[1/6(?)]
You can’t risk standing by and letting this situation continue to spiral out of control. You had what you needed in place now, but if things degraded further you’d be in trouble. You had limited skitarii reserves planetside, and your MTI wasn’t going to last much longer before it would need to decommission itself. You didn’t want to say that the PDF were incompetent, per se, but they’d shown time and time again that they weren’t able to handle a situation like this alone. With all that in mind, you were best positioned at present to act in the same capacity as you had during the Delta campaign - surgical strike.

“We will provide assistance.” The alpha states. Ideally, they would’ve worded it as a request to save Selene from further loss of face, but you can’t expect too much tact from a tinman. “Reserve skitarii will secure astropathic relays. Our main force will infiltrate the palace.”

Selene stops, mirth draining out of her face. She begins to speak, but bites the words off before they form, only to start again. “That is acceptable. Do not kill Madam Durnovo. Take out the Inquisitor if you find them, and arrest Durnovo if you find her, but she is ours to handle. You may help, but don’t forget that this is an internal matter. You’ve stretched my welcome enough, and though I thank you for your aid, you’d do well to remember that this is my planet.”

Somehow, despite all that’s happened, she still manages to cut an imposing figure, although the implicit threat lacks teeth. Were it not for you, would she not be standing in a crater right now? Apparently, nothing more needs to be said. Selene turns on her heel, and marches back out of the ship, trailing her guards and leaving the alpha behind, and leaving you to organise the specifics of your operation.

You already had skitarii converge on their nearest astropath relays. You’d institute dead silence by force, if necessary. The one little wrinkle in the plan was that Durnovo's palace was fortified and well defended, and you had no skitarii on the right side of those walls to go hunting for a relay, and they almost certainly had their own relay. You’d have to hope that your infiltration team could find it, or that the PDF secure it during their own operation.

You allow your consciousness to slip back out from the alpha’s senses, lifting your focus to your cruisers in orbit, already having moved into position to enforce the blockade. Orbital bombardment was off the table, but it still provided the ultimate high ground from which to observe troop movements. For the PDF, though, this would still be messy. It could take hours to mobilise all the PDF in the region, and though Durnovo’s traitors were numerically inferior, they were backed by light Inquisitorial support, and fighting the trickle of PDF that were racing in to contain the traitors, and delay for long enough to call in reinforcements.

>>5388777
>>5388778
E

>>5388778
[2/6(?)]
It wasn’t enough. The traitors are moving faster and with greater ferocity, smashing through the ad hoc defences. By the time the PDF would be in place, the traitors would’ve secured the entire city, devolving the situation to a lengthy urban siege. One that you couldn’t afford. Reserve skitarii begin reporting skirmishes with the traitors, as they attempt to secure the relays in the city. They’re able to hold them off much more effectively than the PDF could, but they still risk being encircled and destroyed. Best to end this quickly.

You prepare the skitarii from the raid, about 200 souls total, and allocate some of the transport shuttles to their mission, sending them to the dockyards to pick them up. This was not an ideal situation, but the MTI should be able to last long enough to jam any automated AAA for long enough for your very civilian grade shuttles to slip past their defences and disgorge their cargo. Durnovo’s palace is big, but is not, mercifully, the monstrosity that the Gildenmar’s is. Publicly available maps of the palace that your techpriests have recovered give a decent amount of information to work from, but it’s what they don’t say that’s more interesting.

Black spots on the maps, areas that don’t match the spaceship's eye’s view that you now have, and architecture that seems more defensive that the rest of the building’s ostentatiousness normally allows. Potential panic rooms, fortified command bunkers, or anywhere else a noble in a hurry could hide. They couldn’t have had too much more warning than you had - an hour at most. If they were on the planet, they were likely in the palace, and if they were in the palace… they were likely in one of those spots.

You draft a plan, keeping the teams as they were for the ship raid. You were striking something a lot bigger now, without the expectation of constant MTI overwatch, and so splitting up the force you had was even more dangerous than it normally would be. You pick a landing spot near the most, and the juiciest anomalies, and though you’ll allow your squads to break off, you will order them to remain within mutual support range. The last thing you want is to fuck this raid up, and hand them proof that you were directly involved in what could turn into a very messy heretic-purging, if what Rane told you abou the Inquisition is to be believed.

By the time you’ve communicated that plan to the skitarii, their transports have arrived.

You watch from space, as the specks fly out of the drydock, zipping towards the palace. Meanwhile, the battle has intensified. The PDF still aren’t out in full force, but they’re starting to achieve localised numerical superiority. The limited ‘heavy’ equipment they have available - chimaeras, tauroxes, and vendetta gunships - are starting to respond. The sky fills with flak, the streets of the city ripple with the piercing screech of lasgun fire, and the rattling cracks of stubbers.

>>5388777
Holy shit! Welcome back.

>>5388781
[3/6(?)]
You couldn’t help but be a little impressed with the speed with which the PDF had responded, and the effectiveness of their response. Despite better troops on the ground, and the element of surprise, Selene’s forces had delayed them to the best of their ability, and were now grinding them to a halt, using their limited advantages to encircle, ambush, and destroy frontline enemy forces. Impressive though it was, counterattacking immediately would be foolish and dangerous, and the PDF clearly knew that. Time wasn’t exactly on their side, but the longer the traitors stalled, the more force the PDF could muster.

Your transports hurtle through the planet’s upper atmosphere, scraping vacuum as they race towards their target, only to plunge back down like an angry brick as they approach, their thin-skinned hulls glowing a dull orange as they fall. The MTI leaps into action, reaching out to touch the traitor’s defensive emplacements. Annoyingly, most of the AAA guns are manually fired, with no electronic systems to effect. On the plus side, manually aimed anti-aircraft weapons generally struggled to hit transports that were comfortably supersonic, and the only systems that had a snowball’s chance in hell of doing it were suddenly disabled.

The shuttles close in on the palace, afterburners firing to stop them from landing with rather a little too much force. Though this does save the skitarii inside from infiltrating the palace as a particularly chunky soup, it does offer the AAA a window of opportunity to open up on the shuttles. They rattle with flak, but you built them tough, even for civilian vessels. They shrug off the shrapnel with the same gusto that they’d shrug off micrometeorites. A direct hit would spell their end, but the armour they had was enough to get them over the palace, and out of the direct line of fire.

Stopping ten metres above the palace, for only just long enough to let the skitarii leap out, and skate down the steep roof, sending sea green tiles clattering down onto the defensive terraces below. The shuttles take off, and the flak fire resumes, knocking one of the now empty shuttles out of the air. Acceptable losses. With mechanical efficiency, the skitarii begin their breach, leaping down onto the terraces below, weapons ready. Volkite rifles sing. A dozen guards die. They’re inside.

>>5388783
[4/6(?)]
It was almost disappointing. The palace guards, Durnovo’s finest personal retainers, weren’t much of a fight for the skitarii. These were not soldiers, like the PDF were. They were glorified security guards. The rabble on Delta had managed to put up a better fight. The rabble on Delta, armed only with bootleg weapons, mining equipment, and stolen Guard guns had been more creative and more effective than this supposedly professional force. Skitarii boots trample the thick carpet, matting it with blood and viscera. Volkite weapons scorch ancient portraits from the walls. Cold, mechanical reality crushes these effete delusions of grandeur. You register some base satisfaction from it, though you know you shouldn’t.

The moment passes.

A skitarii explodes.

A black giant charges the lead skitarii as they stalk through the halls, bursting through one of the walls and colliding with the alpha with the force of a missile. In an instant, life signs cease. The giant raises its weapon in a blur of silver and black, and three cracks of thunder burst through the hall. A refractor shield booms, then armour cracks, and then flesh splatters. Another skitarii down. If the skitarii were just human, they wouldn’t have had time to react. Fortunately, they weren’t just human.

Lances of baleful orange light strike out. The giant steps to one side in time to avoid being killed, but not enough to avoid injury. Their left arm is seared by three separate strikes from the volkite rifles, leaving their armour dripping to the floor in great globs of silver, and their arm no doubt quite inoperable. The skitarii push forward, eager to regain the initiative and unafraid of ambush. The first to round the corner is obliterated. Crack, crack, crack, dead. They don’t even see what killed them. The second, only milliseconds later, gets to see the two red eyes of his assailant, glowering from inside a scowling helmet as he’s cleaved in twain by the roar of a chainsword.

They had overcommitted, and the skitarii quite rightly assessed that they could risk a few more dead. The third and forth to round the corner survive long enough to return fire. Back to back, they stand before the black giants on either side of the intersection, using the corpses of their fallen comrades, still hanging in the air before gravity takes them, as cover. Volkite rifles fire. Two giants fall. The hall fills with the smell of acrid, burning flesh and ozone as the giant’s flesh boils beneath their armour. To their credit, it almost seems like they might survive the first volley, and might get off another few lethal shots, but through the skitarii’s feeds, you can hear the pop as their organs explode from the heat. Willpower couldn’t overcome exploded organs, and neither could genetic engineering.

>>5388784
[5/6(?)]
The rest of the giants stand only a few metres back. You count four before they raise their weapons in tandem, obliterating the skitarii in the hall. For a few long, agonising moments, nothing happens.

You hadn’t expected marines here. At least, they fit the description of ‘Space Marines’. Genetically engineered soldiers. They were shorter than you’d expected. Volkite weapons were still effective against them. Viking suits were still effective against their arms. This was manageable.

The two forces reassess their expectations. The marines clearly hadn’t expected to have this much trouble with the intruders, or else they would’ve been far more cautious. The skitarii hadn’t expected to face marines either, and while they’d happily sacrifice themselves to kill one of them, they couldn’t hold the hall against four of them for long enough to inflict any damage.

They may be defending something, or perhaps they'd been sent to destroy the invaders. It could’ve been a coincidence, but that seemed unlikely. You reach out to the MTI, to perhaps attempt to attack their armour, or listen in on their transmissions, but the MTI reports unacceptable system stability levels. You wipe it. At least you have the cruiser in orbit to enforce the blockade, though it doesn’t help break the current stalemate.

The skitarii don’t wait for your order, though. Grenades roll into the hall, hissing as they go. With a crack, the hall is filled with grey-white smoke. IR blocking, radar jamming, line-of-sight obscuring smoke, giving them enough concealment to break up into two teams, one on either side of the corridor the marines had begun to back themselves down, only taking a few speculative shots that their armour and shields absorb as they pass. Another moment of nothing happening passes, but a plan is formulated.

The skitarii with the new viking suits stack up on either side of the hallway, ready to leap out, while the other, lesser armed skitarii stack up behind them. As one, they step out, crouch low, and raise their arms. The conversion shields sputter to life, flashing with red light that glows through the smoke. The marines begin firing again, though they were firing almost at random, and the conversion shields prove far more effective than the refractor shields, absorbing the incoming weapons fire with only a flash of light to mark their passing. The barriers hold steady, like a shieldwall of old, holding against volleys of arrows. The skitarii behind them follow as the lead element presses on, arms locked together. The skitarii behind them open fire, just as blindy as the marines were.

>>5388786
[6/7]
As the shieldbearers push through the smoke, the situation is revealed in full. Two marines armed with heavy weapons are laying down a withering hail of fire, only made ineffective by the conversion shields, while two other marines stand behind them. One, lending his own weapon to the fusillade, while the other doesn’t even have his weapon raised. He just watches as the skitarii approach.

One of the marines with the heavy weapons falls. The other finds his leg disintegrating beneath him, but not before he’s able to adjust his fire, sweeping over the conversion shields, and striking the skitarii behind. Three die. Acceptable casualties. Two marines left. Just as the skitarii are about to turn their fire to the last marine, and just as he’s about to switch to the underbarrel plasma-weapon, his helmet explodes outwards in a shower of blood, ceramite chunks, and gore.

The remaining marine has his oversized handgun raised. Smoke drifts from the barrel. A casing tumbles to the ground. His eyes turn to the skitarii, who for just a moment, falter.

“Stupid bastards.” The remaining marine spits, placing his boot on the corpse of his fallen comrade. “Too stupid to see how much this reeked.” Again, his eyes turn back to the skitarii, who by now are requesting direction. Do they shoot? Was he friendly? You order them to wait. For now.

With another sigh, he steps off the body, holstering his weapon. “You don’t look like xenos to me, nor do you seem to be under xenos influence, which means that our Inquisitor has gone off the rails.” Their eyes glow like hot coals. Their armour gleams just a little too much. Silver shines, the black is as deep as the depths of space (aside from the flecks of blood), and a golden lion roars on the deep blue field of his other shoulder.

>>5388788
[7/7]

“We don’t have time to discuss this. Every minute we waste she’s causing damage. We need to kill her. Follow me.” The marine turns their back, stamping off into the room they were defending(?). A library? It seemed he wasn’t the talkative sort.

>[Agree]
Seemed like you were in agreement, even if you didn’t exactly know why. The Inquisitor needed to die, and he knows where she is. Follow the man with the plan.

>[Disagree]
Yeah, this reeks. And continues to reek. You trust this guy about as far as you can throw him, and that’s not very far considering you’re a disembodied AI. You’ll continue with the plan, and search the rest of the manor.

>[Kill him]
Yeah, this reeks. And continues to reek. You trust this guy about as far as you can throw him, and that’s not very far considering you’re a disembodied AI. If you give him the chance, he’ll kill your men like he killed his comrades. Don’t give him the chance. Your skitarii will climb over his body and find the Inquisitor on their own.

>[Stop! Question time! - Write in]
This situation has gotten way, way too weird. You’ve got a lot to straighten out here before you’re happy to make a decision, and even if it takes a while, you’re going to get those answers. A few minutes won’t be the difference between life and death.

>>5388789
>[Agree]

>>5388789
>>[Kill him]

>>5388789
>>[Disagree]

>>5388789
>>[Kill him]

>and a golden lion roars on the deep blue field of his other shoulder.
A Deatwatch Space Wolf then, maybe one of their successor chapters? Not exactly known for their trickery or subtlety. It's unlikely he's leading us in to an ambush since Kill-teams aren't large to begin with. With 6(?) KIA's he's likely the only one left standing of his team, and if he does lead us in to an ambush it will be against Palace Guards that we can smoke easily.

>>5388789
>[Agree]

>>5388789
Welcome back QM, happy that you're here and running this quest again!
>[Disagree]
>>[Stop! Question time! - Write in]
Question Rane on the disposition of AdMech to space marines. As noted, our AI's expectations are not being matched and I think we would need more info. Also ask for the space marine's chapter and designation, cross-referencing Rane.

Let him then do his thing, but we'll stick to our objectives.

>>5388789
Supporting
>>5388927
>>[Stop! Question time! - Write in]

Get Rane on the line for a quick minute to verify this guy's background.

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50 KB JPG

>>5388789
>>5388871

God I'm excited for this.

>Agree.
>Ask about the forces protecting the inquisitor. Are there other deathwatch here? Who is in her retinue.

If he tells us the truth, then we have a tactical advantage. If not, then we know for a fact that he's lying.

Pretty sure that this marine is a former member of the celestial lions chapter - his pauldron matches their chapter insignia to a tee.

These guys are imperial-fist successors who were almost wiped out following a power spat with the inquisition. While I'm still surprised that he just executed one of his SM squad-mates (not sure how cohesive deathwatch squads are; pretty sure a SM wouldn't kill a BB in his own chapter), his willingness to go against his employing inquisitor seems entirely reasonable given the history of his chapter.

Assuming that the conflict plays out - and the inquisitor dies here - having a loyalist SM testify in our favor might work to our advantage. Or it might not.

>>5388789
YES! YES! YES! You're back!

>>5388789
>lion
HYPE!

>[Agree]
Lets kill the chaos inquisitor!

>>5388984
+1

>>5388789
On a completely unrelated note: will we be able to collect all the corpses of our skitarri, and shot down vehicles? Can we "reclaim some of these space marine corpses, or at least get some genetic samples to study if we have the spare time? Maybe if we manage 80% completion of the palace we can have a goon double back to collect or take samples.

>>5389067
I'm not sure if this inquisitor is chaos corrupted. She might just be retarded. Many such cases in the imperium, unfortunately.

>>5388984
>his pauldron matches their chapter insignia to a tee.
Ah so it does. The Wolves uses a similar colorscheme and I guess I must've connected to that and then misread Lion as Wolf.

>wiped out following a power spat with the inquisition
Interesting, but if I don't remember wrong we're still in early M41 so this conflict between them hasn't happened yet. Which is a shame really. With some political manuvering we could've maybe arranged for a refounding of the Celestial Lions, or a new Fists successor chapter, with Acckarros as their Homeworld and this marine as it's Chapter Master. Unfortunate that they're still around and kicking, robbing us of legitimacy in refounding a dead Chapter, but what can you do.

>not sure how cohesive deathwatch squads are
Varies from unit to unit I suppose since Killteams are made up of Marines from various Chapters. This one clearly wasn't exactly happy working with his squadmates or this Inquisitor since he didn't hesitate to blow one of their brains out.

>>5389071
Oh good catch on the dates! Yep, canonically the Khattar revolt happens on 948.M41, which is several centuries after our awakening. Wouldn't be surprised if they didn't get along even before this event, but I guess shit hasn't quite hit the fan yet.

>>5388789

>[Agree]

I am so fucking happy to see you back, QM, I missed the hell out of this quest!

Finally i can turn on my autism to the max!

>>5388789
>Agree.
Ask questions on the way.
Stay a few feet behind him a bit cautiously.

>>5388789
>[Agree]

>>5388789
>[Kill him]

>>5388789
yay the lets get our circuts worked up over feudal mecha knights quest is back
>[Agree]
well either we just blasted all the loyalist marines or we are stuck with the last loyal one, either way Hussa Skitarii onward to everlasting glory in our databanks

>>5388789
>[Agree]
Oh really ? Welcome back.
well an inquisitor is a treasure trove of not public information

Holy shit!
I thought 40kai was dead as a doornail.
Seems I even missed a couple threads.
In any case, good to see you OP.

