>>50874097
Since we're talking regular IG, why don't we talk commissars? I can see why a fascist, grimdark Imperium would have commissars, but I have trouble seeing why a nobledark Imperium would have them given that:
- Having the Commissariat around creates multiple conflicting chains of command, which causes problems (just look at history)
- The Imperium doesn't care what you worship as long as it's not Chaos, so there is no need for political indoctrination and thought police. Many people in nobledark!40k know that Chaos is a bad thing, and are more likely to be on the lookout for it
- The Commissariat is tied to the Ecclesiarchy, which does not exist in this timeline
- Their outfits make them giant bullseyes for snipers, even orks tend to go for the commissars because they see the humie with the biggest hat and the loudest gun

But since commissars are such an iconic part of 40k, maybe we should try to salvage them. Some suggestions:
- Commissar's main jobs are to maintain moral and command the regiment. In essence they take the place of a corporal in the IG's chain of command.
- They ARE more trained than the average individual to look out for Chaos corruption
- Not always orphans. Regular guardsmen with leadership aptitude can also go through commissar training
- Despite the increase in sanity in nobledark!40k, BLAM-happy commissars still exist. Power corrupts, after all. The only difference is when the activities of those individuals come to life, they get a military trial. Whenever a commissar gets assigned to an Imperial Guard regiment, the guardsmen hold their breath to see if they are going to be brave or insane. Sometimes, if they are particularly unlucky, they are both.
- Still carry their infamous “more effective on their own men than the actual enemy” bolt pistols. However, their reason for doing so is much more tragic. The reason commissars carry such weapons is to provide mercy killings to guardsmen who have been corrupted by Chaos.

>>50874987
Hell, did you pick up on the filename?
As for reworking commissars, pretty much I'd agree with you on
>maintain moral and command the regiment
>provide mercy killings to guardsmen who have been corrupted by Chaos.

Without going into /pol/ tier "muh degeneracy", would Chaos corruption perhaps be more rampant in an Imperium without the Ecclesiarchy and without such an overzealous Inquisition? Granted, education would mean countering it would be far easier, but given that the IG wouldn't have their eternal faith in the EMPRAH to go for (instead just their local religion or the Imperial Truth equivalent), commissars might simply serve as mini inquisitors within IG units.

Also, greater ease of corruption means that we might see more Traitor Guard opening up, which is always interesting

>>50875345
Actually no I did not. I did a double take when you pointed it out.

Since knowledge of Chaos and how to counter it is much more easily available, I can see the Chaos Gods putting a lot more effort into finding corruptable individuals. It's easy to corrupt someone if their entire faith is built on a lie.

>>50875450
But one of the big themes regarding the Imperial Cult is that "Big E was smart, but when he went Fedora he did it completely fucking wrong", and how the Ecclesiarchy and the unshakable faith (lies or not) is a pretty hard counter to chaos (eg. SoBs being as tough or tougher to corrupt than SMs). Again, this is straying pretty close to "reeeeeeeeeee free atheistic thought makes you a degenerate", which is unsurprising given that we're on this particular argentinian knitting enthusiast imageboard, but it would kinda make sense that without the blinding faith of vanilla 40k, the Gods have an easier time corrupting some.

>>50874987
Officers shooting their own men was the norm for all armies until around ww2.
Only some armies still did it there.

Also it's iconic for 40k.
If you want to make it more nobledark, I think making Gaunt like commissars the norm would be a good idea.

>>50874987
The Inquisition is the reason the Imperium is still standing in the main universe.

The corruption of chaos has so many forms that it is better to be safe than sorry.

People having somewhat knowledge about the warp would make them agree if anything.

I could see people kill themselves after having witnessed a demon being a thing. Not because they could not bear the memory, but knowing that they may be carrying the seed of chaos now, thus rather end themselves than to infect others.

>>50876917
Well, then all Chaos would do is summon daemons to run through cities shouting LOOKATMELOOKATMELOOKATME

>>50875485
>it would kinda make sense that without the blinding faith of vanilla 40k, the Gods have an easier time corrupting some

Fair point. But at the same time most Imperial citizens in vanilla don't even know Chaos exists beyond (at most) a metaphorical concept. So if they run across anything daemonic they don't know it's a bad thing, and if the Dark Gods start tempting them they may not even know they are playing with fire. So it may just even out. There aren't as many zealots out there with the kind of blinding faith that makes daemons not even bother trying, but people are well informed enough that its harder to get stuff past them. However, although living conditions are relatively less grimdark (meaning people are not as desperate to turn to Chaos to change things), the lack of a universal faith means its even harder to tell the Chaos cults from everyone else.

Big E's issue was not just that he went full fedora (though I agree that was an issue) it's that he kept the fact that there are gribbly warp horrors that want your soul out there, so no one knew it was even an issue.

>>50876917
Then you get this >>50877080. That's just getting into grimdark territory. Nobledark!Imperium has books with things like "never sell your soul to anyone, I don't care who they are if they're asking for that there's something fishy about them". There are also probably things like "look, if you saw a bloodthirster from 500 meters away, you're going to be fine. Nurglite daemon maybe not, but as long as it didn't actually hurt you you're going to be okay."

>>50876821
The issue isn't the BLAM-ing of deserters, the issue is that the Commissariat exists as a completely parallel chain of command for the same IG soldiers (Commissars being completely out of the IG chain of command in the first place). Similar structures have existed in 20th century countries, but they almost always end in chaos because you have two groups fighting with each other for control rather than the enemy. Its even mentioned in the fluff that the simultaneous presence of the IG brass and the Commissariat causes problems, because the Guardsmen are more likely to listen to the commissar than their own commander, cutting the IG leadership out of the loop.

It makes sense that normal 40k has commissars, because the Imperium is a hellhole and it's hard to get people to fight impossible battles for an idea they don't believe in without the threat of violence, the Imperium is a fascist theocracy so it makes sense they would have thought police making sure everyone toes the line about the Imperial Creed (most of the other countries that had commissar-like positions tended to make sure the soldiers were as indoctrinated as possible), and half of the Imperial Guard defected to Chaos during one major event, which makes them understandably paranoid about maintaining the obedience of their troops. The first part is still around to some degree (anyone would probably have to roll a will check facing the tyranids), but the other two aren't issues in this timeline.

>>50877853
This.

Book of Lorgar and derivative works is in very widespread circulation. It provides a basic education in avoiding the grasp of Chaos, how to spot it in others, why it's a bad thing and what to do about it.

It works as well if not slightly better than the Ecclesiarchy of Vanilla 40k.

Commissars represent a tangible tie for the foot sluggers to the Imperium of Man and Eldar. Some people in the real world have trouble thinking past their city/tribe/religion to focus on what's good for their nation. Take that problem, and magnify that to a galactic level. Guardsmen that might previously have considered the trip to the big city a long ways away are suddenly surrounded by technology beyond imagining, aliens they've only heard in legend, and worst of all, guardsmen that they're told are the same species as they are, but do everything completely wrong in the most disgusting ways. Some of those freaks have TATTOOS for pity's sake!

This isn't just the problem that the grunts suffer. Officers, graduating top of their class at the finest war academies on their worlds are forced to rub elbows with complete yokels that couldn't tell you the difference between a flanking maneuver and their asshole, or complete snobs that sneer at one another's credentials and undermine authority with their pompous arrogance. In short, for humans faced with the weird and unknown, they can get unpredictable. The commissar is there to ensure that every soldier remembers their duty to the Imperium, and prevent culture shock from harming army cohesion. Guardsmen regiments are given a great deal of latitude- they may specialize in their own methods of warfare, select their own uniforms, and create their own command structures, with the exception of the commissar. Every raised regiment requires a commissar, and every commissar dresses exactly alike, and every guardsman regiment is required to train and recognize what the commissar represents as the Imperium made manifest, the final word on matters of justice, and the last resort commander. Regiments across the galaxy immediately know that if all their native officers fall, they need to look for the cap and great coat to follow.

Something something also act as military police tired I come back later

>>50881007
Holy shit this is good

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So are ther eldar and other xenos in the commissairiant?

>>50881007
Impressive.

The only things I am still wondering are how do IG commanders and commissars function? Is the Commissarist associated with the military this time around, having been created to make sure the wheels go smoothly? Does the commissar have power over the commander, or does he act more like the commander's right hand who keeps the men in line and the right supplies in stock (while also technically having authority to pull rank on the commander in case of Chaos corruption)?

And if the Commissars are military police, how do they relate to the SoB? Are they like "solve any problems that crop up at the local level on my own, if the grox shit is really going to hit the fan and its something I can't do alone call in the big guns"?

>>50882120
They do not rule, they do not follow.

They look over the shoulder of the rulers to make sure they aren't doing anything too stupid and they make sure the plebs follow.

They can't pull any rank unless everyone else with a real officer rank is dead. They can't execute anyone unless they are sure that they are acting in cowardice rather than tactical sense, they are obviously Douglas Haig levels of incompetence or that they are secretly on the other team.

They have no rank. They have very little actual authority, although what authority they do have is terrible and terrifying. Everyone gets a basic anti-Chaos education, the commissars get additional training.

This time around there was no great and cast iron divisions in the break up of the old Legions. If you are part of an Imperium commissioned fighting force you get one of these scary fuckers traveling around with you.

It's not so bad, they are usually very well educated in the ways of war and they sometimes come out with good ideas.

>>50882235
So, would it be accurate to say that Commissars are to Guardsmen as Custodes are to Space Marines? Or am I underestimating the power level of Custodes.

>>50882736
I thought the custards were the Emperor and Isha's bodyguards?

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>>50874097
>CSMs are starting to take form; most but not all from DAs. Plus since they're rare than Croneldar
I was wondering that if CSM was say made of 3/5 DA than the other 2/5 should be made of another two different legions than. The numbering of the CSM could be anywhere from 100,000-300,000 just to keep them outnumbered by the Chaos Eldar at all times while still keeping them a real threat to sectors. Without any unholy bullshit, all of the CSM fighting 1 on 1 could be crushed by five full SM legions thus forcing the CSMs to become very cultish very fast. The turned CSMs need as much magical Chaos bullshit just to survive when loyalist forces learn that they have turned so they all start to willing offer serfs and burning hive-cities in order to always keep one step ahead of hunting Imperial forces.
1/5 of the CSMs should Slaaneshi Night Lords,now stay with me here, things like broadcasting torture across a sub-sector or mutilating a corpse beyond recognition in which they clearly enjoy it is something the whispers of Chaos can influence these SMs. Their motto is "Fear the Shadows".
The other 1/5 should be Nurgleite Imperial Fist, this is where these SMs are desperately defending a hive-city from Chaos Orks on let's say Necromunda but are losing the battle and know the only hope of victory is by reviving their fallen brothers or SMs fighting without legs/ missing an arm. The dead SMs in the streets are piled up with armor still on them to be used as barricades when the fighting become hopeless. Their motto is "For the Imperium".
The original Chaos DA could be split into 3 ways as infighting broke out after they fled into The Maelstrom at the end of the WoTB. The 1/3 of the CDA are the old guard that planned the rebellion want to maintain they are Chaos Undivided just to call in favors from any gods while still looking like they could join one of the gods any time but won't.

>>50881007
Haven't the Eldar and the Imperium been allied and mingling since the end of the DAoT? You'd think culture shock would've worn off.

>>50883733
We're dealing with a ten to twenty thousand year time span here. The stuff from the earlier threads with the hunky dory mutual respect and the romanticisation of the truce comes latter.

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>>50883673 (cont.)
The DA motto is "Death to the false humans".

The splinter warband that is made up of 1/3 former CDA led by disgruntled veterans can form a group called the "Skull Angles" in which they only worship Khorne. Commonly those in the SA believe that because of the fact the DA when turned traitor didn't just outright killed the civilians or POWs instead trying to convert them all. The mass conversation, understandably, slowed down the traitors leading to the loyalist being given time to react with overwhelming numbers thus forcing the traitors to flee to The Maelstrom. Their motto is "Fill the skulls with blood!"

The last 1/3 of the DA to splinter off formed into a warband called "Warp Spirits". They are led by low-ranking officers that fought in the WoTB and saw the traitor DA hesitate to use the full potential of the Warp. They even placed restrictions on what certain hex, spells, or summoning couldn't be done even as they were fleeing from Loyalist forces. The warband now broke away from the DA and only worship Tzeentch, thinking they could have planned the rebellion better. Their motto is "Blessed with victory".

This should have the CSM as a diverse force that is devoted to each Chaos God and Chaos Undivided while adding defectors from legions other than [TRIGGERED] Dark Angles.
The CSM navy would still be the same vastly outnumbered and outdated fleet like in vanilla!40K but this time more outnumbered, but to compensate the ships can be covered in Warp properties such as random damage absorption or illusionary doubles at various distances.
Tiny tricklings of defectors from the other legions can form into smaller warbands after the WoTB but the majority of the CSM are made up of direct descendants of the original 3 traitor legionnaires.

Should there be equivalent to Father Christmas beliefs in the Nobledarkness?

>>50883783
Earlier thread said that post-fall Eldar tend to have a lifespan of about 4000-5000 years. Eldar and mankind have been allied for 10,000 years.

Doing some back of the hand calculations with the (very big) assumption that eldar generation time versus maximum lifespan is similar to humanity, only about 6 generations have passed for the Eldar since the alliance began. That is only about 180 years from a 21st century human perspective. Add on top of this that you have the older, more conservative Eldar still around for quite a bit of time (given the bigger error bars on age) dictating policy and reminding the young'uns that things weren't always so rosy, and things change a lot slower than one would expect.

>>50884332
>The CSM navy would still be the same vastly outnumbered and outdated fleet like in vanilla!40K but this time more outnumbered, but to compensate the ships can be covered in Warp properties such as random damage absorption or illusionary doubles at various distances.

Depending on the availability, the human forces of Chaos could just take space Hulks and strip them for parts. All they have to do is clean the hulk of genestealers and miscellaneous weirdness, since Chaos doesn't care if it's stuff is warp-tainted, and most Orks are chaos-aligned in this timeline.

Despite their being no schism within the Mechanicus, there are still probably plenty of Hereteks around. The repressive nature of the Mechanicus and the general tendency of younger, more naive members to try to poke stuff they shouldn't means that you're probably always going to get someone who is willing to partake in forbidden experiments doing things like using daemon blood instead of oil. The Mechanicus are probably more likely to fall than the average Imperial citizen because like corrupted Inquisitors in regular 40k they're arrogant enough to believe that they can control Chaos until they're in so deep they can't get out.

On the subject of Dark Angels, I wasn't sure if we had decided to completely scrap the Watchers in the Dark (I know there is a rank within the loyalist DA chapters called "Watcher", so I wasn't sure), but in case not here is just an idea for the Watchers in the Dark as a minor xenos race.

When the Old Ones left much of their webway-making equipment on Caliban, it left a bit of a hole in the fabric of reality that allowed Warp energy to leak through. This wasn’t helpful for a planet so close to the Eye of Terror, and much of the planet became uninhabitable due to Warp exposure turning the local ecosystem into a hellscape. Out of a sheer need for survival, the native sapient species of Caliban developed into a society fanatically obsessed with opposing Chaos and reclaiming their planet, but because of their limited physical prowess were unable to do much more than keep their few remaining bastions of civilization untainted at great cost.

The Dark Angels, being the first legion sent out beyond the solar system to look for survivors of the Age of Strife, were the first to encounter Caliban. Luther, more worried that the Imperium was going to carve up Franj while his back was turned, was dismissive, whereas Lion, ever the idealist, saw the Watchers as a Chaos-opposing people in need and stepped in to help. Lion and the Dark Angels cleaned up most of the Chaos Beasts on Caliban, and in gratitude the Watchers pledged their fealty to Lion and the Dark Angels. A small garrison of Dark Angels was left on Caliban, but this notably did not include Lion or Luther. The garrison’s job was to help the Watchers rebuild their planet, but it was difficult because they could never really find the source of the Warp corruption and could only keep the number of beasts to a minimum.

>>50886421 (cont.)
The Watchers in the Dark are essentially the reason the loyalist Dark Angels even survived the schism. When two-thirds of your forces turn on you at once, it is difficult to even survive under normal circumstances. Although the Watchers couldn’t physically fight against the traitor space marines, they could relay information and help loyalist marines find one another. And in a pinch, if you don’t pay attention to Orko in the corner with a knife while fighting your loyalist brother, he will seriously mess up your day. However, in the course of the fighting during the schism, Caliban blew, and the Watchers in the Dark were left without a homeworld. Some say the Watchers intentionally blew their homeworld, to deny the Fallen the use of the Chaos Beasts and the artifacts beneath its surface.

The Watchers are a very minor xenos race. Their homeworld is gone, and there are only just enough of them to act as support staff for the loyalist DA successors. At first the Watchers were a rather poorly kept secret to the rest of the Imperium. However, when the Imperium started letting minor xenos races into the Imperium, the Dark Angels were some of the first in line to present a petition on behalf of the Watchers. People coughed when they saw this, but let the Watchers in anyway. Even as an official part of the Imperium, the Watchers are kind of enigmatic. Watchers in the Dark can occasionally be seen on hive world and in other metropolitan areas, but are almost always running some kind of errand for their chapter. Their biology and social structure beyond “warp-resistant, long-lived, and hate Chaos” are only known to the Dark Angels and a few Inquisitors who have found out via other means. Even the gender of a given individual is not clear. They technically don’t pay a tithe, but since the entire species is basically a vassal race glued to the ass of the Dark Angel successors, nearly every adult member of the species serves in some fashion.

>>50877853
The problem is, that even watching a Bloodthirster from 500m can corrupt you.
Not for sure, but there's a chance down the road.
Hence the "kill them all and let the emperor sort them out" acts of the main universe Inquisition.
Chaos is just that dangerous.

>>50877080
That demon just fed the Emperor a lot of faithful. Dumb demon.

>>50883733
They allied in the crusade. Means around 10k years allied. DAoT ended 5k years earlier.

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>>50886449
>>50886421
I really like this.

There could be oh so many in-universe rumors surrounding them.

That they are Imperium sworn Hrud.
That there have been none born since their breeding grounds got destroyed.
That they haven died out because they have a secret sanctuary under one of the Hives of Old Earth, the last breeding ground they have
They survive as nomadic creatures now, forever moving with their astartes masters. Their homes are star bases and ships and fortresses.
That they can slip into an somehow travel through darkness.
That they hand out present to good little boys and girls under the command of Cypher Claws.
That the Mechanicum uses them to spy on your comings and goings and dreams.
That they somehow know the names of everybody they meet.
That besides the eldar they are the only creatures to be able to navigate the webway.
That they sing beautifully but they won't let anyone hear them.
That the eldar forgot who they were, but the Watchers remember them and remembered more than the eldar would like.

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So what are the Adeptus Arbiters like?

>>50882855
Yeah, but I'm talking in terms of skill/power level, not duties

>>50887271
Original writefag here, I like a bunch of these ideas as in-universe rumors.

>That there have been none born since their breeding grounds got destroyed.
>That they haven died out because they have a secret sanctuary under one of the Hives of Old Earth, the last breeding ground they have

Some extra info, at least in terms of what the average Imperial citizen wouldn't know, is that the Watchers have extremely long lifespans and warp resistance as a result of natural selection on Caliban (the adaptations to prevent mutation and cellular degeneration also help slow aging). This is about all that kept their species from extinction, since they maintain reproductive age for a longer period of time (think tuatara or sturgeon).

Depending on the numbers of DAs (by which I mean the successor chapters), the Watchers would be considered a threatened species by our standards. There probably has been reproduction since the Schism (if nothing else because even with long lifespans Watchers would be near extinction after a while), but since no one knows how to tell a young Watcher from an old Watcher, no one can tell the difference.

The long life thing also is why they almost never intentionally fall to Chaos. Young Watchers hear a lot from their elders "we had a nice planet once, and then Chaos ruined it. Fuck those guys".

The Steward probably knew they existed before they officially became members of the Imperium (probably from the Lion), but didn't say anything because they were clearly anti-Chaos and reliable. Its also why their acceptance got through despite being mysterious creatures attached to the legion infamous for going rogue.

The only reason the DAs know about them is because the Lion went out of his way to do them a solid back in the day, and as far as they're concerned the loyalist DAs are good people. They just don't trust other people yet, especially given their currently precarious situation.

Or if these don't work, lets hammer something else out.

>>50887076
How much of a chance? If it's high enough that just seeing a daemon from half a kilo while you are running away from the general mayhem can corrupt you, then most of the primarchs and everyone at the Battle of Terra should have been killed because of the high daemon presence. Nobledark Imperium literally has books explaining things like "minimum safe distance" and "when to start running".

Keep in mind Chaos supplements their armies with a lot more daemons than in vanilla!40k, given they don't have nine traitor legions to work with. That would mean a whole lot more purging than usual if all else is the same.

Of course, there definitely are aspects of Chaos which are about as safe to be around as nuclear radiation. I can see people treating GKs (if the GKs are publicly known) with an odd sort of James Bond-esque respect. They know they're doing something important, but they also know they do not want to know the specifics of what that actually is.

>>50887123
I'm not sure it works that way.

>>50883733
>End of the DAoT?
Sorry, what? I thought the initial first contact was early GC (or at least starting formal relations, where Eldrad gave a hand into the creation of GKs in return for the raid). AFTER rescuing Isha, the alliance was formalised, and only after the WotB was it more than just a token of technology exchanged for brute force.

>>50874097
>>Still need Weebs

The Tau are in a rather interesting position in this universe. In contrast to vanilla 40k, the Tau of nobledark!40k are kind of arrogant. When the Imperium made first contact with the Tau and offered inclusion, the Tau turned them down, thinking they could do things better by themselves. The Imperium tried to take the role of “older sibling that has been around the block once or twice” with the Tau Empire, but the Tau mostly refused to listed until the Imperium had to step in and bail their ass out of the alligators with the Dark Eldar.
However, come M39-40, with the integration of the Tau into the Imperium, things are liable to change. The Tau are likely to discovery that, with the exception of the lack of Tau supremacy, the general beliefs of the Imperium are largely synergistic with the Tau idea of the Greater Good. In this universe, the Imperium represents an organization of like-minded species that joined together out of mutual benefit and self-interest, against forces which are decidedly anti-civilization (Chaos, Orks, Tyranids).
Indeed, in many ways in this universe the Imperium is virtually synonymous with civilization. In this respect, the Imperium is rather similar to ancient China. Because Imperial China grew up surrounded by steppe nomads and other people they considered as yokels, the ancient Chinese saw the concept of China itself as essentially synonymous with civilization. Even when China was divided into numerous warring feudal kingdoms, all of these warring states still saw each other as fundamentally Chinese, because to them China = civilization. The only civilizations whom ancient China ever saw as near equals were the Persian Empire and the Romans (who were tellingly referred to as “the China on the other side of the world”).

