>>52769445
Isha has given the Sharks a deal. Legal recognition as the owners of the Nicor (and all the fame and prestige that goes with having one of the 5 Big Bastards) if they hunt down and kill ever follower of the arch-traitor Karamazov.

>>52769445
I know Primarchfag wanted to do Dorn a while back but I don't think he's been in the last few threads, have we lost another veteran writefag to the warp? :(

>>52769616
The Nicor?

>>52769616
Given that the Astartes Chapters are much more closely integrated into the Imperial Army in this AU, I don't think that would be necessary. The Space Marines aren't independent fiefdoms, they can be ordered around like any Guard regiment.

>>52770026
One of the big fuck-off super-battleships, like the Phalanx and the Rock. I think.

>>52770557
Yes. There were 5 of them. They were known as the 5 Big Bastards.

If we are going to have an assassin try to kill Oscar he would have to be armed with something special. C'tan phase blade to the vital bits should be theoretically capable of killing Oscar.

Thankfully before the blade could fall the assassin received eldar old man boot to the face, driving nose bone into the brain and resulting in catastrophic damage and death.

Perhaps not full fledged assassins. But instead, death cultists attempting to imitate assassins?

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>>52772677
There might still be a few genuine Temple Assassins in the ranks. The thing about the latest incarnation of the Assassins is that they don't have nearly as much indoctrination and brain scrubbing as their ancient predecessors in the Tower of Salt. On the plus side they are human more than just finely tuned killing machines but on the down side they are more prone to human faults. It is possible that there are those in the Temples who hold Karamazov's hard line monodominant views and believe in the need for an iron rule for survival in these dark times. Possibly they believe it enough to become oath breakers.

>>52770514
It seems kind of fluid how autonomous the Space Marines are.

Space Sharks are considered weird by the others in both this and Vanilla in any case.

>>52773260
I don't think that characterization is of Assassins is quite right. Assassins are still pretty much human weapons utterly dedicated to their craft, like an Eversor will never be anything other than an insane walking blender. If anything, indoctrination should have increased since the beginning given the twin failings of the Beheading and the Age of Apostasy, new Assassins will have the idea of unfailing loyalty to the Emperor (not the Imperium, note) drilled into their skulls because at the end of the day they exist by the Emperor's mercy, and the moment they fail again like that they will all be liquidated by his hand. Could that indoctrination be subverted? Maybe, but it would be a tiny, rare exception with a narratively convincing reason though.

As for SMs, it was mentioned in an early thread that a standard Codex adherent chapters operates somewhat like modern day special forces, answering only to high/central command but wise enough to work closely with front line grunts.

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>>52773630
The indoctrination could work both ways. If some nefarious cunt figured out how to manipulate one of them then he would have huge sway with them all because they all march to the same beat, so to speak. Also if they are utterly loyal to the Emperor to an unthinking robot degree and are taught to be hard and uncompromising bastards and then someone like Karamazov comes along then things could get a bit murky.

Karamazov, to their inhuman sensibilities, would make a batter Emperor.

Also child soldiers routinely abducted and turned into not-quite-people is a bit grimdark. Krieg gets away with it because it's not done on anything but the local level but the Assassins are part of an Imperium wide organization with Oscars own stamp of approval on them.

Is there room in this AU for a Strogg like race to be an affront to the Mechanicus and a menace to everyone?

Is there a Borg But Not Shit faction in Vanilla that could be used?

>>52770557
>>52770622
Literally one paragraph left on a write-up on them and then it's ready to be posted. Damn.

>>52775161
Strogg are big on cybernetics, right? Maybe the Rak'Gol?

>>52774296

Eh, the assassins got fucked up twice and paid for it. Having the same kind of shit happen AGAIN would go against the "noble" part of nobledark.

And they don't have to be child abductees. Could also be fanatic volunteers or transfers from lesser "special operations" organizations. Or was that written down somewhere?


For the whole "Inquisitorial coup", I think a better approach would be to have Fyodor send a fuckhuge mob of fanatics. People who had a part in Salem, willing or not quite, and realize they have no way back. Perhaps a few blanks mixed in - if Karamazov was big against witches then he might have gathered those. Similar to canon Eisenhorn.

Karamazov knows they will all be slaughtered, but he does not care. Their only purpose is to kill lesser functionaries and disrupt the Court long enough for him to secure his position and call up followers in the Inquisition.

