>>52094859
>>52094841
Yeah, I figured that was the case, but I wanted to make a call back to the old origins of Chaos (Which were kind of dumb in my opinion, but that's the fun of old fluff) with the lies for human supremacists. I imagine for different groups they'll have different appeals.

>>52094866
I can see the chapters having less of a close kinship with each other based solely on Legion of origin given that they have no shared genes exclusive to that decision.

Ideology playing more of a part in who gets on with who over some distant Primarch long dead of a distant parent organization not spoken to in 120 years.

Lamentors and Salamanders getting along due to similar attitudes for example. Or Space Wolves and some obscure White Scar Khanate.

Also I can definitely imagine KSons and descendants lending specialists to the other Chapters.

>>52095048
Shared history and philosophy can make up for a lack of shared genes, given how attached real life soldiers get to their units. At the very least the successor chapters get along well enough to operation as a reformed legion during times of crisis as described here: https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Nobledark_Imperium_Imperial_Forces

I agree that there is probably less friction between the different legions or there may even be outright friendships, since the Imperium as a whole cooperates more in this AU.

>>52094942
Yes.

But they are lies. The Fallen may believe that Chaos are *their* gods but they don't know shit. They belong to Chaos, body and soul. They are it's plaything and they are not cite favourite and they are not it's first.

Erebus knows this but the Fallen need their fantasies.

So is there an Eisenhorn in this AU?

Also Cherubael.

It was hinted at in the books that Cherubael was the servant of a great deamon king that rebelled against Tzneetch and was cast down in a long ago era.

Was the Devil's Chariot the source of Erebus' Blackstone Fortress?

Here's the next part of
OPERATION: FOXGLOVE NAVY SWAN (Soggy Snooze 8)
SOURCE: Ordo Malleus, Divisio Panoptica, ARGENT CRENELLATION
AUTHOR: Inquisitor RIGEL NIGEL

Thanks to near-unprecedented levels of cooperation and openness from several Harlequin troupes, we now have a partial report on the status of the Webway within the Eye of Terror itself. As anticipated, it is terrible, although surprisingly it has not disintegrated entirely.
First and foremost among the problems is the vast sections of path which have been swamped by the warp. In addition to the inevitable complications this poses for navigation, this also allows daemons to access the webway. Total saturation is thankfully impossible- like the Materium, daemons cannot normally persist for long within the webway without some additional source of power. Further, since the webway is normally devoid of easily accessible prey, the only daemons to occupy its halls normally are near-mindless things wandering in on accident. Of course, that can change in an instant if you wander too close and they start to smell you.
>loading next page...

>>52097560
This fact surprised me, given that the webway is apparently fragile enough that regular use by the mentally undisciplined can damage it; how can parts of it survive when in direct contact with the warp and infested by daemons? When I posed this question to the Harlequins, it was explained that, while the full nature of the webway is incomprehensible to any mortal and most gods, the best analogy would be interfering waves. When two waveforms collide, there can be areas of constructive interference where the power of the waves amplify each other, and areas of destructive interference where they nullify each other. Similarly, areas of the webway can be vastly weaker or stronger than others, with little to no way to test how strong a given segment is without risking its destruction. He also mentioned that the Crone Eldar may be strengthening sections of the webway with dark magics, to preserve it for their use. I am uncertain how much of this explanation to credit, but the upshot is, there are surviving lengths of webway in the Eye of Terror. [Attached file: transcript of Harlequin explanation of Webway resilience, copied to PLATINUM MAROON BEGONIA]
Aside from the wandering daemons, the Croneworld Eldar naturally make heavy use of the webway, posing another threat to travellers in the webway. They are a frequent presence among the sections of the webway that still lead places; any attempt to use the webway to penetrate directly to the Croneworlds will be hard fought and likely doomed. However, a great deal of information was recovered on factions of the Crone Eldar and their respective uses of the webway. [See file FOXGLOVE NAVY SWAN (Soggy Snooze 10), copied to LOBSTER UINTATHARE FOUR SQUARE]
In short, while a great deal of useful information was recovered, the webway itself will be useless for any penetration into the Eye above the level of small commando teams, and nearly useless for even that. Other means will have to be pursued.
>End file

>>52096607
The Warp hasn't been static in this AU. Back when Slaanesh was first murderfucked into existence, the Chaos Wastes were much more sizeable and there were a lot of entities that weren't daemons of whoever.

That's been changing. When Chaos hasn't been directing their attention on the Imperium, they've been working to consolidate more of the Warp under their control. The number of unaligned entities has greatly decreased, and many of them are still Chaos Undivided rather than simply independent. Be'lakor probably has the biggest chunk under his control.

>>52094866
What we really need are more named Cronedar champions beyond Lady Malys. Vanilla has tons of named CSM, we need more named Cronedar.

>>52095048
>>52095220
Yeah, it does seem in this timeline that the veneration of the chapter’s original primarch is more of a point of personal pride than quasi-genetic ancestor worship. Like “this famous historical hero was our original founder way back when, and we strive to uphold their ideals”. That said, though they respect their primarch, they understand full well that they weren’t perfect and their ideals weren’t ironclad.

So you get things like the occasional Dark Angel successor chapter and Space Wolf successor chapter on good terms with one another, despite Lion and Russ hating each other, because the chapters realize it’s stupid to hate each other over a grudge two men had over a pair of nations that have been extinct for ten thousand years.

And, like >>52095048 said, you probably get a lot of successor chapters with similar ideals finding a lot of common ground and having close ties with one another, despite not descending from the same legion. Indeed, it was mentioned the Blood Ravens hold a lot of respect for Corax and the Raven Guard despite technically being Ksons descendants.

And because Ksons were always the specialist legion they end up sending specialists to everyone, save the Death Guard and the Templar movement. Surprisingly, this probably includes the Space Wolves, given that Magnus and Russ made up and Ksons and their descendants are using the “Magnus tested, Russ approved” method of psykery. Magnus and Russ intended their methods for the Grey Knights, but some of the less intensive methods probably dripped down to the other Ksons, if for no other reason than Grey Knights being in contact with Prospero for the latest developments in psykery.

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>>52094942
>>52095220
I can see the Chaos Gods trying to pass themselves off as humanity’s gods, with varying reactions from attempted suckers…I mean converts.

Some fall for the human supremacy hook, line, and sinker.
Others go with the whole “no god that is worth worshipping would ask for such atrocities to be commited in their name”
Other others would go the Lorgar route (particularly the Katholians), and say the very act of the Chaos Gods trying to pass themselves off as the gods of humanity proves they are not the real deal. God is immaterial, immaculate, and perfect, whereas the Chaos gods are very physical, mortal-born, and flawed. God speaks to everyone, whether it is man, Eldar, Tau, or more, as befits an entity that created all life in the universe.

If they believe what the cultists say, some might even go the route of some African theologies, where if the gods of humanity are evil, then it’s every man, woman, and child’s duty to defy them.
Others might see the fact that the Eldar gods adopted humanity as their surrogate children as a good thing, to get them away from their abusive “real parents” (almost like a reversal of the Aedra and Daedra)

Of course, Chaos isn’t stupid, and probably only gives the bait to people it knows will bite. Indeed, traitor guardsmen might actually be more common in this timeline than in canon. I could never understand why so many guardsmen fell to Chaos during the Heresy, when they could just look at the primarchs and Chaos Space Marines and see what was happening to them. Here, with no fallen demi-gods to provide examples, it’s much easier to convince people (especially planets that have no history with the followers of Chaos) that Chaos isn’t that bad.

>>52094866
>How far did we get with Heroes of the Imperium? Have we made any new ones of our own?

In terms of Heroes of the Imperium, there are so many human and Space Marine characters in canon that you can almost throw a dart and come up with a named character that fits the concept you're looking for.

Non-human characters less so, but that is because GW gives so little attention to the xenos on a personal level. In canon there are only a handful of named Eldar characters (not counting DoW), Eldrad, Yriel, Ilic Nightspear, Iyanna Arienel, and the Phoenix Lords. Tau aren't much better.

However, we do have a few completely novel non-human characters
>Aun'O Da
>Sreta Ulthran
>Rommel
>That Saim-Hann guy (warrior then harlequin then Disciple of Kurnous then Wraithguard, that has to be a story)

>shitposters

I suspect a good chunk of the shitposting is by one person. Their complaints were almost exactly the same as the last shitposter and worded the same way.

While we do need to make sure we don't fall into HFY (especially since everyone is more competent in this timeline), I think there are going to be some who will always accuse us of this just because people are more competent than in vanilla, just like shitposters call Imperium Asunder a Chaos-wank fest and Hektor Heresy...I don't know what derogatory term they use for it.

>>52097720
How about a Croneldar Farsight? Not literally, but at least a "what the fuck do you mean eldar can't whack the impure with chanswords" type. As for the faction as a whole, I could see some super interesting stuff going on with corrupted wraithbone constructs and shit

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>>52099178 (cont.)
Given the lack of named Eldar characters in canon, I recommend we steal liberally from Warhammer Fantasy, since that's where a lot of cool elves seem to be anyway.

Indeed, I had a suggestion regarding Asurmen, since there's very little given on his death in canon beyond "died fighting to protect his students on the Shrine of Asur". I thought we might take a page from Aenarion. As in canon, the Shrine of Asur was besieged by daemons during the birth of Slaanesh. In order to protect his students, Asurmen took up his weapons and fought innumerable daemons, and eventually, four greater daemons, one from each of the Ruinous Powers. The point of Asurmen's battle was not to fight four greater daemons and win. No mortal, no matter how powerful, could do that. Instead his goal was to stall the daemons for long enough that his students and the population of the Shrine of Asur could retreat to the safehouses beneath the planet, warded with runes so heavily it would take one of the dark gods themselves to break in, where they could wait out the fallout from the birth of Slaanesh.

"I win."
- Last words of the original incarnation of Asurmen, before being decapitated by a greater daemon of Khorne

>>52099254
Three words. Evil. Eldar. Bjorn.

A wraithguard containing one of the Blood God's greatest Eldar servants, trapped in a wraithguard body after falling in battle. Thing is, he can't feel very much after being put in a wraithguard, and so he is infuriated that he can no longer feel the rush of battle or the thrill of killing your enemy. He throws himself into ever more dangerous battlefields, in the hopes of just feeling something again, if only for a moment.

Khorne is pleased by this, because it means more blood for the Blood God and whatnot.

>>52099178
>>52099346
I agree, humanity has so many canon characters that OC would just feel wanky.

I quite like the idea of porting some thematically consistent characters over from Fantasy, I kinda forgot it existed. I think a Crone Eldar Sigvald the Magnificent would be appropriate, both as a bit of relative levity and because he encapsulates what 80% of CE have become.

How do people feel about bringing in our favorite asskickers, Tyrion and Teclis? Maybe Tyrion is one of the greatest Exarchs and becomes the most recent Asurmen when the previous one falls? Or if we want to use some of his End Times fluff, maybe he somehow absorbs one of the Shards of Khaine from an Infinity Circuit and becomes a demigod murder train? (Probably not the second suggestion, I know End Times can be controversial here to say the least) Maybe Teclis is Eldrad's greatest protege, but leans more warlock than farseer? I do see how bringing characters straight from Fantasy might dilute the 40k aspects though, so I'm interested in what people think.

As a side note, I like your Asurmen backstory, though I believe the PL souls are actually housed in the armor, so it would make sense if the Eldar counterattacked, retook the Shrine and recovered Asurmen's armor.

>>52099737
>Tyrion and Teclis

It would make sense to keep the twins aspect of their characterization. Tyrion being a Phoenix Lord would mean his personality gets nommed by whoever puts on the armor.

>though I believe the PL souls are actually housed in the armor, so it would make sense if the Eldar counterattacked, retook the Shrine and recovered Asurmen's armor

Right, that would be his first death. Though I suppose the daemons could have just dragged his armor into the warp, so they would have had to (and they would have wanted to, daemons just killed their teacher after all) counterattack.

>>52100011
>>52099737
How often do Eldar have twins, anyway? Given that twins are a requirement to make wraithlords, which are fielded enough that there would need to be a ready supply of them for wraithlords to be militarily viable.

The highest rate of twinning for modern humans is about 5% of all births, but higher rates of twinning are almost fraternal twins because they result from multiple eggs being fertilized. We know from Dawn of War III that fraternal twins work well enough for wraithlord purposes, so we don't have to worry about identical twins. Unless Eldar have no sex chromosomes, which opens up a whole 'nother can of worms.

It almost seems like Eldar are naturally predisposed to having fewer births (due to their weird birth cycle) but multiple offspring per birth. Maybe they're like nine-banded armadillos (which always have genetically identical quadruplets), except they don't always have twins.

tl,dr: twins they were

>>52101008
Depends on how durable wraithlords are. If they last a long time (Eldar, duh) and can be restored to functionality after even massive damage, even a small trickle of production would result in there being a lot of them after 10,000 years.

>>52101193
But you need a surviving twin to pilot it. A twin who has to not only not die all that time but who will eventually (in a millenium or so) die of old age. Plus you need to have one twin die and not both. Maybe the math increases the likelyhood but it looks like making Wraithlords is hard.

Wraithguards don't have the same problem, since they're not piloted and you only need one soul.

>>52099737
>>52101008

Maybe combine these?

>Tyrion and Teclis are the Dissimilar Twins - both achieved greatness along separate paths.
>Tyrion was very physically capable and went far along the paths of the warrior but not full exarch.
>Teclis was weak to the point of having difficulty walking around. But his mind was powerful and he did great things as bonesinger and warlock.
>When Tyrion died in %suitably nobledark manner% his soul was put into a Wraithlord that the other twin now pilots.
>Tyrions powerful spirit actually does the fighting, Teclis just points it at the (right) enemy.
>This lets Teclis, with his powerful mind, to spare the attention for mental exertions of his own.
>TL;DR psyker wraithlord as special character

>>52101452
Knights need twins, wraithlords are much easier to deal with.

>>52101452
>>52101733
I don't see anything in the Lexicanum or 40k wiki about wraithlords need twins or even a pilot. Looks like they're just big wraithguards and are powered by a soul stone.

>>52101733
Or they were the children of an Isha priestess. If any eldar are likely to have twins it's them.

Both grew up big and strong with classically handsome features. Both got drawn down the paths of Khine, both joined the Dire Avengers path. Both build up names for themselves.

Then in one particularly awful battle Teclis takes a nurgle blade in the gut right up to the hilt. It should have been fatal, eventually.

At the end of the battle Tyrion finds his brother with the blade still in him. Pulls blade out and carries his bleeding brother all the way to their mothers temple.

Their mother manages to halt the poison and drive back the infection but Teclis is withered and weak and in pain.

Needless to say he isn't capable of walking the war paths any more. Mopes around temple for a while in a foul mood.

Tyrion abandons the Dire Avenger path and takes up the Striking Scorpion path.

Teclis starts training as a seer. Has many masters as most grow weary of his increasingly acerbic and sardonic personality.

Tyrion gets board of Scorpions. Becomes Swooping Hawk.

Teclis becomes a fully fledged Warlock. Admittedly he has to lean on a wooden staff and wield a stiletto knife rather than the usual sword of office. This makes him no less lethal as his psychic training allows him to know exactly where to shank you with that knife.

Tyrion eventually becomes a well respected Autarch, at his side is always a rather grim figure in ill fitting robes.

>>52101733
>>52102474
We could easily combine these two.

>>52103793
could we change the names from teclis and tyrion

cause that's a little too unoriginal

unless we want to bring in karl franz and grimgor and the whole passel of fantasy

>>52103865
Good point. We only want to be taking ideas from fantasy, not characters wholesale.

Bump

>>52103865
>>52105710
From the Tolkien elf name generator

For Teclis - Triwathon. Meaning: Slender Shadow (trîw+gwath) Male (on) (triwath+on)

For Tyrion - Delgaranor. Meaning: Red Horror (del+caran) Male (on) (delgaran+on)

Unless someone wants to come up with something less stupid.

>>52107715
Not bad.

Just a random housekeeping question, but is the Navigator stuff ready to go up, or did it need to be tweaked at all (i.e., does it all go under Navis Nobilite on Forces of the Imperium, or does Fedor Jiao get his own page?)

>>52108118
Fedor Jiao story is already up

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

The description of the Navigators maybe in either Forces of Imperium or just in notes.

As anon who did the description of Navigators I would suggest Notes because it feels quite unpolished.

>>52108172
Navigator description is great, just needs tweaking if anything. And that's saying something, since some anons several threads ago said how hard it was to write Navigators.

Also, Bleeding Star was the name-to-be for the Cronedar ship, right?

>>52108347
It was something like that.

Another good one to transfer from fantasy could be Eltharion the Blind.

In fantasy he was tortured by Dark Elves and had his eyes gouged out.

In the Noble Darkness he could have been a webway guide captured by Dark Eldar. They wanted to know the passwords to get into Iyanden via the webway.

He refused.

They took him apart a bit at a time.

By the time he friends caught up with his abductors all that was left was a few scraps of flesh wrapped around a soul stone.

When they placed him in the Infinity Circuit the first thing he did was kick his way to the top of the waiting line for a wraithguard shell.

Even before the union of Dark and Chaos Eldar he was all in favour of exterminating every citizen of the Dark City down to the last man woman and child.

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>>52109192
Speaking of DEldar/Eldar relationships, I had a suggestion regarding Craftworld Lugganath. In canon, each of the major Craftworld is to be devoted to fighting a specific enemy (Alaitoc and Necrons, Biel-Tan and orks, Iyanden and tyranids). Now, with some notable exceptions (i.e., Iyanden has a pretty good reason to join Kryptman in his “We Hate Tyranids” club) this isn’t the case for this universe. However, if you’ll notice, in canon no major Craftworld has “Dark Eldar” as their preferred enemy, as even though the Craftworlders don’t like their dark kin, they seem to try to avoid fighting with them.

This isn’t the case in this timeline.

In this timeline, Craftworld Lugganath is the Dark Eldar-hating Craftworld. As in canon, Lugganath are still trying to find a way to bring their Craftworld into the webway so they can rebuild Eldar civilization from there. The Webway would literally provide an infinite amount of space for the Eldar to grow and thrive away from the horrors of the galaxy. However, they realize that’s not going to happen so long as the Webway is being squatted in by their cocaine-snorting kin. Not only do the Dark Eldar make it impossible to live in the Webway long-term, they make Webway travel dangerous in general. So Lugganath wants to kick the lazy bums out. Lugganath was always kind uneasy about the Dark Eldar, but it got worse after the War of the Beast, where it became clear the Dark Eldar were willing to kill their own kind with impunity. Also canon has Lugganath’s seer council getting slaughtered by a wannabe Dark Eldar (this seems to happen a lot with Lugganath).

>>52109192
If we wanted to, we could make it so that he was still alive, just mutilated by the Dark Eldar. Placing him in a wraithguard makes him sound like every other wraithguard, since they're all technically blind and can only "see" via psychic sense.

Guy is completely blind (do Eldar have medical technology that can fix that? I imagine they do but Dark Eldar poisons might make that impossible), but he's still one of the best Webway guides alive. Indeed, his lack of sight seems to have made him even better, as now it is impossible for the alien geometries of the Webway to play tricks on his mind.

>>52109588
Actually that does work better.

>>52109506
Last thread it was suggested that the Silver Skulls chapter maintain a presence at the intersections of the webway and send out regular patrols.

They could be very much allied with Lugganath.

Lugganath's end game could be that all permanent eldar habitation be moved to the webway but rather that one or just a few big cities like The Dark City they are working towards thinner spread with a "village" at each intersection, junction and crossroad.