>>50891242 (cont.)

Since the beginning of the Imperium, the battle lines have been drawn between the “civilized” factions and the “uncivilized” ones (i.e., the ones which have no sense of order or reason, even an alien one). Even the most “uncivilized” parts of the Imperium are still pro-civilization. Russ and Khan came from warrior nations, but they came from one with rules and honor. The same is true for Saim-Hann among the Eldar. They may not be Alaitocs or Colchians, but they are definitely pro-civilization, even if their view of civilization was a bit more untamed (but pointedly not uncivilized) than the average person. This view would have been increasingly magnified when races like the Demiurge were included, essentially codifying that Imperium = civilization.

This may be one reason why the Imperium were baffled by the Tau, and why they spent so much time and effort trying to help them. Here was a race that was clearly civilized by the Imperium’s standards (and much more easily defined as civilized than many parts of the Imperium), and yet did not want to join. It was like a civilized race was rejecting the fact that they were civilized.

>>50891250 (cont.)

This may also be why the Imperium is so freaked out by the Necrons. To build off of what anon said in a previous thread, the Necrons clearly have order, they have some reason, but as a post-scarcity, post-heroism society they are decidedly different from what a society like the Imperium sees as civilization. The Necron Star Empire is a grimbright leaning empire compared to the otherwise nobledark Imperium. The Silent King essentially speaks for all Necrons, not because the Necrons need a hive mind like the tyranids but because it is pointless to do otherwise. In contrast, the Imperium has a multitude of individual opinions and the actions of individuals are often what makes sure the empire is in one piece at the end of the day. Indeed, most of the Necron Lords who want to jump ship and join the Imperium are the ones who prefer individuality to being just another appendage of the Silent King. To paraphrase Bones, “it’s civilization, Oscar, but not as we know it.”

>>50891263 (cont.)
But back to the Tau. Now that the Tau are intermingling with the wider Imperium, it becomes clear to them (particularly the Water caste, who does most of the mingling) that despite all their efforts the Tau are way behind when it comes to technology. The Imperium has stuff, they want it, especially since they see themselves as one of the most prominent minor races in the Imperium after the Big Two. As a result, I could easily see the Tau empire going through its own version of the Meiji Restoration, hurryingly trying to export technological development and modernize to get them up to par with the rest of the galaxy as well as experimenting with foreign social ideas and reworking them to fit within their own social context. In essence, there may be a significant number of Imperiaboos among the (primarily Water caste) Tau.

Indeed, this may be why Farsight decided to take his ball and go home, a backlash and desire to return to the old ways almost always seems to happen when a culture tries to modernize and see if there is any wisdom in these foreign social ideas.

No matter how fast the Tau modernize, it won’t be enough to make them a player in the End Times, but provided the Tau manage to survive the apocalypse, it might place them in a very advantageous position in the rebuilding of the Imperium.

>>50891284 (cont.)

As a final point, what should we do about the fact that the Ethereal caste has been suggested to have been engineered by the Eldar in M36 to uplift the Tau for some reason (possibly to use as allies/cannon fodder). In the nobledark Imperium, the Eldar would have no need to do such a thing, since they already have humans as allies, and humans would be kind of skeptical of the idea of trying to mess with another species' development (more out of "we need to get our own house in order" rather than any Prime Directive).

I would say the Ethereals are just natural Tau psykers in this universe, but you know, Tau. No psykers. Maybe the Ethereals here were just normal Tau who unified the Tau through their own actions, akin to what the Warlord did for mankind. As befitting a nobledark universe, the Ethereals in the nobledark universe brought their species together through blood, sweat, and tears, rather than Orwellian mind control.

>>50891242
>>50891250
>>50891263
>>50891284
>>50891413
I like all this, especially the description of Necrons as post-heroism. That being said, a few prodding points:

>despite all their efforts the Tau are way behind when it comes to technology.
I sincerely doubt this, given how their technology is depicted in Vanilla. Remember, even though Nobledark isn't pants on head retarded, it's still pretty stagnant; Oscars common sense doesn't influence the mechanicus as much as it does the Squishy Imperium, and as such they're still incredibly conservative and opposed to change. And they're STILL mopping up the occasional STCs from the DAoT. I'd say they're a few more steps forward than they are in Vanilla, but not in any position to be reliably out-teching the Tau.

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>>50874097
>Still need non-Battle of Terra WotB stuff
Could the Battle of Necromunda be a major conflict during the WotB, where the Imperial Fist fought to control both ground and space around the hive-world. The world is the munition manufactorum that supplies directly to the front lines and Terra itself. The Beast made a beeline for Terra to recapture Isha and kill Oscar, in order to make the Battle of Terra easier the Orks and CE worked together in cutting off the entire Sol-Sector from the rest of the Imperium. When a blockade couldn't be establish by the Chaos forces they switched to not cutting supplies lines but rather attacking the production of supplies itself. The ever opportunistic DE joined along for the ride with the Chaos forces to make the Imperial shipping lanes a living hell to operate within Segmentum Solar.

The sights of a big WAAAGH! had the poor planet of Necromunda as the next pray after already destroying several Imperial worlds when they bypassed Terra. Still rich in mineral and other resources the hive-clusters on the surface would be devastated in the fighting over in the orbit as debris from Imperial Navy wrecks, Ork rocks, and twisted Crone corpses. Due to people living so tightly packed, tens of thousands of civilians died just in the first week of fighting over the planet. The Imperial Fist sends a detachment of 40,000 under First Captain Sigismund to defend the planet at all cost, but an unknown amount of ships got lost in transit due to Warp interference that was probably conjured by the CE(?). When Sigismund arrived over the planet, the Imperial Navy was in a stalemate with Chaos ships where neither side could attack without being destroyed in a single battle. Unfortunately, the Ork ships orbiting Necromunda had mostly crashed onto the surface to begin invading the planet. Sigismund would report that Imperial Fist ships are arriving over the planet at random times yet there were enough Battle Barge to kill the Chaos fleet.

>>50891616
The technology is supposed to be closer to that of 30k, if not a little more advanced from the STCs that have been discovered since then. No HH, no Mechanicus schism, no massive drop in tech levels.

Also according to the previous threads the Tau got kicked in the balls a few times due to tyranids, Dark Eldar, A.I. rebellion, Dark Eldar, internal conflict, and Dark Eldar. It stands to reason that they might have lost some of their tech, especially most of the A.I. stuff.

That being said I agree with you that the gap between Tau and Imperium is nowhere near as big as the gap between, say, Imperium and DaoT mankind. It's more of "what have they learned and how can we make it work for us".

Tau also way further along with how to work with plasma than Imperium.

All of the races of the Imperium seem to have some major flaw. Tau need to learn they aren't the center of the universe. Eldar need to learn to admit that they fucked up and pick themselves up off the ground. Humans are harder, because of the sheer diversity, but the closest I can think of is humans need to learn they can't control everything. The most successful members of these races are the ones who have taken these lessons to heart and learned from them.

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>>50892256 (cont.)
The Battle Barges combined with the Imperial Cruisers attacked to finally crush the remaining Chaos fleet.

The damage was already done for Necromunda as the majority of the invading Orks had already crash landed into or near the hives-clusters. Sigismund ordered all available Imperial Fist SMs to land and defend the manufactorums at all cost. The hive cities were turned to fortresses (more than usual), in that the Orks paid five Boyz for every one Space Marine. Even this was not enough when the Orks outnumbered the Imperial Fist, ten to one. What was more frightening was that the invaders were making fast progress as well. Thousands of Imperial Fist were lost within the first few days of fighting in the hives. Sigismund was not shocked with the losses but rather had expected them knowing how the battles in the WotB worked. What he did feel was worried by the fact that as this battle of attrition continued, the Imperial Fist will lose the world being bleed dry.

The streets were filled with trenches, the spires were kill-zones, and rooms were bunkers. Hallways were blocked off with the body of fallen Imperial Fist with armor still on them. Hive gangers had resorted to cannibalism while the rest of the civilians fled away from the hives. The desperate and pure hopelessness of fighting in the hives led to many, including Sigismund, to fall under the sway of the Plague Father. The wishes of eternal life and reviving fallen brothers to help the defense of Necromunda were granted under a demonic pact with the First Captain's blood. The words "I offer all those presently under my command" had damned all 40,000 (living and dead) Imperial Fist along with the mortal crew of the Battle Barges, to serve Nurgle.

>>50891616
There's all the psychic tech like gellar fields, teleportariums, stasis grenades, void shield, and true warp drives, and other inexplicable shit that humanity used to mass produce and still can build and service with expertise. This is stuff with roots in the DAoT that may be lost to the imperium on a theoretical level, but remain within their technical repitoir. On top of this, eldar tech is actual magic, and the tau wouldn't believe it to be real even as it wrecked their shit, and it falls under the umbrella of imperial assets.

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>>50892999 (cont.)
The fallen Imperial Fist were brought back, along with some being granted immunity to pain and being able to fight while still missing all limbs but one arm. Now the Orks had to kill every Space Marine twice and they could take twice as many wounds. The blessed Imperial Fist shot the Orks in the front as the revived brothers shot from behind, the Orks had walked into a trap of their own making. In the ending stages of hunting down the last Orks, an unknown Space Marine clearly blessed with illnesses shouted "For the Imperium!" before slicing an Ork with his Lighting Claws.

The Battle of Necromunda was won but not for the Imperials nor The Beast. The real victors were the Chaos Space Marines, true the Imperium still hold the planet and the Ork WAAHG! was crushed. This was done for the price of almost 40,000 Imperial Fist turning to Chaos and forever being lost to the Imperium. Those on the planet that seek the Dark God's help did so when they were forced to flee then losing the planet or have a heroic last stand then losing the planet. Well, one must remember that Sigismund was told to "Hold Necromunda at all cost" even at the price of any lives and damnation.

The traitor Imperial Fist would quickly and quietly depart from the sub-sector on their Battle Barges before the news broke out, then announcing to their mortal crew that they would now fight the Imperium. The traitors would rename themselves into "Rotten Fist" as a joke about how the Imperium would be rotting in the future. Their motto is still "For the Imperium" as some odd form of love for the Imperium or a reference to how they fell to Chaos due to defending the Imperium.

Rotten Fist marines during the WotB were sighted fight Orks and Imperial forces but not the CE. After the Battle of Terra, the Rotten Fist along with other CSMs were hunted down by Loyalist Space Marines. The Rotten Fist would flee to The Maelstrom.

>>50892999
But I don't wanna lose Sigismund...

As a nitpick, 1 SM to 5 Boyz would be extremely poor combat performance for the SMs. 400,000 Orks is probably only a planetary level threat, maybe solar system level if the system is low tech with poor PDF, whereas 40,000 Space Marines is approaching the size of a small legion and is a sector level threat. The Orks would have to number in the millions to fit your scenario. (Sorry, I'm a stickler for consistent power levels)

>>50893235
Even when I wrote 1 SM to 5 Orks I was thinking "Isn't this a bit too low? Shouldn't it be more like 1 to 10." I remembered a 5 man tactical SM squad could take on a 20 man Ork Boyz squad. I realized that these Orks were not just regular Orks but was running on Chaos Warp magical shit that makes them fighty(?).
>The Orks would have to number in the millions to fit your scenario.
Well more like 600,000 to 1,000,000 had landed on the planet while countless more were probably killed in the actual landing or the void combat.

>>50893345
Also to add, maybe 10,000(?) got lost in transit and the rest of the detachment was being trickled in as the battle dragged on. When Sigismund arrived there was already enough Battle Barges that came before his that they can make a difference in the void battle before the rest if the detachment arrived.

>>50893235
>>50893345
>>50893497
>numbers numbers numbers
Might wanna revise those up further, fampais - remember the other thread (that was, admittedly, full to the brim with autism) about Orks staging an invasion of modern day Earth? Apart from how it ended up in shitflinging about
>REEEEEEE THEY'D KINETICALLY BOMBARD US (t. faggot who doesn't understand 40k)
>REEEEEEE THEY WOULDN'T BECAUSE THAT'S NOT ORKY (correct answer)
it was also figured that an Earth fully geared up for war could still soak up 20 million Orks and carry on going, even assuming up to 100:1 casualties on our part. Adjust upwards becaue we have navies and air forces worth of the name and because we have combined arms, then adjust back downwards because "muh M1 Abrams has bettah specs than a Lemon Rush" doesn't take into account that the latter regularly shrug off plasma weapons.

Basically, unless you're talking about slowly grinding down the planet over generations, the planetary PDF should be able to soak up at least somewhere in the region of 5 million (assuming higher tech but lower competence) Orks, a figure which would skyrocket with the presence of SMs and (presumably) IG fighting too.

>>50888813
I like it.

A question. Does anyone know what they look like under those robes?

Or is it a case of nobody dare look. From official art it looks like they have slightly reflective eyes like a cat or a dog so we know they are at least vaguely humanoid in shape with binocular vision.

Beyond that it could be a mystery, even to the DAs.

So in order of who makes up the big original CSM

Dark Angels. 2/3 - 3/4 of Legion fall but did manage to retain some sort of nebulous command structure in the aftermath which only made them more dangerous and also gave fresh converts something to attach to in later years.

Imperial Fists. Basically everyone on Necromunda, estimated to be 1/5 - 1/4 of the entire Legion but with considerably more Imperial Army assets then the DAs.

Space Wolves. Unspecified but enough to delay them. Presumably fell to Khorne and Slaanesh or both at the same time. Mostly the old unrefined Canis Helix survivors made the core group, which made Russ more than a little uncomfortable.

Night Lords. The ones that joined to get their jollies off. Some weird Nurgel + Slaanesh influence going on here but mostly Undivided so long as Undivided lets them get their jollies off.

All the others had someone go renegade for one reason or another but not in the same numbers as the above.

Ahriman and his Tzneetchian dupes for example, although he fell for the search of knowledge rather than malicious reasons and he fell before WotB.

Lucius the Eternal still became the butt boy of Slaanesh and took a small but dangerous following with him. His long term goal is to break into the vaults of Ganymede and take the magic sword. It calls to him in an impossibly beautiful voice, sadly he he has the attention span of a small kitten and keeps getting distracted by committing atrocities.

Fabulous Dr Bile did not fall to Chaos. He fell to the Dark Eldar. He wasn't even captured by them, he sought them out and offered his services as either a warrior or a doctor in exchange for training in their flesh crafting arts. He now has an office and a very successful private practice in the Dark City.

>>50895199
To balance out Sigismund falling, I think we should have Ahriman stay loyal. I think his intentions have always been somewhat noble in canon, and in the Saim Hann writefaggotry posted awhile back he wins the big death race and chooses access to the Black Library as his prize, which probably wouldn't fly if he fell to Chaos. He could skirt the line of what's acceptable in his quest for knowledge like Magnus does.

>>50895289
I like that.

He isn't Chaos as such, people just assume that he is because he wears armour with runes on it, has a library full of deamonic lore and has lived since the days of the Great Crusade.

As Prospero burned/vanished in this continuity as well it's also possible that he is possibly looking for his home as he is the last person left alive who has actually seen it.

Although he never fell to Chaos he isn't Imperial either.

He binds deamons to do his bidding, with techniques taught to him by Magnus no less who learned them from his mother, but this has earned him no love from the Warp. Indeed the gods hate him because his rituals of binding are all take and no give. To Ahriman's way of thinking deamons should know their place and come when called.

Although there is no love between himself and the Imperium he does approve of the idea of an Imperium in theory, he just thinks the Emperor doesn't have the balls to tackle this Warp problem effectively.

How has he lived this long? Nobody knows. Astartes enhancements and longevity treatments don't get you this far.

It's also worth noting that nobody has seen inside that armour for hundreds perhaps thousands of years. It is possible, even probable, that there is only dust in there now.

Grey Knight are under orders to apprehend on sight. If apprehension is not practically possible they are authorized to terminate the entity known as Ahriman.

For all that his ultimate intentions may be noble he has done some fucked up shit.

>>50892256
So from this we can deduce that Necromunda was a Survivor civilization rather than a bunch of regressives uplifted by the early Imperium.

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>>50897051
From the what I could learn from the lore, yes it is indeed a survivor civilization in this nobledark and vanilla!40k. The hives must have regressed to technology that is similar to before DAoT started but was most likely more advanced than anything Terra had during the Warlord Era. When the Imperium did rediscover them, Necromunda was more than capable of putting up a decent fight but was considered a backward hive-world compared to Crusade Era Terra. True the society didn't devolve into a bunch of tribal savages that couldn't even build factories, yet the planet was ruled by a Victorian nobility that had technology that was bearly able to travel beyond the planet's atmosphere.

The hive-cities have become a nightmare to live as people are constantly killed by industrial accidents, illnesses, or hive gangers. The processed materials in the manufactorums turned to refined metals and poisonous gasses. Toxic sludges continuously pour out of the hives into the surrounding landscape. The failure of the nobility to organize an effective garbage disposal led to rampant epidemics being broken out all the time.

Now, the hive gangs were some of the worst in the Imperium. Different gangs always fight over every single street and building in the under-hives, not caring who gets killed in the cross-fire. Hallucinogens are always bought by a minority of the population and the gangs always fight to control it or prevent the rival gang from selling it. Early on in the Crusade Era the Imperium had to deploy the Imperial Army to crush the hive gangs when the Arbites failed to do so before the WotB. Thinking the criminal problem had been dealt with, the Imperial Guard regiments deployed on Necromunda were reassigned to the front. As soon as the Imperial Army left the planet's surface, the hive gangs had already reformed into their former selves and were up to their no good misadventures.

>>50895289
According to the Saim-Hann writefaggotry he's been holed up in the Black Library since he got access and hasn't come out since. It's clear he's still alive, but exactly what he's been doing and when he is going to come out is unclear, since he hasn't done much beyond send the occassional note of "I'm still alive, you don't have to ask Cegorach if you need to send a search party".

The Ksons could have a saying like "yeah, and maybe Ahriman will actually help us", said in the same context as "when pigs fly".

>>50895199
>Mostly the old unrefined Canis Helix survivors made the core group, which made Russ more than a little uncomfortable.

According to the 1d4chan page Skyrar was pretty high up in the Space Wolf hierarchy before he went traitor. Not Bjorn level, but enough that "Russ would have called him brother".

By the way, the last thread isn't showing up on suptg for some reason, even though I know we got it archived.

>>50887787
They are literally Judges from the Dredd comics.

Even had the same artists.

>>50891616
Since the Ethereals can't reasonably be the product of Eldar meddling in Tau biology anymore, we need a new origin for how the modern Tau came about. I had one idea, but I'm not sure if it's any good.

The origin of the Tau concept of a “Greater Good” can be traced back to a man named Aun’O Da (at least that is the translation in modern Tau), otherwise known as “the Great Philosopher”. Da was born during the Mont’au, in an age roughly analogous to the late middle ages of Earth. Da was a member of the calligrapher’s guild, acting as a court stenographer to one of the petty empires that controlled much of the river basins and fertile lands of T’au. Throughout his career, Da transcribed virtually every decision made by the emperor he served under, with his own annotations on its usefulness in addition to its effects on the populace, as well as all the commands made by previous emperors.

Unfortunately, the winds of political fortune change, and the emperor that Da served under was replaced by a new ruling family. The first thing the new emperor did is order the entire court of the previous emperor to be arrested and executed, feeling that they would be too sympathetic to the old order to be trustworthy. Like many others in the court, Da fled in political exile to the mountains in the desert on the outskirts of the empire. It was there, sitting in a desert cave musing over his old writings, that Da came to a sudden realization.

>>50900635 (cont.)
In Da’s mind, life was full of misery, often driven by the selfish ambitions of others. Yet when people set aside their individual ambitions to aid one another, not only did Tau’s grievances against Tau decrease, but it reduced the net misery of the universe in general. Da put these ideas in writing, in what would eventually become known as the first known version of the Tau’va, or “Greater Good” (perhaps most literally “spiritual good of Tau”, “va” meaning “that which benefits the spirit”, and “Tau” meaning, well, “Tau”). Much of this manuscript has been misinterpreted in the years since it was written, both by Imperials and Tau. Da did not say that Tau should not have individual goals, or take personal enjoyment in life. However, he did stress that when duty conflicted with personal goals, one was obligated to put duty first. Nor was there any mention of Tau superiority over other races, since at that time the Tau believed they were alone in the universe.

Da’s new ideas brought him numerous eager converts. In particular, eight of his brightest disciples, all of the calligrapher’s guild, were sent in pairs in the four cardinal directions of the compass, to bring the word of the Greater Good to the general public. Da did not live to see T’au unified, he was already an old man when he came up with his ideas, but he did live long enough to see the old empire where he once served come to embrace the Tau’va. And yet the campaign continued onward. In a watershed moment in M37, two of Da’s disciples were able to broker a peace treaty between the plains barbarians and the fortress city of Fio’taun. This event essentially signified that the ideology of the Tau’va was going to become the dominant force on the planet of T’au.

>>50900650 (cont.)
As the Tau’va became the dominant ideology among the people of T’au, so did the students of Da become rulers in their own right. This led to the development of the traditional Tau caste system, and the taboo of fraternization between the castes. The scribes and scholars, particularly the disciples of Da, already somewhat detached from the physical world, became Ethereals. The Tau caste system was less about bringing order to the people of T’au, and more about codifying a system where the disciples of Da and their descendants were always at the top of the socio-political heap. Da would not have been happy if he could have seen this. Thankfully, the Ethereals tend to rule as some sort of bizarre combination of theocrats and philosopher-kings, utterly ascetic and with little desire to abuse their power yet haughty and loathe to social change.

However, now the revolution has come full circle. Now it is the Ethereals who represent the old establishment, rather than the bright-eyed young revolutionaries with new ideas, and they know it. It remains to be seen whether the Ethereals will be able to reform themselves to keep up with the evolving Tau Empire, or whether the Tau Empire will undergo a change into a new form of government for a new era.

Not sure how much I like the idea, feels a bit superficial to me. I'm also not a Tau expert. I like that it gives the Tau a historical figure of note before M41, especially as nobledark is all about heroic and legendary figures.