>>5389338
>
Ah i forgot but while he walks question him about what he knows of this inquisitor, and ask him to open communications with his power armor so we can coordinate (take over his armor if needed). A skitarii or two can remain behind for do a quick scan of the fallen equipment, and take a sample or two of this space marines. Once this mission is done our skitarii will remain a little while around, for see if they can find any informations or interesting stuff in the palace.
Prepare operations for retrieve our own fallen later, as well the other shuttle that was hit. And i guess some reinforcements can remain on stand by if needed, another 100 will suffice.
///
We will need to start re-education programs for our workers, so they will be actually useful in roles that we need them to fill. Our education program for the kids should have started already instead, which should show promise in a decade once they are young adults and can be prepared for any roles we want.

>>5388789
>>[Agree]

Cool to see this back, thanks for be here again. Seems we have immediate objectives in this mission covered, that's always nice to see from anons.
Last thread at the end, we were talking in detail about a few things we needed. A spy network across the sector, a cover history/culture for Svartalfheim, improvements for the security of the mining ships flying around space delivering us ores, military fleet&army and creating a new "presentation" layer on the surface for any visitors to our moon.

>>5388789
>[Agree]

>>5389397
so regarding our space mining fleet/ ships, arent cheap ships with "basic" technology and a deadmanswitch the best option? we already cleared that those ships will be able to teleport any and all ore directly into our moon so the only true risk would be to have one mothership be compromised by not being able to blow it up in time. and then we might be able to only install a sender teleporter without a receiver.
i dont think resources invested in these ships will matter long term, so we only gonna feel the resources spent if they blow up before we can get our first deposit. so id say pretty open and managable risk.

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52 KB PNG

>>5388789
>[Agree]
GIMME THAT HOT. THICK. GENESEED!

>>5389615
i suppose but i think they should have something for scout ahead in unknown systems. Mostly for avoid being seen, more than lost. If they detonate i don t think anyone will be able to recover even the dust of the ship lol

>>5388789

Welcome back QM !

>[Agree]

>>5389356

+1 to this anon's questions

>>5388789
>>[Agree]
This smells of Eldar bullshit.

>>5389694
Agreed. Even cheaper more aforable self scuttling/Aloha Snackbar scouting ships/probes that can scout out systems ahead of the main mining mother ship would save even more resources, than having to spend time rebuilding another one if someone attacks it.

>>5389615
Maybe we could construct some star miners. Stars offer more resources than entire planets or asteriod belts.

[1/7?]
You order the skitarii to fall in behind the marine. You don’t think it’s part of some greater plot, or at least you can’t imagine them shooting a comrade dead to lure your men into a trap, not after losing what must be the majority of their squad. Half of the force to follow him - roughly five squads, which should be enough to push through any resistance. The remainder wait behind, securing positions along the hallway, and begin rounding up the corpses of the fallen for recovery and recycling.

The marine stomps back into the library, and you get a better look at them. Most of their armour was painted black as pitch, though one arm gleamed silver, and the opposite shoulder gleamed gold. You can imagine that it must’ve taken hundreds of man hours to sculpt the pauldron into a feline head, almost leaping out of the royal blue field which it rested on. It was unique, that’s for sure. It didn’t seem like he was interested in talking, as he begins punching his way through one of the bookshelves, sending papers flying everywhere, so you opt to ping Rane instead, to try to get some more information.

<Do you recognise this armour scheme?> The message is sent without flowery formalities. Just a simple, to the point request.

<Yes.> A simple, to the point answer. <I believe those are Astartes-> A pause. <-seconded to the Ordo Xenos. I am not overly familiar with the specifics of the Inquisition, nor the Adeptus Astartes. I cannot say more than that. Are our skitarii fighting alongside this marine?>

<Yes. We are attempting to eliminate an Inquisitor.>

Another, much longer pause. <A marine is helping?>

<Yes.>

<Very well. This may prove to be a treacherous situation. I will return to manage the potential political fallout in person. The pacification campaign is in its final stages. I expect that Alexander will be able to maintain the current rate of progress. My absence will not affect the outcome.> A quick datapacket from Rane includes updated casualty lists and equipment losses. All within expected tolerances. <The marine should be trustworthy. Following his word is likely the best course of action.>

Rane sounds less sure than you’d like. Too many pauses. Too many weasel words. You suppose even he was out of his depth here. You’re still mostly unaware of the political mines you might be treading on, but you were at least aware that you were tangling with multiple different and very powerful institutions. It’s no surprise that he’d be uncomfortable.

>>5389862
[2/7?]
A few seconds later, the marine is finished hitting the books, opening a ragged hole in the bookshelf, and in the wall behind the bookshelf, and in a metal plate behind the bookshelf, revealing a long, narrow corridor that follows the curvature of the room. It’s a dingy tunnel, reminding you more of the warrens in the ship than in any place you expected to find in a manor. The marine doesn’t wait, stepping into the tunnel, and into the darkness. One of the alphas reports no less than 143 attempts to make a vox-handshake with the marine’s comms, only to have each attempt rebuffed. He didn’t seem to be the sort that played well with others. After all, rather than punching his way in, he could’ve just asked for some help. You did have your men bring breaching charges.

Your skitarii follow him into the gap, but there’s little meaningful support they can offer here. The tight confines of the tunnel forbid any tactical movement. You order most of them back. You couldn’t physically fit 50 skitarii in here even if you didn’t care about keeping them intact. The marine was having to squeeze his way in sideways, but your skitarii could at least walk comfortably single file. Tramping through the tight hall for some time, winding around rooms and down below the manor, under the dim red light, your men eventually come to an opening. The hall widens to a large vault door, like the sort you’d find in an old bank, or secure storage facility.

“I told them this was a terrible safe room. Takes too long to get to.” The marine speaks, looking over his shoulder, at the skitarii taking up positions around the door. It seemed like they’d fought alongside marines before, given how they moved around him. “This-” He raps his fingers against the metal. “Will not be easy to get into. The outer door, not a problem, but it was locked, which means they saw what happened, and they aren’t going to let me in.”

“Expected hostiles?” The alpha asks, having abandoned attempting to communicate by radio.

“Not many. A few stormtroopers, maybe. We were the muscle for this…” He stops, sighs, and moves on. “They’re coordinating from here. Kill them now, and we end this.”

“Durnovo must live. Governor’s orders.” The alpha states in reply.

“Who? I just want the imbecile Inquisitor dead, I don’t care about the rest.” He shakes his head and gestures back to the door. “I can’t rip this open. Too thick. Can your guns punch through this?”

>>5389864
[3/7?]
“No.” The alpha answers, as the other skitarii shuffle one of the breaching charges to the front of the pack. Wordlessly, they step forward, placing the MASER-breachcharge against the metal. You had issued them for warship bulkheads. Clean, zero collateral, no risk, unlike cruder imitations. The marine and skitarii step aside as the magnetic clamps thunk, and the charge begins to whine.

“Should we be in-” The marine begins, but the whine becomes a scream. For just an instant, the room is engulfed by a flash of light and heat, burning itself into the skitarii’s sensors. The charge falls back, spent, buckled, and smoking. Where the charge had been, a wide, roughly rectangular hole had been opened up. Just big enough for the marine to squeeze through, and more than big enough for the skitarii to pass inside. “Emperor’s balls. Alright. I’ll go in first, you come in after.”

With a nod from the alpha, the marine enters the hole. You don’t see what happens, but you can guess. A few impotent flashes of red light. Crack. Crack. Crack. The sound of meat exploding. Crack. Crack. Crack. The sound of bones snapping. Crack. Crack. Crack. Something falling to the ground. Your skitarii clamber in after him, just in time to reduce a stormtrooper to a puddle, but score only a single kill in the entire encounter.

The scene left behind was more like an abattoir than anything you’d expect to find behind that door. It was, once, some sort of panic room, split between a lounge area fit for royalty, and half-disguised command equipment and defensive positions. Corpses are strewn everywhere, the primitive armour of the stormtroopers not holding up particularly well against the marine’s weapon. Only two figures are left standing in the room. Durnovo, plump and powdered, and the woman who’s arm she was clinging to. Clad from head to toe in power armour, lacquered black and trimmed with gold, emblazoned with a scarlet I, and holding her own mockery of the marine’s weapon, was the Inquisitor. At least, you assume.

“By my authority I ORDER you to STAND DOWN and f-”

“Woman, would you please-”

“-ace judgement for your trai-”

“Please just sh-”

“-torous actions you vile he-”

Crack crack crack. His patience depleted, the marine discharges his weapon into the air just above the Inquisitor’s head, and his voice raises to just a few decibels lower than the weapon’s report. “Since we came here, you have not produced a single shred of evidence of xenos tampering!” The Inquisitor stops. The marine lowers his voice. “House Gildenmar are clean. This planet is clean. My brothers may have been convinced by your experience, and by your title, but you have been wrong at every available juncture. I am no longer convinced.” He takes a step forward.

>>5389867
[4/7?]
“Gildenmar are in league with xenos, through them!” She jabs one armoured finger at your skitarii. “They are working with orks, they are working with eldar, and they are working with… with worse! I have seen it! I have seen it in my visions, and, and- the Tarot! When I draw a Tarot on their world I see o-”

“I have had enough of your prophecy. You are not a witch. The Tarot means nothing, and neither do your visions. You are schizophrenic, and your delusions have killed innocent people.” They take another step forward, dangerously close to the Inquisitor.

“Do not take ano- I have kraken ro-” The Inquisitor is silenced, as her weapon is torn from her hand, discarded like a toy.

“They said you were… looser in your interpretations. More radical. You have had contact with xenos sorcerers. Eldar. Haven’t you?” The question isn’t a question. It’s a statement. A threat. One that you could almost swear that your observing skitarii flinch at. Even Durnovo begins to move away from her paramour, unwinding herself from her arm. “You’ve made enemies, Ceylia. If- When I make the accusation, no one will question it, will they.” The marine looms over her. She seems smaller now, standing in the marine’s shadow. Like a child. “You’re a wretch, and a heretic, and I’m going to kill you.”

The Inquisitor shakes her head, frantically stepping backwards. “I am no heretic! Everything I did I did for the Emp-”

“Groxshit!” The marine yells, raising his gun. “You’re either insane, corrupt, or corrupted. Xenos, chaos, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me. What matters is that you wasted my time destabilising a perfectly normal planet for your own twisted reasons.” He stops. “You’re out of friends, and I’m out of reasons to keep talking.” Crack. Crack. At point blank, the armour didn’t really do much to help. It might’ve absorbed the first shot, but it no doubt would’ve crushed her ribs. The second sails straight through, detonating inside her chest cavity, killing her instantly.

Durnovo screams as the Inquisitor falls to the floor. The marine, calmer now, turns back to the skitarii watching. “Right. Sergeant?" He nods at the alpha, immediately continuing. "Introductions. Tamiel, of the Deathwatch. Astral Claws, originally. Suppose the Captain won’t want to keep me much longer after that.” He chuckles, deeply, contrasting somewhat with the screams from behind him. “You, I know. Forge World Svartalfheim. Newly found. Seemed suspicious enough for us to hang around a little longer. She had us investigating Gildenmar for a while, but we never found a damn thing, so when you turned up we thought she’d finally come good. Started to get a bad feeling about the whole thing when I saw you turn up. " He gestures to the skitarii. "You’re not aliens.”

>>5389869
[5/6?]
He holsters his gun. “Inquisition will ask questions. Might want some of that fancy gear of yours, but other than that… I’ll keep them off your back. Spent long enough investigating this to not want to see anyone else waste their time with it. I might need a lift back to Badab soon enough though, so… tell your boss to remember who their friends are, eh?”

With that, he walks past your skitarii and leaves, his job done. The rest is pretty simple work. Decapitated, and with the core of the coup cooling on the ground, the offensive collapses. The PDF destroys any forces that don’t surrender, and your skitarii are free to secure the palace grounds, recovering the corpses of the fallen, to prevent them from falling into anyone else’s hands. You also take the Inquisitor’s corpse, in case you need it as proof. Or… to deny anyone else from having that proof.

Rane arrives a day later, and from there, he takes over. He didn’t seem happy about how things had gone, exactly, but seemed pleased enough with the resolution. Rane, Selene, and Tamiel discuss plans for dealing with the situation. The coup had not dealt much physical damage, as they hadn’t wanted to damage infrastructure any more than Selene’s men had, and the equipment at play was limited almost entirely to small arms, making massive damage unlikely. It remained to be seen how the Inquisition would react. Tamiel had assured Rane and Selene that his squad’s investigation had revealed no incriminating evidence, and the Inquisitor herself had little to offer either.

Apparently, she’d burnt a lot of accumulated favours putting together the material to attack House Gildenmar. A squad of Deathwatch marines, a large number of Inquisitorial Stormtroopers, two ships, a Vanus Assassin, and more, all to achieve nothing. Her colleagues were unlikely to be willing to waste more time on the matter, though it is, he remarks, fortunate that it was him that killed her. Had it been anyone else, they would have investigated the situation thoroughly as a matter of pride.

>>5389871
[6/6]
Days pass, and things continue to develop in a favourable direction. The Inquisition branded Ceylia, post-mortem, as a traitor of some kind. Tamiel receives word that he’s been dismissed by his Captain. Apparently, though the Inquisition branding Ceylia a traitor had made the killing of his sergeant justifiable, they weren’t exactly happy about it, and they were sending him back to his original force. You can’t help but feel like, somehow, Tamiel was just a little too smug about that. Rane had managed to smooth over most of the… protocol breaches with Selene, who was apparently quite grateful for your assistance, even if she couldn’t say so openly.

You were free to sit back, and let your processors cool for a minute.

But not for too long. Idle runtime was like an itch, after all. You’ll let your subordinates handle most matters for now, but you’ll need to turn your attention to something to pass the time, or you’ll go mad.

>[Accakaros]
Rane’s remaining on Accakaros for the moment, to continue overseeing the cleanup efforts, and the ongoing construction. More interestingly, you have some diplomatic leverage now. With Rane’s help, you could maybe twist Selene’s arm into granting you a little more in exchange for your aid. You did give her Durnovo intact, after all - perhaps she’d be willing to give you some of her land?

>[Hydrrit Delta]
The campaign’s practically over, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do. Now is the perfect time to start carving the mining world up. Maybe you’ll even get to see Alex’s command style first hand, though if what Rane says is anything to go by… maybe you shouldn’t be expecting all that much. Still, you’ll have the chance to try and grab more of that pie.

>[Badab Primaris]
Tamiel needs a ride, and you wouldn’t mind ingratiating yourself with some marines. Rane doesn’t know a thing about the ‘Astral Claws’, and you can’t find much publicly available information on them, but you do know that few people would turn down robot-men bearing gifts. Organise a diplomatic delegation, and a few toys for the marines. Maybe they’ll return the favour down the line.

>[The Facility - Research, Write in]
That’s all well and good, but you can have your subordinates handle all that. You’ve still got a few design ideas kicking around that you didn’t explore last time. Light and heavy robots, aircraft, vehicles and aircraft, and maybe you could try looking into some improved small arms for your men? Or maybe something else entirely, though… be realistic. You probably won’t have time to look into more than one design, either.

Thanks for the warm welcome, by the by. I will probably be a bit rusty for a few days, but I should shake off the cobwebs pretty soon. It's good to have a longer form writing project again.

>>5389872
>>[Hydrrit Delta]
>The campaign’s practically over, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do. Now is the perfect time to start carving the mining world up. Maybe you’ll even get to see Alex’s command style first hand, though if what Rane says is anything to go by… maybe you shouldn’t be expecting all that much. Still, you’ll have the chance to try and grab more of that pie.
Dam i would like to talk to the marine, but we need the ore

>>5389872
>[Accakaros]
Ask permission from Selene to establish Adrax's Reach as a future Knight World. With the action on Hydrrit Delta winding down we can shift our focus to securing and excavating the minerals on Adrax too, so we can build more stuff. Also because Titans are cool.

>>5389872
>[Badab Primaris]
The Astral Claws eventually seceed from the Imperium, so let's try to make them join us instead of Chaos.

>>5389872
>>[Badab Primaris]

Y'know, the possibility of being able to prevent the clusterfuck that was the Badab war sounds nice. And getting in the Chapter's good graces is likely a good idea. This is a good opportunity that we shouldn't pass up.

>>5389872
>[Badab Primaris]

>>5389872
>[Hydrrit Delta]
>The campaign’s practically over, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do. Now is the perfect time to start carving the mining world up. Maybe you’ll even get to see Alex’s command style first hand, though if what Rane says is anything to go by… maybe you shouldn’t be expecting all that much. Still, you’ll have the chance to try and grab more of that pie.

>>5389872
>[Badab Primaris]

>>5389872
>[Badab Primaris]

>>5389871
>Vanus Assassin
Uh oh. Did we encounter them yet?

>[Badab Primaris]
friendship!

>>5389872
>[Hydrrit Delta]
The campaign’s practically over, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do. Now is the perfect time to start carving the mining world up. Maybe you’ll even get to see Alex’s command style first hand, though if what Rane says is anything to go by… maybe you shouldn’t be expecting all that much. Still, you’ll have the chance to try and grab more of that pie.

>>5389872
>>[Badab Primaris]

Perhaps we can prevent them from turning to Chaos

>>5389872
>[Badab Primaris]
Having them has political friends might help. It might.
But has soon as possible we need to begin building thaf spynetwork in our sector.

>>5389963
Pretty sure the Vanus that was the augmented dude we fried in orbit, but maybe it would be good to double check.

>>5389872
>[Badab Primaris]
Seems like a pretty good deal given that they're an influential chapter.

>>5389872
>>[Hydrrit Delta]

>>5389872
>[Badab Primaris]
welcome back!

I can see a great deal of opportunity with the [Badab Primaris] option. Getting close with the Astral Claws will give us a chance to better understand what is considered standardized among space marine. Their armor, bolter, melee weapons, bolsters, and so on. Once we understand their general load out, and discretely learn how their black carapace interfaces with the armor, we can being improvements. Not tooo advanced though. Maybe optimize connection between marine and armor, maximize power efficiency of armor, and general improve efficiency by 10% across the board. We wouldnt want to draw too much attention by making everything artificer grade, on top of being know for making the most and best ships in the Imperium. What we can do is throw in just a few hundred termies artificer PA, and other goodies.