They help humanity and the others be masters of the Galaxy so long as the Imperium helps them become masters of their domain.

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I'm hoping to finally finish my primarch story over break, in the meantime I'm distracting myself from work and thinking of Crone Eldar stuff. I was thinking it would be good to have some other powerful, established Crone leaders besides Malys, some not affiliated with a particular god, but others fully committed. I hadn't thought of any solid individuals, but here are some concept that I wrote down.

Marshal of The Scions of The Old Helm
>Highest ranking figure among Khorne's remnants of the Eldar empire's military, claims authority is descended from the old empire's chain of command
>Access to some of their best surviving large-scale weapons and naval assets from before the fall
>the Marshal holds crone worlds in the eye and is granted warp real estate from Khorne, and has official palaces in the Shah-Dome, but most of its holdings in the shellworld are limited to the outer layers
>the Marshal controlled the backbone of Crone forces and needed to be appeased by Malys at the expense of the other factions until Luther and the fallen became an analogous option

High Conservator of The Attendants of Isha
>The original High Conservator was a decadent leader of Isha's priesthood that embraced her captivity as a wedding of the generative mother and the eternally preserving father
>welcomed in the garden of Nurgle, the upper priesthood that clung to Isha became immortal, pseudo-deamonic beings that fawned over their 'mother'
>The upper leadership of the Attendants witnessed Isha's rescue and are absolutely dedicated to her recapture
>Other than being patient, implacable, and insanely hard to kill, the Conservator and attendants have a large following in the slums and horrible places of the galaxy
>Their eternal readiness to campaign and their ability to motivate wars makes them useful to Malys, and they have a few powerful leaders, but they have few holdings that aren't warp real estate from Nurgle and weak armies

>>52110192
Been trying to dredge the old threads for the stuff we had on the major factions of Cronedar. Reposting the ones on the various flavors of Nurgle.

>I imagine that since the fall there had been eldar going to nurgle to be close to isha, but since the raid they've been psychotically dedicated to dragging Isha back to the garden, but their actual loyalty to nurgle is questionable, and they now only cooperate because they both most want to steal back plague-dumpster waifu. For Isha's part, their company is just slightly preferable to nurgle's own, and they mistook this preference, and her mixed pity, disgust, and sorrow for genuine love for them, and they believe they will be welcome, eventually. They hope the prophecy with Oscar and Malys turns out, because they think it means they will get to "rescue" Isha.

>In other words they are the eldar equivalent of greasy neckbeard M'Lady white knight orbiters who see Isha as their incestuous mother+waifu.

>Then there are the actual Nurgle ones who are rarer. They see the fall of the empire without any romanticism, only as evidence of the universal trend towards entropy and decay. The only possible means of enlightenment is despair and the acceptance of all being lost and fucked up and decaying without meaning. The clockwork of the universe counting down towards the end of all things. Inexorably. Irredeemably. Inevitability. It doesn't upset them much. They are past despair and into the enlightenment of acceptance and believe that by sharing Nurgle's gifts with all living things the inhabitants of this dying universe will be happier in the long run. Or dead. More probably dead. But if you're dead you aren't unhappy.

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>>52094866
>Chaos Guard
I see forces like the Blood Pact being popular among the Crone Eldar as cannon fodder forces next to Orks. Seeing as most of the renegade Guards regiments would fall under either Crone Eldar or Fallen Marine overlords and Slaanesh would be the patron Chaos god for a large chunk of these regiments. Most would act like the Chaos Emperor's Children to compensate for the fact they will be outnumbered by loyalist forces. Jack-of-all-traits and master of none are common among the Chaos Guard as they have to adapt to each different battle then use their small force to defeat a larger loyalist force. Chaos Guards regiments that failed to master this are quickly crushed by overwhelming Imperial troops. The nature of the fighting for the Chaos Guard makes them become more elite than regular Cadian Guardsmen. What the Chaos Guard lacks in troops are more than made up for by Warpcraft and smart officers. How the Chaos Guard is often in a position of rebellion or under an overlord's service that lives inside the Warp, have them use cheaper weapons and armor. The industry and looting that supply the Chaos Guard is simply not enough to keep up with Imperial manufactorums, leading to the rise of subbers being used by Chaos Guardsmen instead of Las weapons along with cultist militias being thrown to distract the enemy away from the real valuable Chaos Guardsmen.

The Imperial Guard see the Chaos Guard as an elite force that is much better at combat than Orks but is less of a threat to the Imperium as a whole compared to Orks.

Just for the fact, Chaos Guard regiments work for Chaos means many of these Guardsmen will act like barbarians. They would lose some semblance of professionalism on the battlefield while turning into full Huns after a battle. Sacking planets to stay supplied or just for the fun of it, the Chaos Guard would be infamous for cruelty and bloodshed to the wider Imperium.

>>52110625
>chaos guard regiments
>smaller than ig regiments

Hahahahahahaha. No. If you want your small amount of Chaos forces vs. lots of loyalists fantasy, stick to the Chaos Space Marines.

Chaos Guard AS IN THE LOST AND DAMNED always outnumber the IG.

Stick to the lore, you fucking Sonichu fag.

>>52110192
(cont.)
The Indigo Crow (or some other esoteric title)
>The preeminent Crone sorcerer and seer, an independent Tzentchian scholar of vast power, not bound to the service of a liege or court
>Able to call on some level of cooperation between the dark academies of warp-lore in the corrupted webway around the eye
>Its unclear if this is a single individual, an assumed title passed between great tzeentchian eldar, or some more unusual entity, but in any case it is the Crones' answer to both Eldrad and Ahriman
>Has incredible supernatural power and knowledge, and is the conduit for much of the Tzeentchian Crones' access to Tzeentch's realm and boons, but little miliary power
This one needs the most work in my opinion.

Chosen Taskmaster of Slaanesh
>The Taskmaster is selected to direct Slaanesh's material domain in the Eye of Terror while the inner circle enjoy the revels
>Holds power over significant portions of the Shah-Dome, including massive habitation, industrial, and technological assets, made even more imposing by direct connection to Slaanesh's palace
>While the Taskmaster has the strongest realspace assets and most readily granted and utilized warp boons, Slaanesh can provide less in terms of raw power and reality distortion.
>The Taskmaster's strategic purpose is to wield the ruins of the eldar empire Slaanesh has claimed to make the prince of pleasure arch-enemy of the Imperium as a means of expanding his influence on the warp, which works well for Malys

>>52110656
what the hell is your problem?

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>>52110465 (cont.)
Also had an idea for an individual Cronedar that can best be thought of as "Eldar Typhus". Was going to call her "Malaria" for reasons that will become obvious, but realized that name is too close to Lady Malys to fork.

When Isha was freed from Nurgle's mansion, Nurgle no longer had a guinea pig for his experiments, and Malaria offered herself as a substitute. However, the Lord of Stagnation eventually realized it just wasn't the same, and gave up on her. To everyone's shock and horror, Malaria actually survived, but not before she was merged with the destroyer hive creating Malaria, the Living Hive.

Malaria is a disgusting creature. Half of her body is covered in hive-like outgrowths, home to growing maggots, rot wasps, daemon flies, and plague gnats. The parts of her body that are not covered in outgrowths, including most of her face save the area around her left eye, look as pristine and flawless as they did the day of the Fall. However, this is only a veneer of normalcy. Malaria has almost no original tissue left, and if one were to break Malaria in half (as has happened several times), one would see that her insides are nothing more than honeycombs for the insects inside her with a thin veneer of skin on top (and then get stung by a bunch of angry Nurgle bees). She shouldn't even be able to move, having no brain, muscle, or bone.

Malaria herself does not care. She is in a constant state of pleasure, happiness, and religious ecstasy as pupate inside her body, giggling like an innocent child in spite of the horror she leaves in her wake.

I'm going to go scrub my brain now.

>>52110656
I was basing the idea of Chaos Guard being better than IG on how the Blood Pact with 600 troops beats IG force of 2.000.

>always outnumber the IG
Why should that be the case? Where you have the Tau, Eldar, Space Marines, and countless other loyalist forces up against what is basically a human-only Chaos Guard, it pretty much means the Chaos Guard will be outnumbered all the time. The Chaos Guard can only survive as a combat force if it becomes better than the average Guards regiment. Even when they are better, they still aren't super duper commandos compared to Guardsmen or Orks. For Crone Eldar, the Chaos Guard is just easier to control than Orks while still being just as combat effective. To the IG, they fight better than the average Guardsmen regiment but not as rowdy as the Orks.

>>52110625
The Chaos Guard is probably also made up of a lot of cultists. That is, the ones that actually succeed in dragging their planet into the Warp to be playthings of the dark gods. They probably weren't all guardsmen, but they're called Chaos Guard because they're baseline humans that fight for Chaos, what else are you going to call them?

I agree with the sentiment that once they actually get to the Warp and find out how Chaos actually works, they're often going to find themselves under the control of Cronedar or the Fallen because they're at the very bottom of the foodchain.

>>52110835 (same as >>52110850)
Now that I think about it, the Lost and the Damned are probably about as tough on average as a Death Worlder. The Warp is not a nice place, and if you're a weakling in the Warp you either get eaten or you get 'ard. So on average, one-on-one a Chaos Guardsman probably beats a regular guardsman, especially in close combat, unless you're up against a Catachan or a Cadian.

>Tau, Eldar, Space Marines, and countless other loyalist forces up against what is basically a human-only Chaos Guard

Not that guy, but Chaos also has the Fallen and Cronedar. Indeed, the Cronedar probably outnumber the Dark Eldar, Exodites, and Craftworlders combined by a large margin, since they're the ones from the old Eldar homeworlds that were as densely settled as Old Earth is in M41. Even if 90% of the proto-Cronedar were nommed by Slaanesh for breakfast when schlie got up for morning recaff, that's still a lot of Cronedar.

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>>52110930
I was taking the idea of >>52110656 where if the Chaos Guard is only made up of former IG and cultist that are the same or weaker than an IG regiment. So they would outnumber the IG regiments.

The idea being that Crone Eldar or Fallen Marines don't intervene to save say a Chaos Guard rebellion. In the initial start sure the Chaos Guard would outnumber loyalist forces but once a Crusader Army arrive to crush the rebellion if the Chaos Guard is equal or lesser than the IG in combat effectiveness then the very idea of Chaos Guard is doomed to fail from the start.

This is also taking into account when a Black Crusade happens, the Chaos Guard is let loose to attack Imperial forces and systems while either Crone Eldar or Fallen Marines fulfill objectives. The Chaos Guard must be better than the average IG in order to drag out the fighting long enough to allow Chaos to actually get shit done. If the Chaos Guard former Guardsmen are equal to the IG then the Imperial Army wouldn't even register them as a speed bump when coming in to stop a Black Crusade.

>>52110930
In this AU Old Earth is not the over populated city-planet of Vanilla.

It has distant and separate Hives surrounded by vast idyllic agrarian land.

>>52110784
>work, not fork
>as flies pupate

Friggin' autocorrect

>>52109733
Last thread it was also mentioned that the Cronedar have used blasphemous magics to keep parts of the Webway stable in the Eye of Terror. Lugganath would have to do something about that to keep the Webway from turning into She Who Thirst's pantry.

So it sounds like Lugganath's plan is...
1) Remove Kabal
2) Seal off parts of Webway leading into Eye of Terror
3) Move Eldar into Webway
4) ???
5) Profit!

>>52110930
>>52111272
The whole point is that while a Chaos soldier might be tougher and stronger than an Imperial Guard, his or her equipment will be ABSOLUTE DOGSHIT.

You know how the AdMech is really bad with tech because they don't always know how things work?

The Dark Mechanicus is worse. FAR worse. But not the way you think. The Dark Mechanicus has far more understanding of technology than the Adeptus Mechanicus, but they're extremely egoistic and they only really care about killing other Dark Mechanicus members. They're all mad scientists that want to kill all the other mad scientists.

Which means that Chaos soldiers get absolute dogshit for gear.

Old WD articles about creating your own Lost and the Damned regiments talked about taking regular IG parts, and mangling them so they looked like they had been looted from the dead. The Dark Mechanicus doesn't care about the Chaos soldiers to outfit them like the AdMech does for the Imperial Guard.

How you fit that in your Nobledark universe, I dunno. But it's something to keep in mind.

>>52110625
Also, only now I realise that this is the nobledark thread.

My little outburst at the end of
>>52110656
is a bit uncalled for.

>>52111745
Meant in canon. And I think the situation is more like a giant layered city. The very tops of Old Earth are vast layered tracts devoted to farmland, while caverns underneath grow edible fungi, alga, and other food items. Anything that looks like flat land is probably at least ten stories off the bedrock.

I think the oceans are also supposed to be partially built over as well. They're not evaporated like in canon, but Old Earth is said to look green, rather than blue, from orbit (unless they're like solid algae farms).

Of course, that's the ideal for hive worlds. Many hive worlds have had their hydroponics break down over 10,000 years of use and the Imperium doesn't have the resources right now to repair them. Some of them they're not sure how to repair because they were built by Perturabo. Earth is lucky because it's not only the capital, it's the seat of the Astronomican, the home of the biggest psyker schola remaining after the destruction of Prospero, etc., so extra care is taken to make sure it stays in working order.

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>>52111802
From what I know about the Dark Mechanicus is that they are larger than vanilla or at least big enough to outfit and make fleets inside the Warp. I too doubt the Dark Mech ever think of working for the Chaos Guard to produce supplies. They would only care and work for those that can provide knowledge or rare assets like Fallen Marines, Crone or Dark Eldar.

Materials to manufacture weapons for the Chaos Guard wouldn't be a problem inside the Warp since Chaos can just magic things into existence to build ships. The problem comes in that most of the Chaos Guard would operate outside of the Warp for an extended amount of time where they can't just magic in resources to make weapons. That means either Chaos Guard troops would loot supplies (which is not sustainable logistically speaking) or use manufactorums to produce supplies (that can't even dream of competing with Imperial industry).

The lack of ability for the Chaos Guard to get supplies means either they are throwing out swords and stubbers to every civilian in sight to make cannon fodder cultist. Alternatively, the Chaos Guard regiment can still use Las weapons and the more popular Autoguns from lootings and easily manufactured weapons from occupying worlds. If there are weapons to spare than a combination of both. The Chaos Guard regiments that try to act like IG regiments will try to keep Las weapons from their old days and used captured or produced weapons afterward. Because the renegades don't have the economy backing them to have a steady flow of Las weapons, Chaos Guard would be filled with melee weapons, Stubbers, and old vehicles or generally ancient/cheap things to keep themselves fighting.

Physically, anybody in the Chaos Guard above cultist level is stronger than a normal Guardsmen because of the Warp or magic toughing them. That and along with battlefield Warpcraft with smart officers are the only thing allowing the Chaos Guard to defeat Imperial forces.

>>52112654
Yup. When you run out of guns, loot the guns of the enemy's dead. Lasguns are simply to reload.

And having an army that has a higher focus on melee combat because swords and axes don't need reloading sounds perfect for a Chaos-influenced army. Just need to make sure everyone doesn't go full Khornate and charge en masse into the lasgun and shuriken pistol fire.

The smarter Lost and Damned offficers probably use the Dark Mechanicus' ego to their advantage. I.e., if you supply us with stuff, we'll go knock over your rival, or attack an Imperial research facility for you. Play the mad scientists off each other.

>>52112802
I like the idea of the Chaos Guard being the melee mirror of the IG and so far there is no Chaos faction that is really melee focused. Melee weapons not needing to reload is a great reason why the Chaos Guard use CQC than range combat. Having the Chaos Guardsmen be strong enough to beat a Cadian in melee is a good way to counter the lack of even mediocre guns the Chaos Guard don't have. Cultists are sure as shit aren't good for anything but be meat shields for proper Chaos Guardsmen. The Chaos Guard would have troops tanky or crazy enough to charge at a Guardsmen gun line for melee combat. They can also avoid fire by dodging or plan to close the distance where the enemy can't return fire.

>>52113323
>so far there is no Chaos faction that is really melee focused

Well, there's the Orks, but they're less Chaos and more manipulated by Chaos into fighting on their battlefields where the best fighting is in exchange for avoiding targetting Chaos troops.

>They can also avoid fire by dodging or plan to close the distance where the enemy can't return fire.

Ye gods, urban combat with the Chaos Guard. I'm reminded of that AGP story where Shoggy's group had to fight Orks, then traitor guard, and said they'd rather fight the Orks again please.

>>52094942
>>52095939
You know, the aforementioned posts in the last thread really drives home the point of just how advanced the Old Ones were to everyone else. We talk about mountain-sized terraformers and time-altering blades of humanity and Eldar as being irreplaceable relics of a lost golden age, to the Old Ones they were about as high-tech as iron-smithing. To the Old Ones, gods were little more than supercomputers, perhaps smarter in some respects by the race that created them but ultimately constrained by their programming. They uplifted and created advanced, space-faring races in the same manner that humanity and Eldar create tools.

The Necrontyr, which had developed technology beyond what any living race in the galaxy could achieve, fought the Old Ones for dominance. They lost. Badly. The only way the Necrons could defeat them were to create their own pantheon of gods to level the playing field and the Old Ones in literally the one place where the Necrontyr could weather the fallout better than the Old Ones: the Immaterium. But the Necrons still had advanced enough technology that they weren’t snuffed out like a candle. High-end Necrontyr stuff in many respects is probably comparable to low-end Old One stuff, just like high-end, long forgotten DaoT Eldar and humanity stuff is akin to the average Necron tech level.

The scary thing is that unlike all the other races in the galaxy, save the Orks, the Necrons remember their old stuff.

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>>52114238
>AGP story
That fits considering the IG can mow down tons of Orks charging at them in an open field, but as soon as they have to fight the Chaos Guard in a city it was a death sentence. Plenty of ways for the Chaos Guardsmen to flank and close the range to butcher the Guardsmen or swarm a location with an endless amount of cultists.

I realize the regular Cadian regiments doesn't have anything to deal with a decent melee force. The Cadian Doctrine is to dig in to mow down attacking enemies before they get into melee. When attacking, the Cadians use mass artillery support with charging infantry to dig out defending enemies. Chaos Guard acts as a hard counter to the whole charging across the open field because they would have enough troops to succeed or attack in a cover rich environment. Cadians attacking Chaos Guard wouldn't really work when Chaos Guardsmen just wait out the artillery barrage in bunkers or Cadians facing enemies right on top of them to prevent artillery support due to friendly fire.

>>52116519
That's what Beastman assault sections, Ogryns, flamers, and grenades are for.

>>52116327
Eh, that might be underselling DAoT humanity and pre-Fall Eldar a bit. DAoT humanity had, among other things: a cure for all diseases as part of the STC, ships that could casually shoot black holes with perfect accuracy in warp storms, Titans that were pretty much Evangelions (Castigator Titan), and IIRC bullets that could go back in time to hit their target. Details on pre-Fall Eldar are scant but I imagine around the same level.

So no, they're not on the same level as the Necrontyr and Old Ones, but in a theoretical fight they probably still could have given either of those species a bloody nose at the very least.

>>52116579
Most Cadian Troops don't have the luxury of having lots of those things to deal with an army.

>>52116794
That's more what I was getting at. Necrontyr, Daot Humanity, and pre-Fall Eldar were probably close to the same level, but Necrontyr were just a biiit ahead, enough to drag the Old Ones down to their level.

Plus, kind of like the Forerunners and Precursors in Halo, the Necrontyr managed to win by figuring out the specific stuff that was super effective against the Old Ones.

My point was more than we see the accomplishments of DaoT humanity and the pre-Fall Eldar as a mountain, only for when we reach the peak of that mountain to realize that there's another, even larger mountain in the distance that we hadn't even realized existed until now.