>>50883733
>>50883783
>>50885756
Lightbulb moment, this is why the Eldar leadership treats Eldrad the way he does. He's too openly pro-human for their tastes. IIRC, it was mentioned in a previous thread that despite being the greatest farseer alive and the savior of the Eldar race on multiple occasions, something that should have won him the accolades of the Eldar race, Eldrad is kind of treated like a weird uncle that should be respected, but not necessarily admired. Something that is especially taught to the younger generation so they don’t follow his example, as many of them see Eldrad as a mysterious maverick with enough achievements to his name to prove his badass credentials.

Even in vanilla Eldrad was pretty pro-human for an Eldar. He tried to diplomate with the Imperium (but eventually wrote them off), and even disagreed with the plans of the Cabal to let humans go extinct and take the Chaos Gods with them, actually stepped in to save Vulkan (though that was more because he thought their idea was stupid than solely moral concerns).

Make no mistake, Eldrad is not HFY. His goals are still first and foremost the survival of the Eldar. His opinion is more along the lines of "the Eldar are awesome, but humanity is pretty cool too sometimes, though not as cool as us". This doesn’t exactly endear him to the Eldar leadership (which is mostly conservative, older individuals), whose party line is cultural posturing to ensure humans know how big the cultural gap between them is. Eldrad doesn't care. He's far too old to care, and any race that's willing to go into the literal gates of Hell to give Chaos a bloody nose and competent enough to survive deserves respect. He doesn't need to posture to let people know how good he is, he knows his record more than speaks for itself.

Humans, on the other hand, love Eldrad. They see him as, basically, Space Merlin, and the first thing that comes to mind when you think of “Eldar heroes”. This does not help his case.

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>>50895912
>>50895289
>Ahriman goes renegade
When the Imperium confirmed that some of the Thousand Sons had been binding daemons and that Ahriman had been spreading this knowledge after an investigation, everything took a turn for the worst. Ahriman, along with most of the Thousand Sons that knew how to bind daemons fled with their followers. Becoming a nomadic renegade SM regiment has led to Ahriman taking control then renaming the happy band of renegades to the "Daemon Busters."

The wondering Daemon Buster Marines fights off hunting Imperial forces and helping Imperial worlds in stomping daemon outbreaks. The renegades are not above interference and sabotage to ensure their survival. The recruitment for the regiment is always on-going and they hunt down any latent psykers to join them willingly or otherwise. Most defectors from the IG join the renegades as either a criminal escaping punishment or freedom seeking idealist. Those of the mortal soldiers that proved themselves in battle are sometimes given armor similar to that of the Sororitas. Just like the armor of the Sororitas, if there is no power supply for the limbs the soldier simply can't move. Worst is that if something hits the limbs under the armor, the limb movement accelerator will snap human bones like a twig.

Their motto is "Vanquish the Darkness" as said by Ahriman when he smashed a bloodthirster's head with his tome "Vocem Subjugatio Liber" thus binding the poor daemon to his will at all times.

>>50898242
I was wondering at that.

It is here
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/50719277/

But it does not show up on the list like the others. Did someone fuck up the tags?

>>50901197
Daemon Breakers sounds better

>>50902363
This. I'm all for Ghost Busters references but Breaker rolls off the tongue easier.

>>50902363
>>50902525
Yea, I made the name as a joke and shouldn't be taken seriously. I knew it was going to be changed later but Daemon Braker sounds pretty nice and metal.

>>50902525
>Be thine world benighted by esoteric phenomena?
>And whose aid would you ask?
>Be you confronted by the unknown, and deem it horrific to look upon?
>And whose aid would you ask?

>Men of Ahriman fear no daemon!
>Men of Ahriman fear no daemon!
>Be you stricken with ghastly, coursing visions?
>And whose aid would you ask?
>Be your boudoir inhabited by wicked phantoms?
>Aye, and whose aid would you ask?
>Men of Ahriman fear no daemon!
>Men of Ahriman fear no daemon!

-the first verses of the hymn of the demon breakers

>>50898090
I like this idea; what if over time the Ksons' comment of "[x] the day Ahriman brings back Prospero" (owtte) starting out with optimism but eventually becoming a flippant comment at best.

>>50900650
>this manuscript has been misinterpreted in the years since it was written
>Da would not have been happy
>utterly ascetic and with little desire to abuse their power yet haughty and loathe to social change.
This is most definitely how I like my Tau/Greater Good.

As for the last bit - since the Tau have been assimilated into the IoM into protection, how does this factor in?

I like the idea that the progressive faction actually managed their revolution and overthrew the Ethereals (or at least severely undermined their power base), attempting to implement a looser social structure. It was during this period of reform that the Empire suddenly came under external attack; Orks, Chaos, or some of the earlier Nid hive fleets. Either way, this crippled the Tau, as their carefully planned combined-arms tactics were ruined by the logistical nightmare of a system trying to change itself mid-war. This eventually lead to the [however you say schism in Tau], where the weakened reformist (but "legitimate") government sought assistance from the IoM, while some Ethereals and other remnants of the old order retreated to the outer fringe of their territory alongside their sympathisers, forming the Farsight Enclaves.

tl;dr: Idealistic young revolutionaries get btfo by some outside power that the Big Bad Dictatorship probably would've done a better job fending off totally not inspired by the fan theory that claims that in SW's EU, Palpatine's superweapons and fuckhueg militarisation was actually in preparation to face the Yuuzhan Vong, while the New Republic failed their anal circumference roll, because if that's not nobledark I don't know what is.

Oh yeah, also Farsight has his role inverted too.

>>50904224
Only a proportional number of ethereals should side with farsight, a significant number of them would rather see their order diminished than go into exile and neglect the greater good. Still, the hardliners side with farsight and those that remain take part in the reforms, so the effect is maintained. The young of the ethereal caste at the time of the reforms could be some pretty interesting figures, and the reforms might lead to a massive diversification of tau political thought. They would be on the verge of a true renascence, but beset on all sides by at best domineering and often malicious influencers.

>>50905100
>beset on all sides by at best domineering and often malicious influencers
...I feel like the biggest challenge they're currently facing is having the shit kicked out of them - although I like the idea that they're having difficulty fending off each others' attempts to use the war to get some palpatine-esque power creep in

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>>50905139
I was mainly meaning that if the tau start reconsidering their political order they might become the best young movers and shakers in the imperium, but their idealistic reformers might get overtaken by entrenched imperial, eldar, or traditionalist tau interests, even if they can avoid the perversions of chaos and other actively pernicious actors.

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>page ten

Noooo, bump!

>>50903680
Fuck, is that the ghost busters theme song?

We have a craftworld orbiting Valhalla and a craftworld in the Cadian system.

I think there needs to be one that set up shop in the centre of the Tau Empire.

I'm going to suggest Mymeara as it started out on the edge of the Old Eldar Empire so its possible its just been wandering the Eastern Fringe since then.

They started out as one of the largest craftworlds because being so far from the decadent homeworlds people were more willing to listen and weren't too deep in the cocaine orgy heap.

Upon the Fall and being so remote they for some time believed they were alone and the only elder survivors.

Orks attacked them mercilessly. Phoenix Lord Irillyth of the Shadow Spectres arises and manage to hold off the orks. Irillyth leads a team to try and find more eldar survivors and gets rekt by orks soon after.

Some time later the expeditionary forces of the Great Crusade catch up with them. Quit late on in the Great Crusade as this is the Eastern Fringe.

Craftworlders scream at the humans to fuck off, they are the last bastion of civilization, the last of the eldar.

Imperials leave as requested. Some months later a joint detachment of Saim-Hann and Bail-Tan make contact properly on behalf of the young Imperium. They had tears of joy, they were not alone in the night.

Next time the orks came calling they had friends.

Why are they now perched in the middle of Tau space? They like the Tau. They feel vibrant.

Its meme time!

>Perturbato: "Now look at this fortress. That I just built. When you see Dorn/When I say go. Be ready to fortify. Now go!" *they build a wall around 'Merika* "BUILD IT AROUND DORN NOT AMERICA! *sigh* Let's try something else."

>Lorgar: "Now look and see, here's the deal. They'll slip and slide on these copies of the Lectito Divinitatus! Hahahaha!" *they slip and slide and read Robot Grilyman's Codex* "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?"

Are Hive Worlds still polluted and horrible to live in?

>>50909674
Yes, but not to quite the same extent.

The Imperial era ones are derived from Perty's genius designed hives on Old Earth and the pre-Imperial ones had substantial work done on them.

It's still quite shit because 10,000+ years of war economy will do that but it's out of necessity this time rather than indifference.

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Bumping with laughing tau

>>50909459
You are not done yet until you cover the whole song.
You will be awarded with a compliment upon completing this task.
Failure to comply will result in no noticeable consequences.

>>50904224
>>50905100

IIRC, the majority of the Ethereals and the Tau empire actually were pro-Imperium during the schism, with the Farsight Enclaves walking off because they thought the Imperium's fancy new ideas were having a bad effect on the idea of the Greater Good. The Ethereal's problem is they want change, but it's hard to change when the system you want to change to no longer guarantees you a position of authority.

I like your Ahriman comment idea.

>>50912265
I mean the deposed/diminished traditionalist Ethereals leading the Farsight Enclaves in their exile; clinging to their interpretation of the Greater Good that their old order was built around. The new young revolutionaries, Ethereal or not, were the ones who were so pro Imperium.

>>50904224
>Eldrad will spend the number night with Sister Jubblowski the day Ahriman brings back Prospero. - Abbess Ephrael Stern

It works.

>>50913269
I have no idea where number came from

Fucking autocorrect.

>>50912265
>>50912378
Where would commander Shadowsun fit in the Reformist - Traditionalist spectrum?

>>50915264
He's a diehard fire caste general that incessantly reminds the ethereals of their noble responsibility to be surly, high handed, self sacrificing philosopher kings. He's a die hard traditionalist that might even step above his station to hold ethereals to his idealized vision of traditional tau society, and pressure from him has influenced the enclave ethereals to conform to this vision of "High Tau'va". The ethereals in the farsight enclave are becoming more philosophical, abstract, and saintly in bearing, and rely increasingly on farsight and his fire warriors to interact with the enclave's people. Farsight has influence over the ethereals that goes way beyond tradition, but this is totally lost on him, and he seeks to do the ethereals will even as he cajoles them towards greater mysticism and the nobility he already sees in them. For their part the ethereals recognize Farsight's prominence, but say that he is reminding them of their duties as a caste, as he ought to. They're happy to have a major fire caste figure affirming their reactionary feelings towards the reforms, and are beginning to believe in his rosy picture of tau traditional society.

Where should Shadowsun come into this? I was thinking she could be one of the ethereal reformers here, or another fire caste with contact experience with imperial culture and the wider galaxy.

>>50915735
How powerful should the Farsight/Traditionalist Enclave be?

A dozen or a hundred worlds?

>>50915264
>>50915735
According to what we have on the 1d4chan page, Shadowsun was a good friend of Farsight. Then Farsight did something during the Tau civil war that made Shadowsun swear a blood oath against him.

Probably did something so grievous that in Shadowsun's opinion Farsight has no moral justification in claiming that he's doing what's right, like escalating the tension between the two factions into outright violence and the first shots of the Tau Civil War. Farsight saw it as necessary and justified because the reformists weren't letting the traditionalists practice the Tau'va the way they wanted to. Shadowsun called bullshit, his actions led to Tau killing Tau and in her mind this was an act of barbarity just asking for the Mon'tau to return.

The two of them probably had some sort of forbidden feelings for one another, but after that moment their relationship changed to that special feeling of hate and betrayal you can only have for someone you once loved.

Didn't Shadowsun swear a blood oath or something against Farsight in canon? What was the reason there?

>>50893235
Wouldn't Sigismund be more likely to fall to Khorne than Nurgle? All full of RAGE and whatnot? Though other than that I like the ideas for the Battle of Necromunda so far.

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By the way, I know we have established what the Mechanicus’ opinion is on humans using alien technology (i.e., they’ll either look the other way as long as it’s not flagrant or go REEEE), but what is their opinion on aliens using human technology? It’s not an issue with the Eldar because the Eldar mostly use their own stuff, but what about groups like the Interex, Squats, or Tau, which while not dependent on the AdMech can actually benefit from using AdMech stuff (and in some cases include significant numbers of humans). Even though they control 80-90% of the manufacturing in the Imperium, the AdMech can't play as stubbornly in this timeline (or at least have to play a little nicer/subtler) because unlike vanilla 40k they have competition and are no longer a tech monopoly. If the Mechanicus are too ridiculous, some will go “let the AdMech sit in their tech-monasteries, we’ll go to the Demiurge or Squats”. This may not work for a hive or agri-world that is totally dependent on AdMech supplies, but any Survivor civilizations or semi-autonomous xenos that have their own manufacturing capabilities will balk at not being allowed to make their own stuff anymore, especially since the AdMech are nominally equals in the Imperium’s political structure as Age of Strife survivors.

I’m not even sure the AdMech have a reason to hate xenos using human technology anymore. In vanilla, hatred of xenos technology seems to be something the AdMech picked up from the rest of the Imperium (as part of the whole “fear the xenos line”) despite their religious beliefs otherwise being very different. Before that, they seemed to be kind of equal-opportunity despisers. Yes, they thought they were the only people holy enough to handle and manufacture technology, but they didn’t care if the person mucking around with what the AdMech thought they shouldn’t was human or xenos.

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>>50918033 (cont.)

I can see the Mechanicus having a very real fear of a group like the Squats reverse engineering their stuff (as well as being fanatical over STC printouts, which like holy relics they see as theirs no matter where they are found), but I can also see them pointing to other semi-autonomous factions using their stuff as a point of pride. Like “yes, we’re so awesome that even other civilized people recognize our stuff as superior” or “we are bringing civilization to these poor backwards xenos races”. It would also explain why the AdMech are allowing very preliminary research into wraithbone hybrid tech (at the very least in M40-41, when shit is getting so desperate that the AdMech is getting willing to bend or break a lot of their old rules because the old ways are simply not enough).

>>50918055 (cont., because character limit is a pain in the ass)

The best I could come up with is that the AdMech would love to be the tech monopolists of the galaxy. They want to innovate and advance to the point that all the other factions, the Interex, the Squats, the Tau, the Colchians, the Demiurge, even the Eldar, go to them for tech support. They want the entire Imperium to look at them and go “See those guys. They are the pinnacle of technological wisdom”. They want to bring technology to the masses, but they want the masses’ interpretation and use of that technology to be dictated on the AdMech’s terms. The problem is that the AdMech can’t advance very quickly because the lower echelons are so indoctrinated and conservative they can’t or won’t think outside the box, and the upper ranks, who how technology really works, would love to innovate but are terrified to do so because they’re always keeping one eye on the Void Dragon looking over their shoulder. So they have to make do with STC printouts (making them even more rabid about them) and the few bits of innovation that they have sufficiently vetted to consider “safe”. They’re running into the same issue that Martin Luther ran into when he translated the Bible but freaked out over people interpreting it differently than him: you can have control or freedom of thought, not both.

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>>50874097
>What about regular IG during the Age of Apostasy?
With Vandire still doing the same shit that he did in vanilla!40k, Oscar comes back from his vacation/inspection tour of the Imperium. Oscar and Isha would be one of the first to denounce the self-proclaimed God-Emperor Vandire. This is where Vandire would use the Imperial Army to hunt down then kill Oscar and Isha while the SMs would see to it that Vandire's head is on a spike. Sebastian Thor was basically a nobody from the mundane Imperial world of Dimmamar, where he taught anti-Warpcraft classes. This is where he led a revolt after finding out that Vandire ordered all ten-year-old kids to be captured from an Imperial world when that world failed to build enough titanic statues of Vandire.

The revolt in Dimmamar not only didn't get crushed but the majority of the Guardsmen send to kill him joined his cause. The Lord-Governor himself actually supported Thor. After hearing the news of the revolt, Vandire was angered that this was the first time the civilian population organized such a thing. At the time of the revolt, SMs and the Imperial Army were already killing each other. The SM and some Craftworlds following the orders of Oscar and Isha attempted to rebel. The rebel forces didn't have the logistics nor the fleet to simply go straight to Terra then kill Vandire. Some Craftworlds thought they could easily manipulate the clearly insane Vandire thus stayed loyal, even going so far as to arrange Eldar bodyguards and advisors for Vandire. Almost all of the Imperial Army answered directly to Vandire as they swore an oath to serve the Golden Throne and not to Oscar/Isha nor the Imperium.

Oscar and Isha learning of the fleet despatched to burn Dimmamar, wanted to protect this single hope of a popular uprising to help the rebellion. In a Warpstorm that was known as "Imperium's Warth", every ship in that fleet were destroyed by the combined Warpcraft of Oscar and Isha.

>>50920320
>Some craftworlds side with Vandire against Isha
>IG completely grab idiot ball and try to hunt down biggest living hero of mankind.

I get the manipulation part, but I have a hard time seeing even the most demagogued Imperial Guardsman hunting down the Steward without questioning things.

I can see Vandire ordering the Imperial Army to capture the Steward and Isha once they pop back up, but part of the reason the Age of Apostasy happened is that no one could get a hold of them for 150 years, so no one could ask them for a second opinion when Vandire got his Spess Stalin on.

If the battle lines during the Great Civil War were that sharply drawn between IG and SMs, it almost seems like the Age of Apostasy would have ended up like the Horus Heresy. SMs would never trust IG again because as a whole they took the bait, and IG would never trust SMs again because they saw how easy they turned (in their mind) on the Imperium. But then again if the battle lines were more evenly drawn between marines and army, we just get the Horus Heresy with less primarchs.

Also Sebastian Thor was an Inquisitor in this timeline.

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>>50920320 (cont.)
Thor led the angry crowd of the starving, poor, religious, and atheist citizens from various worlds of the local Sub-Sector to support the rebellion. The merry band of angry citizens was causing mass defection and surrender of Guardsmen as they jump from one world to another. The Imperial Navy didn't care to listen to any so-called rebel propaganda and just shot any ships thought to be carrying many rebel sympathizers.

Vandire had declared the rebellion to be an "Apostasy" and that the rebels were "blasphemers". What started to happen was that Thor began to order his followers to infiltrate Imperial Navy ships then to rally support for the rebellion that was endorsed by the founders of the Imperium. The Imperial Navy was splintered on varying degrees of rebellion as a few stayed loyal whilst others refused to fight or just surrender to rebels, and some opened fired on loyalist ships in the middle of battle. The rebellion made their way to Terra as they simply brushed aside token resistance or grew as more of the Imperial Army defected. On Terra, the Imperial Fist was fighting the Imperial Army for control of the planet when the main body of the rebellion arrived.

Giving up hope of victory, most of the Guardsmen outside of the Palance just surrendered or stepped aside when the rebels marched from the landing pads to the Palance. Thor organized to storm the Palance with his bodyguards known as the "Star Sisters", who are made up of an elite all-female warrior secret society from a religious school. Any SMs planetside did try to help Thor but even their efforts were not enough to punch through the first layer of defenses.The Imperial Palance was in such disrepair that most of the unmanned rooms were natural death traps. Loyalist guardsmen had turned the hallways to mazes and doors to boobytraps. SMs would advance only to be fired in the back by loyalist Eldar or 30 rebel Guardsmen being pinned by a loyalist heavy stubber team

>>50920931
>Sebastian Thor was an Inquisitor in this timeline
Fug forgot that.
>SMs would never trust IG again
That's the point, this is why later on loyalist SMs and Guardsmen fight for the stupidest of reasons. For example a SM regiment fight the IG to steal relics from a system.
>we just get the Horus Heresy with less primarchs
The difference is that on land the SMs basically curbstomp the Imperial Army while the Imperial Navy making the SMs directly attacking Terra impossible.

>>50921077
>nobledark magpies
"oh foR FUCKS SAKE"
t. everyone

>>50920320
Back when we were discussing SoB relative to Space Marines, I had the idea that the Age of Apostasy was really where the SoB proved their worth to the Steward. The SoB had been formed some time prior to the Apostasy, but the Emperor still had some reservations about their ability given his upbringing by Malcador.

As the Sisters primarily acted as muscle for the Imperium's internal affairs, the SoB saw Goge's craziness coming far earlier than just about anyone else. When the Apostasy really got going the Sisters kicked into high gear, secretly getting as many civilians (particularly high-risk individuals Vandire was likely to 'disappear') as possible to safety and using their urban warfare, anti-insurgent tactics to fight back and make it a nightmare for anyone who actually tried to stop them. The fact that the SoB did so well during the apostasy impressed the Steward (now Emperor), and ensured the permanence of the SoB as an institution. The sisters consider it their greatest victory over their Space Marine "brothers" (who they see as foolish for not recognizing what was going on until the Apostasy was in full swing) and lord it over them at every opportunity (like any interservice rivalry does, or the old "we bailed you out in WWII" argument you see between the former Allies).

>>50921141
>not liking the best raven-based Space Marines

>>50921177
That's a negatory, I'm afraid. The Ordo Securitas (and by extension the SoB as we know them) were created and expanded in response to the AoA. Although perhaps some predecessor unit might've worked, kinda along the lines of Daughters/Brides of the Emperor did in vanilla.

>>50920320
>>50920931
Don't know if you guys saw it, but editfag and I had pretty much this exact conversation two threads ago, and most seemed to agree that the Civil War ended pretty soon after the Steward returns since everyone reveres the guy and most would follow him immediately. To reuse the analogy I had, it would be like if George Washington came out of retirement and denounced James Madison as unworthy times 10 because Washington would be a beloved demi-god and Madison would be an insane tyrant. As the second anon said, the civil war only lasted as long as it did because no one could find the Steward so both sides could claim some legitimacy.

>>50921077
>That's the point, this is why later on loyalist SMs and Guardsmen fight for the stupidest of reasons.
But do they? In vanilla 40k SMs and guardsmen fight for silly reasons, but here you have someone to slap them and get them to stop being stupid. It's part of the nature of this universe. Imperium is more competent and sane, but tyranids, Necrons, and Chaos are twice as nasty to compensate.

I could see a significant number of IG defect, but not 100%. This might be enough that the SMs give them shit for taking the bait during the Apostasy, but not enough that they think the IG are totally compromised.