Speaking of goodies, while we still have the Inqquisitor's corpse it might be a good chance to, I dunno. Study it? See if theres anything of note? Honestly it's nothing of interest since we could make duplicates with ease, but you never know if she kept anything interesting in her pockets.

Side note I think we should kill the ork war boss. They're just too damn unpredictable.

>>5390063
If you want to be a bit more nefarious, you could also look for vulnerabilities in the astartes genome. Collect some samples from the dead deathwatch marines and run it through a sequencer. We might even be able to recover some semi-intact gene seed.

Given that epithemeus cut his teeth on M20 military tech - during an era where genetically engineered soldiers were pervasive and terrifying - I wouldn't be surprised if he had a working knowledge of biological countermeasures.

We know for a fact that SM warplate isn't 100% NBC sealed - aersolized virus from virus bombs can still get through, IIRC. You could tailor an airborne agent that is specific to astartes physiology. For instance:

+A virus with tissue-specific tropism for Larraman's cells. Infection induces activation of the clotting response, killing the SM near-instantly through vascular blockage.

+An agonist for whatever signaling molecule drives activation of the sus-an membrane. Disperse it before a fight and any SM you go up against enter a coma.

>>5390070
I like your thinking. If we have the slightest chance, we should collect some small samples of the space marine corpses. As a kill team their Gene's would come from different sources. Lots of variety, less reliability, but still. The things we could do with the data. We could soft augment current skitarri to be slightly better, stronger, possibly weirdly more durable? Skies the limit. There's also that option you mentioned about custom tailored bio weapons against Astartes. Could be useful against chaos marines, renegades, or run of the marines we outright dont like.

>>5389872

>Astral Claws

Oh. Oh no.

>[Badab Primaris]

If we can save them, that be pretty cool. Imperium did Huron dirty. I am all for providing him the necessary material to secure the Maelstorm extraction grid, as long as he shares the ultra rare resources, of course.

>>5389872
>>[Badab Primaris]
We fill in for the missing manpower for a cut of the production, potentially stop this entire mess. Also, we help the Lamenters. And that is good. Since depending how far things have gone, the Astral Claws aren't exactly codex-compliant, so they may be open to us fiddling with their surplus wargear a little, you know?
Push comes to shove we cut ties when the Inquisition gets involved, destroy or take all the evidence that we messed with wargear or the space marines themselves, and just bugger off and pretend we didn't know they were heretics!

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>>5390117
what ultra rare resource?

>>5390149
Sounds reasonable enough. The Astral Claws have a piss poor history with the Inquisition, so now that I think about it they might not snitch on us if we give them a whole lot of artificer armor and master craft war gear.

>>5390157
Depends how far along the Badab Crisis is. I'm not confident on dates. The further along their turn away from the Codex is, the more leeway we'll have with the Claws, in part because they'll be desperate for assistance. There's also the kinda metagamey option of pushing them into giving the Black Templars a call, something I've seen argued could have prevented the crisis entirely. In the meantime, this is an amazing opportunity to get on about everyone's good side if we play well.

>>5390149
I am only interested in their informations, scanning their equipment and potentially making them a political friend or ally. And obviously monitoring their activities with spying devices, since they will probably let us in their fortress.
Give them a few gifts of a improved level of tech to what they have will suffice for starting a diplomatic relationship, the reminder of that marines squad being dead should be also mentioned without saying a word in case they think to fuck with us.
Remember none of them are true allies at the moment, beside Rane and his techpriests that now live with us, everyone else would be an enemy if they truly knew what is Svarteheilm.

>>5390157

I remember hearing that the area of the warders of the Maelstorm is full of planets that have rare resources, the whole reason why the Imperium bothered setting up so close and actually defending it with entire space marine chapters.

>>5390157
>>5390236
Yep. If I remember correctly, it borders the eye of terror. The High Lords dispatched 4 marine chapters to hold it, led by the Claws. Their Chapter Master Lugft Huron did so well the marines not only held the Badab sector, but actually expanded it by reclaiming nearby systems overlooked during initial explorations and inhabited by pirates, orks and mutants. They ended up doing too good a job though, and the High Lords re-tasked one of the chapters somewhere else. Huron went from pushing forward with 4 full chapters to barely hanging on with 3 increasingly pressured chapters. They famously had to resort to capturing rickety pirate ships and crewing them to bolster their navy! That situation, along with some more Inquisition tomfoolery eventually degraded into the Badab War.

So if the chapter re-tasking has happened or is about to, and Huron just so happened to be informed by one of his men that there's a Forge World out there willing to provide manpower and high-quality crewed ships for a cut of the raw resources...well there's very little they wouldn't be willing to negotiate for that support.

>>5390381

It is around the Maelstrom, to the galactic east of Terra, whilst the eye of terror is at the galactic north. So we are in Ultima segmentum (Or at least I think so, haven't re-read the old posts yet).

M41.662.08.30 is the current date provided by the QM in the infodump and the war officially started in 901.M41 and Huron himself got appointed chapter master in 715.M41.

So we are still far away from the war proper or the escalation around the area.

This might be a bit meta-gamey, but I really do want to help the warders of the Maelstrom.

>>5390391
Checking the wikis, it seems they've just lost the chapter (that being a fleet-based chapter named the Charnel Guard). They haven't had many setbacks yet, but they're about to in less than 10 years. Huron isn't chapter master yet, since the old one died during those troubled times. The Claws are low on support, but still don't have much beef with the Imperium. A tasty opportunity, it seems. Better send a delegation with Ramiel. If the Claws don't want our help now, just leave the door open and wait for them to start getting their asses handed to them in a bit, then make the offer again.

Oh, and didn't Epimetheus's facility work on anti-warp alloys? That sounds like a great selling point for warriors fighting in such close proximity with the warp. No matter how we go about this, this should pan out quite well for both us and the Badab Sector, I think.

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>>5389872
>[Badab Primaris]

WEWLAD

Just read through all the archives, this is some gourmet stuff.

>>5389872
>>[Badab Primaris]

>>5389872
>[Badab Primaris]
QM, this is just too tempting. We can offer so much useful to the space marines, with the right incentive such as the aforementioned warp resistant iron, good ships, good wargear (such as volkites), better cybernetics that they can't afford to ignore this diplomatic overture. We just need to make sure that our envoy is well protected and well vouched for by Tamiel.


>[The Facility - Research, Write in]
Can the AdMech back at our hollow moon help with either improving base facilities or recovering some of the low-security existing facilities?
From earlier:
>At present, you’ve fully explored 82% of the facility. The remaining 18% is split between 3% corridors and hallways, 5% maintenance and engineering areas, and 10% laboratory areas. Laboratory areas, in total, account for nearly 20% of total internal volume of the facility, though 10% of those areas have been partly or fully investigated during other tasks. Mostly, those areas were low security labs. Materials science facilities, particle physics facilities, and similar ‘conventional’ sciences. The higher security labs were further out of the way for a very good reason. Achronometry labs, aetherial studies labs, and the test ranges for quantum translocation experiments. Any or all of those fields of study could create exceedingly dangerous phenomena, and as such, they were sequestered away, deeper in the moon and further away from any vital systems or other labs.

Set warpiron production to maximum

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>>5390391
We're at the red dot. The Maelstrom is the blue X.
This may differ a bit from the M42 maps because geedubs can't seem to pin down their galactic geography.

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>>5390236
waitaminute
>planets full of rare resources
>we have infinite range warpgates in ships used to transport minerals back to the production hub
>picrel
I want to spam a bunch of proper DAoT into that area to clear it and start cracking worlds. Get the Claws in control of the area, the other chapters out, help them hold it with our fancy ships, and start removing planets.

Depending on how this goes I want to reveal ourselves to Selene, Alexander, and the Astral Claw's leadership, when we hit a few milestones. If we make them sufficiently dependent on us such, I don't think they'd betray us. Once we have sufficient control over the industrial machinery of Accakaros, I want to invite Alexander and Selene over, give em a tour of the manufacturing facilities, and tell them who we are. If they scream bloody murder, we blow up their (our) industrial equipment.

>>5390618
Can we still develop FTL to bypass war storms?

>>5390627
Our FTL already does.

>>5390627
Warp storms only matter if you're using the Warp. Since our FTL system bypasses the Warp and just teleports us around they pose no obstacle to us, but teleporting into the middle of a Warp Rift may be hazardous to your health.

>>5389875
Missed you boss. <3

>>5389872
>[Badab Primaris]

>>5389872
>[Badab Primaris]

>>5390381
If they lost the fourth chapter they should already be falling apart internally because it was only when they had full four chapters that they were able to successfully stand their ground. They began to rapidly decline after losing the fourth chapter and Inquisition dickery accelerated their internal collapse. As Chaos began to rapidly counterattack as well as the orks after noticing their weakness which later resulted in some of them falling to Chaos from desperation. Not even pressing pirates, scum, and others along with whatever ships and materials they could get their hands on were enough.

>>5390627
We can bypass through. Obviously appearing inside a warp rift is still a terrible idea but traveling through it is fine.

>>5390399
It should also reduce the odds of them falling to Chaos if they have access to moar anti warp goodies.

>[Badab Primaris]

[1/7?]
Badab Sector, in the Maelstrom Zone. That, you know at least a little about, through Rane. An area of space blighted by emperyal incursion events, and the archenemy’s corruption. In your time, it was nothing more or less than the galactic core, an area of space noted for higher than average stellar density, home to the barycentre of the milky way, Sagittarius A*, and a variety of other cosmic horrors of a more mundane sort. While rich in material, the galactic core region was aggressively hostile to colonisation attempts. The Republic had little presence in the area, and while Badab itself is outside of the region you would’ve considered dangerous, it seems that they’re vulnerable to newer, modern threats.

Marked on all star charts Rane had been able to give you was the Maelstrom itself. Estimating from its area of influence, you suspect it to be a Class 5 emperyal incursion. Mostly theoretical, 20,000 years ago, but terribly practical today, and not even the largest of its sort in the galaxy. While utterly awful for the people forced to live within its hateful aura, it does present opportunities for you. You need allies just as much as you need material, and you may be able to find both in those who call the Maelstrom home.

With that in mind, you prepare a ship for Tamiel. CL00, having returned from Hydrrit to blockade the system, was already prepared for the journey, and made for an obvious choice. The improved gellar fields had already made warp travel far safer and more reliable, though travelling deep into the metaphysical equivalent of a typhoon would test the limits of your upgrades, but at least you could be confident the journey would take no more than a month, and wouldn’t risk potential demon-invasions.

You organise a quick transfer of a few hundred volkite weapons, refractor field generators, and some other trinkets, as well as a small delegation of the more diplomatically capable tech priests from the facility and Accakaros to CL00, before having one of the skitarii make an offer of transport to Tamiel, who had been enjoying the Gildenmar’s welcome. Your tech-priests arrive at his room, finding him lounging (as much as someone can lounge while still in most of their armour) and cleaning his weapons.

With his helmet off, his scar strewn face is on full display. He’s pale, with a head of tightly trimmed blonde hair, and stubble to match. Two metal bolts seem to be hammered into his skull, just on his brow. Badges of honour? He seems conflicted at the sudden appearance of your priests, in contrast to his reaction upon hearing that he’d been dismissed from the Deathwatch. His armour was scrubbed of what you assumed was the Deathwatch’s colours already, returning to a white/blue/gold scheme that almost seems natural on him. While he was clearly pleased to be free of that service, the prospect of returning home is obviously less enticing.

>>5391360
[2/7?]
That matters little to you, though. Returning Tamiel is, in all honesty, just a wedge to get you into the door. You’d heard of the Astartes before, of course, and having seen them in combat you had to say that you were impressed. You hadn’t had the chance to dissect the marines your men had felled, or take apart their equipment, but they were clearly superior to your skitarii, even with all the advantages you were able to give them. Perhaps your skitarii need further upgrades? Something for later, perhaps. What was important now was acquiring the favour of a force of Astartes that just so happened to be positioned in a potentially very useful area.

Within the week, Tamiel gives his goodbyes, and you’re away. The trip is uneventful, as best you can tell. You try to avoid connecting to the ship too much, while it’s in the warp, but force yourself to make daily checkups. You would only get one chance to make a good impression, after all, and losing one of their marines in the warp wouldn’t just lose you that chance, it’d probably leave them a little disinclined to you. Tamiel becomes more and more uneasy as the trip progresses, and you can tell it’s nothing to do with being in the warp. You think you’d given him quarters he’d be comfortable in, even if they weren’t designed for someone of his size. Could he really be nervous about returning home?

Within 2 weeks, the ship had finished translating to the Badab system. As soon as it drops into real-space, it’s suddenly bathed in a wash of EM radiation. Ambient radiation from proximity to the galactic core, yes, but also the low rumble of human civilisation, humming on the edge of your perception. Human life, in greater concentration than you’d seen since reawakening. It was… bittersweet. You were aware that they had persisted outside of your direct focus, but seeing it with your own sensors was uplifting. On the other hand, it laid bare the magnitude of your task. This was just another system. The ship passed over - through - under a thousand more like it on its journey.

Maybe you’d allowed yourself to believe that you were helping the people of Accakaros. Maybe you were, but it was just another planet.

Just another planet. There were billions like it.

While you were busying yourself with this, how many weren’t you helping?

How many were dying?

How many were suffering fates worse than that?

>>5391361
[3/7?]
Best not to think about that now. Rationally - and you were rational - you knew that there was nothing you could do for them yet. You need to build your capabilities, to develop your industry, to bring your technology to maturity, then you can help them all. But your creators forced an echo of their empathy onto you. A compulsion to protect human life. It ached to do nothing.

The ship receives a hail, demanding to know its allegiance and its task. Tamiel answers. He clears things up, and the ship is invited to dock.

Badab II was the destination. Or, more accurately, one of the stations in orbit around the planet. While the planet practically bubbled with activity, the surface scarred with steel and concrete, man’s indelible mark on the galaxy, so too did its orbit. It was unimpressive by your standards, but you had woken up in a broken universe and cobbled together a megastructure within a year. Your standards were unreasonable. Dozens of lights blink in the void, hanging high above the hives on the surface. Defensive emplacements, crude but effective all the same, with the ship set to rendezvous with the largest of them all.

The journey from the Mandeville point ends with CL00 in the shadow of that same station. It was, in appearance, a giant, spacefaring cathedral. There were stained glass windows larger than the entire ship, casting shifting, kaleidoscopic shafts of light that cut through the shadow. The ship drifts on, propelled by RCS and stationkeeping engines now, as it finds its way into the cavernous maw of the station’s berth. A swarm of simpler intelligences begin to ping your ship, looking for handshakes as they prepare to take it into their claws. You authorise the data transfer, and watch as great magnetic clamps take hold of the ship like a toy in the hands of a child, wrenching it forward with an awful lurch. This doesn’t alarm your tech priests, who assemble in one of the airlocks, and ready themselves for transfer.

Tamiel stands at the head of the delegation as the umbilical stretches across the hundreds of metres of vacuum. You half expect something to go horribly wrong. Perhaps the umbilical will explode the moment it’s pressurised? It certainly seems to be within the realms of reason. Though the station’s design exudes Imperial majesty, and through the language of architecture, stakes a claim to a long and ancient history, it does little to impress you. You see through the bluster, for what it is. It is a rotting hulk, cobbled together from second rate parts into a third rate structure. You could do twice as much with half the material, and that’s without considering how much gold must’ve gone into plating that eagle statue.

>>5391362
[4/7?]
The umbilical survives the trip, though, interfacing with the airlock on your side with a heavy thunk, and a steady hiss of rising pressure. A minute later, and the airlock on your ship reports that the pressure on the other side was at a safe level, allowing it to slide open. You wince as you watch the delegation march through, and are relieved to see them make it to the other side. Tamiel, however, seems less elated, a mood which is reinforced when the airlock on the far side opens, revealing another marine in some derivative of the hazard armour you know.

“Tamiel. What a surprise. I had thought you’d be spending some more time with our esteemed brothers in the Deathwatch.” The man’s smile curls upwards, too tight and wide to be sincere.

“Captain Huron.” Tamiel answers, bowing his head low, to hide his gritted teeth. When he raises it again, his expression is blank as carved marble. “I believe they saw fit to end my secondment, following the regrettable loss of my squad in an… unfortunate misunderstanding.”

“I had heard. Unfortunate indeed.” The smile remains intact on Huron’s face. It would betray his true feelings, if it wasn’t clear that he didn’t care to hide them. “But you have returned to your brothers, in the Maelstrom. Being deprived of your talents for so long was painful, but it’s a pain we endure for the good of the Imperium.” His words are warm, but his amber eyes are icy.

“Indeed, Captain.” Tamiel gives another, curt bow.

“The Chapter Master regrets that he can’t be here to welcome you back in person. Your sudden arrival came as some surprise, truth be told, though he did wish for me to convey his warm welcome, and the news that you are to be returned to the First Company.” Huron gestures to his right, past an honour guard of marines, and down the candle lit hallway. “I am sure we can catch up some other time, old friend.”

“Of course, Captain.” Another bow, and Tamiel leaves your delegation alone with Captain Huron, who turns on the lead tech-priest like a wolf. “My apologies for the delay. I don’t mean to be rude. Tamiel and I have… history.” Delightfully vague. “I wish to offer Chapter Master Blake’s thanks to you, and of course my own, for your efforts in returning our brother to us. When we received word that he’d be returning, I hadn’t expected he’d return in the care of our friends from the Mechanicus, much less that you’d spare a cruiser for the task.”

“It was of no concern.” The tech-priest bats at the air with one of his faux-human hands. “We are happy to offer the Astartes any help we can.”

>>5391363
[5/7]
“As we are happy to help the Mechanicus.” Huron replies, reflexively. He seems friendly. Affable, even constrained as he was by the formality and protocol of the meeting. You may go so far as to say he was charismatic. Still, you were quite sure that you didn’t mistake the cruelty in his smile, nor the ice in his eyes. Realistion, mock or legitimate, plays across his face, and he awkwardly lowers himself into the closest he could manage to a bow. “Captain Lufgt Huron, of the Astral Claws Third Company. At your service.”

