's a truly terrifying thought, especially when combined with the notion of the fragment of the essence of Malal that is within her.

>>63592195
If she goes to war before Ynnead is conceived with that part used as the seed from which he will grow then shit is going to go very bad. Isha, so far as we have written, has never held weaponry deliberately. When she butchered an army sent to bring her back to The Mansion she used weaponry of opportunity because her assailants were armed but she went into battle ripping and tearing with her bare hands.

A weapon is a deliberate and premeditated thing by it's nature designed to bring an end to other things. In a sense all weapons are part of Malal, probably closer to the part that Khorne got but still part of Malal. Malal has flavoured all weapons.

Isha has a piece of Malal in her very soul stolen from Nurgle.

Nurgle does not have a piece of Malal anymore, which is why he is now incapable of ending a thing rather than just unwilling as before. He can't land a killing blow, just debilitate with increasing ailments and hindrances into total inactivity and stagnation.

Isha can and Isha will be deliberately armed. Nurgel is going to get royally fucked up.

>>63583664
Has any Nightbringer shard ever encountered a Khaine avatar in this Dark Millennium?

>>63593832
Not that anyone's said yet.

>>63593832
>>63595403
It would make sense if it had; Nightbringer shards are the sort of thing you want to pull out your biggest and warpiest guns for. And there isn't much in the Imperial arsenal that's bigger or warpier than an Avatar of Khaine.

>>63595596
How warpy are Harlequins?

>>63592437
Even if Impossible Child is born beforehand 20 years to get it to adulthood is small change in the scheme of things and now there's another combatant at Judgement Day.

>>63582127
Is time travel a thing in this AU?

>>63598575
not officially. There's various ambiguous elements like the Ordos Chronos which apparently was a thing despite there being no records of them, and they pop up from time to time, but there's deliberately no concrete answers on the subject because things like time-travel only really work when it's left ambiguous whether that's actually what's going on.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that if time-travel is occurring, it's actual ability to affect events is negligible, or at least wildly inconsistent.

>>63598575
People who try it tend to get eaten by Tindalosi "hounds". Little is known about them.

Are Living Saints still around?

Better, do they even exist?

>>63601477
Lady Celestine does but she is a genetic abnormality due to being descended from Sanguinius. She is a rallying call to the Katholian Faithful for renewed Crusade.

Ephemeral Stern is whatever freak of nature Magnus the Red was. Stern is the Inquisitions wrecking ball.

Both are supremely dangerous in their own way.

>>63598638
Orikan has deterministic time travel, it can't effect causality, but many of Orikan's schemes hinge on Orikan knowing the details of history better than anyone else for the sake of prognostication, he goes back to check the details, not change them.

>>63598575
>>63600295
What >>63598638 said. It likely exists on some level, due to the nature of the Warp allowing one to on rare occasions exit earlier than they entered, but it's not common and its impact is mostly negligible. Orikan's bullshit being the best example of it.

The origins of the Tindalosi have been deliberately left up in the air but one possible origin is that they were made by ancient humanity and spread throughout the timestream until they were found by the Necrons who subsequently “domesticated” them. It’s kind of sad to think that out of all of humanity’s accomplishments, all of their achievements, humanity’s lasting contribution to the galaxy at large might be the fucking Tindalosi. Or they could just be Necron hunter-killer bots.

There is also the implication that Ahriman travelled back in time after winning the latest Iron Storm and swapped places with his counterpart, which is how Ahriman knows how to use the Webway, why the Daemon Breakers are so close with the Harlequins (Ahriman being a BL alumnus), how Ahriman figured out how to bind his soul to his armor, and why the “current” Ahriman was never seen to leave the Black Library.

>>63596591
Harlequins are warpy on the level of Grey Knights and Handmaidens. Their power levels tend to be a little bit more mutable due to their literal plot armor based on their role in the "show". Solitaires are notable anti-warpy.

>>63601997
There's also the possibility that nobody invented the Tindalosi. If they can alter past events that also effect/ed themselves without erasing or retroactively altering the!selves then they are immune to changes in the stream of time and possibly causality entirely.

Maybe humanity or something like them did create them. When is a meaningless speculation as they were scattered or escaped and diffused across all of time. Such a culture as could make these creatures would have had to have been capable and experienced at playing with time. The Tindalosi target causes of disruption to linear time, this may be instinctive, premeditated or programmed but motive matters little at this point. With infinite time any control measure or safeguard will have failed and the Hounds will have turned on their creators in their first successful experiments in manipulating time, making time travel research too costly and dangerous and aborting the line of scientific development that lead to their own creation.

The Tindalosi Hounds are relics of an aborted timeline that they themselves prevented.

>>63602748
Possibly. Then again, Necron reality pins derived from the Whaagh (and eventually refined into the Cadian Pylons) are essentially miniature Towers from the Elder Scrolls, holding down in specificity particular physical constants that would otherwise be much more like probability fields. At the peak of the War in Heaven, from the Necron PoV, they were doing all they could to keep a shred of material reality alive in the warped tumult of the Old Ones pulling the realm of thought and dreams into the realm of physics and material. Those that were born after the war simply analyzed and recorded these settings as physical laws, not knowing these were rates and proportions chosen to keep Necron tech running even as every other part of reality warped around it.

>>63588496
Tarellian guy here, still alive and working on stuff. Here's something I was working on about Tarellian society.

Describing Tarellian society in broad strokes is very difficult. Like humans, Tarellians do not have a unified cultural baseline. Maza’s council of elders is very different from Tikal’s rule by the Xibalaniqan mage-priests, and so on and so forth. However, the following type of social structure is the kind found the Tarellian homeworld after the Age of Strife, as well as the many of the lesser colony worlds founded by the Tarellians either during the tenure of the Tarellian Confederacy or as refugees following the attack of Hive Fleet Kraken (most of which came from Tarellia in the first place). Therefore, this kind of social structure is the closest one gets to a “general” Tarellian society.

The functional unit of Tarellian society is the hunter pack, a group composed of several associated individuals and their offspring that may or may not be genetically related and form a military unit. Each hunter pack lives in a hauden, a structure made of an artificial cement-like mixture that is part barracks, part domicile. Each pack is expected to be responsible for their own needs, producing or hunting their own food, and so on. Individuals may leave or join new packs upon bonding with another individual, but are normally part of at least one pack.

>>63605157
Tarellians are fiercely meritocratic. The leader of a hunter pack is elevated to that position based on the consensus of their peers, usually on the basis of the glory they have won. This is called “shield-raising”, based on the fact that in the distant past when a leader was chosen the individual in question would be raised on the shields of their comrades. An individual will not be elevated to leadership status just because of their ability to kill things, but based on their perceived ability to lead and command others well. No Tarellians wants to follow a leader they do not trust enough to choose to lead. The leaders of a group of hunter packs are then organized into their own group, who choose their own leader, and so on and so forth until one reaches the highest levels of Tarellian society. As a result every Tarellian is aware of their place in the social hierarchy at all times, but it is a societal structure that allows for a great deal of social mobility and individual say. Meritocratic ideals are present on many other worlds like Tikal and Maza, even those which differ dramatically in social structure (Maza, for example, has little social organization beyond a council of elders drawn from the matriarchs of each tribe).

As a result, this makes the division between civilians and military exceedingly murky. Almost every adult Tarellian is capable of picking up a weapon and defending themselves in times of war, although the same thing could be said of. Does this mean the Tarellians are nothing more than an authoritarian system where civil society is nothing more than an outgrowth of the military? Or is Tarellian society primarily a civilian militia that merely happens to be organized into a highly fashion? Tarellian leaders are subject to the will of their civilians, something which is typically not present in a military dictatorship. An argument could be made for either.

>>63605173
The Tarellians would say those who debate such things are far too fixated on the details, it is what it is and should be considered on its own merits.

The meritocratic nature of Tarellian society is one reason for the Tarellian’s dislike of the Imperium. While not ungrateful that the Imperium was willing to provide assistance in the rebuilding of the Neo-Confederacy, they do not like the fact that the Imperium summarily imposed their will on them afterwards. They do not like the idea of having a leader imposed on them, rather than chosen. If the Imperium had presented the rescue of the Tarellian race as evidence for their ability to perform as leaders, some Tarellians might have even considered this enough of a valid argument to voluntarily shield-raise them, but the Imperium did not. They unilaterally assumed control. As social pack-hunters, the idea of unfamiliar outsiders having power over them on any level is vexing.

This long-standing issue dominates Tarellian interactions with the greater Imperium. Tarellians are well known for their caustic, contrarian attitudes in Imperial politics, though despite their stereotype of being bitter and grumpy Tarellians are capable of forming positive relationships with individual humans (Tarellians even have a saying along the lines of “if separated by more than two degrees of leadership everyone is a grunt”). Rather, the political actions of the Neo-Confederacy are due to the fact that under Tarellian custom, the subordinates to the leader of a hunter pack are also expected to voice dissenting opinions to make sure their leader. To the Tarellians, they smugly consider their contrarian behavior to be fair play given how humanity waltzed in and declared themselves in charge

>>63605279
The whole reason for the bit at the beginning is to point out that although we have taken pains to avert Tarellians being a monoculture with the various colony worlds being as different as Cadia, Ultramar, and Fenris, this is one of the larger cultural groups that was present on both their homeworld and Neo-Tarellia. As in, “Tarellian customs are very diverse, but if you need a starting point for Your Dudes here is good place to start”.