Alternatively, given the 1d4chan page has the actual war only going on for ten years, the appearance of the Steward could have either been what caused the Imperium to erupt into full fledged war, or could have gotten all but Vandire's most ardent supporters to stand down if the Steward showed up at the end of the war. This could be one argument Thor could use to convince the Steward to become the Emperor. "Everyone stood by Vandire when he went crazy because you were the one who vouched for him, and everyone took up arms against him because you came back. People listen to you, which is why you're better qualified for the job than I am".

Oscar could have replied that Thor organized a rebellion with his own charisma completely cut off from Inquisitorial resources, and not only that but being level-headed enough to forgive the regiments that had been brainwashed by Vandire, preventing any permanent bad blood between forces of the Imperium. Thor could reply he was a luminary, not a long-term leader.

>>50921276
They did? Huh, hadn't seen that. Oops. Predecessor unit could work, though like with all things that's up to the /tg/ consensus.

>>50921442
I don't remember that, but that makes perfect sense. Will try to find that.

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>>50920984 (cont.)
Inquisitor Thor personally led a small strike force of his own bodyguards, SMs, and specialized Guardsmen to kill Vandire then end the fight as fast as possible. Using the forgotten pipes, ventilation systems, and air ducts to bypass the front lines. The strike force made it mostly undetected while leaving a short trail of bodies behind only to be confronted by the loyalist Eldar bodyguards near the personal chambers of Vandire. This is where the fighting started in earnest yet neither side gained the upper hand. Thor decided that he would try to negotiate the surrender of the Eldar bodyguard by threatening to kill everybody in the room with explosives unless both sides stopped fighting.

2 chairs and a table were brought out by both sides to start the talks. The Eldar bodyguards explained that the reason why they were fighting to the death for an insane tyrant was because they believe if they surrendered then they will face a very public exacution. Thor would transmit a pardon order via a publicly assessable vox channel for all defenders of the Palance. The Eldar bodyguard would reply with "We will not stand in your way" before parting to allow Thor into Vandire's room. Thor came back out with the head of Vandire and was celebrated as a hero thus ending the rebellion.

Oscar offered the Golden Throne to Thor but Thor wanted to give the Throne to Oscar. Yet Oscar refused by saying "An artificial lifeform can't take the crown of a living empire" then Thor replied with "I may be the best emperor ever but I'm not immortal. It will only be a matter of time once I die, another worst than Vandire will take my place." From there on Oscar ascended to become the Emperor.

The Imperial Army was restructured to where it was split apart into two main branches. The Imperial Guard was the planetary elements along with land-based hovercraft. The Imperial Navy was the ship-based voidcraft and void ships. Neither authority can override the other.

>>50921493
The main reason why I said the SMs will never fully trust the IG is because I want to allow people to have battles like SMs killing off IG eyewitnesses or any other loyalist on loyalist skirmishes without a guy coming in and saying "B-but the SM and IG never fight each other in this timeline."
The war lasting 10 years mostly because it would have started in minor clashes between IG and SMs before exploding into a grand conflict. Most of the hardcore Vandire loyalist would be in the Imperial Navy as they would have never seen Vandire's insanity firsthand unlike the Guardsmen. That was why when Oscar reappeared and ordered Vandire's head on a plate, the Imperial Navy refused to believe it to be real. The Imperial Guard had been fighting some SMs for a while (and getting curdstomp) by the time of Thor's revolt, they just needed any excuse to stand down. Refusing to fight because "unable to open fire on civilians" or surrendering when "can't fight overwhelming odds" then defecting after seeing firsthand recordings of Oscar calling upon the Imperium to depose Vandire.
The war should have lasted only 2 or 3 years because the SMs answering the call-to-arms should have steamrolled their way to Terra. The Imperial Navy's titanic fleet pretty much dragged out the war for much longer than it should have been.

>>50922182
I feel like you're kinda ignoring what people are saying man. The entire point of this AU is people are decent and work together, so killing IG eyewitnesses is exactly the sort of grimdark we were reacting against when this thing started. Could it somehow happen? Perhaps, given the sheer scale of the Imperium, but it should be rare and be a narrative exception that people agree upon.

And give what's been said, why would the Imperial Navy stay with Vandire for 3 years after Oscar returns? They revere him as much as everyone else. I think it makes most sense for the Civil War to happen because of the confusion of most people as to whether Thor is correct that Vandire has failed his oaths and duties as Emperor, or whether Vandire if legitimate in his authority even given his later craziness. The return of Oscar resolves that confusion, and the war ends pretty quickly afterwards (maybe a year, again given the scale of things).

>>50922182
See: >>50921442 and >>50922307
IG and SM conflict is far more rare (if at all present) in this AU compared to Vanilla; hell, even in Vanilla 40k the worst of it seemed to be in DoW. The whole point of the civil war is that both sides think they're right, and that it only lasts as long as it takes for the news to filter down to Oscar and for him to pack his bags and catch the nearest flight back to Terra. Hell, remember that here the SMs are part of the Imperial Army as a whole and don't have their whole "muh untouchable, muh Answer Only To The Emprah" status they do in Vanilla.

>SMs killing off IG eyewitnesses
I don't quite think you understand how Nobledark Imperium works.

>because I want to allow people to have battles like...without a guy coming in and saying
>because I want
I don't quite think you understand how these collaborative writing AUs work as a whole, actually.

>>50922182
What >>50922307 said. Space Marines and Imperial Guard have to have a reason to fight each other in canon because vanilla 40k is first and foremost about little plastic army dudes. So every faction has to have a reason why loyalist Imperials would be fighting Imperials (no one trusts each other), Eldar are fighting Eldar (craftworlds), Tau are fighting Tau (Farsight enclaves), tyranids are fighting tyranids (swarm Darwinian selection), Necrons are fighting Necrons (phaerons are dicks). It also adds to the grimdarkness of the setting by showing how everyone is so fractious that they can't work together to face the big threats.

But this is more nobledark worldbuilding than wargame fluff. People give each other shit in this universe, but at the end of the day everyone's backs are pressed up against the wall together fighting the apocalypse.

Take DoW for example. In contrast to what happened between the IG, Blood Ravens, Tau, and Eldar in canon the worst that probably happened between the Imperial forces (Blood Ravens, IG, Eldar, and Tau) in this universe is that everyone got creeped out by Shas'O Kais being an Imperiaboo and the Blood Ravens "requisitioned" all the "unneeded materiel" for their own use once the mission was over (though I know we had some stuff hammered out on what happened over the events of DoW in a really early thread, did we ever codify that?)

>>50921791
I think in this timeline Imperial Navy was separate long before the Horus Heresy. Basically the Steward just took Horus and the Voidborn fleet and gave them a military commission.

Quite a bit of the Imperial Navy is probably composed of flatlanders by M41, if for no other reason than the simple logistics of how large the Navy needs to be to serve the Imperium, but a good deal of the Navy is voidborn and proud of it.

>>50922689
>Citing DoW
Actually, I do think that DC/SS might be a little bit of an exception that proves the rule. Given that we've established that the Tau are their own self contained units that are affiliated with the Imperial Army but aren't actually integrated with Guard or Navy (i.e. pretty much how the SMs are attached), there could be some brief conflict, possibly? In the same "you have your orders, but I have mine" sense that DoW had? In nobledark, it'd probably end up fizzling out into uncooperative fighting but still on the same front (e.g. the Magpies fucking off for their artefacts and completely ignoring IG requests for help, but still blowing the shit out of any Chaos they find).

>>50917950
he raged against the orks as best he could, and as it all came out to nothing he turned to nurgle in a plunge to immovable, resentful despair

>>50922307
There would already be rare fights between the SM and IG before Oscar decided to do something about the shitfest. Then Oscar was working behind the scenes to arrange a bloodless coup using SMs then that got fucked up resulting in more skirmishes between the SM and IG. The SM later on intervene in some cases where basically say "You sick fuck aren't going to torch a hive-city on my regiment's watch". Oscar might then support assassination attempts of Vandire for a year or two, while the fighting between the IG and SM gets out of hand as the SMs try to take on the role of space police. When Oscar reappeared saying "Hey guys, guess who's back! Now, would you kindly bring me Vindire's head" the unofficial war has been on for 5 years. At almost the same time Thor's revolt was the straw that broke the camel's back for the Imperial Army. The Imperial Navy refused to believe that the call-to-arm was really from Oscar than tried to purge the fleet of any rebel sympathizers. The Imperial Guard would be exposed to Oscar's messages firsthand leading to any land resistance just disintegrating. The Imperial Navy blowing up ships left and right and becoming almost as bloodthirsty as Vandire is what the war last an extra 4 years. It should have been only a year to allow Thor's revolt to snowball out of control all the way to Terra.
I mean seeing Oscar coming in at the ending stages of the war and saying "I supported the winning side all along" just make him seem like an opportunist asshole. Revealing himself half way in the "war" would make the loyalist either plug their ears and say "la la la I can't hear you" or just defect. IG did the latter while IN did the former. When Oscar did declare war on Vandire most of the SM hadn't been fighting any Imperial forces so some regiments simply didn't have enough ships, supply or numbers to just land on Terra then kill Vandire
>>50922588
I'm sorry this is my first time writing for AU. But everybody just surrendering seems boring

>>50920320
Given that Magnus was still alive, albeit very old, at this point that warp storm might have been the result of one of his rituals going horribly right.

>>50922980
Oh shit I didn't even think about that! You can have adventures of "Old Man Magnus" and more along the lines of most in the Imperium that assumed Oscar/Isha made the storm. If questioned later on about the subject they will neither confirm nor deny their involvement. Logic being to not try to trigger the anti-Warp crowd and pleasing the fans at the same time.

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I like the idea that the war only dragged on for as long as it did because Oscar was hard to find.

Insurgency being ground down because lack of transport ships, resources due to Mechanicum indifference and lack of coordination due to ad hoc nature.

Eventually find Oscar by managing to track where the Black Ships are heading. The one job he could never delegate was the Soul Binding.

Oscar had no idea what the fuck was going on. When he left everything was fine. Imperium in good shape with a good man on the throne. It was Inquisitor Jaq Draco that permits his mind to be deep trawled to verify that thing really were that bad. Oscar was as gentle as he could be but he was not left entirely undamaged.

Oscar once made war with ad hoc forces against an overwhelmingly superior foe once and was victorious. He could certainly do it again, easily this time as he already had half the opposition one step from defection.

As to the Oscar Emperor's views on gender roles in the Imperium. He was raised by Malcador who was old fashioned on a world that gave 0 shit about notions of equality. Afterwards he was married to Isha who was also a firm believer in traditional gender roles, though from an eldar perspective.

Isha believed that there were certain things men were good at and certain things women were good at and trying to play against your strengths for personal gratification was not a luxury civilization could afford right now.

>>50912203
>Now look at this net!

>>50923059
By that time there were Ferrus Manus, Vulkan and Magnus left.

FM probably wouldn't have given a shit about the Civil War one way or the other so long as the Forge Worlds remained natural.

Vulkan would have been ancient by that point and well beyond the point of marching to war. He was an old veteran who had retired to become a Philosopher King of Nocturne. He would not have sided with Vandire because like Magnus he remembered Ursh.

Magnus was old by then. Really fucking old.

It's possible that Magnus might have been born a little before Malcador's famous salvage run, which would make him a few years older than the Emperor. Given that he definitely remembered Ursh and would have seen the similarities it can be assumed that any reluctance to get stuck in to the fight with hellfire and magnets would be due to being in his final twilight years and just wanting to die peacefully.

>>50923947
Given that Vulkan is a Mk III S Astartes, by that time he might have been still healthy physically but exhausted mentally.

(When I wrote the Mk III fluff I wanted to make all the canon 40k top tier fighters Mk III S. Since Horus was human and Angron was a Thunder Warrior that left Sanguinius and Lion, and Vulkan I threw in since in canon he was stated to be the physically strongest Primarch, so much that he held back when sparring his brothers for fear of hurting them.)

Bump

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>>50923947
I've been wondering what Magnus' stance on the Daemon Breakers is by the time of the AoA. Would he still be ass-blasted about Ahriman binding daemons or forgave him after so long?

There can also be more like the relationship of the DA to the Fallen, where with for seeing some of their brothers go rogue the Thousand Sons tirelessly hunt down to wipe out the Daemon Breakers. Magnus might want to kill off Ahriman's regiment just to make sure that psykers were seen in a better light in the Imperium at large instead of the image of a trouble-making minority.

>>50922858
I don't think Oscar would necessarily look like an opportunist if he didn't show up until the end of the war. It's not like he was intentionally staying out of it, its more like a parent coming home from vacation to see the place trashed and going "what the fuck is going on here".
Plus having Oscar sit out the lion's share of the war means more opportunities for the little guys (i.e., Guard, rank-and-file Space Marines, Eldar, etc.) to get a chance to shine.

I think the implication with people surrendering is that Vandire had everyone living in fear for ~140 years, then Thor started a revolt that lasted about 9 years or so, and on year 10 they found Oscar who immediately set out to fix things. Oscar basically caused resistance to crumble across most of the Imperium except for the real die-hard Vandire supporters, who holed up in Terra and had to be manually removed. The surrender of the other groups once they know Oscar is back is important because it shows they thought they were doing what's best for the Imperium, despite being on the wrong side.

>>50921442
Found the conversation. Basically this.

>>50922762
Good point. That's probably exactly how it went down. Though I doubt bolters and lasguns were being fired en masse.

>>50923442
I like the idea that tracking the Black Ships is how they found Oscar, and it explains why the Inquisition was the group that did.

I whole-heartedly agree with what's been said about Oscar's views on gender, and I can see Isha's reasoning, but what about Howling Banshees?

Also, what were the Custodes doing at this time? I know in canon they holed up in the Imperial Palace because they were more concerned with the Emperor, but here they actually have a live Emperor (Vandire) to guard.

>>50928092
>Oscar was gone for almost all of the war
So what would have made the Warpstorm to save Thor's revolt? [spolier]Magnus, an unknown 3rd party or luck?[/spoiler] Leaving the question open-ended because nobody takes the credit actually sounds pretty possible considering the confusion of the Civil War.

Is the rebellion just Imperials fighting Imperials than because the lines between the rebels and loyalist were blurred? If the lines really were blurred I think >>50920931 had it right in saying that it's just the Horus Heresy with no primarchs. The idea that Thor threatening to kill everybody with explosives unless they negotiate still sounds like a crazy thing an inquisitor would do.

>>50928092
Howling Banshees are Khine more than they are Isha.

Custards were tasked with defending Oscar, their order swore loyalty and protection to him personally rather than to the title. They were mostly released from their duties to make lives for themselves except for a small handful that couldn't imagine lives without their jobs so they went with him to the beach.

>>50927699
Probably don't view them the same as the DAs view Fallen. Fallen were a bunch of self serving dipshits who wanted to take over the Imperium and Death Camp all the xeno allies using Chaos as a tool/shortcut and having their twisted motives twisted further from there.

Deamon Breakers are a bunch of idiots who have done some bad shit for good(ish) reasons and need to be brought in for questioning before the fire they play with burns the house down.

>>50929346
>Death camps for xenos allies and use Chaos
I just realized the Fallen are now Wolfenstein-tier Nazis now. I'm so proud of them ;_;

>>50921547
Can't the SoB function like the Stormtroopers but as void marines or anti-Chaos specialists. Flamers can be very effective in boarding actions like how a flamer squad just teleports into the bridge of a ship then roast everybody in the room. Already equipped with some melta charges if they accidentally get teleported near the engines they can still disable it without a problem. If that can't work then they can always melt the generators or deck support beams. They can also be trained to fight with anti-Warp tech and IG psykers against Chaos forces. The recruitment for this all female organization just so happens to be mostly from religious education institutions.

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>>50930374
I think that in a previous thread the method of their formation went thusly;

It is not illegal for citizens to form peoples militias, even in times of peace. In fact if anything it is encouraged because it occasionally comes in useful when shit really hits the fan.

The Imperium does not give a shit what sort of government you have so long as it works, so there are theocracies. The head of the planetary government is also head of the state religion but the division of faith and military is maintained by him having a duel secular title and authority. The PDF comes with the secular title.

If the government, by the authority of the secular head of state, wants to provide some level of training and maybe a bit of equipment for these citizens militias then that is entirely their own business. Again, so long as the Tithe is paid the Imperium gives no shits.

The Imperium has no problem with soldier ascribing to a particular religion so long as it doesn't interfere with their duties. If anything a shared faith improves cohesion and fervent belief is a mild Chaos deterrent.

Restrictions on war gear and weapons, or a lack thereof, in the general population is an entirely local law level thing that the Imperium gives no shits about.

The original Adepta Sororitas and Adeptus Fraturnus were "citizens militias" that just so happened to receive a lot of state funding from the head of their planets. Who also by coincidence just happened to be religious heads of the state religions. And they, by increasing coincidence, tended to recruit from religious orders.

The coincidences just mount up. It's not actually breaking the law, but it's very fucking close.

They presumably became a united Imperial Institution rather than a bunch of independent local organizations after they proved how useful they could be when they went all in right from the start in the Civil War on the side of Inquisitor Thor.

>>50931383
That pic reminded of Ana from Overwatch. I realised that Ana-based Soritas would pretty cool.

>>50930374
No Ecclesiarchy in this timeline, so no state-sanctioned religious schools.

To try and summarize what's been said on the SoB so far, in this timeline, the SoB act as internal security as the militant arm of the Ordos Securitas. After the Apostasy, it was clear the Ordo Securitas needed a militant arm, as despite it being their job to watch the watchmen their warnings were being followed half-heartedly or not at all. To Oscar, the creation of the SoB was killing two birds with one stone. It gave the Securitas muscle, and it also gave the Imperium something to do with the women who would have made good space marines, but were geneseed-incompatible and Oscar did not feel comfortable putting on the front lines. The SoB keep the home fires burning...although the fires in this case are the burned bodies of those that would destroy the Imperium from within.

There was also some discussion over whether the SoB in this timeline should have some minor physical augmentations, essentially whatever modifications and power armor the Imperium can give them without the need of a geneseed. This would make them as tough or tougher than a Lord Commissar (but able to function as a unit rather than one really tough general) but less so than the Space Marines, basically making them SPARTANs to the Space Marine's...Space Marine. This makes them able to curbstomp most of what the Sisters face as anti-insurgent internal security, but can't take on a Space Marine in a straight up 1v1 fight. However, I am not sure if this was ever really agreed upon.

At least, this is what I have been able to gather from what has been said. The Sisters of Battle have probably been the most contentious piece of the setting so far, since they already have trouble fitting in regular 40k and they have it worse here since there is no Ecclesiarchy for them to be the militant arm of.

>>50931383
>>50932208

Okay I just realized these two posts are pointing in completely opposite directions. What exactly are the Sisters of Battle in this timeline?

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>>50932241
Could combine the two.

A loose association of theologically unconnected religious order with variations of the common origin in

>>50931383

that came to prominence in the Civil War, were amalgamated into an official Imperial Institution, given authority and accountability and then neatly folded into the Ordo Securitas as written here

>>50932208

They don't need a galaxy spanning Ecclesiarchy for there to be religious orders.

It's entirely possible that each order is taken from a different world with a different religion to ensure that they never amalgamate on the larger scale and become a power in their own right.

I like the idea that they do usually have some level of augmentation. Nothing that would stop them from passing as human to the naked eye but maybe with some high grade discreet cybernetics and maybe some limited gene-forging.

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I've added the list of links to the old archived threads to the 1d4chan page including the illusive previous thread to this one.

Page 10bump

Brumf

>>50932466
It still raises a number of questions.

If the SoB originated from the PDF of theocracy worlds, why are they all women? Especially given that >>50931383 mentioned the militias of the theocracy worlds also contained men. One could use the "men under arms" loophole, but the Emperor is still around in this timeline and he'd see right through that. Indeed, Oscar might react more negatively to the SoB in this situation than one might expect, given that they represent two things he is really uneasy with: militarized religious institutions and women on the front lines. Oscar might tolerate it if it was just PDF, because the Imperium cares very little as to what you do in your backyard, but turning it into an Imperium-wide institution, no matter how fractious, would probably make him uncomfortable.

If the orders of the Sisters are world-specific and recruited from the faithful of that world, how are they supposed to function as an Imperium-wide institution? If all the orders come from different religions (particularly the fanatics of said religion, as opposed to the more friendly type), they might spend more time fighting with each other than doing their job. After all, one religious order might consider the beliefs of another religious order to be a bigger deal to the Imperium (especially because the Imperium doesn't seem to share their concerns) than the actual group of insurgents that share the same faith.

What does one do if they are not particularly pious (or born on a world that does not have a Securitas order of their particular faith) yet badass enough to get sent to the Sisters (and obviously resistant enough to Chaos to not be a liability)? Would it be something you just have to tolerate, like if you were a secular person working at a Jesuit college?

There were also several anons in the last thread arguing for a more secular SoB.

>>50937682 (cont.)

Nevertheless, I could see the Sisters recruiting a lot of people with strong faith, regardless of whether or not they are officially a religious institution or one in all but name, if for no other reason than faith is a good Chaos deterrent and the Sisters would spend a lot of time fighting Chaos cults both in canon or as internal security in this timeline.

The SoB could have started out as an outgrowth of religious institutions, and simply become more secular over time. IIRC, several real life humanitarian organizations have had similar roots. In this case, it would be out of pragmatism given how hard it was to manage the organization in a way that followed all of its members' beliefs, or to avoid favoring any one faith (which might compromise the faith of others, which might increase vulnerability to Chaos).

There's also one question regarding Oscar's specific thoughts regarding women on the battlefield. I can see why he never named any female primarchs or tried to get Astartes augmentations to work on women, but later in Imperial history in addition to the SoB we have female Eldar and human Imperial Guardsmen, female commissars, female Inquisitors, Howling Banshees, and female Tau soldiers (Shadowsun, for one); all of which seem at odds with what he would have been okay with. Perhaps during the Age of Strife Oscar was rather traditionalist, given the political climate on Earth and his upbringing by Malcador, but in the centuries since he may have become a bit more flexible, which is why he didn't balk when the SoB came along six millennia later.

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>>50937682
Secular SoB is pretty much the only way Oscar would allow such an organization of all-female soldiers could ever exist. Militarized religions was pretty much why the Imperial True preached for state atheism in the first place. They might have started out as a loose collection of anti-Chaos religious militias going by the name "Templars of Battle", until the Emperor brought down the banhammer40k on them. To keep existing the organization became "secular".