>>52116519
This raises a good question. If Chaos Guard is a hard counter to the Cadian/Ulthwe strategy (you know, the most common strategy in the Imperium and the one used by the guys guarding the Eye of Terror), how is the Eye of Terror reliably held? Do we just go with >>52116579, plus Fenrisian Line Regiments and Sisters (now with enhanced guardsman-tearing kung-fu grip?)

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>>52117011
The Eye of Terror is held because Chaos Guard don't pour out of the Eye of Terror or the Maelstrom. From what it sounds like the Chaos Guard is a very real force that mostly exist within the Imperium and outside of the Warp. They would congregate around the Eye of Terror or the Maelstrom when a Black Crusade occur to help in the break out and act as fodder along with Orks. The thing is the Chaos Guard unlike the Imperial Guard, is not a unified organization and act as independent regiments until they come together during a Black Crusade. Meaning they don't just roll out the red carpet for Chaos at the Eye of Terror and keep the Imperials away all the time. They only roll out the red carpet in the event of a Black Crusade and only then. Having them be a hard counter to the Cadian/Eldar combo is one of the few things keeping them alive against a bigger enemy. They have dogshit weapons, constently outnumbered, and no supplies so they need some advantages to prevent them from becoming "Shouldn't they already be dead" tier troops.

>>52117011
>plus Fenrisian Line Regiments and Sisters
And Eldar Guardians and Aspect Warriors. And, you know, all of the *hundreds of thousands* of other Imperial Guard regiments. Also, it is probably safe to assume Cadian Shock regiments- the regiments raised on Cadia itself; are very capable at CQC, whatever their 'specialization' is.

I just noticed a bit of an issue with the Necrons.

The idea that we were kind of leaning towards was after the biotransferrence, the C’tan gave Szarekh complete independence and the ability to control the Necrons unless a C’tan gave them a different order as some sick parody of gratitude, similar to how Homunculus gave Hohenheim immortality at the cost of billions of people in Full Metal Alchemist. This ended up biting them in the ass when the Silent King ordered the Necrons to fire on the Deceiver and the Nightbringer before they could countermand his orders after the C’tan cannibalized each other.

However, given that we’ve established the C’tan are only able to control “orphaned” tomb worlds in M41, how did we get to this point? Did the Silent King manage to figure out some way to sever the controls after all? Or maybe just subvert the ones for the C’tan such that any amount of free will could override them, but couldn’t manage to figure out how to break his personal control because it would be the equivalent of a computer performing repairs on itself?

>>52117564
Eldar Guardians are part of the standard Guard regiments. Regiments on Cadia are more combined Cadia/Ulthwe than anything else.

Though I see your point about Cadian Shock Troopers actually from Cadia would be better at CQC, given they fight Chaos Guard on a more regular basis.

The issue is more that the Cadian style of combat is considered the standard across the Imperium. Many Guard regiments use a similar strategy, unless they're Machairians (play to your strengths) like Catachans, Fenrisian Line Regiments, etc.

>>52117430
>Having them be a hard counter to the Cadian/Eldar combo is one of the few things keeping them alive against a bigger enemy. They have dogshit weapons, constently outnumbered, and no supplies so they need some advantages to prevent them from becoming "Shouldn't they already be dead" tier troops.

I see your point.

>>52117430
I would assume the primary factor in their survival is that it is a very large universe and even an utter dogshit unit could rampage around for years on the fringes of the Imperium before being stopped.

>>52117615
Could be that the override signal has to be given by a sufficiently intact C'tan. By the time the shards got their shit together enough to figure out how to send the control signal in their compromised stat Silent King had already changed the passwords.

>>52110930
>>52117909
I rather prefer these 2 explanations for the Chaos Guard's survival: that Chaos Guardsmen are all hard as nails like Death Worlders (maybe even more so) due to the super natural selection of the Eye of Terror, and that they survive via sneaking around the edges of Imperial space and raiding.

The idea that Chaos Guard are so superior in melee combat as to hard counter Imperial tactics doesn't really work for a few reasons. First, Chaos buffs don't work like that. In canon, the Chaos Gods are pretty picky about granting buffs to people, so being a faceless Chaos mook isn't going to be enough to get even a bit of warp strength. Secondly is just a matter of common sense: the advantage that range weapons give over melee weapons is vast, and there's a reason melee fighting went obselete. Even shit like the Zulus beating the British at Isandlwana was more due to massive British tactical failures than melee actually being viable. I do like the idea that Chaos Guard are better melee fighters and try to exploit that advantage against the Imperials, but to lean on it heavily as the reason for the Chaos Guard's survival/success doesn't make sense.

Tactically, what if the Chaos Guard are sort of like the Dark Eldar? They avoid direct confrontation and use ambushes, raids, and hit and runs as much as possible, but use stealth and blending in with human populations to get in and out instead of speed and webway of the DE. Also, since Chaos emphasizes individuality, maybe Chaos has more innovative tactics than the Imperium, and is more flexible to changing battlefield conditions compared to the Imperials?

This is a neat idea, any fleshing out for the two xeno hordes yet? (Tyranids and Orkz)

>>52118226
It could be a combo. Remember that we are trying to buff Chaos to be viable against the Imperium.
So, sections of the CG are buffed by Chaos, other sections use sneaky raids and infiltration. All of them go through natural selection in the Eye of Terror, and other gaping wounds in reality.
Another advantage could be a cell structure that gets called together by worship spawned visions. This not only makes tracking them harder, it also allows them to create and recruit cultists just about anywhere - and you can't really find that anywhere if the guardsman is good at infosec.
Tactics are also a major game changer - almost every Chaos Guard unit runs away from an open field engagement. They turn cities into deathtrap mazes, they scatter traps around, can entrench an area like they're the bastard child of the Viet Cong and a Mexican Drug Cartel (and faster than the IQ, to boot), and only the Orks beat them for being able to salvage components for traps and weapons out of battlefield scrap. Hell, plenty of them could build their own basic infrastructure.
You wanna dive into a forest and play mongoose? Those tunnels eat regiments, and you can never be sure that they didn't get inspired by Dorf Fortress - and they're the dorfs and the happy fun stuff rolled into one. You could bring in excavator equipment and high explosives to strip mine the area down until you run out of tunnels, but they can always dig more. Not even collapsing the tunnels is sure to work - there is always a backup bunker. The only way to be sure is to send people into a meatgrinder that plays to the Chaos Guard's strengths, and hope you don't choke your entrance with your dead.
Or a good orbital bunkerbuster. But see the above about "We don't know how far the tunnels extend". It's a good start though.

Offensively? Not sure yet. They probably draw local and IG forces off to said deathtrap with bait forces while they prep to do the same setup to whatever objective you must hold.

>>52118229
Brain Boyz are returning.

Gazzy is taking up the mantle of The Beast.

Some orks in the Octavius sector are farming Nids.

Wazdakka has managed to gain access to the webway and somehow navigates it.

We are up to 5th or 6th Great War for Armageddon.

Obliterator Boyz are a thing.

Bug Boyz are very much a thing.

Chaos orks are uncommon but not so much that people are surprised by them.


This is shamelessly stolen from a previous thread.

However, I'm not sure how much has been written about the Nids beyond that snippet on the Swarmlord.

>>52120584
I don't think there is a great deal that can be written about the nids as a faction as they aren't so much a faction as a natural disaster that other factions have to deal with.

Bar the Swarmlord and the implication that the Hivemind may actually be sort of sapient and malevolent rather than adaptive and just hungry.

The Civilization vs Chaos angle could in this AU be seen as an escalating war that's been getting progressively hot for the entirety of Imperial history.

At first it's AoS and the eldar are just recovering from The Fall. Cronedar are re amalgamating after majority get nommed, DEldar are founding The Dark City as their new home and Craftweorlders are still getting shit working on the ships.

Oscar is waging his Earth Unification and declaring war on Chaos, although he doesn't know Chaos is actually a sapient and sentient collection of things in it's own right yet. For Chaos' part in the war they don't even notice him. Just one more localized planetary level little warlord among hundreds of thousands.

Then shit gets interstellar. Now Oscar is one among hundreds at most. The gods still barely register him beyond "quaint". Oscar has met the eldar. Now he knows stuff.

Chaos never really sees it coming. One minute they are playing cards and giggling a little about the petulant tard rage of some insects and then BAM! Someones kicked the door in, slain the property guards, kidnapped Isha and left a mile wide tail of ohgodwat on the way out.

Then the war gets hot. Turns out Oscar wasn't "quaint". Turns out Oscar was a threat. Turns out Ceggers and Khine and Isha are all still participants in the Great Game. And they are out for blood.

Oh shit what is this Omnissiah thing that's just started coalescing? What is "The Dragon"?

Where are all these prophesies coming from?

QUICKLY, KILL EVERYTHING! RELEASE THE BEAST! RAISE THE ELDAR! SET OUT THE DEAMONS! OH FUCK IT ISN'T WORKING!

And it's only been getting more frantic since the first Black Crusade.

Soon the cold war that went hot is going to go incandescent. The old pantheon survivors are lining up.

On the side of Civilization you have;
Ceggers
Khine
Isha
Impossible Child/Ynnead
Void Dragon

On the side of Chaos;
Khorne
Slaanesh
Tzneetch
Nurgle

>>52122414
On no ones side but will wreck everyone who gets too close;
Gork
Mork
Malal
Nightbringer

Oscar and his friends turned the ruin at the end of the Age of Strife into a galactic sized delivery mechanism for his bitch slapping hand.

Shit is heading towards the big push towards dawn. But is that a sunrise or is the horizon on fire?

>>52122414
Talking about Ynnead, we should just have it be the Eldar name for the starchild instead of whatever the fuck stupid shit it is in canon.

>>52122638
The Starchild Prophesies all differ. There will definitely be an Impossible Child. Ynnead will definitely arise soon they may or may not be the same individual.

>>52122638
>>52122689
Ynnead being the Starchild is one of the main possibilities of the Starchild Prophecy and the one I’m personally most in favor of. However, it’s a post 999.M41 thing, which means that it is at best an alternate future that could happen, rather than canon. Anything else is an equally valid possibility, up to and including Vect’s Magical Realm.

It would be interesting to see what the human supremacists reaction would be to Starchild!Ynnead. Here is a god who is literally, by definition, half human. Oscar may be a Man of Gold but that essentially makes him a human with some bits added. Here you have a benevolent deity (at least if Oscar and Isha raise him right) that is undeniably human to some degree.

Ynnead is also the god of rebirth. The ultimate breakdown between the barriers that separate species. Don’t like living as a human? Be reborn as an Eldar. Don’t like living as an Eldar? Be reborn as a Tau. Ynnead doesn’t just herald the Singularity. Ynnead is the Singularity.

>>52122414
Basically this. The Chaos Gods have also been trying to gain power as well. 10,000 years of detente like the Horus Heresy.

>>52122452
Also Hive Mind and Outsider. I would say Deceiver, but he doesn't seem interested in playing the Great Game anymore.

>>52118229
>>52120584
>>52121313
Was suggested that there were some Chaos orks that don't like Ghazzy favor of "Gork and Mork", and he's gonna have to (and will) krump them if he wants to unite the WAAAGH!

Should be noted that the Armageddon Wars are all Ork-related in this timeline.

Tyranids are deliberately being written as faceless and unindividualistic as possible. Kryptman is being used as a vehicle to further explore the tyranids without giving them too much personality.

We also have Doom of Malan'tai written, and there was that suggestion of biological espionage by the Ymgarl Genehounds.

Even if the Hive Mind is sapient, it's not in the way we know it. It's more like a wasp swarm (or better yet, a bear) that realizes that it has to kill off all the soldier bees before it can gorge itself on the workers and honey. It can recognize threats, but it shows no malice towards them. Just a prioritized target that has to go down before they screw up lunch.

>>52124028
We really need more shit on Inquisitor Boaz Kryptman.

>>52123916
I'd say Outsider is against the Great Game becasue as an idea that is desperately trying to erase all acknowledgement that it exists or ever existed getting involved in a that shit show would be counterproductive.

>>52123916
Starchild Ynnead would drive more of xenophobic to a more radical state and right into the arms of Chaos. When the illogical or religious are confronted by hard evidence countering their beliefs only one of three things will happen. They will take in the information then discard their old belief, or block out the information as false and keep believing in their belief, or drive them to become more radical in an attempt to snuff out counter arguments. By snuff out counter arguments, I mean dismantling the Imperium then establishing smaller independent stares.

>>52124812
Involvement of the Outsider is less voluntary and more because he's getting roped into something he doesn't want as one of the few whole C'tan. Anyone that can get him to do what they want has a huge advantage on their side, regardless of what Outsider wants. Good luck trying though.

The Deceiver is shattered in as many pieces as Khaine, and seems to be more interested in playing with his C'tan vampires and small scale dickery. It's possible he does have some master plan, but it's not obvious at the moment. Also no one would want the Deceiver on their team because he's a team-killing dickbag.

>>52124028
>It's more like a wasp swarm (or better yet, a bear) that realizes that it has to kill off all the soldier bees before it can gorge itself on the workers and honey. It can recognize threats, but it shows no malice towards them. Just a prioritized target that has to go down before they screw up lunch.
After binging nature documentaries I posted some stuff in earlier threads about making the tyranids slightly less pulpy by shifting their overall characterization as a faction away from super exaggerated ferocity and overblown malicious hunger and making them more in line with being a natural predator, just scaled up to an ecosystem the size of our local group. Mostly this came down to it being just as big a threat, but is hardly assured its prey, and there being some chance that the hivemind chose a quarry that will at best make it very ill. Between the Necrons and the Old Ones we can see that the tyranids aren't even close to the apex of physical or psychic mastery, and the Chaos gods seem almost like a more sedentary form of the same phenomena. Its fun to imagine a supercluster sized ecosystem full of predatory super-organisms traveling the open space between galactic 'reefs' full of other, highly competitive super-organisms, hidden in the dark or shrouded by the glow of their galaxy respectively. The hivemind is like a bird sticking its head in a hole, and while it has a sharp beak, if there's hateful robot skeleton in the tree its fucked.

>>52125343
I think this actually has some basis in canon. In canon, when the Silent King went bumming around intergalactic space after the War in Heaven, he saw things that made even the Necrons, who were used to some serious shit after the War in Heaven, go "nope". The tyranids were just the most pressing of the lot because they were heading straight for the Milky Way.

>While the majority of the necron race slept away the aeons, his great majesty Szarekh, the Silent King, journeyed far and wide beyond the borders of this galaxy. Such unspeakable things did he witness as cannot be adequately articulated in our noble language, nor any other. The most dire of all these extragalactic enemies were the tyranids"

>>52126367
I suppose what I'm getting at is meant to go so far as to say that the Silent King going "nope" at the extragalactic ecosystem isn't because its on such a high power level, but because its like a spider wandering into a pond. To have forces with technology or artifice significantly greater than the Necrons kinda needs something to the tune of timelords kicking around, which is silly. Instead I imagine it to be a difference in kind instead of magnitude, where the Necrons or Imperium could do just as well as the Tyranids as intergalactic predators if they were to go full Culture and start building Phaerons with inertialess drives/build The Ship and dedicate their entire respective faction to the goal. Ultimately, the Tyranids aren't just reduced to dumb animals, nor are they a cartoonish space demon. Instead they're the beasts the forest to the (AU) imperium's idealized 1700's in space, good for fretting over nature red in tooth and claw, and to the Necrons they're big game, suitably met with a victorian scoff and a Carnifex gun.

>>52126928
I agree with you, and that's what I was trying to get at with my previous post (am >>52126367). The threat from extragalactic entities is not from the power levels outside the galaxy being higher, but that the universe as a whole is just so weird and unconventional that there are loads of foes who are simply outside context problems to the people of the Milky Way.

And lacking context and strategy can be just as lethal as sheer power. It's like someone once said with the Ultramarines "it doesn't matter how well-oiled your war machine is if you don't have a plan in the first place".

>>52123916
Vect's magical realm?

>>52128106
Malys kills and rapes Oscar while Vect watches

>>52128217
In that specific order, no less.

>>52128217
Of course a Dark Eldar would come up with deprived shit like this.

>>52129772
Yes, the DE are rather deprived. Of exactly what, we'll have to find the list, but let's start with sanity and spell check...

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>>52118226
>blending in with the human population
That is not going to be happening with Sword-hands McGee and a former Guardsmen with a giant tattoo of a Chaos Star. The Chaos Guardsmen are in not a state to act like civilians when they do shit like dancing on top of a dance floor build on prisoners to kill them on a weekly basis. Such a thing is viable for cultists which are just civilians given weapons then told to charge. Although the cultists might talk oddly they can be passed off as harmless civilians. The Chaos Guard would fight like a guerrilla force when at a disadvantage just to survive. If there are enough men or at an advantage, they should act like a conventional military force.

At worst if all of the different Chaos Guard battle-groups somehow managed to unify, they become a Segmentum level threat. Of course this never happens as the closest thing to that is 1 or 2 sectors being threatened near the Eye of Terror and the Maelstrom by battle-groups during a Black Crusade. Given this low priority, the Imperium has better things to do than snuff out the Chaos Guard, like fighting Orks or preventing Dark Eldar raids.

Unrestricted by Imperial doctrines, the Chaos Guard battle-groups can mix and match tactics to adapt to the ever changing battlefields. So when a battle-group is fighting a Kreiger Korp, they can throw the Cadian and Fusilier Doctrine into the trash because that won't work against the unique way Kreigers fight. Instead the battle-group can fight like Iron Warriors with their pre-planned killzones and delayed withdrawal into a death maze. Something a Imperial Guard regiment can't do like switching tactics depending on each individual battle is allowed for Chaos Guard battle-groups. Leading to innovative officers compared to the stagnant Imperial officers.

>>52131077
This makes it seem like guard regiments can only ever do one thing and can't innovate, as opposed to normally trying to play to their strengths. Do you really think if a battle's starting to go ploin-shaped the guard (except perhaps Kriegers) won't try to modify their tactics? Now granted with Chaos its a lot less obvious what they're going to be from the start, as opposed to just looking at a guard force and easily saying they're Cadian Shock Troopers or Fenrisian Line Regiments, etc.

>>52119071
I'm all for the Lost and the Damned on the defensive being like Viet Cong/asymmetrical warfare and on the offense being like anachronistic Warriors of Chaos/technobarbarians with lasguns. Melee can still fuck you up if you get taken by surprise but the enemy remains well-organized, and between the cultists acting as meatshields the actual melee fighters can get in close and keep the guard from firing at the ones with actual ranged weapons.

How did the guard in this timeline even come about? IIRC, in canon the Emperor planned for Space Marines to perform all infantry-related tasks while baseline humans operated artillery and tanks and whatnot. Did the Steward in this timeline just see the use in having regular humans around and using Space Marines as heavies?

It makes sense because we have the Warlord's troops essentially divided into "normal" and "super soldier" divisions from the beginning, not to mention we have discussed things like the Uxor who commanded baseline humans. By the time the War of the Beast ended, the Imperium still controlled so much space (having lost a lot of worlds, but holding ground was never the Orks or Cronedar's primary goal so much as wrecking shit) and the Space Marines had suffered so many casualties that it simply became more practical to raise Guard regiments for small-scale stuff than call in the Astartes for every feral ork who figures out how to make a Rokk.

>>52132758
In this AU it's more likely that, like with himself, the long term goal was to make Super Soldiers obsolete. At some point the wars would be over, the butchers shops would be closed and the existing Space Marines could try and make lives for themselves.

How did the Guard come about? As an amalgamation of the old national armies of the Unification that just kept getting added to.