The Imperium’s reasoning for considering themselves justified in being in charge is that many of the planets the Tarellians were ceded used to be Imperial worlds (albeit ones that had had never really been colonized), kind of similar to the Romans resettling the Goths, Visigoths etc. However, the out of universe intention was the whole situation was a bit morally dubious and the Imperium could’ve handled it a lot better. Though reading through it, I realize one could see unintended parallels with the resettlement of Native Americans on reservations and getting screwed over in the process, especially since the Tarellians take inspiration from groups like the Iroquois and the Comanche. Of course, one could make a pretty good argument that the Europeans in this scenario are Hive Fleet Kraken.

File: 1237188738891.jpg (167 KB, 600x600)

167 KB JPG

Here we go.

https://pastebin.com/qKkEsAfE

I'm done. I can't think of more to write. I've tried to not have it become magical_realm but I'm operating on caffeine and little else at this point.

If I've done something wrong or something needs changing or you have a better idea please tell me so I can change it.

>>63605443
I really liked it, though it needs a quick copy edit since there seem to be a few dropped words. Your commentary at the end is also quite good, and the Imperium is an empire in both the classical and age of exploration sense, so it's entirely appropriate to raise the questions that go along with that worldview. As a whole the Imperium is the idealized version of both of those archetypes, avoiding their pitfalls and excesses, but even still there are many conflicts that will arise simply from opposing outlooks of good-intentioned actors.

We've raised that a lot in the pre-induction eras of Tau history, where some of the nastiest, most demoralizing, vengeful fighting the Imperium has see against another mundane nation has been against a regime no less judicious and benevolent than themselves. The Imperium knows how to deal with evil, brazen or subtle, it can smash the Blood Pact with decisiveness and wroth, secure enough in its known righteousness to even deal mercy when appropriate, but what can it do when a lesser good stands in its way? What measures are justified by their utility, what extent of force, what of restraint, of propaganda, when your opponent is merely a disagreeable neighbor, or claims the same right of lawbringer, or is already in your power. The Imperium had been seeking to integrate the Tarellians for thousands of years, as much due to its own cultural purposes as any need for them, and seized on the chance. The fallout from this probably had something to do with why they didn't annex the Tau when they had weak periods.

>>63605443
I like this. It also fits with what we've established for the Ulmeathic League and their potential roots as offshoots from far-flung Tarellian colonies- the emphasis on merit could easily have influenced the Ulmeathic philosophies of "the strongest lead," yet where the Tarellians developed a system of peer-review and support that favors independence, the Ulmeathics took the mindset and built a heavily-Authoritarian system.
Thus, there is enough similarity at the core for it to be conceivable that they have a common source, yet so vastly different in execution that both parties would likely take offense at the suggestion that they are like the other.

>>63601566
>Lady Celestine does but she is a genetic abnormality due to being descended from Sanguinius.
Sooo...female marines?

>>63607858
no, wings

File: dc79du4-8433809c-8c87-42f(...).png (3.35 MB, 2000x2000)

3.35 MB PNG

Have we done anything with the esteemed Carlos Mcconnell? Is there a cat-person megacorporation around on the Imperial economic stage?

>>63608648
There was a thread that talked about him before; he definitely existed and did some crazy shit, to the point where in some areas he's remembered as an almost-folkloric figure like Paul Bunyan or Johnny Appleseed.

File: Frenzy Plant.jpg (56 KB, 1280x720)

56 KB JPG

>>63592437
Isha has used weapons before but they have all been of the improvised, “When Trees Attack” sort. Vines suddenly growing at 5000 times their natural rate, branches lunging forth to skewer people, plants exploding forth from pristine stone floors or worse, from the seeds within somebody’s gullet. That said, she’s never actually used a sword or a weapon made just for her before, though we’ve mentioned she doesn’t go around unarmed anymore (though that could be referring to her manipulation of plant life or just carrying some kind of dagger or pistol).

This is kind of related to an idea that I was going to suggest. We’ve said that the negative side to Isha’s portfolio (in addition to nature red in tooth and claw) is kind of like Demeter’s rage in Greek mythology, withering and the harvest. I was wondering if it would be too much to suggest that Isha might have blessed one of the primarchs’ weapons as a gift to be extra effective against daemons, withering them when it strikes, with such a weapon being passed down through the ages until it achieved legendary status like many weapons in canon. Although Isha may not be a frontline combatant she would have no problems with blessing a weapon to punish her former captors. The Thorns of Isha wielded by the Handmaidens kind of do the same thing in the sense of inflicting wounds that never heal. Even if it doesn’t give daemons a True Death from being hit by something blessed by a god it might put them on a timer, sapping their strength enough to force them to return to the Warp faster.

The most obvious candidates for this would be Mortarion’s scythe Silence, for the “reaping scythe” imagery. However, Mortarion and the Death Guard are still the “anti-psyker” legion. Even if it did give them a way to fuck up daemons, they would probably refuse such gifts because they came from a Warpy eldar goddess.

File: Durthu.png (164 KB, 206x346)

164 KB PNG

>>63610357
The other suggestion I was going to make is one regarding Isha’s daemons in a potential post-M41 timeline as part of the whole “Visitor Timeline”. IIRC we decided that the only eldar god to ever make a daemon was Cegorach, and even he only made the one, if for no other reason that the process of making a daemon is not very intuitive because it involves self-mutilation, but that Isha was going to try experimenting with making daemons in the future. The obvious choice for Isha’s daemons would be something like Fantasy’s Treemen and Dryads, which IIRC was also suggested.

Durthu is Isha’s righteous sword, the manifestation of her resilience, her desire to continue on in spite of hardship. His personality at first blush is cantankerous and caustic, and he has little time for wishing or naiveté. His body is twisted and gnarled with scars from a thousand old conflicts. Although he was once filled with resilience and optimism, that has all been chipped away as he has watched good people and innocents die and considered each a personal failure. And yet, he finds himself stubbornly putting himself in harm’s way, if for no other reason that there is still part of him who believes in doing the right thing.

Drycha is nuts. Every daemon is on some level an aspect of its parent entity’s personality, exaggerated until it takes on a life of its own. Aetaos’Rau’Keres, for example, is the living personification of Nerd Rage. Drycha is the manifestation of Isha’s memories from her time as Nurgle’s prisoner. The part that Isha desperately tries to repress and forget. Drycha is perpetually stuck in that frame of mind, that of having seen Kurnous murdered, her daughter killed and worn like a suit, her children as far as she knew extinct, and the unimaginable tortures only capable of being inflicted on one immortal by another. Imagine reliving the worst day of your life forever. Is it any wonder she is psychotic and nihilistic?

>>63610485
Another major difference between Isha’s daemons and those of the other gods is that while they do work like daemons they exist in the material realm by possessing plantlife, which makes people look on the much more favorably. And they can probably stay in realspace much more reliably, only having to make a new body out of plant matter if the old one is destroyed.

>>63610485
WAKASH

DUUUUUUUUUUUURRRTTTTTHHHHUUUUUU

>>63610354
Orn of Ornsworld is a similar figure among the ratlings.

>>63610485
I like it

>>63606361
I've read worse. Ending seems a bit rushed but with the lack of original source material it's not bad.

>>63600295
Is there a House of Silence?

>>63610354
What list of tall tales could be associated with him?

>>63605443
Other than the occasional missing word it's very good look at the lizards.

>>63614694
I'd say not, it would be one reference too many.

>>63613519
I've had one day off since October so I'm not operating on all cylinders. I was going to have a far longer climb to fame for her where she meets such legends as Ambassador Cain when he was still a mere Commissar and Lukas the Trickster, it would have mentioned her daughters who became a Word Bearers commander and a Favoured Skald of the Fang. I'll do it again and hopefully better at some point in the future when i have time perhaps.

>>63619194
Jesus, if what you’re saying is true then take care of yourself man, writing for nerds on the internet is secondary to getting some sleep. Unless, of course, writing is how you unwind, then more power to you.

Also, as an informal poll, how many of the OG oldfags are still hanging around? Personally I only visit the thread once or twice a week these days and rarely post, but I am glad people are keeping this thing alive even if I don’t always agree with the direction of the new lore. Keep on keeping on.

>>63619194
Another facet you got really well, but I’d still hope you expand on, is the huge difference in life experience between a Cadian grunt (or any common citizen) and someone that’s part of the Interstellar Aristocracy, living in a series of palatial starships and planetside estates as rejuveants float you down the decades.

>>63619385
I’m still around, still minimally productive

>>63619385
Still here.

I write because otherwise my life would be mostly work or sleep with little between. Current state of job activity is seasonal, if I can survive until April I start to get days off again. June and July I can have all the time off I want.

I think a good next stage for the project could be providing the more full, 'your dudes' potential treatment for the Crones, but also the various Ork empires we've mentioned. Ork characters are some of the more entertaining stuff from canon, and our version of the Brain Boyz and Ork empires form an interesting point of contrast in the civilization-savagery theme of the setting. Superficially, they are savage, brutal, and crude, but in depth the Orks are ancient, cunning, and arguably live their own valhallan nirvana free of the troubles of other species.

>>63619385
I've been here since thread one myself, and if there's any waifuposting that seems cringe-y to you, that's probably me. I like to think I've done a little better since then, writing up the initial Craftworld fluff and the Severus XIII writefaggotry, but eh.