Why create an all-female army in the first place instead of a mixed force like the Imperial Army? The most likely explanation is a similar reasoning as to why SMs are only male. The SoB will have to undergo a chemical, genetic, and surgical operations to change their bodies to beyond peak human performance, that only women can partake in. Some sort of chemical developed by the Assassines to enhance their shap-shifters is what might have started one of the first "transformation" operations.

The actual function of the SoB is to root out cultist and traitors. The organization should be made of some of the most well trained political fanatics in the Imperium short of the SMs or the Inquisition. At home they act like the anti-partisan troops in that they hunt down potential traitors or renegades, and kill off any cults or cleanse the taint of Chaos. This mean they would mean they will defiantly be clashing with infiltrating CSM and renegade SM like the Fallen.

On the frontlines the SoB would fight like Stormtroopers or in some cases act as makeshift Commissars, they won't be officers but will roast any Guardsmen that tries to retreat or worst. Unlike the Stormtroopers the Battle Sisters don't infiltrate nor act covertly but fights on the front and sometimes just behind the front. The Imperial Navy would love of have Battle Sisters for boarding enemy ships because unless they are facing heavily armored foes like the CSMs, the tight hallways and cramped rooms are perfect for a flamer.

>>50938640
Or the original pre-Civil War sisters were a collection of non military organizations that just startred to get their warpath on during the Reign of Blood.

>>50937682

I beg to differ with >>50932466
. The whole point of the SoBs being with the Ordo Securitas in this setting is because it was decided that having their defining feature being
>holy shit do your job properly or i will fucking burn you
is a lot more refreshing than how they're always
>reeeeeeeeeeeee heretics please go i will fucking burn you
everywhere, both in canon and most AU discussions. Given that fact that the Ecclesiarchy isn't a thing, and Oscar decreeing that galaxy-spanning religion shouldn't really be a thing, it wouldn't really make sense - and making them crazed zealots of a hundred *different* religions is grasping at other people's straws at this point.

Having them with the Securitas removes the need to shove various excuses to their faith into it; and there's no real need to make excuses as to why they're all female (since the No Men Under Arms rule/loophole could be also applied comfortably the Securitas, since nobody really wants the people who can pass judgement even on the rest of the Inquisition to be heavily armed). But do we want the SoBs to be the Securitas's militant arm, or the entire Ordo?

>>50938640
>Secular SoB

Then why even bother call them SOB?

>>50941387
>SMs mainly perform ground action, with only the Sons of Horus/Luna Wolves actually specialising in boarding actions
Then why even bother calling them space marines?

>>50941387
B-because they're female...?

Are the Tau still confined to their corner of the galaxy or have they been able to settle in all segmentums?
I can't remember if this was decided or even discussed.
Need to know for oc fluff.

>>50941387
>Inquisition don't have to follow a state religion
Why even call themselves the Inquisition?

I remember some anon saying that Nobledark's less religiously obsessed nature would probably tone down the gothic aspects in its design, so...

>>50923351
pick an aesthetic, folks

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>>50944212
Art Deco should win out in this less religious AU. The design looks militaristic and utilitarian while still leaving an imposing impression to any bystanders.

>>50944289
Agreed. Brutalism is shit tier (and also nicked by all generic spess battleships), and Postmodernism is some eldar shit right there. Art Deco is the way to go.

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>>50944350
I also found this in the Battlefleet: Gothic thread. Armor like this won't be seen on SMs in the AU until after WotB. The whole knights in space armor like the Mk2/3 should still be around in the AU until Mk4 where there should be tiny bits of Art Deco influence then end up looking full Decomarine in the Mk7 armor.

>>50944474
This...this is good. We desperately need a drawfag,don't we?

>>50944212
>>50944289
>>50944350

Consider this a vote for Art Deco. Also note that Eldar architectural influences might have influenced some aesthetics in the Imperium. Not directly, but more like "hey, that's neat, we should make a building like that on our planet, but human-style".

>>50943932
Because they're inquisitive.

>>50943459
I think Tau are able to freely travel across the Imperium (I mean, as much as any other random citizen), but I don't know if we decided they have been able to settle outside of the Ultima Segmentum.

>>50944517
The Sister of Battle is a secular all-female sisterhood that fights in battles.

>>50944570
Don't see why not, although they will have to use someone else's ships if they want to get anywhere distant. Tau can not into fast ships.

Not that this is an insurmountable obstacle.

Colonists all travel to Eastern Fringe trade and travel hub, get on a commercial ferry to as close as they can get to target then hire a private ship the rest of the way.

What's more is that the Ethereal missionaries have access to everyone.

>>50938640
Guy who suggested the augmentations idea here. This is why I suggested that the sisters are primarily composed of the women who would have otherwise made good space marines in the previous thread. It gives them a reason to be all female, and it doesn’t require us to invent a separate “geneseed” for the Sisters (though I would not be opposed to that if you guys want to go that way).

I also liked it because it gave the Sisters this weird rivalry with the Space Marines (and a new reason to be angry) in this timeline. The Sisters are a little resentful of the Space Marines, which they see as getting the better augmentations and fighting the more important battles. However, this manifests itself as more of a weird combination of sibling/interservice rivalry (and shit-talking each other at the pub) than Horus-level stuff.

I really liked the idea of the Sisters being “the ones who keep you dumbasses in line” in this timeline. Your average guardsman is terrified of the Sisters, only slightly less than they are their commissars or commanding officers, and that is only because the latter two are actually standing over the Guardsman’s shoulders. The sisters have a reputation for being real hardasses, and like any Internal Affairs department the grunts become terrified when IA comes knocking. The sisters know this, and even the more reasonable ones use their reputation to their advantage.

I also kind of liked the idea that the white hair of the Sisters is either a side effect of the augmentation process, or it was a flaw of the prototype Sisters and later members dye their hair the same color out of respect and solidarity. This kind of flaw is trifling compared to the kinds of mutations Space Marine can get, so no one bothered to fix it. Sisters undercover can simply dye (or neglect to dye) their hair to blend in, and when fighting openly the white hair is sort of psychological warfare that tells their enemies “oh shit, the Sisters are here”.

>>50944937
>a weird combination of sibling/interservice rivalry
This. As well as more obvious reasons (augmentations, equipment), I can also see the Sisters getting jealous over the foes they get to fight. Like, they must get resentful stuck doing IA and rooting out corruption (both normal and Chaos) instead of going out there and punching orks in the face.

>oh shit, the sisters are here
>t. everyone
Good.

Hello the "Balthasar Gelt in 40k" fluff guy here, I have a question and I wonder if I could get some suggestions.

Since the AdMech don't like (to put it mildly) the oc colony I am writing I was thinking that one of the side effects would be that their interstellar fleet with warp capability is very small.
They only have two warp capable ships that the AdMech maintenance checks once a year at the behest of the Administratum.

What would a viable course of action be that could resolve their difficulties with FTL? Should it even be resolved or should they be confined to their star system as outcasts?

The original plan was after a certain event that called for desperate measures they would achieve their own 'clunky but fast' means of FTL (complete with fucking numbers and everything)

But the original plan feels like it's stretching their capabilities too much and so I ask for advice.

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>>50944937
On the idea of the "geneseed" the Sisters receive is nothing compared to what the SMs have to undergo.

In terms of surgery the regular Battle Sister might have a special organ that produces extra adrenaline or converts estrogen to adrenales. If anything all this organ does is just tell the brain to stockpile adrenales instead of making estrogen. To reinforce this, the Assassins could provide the plans to make a chemical that is only compatible with human women which would enhance the body based on estrogen levels or genetics.

The "geneseed" is very mild or tame compared to the SMs who become hulking giants that can spit acid and absorb memories, while the Sisters just end up being very fit, and slightly taller than the average human.

The standard Battle Sister is the ideal Guardsmen, and could be actually achieved for some in the IG if they are strong and fast enough. The SoB represents the golden standard that humans can become without resorting to becoming horribly mutated like the SMs.

>>50945473
This, although I feel like it'd just be done via regular augmentation instead of however the fuck geneseed implants work. Basically, >>50932208's idea that SoBs are augmented to about SPARTAN level sounds about right; somewhere between peak human and walking tank (but leaning towards the former).

>>50944474
I wonder how a deco beakie helmet would look.

It would make sense that sisterhoods of the Sororitas would be recruited from the same world/culture to promote unit cohesion.

There is nothing therefore either encouraging or hindering a particular sisterhood from being devout adherents to a particular faith.

So presumably there are holy order warrior nun Sororitas in the same way as there are holy knight Astartes even though neither the Adeptus Astartes or the Adepta Sororitas as a whole are religious organizations.

I think that's a fair compromise.

>>50945452
>>50945452
The AdMech could have threatened to completely strand them, but the greater Imperium could have stepped in and said "look, you may not like these guys, but we can't just leave them unconnected to the galaxy where they'll just get nommed by Chaos or the Orks. At least let them have an emergency ship."

The Mechanicus agreed, as long as the colonists agreed to do their stuff FAR AWAY from the Mechanicus, in the hopes that they will be far enough away that the AdMech's unwanted roommate doesn't noticd them (they probably would be, but the AdMech are paranoid).

That, or a Rogue Trader regularly visits them. The RT get all sorts of tech goodies, and the colony gets much needed supplies. The RT could be close enough (using the colony as a hub to explore the area, since it is on the frontier) that they could panic dial the RT for help if shit goes down.

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>>50945910
Maybe something like this but the SMs don't go full Deco until Mk7.
This is my first time drawing digitally, I know it looks like shit.

>>50945473
>>50945806

Whatever modifications the Sisters receive, it would have to be either implantations or something that can't be passed down genetically (somatic but not reproductive gene-forging? Might work since unlike men women don't produce eggs their entire lifetime). If it wasn't if Chaos got their hands on a Sister they could produce a whole army of supersoldiers in record time.

Looking through the fluff, there's a lot of canon example of augmentations that can do the stuff we're looking for. Gland warriors are capable of superhuman strength and endurance on par with what we are talking about (SPARTAN levels), and the only reason they were never perfected is the AdMech wrote them off as a project. And of course you have the "false Astartes" like Kor Phaeron (though I'm not advocating going in that direction, I like >>50945806's "between peak human and walking tank (but leaning towards the former)").

Being augmented but essentially able to pass for a normal, if rather tall and fit, human would be really useful for their job as Internal Security. Not only would it enable the Sisters to blend in with urban society if need be (which the Space Marines...can't), it would also enable them to make better use of cover and alternate flanking routes in urban combat.

>>50947487
Guardsman
>Quick! Take cover!
SM
>What cover?
Guardsman
>All these conveniently placed knee high stone slabs!
*SM crouch down behind a slab*
SM
>They can still shoot my head, chest, and shoulders!

>>50946126
Agreed that there are probably highly religious orders of Sororitas despite the Ordos as a whole being secular in the same way that there are highly religious groups of Space Marines despite there being no universal Imperial faith. Indeed, having a strong faith is probably a positive on your resume for anyone trying to join the Sisters because it helps with the Chaos cults.

>>50945098
I liked the idea that some of the Sisters' other nicknames (i.e., "Sororitas, "SoBs" (you know what I mean), "bolter bitches") started out as derogatory epithets by their enemies. Some the Sisters took up on their own as a term of pride (hence why they are known as the Sororitas as often as their actual department title) others...not so much.

>oh shit, the sisters are here
>t. everyone

"Oh, Howling Banshees. You have those too."
"What? No, those are the Sisters of Battle."
"They're female, angry, and they scare the piss out of everyone. Sound like Howling Banshees to me."
-- Conversation between an Eldar exarch and a human Imperial Guardsmen corporal.

>>50947604
>the slabs are spare pauldrons

So has anybody decided anything about Fulgrim yet?

Also would his Legion be still called Emperor's Children if in this Imperium there was no "Emperor" at the time and the Warlord/Steward wasn't an egomaniac? I'm guessing not but what should 3rd Legion be called?

>>50948391
A name like "Empire's Sons" or "Imperial Offsprings" sounds fitting enough. I don't know much about Fulgrim so I won't try to make the story of his legion.

>>50948391
>>50948545
Children of Man sounds interesting, especially since the Imperium at that time was human only and Oscar was so keen on HFY

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>>50948545
From what I remember of the previous threads 3 or 4 back without wading through the archive to find.

Fulgrim was Merikan.

Merika was quite shit. Basically all that was left of the old world nation worth consideration was the military. The military was basically Fallout's Enclave on a larger scale.

Merika has invaded and taken half of what was in ancient days Maxico and all of Canada/Kalbi.

Fulgrim was military commander who goes renegade. Simultaneously Dorn of Kalbi declares Independence.

Fulgrim and his soldiers hole up in the less connected western side of the continent with the subjugated primitive tribal kingdoms and the gene-splice hippes that haven't already fled to the the Warlords banner.

Warlord takes both Fulgrim and Dorn under his protection.

Fulgrim is instrumental in the conquest of Merika and it's eventual reconstruction.

Specializes in getting the maximum done with the minimum of manpower and resources.

Tendency to micromanage.

Refuses to adapt to the post WotB galaxy. Gets his legion fucking ruined in the Iron Cage incident of the Tzneetichian Orks.

can't remember how he died.

>>50948545
I like Empire's Sons. Nice an patriotic.

>>50949458
>form a legion in Merika
>patriotic sounding name
I wish I could say "just as planned" but I can't.

>>50948391
There is an anon working on Fulgrim but we haven't heard from him in a few threads or seen any writefaggotry posted, so it's anyone's guess as to how much is finished.

>>50950014
How long is considered polite to wait before declaring it a free subject again?

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>>50947487
After the Apostasy or also known as the Imperial Civil War, CE forces had encountered SoB in combat for the first when they were infiltrating the world of Dark Haven to steal an Imperial Knight.

The Imperials used a double agent at the later stages of the CE plan to feed false information and leak orders to the local SoBs. In the final part of the plan, CE and local cultist stormed to highjack the Imperial Knight from an underground storage facility. They fell for a bait that the Imperials set up, the PDF guarding the facility fought longer than they should have before fleeing deeper underground. Pressured to move faster the CE rushed to get to their objective bypassing many unchecked rooms and hallways. IG and SoB closed the main exits when they were sure the CE were deep in the facility before sweeping from floor to floor killing any Chaos forces. The CE found out the Imperial Knight kept inside was actually a fake made of cheap metals, cloth, and plastoid. The only few survivors were CE who crawled out of pipes and air ducts, these survivors would go on to report the effectiveness of SoB compared to Guardsmen.

Arach-Cyn raiders being the very same CE that organized the failed highjacking would later capture some SoB while out on one of their raids months later. One of the witch doctors would request the SoB prisoners (that didn't commit suicide) for experimentation. She would first force male human slaves to breed kids with the SoB only to find out the babies were perfectly normal (save for a few cosmetic mutations). Later she tried injecting embryos instead of impregnation, to then find out the kids were clones of their fathers. The witch doctor would be frustrated enough to kill the SoBs via dissection to then see the minor augmentations that filled the bodies. What she saw wasCLASSIFIED BY ORDO MALLEUS =][= , a special gland for production of extra adrenales, and an unknown chemical in the blood.

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>>50948788
might as well finally post the bit of fulgrim stuff i thought up.
The Primarch Fulgrim, foremost of the legion Terra's Children, was conceived in a Merikan population expansion program. His parents were both loyal Merikan officers, and upon their deaths their genetic material had been saved, and eventually combined for one of countless batch grow children. In truth this program and others were conceived and implemented as the early wars of unification rocked the eurasian continent, if only to bolster the Merikan guard should another high-technological joust of nations commence. Fulgrim was decanted twenty years before the fall of Ursh, in the facilities of the MoTon industrial concern. By random chance or the inevitability of mass production he could be said to have been born with a charming and distinct beauty, which he maintained for all his life, though it was accompanied by a vast and neurotic ego. At this time his name was Furis Doe, and shared a surname with all other children created as he was. In his youth he found success among the ranks or mechanists and the overseers of MoTon, and became the commander of his own sub workshop at a young age. Between his competence and the opportunity to demonstrate the success of their program Fulgrim's superiors were eager to fast track him.
Furis matured steeped in the legends told by old mechanists, some even from the arctic enclaves, of the star spanning mechanicus, and the gleaming stelar empire they maintained, but also surrounded by the propaganda of the merikan war machine, with edicts of the holy human form, and even pretensions to brutal meritocracy. In the years surrounding the imperium's first truly overt offensives, and then its brutal dismantling of the Despot of Ursh and all under his banner, Merika hardened for war against the unification.

>>50950717
Between the saturation of muddled anti-Ursh and anti-Imperial propaganda and his own dreams of the stars Furis began to recede into his mind, and this came just as the mounting war effort put the apparent prodigy in command of his own experimental workshop and staff. These were Merikan mechanists and techpriests cast out of the polar enclave after it sided with the Imperium. Fulgrim, a nickname earned by his increasingly dry, cynical demeanor, mostly served as a director, but was himself a decent scientist and tinkerer.
Furis began experiments with superhuman modification to respond to the fabled imperial thunder warriors, among other things. While these projects had successes, even creating subsystems superior to imperial equivalents in some respects, they were few and expensive, and other avenues showed far greater promise. Fulgrim did however upgrade himself in numerous faculties, spending not insignificant resources as such. He was said to be deeply interested in the lore he could draw from the defector techpriests, though he never went so far as to make any of his personal modifications overt. Fulgrim would eventually express that it was partially the mechanicus' preference for skitarii and servitors that made progress on superhuman physiological enhancement so difficult. During this period he traveled around Merika and Kalbi, particularly exploring the borderlands and the deep mazes of vaults drilled through the western mountains, where techno-barbarians still flourished. Fulgrim and his workshop were notably productive though this time, either creating or dredging up dozens of horrific technological marvels, but Furis Doe was only loosely tethered to his superiors' control, and was rarely in contact with Merikan command. In some histories it is guessed that the Warlord contacted him around this time, but it wasn't so.

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>>50951330
Furis and his mechanists, notably cherry picked from Doe production runs, returned from the wastes with technological bounty and only a handful fewer men and tech priests than they set off with. At this time Ursh was fallen, the eurasian continent near unified under the Imperium, Kalbi was in revolt, and Merikan high command even contemplated alliance with Hy Brasil, though the prospect was unlikely. Fulgrim famously wowed the capital as he fired some of his more militarily applicable discoveries over the marching grounds, and excited the officers in the audience with promises of strategic archeotech and superhuman advancements, but in truth the director was unmoored from the war effort as much as the rest of terrestrial reality. Between the unnerving horrors of the wastes, the gross violations authored by the great Merikan industrial core and the Dark Age technologies Fulgrim tried to meddle with he had driven cracks through his world. Fulgrim had long nursed a love for hedonism, and as he enjoyed his fame in the capital his old neuroses as MoTon's prodigy layered into his unmoored state. In something of a haze Fulgrim began to lay down his own base of influence, and seeking military office subsequently attached his forces to the command of one honorable major Luscious, bound for the expeditionary force to europe to engage the Imperium.

>>50949458
Second. Sounds exactly like the kind of thing Fulgrim would do. Where is Fulgrimfag?

>>50951744
and that's about as far as I got. Fulgrim and Luscious go to europe, have wartime adventures, Fulgrim surpasses Luscious. After this Initial tour Luscious is reassigned as backup to suppress Kalbi, Fulgrim goes Jay Gatsby in the capital while simultaneously building up increasingly elaborate influence and technological power base just as aimless 'improvement'. Eventually he fucks up, gets caught, and is gonna be put to death, but alpha legion bails him out. He ends up as one of the major heads of the hydra as the Imperium goes to war with Merika, and cuts Luscious in for a pretty successful attack on high command. He also helps finish up the Astartes program, and really believes in the Astartes as superhuman heroes angle, as opposed to having them fight like soldiers. He and his forces are close with Ferrus Mannus, and dig the transhuman angle Horus takes, and Fulgrim is big on getting out into the system following unification. He is also excited to be liaison of fleshy ones to the mechanicus, and has some success at this.

I hope to write up the rest later.

>>50950717
>>50951330
>>50951744
>>50951960

I am Fulgrimfag>>50951922

>>50951970
Well, I'm an idiot then. Serves me right for not checking the end of the thread.

>>50951960
Wasn't Fulgrim also close with Dorn in this timeline? IIRC he was the one who convinced Dorn to rebel along with him.

So, since we are back on the subject of 30k, has there been any description as to what the Empire of Ursh was actually like, beyond "horrible" and "an awful place to live"? I mean in terms of their cultural mindset, given that they ended up becoming such a nightmare on the world stage. Ursh was gobbling up so much of Africa and Eurasia that the Warlord essentially had to march against them, and nearly a fifth of the primarchs have the stories of their origins directly correlated with the Empire of Ursh (Magnus, Khan, Corax, Perty), not counting the ones who were indirectly affected via political events prior to their birth (Vulkan, Sanguinius). The unification of Earth is in many ways the story of the subjugation and fall of the three most threatening empires on the planet: Merika, Ursh, and the Pan-Pacific Empire, and of those three Ursh was probably the most dangerous.

>>50950518
That's some mighty fine draw and writefaggatory.

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>>50954699 (cont.)
I was thinking that maybe because the Urshites (Urshi? I’ve seen both used) were originally surrounded on three sides by people that were subsistence farmers (Sino-Japan), nomads (steppe nomads), and more tribals (Sibar), when people started to rebuild from the worst of the Age of Strife, they saw themselves as the sole remaining carriers of the torch of civilization that stretched back to Babylon and Sumeria, and as "enlightened" god-kings it was their duty to shepherd the uncivilized masses back into the light. As a result, I can imagine Urshite archetecture being dominated by a lot of Neo-Babylonian motifs and ziggurats, despite having little connection to Babylon, similar to how early American architecture was consciously modelled after Greece and Rome because they saw themselves as inheritors of Greco-Roman ideas of democracy. This, combined with a whole lot of dehumanization, was why the despots were so infamous for being brutal to their subjects. In their view, questioning the despots or making a request was tantamount to saying the "god-kings" didn't know what they were doing or they were not properly ruling the people. The Despots of Ursh were told from birth that they were infallible god-kings destined to rule over the "lesser" people who could do no wrong, and they bought that idea hook, line, and sinker.

>>50954699 (cont.)
>>50954727 (cont.)