Death cultists might be sent against the High Lords on Earth - those guys can be killed, maybe. This is where Eldrad can do his "trap card" thing.

The rushed nature of the whole thing also plays to the idea that no one, including Fyodor, planned it in advance. He was getting more extreme during the Back Crusade and seemed to be getting away with it. Salem is just one step higher, but Emps notices and shit gets real.

>>52775161
Indeed there is. There was some human society located northeast of the Maelstrom that I noticed in one of the 40k galactic maps that had a really creepy name and was a technocracy that sounded like even the Mechanicus would go "nope" at the sight of them.

I tried looking them up, but all I found were the Auretian Technocracy and the Olamic Quietude. It's possible they were the latter, but I remember them being called technarchs or tech-lords or something. They sounded like a society of uploaded human minds that was really creepy and inhuman by everyone else's standards.

From what it sounds like, in this timeline the Imperium might be in sort of a cold war with this technocracy. Whereas in vanilla the Imperium destroyed them after a long battle, here the technocracy has more advanced technology than the Imperium but lacks the manpower. The technocracy refuses to join the Imperium but at the same time doesn't have the numbers to actively control Imperial space. So the two just stare daggers at each other across the stars now.

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>>52773630
>>52774296
>>52775569
>to the Emperor (not the Imperium, note)
Considering loyalty to Emperor over Imperium was the cause of their last downfall, I don't think that'd change any time soon - it's a valuable safeguard that, if anything, would've been beefed up since Vandire. That being said, it's there that you have an opportunity to explain away some of them defecting to Fyodor - they too might share his belief that Oscar is unquestionably a bad thing for the Imperium, and they would prioritise its safety over his rule.

Still, I agree with the others - we don't want the assmasters fucking up again, because they've already been milked a little.

>>52775161

Isn't the AdMech itself basically Strogg?
Directly controlled lesser troops are servitors and the unique boss creatures are magos. Mix of organic and cyber bits for everyone.

Or is the concept about playing up "Big Computer controlling everyone" ? That would get Mechanicus upset as they would see it as Iron Mind 2.0.

Mindshackle scarabs controlled by a Necron Tomb AI are close. Maybe the Tomb was damaged, there are no normal warriors or nobles, so the AI uses its manufacturing base to convert local lifeforms. Hard to make it an interplanetary threat though.

A relic Iron Mind or Obliterator variant are also possibilities but those are more Chaos than just Man-Machine.

>>52771052
I was going to bring this up last thread. Here’s a question that really needs to be asked. What plan, if any, does the Imperium have in the event that Oscar ever dies?

So much of the state of the Imperium in this timeline depends on Oscar being immortal. There are no succession crises or sudden changes in policy because Oscar is immortal. History cannot be skewed as easily because you have Oscar around who has actually lived through the events in question and can set everyone straight.

But what happens if Oscar dies? You run into the same problem every enlightened dictatorship has. Any dictatorship or monarchy, no matter how enlightened, only lasts as long as it has a strong ruler. And there is no guarantee that a good leader will always have good successors.

On a related note, I think I know what Erebus' end game is in this timeline, and why he stole the Anathame from the Kinebrach and Interex.

>>52775691
>On a related note, I think I know what Erebus' end game is in this timeline, and why he stole the Anathame from the Kinebrach and Interex.
You can't drop a line like that and then not expand on it, man.

>>52775691
If Emps dies then the Imperium's only hope of survival is even further reliance on the eldar and their webway making the partnership very lopsided in their favour.

The only thing that Emps could do that nobody else could was Astropaths. IF you want a civilization of galactic size to have any hop of remaining unified you need to get messages across it very quickly. Message boats aren't fast enough.

The only other people who can do this faster than the Navigators are eldar because of the webway of which they have a monopoly because no human besides Jaq Draco can navigate it. It's still not as fast as Astropaths so the peripheral regions will probably fall away.

Isha then uses the increased influence of her children to inherit the Throne. With any look she genuinely does love her adopted children as much as her real children and will be a just All-Mother. Hopefully there is enough of society and people are sensible enough and the Imperium can still hold out against the endless night.