File: 681730_t1ber1um_commissary.jpg (167 KB, 1080x1920)

167 KB JPG

>>63619385
>>63620250
>>63620302
>>63621778
Newfag here who's only been around for a year or so, I wanna thank you old-timers for getting this project started. This is one of the best projects I've ever been a part of, and none of it would have been possible without you guys, so kudos to you, you filthy waifu-fags, for being autistic enough to take the premise of "how can we justify our shipping?" and turn it into a serious project worthy of praise and adoration.
>>63621391
Agreed on giving the Orks a bit more love. They're one of the most fun and recognizable parts of the source material, yet aside from a couple of the big-name boys we've sort of relegated them to the sidelines as "aligned with Chaos for now." Not intentionally of course, but expanding on some of the shenanigans they've been up to that aren't War of the Beast setting-shaking devastation would help.
Maybe detail a campaign where the Imperium was facing off against Chaos, and the end result was that the Orks won because they initiated a free-for-all where Chaos got backstabbed and the Imperium still got screwed by sheer logistics.

Other potential ways to keep fleshing out the world would be continuing to expand on the xenos of the galaxy that have been absorbed into the Imperium (low-priority considering what we've done with the Ulmeathic League and a few other xenos types recently, but still the area where the divergence between canon and this project is most blatant since canon takes the "doesn't matter, purged them all" mindset, while here they're mostly around and contributing to the Imperium), or coming up with potential scenarios for Your Dudes campaigns or setpieces, to brainstorm ways to have games or interactive stories within the setting.

>>63622080
Well we have the Ork empires that arose after the WoTB, Octarius, Charadon, and Bork, as well as the Ork empires Gathrog and Dregruk on the far side of the Eye of Terror. Charadon is noted as a buffer between the Imperium and NSE, and the Octarius war suggests the Octarius Empire is also in the east, in the path of the Hivefleet and possibly also abbuting Necron territory. These two, along with Bork, were the major Ork empires in that survived Warmaster Macharius where the others, smaller and closer to Segmentum Solar, were wiped out. Not only notable for their historical continuity, size, and power, the autocrats of these powers have been faithful to the Gorkamorka as often as the Ruinous Powers, and the Chaos worshiper is frequently outnumbered by the Green in the few meetings of this triarchy of rivals. Dregruk is even more staunch in worship of the Gorkamorka, their despot is a vocal backer of Ghazghkull, and absolutely hates Crones, the Eye, and Chaos for trying to steal the empire. Gathrog is notable in being one of the few Chaos affiliated sustained Whaaghs, being composed of Khornate Orks, and one of the few lasting Ork empires truly committed to a Chaos God, since the gods (through the Crones) usually throw whatever Orks they can get into battle as disposable weapons, with little care for building anything of the sort. Gathrog's Khornate rulers actually have a working relationship with their rimward neighbor, the Blood Pact, trading weapons and resources, even providing (relatively) safe haven when the Imperium comes and wipes Doombreed out again. In turn this has led to a wierd diplomatic affiliation with the Severan Dominate, at least insomuch as the Arch-Dictator of Gathrog isn't disrupting or contradicting the Blood Pact's overtures.

>>63621391
>Superficially, they are savage, brutal, and crude, but in depth the Orks are ancient, cunning, and arguably live their own valhallan nirvana free of the troubles of other species.
The Orks are brutally cunning and cunningly brutal. EVERYONE knows that!

>>63622080
>>63622524
An interesting part of this is how it might expand on the idea of the Eldar, or in this case Crones and Chaos, using the technology of the Old Ones without really understanding it. They try to use the Orks like a weapon, as the Old Ones did, without really considering that as a weapon system the Orks are much more akin to Von Neumann machines, Auto-wars, and other weapons of truly advanced civilizations. For the Crones understanding the correct use of Orks as weapons would mean reflecting on the Old Ones and necessarily coming very close to reflecting on their own place to the Old Ones, which is uncomfortable. For the Chaos gods it would mean understanding a weapon of the Old Ones on the same scale as themselves, possibly greater, underwritten by a warp-based god-system that slipped free of the Sload more easily than they did and completely baffled the lizard wizards for the whole time it was under their examination.

>>63606620
>>63607008
>>63617183

I will try to fix the missing word issues, are there any that stand out?

Dang it, I forgot to mention how we said the Tarellians like the tau for their defiance in joining the Imperium kicking and screaming. The Tarellians probably would have done the same but were in no position to after Hive Fleet Kraken. The Tarellians may be standoffish, but they’re not suicidal. Are the underlying implications of “the Imperium thought they were in the right, but weren’t” clear enough or should I add more? I never know with the right balance is to get the information across but not hit someone over the head with it.

>>63622080
Agreed with the fact that the Orks need more love. The Orks have a lot of room to expand upon, they actually have a meta-plot in this universe in terms of the whole “battle for the species’ soul” between the regular Orks and the chaos Orks once the chaos gods decided to try directing more of their attention to corrupting the Orks. We made mention of the fact that Ghazghull spent most of his time between the Fourth and Fifth Wars for Armageddon krumpin’ Chaos gitz who saw their opportunity to get back at him. We also have the other Beast Orks to expand upon, which based on the introduction are considered almost as big of a deal as the Black Crusade. We even have the “Black Kroosade” of Chaos Ork Rotfang Badgut. And of course the Brain Boyz.

>>63622831
It also would highlight the stagnation of the Eldar Empire compared the Old Ones. Out of all of the Old Ones servant races, the eldar had the greatest potential to take their place, but bottomed out and stagnated at about peak Necrontyr level or so due to hedonism. As illustrated by the fact that the Crones' treatment of Orks is playing with fire (or more accurately, phosphex) and they don't know they're likely to get burned.

>>63623541
Speaking of Tarellians and Orks, I’ve been thinking about the Kroq-Gar inspired character (who I still can’t think of a good name for, maybe Vhakashi or something?) and had an idea of how to incorporate something similar to the Hand of the Gods. The idea was that Kroq-Gar lost one of his hands in the fighting against the Arch-Mangler of Bork, to show that the Arch-Mangler gave as good as he got, and Kroq-Gar had it replaced with a prosthetic with some kind of blaster in the palm. However, I wondered if that was too similar to Yarrick, though in this case Kroq-Gar and in this timeline Yarrick specifically ripped his arm off one of Ghazzy’s Nobz to give Ghazzy the middle finger. Additionally, we’ve never said whether or not Tarellians can regenerate limbs, because if so that kind of makes the point of a prosthetic moot.

I was also thinking about how disruptor rifles might work compared to lasguns. Specifically, I was thinking they might work more like bolt action rifles, with the trade-off being that each shot is individually more powerful. This would encourage taking cover, sharpshooter tactics, and volley fire to maximize the damage of each shot, kind of like how many Native American tribes (and to be honest some European colonies) fought when they got access to firearms (at least when cover is available). There are more powerful lasguns (like hotshot lasguns) and there are disruptor rifles with faster rates of fire, but the two optimized different ways.

File: 1540853567767.png (887 KB, 945x681)

887 KB PNG

If someone is wondering (or even interested), episode 2 of Czevak's story is on the way.

>>63625009
Sounds good on disruptors, I figure there might be a momentary delay while capacitors charge that make it somewhat less than semi-automatic in fire rate.

>>63619385
Khanfag represent.

Haven't been posting as much as I once have but I'm still around. Haven't been namefagging because I tried taking a look at Dorn after another anon suggested it and I just couldn't figure out how to make it work and got embarassed. Dorn doesn't jump out at me like other characters. Ironically I think we may have fallen into the same trap as BL, where the areas of the universe that speak the most to various writefags get the most fluff. Hence our lack of Ork fluff.

Also haven't been posting as much because I feel the last few things I suggested weren't very inspired. Especially after looking through the old threads and it seems like we had a lot more spark then. I think it may be because we have a lot of lore and not a lot of elaboration outside the old threads and the Notes page, so it's hard to keep up with things.

Mostly I've been trying to add my two cents to keep the lore consistent and (try) making sure people are having fun. Not the guy you might think though. As well as posting stuff when I do manage to get it done.

>>63621778
The Craftworld fluff was you? That was good. I like all of the writefags but never got to say that personally.

File: Altansars motto.jpg (37 KB, 550x550)

37 KB JPG

>>63621391
I remember be said something along the lines of the other Crone Worlds tend to be dominated by "actively courting the blessings of all four" Undivided other than Malys. Shaa-Dome is the big leagues, and it's very much Malys' domain. There are a few wanna be up and comers in Shaa-Dome, but many of the big name Undivided set up shop on other worlds because they'd rather be a big fish in a little pond than a little fish in a big one.

To put it another way, Shaa-Dome is the London of the Eye of Terror, but what's going on in the Eye's equivalent of Manchester or Liverpool?

I remember in a previous thread how we mentioned Altansar was taken over by the young up and coming Crone Eldar, kind of making it like the insane religious space elf equivalent of a hipster Silicon Valley. We also mentioned the leader of the bunch is an absolute nutter who installed augments all through his body via the Obliterator virus or something so he could hook himself into the daemon infested Infinity Circuit and let it flow through him.

Am I the only one seeing him as potentially being the insane, evil space elf version of Steve Jobs?

>>63606361
I agree with >>63613519. It's good, though it could use the formatting and it would be really nice to get some more details on what Dorhai's assassination attempt entailed. However, I agree with >>63619385, if you're that stressed out take care of yourself, writing isn't worth destroying yourself if you aren't feeling it. If nothing else you can always be expanded and revised later like with what happened to Yriel.

The one issue I would note would be the Cursus of Algernon.Last I recall that's what originally brought Biel-Tan and Tallarn together, the Crones were trying to get at the Cursus and Biel-Tan jumped in to save Tallarn's ass while bitching out humanity and the other eldar for leaving them to hang. It seemed kind of weird they would forget about it and I was not sure if that was the intention. However, if that was the intention, I really like it. It shows the vast timescales that the Imperium operates on and the fact that the details of the very event that brought Tallarn and Biel-Tan together could be forgotten in the thousands of years since it happened.

>>63608648
>Is there a cat-person megacorporation around on the Imperial economic stage?