Population-wise, Ursh was probably deeply split between vassal peoples (treated poorly), serfs (native-born, but treated poorly), and the aristocratic, military, religious, and scientific classes (which essentially comprised a single upper class). As has been talked about in earlier threads, Ursh military policy was probably a lot like western Rome right before its fall, using one group of auxillaries as boogeymen to scare another group of auxillaries into falling in line. After the fall of the Despot, the upper class was essentially dismantled and few, if any, survived. The various freed vassals and serfs were in some ways brought together by the shared experiences of the horrors of the tyrants, giving rise to the phrase "Children of Ursh" to refer to these people.

And of course, as mentioned in previous stuff, there's the high probability that the entire upper class of Ursh was being played like a fiddle by the Chaos Gods.

>>50954699
I'm imagining a sort of cross between ancient China and ancient Mongolia at their most cruel and brutal but with better technology. Also balls deep in Chaos.

The Despot worshiped as a divine god-king descended from the gods of Chaos. His rule absolute, his authority total. Majority of population is slaves, only his Chosen are free to serve him of their own choice. Like him the Chosen are Chaos disciples.

It is an empire based on fear and misery with a Maoist Stalinist thing going on where everyone is watching everyone for perceived disloyalty to report for reward.

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The Battle of Phaeton started with the utter destruction of the garrison Imperial Navy fleet over orbiting. The Ork ships closed in before the fleet could react to ram then board the proto-Carnage and Devastation-class cruisers. Some Shadow and Eclipse-class cruisers tried to flank the Ork fleet to envelop them then shred the Ork ships. The flanking maneuver was interrupted by some reinforcing proto-Torture-class cruisers of different variants, the CE forced the surviving Imperial fleet to limp away in emergency Warp or Webway jumps.

Prior to the Battle over Phaeton by a few week, the IG regiments were unexpectedly greeted by 2.000 Dark Angel reinforcements without vehicles. Using a few cargo ships, supposedly they were sent as a vanguard force to intercept the incoming Chaos invasion. When the Chaos forces (crash) landed to burn down the forge world, they were met with heavy artillery and entrenched defenders. Most of the SMs helped the IG to dig in and lead counter-attacks to retake some buildings. Some of the SMs fought behind enemy lines to disrupt supply and kill CE officers. One such assassination was SMs mimicking an Ork courier that was bringing a few old important humans officers as a gift to a Crone Eldar. To the surprise of the Crone officer, she and her bodyguards were faced with 10 SMs when their illusions dropped to reveal themselves with bolters and in power armor. The officer along with her retinue was ripped to pieces by the SMs.

The dwindling numbers of the Orks and the increasing infighting between CE caused a stalemate on Phaeton where both sides dug in. The battle ended when Battlefleet Pacificus intervened to end the Phaeton blockade by shooting down CE ships. The Alpha Legion Battle Barges orbiting sent thousands of SMs to Phaeton to crush the remaining Chaos forces planetside. The Dark Angels on the planet disappeared with no official record of them ever being there.

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>>50955173
Ave Hydra

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So how would the Emperor deal with Ogryn and Beastmen this time round if he has the loyalty of the adeptus biologicus?

This is how I see it.

The other abhumans for the most part I can see him being not to upset about. Void Born are cool as fuck and in an increasingly space dwelling Imperium are fine and dandy. Night Siders, Fishsticks, Ratlings and others I can see him being happy with for similar reasons.

Then you get the Ogryn and the Beastmen. To his mind they are human. But they are afflicted humans.

Perhaps he tasked the Biologicus with fixing them.

He would not want them replacing. They are his people. He was made to serve, not to surpass humanity. Destroying a divergent line of humanity would not sit well with him and in truth they probably are closer to baseline human than he is.

The Biologicus Magi would then spend centuries very gradually undoing the damage to the entire population by tiny increments. No more than one small change per generation.

Ogryn end up looking not too dissimilar to the orcs in the Warcraft film. The ones without the green. Still pretty big and strong but not as horrendously retarded. Still not up to human level. Most will never become literate and even the ones that do would stillprobably sign their name with an X but it's an improvement.

Beastmen would be harder due to their tendency to develop additional mutations.

Both would have specially trained care takers to do the heavy thinking and human officers.

Does this fit in with the Noble Darkness or is it a step too far?

>>50955729
Who's naked picture are they forced to look at?

>>50956644
To add this took place during WotB because we still need non-Battle of Terra fluff.

Well it is that time of the year again when our ball of mud have made another breath taking lap around the sun.

And so it is time that I shall share like 7 A4 pages of fluff on the "Supreme technocrat" with everyone in this very thread.
Now some of you will say "Why the fuck did you write 7 pages before posting anything?!"
All I can say is, good question and fuck it let's get to posting...

>>50958215
The 'Supreme technocrat' (mid M40)

Most people within the imperium would not be able to give you an answer were they to be asked “who is the 'Supreme technocrat'?” and the same goes for the twelve other technocrats that serve him.
Yet despite them being such a small group on the outskirts of the imperium they have managed to garner the ire of the adeptus mechanicus and the ever watching gaze of a select few powerful individuals.
The reason for the attention from these two sides is one and same but the intentions are opposite.
The korodians are a people that explore, research and create their own technology independent of the AdMech. The transition from relying on the AdMech to independent development have been a long and arduous journey for the korodians and their leader Manter Valler now formerly known as The 'Supreme technocrat' or 'the first technocrat'.

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>>50957533
In terms of the SUDDENLY ORKS/CE, and the navy getting completely instarekt, I thought this was the beginning of some exceptionally good First Day Of The War writefaggotry.

Still, still, good work fampai.

>>50958215
>7 A4 pages of fluff
pic related

>>50958234
oh and formatting may be shit since I am just copy pasting from my doc.

Their independence however have made them no more superior or inferior to any other faction within the great imperium but they are still very much different.
In essence it is another way of life that contributes in their own way to the imperium.
Their main focus is to further their understanding of the universe and everything in it, this focus have in turn shaped their society entirely.
Every Man woman and child in the Korod system have at some point spent or will spend decades within the Korodian Academies, honing their skills and knowledge so that they can serve the Supreme technocrat.
Every mineral, crop and creation not used as imperial tithes are refurbished to further their research apparatus.
Every man and woman who willingly lay down their lives in the imperial guard do so knowing that they have safeguarded their bastion of knowledge.
For the Supreme technocrat, Korod can be summarized as his 'little laboratory'.

>>50958248
As for the 'Supreme technocrat', he is elusive.
In the past when he was given leadership of the entire Korod system he used a more hands on approach in governing and educating the masses.
Now however there are administrators, assistants and teachers that manage to keep everyone out of his way except for those particular exceptions.
An audition with the Supreme technocrat is rare and only a handful of people outside of Korod knows what he looks like.
It is not out of spite he avoids people however but rather his priorities. In his mind meeting every person from the administratum, munitorum or some other political or military institution that would visit the system would be a waste of time he could spend on other things... like field manipulation.
Gifts however can usually make him appear if they seem interesting enough.

>>50958259
The Korodian government is like many other colonies within the imperium, ruled by a single person with complete authority over the local affairs.
But the similarities end there. While the Supreme technocrat indeed have complete power over everything, he rarely uses this position to the fullest extent.
Instead all matters are mostly handled by 12 appointed technocrats who have proven their capabilities (wealth, nobility and fame counts for nothing).
These 12 technocrats in turn also act as research directors for their given branch with complete authority over the action of the branch, this authority can only be overruled by the Supreme technocrat.
The branches handle research and development within a specific field while at the same time administrating the practical applications of said field, for example the “Energy systems” branch construct, install, run and research all power systems that the Korodians use.
Every 100 days the technocrats gather to discuss ongoing matters and to give the other branches status reports on any discoveries they made, as well as any obstacles they have encountered.
This time frame nearly guarantees the report of a new discovery by one branch without constant interruptions that will slow down work.

More information about the Korodian branches will be posted later.

>>50958277
Korodian relations with anyone in the imperium is lukewarm at best. This is due to the animosity between the Korodians and the AdMech. While there have been no open violent confrontation, the AdMech tends spreads derogatory rumors about Korodians to anyone that might wish to deal with them making traders reconsider. Whenever that fails they 'warn' people about the impending malfunctions to critical systems due to the omnissiah being angered.
Since everyone relies on the AdMech this have caused Korodians no end of trouble with foreign relations with the rest of the imperium.
As for other factions who act as allies to the Imperium, no contact have been made between Korodians and other 'friendly' xenos most likely due to the Korodians remote location.
This don't mean that they are hidden, there are just not many reasons to go there for any nearby Eldar, as far as they know.

A more detailed description of Korodian diplomacy will be posted at a later time.

>>50958298
Despite suffering from a near complete standstill trade (except for a select few rogue traders) the Korodians still manage to pay their tithes and supply themselves with everything they need and more. This eventually caused the administratum to send investigators on suspicion of smuggling operations. They found no smugglers instead they found that the Korodians had created their own methods of tapping into any matter and energy they could harvest from their system.
Any element that they ran short on was artificially created through transmutation and any endeavor deemed important for the survival of their colony was undertaken by their brightest minds with near unlimited resources.
Their visit became long, much much longer than they had anticipated. After being toured through the plethora of academies, laboratories and factories they had seen enough and returned to their superiors to relay they findings.

More information about Korodian structures will be posted later.

>>50958305
The administratum finds Korodian technology (while impressive) ultimately not that interesting for the imperium to the point where they want to aid its development.
Their framework is largely incompatible with the creations of the AdMech causing increased costs in developing colonies that would rely on both or convert their technological base.
And so the administratums official stance on the Korodians many creations is neutral as long as they don't impact their tithes.

The only exception regarding widespread use of Korodian tech are Korodian detachments that can accompany Imperial guard regiments as additional support.
More information about Korodian military practices will be posted later.
(still working on that part but basicly they are a nomad army that manipulate their current environment to produce most things they need on site)

>>50958313
There are many secrets in the Korod system and all can be traced to Manter and his technocrats.
Secrets that would no doubt bring about their doom were they ever to be discovered. Not by a torch removing the touch of chaos but rather the cold whirring servos of the mechanicus refusing to have their position threatened by the upstarts and their abominations.
The stage while decorated by Manter was not set by him, that accomplishment goes to his father...

>>50958327
It all began in M40.230 when a man by the name of Haverlok Valler embarked on an expedition to colonize a system located in the outskirts of segmentum obscurus.
The endeavor was considered 'a failure to happen' due to its secluded location and the plethora of xeno threats in the sector.
But Haverlok would not be deterred by any warnings and took nearly half his fortune he had amassed during his century long life of colonizing systems.
His entire life had been about conquering the frontier something that gave him a sense of fulfillment, braving the unknown and shaping whatever world he found into an efficient resource apparatus for the imperium.
This system however would be his last endeavor as dark events awaited him.

>>50958336
The system was a treasure trove for a man with experience and Haverlok was just that man. Four large celestial objects as well as a plethora of drifting asteroids and an asteroid belt, all with their own potential risks and benefits.
Since this colony would be established in such a remote location Haverlok focused on defense over speedy development and so decided to designate the alpine planet, 'Korod Prime' over the lush green continental world that became 'Korod Secundus'.
Korod Tertius would not see any colonization attempts until decades later as well as Korod Quatrus
The initial capitol on Korod Prime was located in a green valley surrounded by mountains and ravines. From above, the city looked like a heart with the valleys seeping out like arteries all over the planet. Construction of fortifications, roads, buildings and any other block of refined material given shape was initially slow but progressed with increasing speed. Powerful ground to orbit guns was placed within the confines of the massive fortifications as well as several quad-linked heavy stubbers possessing enough firepower to sweep the skies of aerial assaults. Haverlok reasoned that any ground assault would have difficulties reaching the capitol and so protecting the skies took priority. Outposts, checkpoints and listening posts dotted Korod Prime to make sure nothing would slip them by.

>>50958355
Three years after landfall (M40.233) on the designated capital planet of Korod Prime Haverlok had a son whom he named Manter.
Manter would never know his mother and Haverlok would never tell him about her whenever he asked in his later years.
Children was nothing new to him, after all Haverlok always left blood heirs to administer the planets he had 'conquered'.
Which might have been the reason why his attitude towards Manter changed. All his previous children were fit to sit and enjoy the safe haven he had created for them but none of them were able to keep his tradition alive.
He saw himself in Manter and decided to prepare him at an early age, as early as five years old.

Manter's early years were spent as an aide to his father so he could be exposed to his work as much as possible.
He was present during negotiations between his father and anyone who wanted to make a deal or give the colony a new directive.
When his father went on dangerous trips among the wildlife he would follow so he would grow accustomed to constant danger in its primal and uncaring form.
If the PDF officers were discussing planetary fortifications, Manter would be there as well.
And the aforementioned were only a few of the things he had to attend.
Most of these things he found to be dull but he persisted at the behest of his father.
But the one thing he loved to attend was when the adepts of the adeptus mechanicus would gather to discuss ongoing work.
In his eyes they seemed so wise compared to everyone else since it was their creations that kept the colony functioning but his admiration was something he shared with nobody.
After several meetings with the local adepts Manter wanted to become just as wise as them.
And so he did the only thing he thought of that could work...

>>50958363
He pestered his father until he relented and gave Manter his own secluded workshop.
It was a refurbished storage hangar in the lower levels of the capitol citadel, well out of sight from any prying eyes.
His Father was worried that if the adepts learned of his eagerness they would take him away or manipulate him and so giving the boy an environment away from their view seemed like the best solution.
Manter was nine years old when this happened and he spent every free hour he had in there breaking things apart that others no longer needed and trying to create something new from things he found 'lying around'.
Though the initial 'experiments' usually ended with burns, cuts and bruises, he still kept trying. He also used the workshop as his own study reading through books and cogitators containing information about math and physics, this was possible thanks to the teachers Haverlok had hired in secret.
They were individuals that were too interested in an objective observation of reality than what a certain organization would prefer.
Yet whenever they had helped Manter finish one book he always wanted more, his thirst for knowledge was unquenchable and the more he learned the more he wanted to learn.

>>50958379
His father was overjoyed at this development.
During his early years Manter had followed his fathers instructions and had learned well but he lacked something every decent leader required.
The boy had no passion and Haverlok would often curse his own stupidity for pushing Manter too hard. But now the boy was ecstatic everyday before going into the workshop as well as leaving the workshop. He had found his passion and Haverlok wanted to ensure it flourished into something that would make Manter surpass himself. Thus Haverlok used his resources and contacts far and wide to help procure materials that would help. Rare minerals, machinery and tools were brought in with the aid of Rogue traders under the nose of the AdMech.

Fortunately the resources spent on the additional acquisition for Manter did not hamper the colony development noticeably. Mines were reaching deeper and deeper beneath mountains, cities grew filling the empty valleys, and even smaller enclaves were established on the mountains. Roads, tunnels and bridges were slowly but surely binding all the cities on Korod prime.

>>50958389
At the age of sixteen there was little published work left available to Manter that would further his knowledge and he started experimenting with what he knew to create seemingly trivial gadgets.
Unbeknownst to Manter, his father had called in a plethora of favors to obtain copies of ancient texts. These texts were given to Manter when he turned 17. The texts described quantum mechanics and the inner workings of the tiniest of matter. As he read them he was aptly challenged, he became obsessed and his questions outpaced the answers. He started a journal where he would write down any question he deemed important and another journal that would contain the answers. By the age of 20 he had filled two tomes with nearly 200 questions each of which he had answered roughly a quarter.
Despite his obsessions he still maintained his other duties but with greater enthusiasm than before.

For the following years the colony enjoyed a peaceful prosperous time. Haverlok had decided that Manter no longer needed to attend the regular meetings as often so that the young adult could get more time to spend in his workshop
For Manter the years were mostly spent creating various machines, furthering his understanding of everything around him and avoiding the adeptus mechanicus.
He had learned this was for the best as whenever he tried to engage them in conversation about a variety of topics regarding his discoveries or theories he was met with confusion and hostility not to mention their anger when they found one of his creations.
One of his early masterful creations was a high altitude remote controlled spy drone.
Planetary sensors managed to detect it however when he got to close to the capitol citadel.
But before the PDF could complete defensive preparations Manter stepped forward and explained what happened.

>>50958414
This earned him the anger of the local adepts of the adeptus mechanicus who 'politely' told him to cease his meddling and leave technological matters to the servants of the omnissiah.
Their demand went unheeded however but Manter did keep his creations out of the way.

Since Manter had to keep his projects secret (except from his father) he could not rely on servants to help him. This caused Manter no end of annoyance when he had to move heavier objects due to operating a variety of machines was time consuming, not to mention the space they occupied in his secluded workshop.
Necessity is the mother of invention and Manter created his first ever exo-skeleton that would become commonplace among the future korodians.
His other early works consisted of a militarized version of his exo-skeleton, a four legged walker with treads along the legs that could handle steep and rough terrain, an armed aerial drone with a loadout between krak rockets or a heavy stubber and a few other devices.

>>50958428
Eventually he tried to combine all his creations into one entity.
He began by merging most of his creation onto the exo-skeleton after determining that a mobile multi-functional infantry suit would be a fitting challenge.
The end result was a bulky human sized suit of armor with several curved plates designed to deflect rather than to absorb.
The back had a spinal mounted antenna that could slave two aerial drones to the suit and provide visual information.
The armaments were a high rate of fire machine gun he named 'Hirof' and lastly an arm mounted slab of metal laden with shaped explosives that could be detonated with a trigger one at a time
(yes a tower shield with 40k-ish claymores attached to it, deal with it).
This amalgamation of technology was named Mk1-Valler.
He felt pride for his accomplishment but found himself unable to stop trying to improve his design.
Whenever he had an idea he wanted to test for his 'Valler suit' he would create a new one so he could easily compare the differences. A year after the completion of the first suit his hangar contained 18 Valler-suits all with slight variations on dampening, servo control, wight capacity and power systems but they were all functioning. These suits would serve a key role in the coming defense of Korod.

>>50958458
In M40.258 a large Waaagh ravaged the local cluster of systems. The imperial guard and astartes were locked down on colonies deemed key in the local cluster. Korod was not among the 'important' systems and thus they had to fend for themselves until they could be relieved.
A floating scrapyard sums up the initial impression of the ork fleet that made its way into the Korod system. Twenty vessels of varying size and shape blasted its way inwards with such great speed that they caught some of the Korodian perimeter vessels of guard resulting in easy kills.

On Korod prime the governor and PDF general were discussing the defensive preparations.
The orks would reach Korod secundus before Korod Prime and would undoubtedly cause major damage to the planets infrastructure and facilities. This was deemed unacceptable since secundus was an agri world that supplied Korod prime with food as well as part of the tithes. And so 60% of the PDF on Korod Prime was shipped to Korod Secundus to slow the ork menace before any further damage could be done and the imperial guard could arrive.

The defense fleet that fought against the ork vessels were outnumbered, outgunned and eventually destroyed. Only merchant vessels still remained in the system, keeping out of sight transporting supplies to any needed location.

>>50958483
Predictions regarding the orks first target proved true and Korod Secundus became host for the first ground war between the Korodians and the Orks.
Despite the PDF being well organized and equipped, the orks were sweeping through the PDF on Korod secundus and much of the PDF firepower was lost in the attempt to halt the orks.
After three weeks Korod secundus was deemed lost and the remaining PDF was allocated back to the capitol. Barely any forces made it of Korod secundus making the defenses on Korod prime undermanned.
After consolidating their victory for a day the orks followed the routed defenders but was met with ground to orbit artillery.
Because of their hotheaded nature, the invading orks lost many rust-buckets to the large rounds blazing into the void.
Down on the ground debris could be seen hurtling through the atmosphere, crashing into anything unfortunate to be in the way.
Angry at seeing his ships and boyz get killed without a proper fight the leading Nob ordered the remaining fleet to land outside of the kill zone above the capitol.
The orks descended into the many canyons that covered the planet.
This bought the defending korodians some time but because of their low numbers they could not man all defensive fortifications on the planet, giving the orks multiple blind spots to land in.
The loss of orbital installations and no fleet support made it impossible for the Korodians to keep an eye on the orks movements wherever they would be.
Worse yet there were still no word of reinforcements coming to relieve them.

>>50958502
Having managed to avoid the ground to orbit artillery the Orks now faced a new challenge, moving the boyz across the mountains. The Alpine terrain proved to be unforgiving for the orks and their large bulky vehicles when they tried to ascend mountains or travel along the slithering roads.
But the vehicles were not the only thing to slow them down, much of the large and cumbersome equipment was ditched by the scouting parties so that they could easier move around and call out directions for the boyz below. Some of the groups acted with greater patience (for an ork) and advanced slower (for an ork) while other more impatient groups yelled waaagh as they floored it all the way down to the bottom of ravines.
The ork advance varied between slow and suicidal depending on the leading Nob.
But it was advancing on all directions, the heart of Korod prime was completely surrounded.

>>50958535
In the command center the PDF general had relayed the situation to Haverlok.
Their best course of action would be to sap the terrain and slow the ork advance, problem was they had no way of knowing where to send the resources. And even if they did know the exact routes, the current equipment that was left on Korod Prime were ill suited for the terrain and task of transporting explosives.
Manter suggested using his creations to track the orks and stop them. His proposal however was dismissed at the behest of the adepts claiming such abominations would anger the omnissiah greatly and impact their defensive fortifications and weapons.
Manter was outraged at their asinine reasoning and stormed out of the command center and headed towards his workshop.
Worried that his son would do something foolish Haverlok ordered a contingent of 50 troops to follow him and to 'aid him in any way possible', knowing deep down what would inevitably happen.
The cadre scurried after Manter and by the time they had caught up to him he was already at his workshop preparing his Valler suit and loading his quad-walker with explosive payloads.
Giving them a brief explanation on what they had to do the guards hesitantly equipped the suits.
The exo-skeleton frames were adjustable so that 17 guards that would follow him into the mountains could use them to the fullest while the rest would support them. Three guards remained outside the Workshop to keep nosy people and adepts in particular away.

>>50958565
His creations proved their worth that day.
The drones spied on the orks from above, optical cogitators revealing the warm bloodied orks in the cold alpines like bonfires.
With the quad-walker navigating the rough terrain with ease they were able to reach several choke points they knew the orks would pass through with great speed, preparing explosives that would put an end to their advance. The extra strength from their exo-skeletons allowed them to with little effort scale mountains and carry with them heavy ordnance to locations the walker could not reach.
Bridges crumbled, sending orks plummeting to their graves.
Tunnels collapsed, burying orks by the thousands.
Ambushes were set, killing of the forward scouts in a hail of bullets from the Hirof rifles.
With the majority of ork groups trapped and unable to move forward they became more and more agitated, infighting began and most groups self destructed, among these groups was the main bulk of the force.
Despite their success Manter and his fellow sappers were unable to stop all the groups from reaching the capitol.
One group in particular was led by a brutally cunning 'kommando nob' that managed carry out an 'infulraetion' of the citadel and kill several important officers before being taken out. Among the casualties were Haverlok.
With the sappers supplies nearly depleted they made their way back to the capitol.
Manter's spirits were high, he felt like the impact they had made was important and he could not wait to relay the events.