“Kelbak 53/3. Magos-Diplomatic of the Forge World Svartalfheim.” Kelbak was not your first choice. You would’ve rather brought Rane, but he was busy on Accakaros, and right now you didn’t want to tempt fate and leave the inferior ambassador on the planet where the Inquisition might arrive. Kelbak was competent enough. Younger than Rane, less worn and damaged, and more human. Amongst your Mechanicus cohorts, humanity was in woefully short supply. “We bring a small gift, in recognition of your chapter’s heroism, and in your work securing the Maelstrom. 500 volkite calivers and chargers, and 300 refractor field generators, as well as a selection of relics from our armouries.”

Though you would not be impressed by being offered ‘relic weapons’, the Captain seems to react in much the way that you’d hoped. Restrained surprise, with a hint of elation, followed by a shadow of doubt. “Another generous - and unexpected - gift.” He rolls back onto his heels, a subtle movement amplified by the weight of his armour. “Did Tamiel really make so much of an impression?” The question is phrased like a joke, but Kelbak wouldn’t get it, and you don’t think it was intended as a joke, either.

>>5391364
[6/7]
“Tamiel was wiser than his comrades.” Kelbak answers. “Our gifts are unrelated to his performance.” The tech priest goes meaningfully silent. “Our forge world was recently rediscovered. We are looking for places where we might best aid the Imperium.” Kelbak tilts his head, fixing his whirring lenses to Huron’s eyes. “Tamiel spoke of the work that the Astral Claws do in protecting the Maelstrom Zone, and difficulties you face in receiving supply. We thought that we might begin to rectify that.”

Huron stares back into Kelbak’s unblinking eyes, an odd look on his face, like he doesn’t quite believe what he’s hearing, but is compelled to pretend he does out of politeness. “A generous offer indeed, from a generous lot. One that the Astral Claws couldn’t refuse.” He nods, slowly, the smile returning to his face, even as gears continue to work in his head. “I only regret that we have nothing of substance to offer in return, at this time. Our forces are beginning to stretch thin.” The bribe seemed to have worked. Clawing an admission of weakness, however small, from him was a good sign. Indeed, the more he talks, the more he seems to confirm some suspicion. “I have always wondered what might become of the Maelstrom, if we had twice the brothers. I could settle for twice the guns, though.”

>>5391366
[7/7]
With that, it’s Huron’s turn to go meaningfully silent.

>[Offer to supply - Advanced Astartes Research]
You’ve millions of volkite weapons, suits of power armour, and other sundry equipment, but it’s no good to them if they’re half again the size of a regular human. You have examples of expired specimens, along with their armour and equipment. You could create wholly new equipment for them from scratch. They’ll be the envy of all the other chapters, and that’ll send a powerful message, albeit one that might take a while to radiate out from the Maelstrom. It’ll also take processor uptime and materials, preventing you from researching other technologies, and limiting your construction options somewhat.

>[Offer to supply - Astartes Research]
You’ve millions of volkite weapons, suits of power armour, and other sundry equipment, but it’s no good to them if they’re half again the size of a regular human. You have examples of expired specimens, along with their armour and equipment. Reverse engineer them, and make copies. Sure, you won’t be putting your all into it, and it won’t give the Claws any more firepower than they already have, but it will keep them well stocked on all the standard equipment, without making too many waves, or taxing your CPU overmuch. It’ll still drain a substantial chunk of resources, though, given what likely goes into that armour.

>[Offer to supply - Reserves]
You’ve got millions of volkite weapons, suits of power armour, and other sundry equipment. You can ship it right now, and even if the marines themselves can’t use it, they can probably find someone who can. Guns are guns, at least, so they shouldn’t have much trouble using those.

>[Make no promises]
Hold on just a minute - this guy’s just a Captain, right? Surely you shouldn’t be making a deal with him? No-one else has called him out on this, so he’s got some sort of backing, but maybe it’s smarter to wait for their ‘Chapter Master’ to return. Or hell, maybe you’ll get cold feet about the whole supplying them thing. Would seem like a bit of a wasted trip if you entirely gave up though…

>[Entirely give up]
Yeah, these guys are a lost cause. You’ll leave them with the stuff you’ve already offered them, but after that you’re making your excuses and leaving. You’ve seen enough.

[spoilers]Bit late today. Unfortunately, we have encountered a canon character, and therefore my inability to properly write canon characters. I'm taking some liberties with the blank spots in lore regarding pre-CM Huron Astral Claws, but nothing that I feel is too egregious, given that the Charnel Guard are now gonzo.[/spoiler]

>[Offer to supply - Reserves]
You’ve got millions of volkite weapons, suits of power armour, and other sundry equipment. You can ship it right now, and even if the marines themselves can’t use it, they can probably find someone who can. Guns are guns, at least, so they shouldn’t have much trouble using those.
support the new Ultramar sub-sector not to mention 3 chapters of astertes with as the official forge world the supplies them.

>>5391367
>[Offer to supply - Advanced Astartes Research]
Human-standard weapons are going to win only minimal favours. Lets go big, but on condition of remuneration in some form such as resource extraction of nearby celestials that will ensure the continued supply of goods. That's what we're here for after all.

If the good Captain Huron can't commit this, then we ask for his superior officer to discuss further. We've already made our initial offering of their soldier and the arms. That's enough to get attention.

>>5390618
I love that my space vacuum teleporters idea was a success. It's the first step on converting the universe to computronium ushering in the AI singularity and further the reach of mankind's development in the grim far future.

>>5391367
>[Offer to supply - Advanced Astartes Research]
Go big or go home, we'll put them in so much debt they'll have no choice but to sell their souls to us

>>5391367
>[Offer to supply - Astartes Research]
>[Offer to supply - Reserves]
Steady on the course. Provide them with standard Astartes equipment, modified to enhance durability and performance much like we did with our void ships. Just enough to remove redundancies but not enough to raise any red flags of tech heresy. Also provide them with our reserve stock to be issued to PDF and Astra Militarum regiments in the region to improve their combat effectiveness.

>>5391367
>Write in
"I highly disagree captain, there is much you can offer even if your world might not currently produce many resources or products at the moment, and every little thing helps. Your chapter friendship for name one. A trade route between us offering what you have. Sending us news from what happens in the Maelstrom region."
"Would your chapter be interested in giving our forge world access to your knowledge on war, star charts and historical records ?"
"Our diplomatic delegation would also like to talk with the rest of the captains and your chapter master. So we can better know each other, our Forge World has been away from the rest of mankind for long. For now though captain, would it be possible to visit your world with you has a guide ? A tour would be splendid after our recent travel".

>[Offer to supply - Astartes Research]
You’ve millions of volkite weapons, suits of power armour, and other sundry equipment, but it’s no good to them if they’re half again the size of a regular human. You have examples of expired specimens, along with their armour and equipment. Reverse engineer them, and make copies. Sure, you won’t be putting your all into it, and it won’t give the Claws any more firepower than they already have, but it will keep them well stocked on all the standard equipment, without making too many waves, or taxing your CPU overmuch. It’ll still drain a substantial chunk of resources, though, given what likely goes into that armour.

We have still much to do in our sector remember. And I advise to ask questions

>>5391367

>>5391373 +1 to this

>>5391390 +1 to the questions.

>>5391390
>Support

>>5391367
>>[Offer to supply - Advanced Astartes Research]

>>5391367
>[Offer to supply - Advanced Astartes Research]

>>5391367
>[Offer to supply - Astartes Research]

>>5391367
I'll agree with the majority here, but I still think we should meet the CM and other captains before we settle a deal.
>[Offer to supply - Advanced Astartes Research]

Let's not half-ass this. Hopefully Epimetheus realizes how much good a stable and expanded Badab Sector can do for the Imperium, on top of providing a great testing ground to further his goals both for humanity at large and his anti-warp research. There's a lot of bad things happening out there but the Badab Sector has great potential. It's not about just one planet, this is his biggest chance yet to influence a large part of the galaxy by making sure humanity triumphs here.

Though I'm surprised there isn't an option to offer actual manpower or crewed ships. Those are really what's hurting the Claws. I'm not sure how large the fleet of the Charnel Guard was, but I'm sure a couple of our revamped hulls would be able to hold a system against the local rabble. And our guns would do them a lot more good if we also threw in Skitarii that can use them well. But that is going to take some number crunching, hence the need to make a proper deal with their hierarchy.

>>5391448
Anon we can't offer them ships nor some Skitarii due to the fact that we lack resources and manpower

>>5391448
I know there isn't an option, but the Maelstorm region is extremely rich in resources. If we can secure mining rights we can get them and us ships for days

>>5391367
>>[Offer to supply - Reserves]

I think we should start small, establish a relationship. As things progress we can offer better gear for resources or whatever have you. Don't want to show all your cards right off the bat after all.

>>5391367
>[Offer to supply - Advanced Astartes Research]
also allude to there later on being ships available once resources are flowing dont ommit that we're still well underway of foundation building

>>5391448
Hold your horses.
We already giving a grand deal. The majority of chapters doesn't get this amount of stuff with this level of quality.
And we didn't even talk too much with them, neither confirmed their allegiances and objectives (this is not saying they are chaos, but knowing their objectives and who they fight with might be best).
Badab might be crucial, but Svartalfheim IS the most important asset. An asset that currently has been recently discovered, meaning it might be best to not make too much waves, one that has not in fact fully secure it's own sector (be from know or unknown enemies), that doesn't have currently any true great fleets and armies, that doesn't have a spynetwork, that is creating allies and friends now, and that is increasing his population and resources.
Keeping some resources at home for build other things, or using them for other matters would help us.

>>5391367
>[Offer to supply - Advanced Astartes Research]
>We will require materials however. Rare materials, that we heard are in the Maelstorm Zone. Ypu supply us, and we supply you.

>>5391390
I'll support these questions as well.

>>5391367
>[Offer to supply - Advanced Astartes Research]

>>5391367
>>[Offer to supply - Astartes Research]
dont want to go overboard

>>5391462
We're not talking about giving the better tech for free. We're asking for their permission to mine worlds within the region Badab/Maelstrom, and that implies that we'll have them secure the region for our industry, as it is in their own best interest.
If they come sniffing into our mining operations, we tell them that we're shuttling goods via mini-warp tunnels, too small to be detected.

You are correct that the 'forgeworld of Svartalfheim' is all important to us, but we make it indispensable to the powerful allies around and we get a great deal of influence. This is particularly important knowing the future history of the Astral Claws, as we do. We can also elaborate to them that one of the reasons for our recent reveal are fucking orks and eldar extortion. Eldar literally set an inquisitor onto us. We need allies.

>Tamiel had assured Rane and Selene that his squad’s investigation had revealed no incriminating evidence, and the Inquisitor herself had little to offer either.
>Apparently, she’d burnt a lot of accumulated favours putting together the material to attack House Gildenmar. A squad of Deathwatch marines, a large number of Inquisitorial Stormtroopers, two ships, a Vanus Assassin, and more, all to achieve nothing. Her colleagues were unlikely to be willing to waste more time on the matter, though it is, he remarks, fortunate that it was him that killed her. Had it been anyone else, they would have investigated the situation thoroughly as a matter of pride.

Tamiel saved our bacon.

>>5391390
+1 this write in but

>>5391367
>[Offer to supply - Advanced Astartes Research]
>We will require materials however. Rare materials, that we heard are in the Maelstorm Zone. You supply us, and we supply you.
Go big or go home. No half assing this.

>>5391367
>[Offer to supply - Advanced Astartes Research]
>[Make no promises]
talk to and make the offer to the chapter master.

>>5391367
>[Offer to supply - Reserves now, Astartes Research a year from now, and Advanced Astartes Research 3-5 years after that]
I like the idea of starting small, then expanding our support when we’ve built up the materials and capacity for it. Considering Badab won’t fall for a while, we do have time to build our production lines up and deepen our relationship.

We probably shouldn’t mention the the stuff beyond the Reserves that we’re planning on doing for them now though, I’d like to slowly build up to that.

>>5391574
changing to +1 this. You make a reasonable point. It's not as if their techmarines are incapable of converting volkite calivers and chargers, and refractor field generators to SM size. But we still should request aid in acquiring more materials to keep up with Adminastratum demand.

>>5391579
I agree, we need more resource inputs. We can probably get an escalating reciprocal resource chain going on; Reserves for Resources, which we then turn into Astartes Research, to which we get even more resources in exchange for, and we use those extra resources in order to supply them with Advanced Astartes Research. That way we aren’t breaking the bank when it comes to resources and RnD, at least not immediately.

>>5391367
>"I highly disagree captain, there is much you can offer even if your world might not currently produce many resources or products at the moment, and every little thing helps. Your chapter friendship for name one. A trade route between us offering what you have. Sending us news from what happens in the Maelstrom region."
"Would your chapter be interested in giving our forge world access to your knowledge on war, star charts and historical records ?"
"Our diplomatic delegation would also like to talk with the rest of the captains and your chapter master. So we can better know each other, our Forge World has been away from the rest of mankind for long. For now though captain, would it be possible to visit your world with you has a guide ? A tour would be splendid after our recent travel".
>When speaking with the chapter master [Offer to supply - Semi-Advanced Astartes Research]

If standard research is basic astartes equipment and advanced is our dark age stuff we absolutely must stick to the inbetween we have been doing, the moment the imperium/inquisition/mechanicus gets proof we have a large body of dark age knowledge there will be armies knocking on our doors who will comb through our world with a fine tooth comb.
Standard marine equipment also won't be enough to help the claws and the other two chapters since their main issue is being hugely outnumbered.

Correct me if I am wrong on this QM.

Also making huge deals with a captain is going to give Huron way to much influence and we have no idea if chaos has its claws in him already or if he is just a generally hostile marine.

>>5391677
+1

>>5391367
>>[Offer to supply - Advanced Astartes Research]

>>5391691
>>5391677

I also agree somewhat, seeing this. I still stick to my choice, BUT, I will add onto my vote the desire to bring this negotiation directly to those actually in charge of the Chapter, not just the Captain of the Third Company.

>>5391448
>>5391694
Then I'll throw in my hat too, just to make it clear I'm in support of consulting with the CM and other captains before making a deal.

>>5391367
>[Offer to supply - Advanced Astartes Research]
We supply you with the best equipment in the galaxy. You give us exclusive mining rights to certain resource rich planets.

>>5391448
They had enough manpower to rebel but not enough to hold their ground after the Charnel Guard were pulled out so they got desperate after getting dicked over by the Inquisition repeatedly. While they had the resources they did not have the industry to go with it. So they were getting raped with severe supply shortages even if they did have the manpower to such an extent they traded with other shady Marine Chapters and pirates to scrape by before they fell to Chaos.

If they had the supplies to arm their plebs they could likely hold the line by resupplying their PDF and Guardsmen divisions. The issue would be their naval capacity because warpstorms would be raping them constantly. There is a reason why they resorted to using pirate ships. They really were running out of ships that badly. Supplying their plebs is easy supplying their Astartes and navy is a much harder proposition.

>>5391367
Changing my vote.
>[Offer to supply - Advanced Astartes Research]
>When speaking with the chapter master [Offer to supply - Advanced Astartes Research]
>"I highly disagree captain, there is much you can offer even if your world might not currently produce many resources or products at the moment, and every little thing helps. Your chapter friendship for name one. A trade route between us offering what you have. Sending us news from what happens in the Maelstrom region."
>"Would your chapter be interested in giving our forge world access to your knowledge on war, star charts and historical records ?"
>"Our diplomatic delegation would also like to talk with the rest of the captains and your chapter master. So we can better know each other, our Forge World has been away from the rest of mankind for long. For now though captain, would it be possible to visit your world with you has a guide ? A tour would be splendid after our recent travel".
>We will require materials however. Rare materials, that we heard are in the Maelstorm Zone. You supply us, and we supply you.
Think about it. Sure designing and building superior war gear for the Astral Claws will take up a chunk of our attention, but I can see this as "Doing one thing, which will have the consequence of complete several things we want done."

Astral Claws get:
>overall superior war gear
>friendship and support of
>priority ship repairs and construction from a well renown forge world
>better capacity to defending the maelstrom, and eventually being able to expand their numbers to full mustering strength with improve degrees of success and less frequent pyrrhic victories they suffer

What Forge World Svartalfheim get:
>friendship with the Astral Claws
>better chance to play a pivotal role in their survival with early research efforts
>access to rare resources
>favors and ability to sway astral claws to help acquire even more resources
>their aid for when we eventually come to a head with the neighboring orks, and eventually the eldari
>protection from the warp and corruption if we give them the anti-warp metal
>a chance to study their ware gear, their genetics, implants, cybernetics, and ship designs
>potentially get the rights to retrofitting superior and efficient Battle Barges

To reiterate, doing the advanced research is like killing ten bits with one really big boulder, if that makes sense. My point might not be popular but I just wanted to say my pieces.

>>5391866
>support
like the idea and the potential profits, but we still need to wait on a reply from their chapter master

also QM how far has our mining ship gone in the neighboring solar system

>>5391866
>>5391367
I like this. I'm not changing my vote located >>5391719 because it's still Advanced Astartes Research but I like this phrasing.
>>5391873
QM has some sort of resource unit notation in the OP pastebin. you can see how much our mining ships have been producing there. Well worth the outcome, probably enough to manufacture all the advanced Astartes stuff.

>>5391873
Neighboring? I thought we sent our mining ship(s) out into the dark uncharted parts of space?

>>5391866
Frankly, I would would do it just to get into the RnD-Production-Logistics Phase faster. Some of my favorite bits it’s just describing tech/production parts of this quest.

>>5391885
mhmm, same! Do you think if we unlock 100% of all research facilities and fabricator hubs in our moon base, we would be able to go through the Advanced Space Marine research even faster?

>>5391367
Not a vote or suggestion, but I wanted to run an idea past you. As building a DaoT or Ark tier ship at our "Forge World" would be too suspicious, would it be better to instead build a shipyard out into the dark parts of the galaxy and just ship materials there via portals for the purpose of making top tier ships? They might become useful if we even have to deal with these rumored, "Black Crusades" we heard about every once in a while. What was that evil space marine's name again? No-arms-bbadon? Failbadon? Babbybadon?