Oh boy is there. McConnell's influence turned the vaguely shogunate-esque People of the Islands into some of the biggest predators of the business world in the Segmentum Tempestus.

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

>>63512037
The fact that i understood that reference, and from my childhood no less, sickens me

>>63625467
We're looking forward to it.

>>63628058
Cat people depending on how cat like they are might be like herding cats. In the Imperial Army they get diffused across more normal regiments.

Carlos McConnell's mega-corp would be mostly human but employ a lot of cats

>>63628081
I don't. Plz explain.

Did it get explained how exiled deldar don't wither when in realspace?

>>63632999
Same way as Craftworlders.

>>63633534
Isha's netting, then.

But did she promptly shielded them, after millennia of spiting on her image, or some arrangement was made?

>>63633959
It's more that the Path makes Eldar souls extremely bland and therefore worthless as food for Slaanesh. Soul Stones are made by the priestesses themselves rather than Isha directly but are only used in the event of death and have no effect on the Withering process.

DEldar are not trusted untill they prove themselves. Before the Dark Wedding they were considered worth the effort of trying to redeem, now they have to really work for it.

>>63627878
>Am I the only one seeing him as potentially being the insane, evil space elf version of Steve Jobs?
Sounds good to me. There's also the dynamic between the Taskmaster and Arrotyr, who have the biggest actual militaries in the Eye and hate each other. Their hierarchies are the alternative to trying to make it as Chaos Undivided and courting all four gods. In essence, Slaanesh or Khorne may try to buy the startup, and might even pay out a princedom just to move a rising Undivided star and the associated assets into their respective camp.

>>63634359
What about those gone wild, like in >>63552926?

>>63635494
Still too.bland to be noticed/worth the effort, either that or they are replenishing their souls with the suffering that they cause.

>>63635494
Well in part, most Commorrite refugees have been doing stuff only since the wedding, which actually could have also entailed at some level a contract between Vect and Slaanesh (among the other Gods) made through/brokered by Malys, essentially to formalize the cooperation between the Commorrites and the forces of Chaos by staying Slaanesh. A related idea I had was actually that the Taskmaster might keep pressing a legal claim to Commorragh, or some section of it, due to Vect's former employment by his house, blithely ignoring Vect's historical purges and status as undisputed autocrat mostly just to bother him. The recognition by the Gods that Vect officially received due to his marriage to Malys put an end to that, because Slaanesh had recognized Vect's stature as an independent Eldar lord.

>>63635712
Abandoning a Lord is abandoning his protection.

Also if those really were Slaaneshi eldar in the Dark City they wouldn't be so prudish.

>>63628058
I hadn't realised that the Cursus of Algernon had already been used before.

Maybe there was a second attempt to seize it.

>>63623541
I think that they understand that they could get burned and understand that getting burned is a possibility of fucking up but that it just doesn't apply to them because they are practically perfect in every way and will not fuck up.

And they have enough successful use to back up this belief. Right up until it fucks up.

bump

File: Spider is 2kawaii4u.jpg (11 KB, 292x200)

11 KB JPG

>>63632999
They showed up out of the Webway gates of the major Craftworlds, went "I can has soul stone in exchange for information", and if the information was good enough (or they managed to elicit enough pity) the Craftworlders let them in. Others just tried running for it and withered to death.

The exiles are a mixed bag. Some fell back on old habits and got in trouble (see >>63552926) or fell in with gangs or criminal activity, some sought revenge (Alith Anar), some became hermits (Yvraine), and some tried to distance themselves from Commorragh as far as possible in the idea that leaving Commorragh meant they needed to doing the exact opposite. I'm talking Mr. Rogers and Bob Ross acting exiles.

The exiles are divided into two camps, one that is terrified of anything hedonistic for fear it will somehow let Slaanesh back in, and those that felt they couldn't break old habits. They're still discriminated against by Craftworlders (who can pick them out easy because most can't speak High Tongue), less so with humans because while humans in this timeline can tell a Dark Eldar and a Craftworlder apart (hell, even the Orks can in canon) telling the difference between an cleaned-up exile and a heavily scarred Craftworlder is hard.

File: creating-the-silmarils-no(...).png (248 KB, 500x1046)

248 KB PNG

>>63634546
Isn't Altansar where the Avatar of Khorne is?

>>63637998
That'a why I was wondering if there was some forgotten knowledge on either end. By Biel-Tani standards the Battle of Tallarn was something that happened 200 years ago. By Tallarn standards it happened as far back as the first settlements are from the 21st century. They might remember the battle but the details of the Cursus might have beem forgotten.

>>63639099
How could that be? They are the link between god and mortal, how could anyone that divine possibly screw up that badly? /s

Pic related.

>>63641952
How many exiles were there?

>>63536878
Sorry but newcomer to this and think of all of the added lore as tldr. I, like new lurkers who spend about an hour or a day looking into this stuff, have the impression that the thinktank or brainstorming is too big for them to be a part of. The stuff I already know of in the original canon or fanon that got integrated or modified is greatly more comprehensive and relatable however, so to note for gratitude.

Since someone asked for guardsmen stories, and I'm not really a hardcore follower but have somewhat similar drives to the minds of 'Nobledark Imperium', I have an idea I brewed for a week or so involving a Kriegsman and a Navigator being stuck on a saltwater swamp planet for being entirely too selfish or prideful for themselves to stay in their respective groups. Then after just living on the planet with each other for a year or so
(The Kriegsman's practical and taciturn intelligence criticizes the Navigator's inconsistent self-supporting identity, while the Navigator consistently provokes the Kriegsman to be more accepting of himself (or herself?) despite being resented in his (or her) training for having a survival instinct he (she) got from outside military doctrine, and the Navigator left his Novis family because he thought from a younger age they were doing something bordering on heretical and necessity)
the Navigator decides to join or help the Imperium in his old role, and the Kriegsman wants to establish an outpost for more exploration and settlement on the swamp planet.

Not that there isn't much to say about the Navis Nobelite or the Imperium's guardsmen, but what if someone had that idea and tried to make them better (barring any retcons or expansions that I have not heard about) by just making these guys more accessible or more space worthy?

Does anyone want me to elaborate more or is that already satisfied in some other session I don't know about?

>>63620250
>>63620302
>>63621778
>>63627758
Briefly namefagging to say I'm glad you're all still around my dudes, glad you responded to the poll. Welcome to all the newfags who have joined our merry band of aspies. And major shoutout to the wiki guy, you're one of the majors reasons this thing is still going. (And a second shoutout to the original wiki guy, Editfag, who hasn't been part of this for like 40 threads now. Come back bby)

>>63621778
Nah, the waifu-posting is where we started and is mostly harmless. I feel more of a disconnect with how more of the fluff feels like OC or wholesale inventions rather than twists, variations, or subversions of existing content, which also makes the setting less approachable to newbies. One reason I think we had a lot of appeal originally was how things were relatively familiar and the changes were flowed logically from our founding premises, and I feel we're trending away from that. I get that any world that gets expanded on for 2 years by a group of dedicated nerds is going to have a learning curve, but as >>63645041 said, it seems to be getting steeper. I also believe in leaving more things deliberately unexplained or vague, especially regarding gods or metaphysical stuff; the over-humanization of the gods I feel detracts from their cosmic, unknowable nature, but that is a battle I obviously lost a long time ago.

However, it definitely wouldn't be fair for me to dictate how things should go particularly as I haven't really contributed much for months now, so keep doing your thing guys. I'd rather see this veer off than die out.

>>63645564
Having proposed the recent Malal stuff after some writing focused acid trips along with finals for the semester gave me some weird and fun ideas about the cosmic stuff, I agree that the recent bout of intrigue-between-gods material may be ok as an addition, but overall the method of adapting canon that we've been collectively applying has been what sustains this project. Also I reckon all this big cosmic stuff from before the War in Heaven is pieced out in the constituent information in the hands of various opposing parties, never to be put together until its all already come to pass, except possibly by some enterprising party of player characters. It's a cosmic secret, a black swan event in the making, more part of the meta-plot than the setting itself, and I'm inclined to search for similarly compelling base material for Crone and NSE victory conditions.

>>63645041
We've touched on both subjects, but not the particular point of making the guard more space-ready. One point is that space marines and Astartes aren't always the same thing, and other forces hardy (or suicidal) enough for such operations are deployed from orbit, another is that the Imperial Navy has an appropriate place beside or above the army in priority of resources, which is partly why the Guard remains hard-pressed as it is despite the Imperium's much better bureaucracy.

>>63644656
A few tens of billions.

>>63642093
The Cursus had to be unearthed, presumably the eldar couldn't or wouldn't destroy it the first time around. Instead it was burried, buried in a hole half a mile deep. The Cursus is very ancient eldar, possibly Old One, in origin. It isn't a webway gate but kind of looks like one. In ancient days some eldar would visit the gods in their divine realm, they must have needed some way of doing that. The Cursus is a doorway to the deep warp. Presumably it has safety features built in to stop it leaking warp all over the place when it's switched on, assuming it isn't always on.

Chaos wanted the device so they could strip the filters out and use it to give the planet the Eye of Terror treatment.

The big stone box it was buried in is lead and silver lined and covered in masking wards, you would have to know it was there to look for it. Tallarn was a sideshow for Crone teenagers in the War of the Beast so barely anyone knew about it. The reason for the renewed interest could have been one of the young punks remembering it after building a name for themselves and organizing an expedition or someone from then recently got resurrected for some reason.