>>52132606
IG regiments don't so much act like stubborn old guard with tactics, but strictly follow the doctrine they have been taught until they get their ass handed then modify said doctrine. If the regiment survive to the next battle the cycle starts all over again with them following their doctrine strictly. CG battle-groups don't follow any set doctrine but already adapt with changing tactics before the battle starts. They would copy tactics done by other forces be it enemy or friendly but never strictly follow a doctrine like the IG.

>>52133349
Keep in mind that sometimes whole regiments go over at once and take all the training and structure with them.

Chaos Guard is a generic term for humans at war on side of Chaos. Their exact nature is mostly defined by origin.

1. Raised from primitive or ruined Chaos controlled human worlds. These are the stereotypical Lost and the Damned - cultists, mutants, madmen. Whenever Cronedar or Fallen need a expendable soldiers or workforce they visit such worlds and herd the meat into transporters.

2. Raised on Chaos controlled world that have actual infrastructure. These are more or less like PDF. Stubbers with some las, iron armor. Some sorcery, gifts from the Gods on officers and elite subdivisions. Often brought along by greater forces, but might do their own raiding or piracy in frontiers.

3. IG that were turned. Fight as they did before, but with less supplies and more sorcery, sometimes demons. Materiel tends to deteriorate with time. Skills too if they recruit replacements from cultists. If they have a specific Chaos patron, may move over to its doctrine in time - khornate rushes, nurglich chem/bio weapons etc. Usually follow the plans of whoever turned them. Otherwise will either join larger Chaos force or establish territory somewhere Imperium are unlikely to pursue them short term.

4. IG that turned and managed to keep their shit together for the medium/long term. Similar to (oversized?) mercenary outfits that take payment in arms and armor - have IG or slightly better equipment but lots of recycling. Try to have some internal manufacturing capability if possible. Recruit from cultists or slaves but have standards and training. Raid for stuff or assist other Chaos types for pay. Often known by their particular name like Blood Pact instead of generic Chaos Guard.

>>52134804
How prevalent should Blessings and Possessions be?

In a no value Cannon Fodder horde I'm guessing not very due to their worthlessness until worth is obtained by doing something to justify the investment so basically 1 in 10,000 pressganged end up with some sort of gift.

1 in 1,000 for the PDF due to being better than the mindless braying horde.

Turncoat Regiments I would imagine that the instigator and close circle that got shit done would benefit most. Maybe Instigator being fully possessed and his acolytes being blessed.

Chaos raised regiments would have the Colonel and maybe the captains possessed. Colonel definitely but maybe the captains just blessed. Lieutenants maybe blessed also.

Does this sound right or is this being too generous with the Chaos Juice?

>>52135114

Well, Chaos is supposed to be more generous in this version, as I understand.
And many of its blessings are decidedly mixed.
So it seems OK.

>>52136116
Well the Chaos gods do care about the material universe more than the Warp or at least Slannesh cares. She has invested lots to make sure her mortal servents win the Long War.

>>52134804
IIRC, in canon the Blood Pact was a Survivor civilization that the Emperor missed during the Great Crusade way out in the rim of the Segmentum Pacificus. They would have gotten purged in either timeline, because they were hard core Chaos worshippers, but they've been able to capture a number of Forge Worlds to supply themselves.

>>52137004
Is Doombreed involved?

This could be some serious Ursh going down.

Can Chaos Eldar get possessed?

>>52138482
horrifically so

>>52138482
>>52138855
Cronedar are probably even more likely to get possessed than Chaos Space Marines, if anything. Many of the traitor legions in canon primarily see Chaos as a means to power or fulfilling their own goals (at least, the “saner” member do), and most of the legions that do outright worship Chaos in the traditional manner are shattered to the point of being little more than mercenaries (World Eaters, Emps Children). The only canon traitor legion that worships Chaos in the traditional sense and is still relatively intact is the Word Bearers.

Crone World Eldar, on the other hand, see the worship of Chaos as a kind of religious ecstasy, as mentioned in the fluff for the Cronedar elite infantry like Gorgons and the Living Hive example above. Unlike saner vanilla traitor marines, who recognize the mutations of Chaos as a downside that comes as a risk to those who serve the Ruinous Powers, the Cronedar see everything the dark gods bestow upon them as a blessing, whether it is or not. They would probably climb over each other to get daemonically possessed, seeing it as a way to get closer to their gods. Imagine the brain of a cultist in a body of a Space Marine. That’s a Cronedar.

Speaking of which, we should probably try to figure out some hard numbers for what proportion of Cronedar follow which god. I was going to say 30% of Cronedar are Slaaneshi and 30% are Undivided, given that they see Chaos and Slaanesh in particular as the fruits and continuation of the old Eldar Empire. It was suggested in a previous thread that Undivided Eldar are rare, though I would suggest this refers to the high-quality, get-shit-done Undivided (the "Black Legion" of Cronedar).

The remaining 40% is divided between Nurgle, Khorne, and Tzeentch. The difference is made up by the fact that the Cronedar of the other three tend to be elite units (the grunts are mostly Slaaneshi or Undivided) and they have a bit more in the way of Fallen.

>>52138164
Could be. Looking at the Blood Pact it looks like they actually climbed out of the pit of the Age of Strife post-Crusade (~M38), but in this timeline we could spread it out so we don't have "everything of importance happened in M41" syndrome like canon.

But they were definitely hardcore Khornates. Imagine Unification but with a mortal Oscar with the backing of Khorne. Kalagann with a lust for blood instead of a ziggurat fetish. That's how the Blood Pact started out.

>>52139714
I like those numbers.

Does this look right?

Slaaneshi = Undivided > [FVCK HUEJ GAP] > Tzneetch = Khorne > Nurgle

OPERATION: FOXGLOVE NAVY SWAN (Soggy Sun 72)
SOURCE: Ordo Malleus, Divisio Panoptica, ARGENT CRENELLATION
AUTHOR: Inquisitor RIGEL NIGEL

From the personal papers of Inquisitor RIGEL NIGEL:

Everything is almost in readiness. The three ships we've borrowed from Deep Field Recon have all finished refitting; they now boast multiple layers of hexagrammatic wards in addition to their reflex shields and holo-fields. Integration of the new crew is likewise complete; we've scoured virtually the entire Navy for the most psyker- and Chaos-resistant minds. Installation of the additional layers of Gellar field have gone without a hitch. We've assembled only the most powerful and daring Navigators and astropaths, along with detachments of the Thousand Sons. Internal anti-boarder refits are all complete; anything less than a Daemon Prince that makes it aboard will be shredded in short order. We've even had a full Brotherhood of the Grey Knights offer their services, although ultimately I decided to decline. Unless offensive operations in the Eye of Terror can be conducted by relatively conventional forces, there's no point in trying to do so; wars are not won by commando raids.

And, of course, an Inquisitor is accompanying each of the ships. GLASS PILOT is aboard the Eye of Old Earth, COVERT CLERIC the Distant Early Warning, and IVORY BARNACLE the Eyes of Empires. And I... will remain on Iyanden, to continue shuffling papers.
It is not that I am enthusiastic about the prospect of plunging into the Eye of Terror, but the thought of sitting idly while my friends on comrades fight and die, powerless to affect the outcome, does not sit well with me. This is potentially one of the most important operations of the century, if not the millennium. The first attempt since the Great Raid to strike at Chaos in their lair. I have set the wheels in motion... and now all I can do is watch.
The operation launches in a week. Fortune be with us.

>End file

Thoughts?

>>52139714
>>52142326
Pretty close, but I would say Slaaneshi Eldar should be the most prevalent, the pre-Fall empire was pretty much one giant Slaanesh cult. So maybe like 50% Slaanesh, 20% Undivided, 15% Khorne, 10% Tzeentch, 5% Nurgle?

>>52142445
Neat.

What are they after stealing?

Or is it a decapitation mission?

>>52142326
>>52142566

I would say reduce the number of Slaaneshi a bit to 40%, so the Cronedar aren't a solid mass of pleasure cultists. That said, even the Khornate, Tzeentchian, and Nurglite ones tend to have a hint of Slaaneshi ideals in them, if only because they felt the warp overtaking them and it was a good pain.

So maybe:
40% Slaanesh
25% Undivided (much smaller number the dangerous, Black Legion style ones)
15% Tzeentch
10% Khorne
10% Nurgle

Maybe with a higher number of Khornates and a lower number of Tzeentchians. Back in thread IXb, it was suggested that Tzeentch is the second most worshipped god among the Cronedar, due to their natural affinity for warpcraft, then Khorne then Nurgle. Nurglites were originally suggested to be rare, but then we came up with a better high concept for them as mentioned in>>52110465.

I would come up with some fancy expression where 8k+u+9t+6s+7n=100, where s>u>t>k>n, so we have nice whole numbers that are divisible by the gods sacred numbers, but that is beyond my capabilities.

>>52143096
This is a follow-up to an earlier bit of writing; it's essentially a proof-of-concept mission, testing the feasibility of raids into the Eye of Terror with conventional forces. They have no mission beyond going in and coming back out. If they can manage that, then more substantive missions can be planned.

Just something I had been working on to try and keep the thread alive.

The front of Armageddon Secundus during the Fourth War for Armageddon will be remembered, if for no other reason, than the Massacre at Smoky Ridge. Smoky Ridge was one of a series of fault-block mountains formed when a large asteroid had struck the surface of the planet when it had first appeared in the Armageddon system, causing the artificial planetoid’s metal shell to buckle and form a series of ridges with a smooth slope on one side and a sharp drop-off on the other. Due to the ridge’s location, winds blowing away from the crater would often pick up ash to form opaque dust clouds, giving the ridge its name.

The battle should have been an easy victory for Imperial forces. The defenders were primarily composed of five regiments of Cadian-style Guardsmen and Guardians, combined with a small number of Astartes and Aspect Warriors. The Imperial Guard held the heavily fortified high ground, which was only reachable if the Orks broke from the cover of the forest and traversed several kilometers of flat, open ground, both factors that favored the Guard.

At first the battle went as expected. Orks erupted from the forest bellowing savage warcries, only to be cut down in a flurry of lasbolts and shuriken pistol fire. It appears as though Imperial Forces were going to be able to successfully hold the ridge.

>>52144968 (cont.)
Until a killteam of more than a dozen nobs silently and simultaneously teleported several kilometers behind the front lines and wreaked havoc on Imperial supply lines.

The nobs were eventually killed, but not before Imperial Forces were forced to break and retreat to the next fallback point, ceding some 120 kilometers of territory to the Orks. This secondary point, although also located on another heavily fortified fault-block ridge, did not heavily favor the Guard as much as Smoky Ridge did.

Ork tellyportas had been used in battle before, but they were notoriously unreliable, at best being used to send emergency reinforcements to an already collapsing front. Never had the Orks demonstrated the ability to coordinate the use of teleporters, even during the War of the Beast. It was events like the Massacre at Smoky Ridge, along with a sudden increase in the frequency of Attack Moons that eventually led the Imperium to realize that something had changed in the behavior of the Orks. The Brain Boyz were back.

Wasn't sure if this should be part of the Fourth War for Armageddon, as it might pin down the date too hard. Also one would think the Armageddon Steel Legion would have been involved and would have behaved a little differently than a normal Cadian-style legion.

>>52145002
Well, I don't think any of the Wars for Armageddon have specific dates attached to them yet, so that's not too much of a problem. Armageddon Steel Legion is probably broadly similar to Cadian doctrine, and in such a situation the correct course of action doesn't change much- hold the heights and pound the enemy when they assault.
I'd change the size of the strike force, though. A dozen Nobs doesn't seem large enough to disrupt the logistics of five full regiments, not enough to force them to retreat. Perhaps a series of assaults, on everything from the supply train to the HQ to the artillery park, over the course of several days?

>>52146111
It was more supposed to be the appearance of a killteam of elite infantry way behind the front lines caused the whole thing to go FUBAR. The Orks were just starting to use reliable teleports, and this was the damage they could do. But at this point they weren't coordinated enough to do it repeatedly. Maybe shrink the number of combatants.

>>52138164
You know what, back when we were talking about Doombreed it was mentioned he managed to subvert a big chunk of space that was currently part-way under integration with the Imperium. The Blood Pact could be the remnants of that who were never destroyed. The Blood Pact certainly sound like Urshii that decided to reorganize their cosmology to place Khorne above all.

>>52147259
I like it. Doombreed is just too stupid to give up.

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In the some 100 years after the Apostasy Era several worlds near the Maelstrom rebelled simultaneously. The Space Marine presence to guard the Maelstrom were too busy holding off a Crone Eldar incursion that rampage down moving to the galactic south and away from the Maelstrom. Terra organize two Corps of the Imperial Guard along with one battlefleet to sweep up around from the south to north. Regiments from Segmentum Solar and Tempestus were recruited to fill in the corps. Several Eldar warhost from Segmentum Solar were also sent to be attached to regiments.

Some of the Cadian Foot Troops from Segmentum Tempestus had been infiltrated by a Slanneshi cult amongst the high ranks. Providing some gifts of heighten skill in combat, this made an impression of the usefulness of Chaos to some officers. Wanting to be perfect and go down in history as tactical geniuses, the Cadian officers in this little secret club of obsessive tacticians try to be granted blessings.

Once arriving to crush the rebellions, the Imperial Army set to work blockading then sending down regiments to kill rebels. Most of the loyalist Guardsmen on these rebel worlds were already dead by the start of the whole affair. Leaving mostly PDF or militias defending the rebellious worlds. The Corps made easy work of killing the rebels but a rather unsettling trend started to appear within the regiments.

Officers had ordered public executions for rebel POWs. That in it of itself is normal for the Imperium yet the difference was the slow and painful ways the rebels died. Reports of dismemberment then being left in the streets, mass impelling to cover fields with blood, and Guardsmen eating the organs of rebels trickled back to high command. Both Corp Commander Gepid and Artulius agreed to form a task force of Eldar to hunt down then transfer guilty officers away from the front. If things come to the worst, the Eldar task force has the authority to kill those who have the taint of Chaos.

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>>52148721 (cont.)
The Eldar task force set to work killing officers at an alarming rate. Rightly worrying about their own survival, the Slanneshi cult plan to join the rebels around the Maelstrom to escape the Eldar task force. Gathering hallucinogens to poison several regiments from Segmentum Tempestus, the cult made sure to be able to distort the vision of the Guardsmen.

Landing on the hive world of Malagus IV, Cadians and Eldar troops cleared the outskirts of a hive city. Then the Merianburg Cadian 174th and 175th along with Occiton Cadian 209th descended to the planet. With a lot of Warpcraft then a little speechcraft, the officers organizing the rebellion were able to convince the Guardsmen to shoot anybody not wearing a red arm band. Right before the assault, the cultist had made the regiments participating to rebel wear red arm bands to identify each other in battle.

When the rebel Guardsmen landed near the hive city, the toxin in their blood or magic made everybody they saw without a red arm band as enemy PDF. Thousands were slaughtered as even the Eldar Farseers couldn't predict this betrayal. Two or three loyalist regiments along with one warhost were killed within two days.

Reinforcements landed on the third day to kill the rebel Guardsmen and by this time the toxin or magic wore off. Normal rebel Guardsmen were seeing only that the Imperium was killing them for no reason. Unable to effectively drive off the rebel regiments away from the landing zones, the Corp chose to send troops to an abandon castle near a hive city. There the loyalist established a base of operations and supply depot to send attacks from.

Revealing the Slanneshi cult to all of the rebel Guardsmen, the cultists told how their only hope of survive is by Slannesh's will. Displaying Warpcraft and blessings to the rest of the regiment to show the power of Chaos. One officer showed a blessing allowing to defeat any Guardsmen in a duel, which he proved by killing every challenger.

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>>52149279 (cont.)
Eventually, the rebel regiments accept the use of Chaos on the battlefield. Stuck in this desperate situation, they reluctantly let people worship Slannesh. Another thing that was allowed was the cultist spread Chaos to the local population.

The rebel regiments first looted any weapon they could find along with confiscating the PDF weapons that were on the world. Then they set to work stirring the civilians into a religious frenzy about how the "rebels Guardsmen joined the righteous liberation of this world". It was all propaganda but it worked to have the rebels form cultist militias from the hive cities. Crowds of crazy civilians were given swords and pistols then told to charge at the loyalist castle.

Eldar troops easily ambushed marching columns of cultist approaching the castle. The rebel Guardsmen had effectively unified into one large Chaos Guard battle-group by now. Using artillery to blow both cultist and Eldar to bits, the battle-group was able to clear the way as they advance to the castle. This loyalist stronghold was in fact the only major point the Imperial Army held on this world. If the Chaos Guard could drive them off that fortress, it buys the battle-group time to get off-world.

First it was the endless waves of cultist charging at the castle which cleared the minefield by stepping on it. The corpses provided cover for the Chaos Guardsmen as they attack while loyalist Guardsmen had to clean out the bodies clogging up the firing slits. Using explosives and even more cultist, the Chaos Guard was able to take the fortress. They sent the cultists first to clear a room while Chaos Guardsmen follow closely. The loyalist fire into the meat shield but that allowed the Traitor Guardsmen to get close enough to hack the loyalist to slices.

From after the Battle Malagus IV the infamous "Silver Levy" battle-group formed. They would go on to escape Imperial justice by fleeing into the Maelstrom.

>>52149696
What a delightful and confusing shit storm, please put it on the 1d4chan page.

It shows brilliantly how Chaos can worm it's way in and take whole worlds and turn brother upon brother to further it's own ends.

Since WotB as any xeno invader ever made it to Old Earth?

>>52148496
It also helps that not long after the Civil War the last of the Primarchs he had a serious grudge against died.

Magnus, Corax, Khan and Lorgar were the 4 that were connected to his old life as a mere mortal and therefore had some power over him. 3 because they were traitors and 1 was his executioner.

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>>52149696

The Notable Planets section on the 1d4chan page has nothing on Old Earth.

Is it out of bounds or am I allowed to do one?

Also is Fulgrimfag dead?

Also on Old Earth are there xeno-districts (with the correct permits) or are xenos restricted to the orbitals?

>>52154534
We have a little on Old Earth, just no one has written it up. Old Earth is the spiritual, cultural, psychic, and administrative center of the Imperium, whereas Mars is the industrial center. Earth is the biggest exporter of psykers, was second until the destruction of Prospero.

The old nation-states remained mostly as they were until the War of the Beast, when 60% of the surface was eradicated and 70% of the population killed. After that point national barriers just sort of broke down as it was hard to maintain a distinct culture when you had lost 95% of your nation's population and your homeland was a radioactive wasteland.

Earth rebuilt, though it looks very different from the past. It looks greenish from orbit, the result of Perturabo's hives dotting the surface. Influxes of people from across the galaxy (e.g., refugees from Prospero) mean the planet is still highly urbanized. Earth isn't as ecologically devastated as in vanilla (there are still oceans, somewhere, for one), but it is still somewhat overpopulated.

In general, Old Earth has been said to be considered sacred ground for humanity, due to its importance in human history. It is not clear if xenos are allowed with a permit or they just aren't allowed. I would assume it's the former, given that the Arbites were forced to issue retroactive permits for the Dark Carnival in M33-34 and xenos would have to travel there for adiministrative business (it would make no sense if Grand Empress Isha and her handmaidens aren't allowed to set foot in their own house). I think it's more of regulating the number of outsiders there because of cultural importance than anything else.

I assume the same is true for other species' homeworlds like, say, humans on T'au.

I could try to look through the old threads for stuff on it.