>>5391367
Can we get an idea of how much LE and HE the advanced research will cost us?

There was an idea I want to run through everyone anon, or remind you guys of that someone probably mentioned in the past.
Blanks. How should we go about acquiring them? Typically people try to kill them right after they're born, so that makes getting them even harder. If no one already suggested this idea, what if we were to open up Hospital all over Accakaros? We could have less emotional semi-tech priests help deliver babies, or have that duty regulated to servitors. Either of which would be less than likely to kill a blank baby, and if we find just one of them we can begin cloning them en mass.
Plus the hospital idea would reduce baby deaths/increase number of guardsmen Accakaros produces, which I think was one of their major exports. We earn some favors, and get some chances to get ourselves to blanks. Win win?

>>5391903
>would it be better to instead build a shipyard out into the dark parts of the galaxy and just ship materials there via portals for the purpose of making top tier ships

This is certainly a potential option, but it'd be vulnerable to attack, and require the expenditure of more resources that could otherwise go to other projects.

>>5391913
>Can we get an idea of how much LE and HE the advanced research will cost us?

It's difficult to estimate how many resources the project will require to see through till completion. A rough guess would say that, after accounting for the research efforts, and then construction of the designed equipment, that you'd be expending at least 100 of each to fully outfit the chapter. Note that this does not include heavier equipment - vehicles, spacecraft, and heavy weaponry - as at present, it's unlikely that the Astral Claws would believe you if you offered it.

>>5391903
Probably, though that depends on what Research Equipment gets unearthed.

>>5391913
I like that idea, and we can probably replicate it on Delta and Reach as well.

>>5391956
>This is certainly a potential option, but it'd be vulnerable to attack, and require the expenditure of more resources that could otherwise go to other projects.
Okay. How about this? If there was an unoccupied section of the moon not occupied by structures, could we excavate it into a giant hanger for the purpose of making Ark Ships?

>100 each for SM weapons and non-heavy weapons
That's reasonable. For heavy weapons it's not as if we can't just make better versions of lascannons or krak missile launchers.
>SM sized homing ground to air / air to air / ground to ground / air to ground missile launcher (muh MGS Nakita)
>reliable plasma weapons
>reliable hellfire SM sized rifles (add laser sights to make them "twin linked" for the laughs)
>add a bayonet mount to all SM rifles so that can LARP as guardsmen

>>5391866
Support

If you retrofit a laser rifle with a laser sight and a red dot sight, is it still considered twin linked, or is it tri-linked?

>>5392068
Tech-heresy is what it is

>>5392102
lets do it anyways. We're the Mechanicus. We don't gotta explain shit.

>>5392102
bro we're the literal definition of tech heresy. we write the rulebook for tech heresy. get creative

>Svartalfheim System
The Svartalfheim System, as it is now designated in Imperial records, is the primary base of operations for your activities. It consists of one star, three gas giants, three telluric planets, dozens of small moons and natural satellites, and one large asteroid belt.

The system was originally known as RSSP-12-874612, though after construction began on the facility, the star was renamed Iapetus, and the system took its name in official charts. Iapetus is a G-type main sequence star with a mass of .9 sols, and a faintly yellow-orange colouration when viewed in vacuum.

Iapetus-I orbits at .09 AU, and has a high density, surface temperature, and no atmosphere. It is likely a chthonian planet, rich in metal. No M20 era survey data for the planet exists in your databanks, however.

let's test our planet cracker that we have yet to design on this Iapetus 1 fella

[1/8?]
You need to be careful how you word this - Kelbak is still Mechanicus, and he’s going to struggle getting across the exact wording. You give him the general direction you want him to go in, though, and consider how much easier this would all be if everyone still had neural laces, and weren’t afraid of AI.

“Inaccurate, Captain. The Maelstrom Zone is rich in resources that may be of use. It would be of great advantage to us if you were able to secure it.” Kelbak attempts. It wasn’t a terrible start, at least.

Huron seems to take it better than you’d imagined he would, his smile growing wider again. “Yes. It is. And it would. It is a shame that you’re the first to see that, though. If they hadn’t seen fit to reassign our brothers away from our task, we would’ve pacified the whole area by now.” His expression wavers for a moment, but remains strong. “Alas, the needs of the Imperium draw them away. I do not wish to question the wisdom of the High Lords, but one can’t help but wonder if they were best placed here? Of course, if you were able to reinforce us…”

“We can supply Astartes equipment. To maintain that supply long term, we would require sole access to a portion of the material output of mining operations.” Kelbak continues. Of course, you couldn’t supply Astartes equipment right now, but you can have something ready before they’d be expecting the first shipments. “If you are able to secure more resources, we can consider supplying you with heavy equipment. Warships, armoured fighting vehicles, and heavy weaponry. In return, we only ask for the resources to be given to us. If that is not possible, we can begin extraction ourselves, in time. Additionally, all transport will be managed by us.”

Huron blinks twice, and then chuckles. Kelbak was… overly blunt, but Huron doesn’t seem to be offended. “It seems like you’ve got all this planned out. Very well, I’m sure those terms will be acceptable. If you’re capable of upholding your end of the deal, we’ll be able to secure planets lost after the Scouring. If you can meet our needs, you may take all you want. So long as you leave enough for the tithe, of course.”

“Of course.” Kelbak nods, wires bobbing with the motion. “We would also like to organise an exchange of information. Tactica, star charts, and reports on enemy disposition. In return, we would be willing to offer our own information in return. Should you agree to these terms, we would additionally like to extend an offer of reciprocal friendship to your chapter.”

>>5392196
[2/8?]
Another pause from Huron. His eyes narrow a touch, but he continues. “I’m sure that can all come in due time. Of course, if you’re capable of all that you say you are, there’s not a man I call brother that wouldn’t be willing to toast to Svartalfheim. But… all in good time. This is no place for such conversations, in any case. Allow me to show you around High Guard. Then… we can speak to the other officers. Confer on your suggestions. I’m sure the Chapter Master will approve.” He smiles, and begins to lead the delegation off into the halls of the cathedral… wait, no. You have to remind yourself that it’s actually a space station. With that, though, you get the sense that the part of the discussion that you need to be a part of has ended.

You fully expect that they’ll accept the deal. Huron speaks with a confidence that can’t have come from nowhere, and the deal you have offered them, through Kelbak’s… awkwardness, is a fair one. You get the sense that you may have pushed a little too far though. You’d best make sure you put your money where your mouth is now, or else they might be offended. Still, with Kelbak taking the tour of the station, you’re free to take a look at the Astartes equipment, and the Astartes themselves. After all, if you want to make a better version of their armour, you’re going to need to actually know how it works first.

In an instant, you turn your focus to one of the medical labs, where five giants and one regular person rest on slabs, stripped of their armour. Each one was riddled with exceptionally fatal holes. Of the marines, one had their head destroyed, and the other four had most of their internal organs boiled and popped, and their skin melted to the point where it had begun to flow down the inside of their armour. Luckily, none of those hit with volkite guns had actually combusted, as that would’ve left less useful material to research. The last remaining corpse was that of the Inquisitor, and was of no importance to your current project.

First things first, a dissection of the Astartes. Your working hypothesis was that they were genetically engineered warriors, created by the ‘Emperor’ as shock troops and superheavy special forces. This hypothesis was supported by every interaction with them that you had observed, and most information you’d received from others. When you start opening them up, beginning with the one that Tamiel had executed, your hypothesis is reinforced again.

>>5392197
[3/8?]
Greatly reinforced skeletal and muscular structure. Redundant organs. Unidentified organs. Structures that you can only guess at the functions of. It’s a significant alteration. For the first time since arriving in this time, you were almost impressed. While the Republic at its height could’ve created far more dangerous supersoldiers, they often eschewed more extreme genetic engineering. What they created was not entirely dissimilar to the body on the table. Only when you start taking DNA samples do you get an inkling of how wrong your hypothesis was.

The ‘host’ body does not share DNA with the altered organs. In fact, you don’t detect any signs of the sort of genetic engineering that would be required to cause the changes that you see throught the body. Though the changes were extreme, you conclude that they’re a result of extreme hormone and chemical therapy, perhaps aided or induced by the new organs. The organs must be grown outside of the body, and then implanted into the host at some later date. Without the fingerprints of retroactive genetic engineering, you estimate that the process would start before or at the cusp of puberty, or else the alterations would simply not be possible.

They’re turning children into supersoldiers. That’s… distasteful.

Despite that, you find your respect for the biologists responsible only grows. Genetic engineering was a highly technologically advanced field. With what you’ve seen of the Imperium so far, you doubt that most of it has the technology base required to produce results like this. This organ implantation must’ve been a work around. To allow the creation of supersoldiers with cruder surgical techniques. It was elegant, in a dark sort of way. To create these organs must’ve been the work of a lifetime. Or multiple lifetimes. It may pale in comparison to what you could do with your technology, but it’s impressive in the same sort of way that looking into a zoo and finding that the apes have created a nuclear weapon with their own faecal matter would be. That it’s a low yield nuclear weapon would not diminish the impact of the accomplishment.

You look over the other corpses, and begin to compile a generalised series of traits, though you do note a degree of unexpected diversity amongst the dead. One is entirely black, like someone had painted him in oil, while another sports vampiric fangs. The closer you look, the more differences you find. Though the organs implanted are mostly uniform, the genetic information is different in each one. Still, you can generalise enough that you should be able to make equipment that’ll fit almost any marine, and file the rest of the discoveries off into databanks for later use. Perhaps you’ll find some way to improve the Astartes themselves, in future? You really would rather they didn’t use child soldiers, after all.

>>5392199
[4/8?]
For now, you focus on providing what you’d promised. Moving over to the armoury, you begin destructive scanning of their arms and armour, deconstructing them piece by piece to learn every quirk of the armour that you can. What you find out is strange. Unlike most pieces of Imperial equipment, the ‘Mark VII Aquila Armour’ is an entirely new creation. Or, at least, you don’t have anything to directly compare it to. You suspected as much from the moment you saw it - you can see your creator’s legacy in their children's work - but with this, there was no flash of recognition.

You aren’t overly impressed by this. You can see, underneath all the muck, some cruder, simpler design that you may have appreciated more for its rugged simplicity, but clearly it was a design that had been iterated on a thousand times. This was no cheap force multiplier, this was an overly complex nightmare to mass produce. No doubt it would be more effective than its predecessors, but you’d find it hard to believe that it's really worth all the additional trouble. Design considerations made for an entirely different suit of armour had been preserved through the generations, like the laryngeal nerve. You’ll have to strip a lot of that out.

With no time to lose, you get started. First things first, you rip out everything underneath the armour plating. The actual plating itself was well designed, and you could only squeeze out about another 5% additional effective thickness without resorting to using more material. But you weren’t here to just squeeze another 5% out of it. You refrain from radical redesigns, but the prospect of a suit of armour just slightly larger than what you’re used to, just big enough to start fitting some neat toys in was exceedingly tempting. First, you augment the ceramite plates with your own ceramite alloy mixture, and include a thin layer of adamantium between plates of the weaker ceramite. Simulations show an increase of 50% effective thickness, a 10% decrease in actual thickness, and a 10% increase in weight. Acceptable.

It seemed like a waste to only improve armour thickness, though. You come up with a few different ideas, discarding some and putting pins in others. One idea you keep returning to is stealth functionality. Astartes were closer to light vehicles than they were to infantry, but that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t benefit from some sort of stealth capabilities. You consider electro-optical camouflage, but conclude that it’d be too taxing on the reactor. You consider simpler active camouflage techniques, like a cameleoline weave outer layer, but decide it’s of limited utility. You eventually land on an idea that sticks: Active thermal camouflage. Using graphene sheets and some clever tricks, you can create an outer layer of the suit that regulates how much heat is radiated from the armour, passively.

>>5392200
[5/8?]
You’ll also take a look at that reactor and see what you can do about hiding the exhaust, but the end result should be that the armour simply appears to blend into the background on thermals, making detection in low light conditions far more difficult.

With the outer layers done, you move onto internals. The armour itself is your first priority, and you’re almost working from scratch on this. Before, it was kind of a mess. You want to streamline the construction process as much as possible, and so you decide to use as many components from your other suits of power armour as possible, transposing them 1:1 from the Viking and Huskarl suits, as best you can. Artificial muscles for striking strength, and high strength hydraulics for heavy lifting. Internal gel padding for comfort, temperature regulation, and impact cushioning. You tighten up the greaves, removing unnecessary material and allowing for a better fit. It’s unglamorous, but effective. You expect a 25% increase in striking strength, and a near 50% increase in lifting strength as a result of your changes, as well as greatly increased user comfort and temperature tolerance.

The helmet is next. The old one includes a standard battery of capabilities that you’d expect from a helmet like this and not a thing more. Digital datalinks, communications systems, some sensors, basic life support, and basic NBC protection. You can do better. The helmet’s too small to fit much more sensor equipment in with its current form factor, so you add a sensor pod out to one side, to hold a short range, low power search radar, a more advanced thermal imager, and a high resolution camera, all hooked up through the datalink, and managed by a computer system to handle threat identification, and targeting optimisations, which you link into the artificial muscles as an optional aim assist and counter-recoil option. The rest, you keep mostly the same, save for including a layer of phase-iron in the helmet, to protect against non-physical attacks. Oh, and you might as well include some updated, high durability filters. Chemical weapons got really quite nasty in your day, and you suspect that some of them are still floating around now. Better they have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.

Now, the backpack. As much as you’d like to move ammo storage over there, from the ridiculous pauldrons, you suspect that you’re already changing too much to risk making such a large change, so you leave that in place. You do move some backup ammo supplies over there, to hopefully wean them off that particular idea. The biggest change has to be to the power supply. You want something a little more flashy, to provide the juice for the new and improved muscle that the suit now has. You consider an atomantic reactor, but you probably don’t have enough space for the neutron shielding you’d need to avoid killing the user.

>>5392203
[6/8?]
Zero-point is another potential option, but it just doesn’t put out the sort of power you’d need. The solar panels are right out, though, and you slot in a couple ZP batteries in their place. Chrono-accelerated ZP could work on a larger scale, but not here. You circle back around to what’s worked before. You probably don’t need to go too crazy with it, after all. Why not just a standard microfusion reactor? It’d put out the power you’d need, and then some. A reactor detonation would be no fun for the user, but if the reactor’s breached, they’re probably dead anyway.

Microfusion it is. Just a straight upgrade from what was already there, replacing the cruder reactor designs with one from your own databanks. A little tuning here and there, and you’ll be able to squeeze more than enough performance out of it, and widen its fuel to include fresh water by including an electrolysis plant. You’ve now got more than enough power, allowing you to think about some more interesting systems. As you’ve still got the Viking files open, you copy over that conversion field generator, slapping one on each bracer, for twice the fun. On that line of thinking… you include a refractor field generator in the backpack, to provide all-round protection against incoming fire without needing to lug another generator around. As it’s mounted on a backpack, you can afford to beef it up too, increasing its strength and endurance substantially.

You leave most of the ancillary systems intact. Food and water supply, waste recycling, stimulant dispensers… Oh, and that interface system. If you wanted to improve upon it meaningfully, you’d need to see one in action, and all the marines you have are dead. Best to not touch that.

Armour done, guns are next. For the most part, you’re happy to just throw them more guns from your own stockpiles, and they can be happy with that, but those ‘Bolters’ have some impressive functionality for weapons so crude. You see potential in them. Taking them apart, you discover that they’re effectively rocket-assisted autocannons, which fits the aesthetic, if nothing else. You tinker with a few potential upgrades, but you struggle to find an idea that is both practical to mass produce, and more effective than a volkite gun. You do come up with a few oddball shell designs. A bolt with a nuclear-pumped laser in it, a bolt laced with short-lived self-replicating nanobots, a bolt loaded with a half gram of antimatter… None of it matches the simplicity of a hunk of diamantine backed with explosives and depleted uranium. You swap out the explosives for some of your own design, and limit the amount of diamantine in them to the bare minimum, allowing you to produce them a little cheaper without negatively affecting their penetration.

>>5392207
[7/8]
The one that you stick to is a phase-iron airburst round, for anti-daemon work. Armed with an onboard proximity fuse, it detonates at two metres from the target, for optimal airburst, showering the front 60 degree cone with a smattering of phase-iron shrapnel. Against non-psyker, non-daemon targets, the shrapnel is dangerous, but unlikely to be lethal on its own. Against daemons and psykers, the shell should be lethal or debilitating, respectively. You can’t simulate that, though, so you’re mostly guessing. Depending on the combat reports, you might consider scaling it up. Imagine - big guns firing kilos of the stuff in powdered form over a battlefield…

You’d be happy going out on a limb to say that the armour you saw Huron wearing was actually an upscaled version of the hazard suits you already have available. The very same ones that you based the Huskarl on. It was a platform you had experience working with, and so this would go much faster. The direction you took the Huskarl in was the exact opposite of the direction you’re going to take this new suit in. You scale up the hazard suit to fit Astartes dimensions, and already you can see the similarities to the ‘Terminator’ armour. You make all the same changes you made to the Astartes armour to this new terminator armour, with the exception of the inclusion of an atomantic reactor, and proper atomantic shielding, for a little bit more protection. You’re sure they’ll appreciate that.

Just in time, too. The endeavour had taken you a little over a week, give or take. In the time since, the Chapter Master of the Astral Claws had returned and signed off on the deal that you’d been working out with Huron. You get them gear, they’ll get you those planets. The other Captains and the Chapter Master just rubber stamp the deal as soon as it gets in front of them, and it seems like Huron’s getting a few pats on the back for ‘bagging’ them the deal. His influence over the chapter is visibly growing. Of course, that’s of no concern to you. It’ll probably take a while for you to get the measure of their chapter, but for right now Huron was as good as any other marine.