>>63645041
I've noticed a similar problem in the lore seeming a bit too impenetrable for newcomers and worry about stagnation. I'm not really sure what to do about it though, the best I have been able to do is try and make sure everything is uploaded on the wiki in some format, but even that doesn't seem like a super effective solution. It would be nice to be able to tag everything related to a certain topic (everything about Ultramar, for example), but that doesn't seem to be fixing the problem.

As for your story idea, it sounds fine. The only things I would suggest are reading the two entries on the Navigators and Krieg to see if anything seems different from canon.

>>63645564
I miss editfag too.

>>63645700
I think it's also important to note that as readers we are viewing the gods from a near-omniscient perspective comparable to that of the Old Ones. The Old Ones saw them as their equivalents of Google, Arpanet, Wikipedia, and 4chan, but to the other races the point was moot, the Old Ones were godlike already and the Chaos Gods were gods made by gods.

Isha is by far the most human of the gods because she was intentionally designed to be by the ancient eldar. Isha also has 10k perspective as life as a mortal that the others lack. The eldar gods are more human than the Chaos Gods because they were designed with an actual personality in mind. And even they are a little weird (e.g., Cegorach'a ethical hedonism). The C'tan have been mentioned as weird because they don't "get" mortals, they don't sleep or age or reproduce and are nearly invulnerable.

The Chaos Gods aren't having many chats with their followers besides the big name followers and the Avatar of Khorne, and that's more like a sliver of Khorne's essence in its entirety (rather than a daemon) that is more approachable. But it's still not Khorne. Most contact if any is more like dreaming about Cthulhu.

>>63645041
Why would a Navigator leave their ship?

>>63635712
This is almost certainly forward planning on Slaanesh's part, which either shows more concentration than usual or she's finding some pleasure in the anticipation.

Those souls, as with all eldar souls and indeed every other soul, is rightfully hers. They will come to her in time wholly and willingly rather than piecemeal and reluctantly as they are now.

Their claiming would make her hold on real space assets even greater than they already are and the others won't even be able to compete.

Vect and his court just see it as a way of accessing fresh slave markets.

>>63625009
That's not too like Yarrick. If anything it's more like Huron Blackheart but by that logic it's also like Iron Man and a shit load of others.

>>63645895
Hmmm, I'll be more specific on what the changes are that come from my story idea and why they could be implemented in the grand scheme of the lore:

There would be a Novis Family trying to outcompete their usefulness to the Imperium by not relying on webways or other Imperium approved xeno forms of travel. For whatever political or technical problem, the problem is solved by just making more Navigators of their blood or creed, and the methods to do so use many repurposed men and women, genetic augmentation, finding the strong from the weak, or giving up authenticity and feeding the Vitae Womb to clone more navigators.

As for a reason why the Kriegsman exists and has a weird reason to doubt dying as decent service for the Imperium, it comes as a result of a Krieg integration into society experiment, as there was an attempt to recreate 'Terranis' in a more developed planet, Aurelia. The integration effort was given 8 years to take effect, but the populace saw the Kriegsmen as "dumber, harsher security officers", which didn't help with a planetary-wide crime syndicate. A few Kriegsman -Aurelian couples were been paired, but none were as fruitful or profitable as the relationship between a Watchmaster and a ruthless criminal mastermind, which they kept hidden from the public. They were later seperated on Krieg after their own progeny exposed a plot to get "luxurious" food on Krieg via discreet orbital drops, which has left a Kriegsman, intelligently not instinctfully, jaded in serving their Korp's dogma.
>>63647515
As an overly imaginative newcomer, I think the best thing I should do is just read more of the original canon lore and fixed lore to get a feel of the fixed bureaucracy. And then add any changes for that idea I have.
>>63648096
This particular navigator left their family at an age of ascension to his role, feeling that the family wasn't doing noble actions for serving noble intentions. He jumped ship during a training course to another planet.

>>63645564
Man, I'm only trying to be self aware, not really aware of the lore situation, as most people like myself would rather read than add to this stuff.

But your statement does demand more dedication on my part that I can probably supply in time, even if I orginally selfishly wanted to find a place for my idea to be developed and written for an informed and experienced audience, which is similar to you guys.
I probably might not add more things with college getting busier for me, but as this is a hobby I want to cultivate, I'll put in my educated opinion on topics needing review or discussion, or add more to the ideas that need more fleshing out when I can. Or those willing can suggest more mechanics or aspects I can include in what I have planned.

>>63646790
>>63646790
Their cultural influence would outpace their numbers, before then they came in at one a century. It also reaffirms the notion that the ones remaining are irredeemable.

>>63650407
I’m assuming you’re the guy proposing the story about the navigator and guardsman? If so, then my criticism wasn’t really directed at you; the small scale, personal level stories about individuals are self contained enough to not really add complexity for newbies and are usually enjoyable as they add a look at the little people away from the galaxy changing events.

My point is more aimed at the discussions of the recent threads. Not to pick on anything in particular, but an example of this is the discussion of the Tarellians and Ulumeathic League. We started with a fairly simple, approachable premise, which was Lizardmen in space, but then we got into weird details about client races and their history and whatnot. While that is interesting to someone already involved in the project, it’s fairly impenetrable to a newcomer, and if we do stuff like across multiple subjects then the cumulative effect is going to be confusing for people who are not already familiar.

>>63650103
I’d point you to the forces of the Imperium section on the 1d4chan page, and the sections on navigators, Krieg, possibly Terranis, and maybe the attack moon lecture for a sample of the AU’s take on Imperial naval strategy.

>>63652497
With the Tarellians, I’ve been trying to keep it close to the Lizardmen from Fantasy but changed where needed to account for the fact that the Tarellians aren’t biological robots of the Old Ones and their self-sufficiency theme, which I think is a really cool touch like the backstabbiness of the Skaven or the “follow the Great Plan at all costs” mentality of the Fantasy Lizardmen. At least with the Tarellians we have a bit of a framework to work off of that is at least somewhat familiar (though you’d be surprised how many 40k fans don’t keep up with Fantasy).

I do have to agree with the Ulumeathic League. I love the concept, especially adapting the Lizardmen’s caste system into an imposed feudal system kind of similar to the Covenant or feudal Europe or Japan, which was a neat take on “a society of single-minded warriors” given that they weren’t biological creations of the Old Ones. However, it seemed kind of spiral off a bit. I think the best way to handle it would be to group all the related material together on the wiki so it’s at least one place and doesn’t seem overwhelming to newcomers.

Of course, most Xenos species in canon barely have any lore on them at all. It may be surprising, but when we first started the canon Craftworlders had barely any lore and the number of named characters not from Dawn of War could be counted on two hands. That has changed a bit but BL authors have outright said GW doesn’t like xenos-focused books because they don’t sell.

I kind of wonder if one reason we’re branching out is because are running out of things to flesh out. The Primarchs with the exception of Dorn are mostly done, and while most of the general stuff doesn’t have official write-ups (summary on the main page really needs to be finished) the general gist is out there.

>>63652497
>>63652609
Oh. Cool then, I'll assume my work doesn't need much intervention from you guys. I'll be writing and researching then.
>>63653265
hmm...not really my department because I don't know what to apply here other than character or culture defnitions of "good work". Gonna lurk now unless asked for something.

Does anyone know what thread to go back to for the discussion of the Blood Pact's cycles of rise and fall?

bump

File: Up high Down low Too slow(...).png (651 KB, 582x865)

651 KB PNG

>>63649984
Iron Man hand complete with repulsor blaster is exactly what I was thinking. Maybe had it attached because the limb was burned too badly to regenerate. The Tarellians are deceptively primitive, they may have fallen from their heights but that “only” regressed them to an interstellar power. Whereas Exodites are Native American dinosaur-riding Space Amish and Kroot deliberately shun advanced technology Tarellians are more like innawoods survivalist nutters, they use as much advanced technology as they want and only appear primitive due to their predatory nature and survivalist boner. The Tarellians were contemporaries of Dark Age humanity, with all that implies, even if they never got to “psychic computer god” level. They just got screwed over harder by history because fewer of their worlds survived the Age of Strife and many of them died out because they prefer harsher climates than humanity.

I was thinking as a further differentiation from Yarrick that Kroq-Gar isn’t is fixated on the Arch-Mangler of Bork. Pissed that he lost it, yes, but it’s not a “Moby Dick” moment.

>>63654745
I don’t remember which threads exactly. I know that the initial encounter with Doombreed should be mentioned on the Notes page. And there was the brief mention that Doombreed has been preferring to set up his empire just west of the Eye, an area where the Imperium cannot reliably send armies without exposing their flank and supply lines to the Crone Eldar.

>>63649515
Not sure if Vect would outright make a deal with Chaos. Vect’s big thing is refusing to bow to any authority, whether it be noble, king, or god. Malys has been trying to convert him for years with little success. He be willing to make alliances, but not swear any oaths.

That said, the Taskmaster trying to assert claim to Commorragh over the years only to eventually be told to piss off by Malys sounds hilarious and a great example of the changing galactic politics.

>>63650103
Why would he jump to a plant and not another ship?

>>63657497
>Vect’s big thing is refusing to bow to any authority, whether it be noble, king, or god.

He's also smart enough to know that any deal entered into with Slaanesh is going to eventually result in enslavement one way or another.

>>63660114
It probably also helps that he remember The Fall and saw the cults of pleasure bloom from not entirely unreasonable seeds first hand.

>>63619385
Still here. A attempt was made.

>>63653265
They aren't single-minded warriors, they just have a very dominance centred world view. You are master or servant. Lord or vassal. The dominated or the dominator. War is simply how this is expressed because violence is a language everyone understands even if not everyone speaks it. Violence is the authority from which all other authority is derived.