What's more likely to happen is a succession crisis, civil war, Imperium fragments, nobody can hold out against the night and all the little empires get destroyed or worse one after another. Any humans and eldar that survive uncorrupted will be fearful little thing hiding away in the corners of the galaxy and sleeping on the Ark Ship.

This is why Emperor doesn't go into battle in person anymore. The risk of death is minimal but even that is too high. If he dies it's game fucking over one way or another.

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>>52776001
Oh fuck so many typos.

I'm need snooze.

Have random click pic

It's worth noting that the assassins basically don't exist as a political organization. There are plenty of assassins trained, there are masters, there is an assassin 'culture' and distinct training techniques, but...There is no longer a grandmaster. After the Age of Apostasy, the Officio Assassinorum was dissolved, and the Officio Tacitum put in its place. And the Ordo Securitas (Or Ordo Sicarius? Or both? There was some naming confusion) keeps the assassins on a tight leash.

But that doesn't preclude the possibility of the watchmen abusing their office. The inquisitors of the Ordo Securitas have the final say over all assassin activities.

For well over 5000 years, this hasn't been a problem. But, problems crop up.

Assassin techniques have been proliferating out. The old assassins of the Salt Spire traditions kept their circles small so they could be sure that the masters were in control. With the Ordo Sicarius/Securitas/whatever, this has significantly changed. With 5000 years, leaks were inevitable. High talent agents are always in demand, and the Inquisition has begrudgingly answered that demand over time by expanding the Officio Tacitum. And on occasion, Inquisitors have sought to improve on the methods of the masters, or to cultivate their own personal stables of assassins. Cross departmental training has also further proliferated the methods of the assassins.

For those that kept to the old ways, this was sacrilegious. But they were sidelined and powerless in the face of the power of the inquisitors. The Grandmaster Assassin's seat on the High Lords of Terra was empty, and never again would any fear the assassins, or respect their power. When Karamazov hatched his scheme, he simply went to the Ordo Sicarius. The Sicarius had more flexible agents, those raised personally for Inquisitorial retinues, rather than the products of feeble Assassin temples. All the same gear and training, none of the cultural baggage.

>>52776594
Slight thing: the Ordo Securitas (née Sicarius) isn't so much flexible, nor were they raised personally for Inquisitorial retinues - the Securitas is an Ordo specifically dedicated to watching for abuses of power in the Inquisition (and sometimes elsewhere). And, since they were given unlimitedpower.bmp, they also had the Nobledark's equivalent of the Decree Passive slapped onto them; which the Sororitas then stepped in and filled the same loophole they did in Vanilla (since SMs aren't detached units anymore, SoBs make up most of the muscle in Inquisitorial retinues these days, Securitas or not). Since they're the Ordo dedicated to the Inquisition itself, the Civil War would only really happen if it was either it too was divided, or just simply swamped by Fyodor's rebels.

fwiw, I personally headcanon the Securitas as something like the SCP Foundation's Ethics Committee - they're not as overt as the other Ordos in their duties, and sometimes they even welcome the notion that they're little more than a laughing stock, because that way nobody really expects them.
>You will observe what is done, and ask the participants - and yourself - why it is being done. If at any point you feel that something is excessive or unnecessary or wrong, you inform us. We will summon the people involved, and ask them questions, in that meek ineffectual way that your coworkers have mocked.
>And then, word will filter down...through the many levels of our bureaucracy. And those who are unethical will be given reprimands which will be noted on their permanent record. Or their pay will be cut, or they will be demoted, or they will be transferred to another project.
>Or they will be shot, for crimes against humanity.

>>52778230

Problem is Fyodor have been using his position as a High Lord and his henchman the Master (don't know the word) of Ordo Sicarius/Securitas to ensure that his men gets away with as much as they could, etc.

>>52778300
Fyodor isn't a High Lord, though.

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>>52775705
What do you think? He's going to try and stab Oscar with the murder sword. It's why he broke it into a bunch of smaller knives to increase the chance that someone he's entrusted a knife to will be able to shank Oscar before he riddles them with mind bullets.

Oscar's ridiculously powerful compared to a baseline human, but unlike the other ridiculously powerful entities in the universe (the Chaos Gods, the C'tan, the Eldar Gods, even the big-name daemons like Be'lakor or Ka'bandha), he's distinctly mortal. In a universe where there are no demigod-level primarchs, Oscar represents the best target for the Anathame. Murder knives will kill him just like anything else.