>>52155234 (cont.)
One thing I really like about this AU is it really shows you why Old Earth is considered so sacred to humanity. In vanilla it just seems like general jingoistic cargo-cultism, but here with the greater detail of the Age of Strife, it really shows why Earth was held in such reverence by people. Old Earth was the site of so many important battles, so many important historical events in the history of humanity, that it makes sense that humans would hold it in some reverence.

>>52154534
>Also is Fulgrimfag dead?

I would like to know this also

>>52156316
I think he recently posted saying he had some time to write soon?

>>52156740
Then we live in hope and we hope he comes back soon because we can't do Dorn without Fulgrim being finished.

>>52154534
Also from looking through the archives, it looks like the Imperial Palace in this timeline has been clearly stated to have been built somewhere in Ursh. This makes sense, given that the Warlord only confiscated lands of shithole nations and Ursh would clearlybe at the top of that list. It wouldn't make sense for him to confiscate the lands of Skand, or the Afrique League, or the Ursh vassals who were essentially nations in their own right (Ind, Khanate, Sino-Japan). So the Imperial Palace is in Ursh, but exactly where is a matter of debate. Some have suggested it is located in Moscow, which makes some degree of sense as it would only be a hop, skip, and a jump east from the old Terrawatt/Ursh border. Others have suggested the Warlord built the Imperial Palace on the old heartland of Ursh, after he found the golden throne there and couldn't move it (and to be fair, no one else was using the land), and made Ursh's old mountain passes work for him.

As to Old Earth itself (am >>52155234) I would say go for it, we always welcome new contributions, just be warned that there is some pre-existing fluff for it and there might be some debating, since Old Earth is one of the most central planets in the Imperium.

>>52157611
I like the idea of it being in Moscow.

By then it would be an incredibly ancient city and across it's history the throne of many old empires. It would have cultural weight behind it to say nothing of it already being logistically and administratively set up to already be the center of a fuck huge empire.

Also it would, to the recently liberated Urshi, give some legitimacy to The Warlords rule if he can be seen as the rightful inheritor of The Despot. Or at least a Gandalf vs Saruman deal where he is Saruman as he should have been.

Also it adds another layer of insult to The Despot in the last days of Ursh in that the Warlord and his Imperium are coming for him and operating out of his old childhood home.

>>52151253
Saved it under a new page.

>>52157762
The fluff on Ursh has Ursh's capital being on the other end of Asia, on the eastern border between Russia and China.

I don't think the Warlord would need to present any sort of legitmacy to the people of Ursh. The people of the vassal states like Khan and Corax were just happy Ursh was gone, the serfs were happy to no longer have repressive overlords, and the nobles would have never tolerated Oscar because he was a "lesser" (i.e., non-Urshii nobility) being. Indeed, building the Imperial Palace on the ruins of the palace of Ursh might have made Oscar look worse in the eyes of people like Corax and Khan, because it would have made it look like they were just replacing one tyrant with another.

Also the palace of Ursh was probably Chaos-corrupted as fuck.

>>52158368
I suppose you're right.

I just really found the idea of The Imperium being ruled from an analogue of the Kremlin kind of amusing.

So where is the Imperial Palace built?

It's already been stated as not in the Clan Terrawatt - Uralia alliance so as not to be open to criticisms of favoritism or imperialism.

For the capital of Ursh I'm going to suggest Blagoveshchensk as it is where the Amur and Zeya Rivers meet and the border regions of China and Russia along the Amur was where it arose from.

Europia saw the Imperim as a macrocosm of their own nation and their own nation taken to it's inevitable and logical extreme. Culturally Rome (post-apocalypse name pending) would be the least chaffing.

>>52157611
Skand was never confiscated. King Thengir the Cripple was brought under the aegis of the Imperium one decision at a time. It started with Terrawatt being given right of passages and renting some boats so they could take over the ruination of Nord Afrika, or as much of it as Guilliman left alive. It ended with the unification of the Nordyc people under High King Thengir and Skand becoming a coherent nation under the Imperium and getting a big slice of prosperity from it.

>>52158650
You misunderstand, I agree with you about Moscow being the better location. The core lands of Ursh were probably Chaos-corrupted as fuck, what with the dark rituals and red ziggurats mixing the blood of slaves in the mortar and whatnot. You could probably make them habitable eventually, but you sure as hell didn’t want to build a capital on there unless you hired some serious exorcists.

The Himalayan Wastes are probably the same way, unless whatever Magnus did made it safe for settlement. Still, one would think it would be a bad idea to make your capital in a region whose base height is so high that your baseline human has trouble breathing there. Astronomican is probably still located below Mount Everest, because that place is a natural bunker.

However, the lands of Ursh in general would be one of the best places to put the Imperial Palace. The Warlord only confiscated and divided up the lands of the people who were really shitty rulers, primarily the PPE and Ursh. If he confiscated the lands of a nation that submitted voluntarily, people would see him as a tyrant just taking what he wants. That's what I meant by Skand. Skand joined the Imperium peacefully, and if Warlord decided to build palace in Skand it would look like he's just taking stuff rather than "distributing the spoils of war amongst more worthy men".

So the best choice is to build the palace on confiscated land. The western part of Russia is perfect for this. Ursh ain’t using it. Barely anyone lives in Sibar in the first place. And it’s far enough away from the Urshii homeland that it’s not dangerous to build on.

Though, it’s hard to tell based on the map, but modern Moscow may actually be in Uralia. Maybe build it around Perm instead (which would be to the right of the “9” on the post-unification map) if Moscow is not possible. And although it may not be in Terrawatt-Uralia, Moscow or Perm might also be close enough to keep an eye on Europe in case things go wrong.

>>52159799 (cont.)
Franj-Europia itself might be too limiting, as it’s mostly bordered by sea. Also there is a huge civilian population there that would have to be moved given the Imperial Palace is basically one giant administrative center and Franj-Europia represents the breadbasket for that part of Europe. Plus we have mention of Franj-Europia surviving as a normal nation until the War of the Beast (Sanguinius was buried in his old homeland, for one, which was adminstrated by Franj-Europia before the WotB. Luther claims to Lion before Lion's Last Battle that all he was trying to do was save Franj, and Lion flips out and basically says 'Save Franj? Have you seen what Franj looks like lately? Its vinyards are burnt, its soil is radioactive, its cities reduced to rubble. You did more to destroy Franj than the Imperium ever could' and Luther loses some more SAN points and attacks Lion.

Indeed, if Franj was essentially bulldozed to make room for the Imperial Palace and it's people displaced, Luther would have flipped his lid a lot sooner and Lion would have had a lot less of an argument.

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>>52159890
I would rather that the old nations be still intact until WotB. Not less powerful, indeed they are bigger fish now than ever but the pond is another level. They are no big fish in a big pond so much as sharks lost in a new ocean.

Luther was freaking out because Franj, like the other nations, was becoming the administrative structure of a single patch of land on a single planet among an increasing number. He couldn't cope with being, and by extension his nation being, an increasingly irrelevant speck in an different and incomprehensibly huge and uncaring universe. Despite or because of Lion's psychological defects he had no problem dealing with that or if he did it didn't bother him much.

I'm not in favor of nations being "bulldozed" for the Imperial palace. For one thing it's not necessary. The Imperium is waaaaaaay more hands off in it's attitude towards it's constituent parts in this AU. The amount of office space needed to administrate is proportionally related to the level of difference the Imperium has to the little details.

So in theory the Imperial Palace could maybe be a single hive spire in Rome or Moscow or Beijing.

Luther, like all the primarchs and other old men, was just not coping well with being a relic of a fading era. It's just part of normal and natural human nature that Chaos can feed on and exploit if given the opportunity and incentive.

>>52160632
>Luther can't cope with the fact Space Marines will be a relic
Luther sounds like the Alex Jones version of canon Horus. He is somewhat right about the whole Eldar conspiracy though, the Eldar have more political power than proportionally to their population.
Also Luther
>predicting Vandire

Bump

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>>52163854
Mordians are pretty advance regiments now in this AU right? They still use hover tanks and shit. I fucking love Mordians

>>52164099
The Imperial Army in general is more advanced, I think; without the trashing of the HH and Mechanicus Civil War, a lot of the 30k-era tech like Volkite and jetbikes have stuck around.

>>52164099
So is Mordia in this timeline inhabited just on the night side like in canon? Given it is tidally locked, I could see the Mordian discipline emerging from the majority of Mordian hive cities being in the twilight zone, and so pre-Imperium there was always lots of issues with overpopulation and who controlled them.

Like Cadians, Mordians just don't export soldiers because it's all they have. It's also the best chance their children have for a better life.

>>52133198
>>52161535
I doubt that Space Marines would have become as irrelevant as Luther wanted or even Oscar hoped. As the Great Crusade went on it would become increasingly clear that it would not be possible to do one sweep of the galaxy and get all the crud out.

The Imperial Guard may try to avoid human wave tactics in this timeline, but take away superheavy infantry like Astartes and you end up with few other options but to use human wave tactics on certain foes. Becoming a Space Marine might be harrowing, but the choice is between inflicting pain on people who could theoretically go back to their lives if the war was won (theoretically, mind you, not easily), or throw away thousands if not hundreds of thousands of human lives. Bit of an oversimplification, maybe, but it's there.

Of course, this was motivated by Luther's fear, and fear isn't always reasonable.

>>52160632
I agree with the idea that the old nation-states were still around pre-WotB. Hence constructing the Imperial Palace in conquered land. Having the Imperial Palace as a planned city would also help reinforce the fact that the Imperium was something new since the Age of Strife.

If not, there's always the Himalayas. But that place seems so inimical to human habitation it's probably better to just have certain things there (Astronomican, maybe some of the research labs).

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>>52166107
Overpopulated shit-holes tend to export colonist because fuck living in this hell. Places like Cadia, Mordia, and Necromunda shit out colonies where the colonist regiments would still follow the doctrine of the parent world. Although it depends if the colonist still calls themselves by the name of the parent worlders.

Something of note for Mordians, Fenrisans, Praetorians, and Scintillans. All Guard regiments from them follow the similar Fusilier Doctrine of using line formations to fight. The whole standing shoulder-to-shoulder to slightly spread out gun line.

Is Tallarn not a desert planet in this timeline because of no Horus Heresy thus no virus bombing. If that is the case I vote to have Myr be the desert death world because Myrian sounds like Syrian and it was mention only once on the map of the galaxy in the IG Codex.

Returning to post a little bit of what I wrote up for Angron to keep the thread bumped. As always feedback is more than welcome.

---

Some men are born into greatness, and carry it upon their brow with the natural ease of command. Others have greatness forced unwillingly upon them, and they suffer its burden for duty and honor. The Primarch Angron fell firmly into the second category.

Little is known about Angron’s early life. What is known is gleaned from his private writings, scattered public records, and a few of Kharn’s recollections; and it is little wonder that the Primarch did not speak of his youth, for it was a bitter and brutal upbringing so sadly common in the chaotic days before the Unification.

The boy who would become Angron was born to a humble family in a small town in Timbuk, the northern state of the Afrique League, along the border of the Nord Afrik Conclaves. The town sat on trade route used by nomad clans and acted as a minor trade hub and rest stop for their caravans as they traveled the roads between the techno-barbarian conclaves of Nord Afrik and the settlements of the Afrique League.

Angron’s family their living as bakers; their fortified strongbread was particularly well-regarded in the area as a food of the road for weary travelers. Their lifestyle was modest but probably not unpleasant, and it was more than likely that Angron would have followed in his family’s footsteps and become a baker as well, living a quiet life, were it not for the Europian-Afrikaan War.

>>52166729
After the humiliating defeat inflicted by Angron’s fellow Primarch-to-be Roboute Guilliman, the Padishah of the Nord Afrik Conclaves needed victory and loot to pacify his rebellious vassal shahs and sheikhs, who were threatening a shahs-moot to elect a new leader or even open revolt should the Padishah refuse. Thus, the Padishah turned his gaze and armies towards the weakest of his neighbors, the Afrique League. The southern Afrique state of Nama Gola was cut off from Timbuk by the toxic coastal wastelands and the vassals of Ursh further inland, nor could they challenge the Afrikaan at sea, thus their northern brethren faced the rage of the howling Afrikaan hordes utterly alone.

---

>End for now

>>52166729
>>52166745
Interesting. I assume this is meant as an expansion, rather than a replacement, for our existing fluff?

>>52166067
delet this

>>52168731
no

>>52166392
Tallarn was still burned this time around, but by Chaos Eldar/Orks.

Would have been rendered 100% uninhabitable but then suddenly Craftworlders out of nowhere. Tallarn and I think it was Beil-tan have a close bond started by this event.

Tallarn is on the Imperium's fix it list for when the wars are over.

>>52166729
>>52166745
Looking good and waiting for more.

>>52166745
Was Guilliman older than Angron? I don't know. I know he was too old for augmentations when Angron joined but Angron would have had to be in his late twenties or thirties when he was augmented, in order to have gathered such a large family and Kharn to have been qualified for augmentation. This fits with the Thunder Warrior augmentations being implantable in a wider age range due to not being as extensive but being terrible in terms of lasting potential and quality of life.

>>52169300
I assumed that Guilliman was in his mid forties when he joined the Imperium. Queen Yolande Fouché being in her thirties as she was described as "relatively" young. Also she was still young enough to have children because we know they had kids.

Angron's family was acquired on a victory prize basis. They dump him in a pit with another dude and the winner gets the pick of the slave pens if the kill was sufficiently entertaining. The expectation being that the victor of the pit would choose someone that appealed to their sexual preferences or some shit. Angron picked the ones that he felt most sorry for.

How many had he adopted by the time The Warlord walked through the gates of Carthisisa? Depends on how long he had been a slave, how often he had been in a sufficiently high stakes death match and how many he could support on whatever wage he had.

Angron would have been younger than Guilliman, somewhere between twenty and thirty most probably.

>>52166745
Getting hype, this looks like it's gonna be good.

>>52167835
Yes, this is meant to flesh out what we already have on Angron. The main bio was just a few lines that Primarchfag wrote way back in the early threads, so he gave his OK for me to take a stab at doing a full write up. I've also pulled in much of the childhood details from the "Nails" piece about Angron that was done a while back.

>>52169300
>>52169428
From the various fluff written, it seems that "Old Man Guilliman" was the oldest of the Primarchs, which fits with my mental image of him as the wise old man of the Primarchs with a tendency to lecture and ramble about military history and strategy even when no one was listening.

Angron will be around his mid-late 20s when he gets augmented, past the end of the optimal window which I think we said ends at 24 at the latest, and this may have been part of the reason why his augments were messed up. Kharn will be a kid at this time, no older than 6, 18 years after the early Thunder Warrior model puts Kharn at a Mk II model when he gets augmented, given that in the Lion timeline it takes about 20 years to go from Mk I to Mk III.

>>52166107
>https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Nobledark_Imperium_Imperial_Forces#Cadian_Shock_Troopers
I think the first 3 paragraphs explain why there are so many Cadian regiments even though Cadia is just one planet.

>>52171167
Was Guilliman the oldest primarch or was Corax?

Corax already had and lost a family and a life time of slaving by the time he started his rebellion.

>>52171167
The wiki says that the earlier augmentations are compatible with a slightly wider range of ages than the later ones like the Mark III. I assume this is because the earlier ones were less invasive whereas once you get to the Mark I geneseed you are getting a whole bunch of organs implanted. Exactly what Thunder Warrior augmentations entail has never been well-described either here or in canon.

>>52171167
Back when we were talking about Ultramar and the chapters feeling, I was actually thinking that the term “spiritual liege” in this timeline is a term specifically used by the Ultramarines to refer to Roboute Guilliman. As in “this guy may not be an Astartes or any kind of super soldier, but we still follow his example”. Unlike many of the other primarchs, Guiliman was not a super soldier and did not participate that much in actual combat, at least not in living memory. He was more of a tactician than a soldier. Even the other mostly baseline human primarchs, Lorgar and Corax, fought on the front lines, though they didn’t do the kind of heavy lifting the Astartes did (IIRC, Corax mostly coordinated attacks from a hidden position, whereas Lorgar boosted morale and was an effective daemon-bane). Guilliman might have fought, but if he did it was as a last resort. So the Ultramarines are basically saying “even though this guy may not be a front-line fighter or a super soldier, he is still worthy of respect”.

>>52172688
Corax was middle-aged by the time he joined the Imperium. He joined near the end, so that puts him at least twenty years younger than Guilliman.

I would assume forties or fiftes, since he was old enough that he was considered pretty old (and as you mentioned had lost a family), but young enough that he could still function on the battlefield.

>>52172224
Even though many guard regiments follow the Cadian method despite not being Cadian, Cadia's prime export is still soldiers.

>>52172809
It was mentioned that the Black Legion are very present on Cadia. Do they recruit from it or import from elsewhere?

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>>52173820
There is no need to import cultist as it would be easy to make cults on worlds so close to the Eye of Terror. That includes Cadia as well.

I don't think the Black Legion exist in this AU which had no Horus Heresy. The closest thing that exists is The Fallen Angles who are the largest and most organized of all Chaos Undivided Space Marine warbands. That is not including all the splinter warbands and offspring warbands descend from The Fallen Angles.

>>52173820
>>52175120
If I remember correctly the Black Legion is successor chapter of the Void Wolves now, just like the Sons of Horus, which is what I think >>52173820 meant. I think they're mentioned in the Horus write up?

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Any idea on this?

>>52175323
>quiet_tuesday_on_armageddon.jpg

Was hoping for Armageddon Steel Legion instead of BA Scouts.

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>>52175323
There are Shadow Wars in this AU but that is just a generic term for secretive or clandestine wars within the Imperium. Insurgents, rebels, renegades, traitors, Black Ops, and assassins are used to fight in these Shadow Wars along with conventional military forces.

So just get rid of the word "Armageddon" and "war-torn" then replace the Orks with Eldar or humans to make it look like it fits in this AU.

I just want Necromunda back, please GW

>>52175589
The Pax Galaxias demands that there is no open war between member states. Participants will be ordered to put the guns down. Any faction that refuses to stop will be shown the big heavy boot of authority. The instigator of open hostilities will then be royally screwed over to but not exceeding the fullest extent of the law.

If open war becomes a thing then it better be over before the Administratum's "Merciless Clerk" Investigators turn up. If all is quiet when they get there then no serious fucks are given because although they may conclude that shit be dodgy and shady as all fuck it is not a perfect galaxy and nobody has ever tried to claim otherwise. So long as the Tithe is paid and the integrity of the Imperium itself is not negatively impacted the Imperium reverts to it's usual indifference.

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>>52175982
I know there was one Shadow War between the two different Old Tarren religious sects that dragged out until the end of the Imperial Civil War. Another was the war between the Reform and Orthodox Mechanicus, which began after the WotB and is still ongoing by M.41.

Powerful individuals and organizations killing each other or at least puppet groups. Not open warfare per say yet not far from it. Except, the Human and Eldar supremacists along with rebels who outright declared war on the Imperium.

>>52175982
>>52176537 and >>52175589 said it pretty well. The Shadow Wars is basically the general name for clandestine warfare between various groups within the Imperium. Navigator houses shanking each other on the down low. Two opposed religious sects on different planets in the solar system trying to plant evidence to make the other look like Chaos worshippers. Often looks like organized crime if you don't know what you're looking for.

It's kind of like two kids pulling each other's hair but making sure that they look like perfect angels when the parents actually turn to look. The question is less "is there war" and more "how much can you get away with before the Imperium suddenly decides that your business is its problem".

>>52173820
>>52175120
>>52175249
Black Legion were the Void Wolves boarding/anti-boarding specialists. Most of the Astartes in the Void Wolves ended up here. Now they recruit almost exclusively from Cadia and the other worlds around the Eye of Terror. Like Black Templars but replace "ALL CRUSADING, ALL THE TIME" with "I AM ANGRY, ANGRY ABOUT CHAOS".