Now what's left of them are part of the Imperium they serve because they are not dominant anymore, they are happy with this because society is as it should be.

They were not cruel masters, they judge a master on how they treat their servants. Noblesse oblige is how they are judged as people, one master to another, and is the other half of the principles that compose their judiciary system. The Imperium is not a cruel master, it is a hard master sometimes but as evidenced by recent events it's a hard galaxy and they showed the remnants of The League kindness when they had no reason to do so.

>>63606361
Moar big tiddy Cadian plz.

>>63653265
I do get where you are coming from regarding the Ulmeathic League. As someone who was a big contributor to that, I think the idea was not so much to make things overly-complex as it was to flesh out something that had almost no substance in canon.
The core idea of the Ulmeathic is still there, but perhaps it would help to include a division between the core, “here’s the important bits for newcomers” and the other, more expansive stuff. Sort of like how the core idea of the Mechanicum is that they’re still jerks, but doing things for a reason, with all the stuff about internal politicking over dogma and how they deal with xeno-tech and their relationship with the Ad-Bio being supplemental material found when you dig deeper.

And yes, I do think the big factor in this shift towards less strictly-canon stuff is a result of most of the big, major parts of canon already being adapted in.

>>63662542
I think part of this may come down to finally finalizing the finalized bits of the drafts page that havent changed in over a year, moving them to the cover page, etc. Essentially, doing the boring organization of our material into an approachable format that we've been putting of from the beginning.

>>63662754
At least it's not math. Remember when we calculated that Commorragh could hold more people than exist in the Imperium if the Ilmaea were G-class stars (and remember, there's more than the two major ones in canon)? Or thst one calculation of just how many worlds there should be in an Imperium that spans a galaxy?

>>63664060
Accounted for by most of Commorragh being derelict and uninhabitable and nobody wants to put effort into fixing it.

Imperium is very diffuse. Each world is surrounded by lots of uninhabited nothing or nothing of value.

>>63664103
To add to that, an agriworld is a small farming hamlet to the scale of the Imperium, the grand vista >>63657021 shows is a quaint and rustic farm or orchard by Imperial reckoning.

>>63664385
That's more to do with the siege mentality of the Imperium. Everything is built around a fortified bunker hub to retreat back to when the siren screams start, hold out until help arrives or at the very least make them work for it.

>>63661497
The Ulumeathic themselves aren't an issue of anyone at the moment, barely any survived. Just a few old people to pass on the stories to unhatched eggs. Their legacy is bigger than they are now to their once vassalas

>>63666928
The very old and the very young- their children got evacuated too, though that comes with it’s own set of problems, as those kids are now coming of age and thus many positions of authority are getting filled by hormonal headstrong teenagers raised on tales of how wonderful the Ulmeathic League was and how they all died glorious deaths.

>>63664936
I was just meaning the scale

>>63670054
We’ve mentioned that the Crow has the support of the Crone schools of sorcery on the border of the webway and the eye, and that these schools produce the sorcerers and seers that no Crone court can go without.

>>63670333
I’m drunk and at a holiday party, I meant this to be a hook for ideas about tzeentchian Crones.

Also, any named Orks from canon that we could turn into Ork lords?

bumpo

I know something this broad in historical reference almost becomes political, but here's my read of the AU
>imperium is the idealized empire, but its faults are the faults that even the best version of an empire will necessarily have
>NSE is the malicious expression of civility, where refinement becomes so ossified it harms civilization
>Crones are decadence, not as a slippery slope but abject reality, the lead-up to the punchline "the aristocrats"
>Orks are barbarity in the style of steppe nomads, so-called-savagery, and unrefined civilization that can be mistaken for chaos at the expense of the presumptuous
>Tyranids are true barbarism, nature red in tooth and claw, and intelligence giving up and conceding to the law of the jungle
>

>>63671959
That...pretty much hits the nail on the head.

>>63672521
last > was meant to say Old Ones are Rome/Atlantis equivalent

>>63671959
Dark Eldar are absolute hands off government.

>>63670619
Zogwort.

Would he be pro or anti-chaos?

>>63673903
I'd have him be Chaos Ork, just for the wizardness of it.

Does the Imperium have a Christmas or Christmas like celebration?

>>63673386
... I give you Rapture.

>>63675460
Hell yes. In Vanilla they had the Feast of Sanguinius and there's no reason not to take that wholesale for this AU as Sangy still did his thing, with the same results for the same reason. It also helps that Sangy was interested in most if not all major religions of Old Earth even if he wouldn't commit to one allowing a lot of faiths to equally claim him as kind of one of theirs.

Add to this the calendars of practically every faith having something happening at the arse end of the year or there abouts, excluding faiths native to worlds without distinct seasons.

Also Cypher Claws, he rewards the virtuous and visits swift retribution to the sinful. He knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're alert. He dresses in robes red with blood adorned with the bones of the slain. On one night a year his slaying is known and his booming laughter heard. It's all just a children's story of course. But there are 10,000 years of Inquisition reports saying different

>>63674466
Didn't Fulgrimfag give up on ever finishing the Wyrd War, at least within the next six months? We should flesh out the Wyrd War/Iron Cage, its one of the last really major early Imperial history events we've named but not fleshed out.

>>63667273
They are big into the Imperial Army, the Guard will knock some sense into them. If they can train Catachan Nova-Ogryn they can train big lizards.

>>63678731
Since the Imperial Army's motto might as well be "we may spend lives, but will not waste them" they'll do well preventing any foolish suicidal antics

>>63679039
The Ulmeathic respect strength above all. Although they are having to adapt after recent events their beliefs have evolved but have not been abandoned. For them the Imperial Army is proof of their amended beliefs "none of us are as strong as all of us".

what if

dark eldar asmr

>>63682268
Merry Xmas, btw.

>>63677267
I'm going to do some writefaggatory on this. going to be tomorrow now. So fucking tired.

Quick and possibly related question; how common are mixed regiments of different worlds?

>>63682846
somewhat common on large battlefronts/campaigns, less so on small ones.

>>63682846
I would think it’s a question of the age of that particular regiment.
Guard Regiments go through a sort of life-cycle. Each starts out relatively “pure-blooded,” with everyone from the same planet or region of space. After their first few deployments, the ones that remain relatively intact tend to replace casualties from survivors of less-fortunate regiments; at this point the regiment “culture” remains largely the same, with some deviation in the more-specialized arms, since someone trained to operate Leman Russes or Heavy-weapon teams are harder to replace than the average grunt, and thus more likely to get “scavenged” into the regiment.
Finally, there comes a time where the Regiment’s luck runs out, and their casualties are high enough that either the survivors are folded into another regiment, or their replacements outnumber the original members. At this point, the company culture becomes a blend between the two dominant groups, with a few odd quirks from the various other groups they’ve absorbed.

Of course, this process can be halted if a deployment ends up securing a planet that the regiment will get settling rights to, and some regiments have their culture so widespread that getting replacements with the same culture isn’t as great of a logistical nightmare (*cough*Cadia*cough*).

>>63683822
So, basically as canon.

>>63685073
Sure, with the minor caveat that not every regiment is strictly human- the most common example being Beastmen, but there’s plenty of Xenos species who pay the Imperial tithe. They’re not the majority, but it’s still relatively common for older/more experienced regiments to pick up a few non-human members along the way.
Of course, this also depends on the region of the galaxy a regiment is active in- Ultramar and the surrounding part of the galaxy have so many Xenos -groups in play that it’s almost a given that veteran regiments will have Tarrellian scouts, or an Ulmeathic shield-line, or Kroot marksmen, while regiments in the Segmentum Solar are almost-exclusively human, with eldar-auxiliaries for the most successful or strategically important regiments.

>>63685256
There's also the fact that regiments have numbers in the range of a notable fraction of settled planet's population

>>63683822
>>63685256
Mixed species regiments are pretty rare. Usually they exist in the form of auxiliaries, and in those cases you usually have a member of their own species commanding them. But that’s more because humans are the most numerous sapient species in the Imperium than anything else. Humans like to take orders from humans and eldar like take orders from eldar. Adding tau into the mix didn’t work out very well. You get the same effect with human cultures that you can’t slot into nice little peg holes (e.g., Catachans).

What is more common are situations where two or three regiments of different species work together on the same objective, especially sense in this timeline different military forces at least try to work together and officership isn’t granted on pre-Napoleonic standards of inherited nobility. Military ranks bestowed by nobility can happen on a world by world basis, but it isn’t an Imperium wide rule. Commissars, though, are trained by the central Imperium and act as a standardizing agent similar to Napoleonic officer schools.

>>63673004
I would agree that the Old Ones are in terms of history the “fallen civilization” Rome/Atlantis of the setting, the fluff we have for them takes inspiration from many progenitor races including the Precursors and Forerunners, Vorlons, Protheans, Orokin, and others. However, if there is any cautionary tale to attribute to them it is the danger of completely throwing out emotion, their amorality causing some the problems in the War in Heaven.

Ironically, now Szarekh is in the position of justify his actions by invoking the “needs of the many” to the younger races. He has become what he hated.

>>63676178
>Rap(e)ture
FTFY

>>63673386
It could almost be argued the Dark Eldar are what happens in a society in which their claim to be no rules: law ends up being determined by who has the biggest stick. Of course, Chaos in all its flavors and the Orks are that way too, the Dark Eldar are the only ones trying to make a philosophical point about it.

>>63671959
>Orks
Adding to this, the White Scars, Saim-Hann, Fenris, etc. are kind of the rebuttal to the Orks, the idea that living outside of stereotypically defined civilization equates with savagery and vice versa. As mentioned before, they may not be highly “refined” societies by the standards of others but they are still societies with rules and customs and weregilds and respect for elders and don’t just boil down to “kill the person next to you and take his stuff because you’re bigger”.