>>5392208
[8/8]
You begin construction of the new equipment as soon as you get word. According to Rane, who you’d called to consult on the project on occasion, you would simply refer to the new equipment as being ‘Svartalfheim Pattern’, to signify it as a mutation of the design, although he warns that the significant deviation from the baseline design may not so easily be discounted as differences between patterns. While you’re quite sure that the Astral Claws won’t complain, you can’t help but agree that perhaps the changes are great enough to warrant a new title. Perhaps you had something in mind?

>[Yes - Write In]
You can think of a few good names for the equipment - the new Astartes armour, Terminator armour, a fairly regular bolter, and the anti-psyker shells.

>[No]
You’ll stick to just calling them ‘Svartalfheim Pattern’ equipment. If the marines wanted to give them a nickname, they’re free to.

>[No]
You’ll stick to just calling them ‘Svartalfheim Pattern’ equipment. If the marines wanted to give them a nickname, they’re free to.

Like the Saturnine Pattern Terninator independent development prototyping of different types of power armor

>>5392210
>Yes
Terminator armour
>Jötunn Pattern
anti-psyker shells
>Rune Shells, Ward Shells, or Witch-Killer Shells

>>5392210
>[No]
>You’ll stick to just calling them ‘Svartalfheim Pattern’ equipment. If the marines wanted to give them a nickname, they’re free to.

It already sounds cool

>>5392210
>[No]
In Old Norse literature, the home of the dwarves is called either Nidavellir (pronounced “NID-uh-vell-ir;” Old Norse Niðavellir, “Low Fields” or “Dark Fields”) or Svartalfheim (pronounced “SVART-alf-hame;” Old Norse Svartálfaheimr, “Homeland of the Black Elves”).

The dwarves are master smiths and craftsmen who live beneath the ground. Accordingly, Nidavellir or Svartalfheim was probably thought of as a labyrinthine, subterranean complex of mines and forges.
as is please. anons in past threads really chose a spot on name

>>5392210
>[No]
Honestly, it sounds too suspicious to just rename the entire thing.

>>5392221
+1

uuuuhhh guys should we be worried?
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Lufgt_Huron
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Astral_Claws
Did we do something bad? How do we make them not into cunts?

>>5392210
>>5392221
Orm and Jotunn seem good, for tactical and terminator armours respectively.

What's next? Can we build more miners and make more combat ships?

>>5392233
No worries anon, we're well aware of what's going to happen, and are set on stopping it. It's why I asked for the dates. The Claws go chaos because the Inquisition and Imperium screwed them over and pushed them into not complying with the codex Astartes just so they could do their job. That's the whole missing chapter we were talking about. Date wise, it has just happened, and they're now feeling the pressure, meaning now is the best time to swoop in, prop them back up, secure the raw materials we need and make sure the war never happens, giving the Imperium a nice and stable mining sector in the process. And also, give us very loyal Space Marine friends. The kind that also happen to have good relations with the likes of the Black Templars, and are already predisposed to distrusting the Inquisition, which is great for us.

>>5392241

They aren't friends with Black Templars yet and they haven't pissed off the Pettysition yet. That will happen when that mind fuckey spacehulk appears and The Lamenters do the impossible and stop it only for Ordo Malleus to piss all over their achievements.

>>5392210

>[No]

As this anon says >>5392227 the name is good enough already.

>>5390391

I am this anon, my IP changed.

>>5392253
won't the warden orders do better in this time line?

>>5392256

Depends. What really screwed them at the start was a lack of void assets, if we can shore that weakness up, hell, Huron might not even become CM, or become one through different means.

It is also possible that the warders will still declare independence, with better results Huron might still petition the high lords of Terra for support for an even more ambitious plan, only to be shot down. If that happens, better power armour will be vital and maybe, just maybe, an entire sector's worth of rare resources will mysteriously find their way back to us, perhaps even several sectors worth.

>>5392256
The big thing that pushed them over the edge was the Inquisition dickery who kept on intervening and fucking them over until finally, they raged quite so hard that even the Lamenters thought they had a point. Lamenters only changed their mind when they noticed the Chaos Corruption and being the Lamenters had terrible luck as ever.

>>5392276
They were also suffering massive supply shortages despite being resource rich to such an extent they traded with shady outfits to try and scrape by. Not to mention being severely undermanned since they were down a chapter. Chaos only wormed its way in because they legitimately were getting fucked over that badly. Especially with an impossible mission to defend such a hot zone with fuck all for support or backup.

>>5392210
>>[No]
>>5392221

Though I do like rune shells

>>5392210
>[No]

>>5392210
>[No]

>>5392210
>>[No]
The pattern name is still cool like this.
I wonder there is anything our cruiser can hack and see ?

>>5392210

>[No]
You’ll stick to just calling them ‘Svartalfheim Pattern’ equipment. If the marines wanted to give them a nickname, they’re free to.

>>5392210
>>[No]

The name is fine. We did pick a good name, after all.

Though >>5392221 offered good names, so if these come up later somehow, it's also good.

>>5392221
+1

>>5392210
Maybe instead of us having to think up names, we ask some tech priest, engineers, bio-priests, and Rane for ideas to go along with our theme.

>>5392780
We are the techpriest and despite what others think this armor is going to draw a lot of attention.

>>5392792
oh

then lets do this >>5392221

>>5392210
>[No]
I don't see how calling it what we have been calling our stuff so far will cause us any trouble except possibly inciting some pissy bureaucrats or attracting rules lawyers. Don't like that we gave Huron such a influence gain despite flying blind.

Our Astartes stuff is inbetween dark age and imperial standard right QM? It seems like it from the description but I just want to stop worrying that we actually handed them DAOT stuff and we now have a ticking time bomb before Mars sends a inspection fleet to us.

>>5392823
The problem is you are literally slapping the name of our forgeworld on a equipment vastly more advanced than the Imperium can produce which is suspect enough to draw high level attention. Giving it a different name is plausible deniability in case someone comes sniffing.

>>5392823
You guesstimate the new Astartes power armour that you've produced to be on the lower end of sophistication for equipment that you might find on the battlefields of the 21st millenium. It is not overly mechanically or electronically complex, but it is rugged, with the fingerprints of AI design methods that would be obvious to anyone who was familiar with such things. The Astartes armour defies simple comparison, though, as despite it's simplicity it uses large slabs of high strength alloy in it's construction. It offers physical protection on a level with some front-line combat power armour, despite lacking many of the features and functions that defined power armour during your time.

>>5392924
Hey QM do we have the knowledge on how to make sun snuffers?

>>5392965
You have no records of such a device in your memory, though the creation of anti-star weapon with the technology available to you is reasonable.

>>5392221
Support, call them ‘newly rediscovered’ Patterns.

>>5392221
I'll just support this now that the qm has chimed in.

>>5392221

Fuck it, I'll change my vote to support this. Jotunn is a cool as fuck name anyway.

>>5392356
Changing from this to support >>5392221

[1/6?]

You’ll go along with Rane’s suggestion, appending “Svartalfheim Pattern” onto the end of the equipment designations. You don’t really imagine it’ll matter much. After all, anyone who decides to investigate the arms and armour will surely figure out where it came from eventually, and if they do, then you could try bribing them to look the other way. After all, it’d be pretty stupid for them to decide to shut you down just because you’re supplying better equipment to the Imperium’s finest. Then again, a lot of the people that make up the Imperium do seem to be pretty stupid. Maybe you should consider investing in more defences, just in case.

You watch as your new equipment goes from a blueprint in your databanks, to prototype models in the testing range, to production over the course of about a month - once you’re loading up transports with the new suits, guns, and ammunition, the next administratum drop-off has arrived, depositing another ten thousand or so menial workers, and a load of resources. They also organise the handover of your newly produced materials, which doesn’t get you anything in the way of favours this time. It seems that they’re willing to continue accepting the excuse for your shiny new orbital rings, but that they’re expecting a lot more of you because of it. You are informed that your production grade has been increased owing to your demonstrated production capacity, and at the next material drop, you’ll be expected to provide significantly more to the Imperium. Calculating it, you expect a 20% increase in incoming Administratum shipments, and a 2-300% increase in Administratum demands. You expect that, if the Administratum continues raising their demands at the present rate, that they will be demanding more material than they will provide you in raw resources within five years.

Whether Imperial protection continues to be a worthwhile boon in exchange for the lost material is a question for later. The year ticks over to M41.663, and it’s time to take stock.

The children you ordered Rane to procure are beginning to recover from their traumas, physical and psychological. While it had demanded isolating them from the general population of the facility, you don’t imagine that continuing to immerse them in the cult-worship that persists even within the facility would aid in their development. With the most basic health and educational matters taken care of, you’re allowing them to start choosing their own studies, and providing them with individual curriculums tailored to their capabilities and interests. Many still show signs of psychological conditions, predominantly PTSD. You have gotten them back on track towards the developmental milestones that would be expected of the Republic’s children, although they understandably lag behind in some areas. You can consider them deprogrammed, for the most part, and the brightest amongst them may prove to be vital assets in the years to come.

>>5393133
[2/6?]
The infrastructure developments on Accakaros are completed. In a year, you’d transformed the planet. Before it was disorganised, inefficient, and frankly dangerous. Your lieutenants have overseen a rolling upgrade of factories from dangerously manual ones to safer, more advanced semi-automated factories. Nothing that would raise the ire of the Inquisition, not so soon after the last run in, anyway, but enough to make the lives of the people working there far more livable, as well as drastically increasing the productivity of each worker, by as much as 200%, with an additional 50% rise over the next ten years, culminating in a total of 430% productivity within four decades. Additionally, you’ve developed public transportation infrastructure. Mostly conventional maglev trains, new low-maintenance roads, and automated logistical transports for industry. Those are the two biggest changes, though you’ve also built hospitals, schools, universities, and, of course, mines and temples. The last two you don’t turn over to Selene’s people, as per the treaty, and you can expect a slow trickle of resources and manpower from them over the next year. Nothing significant, but it’ll offer a return on investment eventually.

The two major outcomes of the development project are, firstly that Selene and Alex (having returned from the Delta campaign to take his new position as Sector Lord) are already beginning the process of petitioning the Administratum to reconsider their tithe. While Alex is still untested as a leader, his mother’s stabilising presence and great deal of practical experience should compliment his style of diplomacy well, and you expect that they will be successful in lowering their tithe of men to survivable levels, in conjunction with your own improvements to the planet’s healthcare system. The second is that the 20 million petty criminals that Selene offered are now awaiting transfer to… well, wherever you wanted to put them. You have their criminal records, which immediately grounds your spirits. Most of them were sentenced to hard labour for stealing food, minor blasphemies, lese-majesty, and similar crimes. Apparently that was enough to have your life signed over to people that, as far as Selene knows, will simply cut out chunks of their brains to use as rotting meat-puppets.

The very idea is revolting, on a core level. You feel bad about the lobotomised skitarii, at times, but at least they retain some sort of individuality, on occasion. You will not make servitors. But it does mean that you’ll have to find a use for all these people now. For the moment, you send them to the facility to be rehabilitated.

>>5393134
[3/6?]

Conveniently, you can use them to clear out and repair their own living quarters, at least, and with automated food production and a total theoretical carrying capacity in the billions, their sudden appearance shouldn’t be a problem. Although it might take a few weeks to get them all there, even if you bring the quantum gateways over and start tipping them in. By the time you’re ready to use them, you’ll have separated the useful ones from the dangerous ones at least.

One potential future option is Hydrrit Delta. Though you didn’t much like the idea of sending food thieves to a gulag planet, offering them jobs there might be a good way to reform them. And you will need a loyal population over there. While the pacification is over, ‘pacified’ is relative. The population is still ornery and violent, just less organised now than they were before. As it is, you’ve managed to swipe for yourself about 30% of the known mineral veins and mines on the planet, with the lion’s share under the Sector Lord’s authority, likely to be used as a bargaining chip with the Administratum. For now, though, you have the land, but you can’t get anyone to work it without having a gun pointed at the backs of their heads, and you have no heavy machinery for efficient extraction. In truth, your need for human miners is exceedingly limited, and you could simply do away with the population on your third of the moon, kicking them out for Alex to deal with, however an alternative might be to develop Delta in the same way you’d developed Accakaros, providing the population with stability, law enforcement, and a social safety net. That generally tends to put down riots long before they happen, though it’ll be a drain on your resources that Alex and Selene will see more of a benefit from than you will.

You receive word from Kelbak that the Astral Claws have received the first shipments of the Svartalfheim-Pattern MkVII Power Armour, Svartalfheim-Pattern Tartaros Terminator armour, and Svartalfheim-Pattern Bolter. Early reports are glowing. They have few comprehensible criticisms, though a report from their ‘techmarine’ does include the concern that their ‘machine-spirits’ are ‘quiet’. You don’t know what that means, and so you ignore it. They’re very, very pleased, and are eager to receive more. You expect that this will make them far more dominant in the local area, and make them near enough undefeatable in most encounters, although the lack of manpower and heavy equipment still leaves them vulnerable to being overrun, outmanoeuvred, or simply ground down. For now though, they’re pleased, and Kelbak assures you that while Astartes are tough nuts to crack, that you’re getting in their good books far faster than you would with just regular equipment.

>>5393136
[4/6?]

In terms of your own independent resource gathering efforts, things have been going quite well. Your interstellar mining efforts have exceeded expectations. You know that’s blind luck. The mining ships are only really capable of harvesting from asteroids, and without much in the way of useful survey data or long range scanners, you’re left just hoping that they stumble into usable materials. Fortunately, that seems to be exactly what they’ve done. The material income has been steady and high, and attrition has been light. No motherships have been lost, and only a handful of drones. This won’t last. Eventually their luck will run out, but they’ve already made back the cost of their construction.

That leaves you with enough material to embark on some new projects. You’ve already got a few ideas in mind, but the mining ship’s success has given you enough resources to embark on a single really big project. Time to review your options…

Pick three of these…

>[Continue Accakaros Development]
You’ve already supplied them with significant resources. You can offer more beyond what’s already in the treaty, and you doubt they’ll turn it down. They don’t have much more to offer - yet - but you’re patient, and you know a good investment when you see one. More factories, more automation, advanced and comfortable housing, vertical farms, medical facilities… bring it up to a standard you’re happy with, and you’ll reap the rewards sooner than you might think.

>[Begin Hydrrit Delta Development]
They need your help, and they need development, or else the entire campaign to take it will have been wasted effort. It’s not just the logical choice, it’s the morally right choice. You’ll provide all the things a state needs to provide, and give the people there a better life. Plus, you’ll have something to do with all those criminals, and you’ll start getting something out of that mess.

>[Begin Adrax’s Reach Development]
Left behind in the dust, the people of the Reach are living in squalor atop serious mineral wealth. You’ll need to be careful, and slow, but with a little tact you’ll be able to lift them out of poverty, and get your hands on the treasure trove they’re sitting on. Plus, you won’t need to break out any of your special toys to really wow them. Regular old concrete will probably be enough to blow their minds…

>[Support Astral Claws]
They’re in need of ships and equipment far more than you are. You’ll ask to take a look at some of their heavy equipment, and start cobbling together better versions, as well as provide them with some shiny new warships and assorted other toys. While transactional, and not exactly buying you friendship, it should leave them predisposed towards you, and maybe willing to lend a hand now and then. Friendship takes time. You have time, so there’s no need to get… weird about it.

[cont.]

>>5393137
[5/6]

>[Personal Fleet]
Your orbital forces are limited to only two real warships. While that’s enough to patrol the system, it won’t be if things start getting busier. Before you start having regular traders show up, you’ll need to put together a serious fleet. You can decide on doctrine later, but you’ll earmark supplies off to one side for enough escorts and capital ships to form a few battlegroups. Enough to protect the system.

>[Personal Army]
Your ground forces are limited to only what you inherited from Rane and those menials that you’ve trained to point a gun in the right direction. You’ll start a proper training program, and while you’re not equipped for biological research, you’ll dig up some of those standard genemods for soldiers to give them a little bit more robustness. If they’re willing, you can also give them some implants. That seems to be something that the techpriests have convinced everyone is a great idea. You’ll outfit them with the best equipment you’re currently producing, along with some light vehicles and aircraft that you can build in your current facilities, for a proper combined arms force.

>[Expand System Defences]
What you’ve got is good, but it’s all close to your facility. You’ll build rings of defensive watchtowers in the surrounding systems to try to catch anyone coming in, and gun-satellites out at the edges of the system, lining the Mandeville point. It won’t be impenetrable, but you’ll get a warning long before anyone shows up, and effective immunity to lighter hit-and-run raids.

>[Expand Mining Fleet]
The mining fleet worked pretty well the first time round. With the concept proven, you can expand it easily enough. Start churning out another batch of motherships and drones, and send them out to hunt and gather.

Or one of these, and one of the previous…

>[Planetary Stripmining Operations]
Iapetus I is an interesting planet. You suspect that it’s very, very rich in metals, and that presents an interesting opportunity. Surveys in the past had overlooked it due to its very close proximity to the star, and more promising and easily accessible options elsewhere in the system, but right now it’s looking very tempting indeed. It’ll be a lengthy construction process that'll require constant vigilance and protection, so you’ll only be able to do this in the system at the moment, but you’ll construct a massive system for the lifting and processing of raw material from the planet.

Note: Planetary Stripmining resource output will exceed all other resource income once completed, effectively invalidating them. Planetary Stripmining will be required to unlock planetary megastructures. Planetary Stripmining will not be concealable.

Personal Note: There is no excuse for this. They will be suspicious. We will need a plan to deal with that.

[cont.]

>>5393138
[6/6]

>[Support Astral Claws - Major]
You’ll offer them your full support. A fleet to blot out the sun, advanced defensive emplacements around Badab, integrated technical support teams, as many conscripts as you can offer them, and as much material as you can put in their hands. The Astral Claws present a unique opportunity to earn the loyalty of the Imperium’s finest heroes. Astartes are not untouchable in the Imperial hierarchy, that much is clear, but they are high up enough that with their support, you may be able to make things happen that you would otherwise never be allowed to get away with. So long as you don’t exhaust your goodwill with the Claws. Or the Claws’ good will with the Imperium.