I was thinking about Imperial Guard doctrines beyond the Cadian and Fusilier doctrines already detailed, and here's what I came up with.

>Infiltration doctrine
Infiltration doctrine is a light infantry doctrine focused on stealth and mobility. It omits vehicles and heavy artillery from the TO&E almost entirely, relying on crew-served weapons that can be dismantled and carried by an infantry squad for heavy firepower. On the offence, infiltration regiments use their stealth and lightweight equipment to close with enemy formations undetected and from unexpected directions; once all elements are in position, they launch an overwhelming surprise attack from close range, using their crew-served weapons and snipers to suppress the enemy and ensure they cannot mount an organized defence. On the defense, they use the same qualities for hit-and-run raids, whittling down the enemy and melting away into the night when the enemy tries to bring their firepower to bear.
Infiltration regiments are usually equipped with specialized equipment such as camo-cloaks and night-vision goggles, but these are less important than how the regiment is trained. The nature of their operation requires that officers and NCOs be trained to a higher standard of independence than normal, as units as small as squads will often be trusted to maneuver individually in support of the overall objective. This usually cultivates a sense of being elite; combined with the looser chains of command infiltration regiments usually operate with, other regiments usually consider them insubordinate and undisciplined.
(cont.)

>>52177689
In combat, infiltration regiments are used to secure and move through terrain that mechanized regiments cannot. They are also used in combined-arms strategies to scout out enemy positions, assassinate officers, and destroy enemy strongpoints in advance of the main armored thrust. Infiltration regiments also maintain their effectiveness easier in the face of enemy air and orbital superiority thanks to their ability to fight while remaining hidden and dispersed. Finally, infiltration doctrines are popular among PDF forces incapable of maintaining large mechanized armies.
However, as powerful as they are within their specialty, their lack of vehicles and artillery makes them perform poorly outside of it.

Thoughts?

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>>52177710
Any examples of named regiments that would follow this doctrine? I would think Harakoni, Elysian, Attilan, and Armageddon Outriders follow a version of this.

>>52177981
I was thinking Tanith First as the 'main' example, and the Viet Minh/Viet Cong as the real-world inspiration. Harakoni and Elysian are, IIRC, air-mobile regiments while Infiltration doctrine is a light infantry doctrine, which I plan to cover later as 'Elysian doctrine.' Attilan are cavalry and the Outriders are light armor, what I'm thinking of as 'Fast Attack'.

>>52177710
>>52177981
>>52178105
There was mention of a Machairian style, which is more "play to a general planet's military strengths", in contrast to "base everyone off Cadia" and "Krieg" but I think this is more of a school of thought than an actual method of war.

From the Krieg entry:
"The Macharians take their name from Lord Solar Macharius, who famously forged an army from a mass of diverse elements and worlds, making a flexible legion ready for every element. In their minds, trying to force guardsmen to march and act the same is an act of folly, that denies useful specialization and experience. Any attempted reform would take hundreds of years, untold fortunes, and would cause the war machine to grind to a halt even as they are besieged on all sides. Catachans are expert jungle fighters, Valhallans ice worlders, Chem Dogs tunnel fighters, and so on and so forth. Why break what isn't broken?"

>Armageddon doctrine
Armageddon doctrine is a maneuver- and terrain-focused mechanized infantry doctrine. Developed by the Steel Legion in their endless battles against the Orks, Armageddon doctrine TO&E is extremely vehicle-heavy, with sufficient Chimeras to carry the entire regiment, strong organic artillery support, and at least a modest tank detachment. Mechanized scout detachments- Salamanders, Sentinels, and bikes (preferably jet-) are common, but can also be delegated to other specialized regiments. (The Steel Legion itself uses the Outriders for this purpose, but other regiments have other solutions.) Likewise, organic combat engineering support is common, as are air defense vehicles; Hydras in particular are valued for their ability to sweep aside Ork hordes in addition to aircraft. Soldiers are heavily armored in carapace.
In combat, Armageddon doctrine is often described as 'operationally offensive, tactically defensive'. Using the scout detachment to scout out the terrain and enemy dispositions, the regiment seeks to seize vital terrain features before the enemy and fortify it, forcing the enemy to assault a fortified position on terrain of the Imperium's choosing. To this end, Amageddon-style regiments usually carry copious amounts of barbed wire, mines, and other defensive implements; vehicles are equipped with dozer blades to dig out entrenchments. This is where the engineering detachment comes in. The scout detachment, if present, harasses the enemy on its approach, although this is not a vital component of the doctrine.

>>52179303
At the level of individual squads, Armageddon doctrine emphasizes close cooperation between infantry and armor; full mechanization means each squad has a Chimera, which they are responsible for defending from threats and vice versa.
Few worlds adopt the Armageddon doctrine in full. Although many other mechanized infantry forces adopt its emphasis on mobility, terrain, and forcing the enemy to attack fortified positions, few worlds can afford to equip their regiments with the same weight of metal as Armageddon, and thus do not adopt the full TO&E. In addition, the emergence of the Brain Boy caste has thrown the doctrine into flux; with the Orks no longer throwing themselves as eagerly into near-suicidal charges, the strategy has lost some of its effectiveness. Although the core of the strategy remains sound, the arguments at Steel Legion HQ about how to adapt to a changing galaxy continue long into the night.

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>>52179322
I was going to say these Armageddon regiments must be fucking expensive to form.

>>52180201
Yeah, most 'Armageddon doctrine' regiments stop at the Chimeras, sometimes Basilisks, sometimes a few Leman Russ, with the other detachments remaining in their own specialized regiments.

>>52110656
Actually, you're a fucking retard.

Chaos IG would be individually more likely to be veterans just by the nature of their circumstance. A fresh conscript would be a true warrior if they survived six months in Stalingrad. Attrition is a hell of a thing.

>>52179303
So, does this mean >>52144968 needs to be revised to a non-Armageddon force?

>>52181063
Don't be too hard on the guy. >>52111826 Just a newfag that stumbled onto this thread

Normally these former Guardsmen has seen some shit as they mostly made a bad bargain with Chaos in a desperate situation to become Chaos Guard. I do agree with Traitor Guard being individually stronger because of hyperactive natural selection due to being sent to the Warp. Alternatively, they are Death worlder level physically strong by the nature of fighting in melee a lot. Operating without supplies, the Traitor Guard has no choice but to use melee weapons.

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>Fast Attack doctrine
A light-armor and occasionally bio-cavalry doctrine focusing on the use of speed and maneuverability as weapons.
There is no standard TO&E for Fast Attack regiments, due to the wide variance in equipment used. Salamander scout tanks, Sentinels, motor- and jet-bikes, a thousand varieties of armored car and riding beasts. A very few forge-worlds even have super-heavy fast-attack companies, equipping tanks as heavy as Baneblades with antigrav units to allow them to keep up with lighter forces.
Whatever the equipment, all Fast Attack units operate similarly, using overwhelming speed to strike at an enemy's weak points before an effective response can be mustered. The 'classic' pattern of attack is to punch straight through the enemy line and rampage through the rear areas, but that is hardly the only tactical possibility. Outflanking maneuvers, hit-and-run raids- speed opens many possibilities.
Fast Attack regiments are usually deployed as part of combined arms strategies, scouting for slower units or exploiting breakthroughs created by heavier ones. On their own, while fast and generally well-armed, they are also more fragile than a true tank unit and lack staying power. This varies, of course; the dynamics of a horse cavalry unit differ from Sentinels and Salamanders which differ from jetbikes. But the general principle holds; as with so many other things in the Imperium, there is strength in diversity.
Fast Attack units, like Infiltration units, are often popular among PDF forces which cannot sustain heavy tank formations but can build light tanks and armored cars or breed horses, which contributes to the wide variance of regiments following the doctrine.
>Pic related, PDF fast attack unit

>>52182134
And lasguns. Remember, those things can recharge off campfires.

>>52183329
>https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Chaos_Guard
Updated this to prevent confusion about how the battlegroups operate. Yes, some do still use lasguns while others just ditch once ammo spent for swords and stubbers.

>>52184887
Interesting, but could use some polish. Mind if I take a crack at cleaning it up?

>>52184887
>Nobledark Imperium

This ship might have sailed, but can we change this to "Nobledark Warhammer"? Makes it more general, and makes it less confusing than "NOBLEDARK IMPERIUM: FORCES OF CHAOS (They're not part of the Imperium)"

>>52181063

The very nature of such attrition leaves most units that have "gone to warp and back" devolved into warbands unable to coordinate above tactical level. Their lack of numbers also makes them a small minority in human composed chaos forces.
Most of such forces being either
Guard/PDF that were turned in-theatre or during current campaign
or formations freshly raised from chaos controlled human worlds

Which raises another question - with the Cronedar around does that mean humans and Fallen have fewer worlds (and therefore smaller resource base) in the Eye compared to canon?

Thinking about it, I'm not convinced that Chaos Guard would usually suffer from severe supply problems. In order to have a future as a fighting force at all, they would need to have access to a starship, and anyone with the technical knowledge and resource base to keep a starship running would surely be able to produce or procure ammunition and armored vehicles. Unless we want to propose that the average Imperial merchant vessel (which is what the average Chaos Guard unit would probably wind up using for reasons of availability) can go for centuries without skilled maintenance, the idea of a poorly-equipped interstellar force just doesn't add up.

>>52186308
Also there are fallen forge worlds in the Eye.

Across the more well-educated worlds of the Imperium, many pro-morality movements have sought to use the example of the fate of the Elder Empire as evidence for their own agenda, usually with statements to the effect of "it could happen HERE!"
The response is generally along the lines of "bitch, you have no idea how crazy the Elder Empire got."
>THE MANY ATROCITIES OF THE LAST DAYS OF THE ELDAR EMPIRE
-There was a certain drug that, when consumed by an Eldar, briefly boosted the user's telepathic abilities while also forcing the user's body to slowly crystallize into an array of other drugs. The exact effects and potency depended heavily on the physical qualities and mental state of the user over the course of the transformation; therefore, the lords of the Empire kept 'Eldar farms' where slaves were force-fed the catalyst-drug while carefully kept in certain states of mind. The most potent mixes (although subject to personal taste) were often considered to come from newborn infants, kept in a state of terror and confusion through the entirety of their short lives. The children's mothers were often forced to witness the slow deaths and subsequent consumption of their babies; this did nothing for the quality of the drug, and was done exclusively for the sake of assholery.
-Billions if not trillions of members of various alien species were kept as slaves. Many Eldar took to breeding specific varieties of slave-species, much as humans breed specific varieties of horse and dog. Although initially this was for practical purposes, aesthetic values quickly took precedence, and most of the slaves of the late-stage empire suffered from multiple types of deformity, features deemed 'aesthetic' becoming grotesquely exaggerated over generations.
(cont.)

>>52187304
Of course even this was not enough, and for many Eldar slave-breeders deformity and defect became an end-goal rather than side-effect, engaging in perverse competitions with each other to see how many genetic defects one individual could have and still produce offspring.
-It was the fashion for Eldar nobles to show off the skill and obedience of their slaves by having one prepare him, her, or itself for dinner. The exact procedure varied according to physiology, but the general outline remained the same. First, surgical sorceries were layered upon the slave to allow him to continue functioning despite massive blood loss and organ trauma. Then, preparation would begin; the slave would skin himself, flense his muscles, and remove his own organs to provide the meat for the meal. Then, the slave would cook his own tissues, a process that often took days given late Empire cuisine, every moment sending jolts of agony through exposed nerves. Then, the slave would serve his master and guests; finally, the slave would crack open his skull or closest equivalent, offering his brain-meats to the master as the final course. If the slave had performed sufficiently flawless, the master would honor him by consuming the brain, finally killing the slave; otherwise, hideous tortures awaited, often with the participation of the guests as apology for subpar service.

-And many more! Anyone else have ideas, feel free to share!

>>52187304
>>52187309
There is no way I can top or equal that.

>>52157611
>>52155234
So is it more that there are towering hives that reach deep into the bedrock with verdant fields between them this time?

Given the height and depth of the hives it's still going to be 50 billion population time but Old Earth is supposed to be the Hive ideal rather than the Hive typical. So less global sardine can, to an extent.

>>52185547
To be honest, we should do what Hektor Heresy, Imperium Asunder, or Brighthammer did and organize pages like "Forces of Chaos (Nobledark Imperium)" to show it is in the Nobledark Universe.

I think the use of the term Nobledark Imperium might have sailed. It's how other people on 4chan and the internets are starting to refer to this universe, especially to distinguish it from nobledark versions of 40k in general.

I agree the name's not intuitive though.

Also we should archive the thread.

>>52185632
There's a big difference between IG regiments that were recently turned and have all their old stuff and the ones who have been in the warp a long time and are borderline "feral worlder with guns".

As to number of worlds in the eye, probably yes, but there are fewer Fallen and Chaos Guard usually form an underclass on every world whether it is Fallen or Cronedar held. So it probably evens out.

>>52186308
True, but this is Warhammer. A saner Warhammer, but Warhammer nonetheless. The limiting factor in a Chaos Guard warband's long-term survival is whether they can get off-planet. I'm not sure the average Imperial knows how to run and maintain a spaceship, just like your average human today doesn't know how to fly or maintain an airplane.

>>52186609
It was mentioned the Dark Mechanicus are just as large in this timeline, but it was also pointed out that in canon they don't give a shit about equipping the other traitors. Though this raises the question: where in canon do the traitor legions get the means to maintain their stuff?

>>52188881
Less global sardine can, more one of those planetary eco-friendly arcologies you always hear about. There's farmland, but it's probably a layer of strata on top of ten layers of buildings that look flat from the top.

No clue if this is true everywhere. Sanguinius, Kharn, and Lorgar were mentioned to have been buried in orchards or quiet forests, and it would be seemingly hard to do this if any forest would be a hundred feet underground or you have to worry about the ceiling giving way and the corpse of the martyr angel falling on your head.

>>52185522
Free game for anybody willing to edit.

>>52187304
>aesthetic Eldar Empire
Holy fuck, they made the Dark Eldar look like kindergarten teachers.

>>52186308
Not so much the lack of supplies but more like the lack of decent weapons they can get their hands on. They can make swords and stubbers coming out of their collective asses but actually lasguns or tanks are another matter. That's why the Chaos Guard can arm millions of cultist but have trouble keeping the same Guardsmen equipment as they had before. Supply void ships and bumfuck nowhere Chaos worlds can still make supplies but even that can't compare to Imperial industry.

>>52189899
So is there no actual "open land" between the structures?

I'm guessing that there was in the earlier days and that shit just got built around, under and over.

By the dying of the Dark Millennium is it arcology all the way around?

I'm wanting to do the Old Earth (as of 999M41) section but I need to havea feel for what it actually is like. Preferably annoying as few people as possible.

>>52191433
I'm not sure, but that's what it sounds like. The Khanate was mentioned to be one of the last countries on Earth to be heavily urbanized, but Khan saw the writing on the wall and set up Khanate colonies on rural worlds, which became the Pastoral Worlds.

I don't know for sure though. More anons weighing in would be helpful. Here are the graveyard descriptions

Sanguinius: [T]hey buried Sanguinius in his favorite childhood refuge, a solitary place with a creek, quiet and clear, and where the trees were very old.

Kharn: [H]is body was buried beneath the orchard that now stands where the village he grew up in once was

So it looks like there are some areas that weren't fully build over.

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>>52189899
>>52191433
>>52191806
There definitely could be space for open land. If you look at the attached info graphic, we could fit all 7 billion people in a corner of the US if it was as dense as Paris, and an Imperial hive is going to be far more vertical/dense than any modern city.

Obviously there would be lots of land needed for secondary functions like manufacturing and whatnot, but there could definitely be earmarked stretches of open land, especially if, y'know, a primarch is buried there. It certainly isn't going to be like canon where every inch is built over with at least 10 stories of temples.

>>52192013
I'm going to assume that that pic is just taking into account surface footprint and not so much the vertical axis.

40k hives are several miles deep and quite tall.

>>52192013
>>52192137
There's also the fact to consider that hive planets in general just wouldn't work from an energetic standpoint. This is kind of glossed over in the lore because 40k cannot into scale and there are much bigger issues present, but a hive planet like Coruscant in Star Wars would require numerous ships coming and going at all hours of the day just to feed the planet. Huge waste of fuel. And that's in a universe like Star Wars where FTL is reliable. You would need lots of space dedicated to algal farms and agriculture and whatnot.

Rather than in canon, where it's corpsestarch for days, your average hive worlder diet is probably nutritious, if a bit bland. Hive world crops are selected for efficiency, not flavor. Besides a knack for navigating 3D spaces, hive worlders are best known for being able to turn bland foodstuffs into an actual meal. Good tasting crops are rarer, and much of the agrarian imports to Hive Worlds are spices, luxury foods, and foods that are just plain different from the usual fare.

Unless you're on Necromunda. If you're on Necromunda you're fucked.

>>52192646
Shepherd Book: A man can live on packaged food from here 'til Judgment Day if he's got enough rosemary.

I imagine that any hiver with a widow has a window box.

>>52185547
I had originally hoped before the 1d4 was set up in earnest that the parent page'd be Nobledark Imperium, with the categories being Nobledark 40k: [Page Name]. No idea if that's even possible on mediawiki though, rip.

>>52187309
-There were artisans, bone carvers, who would make their works from the bones of the living, often surgically and sorcerously fusing four to thirty slaves together to ensure there was a large enough lump of bone to carve.
-In many noble families of the Eldar Empire, it was a tradition to initiate a child into adulthood with incestuous torture, often with prayers to Isha for a child to result from the various couplings. In some families, those children of incest, twisted by the sorcery used in the torture that conceived them, started an honored line of breeding. In others, they became the centerpiece of a feast to celebrate their parents.

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>>52193776

>>52194277
Creating stuff for the Eldar Empire is easy: simply fuse horror, the inability to care about cares, and the fetishes that /d/ won't touch.
I...
I'm now kind of horrified at myself for how easily I created said guidelines.

>>52189609
>People outside of 4chan

oh dear

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>>52190059
>Nobledark_Imperium_Imperial_Forces#Scion_Tempestus
As we didn't have anything on Stormtroopers nor Scions I added 1 page and a section. Anybody can edit them as they see fit. Yes there is a reference to thread 1 in there

>>52195236
Fuck I mean this
>https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Nobledark_Imperium_Imperial_Forces#Scion_Tempestus

>>52195236
Dat file name

Oh gee, I wonder who founded these ones. It's a bit too subtle for me.

>>52189609
Thread archived.

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>>52196113
I just copied the canon counterpart and changed it slightly. GW is known to be super sudtle.
>https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Scion_Regiments#55th_Omaga_Hydras
>Black armor
>friends with Ultra Smurfs
>Omega and Hydra in name

It's not like Omega Marines exist.

>>52196537
>>52195264
To whoever is editing the wiki, it looks like there's 2 separate but overlapping pages for notable Scoin regiments.

https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Scion_Regiments

https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Nobledark_Imperium_Scion_Regiments

>>52196859
They are literally the same page but with different names.

I moved the page to change the title.
>moving all of its history to the new name. The old title will become a redirect page to the new title.
So there is no two page just two different names for the same page. Same thing happened when I made the Chaos Guard page.

>>52194405
Suddenly I think I understand why the Craftworlders and Exodites left the empire.