>>50958569
Just a quick refill of their supplies and they would head out again or so Manter thought until he was met with the news. Haverlok was dead, Manter was now effective immediately the Governor of Korod.
With an iron will he kept himself from shutting down, grieving could come later there was still much to be done, he could not fail now that everything depended on him.
People who was there that day tell how Manter just stood still for a minute before calmly giving out orders left and right.
The sappers headed out once more after being resupplied minus Manter, to disable more routes to the capitol while Manter joined other officers in the command center.
No additional ork threats reached the capitol except for a few flying machines that were brought low by the heavy stubbers. The orks were grounded and unable to advance, the battle had been brought to a stand still.

Certain that the majority of orks were either trapped or dead, more defenders were sent out to keep an eye out on the remaining groups of orks in case they tried something 'orky' before the imperial guard could arrive and remove them.
There were few skirmishes but the contenders were ill equipped orks that the PDF made short work of.
After two weeks, the Imperial Guard arrived and the remaining pockets of orks proved no real challenge for them and with the last threat removed the battle had been won.

>>50958587
Manter for the coming weeks would only meet with a few individuals that was required by the office he held.
Scribes from the administratum, newly appointed officers to fill the gaps caused by the orks, an adept from the AdMech to name a few.
Most common folk believed he was grieving while others believed that he was busy preparing the future plans for the colony. The truth was a combination of both and after 30 days he began making public appearances again, though they were few.
Unbeknownst to anyone but Manter at the time, the Korod system was about to undergo a change that the Imperium had never witnessed.
He had spent much of the time during these 30 days to contemplate recent events and what the PDF general had told him in private.
Without his intervention the capitol would have fallen by the time the Imperial guard had reached them. This 'fact' was tumbling around in his mind in hopes of finding a way he could cultivate his talent without bringing about the destruction of the colony.

>>50958606
A new form of government would be created and it would govern a society created in his image.
Secrecy would soon no longer be required and with the combined resources of the entire system at his fingertips he could finally create whatever he wanted and answer any question that came to his mind.
The birth of the technocracy was at hand but he had to wait before issuing his decree. Predicting that the AdMech would abandon Korod once they found out what he was planning he decided to use them until they were no longer required.
Much was in need of repair and it would take years before the colony was back to previous capacity.
Haverlok would be proud, he was certain of it.

More about the creation of the technocracy will be told at another time.

Happy new years everyone

>>50958623
This...all looks damn good, but a lot of the whole "hey, we actually innovate unlike the AdMech, and as a result we're actually good at fighting" feels like it's treading on the toes of the Tau, especially with exosuits and drones.

More importantly, the present day state of Korod really needs nerfing; self sufficient techies who are perfectly fine in spite of being embargoed by AdMech and friends is very much noblebright. Plus, downright matter-energy conversion (or at least transmutation) is pushing out the boat a little too far, even for 40k - either it's some kind of warp majjyks, which would see the place thoroughly rekt once the IoM found out, or it would be picked up on and adopted across the galaxy. What kind of logistical difficulties wouldn't be worth technology that could make ceramite plating out of sand?

The core idea's pretty neat - a foil to the AdMech - and the actual writing itself is damn good. But, my good writefriend, you yourself have just proven precisely why you shouldn't write 7 pages before posting anything.

>>50958692
Thank you for the feedback, I'll be looking on these parts tomorrow.
But yes they need a nerf and I know just where to hit em.

As for the exo-skeletons I need to rework them so they don't act like battlesuits (which was never the intention to begin with but I probably lost myself somewhere)

The transmutation I was thinking of is more in line with the transmutation we are capable of today by triggering radiation decay meaning large heavy elements can be decayed towards something else that is useful but altering something like the components of sand into iron would be impossible with the same method.

>>50958743
Fair enough, fair enough - it's just that the implication that they have no real needs since they can transmute things into whatever they want feels rather OP. Personally, I'd hit it on the head, make them mirror the AdMech in a different way.

How about miniaturisation? Kinda like Asimov's Foundation, needing to scrape every last bit of efficiency and reliability they can from what they make because resources are so scarce (except in this case it's because everyone hates them, not that the world itself is lacking in resources). The STCs the AdMech rely on all produce huge, grand, powerful - but /wasteful/ - technology, because DAoT Mankind was an age of plenty for humanity, so there were no real concerns about resource scarcity; while the creations of Korod are treasured (by those who don't see them as Tech-heresy) because they're so reliable and efficient in an age where, even if resources for resupply are plentiful, getting them to you is still pretty tough.

>>50957084
I've actually been thinking about this. In this timeline, most Imperial citizens are well-educated on the difference between an abhuman and an honest to goodness Chaos mutant, except for some people out in the space sticks who wouldn't care even if you told them.

In vanilla, the Imperium didn't care very much whether the Beastmen were natural or Chaos-influenced, so they probably lumped them all into a single category for convenience. The Beastmen lines with the tendency to develop extra mutations, those are likely Chaos-related. Whereas the Beastmen lines that do not are either the result of normal evolution or genetic modification during the DaoT to better survive on their planet. These two conditions are not mutually exclusive, a Beastman-dominated planet can fall to Chaos and get mutated, which is another reason why the vanilla Imperium threw up their hands and called them a lost cause.

I could definitely see him doing something about the Ogryn, despite them being one of the most stable abhuman strains, as well as the other beastmen with intelligence issues, simply on the grounds that no one should have to live like that.

Baseline humans probably have a bit of a superiority complex over abhumans because ratlings, felinids, etc. cannot become Space Marines.

In this timeline, I could totally see people being aware of the fact that the Astartes are transhuman, instead of the awkward hypocrisy of having the greatest defenders of the purity-obsessed Imperium being distinct non-human in canon. However, this does not make the average Imperial citizen think any less of the Space Marines. Instead, the Astartes are seen are more heroic for this, having sacrificed any chance at them having a normal life and family in order to protect others in the Imperium.

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>>50958245
Wait a minute... if the Battle of Phaeton took place at the very start of the WotB, how come the Dark Angles or Alpha Legion knew about it beforehand?
Something fishy must have been going on within the SMs right before the war started.

>>50958743
Yeah, this >>50958305, is where they seem to cross the line. Being able to simply magic whatever materials you need into existence seems a little much. If the transmutation is basically decaying uranium into lead, it raises the question as to where are they getting the sheer amounts of heavy elements to do this, and wouldn't it be easier to just mine lead?

>>50959135
Alpha Legion excels at espionage, they could have noticed something was up and moved to do something about it.

Alternatively, if they are Dark Angels, the Schism could have started right before the WotB. It had to have happened earlier enough for Luther to be known as the Arch-Traitor and the Fallen to show up at the Battle of Terra, after all. Could have interrogated a captured Fallen to realize this is where they were needed, and then didn't want to stick around to answer awkward questions.

But I like the Alpha Legion one better

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>>50958305
This is where it starts to become Star Trek in 40k.

Here is where it passes the Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality horizon
>>50958414


This
>>50958458
Is where it turns in to a low grade anime version of Star Trek in 40k.

That probably sounds harsher then I mean it to and it probably would fit in the Noble Brightness of the old Brighthammer setting. This is Gondor adopting democracy.

And I hate myself for this post because you obviously spent so much time an effort in it.

>>50960289
This is...what I wanted to say without sounding dickish about it. Buuuuut >>50958692 is completely correct - for fuck's sake, run the basic idea past people before you embark on a quest of writefaggotry

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>>50960605
>my writefaggotry was at C.S Goto tier inconsistent, too GrimDark, made to be in a Codex while another anon goes full NobleBright Anime Star Trek
At least I didn't write 8 pages of words before posting about the Imperial Civil War.
Also, this is my interpretation of what SMs would be wearing when SMs fought SMs.

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So has anything been said yet on who's side of the Dark Angel schism Cypher landed on?

Or do different members of both sides assume he is on both sides?

It could be that no fucker knows what Cypher is doing.

Some DAs think he is Fallen some think he is their man hiding among the Fallen. Some of the Fallen are pretty sure that he is one of their oldest members whilst others are pretty sure he's been playing the long con all along.

The covert organizations of the Imperium are pretty sure he belongs to one of their exalted organizations, just one of the others and definitely not theirs. Illuminati thinks he is Inquisition, Inquisition is pretty sure he was always an Alpha Marine rather than an actual Dark angel and the AΩ are pretty sure he is a member of the Illuminati.

Although many of the high up members of the Inquisition are also members of the Illuminati and Alpharius and/or Omegon may have been senior members who created the Alpha Marines to act as occasional muscle for both and also to draw attention from any questions or event acknowledgment that if there are Alpha Marines there are probably Omega Marines somewhere.

What is Cypher and who is Cyper and what is he doing? Depends on who you ask and on what day of the week it is. And it depends if you ask the Watchers because they are the only people left who actually met the bonkers fucker, not that even most DAs realize this, although they never made it secret so as not to draw attention to it.

It's possible that, like Inquisitor Jaq Draco, Ceggorach if not actually his Harlequins have adopted him which might explains at least some of his batshit.

>>50961188
I love the idea of A and O using their twin schick not just to switch around, but to cultivate the belief that one is only ever seeing half of their actions, and another plot could come in from the wings at any moment.

>>50960967
>>my writefaggotry was at C.S Goto tier inconsistent, too GrimDark, made to be in a Codex while another anon goes full NobleBright Anime Star Trek
Wait, what? I have no idea what you mean

>>50961534
I was the guy who wrote the 3 part passages about the Age of Apostasy. Who then forgot Thor was an inquisitor and Oscar/Isha was gone for 150 years. Tried to make the story where it allowed everybody to fight everybody including Imperial loyalist against Imperial loyalists which got GrimDark very fast to DoW level of stupid reason for infighting.

>>50961687
Oh, rip. But hey, the drawfaggotry's good

>>50960967
>>50944474
>>50944289

At first I thought that the idea of art deco armour was stupid and that the style was as un40k as possible.

But this looks fucking sweet.

Also a question. Other than Jublblowski how prevalent is human on eldar god veneration?

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>>50963006
here's the bioshock concept art that was mentioned earlier

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>non-Battle of Terra fluff for WotB
The 2nd Battle over Elysia took place when the Chaos fleets tried to keep the blockade of Segmentum Solar after the Battle of Phaeton started. Battlefleet Solar was effectively crippled in a few days as fighting on Phaeton started, the fleet was killed over the skies of Terra.

The Chaos fleets stationed themselves around Terra in different sub-sectors to block the supply lines. Battlefleet Pacificus launched a series of small offensives including diversionary attacks in the galactic west, drawing away concentrated defenders from weaker sub-sectors to allow the real attacks to clear supply lines. Battlefleet Ultima along with what's left of Battlefleet Solar gathered to the galactic east of Segmentum Solar's bordering sub-sectors to prepare for war. The Imperial ships in the meantime were conducting hit-and-run attacks all along the bordering sub-sectors. Cronefleet L'Oquis assembled every CE and Ork ships it could get together to hunt down and snuff out the raiding ships coming in from Ultima Segmentum.

The raiding ships fled to the rondevu point over Catachan and brought with them news of the chasing Cronefleet. The acting admiral of Battlefleet Solar ordered all ships at the point or heading towards Catachan to divert to Elysia. All of Battlefleet Solar and some of Ultima rushed to meet over Elysia while the bulk of Battlefleet Ultima was moving back to the galactic west. CEs had already teleported inside some of the raider ships to plant tracking beacons on them before leaving unseen. The ships over Elysia rushed to resupply themselves with whatever they can get their hands on until they were unexpectedly attacked by Cronefleet O'Oquis.

The battle started with Imperial ships keeping distance while Ork ships tried to close in. CE ships did enter their firing range to launch voidcraft before the Orks could and the Imperials couldn't retreat by then.

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>>50964247 (cont.)
Many of the human cruisers slugged it out with the CE before the Orks could get a chance to board their ships. The Orks tried ramming the Imperials many times to mostly miss or worst, damage CE ships by mistake. Eldar ships had chased off the rearguard of the Cronefleet while everybody else was fighting in the main battle. Some CE ships from the rear advancing into the main battle were fired upon by other CE ships due to misidentification and were thought to be Craftworlder ships. When the human ships had taken considerable losses Cronefleet L'Oquis tried to withdraw but was blocked by Eldar ships in their rear.

Several days have passed when the Cronefleet first engaged the Imperial fleet over Elysia. The Imperial forces had clearly taken more losses than the Cronefleet near the ending stages of the battle. When the rest of Battlefleet Ultima arrived over Elysia, the Imperial fleet was much smaller while the Cronefleet had bloodied their noses. The admiral of Battlefleet Ultima assumed command of all ships over Elysia then ordered Battlefleet Solar to retreat. As Battlefleet Solar was disengaging, the rest of Battlefleet Ultima rushed to reach firing range. The Cronefleet was almost destroyed when giving chase to the retreating Imperial ships as Battlefleet Ultima shot them to pieces.
The 2nd Battle over Elysia reached a mythical status.

The destruction of so many CE ships in that one battle and ineffectiveness of the blockade in the galactic west, caused a change in strategy for the Chaos navy in the WotB. Chaos fleets were now to fulfill a supporting role in the invasion of supply producing Imperial worlds rather than block Imperial supply lines. What was left of Cronefleet L'Oquis supported a WAAAHG! that already burned 2 worlds then supported the destruction of another world. Only 3 or 4 cruisers of Cronefleet L'Oquis survived the war to return home after almost all of the fleet was burned by Imperial Fist Battle Barges over Necromunda.

Sangyfag back with my first bit of writefaggotry since writing the intro blurb a few weeks ago.

This bit of fluff is in response to the request for writing about ordinary people, and I took this as an opportunity to experiment with styles and get out of my writing comfort zone.

Don't know if it would be too /lit/ for this board, but I would love to hear feedback or discuss the influences behind this bit of writing. I honestly have no idea if it's any good since character writing and dialogue are new to me.

Now, without further ado...

>>50965091
She is a young girl who lives in a village with her parents. The village is nestled in a valley by a mountain river as clear and cold as a winter morning, and around the farms and houses are thick trees and lush meadows, a small part of the verdant forest that blankets much of the world. To the Eldar the planet is the maiden world Exia, to the Administratum it is agri-world Rhea-VI, and to the girl it is simply home.

The village holds about one thousand humble souls, and there are not many children the girl’s age. The only other children like her are a pair of twins, born to much celebration four years ago, and an older boy of eighteen about to embark on his first path – rather stereotypically, he has chosen the path of the ranger.

There are, of course, the human children, perhaps a score of them, and she sometimes does play with them. It is not the easiest thing. Some of them seem a bit in awe of her and others are intent on teasing her. Her sharp tongue means that sometimes playful jabs turn into arguments and end in tears, and they have been asking her to play less now. So she spends much of her alone, and some of it lonely. She explores the woods and reads her books and dreams of the stars, wondering if she will one day meet someone from a far off world.

>>50965099
---
She is reading on a hill overlooking the village like she often does, the wind riffling her hair and the grass feather-soft on her skin. She can see the whole of her village as it stretches down the valley, houses popping from the ground like mushrooms, squat and sturdy beside the glittering blue ribbon of the river.

Today she is reading book of myths and legends. The book is new, brought back by her father from a recent trip to the city, and the stories inside are old, a collection of tales of the Primarchs. She is halfway through a story of the Khan and his rescue of Hive Tirith when she hears a voice.

“What are you reading?”

She looks up. In front of her is a boy, gangly and pale with grass stains on his knees. She doesn’t recognize him, and she knows everyone in the village.

“Stories about the Primarchs,” she says, a little wary.

“Those are my favorite! Which one are you reading about right now?”

“Jaghatai Khan and his White Scars.”

The boy nods sagely. “Khan’s pretty good. Not as great as some, but still pretty good.” He begins to sit, but hesitates and glances at the girl. “Can I sit?”

She looks at him a moment, then gives a tiny shrug of her shoulders.

He smiles and flops down onto the grass with the doe-like clumsiness of a child who hasn’t quite figured out how long his limbs are. He continues chattering as the girl looks pointedly down at her book. “My favorite Primarch is Horus, he’s the best. He wasn’t as strong as some of the other ones, sure, but he was brave and smart. Everyone on the ship prays to him, and my parents say I was named after him.”

>>50965113
The girl looks over at the boy. “Ship?”

The boy nods. “You know, like a spaceship. It’s where I’m from. Ours is the Fidelitas.”

Her eyes are wide. “You’re from a spaceship? What’s it like? What are you doing here anyway?”

“Well, the captain says we’re stopping here to trade, and I like it. There are lots of little places to run and hide, and all my friends are close. I’m still getting used to being out here. It’s a little scary that everything is so open, I feel like I’m going to float into the sky and I fell a couple times, but my dad says its important I know what it feels like living on the ground. That’s why we’re here. We took a skimmer in from the city and we’re staying in the inn down in the square.” He points down the valley at the small shape of a pleasant three-story building with white walls and a red tile roof facing a sun lit square.

The girl is sitting upright now, the book closed in her lap. “Wow, how many places have you seen? Has your ship ever had to fight pirates?”

The boy laughs a bit. “Pirates? We’re not Rogue Traders, silly. There are no pirates around here anyway, we’re too far from the Eye or the Maelstrom.” He pauses a moment, and scratches his head. “You know, you’re a lot nicer than the other kids were. Thanks for that.”

She pauses at that, with her breath half inhaled and a question still on her lips. “Oh. What did they do?”

>>50965116
He looks away, eyes a little distant. “It’s nothing. I just, I saw them down by the river, and I just wanted to play with them. They called me weird, that I was too skinny and white, and then one of the boys splashed water at me and then everyone started doing it.” His hands are fiddling in his lap. “They weren’t like my friends at all. We’ll play with anyone, from the captain’s kids to the orphans down in the maintenance holds.”

The girl nods. “They can be mean. Some aren’t so bad, but I know who that boy was. I don’t know why he has to be so awful.”

They sit a moment in silence. Around them are the trills and chirps of birdsong, and from the high pastures there is a faint and gentle clanking of bells as the grox herds move down the mountain.

He looks over at her. “How come you aren’t playing with them? Why are you out here by yourself?”

She shrugs. “Like you said, they’re mean sometimes. And there’s no point in going home yet, my father is probably still at his boneforge and my mother is probably still tending the sacred grove.” She reaches down to pluck a puffweed, and pulls at the silvery white blossoms. “Anyway, I like it up here. It’s pretty, and quiet, and I can read in peace. There’s a family of snowfurs up here, and sometimes I feed them, papa and mama and all the snowfur pups.”

It’s the boy’s turn for his eyes to go wide. “Wow, your dad is a real bonesinger?”

The girl puffs up. “Yep. My father’s the best in the sub-sector, and people from all over come to buy things from him.”

>>50965124
He gapes. “That’s so cool. Our captain has a wraithbone sword, and he says it’s worth more than all the cargo in the holds put together.” He smiles, a little shyly. “You know, I’ve never had an Eldar friend before. Before today I’d never even seen an Eldar before, and the innkeeper was the first one I talked too. But he doesn’t count, he’s old.”

She twists a lock of her hair about her fingers, weaving the golden strand to and fro, and looks down her nose at him. “Well of course, there aren’t as many of us as you. We are special, you know.”

The girl glances up, and sees the sky starting to blush with tints of pale pink and gold. She stands and brushes the grass from her dress. The boy looks up at her. “It’s getting late, and I have to go home. My parents will be waiting for me,” she says.

He nods. “I should probably go too, before my mom and dad get worried.”

She offers her hand to him, and he reaches up to grasp it, alabaster skin against tanned amber. She pulls him up, and he is lighter than she expects, all skinny limbs and skin and bones. To her surprise he is almost as tall as she is, his pale violet eyes looking evenly into her own emerald green.

They head down the slope, to the edge of the meadow where an old footpath begins leading down to the village.

“What’s your name, anyway?” she asks as they walk.

“Cal.”

“I thought you were named after Horus.”

“Well, his title was ‘The Lupercal.’ It’s not like my parents could just name me Horus, and Luper would be a dumb name.”

She laughs. “That would be. My name is Elianne.”

They both smile. “Well, I want to hear all about your ship tomorrow,” she says.

“And I want to hear about the Eldar and your planet.”

>>50965135
They pass gardens of bright flowers and fragrant herbs and warmly painted cottages until they reach the main road running through the heart of the village.

She points to the right. “The square and the inn are that way. My house is to the left.”

“Let’s meet here tomorrow after noon?”

“Deal.”

“Deal.”

They shake hands with all the solemnness of children trying to be much cooler than they actually are. Then, they part with a wave goodbye. He goes to the east, and she to the west.

>And that's all folks
>Happy New Year anons!

>>50965143
I like it. Not just as a piece of writefaggotry, but how it fits into the setting as to show how your ordinary folks get alone, outside of the leaders and great warriors and armadas.

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>Still need bugs

>The horror from beyond the stars, the fear of the void, the all-consuming darkness, or the Grand Devourer. Whatever you call them, the Tyranids might very well snuff out life in this galaxy.
Lady Eisenburg's Accounts #582

Imperial expeditions during the Crusade Era had encountered dormant ferocious Xenos when explorers accidently awaken them. Thankfully the Imperial Army dealt with them on several different worlds before these incidents got out of hand. These incidents all had similarly described Xenos that were non-sentient creatures found on planets in clusters near the galactic fringes. Later researchers found it worrying that these Xenos were dormant for several Millennium or more before the founding of the Imperium.

Eldar Caftworlds at the galactic fringes of Ultima Segmentum made reports of the lack of Warp presence at random intervals, the first reports were made as early as a few years after the Apostasy. Sororitas ask to divert more assets to Ultima Segmntum 200 years after the Apostasy, when a sudden outburst of Xenos hybrids and cults cripples several planets around the same time. The Imperial Navy detected a trend of unknown objects flying into the galaxy towards habited worlds but didn't have enough ships to actually do anything about it.