>>63677267
The Sanginuius entry says Sanguinala still exists.

>>63688485
To be fair, you are correct about how the usual initial situation is multiple regiments of different “factions” working together. However, as no campaign is bloodless and some regiments are going to get hit harder than others, there’s been plenty of campaigns bloody enough that the survivors merged into a single regiment “temporarily” until proper reinforcements could arrive, only for the regiment to need to redeploy before said replacements could be arranged.
Granted, this is also a divide based on how a regiment is used; the majority of imperial regiments are going to be fighting defensive holding actions which leave little to no room for such diversification, whereas regiments that are consistently the Imperium’s spear are more likely to pick up more exotic auxiliaries.
And they are auxiliaries; the main bread-and-butter of any regiment is going to be the standard human grunts and their lad guns and Leman Russes. Put in tabletop terms, you can buy in some exotic Ally units, but not enough to change your core IG strategy. In other words, it leaves room for “your dudes.”

Merry Christmas.

>>63688650
It depends where you are. Taken as a whole the IG is mostly human but not in the Tau Empire for example.

>>63686239
Not individual regiments. Individual regiments operate in the low thousands.

Also it's not unreasonable to assume that the IA likes to station regiments from different worlds in campaigns. It stops any one recruitment world having a catastrophe if things go horribly wrong. If they get stranded or long term garrison duty it adds genetic diversity and therefore diseases are slightly less devastating. If a recruitment world goes traitor the other regiments can detain or "remove" them as needed.

There are going to be a lot of people fighting alongside a lot of distant foreigners, bodging together regiments from different worlds might be more common in this AU. Commissars have the unenviable job of making it work.

>>63688485
Szarekh is a narcissist and although clever not as clever as he thinks.

>>63688643
>>63676178
'a folklorique network of old alleys and picturesque streets, wherre exitement and romans lurke arounde everry corner and much may be heard the traditional street cries of old time also the laughing visages of the denuizens as they goe about their business private'. - Commorragh board of tourism.

>>63693025
All may visit, some welcome

>>63628058
>>63613519
Any suggestions on what I could add to the interim between Tallarn and it's amended Cursus of Algernon event and the "present"?

How should she meet Cain and Lukas, keep in mind that these should be separate events.

Cain I can imagine her meeting in a military campaign on a world she is currently living on. He would dismiss her as some pretty but empty headed joygirl for the nobility right up until she starts racking up her own a body count. Cain wouldn't have encountered Cadians by that point in his life.

Lukas could be encountered as she is currently "between children" for medical reasons. Due to a political shitstorm on her last home she and the three children (aged nearly 2, 4 and 6) she had there relocate to Fenris because there happened to be a ship heading there. Settles there for a few years, has at least one child with Lukas the Trickster then moves on again.

File: tyBd1ydwf9lzuVVtJk9uuOci_(...).jpg (24 KB, 512x384)

24 KB JPG

>>63694967
Cain we said wasn't there entirely willingly. It was Jubblowski who sought him out and initiated things because he was such a famed "Hero of the Imperium" and he was a bit nervous about the whole thing.

Another thing that I don't know if it has been addressed or not is the fact that the Imperium has been trying to keep her as pregnant as much as possible because each means more Starchild Prophecies. Otherwise the Imperium has to get them from very scattershot and dubious sources.

File: AdBio.jpg (739 KB, 5417x2600)

739 KB JPG

>>63696074
Senior-Maga Sérka Ađk Wulchtáthas determines how often she may have a child. Her mission is the continued health and well being of Jubblowski. It's possible that she could have provided the Imperium with more prophesies but that would have risked The Revered Mother's health.

The Church of the Helix Star if they have given Jubblowski such a title may regard her as "one of their own", an oracle of divinity made flesh. They will not risk harm to her. In theory the Inquisition could overpower the Senior-Maga and the Inquisition is not above doing distasteful things for the safety of the Imperium. The problem is that although they could stand victorious against the Church of the Helix Star, even defeat and subjugate the entire AdBio, the cost would be high. Also the individual responsible for giving any orders to this effect would not be permitted to survive, neither would their associates and their family to the distance of second cousins and known descendants up to several generations would be slaughtered as a matter of course. The Helix Star works to safeguard the populations of the Imperium from the corruption and failings of the flesh. Sometimes an infected limb must be cut away.

But they are getting their prophesies nine moths out of every two years and that is, all have agreed, enough.

>>63696656
>The Church of the Helix Star
Has this been mentioned before?

>>63702414
No. I just needed a name for an AdBio order.

>>63699753
The Emperor was raised in Finland. Malcador was a Finno-Slav. By 999M41 the Emperor is one of only a small handful who remember that place. He swears in some sort of Finnish language when angry.

How many worlds are abhumans native to?

>>63673004
How much should the Imperium know about the Old Ones? How much do the Eldar remember?

Their gods remember them but were a lot younger than them, they also didn't know everything that happening. Also they might not want to talk about it, all sides did things that they weren't proud of later.

>>63706964
Not as much as you'd think. Both groups saw them in the same manner as many post-Rome societies saw Rome, that is, they were their predecessors from whom they drew legitimacy, shared all the same values, and who could do nothing wrong. Needless to say, this is...incorrect.

They don't know the details of the War in Heaven before the eldar's involvement beyond "it's all the Necrons fault". They don't know the details of most with the Old Ones did. They don't even know that Be'lakor is an Old One. He harassed the eldar during their early days and claimed to be one but no one believed him.

They might not even know of their connection to the Chaos Gods, or if they do it's something that's not very well known. They would have had to get it from the Cabal or something.

>>63705045
When did the image come out? It could have inspired or been inspired by the Nobledark setting, or maybe some dude on a completely unrelated bender decided to make De Embra :DDD on a whim or something.

>>63705847
IIRC only Ornworld and Carlos McConnell have been mentioned, though it's not impossible at all that we've mentioned the Beastmen and/or Ogryn homeworlds and my leaky bullet-ridden sieve of a mind simply forgot.

>>63707510
>>63706964
Also remember that the Eldar had millions of years to rewrite and misremember their history from when the War in Heaven ended to when humans finally figured out how this whole 'fire' business worked. The fact that the Necrons and general broad strokes details are remembered should be miracles in their own right.

That said, I think only the Eldar, and even then the higher-echelon, isolationist Eldar, should have any notion of being 'the Old Ones' heirs. Otherwise, the rest of the Imperium would be too far removed from the Old Ones' reign to consider them overmuch. For them, their whole Rome archetype would actually be the pre-decadent wasteland Eldar Empire.

>>63708288
Malcador was a citizen of Clan Terrawatt. The territories of Clan Terrawatt are on the map where Finland is today.

How much do the AdBio and the AdMech hate each other?

>>63708288
>That said, I think only the Eldar, and even then the higher-echelon, isolationist Eldar, should have any notion of being 'the Old Ones' heirs. Otherwise, the rest of the Imperium would be too far removed from the Old Ones' reign to consider them overmuch. For them, their whole Rome archetype would actually be the pre-decadent wasteland Eldar Empire.
Agreed on this point. The Old Ones are the Atlantis to the pre-decadence Empire's rome and the DAoT's carolingian empire.

>>63664385
The Hives recycle everything if they can but it's not a perfect process, Agri-Worlds and the like are there to make up the difference.

>>63710040
Imagine the Catholic Church never actually superceeded the emperor in influence in the western Roman Empire, and at the same time as granting them official recognition by the state the empire had given a similarly official blanket recognition of all pagan sects in Western Europe, then enforced this parity on the church.

File: 1545755027362.jpg (274 KB, 800x600)

274 KB JPG

bump

>>63712579
I wouldn't quite put it at the extent of 'pagan sects', but maybe the equivalent of an emperor making both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches play nice, perhaps?

>>63715298
I’d say it’s more like forcing the Vatican to cooperate with a bunch of Buddhists or Confucians, on the grounds that they cover separate fields

File: 1462150674970.jpg (548 KB, 600x1039)

548 KB JPG

The Story of Bronislaw Czevak
>Ep. 1 - fixed version
https://pastebin.com/U3Qy0DB1
>Ep. 2
https://pastebin.com/fP2pEjhS

Forgive me for taking so long but I dun goofed with my schedule.

Part one has been fixed of some minor issues, part two is unfinished. I got carried away doing it and will need some criticism, if it doesn't matches the style then it will be redone. This preview can be used or not, it will depend of your feedback.

>>63708288
>>63710687
I think they know a little bit more than that. The fact that the Old Ones supposedly gave them the run of the galaxy is how the Old Empire justified its behavior. The Crone in “the Rant” makes mention of the Old Ones as though they are common cultural knowledge. Of course, after 65 million years the eldar’s knowledge of the Old Ones is about as comprehensive as Plato’s description of Atlantis, boiling down to “they were psychic frog bros who did something to help us rise and then told us the galaxy was ours before they died”. But as of the current era that’s about as applicable as King Arthur being given a mandate over Britain because someone chucked a sword at him.

Of course they’d remember that part. The legend in that format puts the eldar on a pedestal. They’d remember anything that fluffs up their ego. And we’ve pointed out out-of-universe just how many holes there are in that train of logic. Although there are reasonable ways for the eldar to come to that conclusion, it’s unlikely it is true at face value, and the eldar have been known to doctor their history to make things seem more “dramatic”.