I think the worst implication of all these things were that the Old Eldar Empire were doing them to themselves, as opposed to the other races. If it were only to the other races, some people like the Dark Eldar might try to dodge responsibility by saying it was okay because it was merely done to “lesser” peoples. But if the Eldar were doing this to their own kind, not even in the power struggle manner of the Dark Eldar, you’re left with deeds that would be morally reprehensible by anyone’s standards, even the Dark Eldars’. And the only reason humanity didn’t go down the same road (though in their own way, seeing as humanity’s fatal flaw in 40k seems to be “control” rather than pride, as can be seen in the vanilla Imperium) is that humanity had someone else around who had been down that road before and was able to say “stop, that way lies madness”.

>>52200042
It takes a lot of effort to murderfuck a twenty-thousand-lightyear-wide hole in the universe.

Handmaidens of Isha

Just as it is the job of the Adeptus Custodes to protect the Emperor of Mankind and his wife, it is the job of the Handmaidens of Isha to protect the Grand Empress Isha and her husband. The Handmaidens of Isha are the Eldar side of the Imperium's praetorian guard, drawn from the ranks of her most devout followers in the cults that sprung up in her wake following her rescue from Nurgle's mansion. Compared to many other followers of Isha, the blessings of the Handmaidens are rather subtle. Little more than an immunity to virtually all diseases and a seeming inability to sustain permanent damage from scaring or age. This allows the Handmaidens to perfect their physical training in a way that only one who does not have to worry about wear and tear on their body can. The Handmaidens are no pushovers, being armed with swords known as "the Thorns of Isha" that can inflict wounds that do not heal. The Handmaidens are also noted to have a connection to Isha that borders on the preternatural, able to sense if their charge is in direct danger even if they are unable to see her directly.

>>52202843 (cont.)
However, the Handmaidens of Isha have an another job in addition to protecting their Empress. As the Imperial Couple travels from world to world, the Empress often sends her handmaidens to inspect the world beforehand to ensure that the world is as upstanding as it often claims to be. Although many worlds have their own dirty little secrets that they have managed to keep secret from the Administratum, few can hide from the gaze of the All-Mother. Although the Adeptus Custodes are also often posted in Imperial society to keep watch for potential threats against the Emperor and Imperium, most of them are incapable of doing so without drawing attention to themselves. The Handmaidens of Isha, on the other hand, are capable of passing themselves off as just another Eldar or even avoiding notice altogether. Because the two groups have essentially the same job, they often end up directly cooperating with one another.

>>52202843 (cont.)
>>52202856 (cont.)
Way back when the Custodes were first mentioned, it was suggested that the Eldar had their own equivalent to the Custodians so they didn't have to worry about their goddess only being protected by mon-keigh. I decided to expand on that and the "Iron Matriarch" characterization we have going for Isha.

Was trying to make the Handmaidens sound more like Eldar Captain America becausr of their relationship with Isha than the Custodes. The power gap between an aspect warrior and a Custodian is not as great between a baseline human and a Custodian.

The lack of greater blessings is intentional, to keep them able to fight and allow them to act as Isha's eyes and ears outside the public realm.

It is highly likely that the Handmaidens are soul-bound to Isha in some way.

Tl;dr: Wood elf-esque Eldar ninja bodyguards

>>52202927
Its a very good idea. It also reminds people that the All-Mother isn't all flowers and sunshine.

What is the relationship between the Custodeus and Handmaidens like? Do they fug?

>>52202985
There is the 68th Scion regiment who are basically Isha worshipping Bretonnians.

>>52191433
>>52191806
>>52192013
Maybe it wasn't built over, but built *under*? The old surface, the old buildings, the old monuments, are all still there, but by 999.M41 the surface of the planet is just a thin crust over mile-deep layers of artificial caverns, filled with algae vats and hydroponics, apartment blocks, factories and power generation. On the surface, Old Earth is nearly untouched, pastoral, but it is an impression that is only skin deep.

A rough outline of the wars for Armageddon:

1st: Armageddon not yet the overwhelmingly important hive world it would become, Steel Legion not yet formed; complacent local PDF failed to properly suppress Feral Ork populations resulting in an invading WAAAGH to swell dramatically in strength upon landfall. Hives almost entirely overwhelmed, survivors forced to fall back into mountains in guerilla resistance until relief from the Imperium arrives
Result: PDF reorganized into Steel Legion; guerilla units given remit to hunt down Feral Orks, and would eventually evolve into the Outriders.

2nd: Relatively new Steel Legion organizes brilliant defence using Armageddon's broken terrain and superior mobility to repeatedly entrap Ork columns; the hives are barely threatened.
Result: Resounding victory, 'Armageddon doctrine' is formalized based on victorious strategy

3rd: After initial success in the ground campaign, the Steel Legion is taken by surprise and outflanked when the Orks take to the seas. Armageddon's small wet-navy fleet fights series of desperate holding actions to prevent the defence from collapsing entirely, culminating in an Ork attempt to destroy the Seawall and flood the lowland hives.
Result: Bare Imperial victory. Formation of the Armageddon Rust Fleet, third and least famous of Armageddon's armed forces.

4th: Ghazzy's first appearance. First large-scale appearance of Brain Boys, use of teleportation, etc. Also, there's an Assault Moon. Things look bleak until Ghazzy is defeated, but not killed, by Yarrick. Although not dead, Ghazzy loses much of his authority and is forced to retreat as the WAAAGH breaks down in infighting.
Result: Yarrick becomes Hero of Armageddon, Assault Moon is paralyzed by mutiny, is captured intact-ish, and is remodeled as a Star Fort.

5th: Ghazzy's grand comeback tour. Everything the 4th was but even meaner and greener.
Result: Ongoing.

Thoughts?

>>52202985
Knew people were going to ask this. Its frowned on because job but it could have happened once, but it would have to be super, super rare. And those two would have to endure teasing from their fellow bodyguards that would make the teasing Ra Endymion got when the Imperial Couple first travelled to the Tau Empire and met Shas'O Shadowsun to pale in comparison /just joking

>>52204837
So is the Fourth where they got Star Fort...Dante IIRC

Ghazzy losing at Armageddon could be a big reason why he has to fight the Chaos Orks and the Overfiend of Octarius and the like to stay in power. Though I'm not sure whether it's better to have Ghazzy be in power for both or part of but not in charge of the Fourth and then spring him as a nasty surprise for round five.

Also keep in mind we have like eight millenia to spread these out over.

>>52203280
Well, Perty was said to have created the archetypal hives on Terra which were copied throughout the Imperium, so that would necessitate some of the classic towering hives instead of mole people buildings.

My point in this post >>52192013 is that with high enough population density, the geographic footprint you need to house people can actually be quite limited, and hives are ridiculously dense, they house 1 billion people each and are several miles high. Thus there could be plenty of undeveloped land left over, the sea levels fell and the world is a huge place after all.

As to the guy who mentioned energy as a limiting factor for population, that could largely be solved by fusion energy and more efficient solar energy capture. Once you have effectively unlimited energy, you can do all sorts of practical things like indoor vertical farming which has greatly improved crop yields but is normally energy inefficient compared to traditional farming.

>>52207305
So if a hive spire can house 1 billion people each, how many are on Old Earth and how densely are they packed? I assume the "Houston" estimate is overkill (Texan cities are really spread out).

Also IIRC there is some hives that use geothermal power. I think the key thing with hives is sustainability, they have to be run off readily available resources like solar or geothermal due to the simple magnitude of people they support and how long they are expected to run.

Perhaps Old Earth looks more like a series of canyonlands and plateaus, only made of steel instead of rock. In some areas you still have surface exposed, whereas in others you have to go several stories down before you hit the surface.

And of course as mentioned in the Perty story hives are designed to be ready-made siege positions and deathtraps for anyone trying to invade.

>>52204837
>>52206584
We could add a few more. So we could have the major wars, maybe once a millennium, and then minor wars (2-3 times as many).
And remember, thanks to random codename generators, the overall operations plan for the Fourth Armageddon War was designated COBALT COBALT COBALT (Cobalt Cobalt 27co) Operation BLUE METAL.

>>52209771
Not to the extent it does in Vanilla

>>52206538
>would make the teasing...
What...?

>>52210384
I think it's a TTS reference?

>>52210442
It's been kind of a joke that Ra Endymion is Black Library's attempts to make Kitten canon, as he does the exact same thing in Master of Mankind as Kitten does in TTS. This was probably a joke about that.

>>52209874
So there have been a bunch of minor offensives that because they don't involve the Imperium funneling as many forces as they can to Armageddon they don't call them Armageddon Wars?

>>52210774
>So there have been a bunch of minor offensives that because they don't involve the Imperium funneling as many forces as they can to Armageddon they don't call them Armageddon Wars?
Yeah. The basic metric is probably how many super-heavy tanks they have to ship in from off-planet. Once you hit about 250, it's probably an Armageddon War.
250 baneblades is not a typo. When it comes to waging war on Armageddon, everything is bigger. What other planets call a devastating war, Armageddon calls a minor scuffle, about equal to two clans of rednecks fighting over the last case of beer.

>>52210442
>>52210774
What'd he do?

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>>52210851
This raises the rather amusing image of assaults on hiveworlds by idiots who can not into the scale of things.

Lets say some Night Lord newbs get a little too close to the enemy. Start fucking shit up for self gratification rather than the cause. One thing leads to another and now they're balls deep in praise of the Dark Muses and want to gain citizenship in the Dark City.

How to do it?

Most likely to work way is to get a bunch of human cattle and offer them as tribute to a minor archon in exchange for being allowed into their kabal.

Best place to gather a human crop? A hiveworld because there's so fucking many of them and nobody will miss a few hundred per marine going missing from the underhive. By the time the authorities are any the wiser they will be gone with their prize and in the life of sex and drugs and torture.

What happens? The authorities notice a mild blip in violent crime in the Underhive and Warrens but nothing to get excited about. Possibly a few gangs getting together, dividing into two teams and settling a few scores.

A few years later some astartes bones are found clogging one of the waste to recycling pipes. That causes mild confusion. Over the next few decades more Mk3 MP pattern bones turn up and some unmarked XXXXL sized carapace armour of good make. And that is all. It's one more minor anomaly in a freakish galaxy with far more weird shit in it.

Don't go to Armageddon Underhives and believe you are a big fish. All sharks are minnows in that place. Minor WAAAAGH!!!!!s get eaten by the street gangs and occasionally Dark Eldar are found swinging from the lamp posts. Armageddon will fucking eat you.

>>52208820
Well if you take the graphic for Paris, 7 billion people fit into 3 medium sized states of the US, and Paris isn't even the densest city on Earth, Manila is according to Wikipedia. So using Manila's density you could cut that area in half, and then divide by 7 to get the area for 1 billion people for an individual hive. And this ignores the fact that hives are going to be way denser than any modern city since a) they're super vertical and b) their entire purpose is to squeeze as many people into as tight a space as possible. Though probably not to the same extent as vanilla, since Perty probably wanted people to have at least a reasonable quality of life, or as much as is possible in a hive anyway. I think I saw the number 50 billion thrown around for the current population of Old Earth? So maybe 50 hives scattered around Earth.

My own mental image for a hive is the geographical footprint of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area that extends several miles vertically, making it pretty much a man made mountain. For scale and comparison the Burj Khalifa is about half a mile high.

>>52210851
That makes sense, and in an earlier thread I think we agreed that there are 3 SM Chapters based on the planet, one for each continent. Given that an SM chapter is supposed to be a planetary level force if properly supported, that means that any force that 3 whole chapters can't handle is probably gonna be pretty damn scary.

>>52211247
>their entire purpose is to squeeze as many people into as tight a space as possible

But if it's possible to comfortably fit 6 billion people in the footprint of Texas even before you get into vertical and underground structures, the question is why. In canon the reasoning is because there just plain isn't enough room on the planet so people have to be crammed in as tight as possible, but if space isn't the constraint it brings up the question of why the hives are built in the first place.

Is this just another case of "GW cannot into scale"?

>>52212797
I've always thought it's for defence. It's easier to fit a billion people under a void shield and behind ten meters of adamantium if they're all concentrated in a single hive instead of dispersed across an area the size of Texas. A hive city is basically a giant bunker that you never have to leave.

>>52212797
Part of the setting is that almost everything outside of the hive is a toxic dump. To insane levels. Everything outside of the hive is strip mined, covered in chemicals, set on fire, and then filled with mutants. Which is pretty nonsensical, but in the grim darkness of the far future, there is no EPA.

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>>52212797
Partly (mostly) because sci-fi writers can not into scale.

Also 10,000 years of siege mentality. There is an inside. There is an outside. Thing outside will kill and eat you if you are lucky. If you are really, really lucky it will be in that order.

There is great distinction between inside and outside. Inside is civility and civilization. Outside is the howling barbarian wilderness resonating with the echos of thirsting gods.

In this AU for thousands of years the word Imperium has also meant Civilization for all practical purposes. All independent civilizations have either joined or died, the few exceptions are expected to join soon or die. If anything the siege mentality of this universe is worse than in Vanilla, if that's possible.

Inside you have the great walls of adamantium and ceremite and a void shield. Outside this circle of firelight and relative warmth and safety Old Night still dwells between the cold hard stars.

Basically bunker down hold the walls, the hive is love and life. Pity and respect those who venture and dwell outside for the good of civilization because and open sky alone isn't worth the risks they take for the good of society.

>>52212797
>>52213095
>>52213141
>>52213216
This goes both ways as well. If one were to divide up all the habitable land on Earth, subtracting the oceans and the deserts and the mountains, everyone on Earth would have a living space of about 1-2 acres, depending on who you ask. Multiply Earth's population by 10 and you could fit 69 billion people on Earth with each getting the same amount of living space as a decent sized apartment (36 by 36 feet). And that's without even making use of a second floor.

This is all without any farmland or infrastructure, but if hives are hundreds of stories tall Earth's population alone is easily in the low trillions.

This also raises the questions as to how many Eldar there are. Canonical numbers are in the low trillions, but an average-sized Craftworld is the size of Earth, and the entire thing is essentially a planet-sized hive (albeit one with more living space per individual).

>>52213488
If nothing else, Isha's freedom would probably result in there being more Eldar. Low tens of trillions, I'd say, making up about 1% of the total Imperial population.

>>52213488
Descriptions of Craftworlds have been inconsistent or vague and nebulous in regards to size.

Personally, and I have no real reason for this, I imagine the main ones as having tens of trillions and Iyanden capping out at over 100 trillion.

Smaller ones are between billions and 5ish trillion at the very most.

A shit load but very little to the teeming quadrillions of humanity.

In this I'm putting forward that 85% of the population is humanity including abhumans 5% is eldar and 10% is all the other xenos.

Eldar are the 2nd largest group it the Imperium by a large margin but holy fuck are humans the dominant species in terms of raw numbers.

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>>52213598
>>52213699
Didn't Colchis have Eldar at about 8% of the global population? I had been thinking a similar demographic in the Imperium, with 90% human/abhuman, 8% Eldar, and 2% other. But thinking about it, >>52213699's suggestion might work better. Eldar are still second most numerous species by a large margin, if for no other reason than they had a galaxy-spanning empire before the Fall and a 90% loss of a galactic empire numbering in the trillions is still huge. Not even the Tau, the third most numerous Imperial race, come close, the Tau Empire being about the same size as Ultramar (which would make it about 25 times larger than canon).

And of course this isn't counting Cronedar or DEldar, and Orks are comparable to humans in number. Worse, every Ork is technically a soldier, as opposed to humans and Eldar where you have a significant number of non-combatants like children.

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>>52213216
to summarize

>>52213855
I think the human population itself would also be incredibly varied, and the line between human and abhuman would actually be pretty malleable within those untold quadrillions. We're already including ratlings, neo-ogryns, neo-beastmen, catfolk, biologicus experiments for the wealthy (or at least navigators), etc so its easy to imagine the imperium's humans are about as varied as the tamer star trek species

>>52215232
Oh definitely. It was mentioned in a previous thread that some of the abhuman subspecies alone outnumber some of the xenos races. So a significant chunk of that 90% (at least 10%) are abhumans.

The abhuman species also consider themselves politically distinct from baseliners. Politically, the only differences between abhumans and minor xenos races is that one happened to come from Earth. Many abhuman groups were essentially treated as Survivor civilizations. Ogryns, beastmen, and Navigators would have been treated like Survivor civilizations if it weren't for the fact that they either had to be uplifted or didn't exist on their own.

Heck, even the Hubworld League would consider themselves to be significantly different from humans politically, despite the only real differences between the squats and baseline humanity are some minor adaptations for functioning in a high-gravity environment.

>>52215940
Hubworlders have no/little genetic deviation from the original Earth stock. They grow up normal in normal gravity.

>>52215072
Basically yes but on a grander scale.

>>52219866
I dunno, the Last Redoubt is pretty fucking grand.

Anyway, I vaguely recall something in vanilla about an Ork Warboss, Wazdakka, gaining access to the Webway. Did we ever do anything with that?

>>52219866
Right, they have little to no deviation from baseliners, yet still see themselves as "different" from the rest of the Imperium.

>>52220204
Other than "he exists", no. Indeed we have yet to do any major Ork characters beyond the Beast and Ghazghull, and both of those are only partially complete (mostly because we can't agree on things).

>>52218084
So it looks like hives don't cover an entire planet. They just dot the surface and make the rest of the planet uninhabitable. Which again raises the question why, given living in a hive is just as dangerous as living outside a hive (hivequakes, undergangers) and it's said the only reason the vanilla Imperium likes it is it keeps people under control through paranoia and fear at the human Skaven below their feet.

Also, should the Cronedar special character concepts go in the Notes section, as in "potential ideas to expand upon?"

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>>52224306
well clearly our hive cities are better arcologies than vanilla

>>52222991
That's more of a cultural thing added to them being a survivor civilization added to them looking weird due to high gravity. They were already an interstellar civilization when the Imperium made contact and not unjustly maintain that were it not for the Orks they would have inherited the Golden Age Empire.

>>52220204
Last Redoubt housed the "last millions" of humanity. Usually gets estimated to about half a billion. And it's only one of a kind.

Imperium has ~thousand hive worlds with multiple hives on each world and most of them bigger than that.

>>52223905
We really do need more stuff on Gazzy and Yarrik.

>>52223905
Somebody cool like Tuska Daemon-Killa should be around to kill ass and take names.

So from what is being said Old Earth still has open oceans and the shape of the continents is the same as on the official map even unto the Dark Millennium.

The Hive Cities of Perturabo's design have expanded somewhat but not preposterously so but also upon the same basic design principles. The hives as seen from the surface are great majestic souring edifices that are graceful and majestic and hide very well that they were designed to be enormous death traps and meat grinders to anyone stupid enough to try and attack them. The streets can form choke points, there are many avenues that would make great killing grounds, all the spires are designed to have an artillery piece placed atop them at a moments notice and there are void shield generators. Also those marble looking walls are mostly made of layers of adamantium, ceremite and shock absorbing plasteel.

What of the hives, great as they be, that can be seen from the surface is also only the tip of the iceberg. Their roots go deep, deep into the bedrock. The greatest depth is to the places where the Earth is hot and from it abundant and perpetual power is drawn. As deep as they are they are also in the Stygian depths broad and the roots of the chrome and glass mountains range far. Far enough to entangle with their neighbors like hands held out to a friend in the darkness. It is known that you can circumnavigate that most august of globes without breaking the surface from pole to pole and back round the other side and around the equator and any other direction that takes your fancy. Indeed there are whole nations down there that live and die and never see the surface for generations at a time.

But for all that might be imagined of cramped and claustrophobic labyrinthine darkness the ways and paths are airy and full of light. Perturabo did not design prisons with which to undo the victory of The Beast. Indeed he did not, Old Earth is the jewel in the crown and the throne of the Imperium, birth world of mankind.