Question is, is "Oscar" or "Item 43" the right name to get the murder sword a-murderin'.

>>52776001
Adding to this, if Big E does die it really behooves the rest of the Imperium to find out where the other two thirds of the Tuchulcha are. Assuming they also weren't on Calban when it blew the pieces of the Tuchulcha have a rather...cut and loose relationship with causality and losing one piece doesn't necessarily mean the thing won't work.

It's like if you had an engine that was missing a major piece, but it still ran because that piece existed sixty years from now and runs in the future San Dimas Time style whenever it is run in the past.

Problem is the Tuchulcha is also alive, like a lot of the Old Ones' high-end creations. But the situation might be desperate enough to reverse engineer the Webway maker no matter what the cost.

Meanwhile the Tarellians are pointing at the rest of the Imperium and laughing.

>>52778908
The...literally what, now?

>>52779736
The reason Caliban has such a problem with Warp Creatures is the Old Ones left the equipment they used to make the Webway on Caliban, which caused a leakage of Warp energy into realspace.

In the Horus Heresy, it is revealed that the device was split into three chunks, one of which is on Caliban, and the other two which were out there in the galaxy. Bringing the three together caused reality to go cross-eyed and has something to do with Cypher and the Fallen showing up randomly throughout Imperial history in some sort of causality loop.

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>>52779933
>Time-traveling Fallen Marines
fug :DDD

>>52780388
That was in vanilla. I don't think Nobledark has the same set of events that led to Quantum Fallen Space Marines.

how many points would fielding a spess marine chapter be?

>>52780434
not chapter, company

>>52779933
Dear lord, I know Black Library has produced some bad fluff but even this is a bit much for them.

>>52780712
Welcome to Nobledark Imperium: We dig up and sift through some of Black Library's more cringe-inducing fluff so you don't have to.

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>>52778230
>SCP Foundation's Ethics Committee
That's a good way of describing it. The rest of the Inquisition needs to know if it can be done. They need to know if it is right.

So the assassins on Karamazov's payroll are assassins rather than Assassins bar a few freak occurrences. Trained killers taught unofficially by the approved of trained killers. One of the freak occurrences would have to be the idiot trying to jab Oscar in the head with a C'Tan phase blade because Pariah gene is very rare.

>>52780388
>>52781955
I think that they would have come to the attention of the Ordo Chronus. That might have, in fact, been what happened to them. They fight a shadow war across all of time and space, hunting each other sideways through no-linear space both pursued by the Hounds of Tindalos and stranger things who have their scent and come at them through strange angles.

So far only one of that strange breed of Inquisitor has been found since they all vanished in late M37. HE was discovered in the cargo holds of the ship Hoec's Grace captained by the in/famous Prince Yriel. He vanished into the crowd when they made port and the Prince will speak nothing of the mad, terrible things he was told.

>>52775192
Cybernetics warfare and nothing else.

No history, no culture beyond military, no industry or scientific interest beyond military application and no notions of morality at all. Their only interest is war and not even for any reason. It's not even like they enjoy it like orks do.

The most "need" they have is that they break down corpses into food or new soldiers to perpetuate the war.

So Fyodor coup basically like this, yes?

> Gathers followers in the more orthodox factions. Won over head of Ordo Securitas/ Sicarius.
>> Implants followers and henchmens all over the Travelling Court Fleet. The escorts and hanger-on ships got implanted with all kinds of explosives.

Lots of Blanks and assassins, some Assassins infiltrated the ship, creating a blank spot preventing Seers from predicting the coup. Most shrugs it off as the Royal Couple needing some... private time. (Eldrad included)

Now, they wait.

> Salem happens. The Emperor flips his shit, storms off to the Ordo Securitas representative (who is actually a follower of Fyodor). Decided to start the coup early.

Eldrad decided to visit, but suddenly receives a vision of what was to come resulting him havig the sprint of his life through the Webway to the Court. Pulls all favors he can spare to the quinns, Yreal, Ceggers, etc.

>> The coup happens the next day when they were unloading guests off the fleet. Simultaneously, hundreds of charges, detonators, cyclonic torpedoes and warp bomb detonated, instantly crippling if not outright vaporizing most of the ships in the fleet, resulting in countless casualties, -important ones- at that. The Court itself was crippled, dead in the air and on a collision course with the space station/ the planet itself.