Some expedition fleets were sent out into Ultima Segmntum but a few disappeared at the eastern fringes. One fleet did set up a fortified research outpost on Tyran Primus. Some titanic unknown Xenos living fleet fought the expedition fleet to later destroy the cruisers and eat the Skitarii defending Tyran. Before all was lost, however, Magos Varnak made recordings of these Xenos in various forms then buried them all over the grounds of the outpost. The planet would once again be a lifeless ball after the Tyranids ate everything in the sub-sector in a few days. When the main body of the Tyranid fleet passed, Inquisitor Kryptman arrived to recover these valuable recordings.

>>50958823
>>50959189
>>50960289

Is good with criticism and it should not take me more than a few hours tops to rewrite parts of it.

This is Plan B
Since Korodians are going to be heavily focused on discovering shit, they have as a fruit of their labor a lot of technology capable of analyzing every known emission to man today and then some. So for the few people that dare to trade with them they are well aware of this.
And so should a person find a something they could bring to Korod for analysis no matter the nature of said device. This is strictly beneath the table however.

As for crippling effects for the colonies they will shift as time goes since a planet of eggheads should not face the same issue for a decade without solving it.
(except for the whole how do we FTL?! and a few other)
First of was thinking a food shortage following the orks pissing on the potatoes on Korod secundus.
Followed by depletion of a mineral that is close to my heart on Korod Prime, which in turn would make the irradiated hellscape of Korod tertius relevant other than being a junkyard


Combat specialty will be restricted to having equipment and gear well suited for extremely steep terrain and subterranean tunnels.
Primarily thinking about mobility and directional fortifications making them good at reaching a hard to reach spot in mountains and dealing with one enemy at a time.
As for the exo-skeletons they will simply augment a soldiers carry capacity and giving them a slight improvement for exerting force on their surroundings.
To compliment their mountain combat doctrine they rely heavily on their own machines to keep track of the enemy.
Drones will not be armed with weapons, instead they will only serve as reconnaissance.
One great advantage I would like to give them is a strong ground penetrating radar allowing them to quickly map tunnel networks and other structures under ground.
This bit of tech would be a result from their long time spent digging for minerals.

More even?

>>50967502
And their transmutation will only be applicable for heavy elements much like we do today.
This practice becomes important since much of their power infrastructure will be nuclear based meaning they need to access a lot of unstable heavy elements and make do with what they extract from the earth.

>>50967513
First revision regarding trade, tithes and production.

Despite suffering from a near complete standstill trade (except for a select few rogue traders) the Korodians still manage to pay their tithes that mostly consists of minerals and eventual surplus of crops following good harvests.
Initial glances at their production systems make them seem very promising until you get to the technical details. Their facilities, extraction machines and other essential parts are all very much nuclear based. The 'evolution' of their machinery have led to their nuclear reactors consuming other types of fuel whenever breakthroughs have been made, increasing their energy efficiency.
Something that sounds good on paper to be sure, the reality of the situation is that the Korodians now have need for three different nuclear fuel types to maintain their current level of production.
Phasing out the older reactors for the newer ones is an ongoing project but drains time and resources and with their increasing production their tithes increase as well.
(this is a catch-up battle they will never win).
Should their production capabilities start regressing it will inevitable be blamed on their technology something Manter and his technocrats are well aware of (since they chose this path they will get no leniency should they fail).
All it would take is one mineral shortage of their required fuel and everything comes crashing down.
Rogue traders tend to exploit this never ending need for heavy elements and are often able to trade Chunks of unrefined ore for technology or services (primarily sensor arrays, scanners and analysis of foreign items) some of these deals are done under the table so that their tithes remain unaffected.

>>50965143
Are you planning to do any more? It was really good.

>>50967957
Thanks anon. I'm thinking about it, I have a story arc outlined, but I'm sort of intimated to keep going because of the potential length and the fact I'll have to write romance.

>>50968491
>intimated
Damn autocorrect, that should be "intimidated."

>>50965143
This was very, very...nice. See >>50966377

>>50967502
>>50967888
I'm sorry, but I'm still not really feeling it. The transmutation as a whole still feels pushing it, and your changes don't seem to do much. For a blow by blow:

>capable of analyzing every known emission to man today and then some
No. Having them far ahead of the AdMech is fine, having them close to the Eldar would be interesting. But having the HTE BEST EVAR is too far, especially if they've only had 800ish years of innovation to make up for nine millenia of degeneration.

>should not face the same issue for a decade without solving it
Changing priorities with Crisis Of The Week makes if feel a bit like a TV show (which doesn't help the current lean towards Trekshit), and also means that they're Deus Exing their shit every decade or so. If you do want to make it seem like you've got an entire planet of MacGyvers, make the crises and solutions over a far longer period (centuries at least), and perhaps have the solutions of each crisis cause or contribute to the next one (eg being able to process food into promethium causing a famine, etc), so they don't sound infallibly noblebright like they currently do.

>seem very promising until you get to the technical details...other essential parts are all very much nuclear based
I don't see the negatives here, or how nuclear power would make the tech any less promising (and noblebright). This AU is still 40k; so long as it's not powered by the souls of screaming sacrifices, it's completely fine (golden throne notwithstanding). Plus, with man-portable plasma weapons that frequently have too much energy and breach containment, is nuclear FISSION is going to be anything particularly revolutionary?

In general, I wouldn't like any particular links to hard scifi other than vague references to lasers and plasma - geedubs never specified anything more than void shields, promethium and Warp Shit (TM); the lack of technobabble made 40k pretty futureproof, and we're a lot better off sticking with that.

(cont)

>>50969349
>(cont)

>>50967502
>restricted to having equipment and gear well suited for extremely steep terrain and subterranean tunnels
This is interesting...

>exo-skeletons
>augment a soldiers carry capacity
...this is not. Trying to nerf the suits by making them relatively non-combat orientated not only fails to address the out-of-universe problems ("why are you giving them exosuits when that field's already covered by the Tau"), but adds in-universe ones too ("well why DON'T you just strap some bigger guns to them?"). This also applies to the drones; making them unarmed doesn't stop them from stepping on the Tau's toes thematically, and it just pushes the Korodians a little further from plausibility.

>strong ground penetrating radar
Again, see the previous post about how 40k has very few actual direct references to modern day tech and is better off that way.
>>50967513
>transmutation
>power infrastructure will be nuclear based
Aside from the things in the last post, nobody really cares what power source you use, even the toasterfuckers. Hell, Promethium is only really defined as "some shit that burns" - 40k is science FANTASY (cough WHFB IN SPESS cough), so having heavy elements and nuclear power for them is both irrelevant and anachronistic. Mainly the latter. And the former, too.

>>50967888
>regarding trade, tithes and production
>entire post is about nuclear power
I'm afraid this revision just adds more inconsistencies and conflicts. If their technology and nuclear power generation is unique, why do they export minerals? Why do their facilities being nuclear make them bad or less promising?

And, most irritatingly (imho):
Why the fuck are the people who can out-tech the AdMech spending their time squeezing a little more efficiency out of nuclear reactors?

For heaven's sake, this is Warhammer 40,000. Having them having problems balancing production and demand is not an appropriate crisis for a faction, nor is resource dependence.

(cont)

>>50969472
I may have sounded harsh in the last two posts, and I probably was. So, let me be clear:

>Korod and its history are an interesting faction, if more than a little overpowered, and appear to be balancing on a knife edge with their technological prowess.
>Korod, in its current state, does not belong anywhere near the Warhammer 40,000 universe, or any AUs thereof.

It feels very much like a heavily worldbuilt and thought through planet/faction from a near future setting...that you've just transplanted into Nobledark and tried to use "well they innovate so the AdMech hates them so they're isolated" as an anti-rejection drug. The technology and themes do not fit in 40k, and the attempted fixes stick out like a sore thumb. I'm going to agree with >>50958692 and say that the original concept was good, but you've taken it in very much the wrong direction.


Might try pulling a rewrite, if that's alright and if I can squeeze it in before autosage.
Also, is anyone mirroring >>50968491's shit? It's fantastic.

>>50969524
This thread needs to be archived.

>>50969582
Will do, but we could still do with a lot of this being thrown onto the 1d4

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>>50969349
>>50969472
>>50969524

Thanks for the feedback.

I just want to make sure we are on the same page regarding the exo-skeletons, I am not thinking anywhere near tau battlesuits I am thinking more like pic related.

Just a strength augmenting skeleton that would make it easier for them to carry more equipment when they are navigating rough terrain i.e mountains.

As for the hard science I could get rid of that stuff, being a tech geek myself I can get carried away with the stuff and it can cloud my judgement.

As for the resources being a persistent problem, that was based on the idea that the administratum would replace the governor with someone who would use tried and tested methods making sure the supplies keep arriving.
Also from the minerals extracted only a fraction would be something that could be used as fuel but then it swings back to the hard science stuff that I'd do better without.

But I shall consider other plausible scenarios that are better.

>>50969666
I understand, since I'm more of a sucker for harder SF settings (and Nobledark, go figure). I know that you're differentiating the exoskeletons, but if they're small enough to not be treading on the toes of Tau Battlesuits, they'd be treading on the toes of SM/SoB power armour instead, or even Skitarii . Having the technology be based on navigating rough terrain and mountains sounded interesting because I envisioned some kind of spider-esque walker, but using your pic related runs into the same problems as the drones: If you don't stick fuckhuge guns on it, it doesn't make sense; if you do, that's messing around in someone else's thematic territory.

The more I look at this, the more I'd like to at least try my hand at a rewrite since I haven't done any writefaggotry in a LONG time.
also nice trips

>>50969738
God damn I have invoked satan, probably gonna sleep well tonight.

Spider walkers are a thing yes with 4-6 legs (depending on walker size).
But it seems like not enough but maybe I am just being generous that way.

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>>50969843
You could go down a different route if you want to have a technocratic society. There is always the Legio Cybernetica.

So far as I am aware the Imperial Robots have not yet been touched upon in the Nobledarkness.

It could be that Haverlok was a Lord Prospector in service to the Mechanicum, given a Writ of Survayance hand signed by the Fabricator General of Mars and large virgin ship, plus support craft, lovingly constructed in the Phobos Dockyard.

Serves the Omnissiah well for five hundred years, although he himself was never ordained and remained a lay-technician. As captain of his ship far from oversight he could pretty much hire who ever he wanted without consequence. Got up to some serious tech heresy, not Demiurg engineer levels of tech heresy. Legio Cybernetica were still legal by some of the more tolerant Mechanicus but by the mainstreem adepts, of the sort that gave him his writ, they were blasphemous.

Also most of the muscle on his ship was Tarellian bondsmen and weapon-thanes.

Eventually reaches the status of a minor R'Trader dynasty in his own right, just commissioned by the red planet rather than the blue one. Now quite sick of living in space, leave it to the Void Born. Also by this point he had settled down from the swashbuckling maverick he was in his youth. Now he's into early middle years with a wife and soon to be also a child.

Tears his ship from it's predicable cource, tosses the bones into the air and sets sail for an empty patch of no-mans-space.

Finds a nice star system. Gas-giant in the Goldilocks Zone, two inhabitable moons. One of them rich in easy to scoop up minerals but half of those minerals were making the surface mildly toxic so only capable of supporting simple life. Other a verdant world. Nothing more interesting than moss and no animal life on the land (and only simple shit in the oceans) but holy shit was it potential prime farmland.

>>50970518
Strips the ship of anything that could be usable in setting up colony, calls in all his old friends and offers them land rights in exchange for help setting up shop.

Sends ship back with skeleton crew of people who didn't want to live on the frontier and also his back account numbers for the Mechanicus to cover the debt of things he "borrowed".

Korod Prime (the one with ALL OF THE MINERALS!) becomes the capital of the system and a eventually a big manufacturing hub.

Korod Secundus (the not shit to live on one) becomes a bread basket.

Prime became the heart of the other lesser colonies in the system, hub of commerce, cultural marvel, center of learning and everything of strength.

Secundus is prettier and stops everyone on Prime starving to death.

High tech shit could include:
The robot rank and file soldiery
The gravity manipulation technology
Strains of genetically engineered crops (dark rumors suggesting spliced from Terran and Xeno strains)
High quality servitor workforce (in this case grown organs in jars combined with machine parts rather than lobotomized cyber tards)

>>50970518
>>50970744

I like the idea and especially the tech focus since all of it could go horribly fucking wrong which would put a nice sword of Damocles above them.
Gonna consider the options.

>>50969664
All of the writing from the last thread was never put on 1d4chan either. Some earlier stuff too I think. The only things I think that have been added recently are the sections on Khan and Sreta Ulthran.

>>50970744
The reason why the main-line Mechanicum dislike them and they have such good/unusual tech is because they are a refuge of sorts for the fringe groups.

Want to prod xeno tech and try and make a wraithbone las-rifle? This is the place to do it.

How do the DAs maintain their anti-gravity bike stocks despite the knowledge of it being lost? Under the table dealings.

The PDF and IG regiments have a much broader pool of toys to dip into but they have one of everything but few of anything. The result of giving lots of tiny order workshops rather than big brotherhoods manufactoriums. It also makes no two battle robots quite the same which is a ball ache on every level.

Manter received a broad education rather than a deep one taught by many masters all of them tech-priests in his debt, no two from the same brotherhood. Jack of all trades, master of none. Like his father never ordained but like his father was not ignorant of the basic mysteries of technotheology.

He is not the chief magi. He is the glue that holds the magi together, considering that no two of their clockworks are quite synchronized.

>>50971087
I like you, you make a lot of sense.

Was thinking of keeping a lot of surface level science visible by all and a few of the record projects.

>>50970938
The thing is, like >>50969472 said about the other problems in the pre-fix version: "oh well our tech might break" isn't really much of a Damocles sword, not really. Sure, it would disrupt the world, but unless it's a singular item that's the lynchpin of the entire civilisation, it's not really a crisis on the scale of "psykers turn chaos, everyone dies" or "suddenly waaaaaaagh" that the rest of the Imperium is subjected to.

>>50966917
So here’s a suggestion I had been thinking about regarding the tyranids. It seems kind of ridiculous that most of the big, nasty wildlife in canon, from the Fenrisian kraken to half the ecosystem of Catachan to the friggin’ squigs, are supposed to be the remnants of a failed tyranid invasion. While it does do a nice job of suggesting that the tyranids have been around much longer than people thought, it gives the implication that the Milky Way isn’t capable of producing big, nasty megafauna of its own because “everything is tyranids”. It also raises questions as to why these worlds aren’t ‘tyranoformed’, among other things.

So here’s my suggestion. Keep the dormant tyranid worlds during the Great Crusade. It still gives the impression that the tyranids have been scouting out the galaxy for a long time, though like the later genestealers and some of the Necron stuff, the Imperium never realized that these were omens of a much bigger threat until it was too late. When the Magos Biologis analyzed tyranid specimens for the first time, they found all sorts of things they shouldn’t have. Genetic sequences and biochemical signatures only found on lifeforms on Fenris, Catachan, and numerous other worlds in the Imperium. The reason for this became clear when a new tyranid bioform was discovered far from the front lines of the main tyranid invasion. Whereas genestealers act as sappers and beacons for the hive fleet, these creatures act as “smash and grab” operatives, picking out organisms with traits useful to the hivemind and then rushing back to the hive mind with their prize. The tyranids haven’t just been scouting the galaxy for millennia. They’ve been raiding its genetic armory for the best parts (as they did with the Eldar and the Zoanthrope) for maximum pain when the hive fleet makes galaxyfall.

>>50971897 (cont.)
I was thinking of either suggesting the Ymgarl genestealer for this position, or else Ymgarl is just one more planet “sampled” by the ‘nids. It makes some sense, why despite being called a genestealer, the Ymgarl genestealer looks more like a lictor (a bioform known to stalk prey, operate far away from the hive fleet, has a face full of tentacles, and feeds by sucking the juices out of its victims). Using the Ymgarl genestealers as “genehounds” might also work better than the canon explanation of “they’re tyranid organisms but the Hive Mind is afraid to reabsorb them because they are so unstable it would destabilize and weaken the hive fleet as a whole”, because if that was the case then all the Imperium would have to do to get rid of a hive fleet is throw a Ymgarl genestealer into it and watch it self-destruct.

Speaking of the biological vacuum cleaners will the whole "shadow in the warp" thing remain the way it was in canon or will it be altered in some way?

How common are interstellar pirates in the Imperium?
Sworn enemies of the imperium not included (orks, DE,CE etc.) but rather humans, eldar and tau

>>50971682
I think the whole Legio Cybernetica's hanging sword is the whole Skynet thing. Happens before, happened to the Tau more recently.

>>50971907
The more disturbing implication is that the Tyrannids are migratory grazers. Every few tens of millions of years they come through the galaxy form somewhere to somewhere else.

Those things might have been hiding behind since then.

>>50972918
hoho HO you have no idea :)

Started thinking about different kinds of robots and I am all giddy inside now.

>>50973122
If its every few tens of millions of years, the Eldar would have known about them and/or have dealt with them in the past, or at the very least the Old Ones would have been aware they existed. The Necrons might know too, if not from their own experience then from the C'tan, who have been around since forever and in a form that could avoid being tyranid chow.

>>50973180
Keep in mind that The FIrst Commandment is something absolutely the entire Imperium agrees upon bar very few very stupid tech-priests and Tau that didn't pay attention during history in school.

The moment one of those asks "does this unit have a soul?" the entire Mechanicum will declare holy war and fuck the consequences.

And nearly everyone will pitch in to help.

You can get around it by housing an intelligence simulated off of something natural in an bioplastic cogitator (to delve into old fluff). Something like a well trained dog with a hint of cuttlefish.

Something clever and obedient but not capable of reading its own user manual and making improvements.

Of course given that this is the Tech-priest Maverick shelter eventually someone is going to fuck up assuming they haven't already and just covered it up.

>>50974138
I have an idea about that, hold my beer.
Time to deliver for the first time since I accidentally doubled the length of some primarch fluff.

>>50974138
I was thinking that certain robot patterns(or if you wanna call them classes) can when programmed with certain tasks gain dangerous side effects when the order is initiated.

I have thought on some ways to differentiate the robots after glancing on the Legio Cybernetica robots listed in Lexicanum.

So the main danger initially I can think of would be that certain unknowns in logic engines(I guess that is 40k for CPU) can cause robots to get really dangerous in certain situations depending on the assigned tasks. Just as a start.

There is one pattern in particular that I think of that would serve a more crisis like situation well. I'll post what I got soon if you'd like.

Korodian robot related question

Would it be too extreme to have kill bots impersonating people?
Thinking that the armaments on such a creation would be hidden sharp poky stuff only.

>>50973993
Very little of the Old Ones remain. Possibly they encountered them before and with their godlike nature not derived from mere biology drove them off after a few quick snack and runs.

Eldar might have endured their predations a few times in the past or maybe even beat them off before their empire grew fat and decadent and stupid.

Or maybe they built well furnished and fabulous fallout shelters and waited them out.

This time they don't have the infrastructure for either.

>>50974520
Yes.

The Cybernetica tend to be big durable and clunky.

If you want Terminators then you could go with skittarii sleeper agents.

Have as much meat scooped out and replaced with metal but not so much that it shows.

Replace all but the legal minimum requirements of brain matter with logic engine and cortex technology.

Have them suppress all knowledge of knowing what they are so that they blend into the general population so well that even they believe in their cover story.

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Thread archived.

>>50974267

Welp, here goes

>>50969524
>>50969738
The early centuries of M40 were a fairly comfy time period to be born in; the 11th Black Crusade had faded to distant memory, while the great Necron awakening had not yet begun in earnest. Granted, some Eldar farseers were beginning to see disturbing visions of an all-consuming wave slowly approaching the Imperium from a great distance, but then again, farseers were always fortelling one prophecy of doom or another.

The Rogue Trader Haverlok Valler had managed to become rather comfortable during this era of relative calm. With wealth, however, came a foolish confidence , and he was reported lost when one of his riskier routes clipped the warp storm thrown up by the Aschen War . The relief of his flotilla and crew all emerging relatively intact - or at least free from Chaos corruption - soon gave way to a frightening discovery: the light of the Astronomican was far fainter than what it should have been from the original Warp jump; it was eventually deduced that they had been spat out midway into the Ultima Segmentum.

Faced with dwindling supplies and an uncertain future, Haverlok refused to roll over and give up. Instead he ordered the longest-ranged and smallest craft in his merchant flotilla to be used as scouts they were to be given the lion's share of the meagre fuel reserves until a suitable system to make landfall in was found. Even when one was found it was beyond the fleet's range - Valler was forced to abandon some of his oldest transports for the remainder of his voidships to make the journey. Xenos artifacts from a dozen worlds and priceless documents from ancient archives were abandoned to the void; but these grievous losses were counteracted by a single fact: Clan Valler would survive.

And on the twin moons of Korod IV, a paradise world and a barren wasteland, it would form the beating heart of the Imperium's newest rising power: The Korodian Technocracy.

moar?

>>50975885
haha whoops looks like i forgot to proofread that

>>50961375
The thing is that you might only be seeing one action because that is all they are doing and they are letting your paranoia do the work.

But then again maybe not.

Their is no Ω Legion/Chapter.

>>50976729
there are no records of an omega legion, but there are hardly records of the alpha legion.

>>50975885
>>50975934
That bad, huh

>>50974551
But part of the point of the tyranids is that they are the group that no one saw coming. Even the prophecies of the Eldar did not forsee their arrival. Everyone has been so focused on the struggle between the Imperium, Chaos, and the Necrons, that no one expected an entirely unknown fourth faction to come out of nowhere and sucker-punch everyone. If the Eldar had fought the tyranids in the past, even at the height of their power, they would have remembered and taken precautions. They certainly remember the Necrons and the C’tan.

Case in point the Genestealer War. By the end of the war, the Imperium hunted down every last genestealer they could find and killed them. The Imperium thought the threat was dealt with, but if the Eldar had to deal with the tyranids before they would have known the genestealers were far from gone, and that the genestealers were but a vanguard of a much bigger problem.

The same goes for the Old Ones. If the space lizard wizards had to bitch-slap the tyranids at least once before, there’s a good chance the Eldar might have learned about it somehow. Even if the Eldar did not learn, the Old Ones were likely to engineer some kind of anti-tyranid defense into their creations, on the grounds that while they might be tyranid-proof it might be a good idea to keep the space locusts from touching their stuff.