>>52230377
Dotted around the surface with great regularity are strange and deep pits with seeming no bottom for one stood upon the top. These are the great ventilation and light wells but also emergency entrances and exits in times of need.They plunge into the depths where the underground kingdoms dwell, the places where the earth meets the sky. And if one was to descend those great depths they would find no lair of twisted things but forests and fields and pleasant seas the likes of which could grace the surface of and look not out of place.

From great height of orbits Old Earth is a green and verdant paradise as once it may have looked in the Golden Age when men, it is said, were as the gods are but no work of god alone is that Eden. Through sweat and toil and the plans of The Mad Architect was that walled garden and by the might and will of man is it defended as is all the Imperium.

Upon that ancient globe is found the Imperial Palace, a surprisingly modestly adorned but great spire in the center of the ancient city of Moskgród. Here is the official residence of the Golden Emperor and the All-Mother, eternal be their reign. From her all law is derived, all mortal rightness judged. From here civilization springs forth but here the Royal Couple are seldom found for they are often abroad about their realm ever diligent to ensure that their appointed governments are just and in their turn diligent.

Upon that globe but far away lies the Hall of the Astronomican, the great lighthouse that allows our Imperium to function and permits the fey breed of Navigators to traverse the seas of the warp. A great crystalline and wraithbone edifice in shape like a great bowl with rowed stands like some strange amphitheater where trained psychics scream into the void to impose upon it some measure of order. It is by their efforts that the warp travel is a practical option at all.

>>52230377
Sounds about right. Perty had a near blank canvas and did everything he could with it.

Only thing I'd contest is the idea that nations still exist on Old Earth. National boundaries were obliterated by WotB. The fact that Earth became a center of administration and rebuilt from the ground up kept them that way. There are probably distinct populations underground, but they are probably well-connected to the surface dwellers. Imperium has more eyes on Old Earth than other worlds. One of the biggest shocks Old Earth got since the WotB was when genestealer cults popped up unexpectedly on the planet during the Genestealer Wars. Not a lot, but the idea that something could infiltrate Earth without anyone noticing was shocking.

By the way, what are we going to do with the psychotic A.I. that the Salamanders had to kill underneath Turkey in vanilla during the Age of Strife?

>>52230719
The old nations that once raised the founders of our Imperium still exist, from the territories of Clan Terrawatt to the Kingdoms of Antarctica to even the lands of Hy Brasil but now as administrative districts that make up the patchwork of that august world. The ground upon which the Primarchs once walked is held in all due reverence and even the tombs of those godlike men are still standing after all this time for all to see.

All those lands, those ancient names, remain alive but not unchanged. All bar Himalayzia that none might walk upon without leave of his Majesties appointed representatives.

Of the teeming billions that call that beautiful world home an uncommon number are blessed but also heavily burdened. Blessed because they are like the Golden Emperor but burdened also for they carry the sight of the witch. The greatest scholars and teachers of the psychic arts have often been found upon the Old Earth and with the loss of Prospero now exists without true peer or equal. It is the natural place for young psychics to be brought both for their own safety and so that their gifts can be used for the good of the many rather than the damnation of the self. Trained and disciplined sanctioned psykers are the most well known export of the Earth.

Not to be ignored or overlooked are the soldiers of that world. Though exempt from the draft many request, even demand, the right to fight for hearth and home against a hateful galaxy. Although not as well known maybe as the likes of Cadia the Terran Guard, the Old 100 Regiments especially, are known to be fearless to a fault and full of fire. Varied greatly in their doctrines of war and often holding true to the old ways of their ancient nations they make war as they have for time beyond mind.

>>52231021
From the haunting Geno-Chiliads to the well ordered ranks of the Gredbrithonics they step forth like strange phantoms of history lending a hand to the present. It is a strange foe that stand firm before them and a rare one that can survive them.

It is said that there are still mysteries on that old world. That not everything is known. That relics from the older ages remain hidden, shrouded in shadows and forgetfulness, the great archives of ancient lore of old Persepotropolis were well accounted for in ancient days but rumors abound that maybe more survived and other things of that nature besides. Almost certainly the fabrications of the tourist companies.

Many faiths hold this ground as holy, and if any ground be holy to man it is this. This was where civilization died and was reborn, our eldar brothers might venerate the Phoenix but here are the ashes from which it arose and never again will that fire grow cold or the light of civilization grow dim.

>>Abdul Goldberg - Rogue Trader on commission of the Earth Board of Tourism and Pilgrimage

>And done.

>>52230794
They were kept for the sake of ease of administrating, they sure as shit couldn't have sustained themselves as actual nations afterwards. After that it became a point of pride to make it as if the Beast had never been. He would have no lasting victory on the soil of Old Earth.

>>52230377
>>52230719
>>52231021
>>52231179
Good stuff, I quite like the description though I personally imagined hives as more of soaring man made mountains rather than underground ant hills.

>>52231021
>>52231179

I would argue that having the old nations still around goes against the themes and fluff that have been established in this project.

It’s been previously established that the nation-states of Old Earth are about as well-remembered as the old provinces of the Roman Empire are by modern standards. The War of the Beast wiped out 60% of Earth’s population (the remainder surviving as refugees in the Imperial Palace) and destroyed 70% of the land surface (or is that the other way around). The Tharkian Empire sustained 95% casualties. After that it was kind of hard to maintain cultural distinctiveness due to low populations and the fact that your home is gone. Urbanization as Old Earth gradually became a planet-wide administrative and cultural hub for a galactic empire did the rest.

It also kind of goes against the existentialist themes of the AU. That in the end, what gets you is not dark gods, ravenous tyranids, or metallic skele-bots. It is simply time. All things eventually crumble to dust. Even the brightest light, the warmest hearth, eventually goes cold. Even if your actions save civilization, the truth is that eventually the civilization that survives is not going to be the one you remember. But the point isn’t that the light eventually goes out. The point is that you did everything in your power to keep it burning as long as you could to defy the darkness is.

Also, I think Magnus made the Himalazians safe for people. The Astronomican is there, for one.

Rest of the writing is good.

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Just curious for a story I'm writing. What would the official name of the Imperium be?
>Imperium of Civilizations
>Galactica Imperium
>Imperium of Man & Friends
If we are sticking to the High Gothic theme, I say the second one makes the most sense. The first one is the most generic. (pic unrelated)

>>52234308
I don't think there is an official name as of yet. It was debated many threads ago and the closest anyone could come up with was the Imperium of the Golden Throne.

All that is known is it sure as hell isn't the Imperium of Man as in vanilla.

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>>52231827
I think it's meant to be both. Termite mounds (and a lot of colonial burrowing animals) have a similar structure to keep the temperature of the colony at a tolerable level year-round. Air gets vented to the bottom so the oxygen doesn't get used up.

Quick question, how much Necron technology (if any) has the Imperium been able to obtain through their contact with Zandrekh? I'd assume not much, but at the same time one could easily see Zandrekh giving the Emperor a prize gauss hunting rifle or something.

Obviously the Eldar would never touch such a thing and the AdMech would likely squirrel it away to never see the light of day again, but the Tau, squats, Interex, demiurge heck anyone who doesn't answer to Mars would reverse engineer the shit out of that thing.

And has the contact with people like Trazyn and Zandrekh curbed the AdMech's tendency to poke around Necron tomb worlds? Especially since Zandrekh could clear up a lot of the ambiguity as to what a particular device is just by looking at the adepts and going "why the devil are you chaps mucking about with my toilet?"

Then again, I'd assume Mechanicus Adepts are high on the list of people to not let around Zandrekh, because they'd ask too many pointed questions and Obyron's scythe hand would start acting up.

>>52235013
Imperium has no Necron parts in their direct possession for much the same reason that they don't in Vanilla. Also fear of Dragon.

>>52236675
Vaguely related the prevalence of FTL travel in the Imperium

Most common method of transport for the average plebeian is the Tau/Diasporex style warp drives. Very safe if you actually read the manual and don't do anything monumentally stupid. Cost effective in that the actual warp drive is easier to build, less ships get lost and you can use a cogitator endjine rather than hiring a navigator. Down side is that it's slow as balls. A trip to the nearest habitable neighbour world takes years (sub-light speed would take decades). But it's cheep and cryo-coffins are more reliable than ever.

Normal warp travel. Use navigator to sail the sea of souls and surf it's currents. Fast and reasonably reliable. The sort of shit used by the overwhelmingly vast majority of the armed forces of the Imperium, rich travellers and high profit luxury goods traders.

Deep warp travel. Like regular warp travel but you plummet into the deep and powerful currents. You need a good Navigator and a sturdy ship. Used mostly by Inquisitors who are either desperate or foolish. Highly dangerous as the deeper into the warp you go the bigger the sharks get.

Webway travel. Reserved for the Inquisition, Space Marine Chapters and the eldar. Reliable, fast but requires specialist eldar guides. Eldar jealously guard the webway for concerns of structural psy-integrity.

Inertialess FTL of the sort exclusive to the Necrons. Imperium has none and has no idea how it works. Mechanicus deem it an impossibility all evidence to the contrary. Nemessor Zahndrekh has one ship capable of it that he has brought to the aid of his Imperial Friends but by his own admission is not top of the range. He also lacks the ability to make any more of them. Extremely fast and either completely safe or the risks are just unknown.

>>52237859
Diasporex drives don't use the Warp. They just chug along at c or just beyond that through ill-understood means. When they actually want to get somewhere with any haste, they use a warp drive. They just prefer to go in slow, borderline generatiom ships.

Also I thought Tau drives were mostly used in the Ultima Segmentum and are only just starting to be used in other parts of the Imperium?

And wasn't the Webway restricted to Space Marines except in times of emergency?

>>52238867
I kind of toying with the idea that the Diasporex were using some super shit precursor to the Tau Drive. They can go a little faster than C but with basically none of the risks.

At some point the Tau find the wreckage of one of their ships on their moon and eventually start figuring out what things do. It's kept hush hush quiet by the Ethereal Council and only the best and brightest Earth Caste team directly working on it ever actually see it in person.

Earth Caste and Ethereal Caste pass of the new Warp Drive as their own invention. Hence knowing how to into warp travel but not really knowing what the fuck a deamon is. Humans by the time they invented their first Warp Drive knew exactly what a deamon was and It's name was Dr Weir.

Diasporex drives are like double Tau drives in that they have virtually no risks but take twice as long and some, which is a shit load of time but still quicker than sub-light.

Or the other way of looking at it is that the Tau Drive is a Diasporex engine with the safeties switched off and the limiter stripped out.

im feeling like writing some shit, but dont know what to write. you guys have any suggestions? might do some shit about alpha legion

>>52239549
Sneaky Alpha Legion, Omega, and 55th Omega Hydras going on an adventure.

>>52239629
that could be fun

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>>52239731
>https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Scion_Regiments#55th_Omega_Hydras
Almost nothing is known about the Omega Marines other than they exist but is kept a secret from almost everybody. Also the wear black and white armor. Alpha Legion perform Spec Ops while Omega Marines is Black Ops. One is commando and the other is CIA/KGB. One is known and the other is unknown.

>>52239329
I dunno, is this too much putting the Tau down again? I get that they reverse engineered the Tau drive from a crashed spaceship, but just saying they found a way to make it work better by turning the safeties off is like saying the Mechanicus found a way to increase the efficiency of the lasgun by turning the knob on the barrel from "steady" to "strobe".

Diasporex drives are also really shitty. According to the original writefag it would take a year at full speed to go from Earth to Proxima Centauri. With a Tau drive you could go from T'au to Macragge in the same amount of time. If turning the safeties off gives you that much of a boost in speed, why aren't the Diasporex using that instead of Warp drives (which they loathe as an emergency necessity)?

Additionally, don't Tau drives use the warp? Like, just barely enter the Warp and slingshot back out, rather than go deep enough where the currents and, more importantly, sharks are.

>>52239892
That they would work with eachother would not be that weird though, beign almost named after the alpha legion, even if they were more puppets for the aplha legion or knowing servants

>>52240737
Do the Alpha Legion have Space Marines? If they are supposed to be the sneakiest of chapters balls deep in multiple secret societies it's possible that they stopped using Super Soldiers that couldn't hide in the masses.

>>52241207
Or that they have a small number of space marines for infiltration

>>52241207

On the path of every high-stakes chessmaster there are points where the best move is to flip the table and shoot someone in the face.

Alpha Legion has Space Marines for such purposes. Highly trained in small unit tactics, exotic weapons and the battle cries of many other chapters.

Since opportunities for direct action are few, they might also "lend" themselves out to other Imperial forces? To maintain skills, avoid boredom and pick up enemy artifacts for use in false flag operations.

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>>52241207
Well, the Alpha Legion is more like battlefield assassins, scouts, and commandos. They act as the face of the more sneaky shit the Space Marines do. The Omega Marines are the ones using regular humans for infiltration and joining secret societies. It is these space marines who would do clearly illegal shit like forming religious militias to hunt down Chaos or steal weapons tech from a neutral world. Yet they act with the sanction from the Administratum or Inquisition.

>>52241207
>>52241260
>>52241523
>>52242214
So they're like the Raven Guard, who use a lot of regular humans as front men and infiltrators and keep the Space Marines for when shit goes down.

Wait, in that case, how do we distinguish the Blood Ravens, Raven Guard, and Alpha Legion? From what we have Raven Guard are the revolutionaries, they specialize in fomenting revolution from within (but what are they doing post WotB, since there are so few worlds coming in?). Blood Ravens are the counter-terrorists, they specialize in being sent to destroy threats from within and absolutely wrecking without actually infiltrating them. I thought Alpha legion specialized in actually infiltrating secret societies and enemy territory.

I.e.:
Raven Guard - Regime toppling
Blood Ravens - Solid Snake-esque counterterrorists
Alpha Legion - CIA/KGB kind of "out of borders" bullshit.

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>>52242761
Blood Ravens a KSons descendant chapter known for their collection of curiosities, good working relationship with the Inquisition and for a KSons spawn relative normality. They still have above average number of Psykers on the payroll but not much deviation beyond that.

The Imperium's big triumvirate of Sneaky Gits is

Raven Guard - Get told a problem, they suggest a course of action, if approved of they do it and improvise as needed keeping civilian casualties to a minimum and filling out a report on all things done afterwards. Fully accountable, fully known. They are not a secret organization but they are a discrete one.

Night Lords - Get told a problem, they slink back into the darkness they came from and the problem goes away. They don't give a shit about civilian casualties, they don't do comprehensive or often comprehensible reports and they sure as fuck aren't discrete. They have no intention of being held accountable and this causes them problems. They are also not exactly a secret organization and everyone knows of them as part of cautionary stories.

Alpha Legion - You don't tell them problems. They already know the problem. If you know of the problem then it's because they were too busy to have already fixed it. They are discrete, they don't fill out reports, they are as close to a secret organization as can be and still surreptitiously get government funding. You do not see them and if you see where they have been it's either because they want you to or because they had to attend to other business in a hurry.

Omega Legion - There is no Omega Legion.

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>>52243087
Wait, I thought the whole point of the Blood Ravens is they're sneaky gits for Ksons descendants. Not as good as Raven Guard or Alpha Legion but above average for Space Marines as a whole.

Started out as a task force to counter-troll Trazyn the Infinite and stop him from stealing the Imperium's stuff without the Imperium having any official response. That's why in this timeline they're not officially recorded as a Space Marine chapter (plausible deniability, a.k.a. "You say the chapter that harrassed you was called the Blood Ravens? We have no records of any such chapter"), why they have a tendency to nick stuff (very little supplies from the Munitorum, also often sent into situations where they're cut off from supply trains and they're used to having to steal any weapon that doesn't have an eight-pointed star on it to survive).

Not as sneaky as Raven Guard or Alpha Legion but to compensate they tend to know what the big doomsday device or other weird stuff is and how to deal with it.

>>52243446
I honestly forgot about that, good call.

RG B Sneaky counter thiefs.

>>52243087
The Blood Ravens got some additional fluff as specializing in independent, deep recon behind enemy lines to explain their scavenging/stealing tendencies, hence the Solid Snake comparison. Having a lot of psykers would also help in this.

The Night Lords were also discussed as being pretty much on permanent Penitent Crusade - specifically because of their dickishness and disregard for friendly casualties, they get sent on near suicide missions out on the Imperium's borders away from any civilian populations. They probably spend their time terrorizing Ork empires, Crone Eldar worlds, or any other hostile xenos civilizations.

Mostly agreed on the Alpha Legion, though at this point it seems they're pretty much an unofficial branch or Chamber Militant of the Inquisition.

>>52242761
There could still be plenty of unaffiliated planets. In canon, shifting Warp currents can open up formerly unknown parts of the galaxy, and I think we mentioned there is a wait list of several civilizations currently applying to join the Imperium.

As for battlefield tactics, I see the Raven Guard as a rapid deployment, "light" infantry force focusing on using stealth and quickness. "Light" being an extremely relative term of course, this means that they shun clunky shit like Centurion suits and would rather sneak up on enemy positions than assault them in a Rhino.

>>52243087
This is what i thought of when i wrote about alpharius omegon, more of a shadow goverment esc organisation that does what they feel is the best, almost in a mytical state that only a select few actually know about and even fewer understand what they do. Something the conspiracy theorists of the imperium whisper about

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>>52242761
>>52243446
I'd imagine the Blood Ravens are like the kleptomaniac Spetsnaz in Afghanistan. Meaning without proper weapons to counter them, terrorist, insurgents, and guerrillas are fucked when the Blood Ravens kick down your door to steal your things (and probably kill you too). They are so good at stealing that the Imperium would use them to steal back things from the Necrons.

>>52243608
>Having a lot of psykers would also help in this.

Out of bullets, never out of mind bullets.

>Night Lords

Yeah, I would say the big difference between the Night Lords and other sneaky chapters is the NL want you to know they're there. Fear and terror is half of their shtick.

>Alpha Legion and Inquisition

I would clarify this by saying AL are the offensive military arm of the Inquisition. The people the Inquisition sends when they want to proactively mess people up. Sisters of Battle are the defensive military arm, putting down rebels, insurgents, actual armies for which the cell-like structure of the AL isn't helpful and the Sisters ability to rip apart Guardsmen is immensely helpful.

As to why so many organizations that perform similar yet slightly different jobs? Galaxy's a big place, what would be just a subbranch of a single intelligence organization on one planet has to be split up amongst multiple branches here.

>>52243872
Well, the Grey Knights and Deathwatch are still the Chambers Militant of the Ordos Malleus and Xenos, and the Sororitas are more internal facing because they the CM of the Ordo Securitas, which is why I say the Alpha Legion is more of an unofficial CM. Maybe the Alpha Legion are less specialized than the GK and DW and suited to a wider variety of missions, or maybe have more exposure to the actual command/intelligence side of the Inquisition?

Like maybe you would send an AL squad on a more sensitive mission where you can't have the GK and DW blow shit up but where Sisters wouldn't work for whatever reason, or maybe AL liaisons would be attached to GK or DW missions where there's a need for an intel perspective.

>>52244579
AL are the guys you send when you need something done without actually knowing that you need it done and then not realising that it was done

>>52239892
>>52242214
I like the idea of the Omega Marines being the Imperium's black ops force used for covert shit where the Imperium needs plausible deniability. Like sabotaging the Silent King's biotransference facilities without prompting a full-scale military response, or false flag operations where they paint themselves in Fallen warband colors and attack Fallen or Crone Eldar to foment internal conflict in the forces of Chaos. They have melta charges planted inside their armor to vaporize any evidence if shit goes south, and if accused the Imperium can always shrug and say, "No idea who these guys are, must be those rascally Fallen acting up again."