The infiltrators and assassins within the Court struck at once, revealing themselves from the disguise as lowly janitors, scribe or guards themselves, massacring the surprised loyal Guards and even many Custodes. The Emperor almost got killed when he lost his footing during the explosions and the Ordo Securitas representative whipped out a 'murder-knife' and was just about to shiv him when Eldrad almost exploded out of the webway portal within the chamber and decked the assassin.

>>52785025 (cont)

No sooner than Empy and Macha/Isha realized what was happening did the adamantium bulkhead to the room exploded and assassins poured into the room.

> A massive battle ensues, with the Royal Couple and Eldrad (and Kitten who was just behind the two) resorting to their more conventional weapons and magics (but still, an effin flaming sword is still very awesome) due to the sheer amount of Blanks (and a very special Culexus) on board... as the Court is rapidly losing orbit, spiraling downward to the planet below meaning that they only now have 12 turns to get to the escape pods OR the bridge and defeat the Culexus in order to use their full power and stop the Court from performing exterminatus via orbital drop on the Hive World below.

>>52785025
>>52785096
That's about it.

It was not the resounding success that Fyodor wanted it to be.

When the assassins started pouring into the throne room to butcher the rest of the High Lords, attendants, assistants and other high ups the Emps and Isha were supposed to already be dead. There would still have been the most high up casualties had simultaneously in imperial history but not the total decapitation strike Karamazov was hoping for. It's hard to do your job when Gilgamesh and Asherah are going full RIP AND TEAR at you and your coworkers. More so when Merlin gets his angry wizard boots on.

Although it was a horrendously bad mistake on Oscars part to go to the head of Ordo Securitas it was also a terrible idea on the part of Fyodor Karamazov to reveal his hand so soon and commit what must have been all of his Blanks and Pariahs in one suicide attack.

Also the rebelling faction is not the orthodox sect in this AU. In this AU the orthodox sect is the live and let live sect. The monodominats and other super authoritarians are radicals because they are going against the traditional order of things.

>>52785226

The final part got a chuckle out of me.

And the first too. XD

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>>52785096
On a tangential note, sometimes I wonder if the Emperor's big flaming sword is really a sword at all, as opposed to a force field projection of sword-shaped space that is constantly on fire due to friction burn due to displacement of the atmosphere. It would explain why it's on fire and why the Emperor seems to be able to whip it out at a moment's notice.

On the other hand, I don't think that's how forcefields work in 40k and the Emperor's blade seems to have persisted since his death.

>>52785226
>>52783532

Isn't the Securitas also in charge of the Sisters of Battle as its militant arm? How are Oscar and Isha going to react to the fact that the Securitas rebelled, given the whole "who watches the watchmen" kind of thing.

>>52785601

Surprise, at first until they realize that appointing someone ultra-authoritative as the head of the Securitas is a bad move, especially with Fyodor -was- being the High Lord Inquisitor...

>>52785096

Heh, this reminds me of the Assassinorum Execution Force, only with the 4 HEROES OF THE IMPERIUM versus the assassins and THE Culexus Assassin and 4 less turns.

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>>52785601
The thing about Orders Militent is that they are made up of political and religious fanatics who are totally loyal to (secretly worships) the Imperial Couple. If the Grandmaster of Ordo Securitas pulls some shit like a coup, the Sisters would be the first ones to blow the Grandmaster's brains out with a bolter shell. When Fyodor's Coup happens, if the Sisters find out that some of Ordo Securitas was involved (which they will know), they would proudly go on a killing spree on purging the Sisters Orders and Ordo Securitas of any Fyodor loyalists. Although I suspect Orders Securitas already knowns about Fyodor's rise in power, the order might be fighting a Shadow War to prevent something like a coup from happening, maybe even fighting amongst themselves before the coup starts. But Orders Securitas failed to stop him as they didn't think Fyodor would act so soon. Orders Securitas is the STASI at that point and they would've known something was going to go down with that insane Inquisitor in the middle of it, they just aren't sure what is going to take place.

>>52786187

It really does fit.

Eldrad = Culexus
Kitten/ Ciaphas = Vindicare
Macha/ Isha = Callidus
Oscar = Eversor

Should Ciaphas Cain HERO OF THE IMPERIUM also be in the throne room during the coup and join the party partly due to his luck?