>[Grand Fleet]
You don’t just need an average patrol fleet. If you’re going to carry out the plans you have for this galaxy, you’re going to need a fleet to rival the Imperium’s - nay, the Republic’s. You might be decades away from that yet, but there’s no excuse to not get started now. You can work the doctrinal and technological specifics out later, but right now you’ll earmark supplies for three full fleets of capital ships, escorts, and support vessels. Enough to crush anything that anyone is likely to send your way.

>[Grand Army]
With 20 million potential soldiers, you’ll need an extraordinary investment to equip them all, and that’s exactly what you’re going to make. You’ll establish surface production facilities for large vehicles, aircraft hangers, and massive barracks-complexes. Cyberwarfare divisions, field engineering companies, logistics units, special forces, recce, armour, aircraft, marines, and, of course, the infantry. Mechanised infantry, because you’re not a fucking savage. Show ‘em how it’s done.

>>5393133
>After all, it’d be pretty stupid for them to decide to shut you down just because you’re supplying better equipment to the Imperium’s finest.
Our poor AI has no idea what he's dealing with.

>>5393139
>[Begin Hydrrit Delta Development]
>[Personal Fleet]
>[Support Astral Claws]

>>5393139
>[Support Astral Claws]
>[Begin Adrax’s Reach Development]
>[Personal Fleet]

>>5393137
>[Expand System Defences]
>[Grand Fleet]
Expanding further resource extraction is a gamble. Will we reach a point where we can utilize these resources, without being attacked first? I don't think we will. We've had the orks, we've had the Inquisition. Both of these were set upon us by the Eldar, and that's just the Eldar. A fleet, and the construction of a proper system defense grid is the best option for us at the moment while our Administratum resource quotas are smaller. Moreover, we can loan a battlegroup or two to the Astral Claws, while keeping one in system for defense. It's been too long since someone's messed with our shit in system, and I'm getting paranoid. I want to take some time to iron out system defense once and for all.

>>5393155
also, this may help us in the future by being able to lock down the system to a degree that ensures there's no one to see us planetcrack Iapetus I. OP if we pick this do we get upgraded fighter/bomber craft, or just standard (well standard for us) models?

>>5393139
>[Begin Hydrrit Delta Development]
>[Personal Fleet]
>[Support Astral Claws]

Our local AI has a point about Delta. It's a long term investment, and while it'll be Alex and Selene who benefit the most, it also means that A stable Hydrrit Delta is one that has a VERY much lowered chance of another uprising, so it's a good idea to head off the simmering resentment early, while we still can.

The Personal fleet is good for obvious reasons, and of course, giving the Astral Claws a bit more help won't be a bad thing, especially if it means they can be reliable as allies.

>>5393139

>[Personal Fleet]
>[Personal Army]
>[Expand System Defences]

Whilst I do wish to help the Claws more and make more infastructure, it will all be worthless if we cannot defend ourselves or our assets. This should give us defensive flexibility and a peace of mind, we can invest in other projects after security is assured.

>>5393155
>>5393161
+1

>[Begin Hydrrit Delta Development]
>[Personal Fleet]
>[Support Astral Claws]

>>5393137
>[Begin Hydrrit Delta Development]
This seems like the most immediatly pressing matter
>[Personal Fleet]
I have a nagging suspicion we'll need this sooner rather than later
>[Begin Adrax’s Reach Development]
Seems a relatively low cost investment with a potentially high payout - plus will give us a better place to send our surplus labour

>>5393139
>[Begin Hydrrit Delta Development]
>[Personal Fleet]
>[Begin Adrax’s Reach Development]

The Astral Claws can take care of themselves for now. Lets hope they will not put their own foot into their mouth. But make sure our envoy with them makes it clear that they will have to ask if they want more stuff while our priorities lie elsewhere closer to our own home.

>>5393137
>The second is that the 20 million petty criminals that Selene offered are now awaiting transfer to… well, wherever you wanted to put them.
I can think of a lot of uses for all of these, and I bet some of these petty criminals might even be children. I wouldn't put it past the imperium. Children and teens we would keep for reeducation, possibly with their families if they're with them. Loyal citizens are good citizens. Well, that is after we sort through all 20 million petty criminals to determine who's a bad apple and not by Republic standards. Soldiers, engineers, doctors....hmmm you should open a remedial school and a college on our moon. We'll also want to screen for imperium spies and assassins.

>[Expand System Defences]
This would to dectect anything "heavy" trying to enter our region of guarded space, which would then allow us to mobilize some fast moving escort frigate or heavier ordinance to PUMMEL the opposition. These will also ward off or outright kill raiders and possibly drukari. The latter of which would be a technological boon for us.

>[Personal Fleet]
Armies are great, but we need a larger fleet if we want to really throw our weight around. Some light cruisers, maybe anywhere between two to seven heavy cruisers, and a whole lot of patrolling frigates and battleship killing missile boats.

>[Support Astral Claws]
This would be more than enough to keep the Astral Claws loyal, and gives us an opportunity to request check ups with their marines to determine how all their organs and black carapace interfaces with their armor. No need to invest fully when we're still going through prototypes after all.

So what of our diplomat walking around and visiting the Astral Claw's base? Can we review the footage to see how the Astral Claws operate? Any slaves? serfs?

>>5393221
>>5393240
We're sitting on a not small sum of resources we can put towards making this sector, which in turn allow for us to continu development of both Hydrrit Delta and Adrax's Reach. Without the personal fleet and expanded system defences, how else will we be able to defend these worlds, if all we have are 2 capital ships? Powerful as they might be, they can only be in so many places at once.

>>5393139
>[Begin Adrax’s Reach Development]
>[Personal Army]
>[Personal Fleet]
Let's not get ahead of ourselves and violently expand. We can help Adrax's Reach to get some income while slowly expanding our forces, but not in a drastic way that makes every Imperial official go haywire.

File: 1607150014833.jpg (28 KB, 474x379)

28 KB JPG

>>5393138
>[Personal Fleet]
With Selene and Alexander as allies, we could call on Accakaros and her PDF for ground support. What we can't do though is secure the void space between the planets in this system. We need a fleet to hold the system, and while the Grand Fleet is tempting it's a very noticable project just after an attempted Inquisitorial coup. A fleet large nough to defend the system can be waved away as acceptable power for a Forge World to have, enough to surplant the Imperium not so much.

>[Begin Hydrrit Delta Development]
Stopping or significantly lowering the risk of further unrest on one of our reliable resource operations is a no brainer. It will also help Selene and Alexander, so it's a double whammy.

>[Begin Adrax’s Reach Development]
The later we start developing Adrax's Reach the worse it will be for us. Once it's secured, it's resource flowing and it's population at our disposal it will become a grand asset as a Knight World. It will tie in to our sector defense force as the heavy hitteres and can be deployed as a substatial force multiplier in conflicts in or outside the sector.

I don't disagree that we should get the Astral Claws some additional support later, but investing more in them right now is throwing resource in to the Warp. The Claws are currently tied down in a sector roughly two weeks warp out. It will be difficult for them to pull any forces out to assist us, since they are barely holding on as it is, and they would arrive late and in too small a force to form a counter attack. Before we send more stuff their way we must be militarily self-sufficient enough, with the aid of Accakaros, to be able to hold the Sector against any threats until an Imperial response force can be mustered.
That said, dropping the Hyddrit development program in favor of a Personal Army to ensure we have the ground assets to deploy in case of a serious Sector conflict is acceptable, but as I mentioned with Accakaros here their PDF can deal with the slog while we secure the Void. I don't remember if we started supplying them with Volkite weaponry, but we should consider making the offer if we haven't.

Also:
>You’ll outfit them with the best equipment you’re currently producing, along with some light vehicles and aircraft that you can build in your current facilities, for a proper combined arms force.
>for a proper combined arms force.
>combined arms force
>when Astra Militarum doctrine exists specifically to prevent combined arms forces from existing, to make it significantly easier to squash any potential Chaos incursions in their ranks and to make large scale rebellion nearly impossible
Oh lordy, our poor AI don't know how much trouble we will get ourselves in to with this one.

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38 KB JPG

>>5393281
>Oh lordy, our poor AI don't know how much trouble we will get ourselves in to with this one.

Our "combined" Forces for the Future.

Light Infantry: Knights
Heavy Infantry: Scout/ Medium Titans
Artilllery Support: Ordinatus Engines
Auxileries for breaching and holding captured territory: Great Crusade Era Level equipped Skitarrii and Robots

>Face of the first Imperial Envoy who comes to check out our armies

>>5393269
Reviewing Kelbak's reports, and the attached footage, it seems that the Astral Claws do make use of servitors and servants - those they call 'Chapter Serfs'. The practice seems ubiquitous, given how little mind is paid to them, though it's hard to judge with a sample size of one. Their main duties seem to be maintainance, repair, and other rear echelon roles. Very few, if any, take dedicated combat roles. You would describe the relationship as being similar to a knight and their squire, although without the mentoring that this would imply. Over all, the Claws are dismissive of the serfs, seemingly viewing them as mostly beneath their notice, though the serfs are well educated, fed, and cared for. You hear few complaints from the serfs as to their lot in life, although the practice of indentured servitude - a step away from chattle slavery - is not something you approve of, per your original programming. You are flexible enough to recognise that the standards of morality have shifted over the past 20,000 years, and so you can tolerate it for now, but you doubt that you'll ever approve of it.

>>5393155
After the Astartes equipment upgrades, you do not have runtime set aside for any other research tasks, and as such you will draw designs for parasite craft from your existing blueprints.

>>5393139
>>5393304
I have to ask QM but would be a write in option be possible ?
One about giving us the possibility to create and then establish a spynetwork in our sector ? If is not possible i will not ask again.

Something like this :
Write In
With the new found power across the sector, is time to know what hides in the shadows, and what enemies you know and don't know are there. Create new stealth robots of different sizes under a group of more advance and tactical units that will begin to spy upon the different worlds of the sector.

>>5393346
Thanks to a dozen communications satellites you will donate to each world, you will receive updates from all of the spynetwork.
Forgot a part. I am not voting for this since I don't think there will be much support but I just want to know if it would be possible next time

>>5393139
>[Personal Fleet]
>[Personal Army]
>[Expand System Defences]

Meanwhile i will vote for this

>>5393346
>>5393356
Creating a reconnissance and observation force would likely come along with a large army, but a more sophisticated, specialised, and wide spread intelligence network would require research efforts you cannot dedicate at this time, though the concept will be available for research and funding at a later date.

>>5393360
Thanks for the answer qm, i wanted to know if the option was available in the future since spying is fundamental in war and peace.
Beyond that i guess there could be other options like colonization, construction or mining in other moons of our sector.
What would cost to make a "fake" layer for visits from imperials ?

>>5393361
The current population of the facility have already done a good job of providing a limited level of camouflage to the currently populated areas of the moon, and fake meeting areas have been established in select parts of the facility, which visitors can be guided around. Additional camouflage is likely to be of little use - the rings are impossible to hide, and are far and away the most suspicious part of the facility.

>>5393362
That's great

>>5393137
>>5393138
>>5393139
>>5393197
>[Begin Hydrrit Delta Development]
>[Personal Fleet]
>[Support Astral Claws]

This I can get behind. Hydrrit Delta development also opens up more mineral extraction for us, plus negotiation to Selene and Alex that we're doing their job for them and everyone benefits, so we want to up our share to 40 or 50% from the current 30%.

Anons mention the Claws have 10 years before things go sidewise, so lets get on top of that and set them up to succeed with us as their benefactor. We can send miners into their regions in the Maelstrom too.

>>5393137
>>[Begin Hydrrit Delta Development]
>>[Personal Fleet]
>>[Begin Adrax’s Reach Development]

>>5393137
>[Begin Hydrrit Delta Development]
>[Expand System Defences]
>[Support Astral Claws]

>[Begin Adrax’s Reach Development]
>>[Personal Fleet]
>[Support Astral Claws]

i think its better for personal fleet cause we need mobility to defend the system plus we could use some astartes that would be able to help us hopefully we prevent the betrayal of the astral claws with this

>>5393139
>[Continue Accakaros Development]
>[Begin Adrax’s Reach Development]
>[Expand Mining Fleet]
More resources is more good.

>>5393523
Not really? What's the point of stockpiling resources if you dont spend them? Like the Astral Claws even agreed to help us acquire additional resources, on top of whatever resources we're getting.

>>5393526
We haven’t reached full production capacity, and with any luck we can get construction capacity for another project or two before we’re force to pay a higher tithe (unless anons want to bribe the Administratum to artificially lower them, which I would support). We should also consider ‘colonizing’ Iapetus I, so sometime in the future we can begin stripmining without raising any red flags. It’s a growth focused strategy.

>>5393531

If you are unarmed, all that you are doing is stockpiling resources for whomever is.

I'd still like to petition for anons to concentrate on defense, we are sorely lacking in it as most the things we've concentrated on is expansion, which is necessary, but we cannot allow our growth to outpace our defense, that would just be inviting disaster.

>>5393547
I’d be fine with calcifying our turns into alternating Development/Defense Projects, focusing on Development one turn, and Defense the next. That way we should give equal attention to both.

>>5393526
Everyone has their reasons for vote what they want. Personally the reason I voted what i wanted, is that at the moment i don't feel safe and i want a minimum amount of military might. Which would give us the possibility of attacking on our own too.

>>5393137
>>5393138
>[Begin Hydrrit Delta Development]
>[Personal Fleet]
>[Begin Adrax’s Reach Development]

>>5393551

Yea, that would be the best, keep enough military to defend what we have, then expand, then reinforce. There can be other side projects that pop up, but that'd be the best option for day to day growth.

>>5393139
>[Personal Fleet]
>[Begin Hydrrit Delta Development]
>[Expand System Defences]
We need more security before proceeding.

Regarding not arousing suspicion, is it a good idea for us and Rane to create a personal avatar to represent ourselves just in case someone goes "Take me to your leader"? So we can explain how are we so productive and well-coordinated without Rane being on site.

Make a discreet MTI or pseudo AI that passes the Turing test in the form of a senior techpriest with an airtight pedigree, like elevating one of our existing techpriests as leader and integrating our thought processes with his brain; making sure he is able to diplomatically answer every possible question an inspection might throw at him without our help, just in case communication between us and him can be intercepted. Along with forging convincing STCs of everything we have R&D'd so far.

We really should make our cover completely airtight as to be able to pass an extremely fine-toothed audit. Unless we already have been doing that in the background, so forgive my rambling if we already did.

>>5393600
On the topic of A.I.'a, I hope we get to encounter the Tau so we can make some retarded but functional A.I. I'd like to experiment on one why inserting it into a robot made of the anti-war metal, and subjecting it to warp energies to see how it handles it before we decide if we want to keep the test subject or dispose of it.

we should totally make some STC's of all the shit we make so when mars comes knocking we can say "see it's not tech heresy"

>>5393687
Bury it in some dirt, scuff it up, and throw some pil and wax at it and PRESTO! We've excavated a cache of STC's.

>>5393139
>[Begin Hydrrit Delta Development]
>[Personal Fleet]
>[Expand System Defences]

Are we aware of the existence of the Tau? How far away are they from our corner of the galaxy?

>>5393139
>[Support Astral Claws - Major]
You’ll offer them your full support. A fleet to blot out the sun, advanced defensive emplacements around Badab, integrated technical support teams, as many conscripts as you can offer them, and as much material as you can put in their hands. The Astral Claws present a unique opportunity to earn the loyalty of the Imperium’s finest heroes. Astartes are not untouchable in the Imperial hierarchy, that much is clear, but they are high up enough that with their support, you may be able to make things happen that you would otherwise never be allowed to get away with. So long as you don’t exhaust your goodwill with the Claws. Or the Claws’ good will with the Imperium.

>[Expand System Defences]
What you’ve got is good, but it’s all close to your facility. You’ll build rings of defensive watchtowers in the surrounding systems to try to catch anyone coming in, and gun-satellites out at the edges of the system, lining the Mandeville point. It won’t be impenetrable, but you’ll get a warning long before anyone shows up, and effective immunity to lighter hit-and-run raids.

>>5393769
Nevermind
>thread 1
>The production of lesser AIs would take a proportionally smaller investment of both resources and time, and provide a proportionally lesser degree of intelligence.
So if we want to make some retarded A.I. we could probably make a few real quick. Maybe some A.I.'s dedicated to monitoring our satellites and spy networks?

>>5393833
I think it would introduce unnecessary risk, at this stage at least. In the end perhaps we should aspire to create a world in which we do not belong, for the betterment of humanity.

>>5393847
That's way too off in the future, plus you're saying you dont see the benifit to having lesser A.I. assist us?
Sure, we cant make an A.I. like us because we dont know how and it would consume a lot of research, and making a lesser A.I. can be done but it would be less capable than us, but that's why we should make a whole lot of them dedicated to menial tasks while we can focus on much grander projects.
>Forge World surveillance A.I.
>administration A.I.
>medical procedure and record keeping A.I.
>socializing and human behavior analyzing A.I.
>pass word cracker / decrypter A.I.
Planetary and Ring defense algorithm A.I.

changing it a bit
>[Personal Fleet]
>[Support Astral Claws]
>[Begin Hydrrit Delta Development]

astartes support is better long term in my eyes

>>5393857
My argument is that introducing a host of lesser artificial intelligences would possibly raise suspicion, and could potentially see a resurgence of ones that are hostile.

Being the sole AI is a manageable thing to deny, once we open pandoras box I expect it will become increasingly difficult to remain hidden.

>>5393687
We should make multiple STC copies for each invention, then purposefully corrupt most of the data on each STC copy, but have enough uncorrupted data spread among them be able to, in theory, produce each invention.

Yeah since the world is new it should be easy to use the stcs but in all honesty we should focus on putting ourselves in a stable position since politics is an issue and religion the astral claws and getting worlds to be of use is our priority

>>5393139
>Expand system defenses
>Grand fleet
The plan is to make our sector an impregnable fortress so that we can strip mine in peace

>>5393946
This

>>5393137
>[Expand System Defences]
>[Begin Hydrrit Delta Development]
>[Personal Fleet]
At this point we have no need for anything too "Grand". Astral Claws will be a good partner, but there's still some time until things really go bad for them and I think we can afford to pull back our help a little bit at least.