I would probably say it’s a mix of idealized predecessors. Many of the eldar subgroups (Biel-Tan, Alaitoc, Commorragh) say they represent the Eldar Empire as it should be or represent a return to the days before it was shit (which is untrue, even Alaitoc at its best is a cold, repressed society compared to the artistic, emotional Old Empire before decadence and hedonism set in). Knowledge of the Old Ones is there, but they focus on the Old Empire because it’s more attainable, and the idea that someone even could become like the Old Ones is hard to fathom. Shaa-Dome is the only ones really thinking about ascension, and they do so for different reasons than “the Old Ones did it”. Most have been prioritizing survival over whatever the Old Ones said.

>>63715850
Ironically, this is kind of what happened in ancient China between the Chinese emperor and Buddhists, Taoists, Confucians, and Legalists. It didn't end well, typically with one group convincing the Emperor to order a purge of the others. Though in this case society is lucky that you have an immortal Emperor who is unlikely to change his mind (laughingErebus.warpvision) and society falls apart if either group fails to do their job (so you can't just get rid of them).

>>63708288
Both Beastmen and Ogryn have more than one homeworld. “Ogryn” actually refer to multiple subspecies of abhuman on different worlds. There are also numerous strains of Beastmen present on worlds that have been separated since the Age of Strife. They vary quite a bit, some are obligate carnivores, some aren’t, etc. It’s one of the reasons why the Imperium is pretty certain they are artificial in some way, along with their very sloppy genetic code. The Imperium assumed they are weirdly spliced humans, but we’ve mentioned there is just as much evidence they could be animals uplifted with human DNA to be pets or servants, or that even both could be true depending on the population. The GaBHD, while not as bad as the Old Eldar Empire, could get pretty weird. Primeval Beastmen aren’t children of Chaos but they are some of its “favorite adoptees” due to how malleable their genetics are. IIRC the Tzaangor fluff we have mentions the Crone Eldar breeding them like pets.

>>63710040
>AdMech: Those tree-fucking hippies are going around grafting extra flesh on their bodies and pretending to be scientists, and in doing so they're probably going to kill us all due to their lack of discipline.
>AdBio: Those heartless mechanical monsters have killed all creativity and everything human in science with their obsessive, opressive dogma and cyberization fetish.

"Science" being used loosely here because neither are using the scientific method in the modern sense of the term.

bump

>>63717338
It's good but his age is still off.

>>63719295
The Croneworlders have standing populations of every people that they keep as slaves, pets, food, entertainment or combinations of.

Is the Tau caste system still as restrictive or are there more exceptions?

>>63719295
We need more insults between factions.

Also I swear I am going to do a Father Christmas writefagging at some point soon, but need time.

>>63724462
They still have it but there are exceptions made on occasion, especially on the borders.

>>63723235
They use a lot of Qunari-esque loopholes to get things done while adhering to the letter of the caste system. Earth Caste can be allowed to pilot battlesuits on occassion because they're clearly "testing" them, etc. It's not as bad as Canon where Farsight was beaten for trying to repair his battle suit and a water caste ambassador was worried she'd be executed by the Ethereals for owning a sidearm for self defense.

This is part of the reason Farsight broke off. The Ethereals were concerned about cultural stagnation and inefficiency and pushed for closer relationships with (but not joining) the Imperium to shake things up and make the Tau'va more adaptable and resilient. Farsight saw it as caving in to the Imperium and being corrupted by outside culture. Ironically both groups have relaxed the caste system slightly from when the rest of the Imperium first met them, the Farsight Enclaves do it because they don't have enough warm bodies to solve their problems, but they are even more convoluted about it.

>>63717338
In the first one the age is too young by a decade consistently.

>>63726453
Also the Farsight enclaves have the cultural feature/bug of being an arguable military junta/fiefdom of a warlord, but that warlord/general is himself deeply pious and dedicates his (seemingly endless) life and his state to the veneration and service of the increasingly sheltered and esoteric philosophical/monastic sect that had formed from the Ethereals that flocked to and legitimized his cause. In a strange way, Farsight's situation resembles the pre-Tau'va era, in others he's a miniature inversion of the distant golden Emperor he so disdains.

>>63726753
The only one who can tell him he's wrong with his overly romanticised view of the past won't admit he's possibly immortal.

>>63728719
Old Va isn’t the only scholar of the Greater Good with a fairly clear picture of its changing contours, Trayzn made a point to study their history as it unfolded, and the sustained interest of Ultramar’s scholars have produced libraries of analysis, explication, and even speculative fiction. Farsight is not any more inclined to value these sources.

>>63729492
Old Man Va is though the only person who has had continuity of vision from the inside. Trayzn might have been taking notes but he and other scholars haven't lived it.

Of course Va might get real fucking quite when the subject of history comes up to not draw attention.

>>63729674
Va would also be the only person to remember the days before the tau and first contact with the kroot, vespid, and poctroon firsthand (with the only possible exception being if that AdBio druid is still around, which is unlikely). The Tau Cluster was pretty isolated until the warp storms blow away.

One thing that probably needs to be considered is that Va isn’t likely to have modern human views on the caste system. Va may have grown up in a pre-caste system society, but at the same time he had no guideline outside of prior tau history as to what constituted a good system of government. He might’ve thought the caste system was a good idea because it kept the different cultures from fighting, even if it got a bit out of hand. Or we go with the old suggestion that Va disappeared for a few generations to try to let the tau figure things out on their own. There was a really good piece of writing that was the second thing to expand upon Va’s immortality which unfortunately has not gone the wiki because we weren’t sure if that was “too much Tau kicking”. It was a monologue from Va explaining what he has seen in his life and being kind of envious of Oscar that his people haven’t fallen down like his have.

Of course, it could be that this is Va’s own internal perspective. He has a bit of envy thinking everything has gone right for humanity only because he lived through most of the tragedies that affect the tau. He doesn’t realize that the Imperium is scrounging in the ashes of empires infinitely their greater, and for everything that’s happened to the tau they had the advantage in that they still remember how to make every piece of their technology. Even advanced AI, even though they’ve temporarily shelved making it until they figure out what went wrong the first time they still know how to make.

space pirates

>>63730096
>It was a monologue from Va explaining what he has seen in his life and being kind of envious of Oscar that his people haven’t fallen down like his have.
I vaguely remember it, and for my part liked it. And if it’s too down on the tau, we can just give it the caveat that Va was having a bad day. I can’t remember if this was part of the original, but I picture Va staying at least a system away from the Travling Court to scrutiny, but still conducting a mental conversation with Oscar as the latter skims his surface level thoughts. Presumably this would be after the second Damocles Gulf War, with Oscar perfectly happy to keep Va’s secret. I’m also imagining Oscar’s reply, trying to to sound patronizing or canned, hoping not to fall into the increasingly tedious pattern of Imperial lecturing Tau on the scale of the galaxy.

>>63721970
>>63726474
It will be rectified.

Might do a shortie after finishing part two, and something I need to know: what's up with the Black Council in this AU?

>>63732930
I'm not familiar
>>63731798
I am partial to various pirate proxy wars

>>63732930
Nearest I can find to a "Black Council" is the Word Bearers Dark Council who in Vanilla run the Word Bearers in Logar's absence.

There wouldn't be one in this AU as the Word Bearers became chapters with the rest of the Legions.

>>63737214
The nearest equivalent to it would probably be the Cardinal Council of the Katholians.

>>63735843
what if

there was a space manaan

>>63732159
Whether or not Va's experiences add up to much on the scale of others is irrelevant. Experience is subjective.

>>63735843
>>63737214
In old lore, the Black Council was the heading body of the Black Library and somewhat a common governance for all Craftworlds. Eldrad was a prominent member.

Dunno if it's still canon.

>>63741332
It seems not, at least there's been no mention of it in the Nobledark. Possibly because a critical number of them joined the Imperium before it would have happened. They listen to Eldrad because he generally knows the best thing to do even if his suggestions are often seemingly weird and also because they'll end up doing what he's forseen anyway so it's pointless to argue after.a point.

The inner workings of the Black Library are unknown to all bar a very few and they aren't speaking.

>>63739404
This. If anything Oscar would see him as almost kin.

>>63729674
>>63730096
>>63732159
>>63739404
Honestly, if Aun'Va came right out and said "Yo I've been around since we discovered bronze, whatup yo?", would people even believe him? I suppose if some Inquisitor Lord were able to pick the guy up and take him to Oscar there might be some moment of kinship, like in the Spider-verse movie*, but that would rely on said Lord somehow taking the insane-sounding rantings of an admittedly old Tau seriously. Then again, considering all the crazy shit an Inquisitor Lord has seen, they might be the only people to take such a thing seriously, in which case the problem of getting it to their ears still remains.

*If you don't know what I'm talking about, watch it. It's a damned good movie.

>>63744753
It would require them taking a trip to Molech and digging through the archives to find the folder titled "First Contact: Tau". The reason nobody has joined the dots yet is because that file is thousands of years old and they have had no reason to look over it in any great detail.

File: 5ca.jpg (53 KB, 476x960)

53 KB JPG

>>63696074
It makes you wonder how much autonomy the Revered Mother has. She has made no oath beyond her duty to the Imperium and owes the Church of the Helix Star nothing, they need her. As does the Inquisition. The Commissariat is probably different in her mind as it's still proper soldiering to her and therefore superior to all other institution by virtue of being the backbone of the Imperium to which all the others are just add-ons.

Possibly if she chooses her own partners they get annoyed but not to the extent that they would try and stop her as then she might go to a different order. Also using mean words at her generally results in a mild kicking by exodites who consider her a minor pilgrimage destination.

Next thread theme?

File: 1545718099628.jpg (63 KB, 450x507)

63 KB JPG

>>63750510
Christmas Edition

New Thread
>>63751904
>>63751904