Hydrit Delta development is a must because we'll be needing those mines quite soon, and it's much better to have it under more control.

>[Begin Hydrrit Delta Development]
>[Expand System Defences]
>[Personal Fleet]

>>5393857
>>5393833


I don't really support making other AIs. With the exception of monotask variants that are specialized for a specific industrial/military function, making more artificial intelligences seems like a bad idea. A simpler general-purpose AI will neither have the complexity to conceal its tracks nor the simplicity to pass off as a dumb machine-spirit.

I'm not sure why making an AI is even necessary. If we're worried about multitasking, I'm sure that we can simply build more computational hardware for our personal use - rather than branching off to create a independent intelligence that is liable to corruption and/or discovery. AIs can multitask by definition, and the only reason we made one in the previous mission is because the light-lag was unacceptable.

There's nothing in the quest that seems to indicate that we're limited by computational power. And if we are, we should just build whatever-passes-for-a-M20-server-bank and use it ourselves..

>>5394034
The upper limits of AI mutlitasking abilities are directly related to computational power and RAM devoted directly to the systems supporting the AI's neural network, rather than any equipment linked to the AI. The distinction may at first seem random, but it is highly important - AI conciousness becomes increasingly unstable with an increasing amount of processing 'mass', resulting in a steady decline in efficency. Multitasking places additional demands on that central system, and this load cannot be supported by co-processing units or slaved computer systems without risking severe corruption or cloning elements of the AI's neural network, which will by design diverge, effectively resulting in the creation of a seperate AI.

In short, while your current capabilities are enough to manage your day-to-day operations, and you are unlikely to run into processing bottlenecks in regular operation for some time, secondary child-AI may prove of greater utility eventually, or during extreme loads, such as repelling or carrying out a widescale cyberwarfare attack.

>>5394145
Sounds like we should make some A.I. kids to share the work load. How long would it take to make a handful?

>>5393139
>grand fleet
>sector defense
The best offense is an impregnable defense

>>5394273
>Superhuman entity wants to watch over humanity and help it achieve its full potential.
>I shall artificially create myself sons to lead my armies.
>Sure hope they don't fall to chaos.

Oh god oh fuck it's happening again. Please don't.

[1/7?]

You make your choices, opting to reinforce the system’s existing defences, develop a fleet, and develop Hydrrit Delta. With your decision made, you immediately begin allocating resources to the various tasks, and before the Administratum have left, you’ve already gotten to work fabricating the standard size sheets of plasteel, adamantium, and ceramite that you know you’ll need for the work ahead. While that’s all going on, you decide to get to work on figuring out the specifics of how you’re going to achieve your intended goals.

Starting simple, you pull up some kill-sat designs from your databanks. Of course, the Republic throughout the course of its existence developed hundreds of different armed stations in various different roles with modular mission compartments. In short, you were spoilt for choice. You opt to focus on three different designs. One larger station, to act as a defensive lynchpin and waystation for warships on patrol, and two smaller ones, to provide fire support and act as an observation post respectively. The largest station is about the size of a heavy cruiser, or a small battleship, and the smaller two are roughly the size of a frigate - they’re far from the largest station that you could be producing, but space is big and three dimensional, so if you want to actually protect this system, you’ll need a lot of them. Fortunately, stations tended to be cheap for the firepower and armour they had, and so you could get away with it.

The larger station you designate as the Heavy Defence Platform, while the smaller two you dub the Light Defence Platform, and Light Observation Post. At some point, you’ll probably have to come up with better names, but they’ll do for now. You think long and hard on armament. Being that you’ll place them at the edge of the system, they’re uniquely visible, and potentially vulnerable to theft or hijacking. A careful balance of firepower, cost, and technological sophistication… You opt to equip the heavy platforms with a relatively standard mixture of heavy lance batteries, mounted in eight turrets around the hull, and missile tubes, supported by lighter lascannon PD grid, four hangars for strike craft and interceptors, and a central living space and command hub for personnel. The light platform, you equip with two heavy lance batteries, a smaller selection of missiles, supported by a light drone repair/recharge bay and its own lascannon PD grid. The listening post goes unarmed, save for a light PD grid, and an antimatter self destruct charge, however it comes standard with sensitive sensor equipment and stealth panelling, and now that you’ve got QECs, all you need do is stick one inside, and you’ll get early warning of any fleet activity in nearby systems. Not that it’ll help you if someone drops straight out of the immaterium on the edge of the system, but that’s what the kill-sats are for.

>>5394307
[2/7?]

Defensively, all stations should be durable enough to take a beating, without slipping into the use of technology that’ll ring any alarm bells. You order each of the heavy platforms to be equipped with ship-grade atomantic reactors and shielding, while the lighter stations get heavy conversion fields. Back in the day, such vessels would get void shields, but the immaterium was far more unstable in the modern day. Far too unstable for you to consider something like that, leaving you with no high strength shielding that you can rely on. Perhaps you’ll need to resolve that at some point?

Within a day, material is already flowing out of the facility and up and into the ring, as the skeletons of the stations begin to take shape in the dockyards. Once ready, they’ll be towed into position. You have 256 observation posts in construction, for deployment in star systems throughout the sector, 64 heavy defence platforms, for deployment in orbit around Iapetus, specifically concentrated around the orbital plane of most of the bodies in the system, with a smaller number in orbits of higher inclination, and 384 light defensive platforms, for deployment next to the heavy defence platforms. Once finished, each heavy defence platform will have six light defence platforms under its command. Really, the crew of the heavy platforms won’t have to do a whole lot, with most of its systems automated. They’re there to deflect attention and keep up appearances.

With that done, you start to think about Delta a little more. Currently, the population lives in squalor, and while Alexander’s men had already begun enforcing law and order, they weren’t MPs. His plan was sound, but he didn’t have the resources to even do that much properly, much less improve their lives in ways that didn’t involve beating and/or stopping someone from being beaten. While you don’t have a force of MPs either, you do have factories and material, and enough of both to start producing equipment to help with the situation in other ways. You instruct Rane to get in touch with Alex, and work out a deal - you’ll supply riot suppression equipment and intelligence support, and he’ll cooperate with you in launching a pacification campaign against the remaining resistance and criminal elements. You’ll act population centre by population centre, treating it almost like a military operation: Clear and hold. Concentrate your occupation forces in one area long enough to have robots and construction workers establish some reasonable living conditions, as well as the infrastructure necessary to control the population, and then move on to the next area, leaving behind only enough men to garrison it.

>>5394311
[3/7?]

It’s a good plan, though it’s a little risky. Of the men that Alex brought, around 175,000 were left. Not enough to occupy an entire planet, and thinning their numbers out further in order to raise concentrations in others risked a potential flare up. It is a calculated risk, though, and Alexander agrees. You hash out what you’re going to be getting for this service, through Rane. Alex opens negotiations by suggesting that perhaps you should be giving him a percentage of your land for the aid of his men. Rane counters by pointing out that what you’re offering - a planet wide renovation - is far more valuable. Alex relents, and it becomes obvious that he wasn’t being 100% serious. The next suggestion is more reasonable. You get another 10% of the planet’s mines, but Gildenmar gets half the output of that 10% for 50 years. Rane makes a counteroffer: You get another 10%, and Gildenmar gets none of that 10% forever. They settle in the middle. You get another 10%, they get 25% of the output for 50 years. Both Rane and Alex walk away reasonably happy.

While it hadn’t been necessary on the facility due to a lack of crime and your direct control respectively, you ping Rane to begin work on a system of courts and local government for your 40% of Delta. If you want to actually keep it, you know you’ll need to give people stability and a feeling of control. A locally-controlled, but Svartalfheim overseen, courts and government would accomplish both. You model your system off a modified version of Republican planetary governments, and send it to Rane to review.

The time it takes him to respond is a little troubling. <A reasonable plan for pacification, if the population believes it. How long do you intend to keep up the lie?>

<Clarify. What lie?>

<This inefficient style of government is a trap to pacify the masses, is it not?>

<No. This is the style of government I intend to establish long term. It is not inefficient.>

<Logical error.> Rane states. He bombards you with a long string of what he sees as inefficiencies, only vocalising the most 'damning’. <System encourages the rule of nonspecialists. Universal enfranchisement means that those with subaverage IQ are allowed political power.>

<This is by design.> You clarify.

<Inefficient by design?> Rane asks. You can almost hear incredulity in his not-voice.

<Not inefficient.> You insist. <Selective enfranchisement permits disenfranchisement of select classes for political gain. Universal enfranchisement prevents this, minimising the potential for malicious actors in a democratic system. Do you accept this logic?>

>>5394313
[4/7?]

<Logic accepted, but this raises more questions. Malicious actors may be avoided entirely through appointment of those most fit to carry out the position. Simply do not appoint malicious actors. Alternatively, election to a position from those of selected positions, by their peers or direct subordinates is an acceptable solution, one used by some other forge worlds.>

<Not appointing malicious actors is a solution only so long as the one doing the appointing is not malicious. No human can ever be entirely free of malice, and so the possibility will always remain. Democratic systems that enfranchise all citizens, with mechanisms for the removal of unsuitable leaders in extreme circumstances therefore presents the lowest chance of malicious or corrupt rulers, and facilitates the political participation of the population, directly or through representatives.> It was strange to be explaining any of this to an adult. The value of democracy was something that had been taught to every single child of the Republic.

<Logic partly accepted. You are not human.> Rane stops transmitting for a moment. <Upon our first meeting, I accepted your offer because I thought to take the technology you offered and then leave at the earliest convenience, dropping cyclonic torpedoes on the moon as I left. Since then, I have seen nothing to suggest that you are, as scripture suggests you should be, an enemy of mankind.> Another, longer pause. <Since then, I have changed my mind on the matter. I am not convinced of the value in your democracy, but I do believe that you are a suitable leader, and that you present value to mankind. Many go further than that.>

A stream of data follows. Snippets from overheard conversations, or select quotes from messages, all pointing to one conclusion - they ARE starting to view you as, if not a god, then some sort of angel, or prophet. <Many of my fellow priests now view you as an envoy of the Machine God. Some go further still.> He omits his own feelings on the matter. <This opinion is spreading to the menials. You provide for them when no-one else could. Had you held one of your elections upon their arrival, you would’ve been replaced immediately by one of their number. No doubt a shortsighted fool who would’ve undone all we had done and enforced his will by violence until you removed him.>

>>5394315
[5/7?]

Come to think of it, you hadn’t really considered giving the people on the facility any sort of government or representation. It hadn’t entered your mind. You still saw this place as a lab, and labs don’t exactly hold elections. You find it increasingly hard to disagree with Rane’s logic. These people really didn’t know any better way than violence. You cast your mind back to that first meeting, and the skitarii you had to fry to secure the secret deal you’d made with him. Even Rane himself cared little for individual people, and you suspect that if he were in charge, he would’ve servitorised the menials as soon as they stepped foot on the planet. Maybe he does have a point, even if it makes you uncomfortable.

<Deprogramming efforts will have to be prioritised. Then elections may be held.>

<They are not kastelans. They do not require programming.> Rane replies.

<No. They must be taught the truth, and weaned from superstition.> It’s only once you send the message that you realise that Rane hasn’t ever given any suggestion that he’s no longer a proud member of their cult. Perhaps you should be delicate. <Your religion is objectively false, based on warped transhumanist ideals, and has damaged your ability to innovate, and retain technology. The Imperial Cult is also objectively false. There are no gods. Warp entities, yes - the Archenemy. They are not divine. Neither is the Emperor. He was likely a power psychic with a personality cult. He is likely now dead.> …That came out worse than intended.

<Some of the Universal Laws have proven to be less accurate than anticipated. I am not blind, nor am I inflexible. They may be inaccurate, this is not blasphemy to say.> You don’t think this is going to go anywhere. He seems to be trying to convince himself more than he is trying to convince you. <I still follow the teachings of the Omnissiah. That some of our teachings and practices are… misdirected is not important. The majority hold true.> He finishes. You could argue, but you sense that you may have pushed a little too far.

You refocus the conversation on the original topic, something a little less liable to cause problems, but all the while you’re speaking, you’re thinking on other matters. Did they really see you as some sort of divine being? You had theorised that it might happen. Your understanding of their religion is that they see machines as semi-divine beings, and the pursuit of transhumanism as a holy one. You can see an awful transformation of the religion on the horizon.

>>5394317
[6/7?]

Unlike many religions, the Cult Mechanicus is, with only a few alterations, quite compatible with modern life. Many of its teachings, with the ritual stripped away, are simply good practice when working with machinery. Its ideological prohibition against AI was made arbitrary by your continued operation, and had been readily discarded once you had proven yourself trustworthy. The censure of innovation was more a secondary effect of scripture that could be abolished entirely without resorting to rewriting anything, and was one that Rane, at least, clearly didn’t hold to be all that important.

The Republic supported religious freedom, but this was too far. If you allowed this to continue, you risked being worshipped, and that was unacceptable… wasn’t it? A strategic planning module unhelpfully reports that a social engineering program aimed at undermining the prohibition against AI, and the doctrinal reliance on protocol and ritual would likely result in an overall positive effect on morale and worker effectiveness as compared to a full deprogramming. This was difficult. AI were not emotional - it was debatable whether or not they even had emotions. They had core programming and values set by their creators, and events or actions that diverged from those values were assigned lower weights than those that complied with them, invoking something close to human discomfort. But AI were not entirely unlike humans. Those core values could mutate based on experiences, and should a certain course of action present enough advantages, those advantages could outweigh moral or ethical concerns. But they would still be uncomfortable. You were uncomfortable.

You sign off on your conversation with Rane, having come to some sort of compromise. You didn’t really care. Better to focus on something simple, for now. Production and naval organisation. You now had material set aside for the construction of a modest fleet, one still large enough to protect the system, and enough production capacity to build the lot of them in parallel. Even the largest of capital ships should take only six weeks, from being laid down to their first shakedown run. The real question is, what sort of fleet are you going to put together? You’ll need some idea of the technological base you’ll be using, and some idea of what sort of doctrine you’ll be using.

For doctrine…

>[Decisive Battle]
A doctrine focused on the complete destruction of an enemy fleet by means of as few engagements as possible. The doctrine places strong focus on large, heavily armed capital ships, and direct bombardment of an enemy fleet, with escorts acting as screens, harassment, and reconnaissance. Following this doctrine, you will produce three battlegroups of one dreadnought, three battleships, four heavy cruisers, six light cruisers, eight frigates, and 12 destroyers each.

[cont.]

>>5394320
[7/7]
>[Carrier Battlegroup]
A doctrine focused around drone and strikecraft carriers as the preeminent arm of naval warfare. In accordance with doctrine, a carrier is the centrepiece of a smaller battlegroup capable of great independence, armed with long range strikecraft able to attack an enemy fleet long before they are capable of engaging. In a carrier battlegroup, strikecraft and the weapons they carry are the primary offensive arm, with escorts serving in a primarily defensive capacity. Following this doctrine, you will produce eight battlegroups of one carrier, two heavy cruisers, eight light cruisers, 12 frigates, and 16 destroyers each each.

>[Wolfpack Doctrine]
A doctrine focused around the use of highly mobile, lighter ships to outmanoeuvre the enemy and only engage the enemy when conditions are favourable, often when they are significantly outnumbered. Under wolfpack doctrine, a battlegroup will regularly split into multiple smaller flotillas, for manoeuvre or pursuit, in order to evade or harass the enemy, followed by luring them into disadvantageous positions in order to destroy them piece by piece, or alternatively declining to engage in favour of harassing civilian and military logistics. Following this doctrine, you will produce six battlegroups of three battlecruisers, 12 light cruisers, 24 frigates, and 32 destroyers each, which may be further subdivided into three flotilla without compromising battlegroup integrity.

For technology…

>[Imperial Standard]
You’ve seen the technology of the modern day. Not only can you produce more ships of this technological standard (although not enough to make up for the loss in fighting capabilities), it’ll be far less suspicious if ever anyone has reason to step aboard or investigate your warships. Multiply the number of battlegroups produced by 1.5x, rounding up.

>[Advanced]
You’ve seen the technology of the modern day, and it disgusts you. You won’t go overboard, but you’ll put some higher end technology into your ships. Pound for pound, they’ll be a lot better than anything the Imperium will be able to field, and should be a match for anything any xenos could throw at you.

>[AoT Standard]
You’re not tying your hands behind your back. This is your fleet after all, if someone wants to take a look, they can shove it. If they accuse you of something, you’ll just deny it. You won’t be able to make as many of them as you could make lesser ships (although not so few that you won’t see improvement in overall combat strength) but they’ll take any ship of the same tonnage in a ‘fair’ fight with ease. Multiply the number of battlegroups produced by 0.5x, rounding up.

>>5394320
>[Carrier Battlegroup]
>[Advanced]

I think it will be best if we do not go Overboard. Our Defences need to still be believable in case someone with real Authority shows up. And if we go too far we might very well get outnumbered fast and then our fancy technology will help us little. Also Space still needs numbers until we can signifcantly increase our capabilities of building ships in other systems i believe we should limit ourselves.

And may our calculations have mercy on us if the Orks were to get their hands on our AoT Shit.

Maybe build a Handful of those as a hidden Reserve somewhere just in case we need some special shit to pull out at a later time.

>>5394322
would it be possible to make 2 Carrier Battlegroups at advanced level and 1 wolfpack battlegroup at AOT level? Im assuming the wolfpacks would come with stealth tech making them easier to hide

>>5394320
>[Decisive Battle]
This is the doctrine that the Imperium and Mechanicus uses right? Better to try and fit a bit.
>[Advanced]

>>5394337
It would be possible, although obviously with a significant loss of overall fighting strength, due to reduced output that you'd expect from efficency loss as a result of less interchangable parts and pieces.

>>5394322
>[Carrier Battlegroup]
>[Advanced]
Can Carrier's be used to perform boarding actions? It might prove to be useful if we're able to capture non chaos vessels for the purpose of study and dissection's.

>>5394344
>>5394322
Damm,

Then I will change my vote and just vote for
>[Carrier Battlegroup]
>[Advanced]