>>52787098
Probably not.

Cain is the Imperium's voice on Beil-tan not Beil-tan's voice in the Imperial Court.

>>52769445
>Lion

>Watchers of the Dark take care of him like usual.

The noble Knights respect the "Forest spirits" and teach him chivalry.

Make the Lion basically a Breton

I'm not sure where people are getting the idea of a "High Lord Inquisitor" or "Head of the Securitas" from. The canon sources emphasize that the Inquisition is a decentralized and collaborative organization with a hierarchy in the loosest sense, the sector/segmentum conclaves being the main source of authority and collective decision making for the inquisition. The closest thing to a High Lord is the Inquisitorial Representative on the council of the high lords, and I think it's been said that for some Inquisitor Lords it's actually a demotion since it gets them away from the conclaves and front lines. Karamazov could be an exceptionally nfluential Inquisitor Lord but there's no one person he could go to for help with his coup, it would have been a long process of persuading other inquisitors at extreme risk of discovery because if even one person outs him he could be done for. This makes the premature execution of the coup and even bigger blow, it was probably decades of work that ultimately came to nothing. I also have some quibbles about the power levels invoked in the coup, but I'll post that once I'm done with work on a real computer.

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>>52787355
It's already established that Lion is a sworn knight of Franj, younger brother to Luther who was heir to the ancient and noble house of Jonson.

Watchers were the natives of Caliban who covertly joined the Imperium in it's early days days swearing servitude to the Dark Angels in exchange for getting off of their shit Chaos infected home planet.

They nuked their homeworld in War of the Beast to stop Crone Eldar getting hold of the Old One crap left behind there.

Lion is in a hospital bed on The Rock. He is in a coma. He has been in a coma for the majority of imperial history. They know exactly where he is and what he's doing because it's not a secret, as such, and somebody has to keep an eye on him.

He knows about chivalry because he was raised by his father to be a knight in service to the Franjic monarch under the command of his older brother. He isn't a social cripple because of childhood isolation this time around so much as he is on the shallow end of the autism spectrum.

>>52787355
As >>52787568 said, Lion is 99% done, we just need a write-up for what happened during the WotB with Luther's betrayal and the final battle between Lion and Luther, both of which we have the broad strokes of planned out but no detailed writeup because Lion-anon couldn't come up with anything.

>>52786209
It could be that the head is a politician who was not from in-house.

>>52788627
I always wanted to organized what the governance levels exist in the Imperium. If anybody would back Fyodor, it would be a Viceroyal of the Gothic Sector because of the 12th BC and the witch hunts are taking place within that place anyway.
>Planetary Governorship
Runs anything smaller then a system, including but are not limited to planets.
>System Grand Barony
Runs a solar system.
>Sub-sectorial Dukedom
Runs a sub-sector.
>Sectorial Viceroyalty
Runs a sector.
>Segmentum Despot
Runs a Segmentum.

>>52788894

In canon there are rulers for:
Planet
(optional) sub sector
Sector

Above that level there is no single ruler. Instead you have Lords Militant (army), Grand Admirals (navy), Cardinal Astral (church), and so on

And even on the Planet and Sector levels, the Governor or Lord cannot order Arbites or Ecclesiarchy/Sororitas around. And has to negotiate with Mechanicus who are outside his hierarchy altogether.

Is this AU going away from that?

>>52785226

This reads like a wank.

> so this one single inquisitor totally tried to coup the entire Imperium by himself
> the head of Inquisition (not that such exists) was in his pocket secretly
> his agents got totally past Custodes and seers and everyone, nobody expected it
> he had his own imperial assassins too and they almost killed the Emperor
> he even blindsided Eldrad who had not been so surprised or desperate since the Beast
> the Emperor and the Goddess Incarnate were reduced to personal combat by his schemes
> and this inquisitor even got away and now does his own civil war, not that its mentioned anywhere else in setting
> it is like so epic you guys!

>>52789579
Its a very rough draft.

How would you do it?

>>52789579
Yeah I'm kinda inclined to agree with this, I like the idea of porting over Karamazov to show how insane a canon grimdark inquisitor would be in the nobledark AU, but the coup attempt needs some rework.

>>52789925
well for one, If any one prominent Inquisitor tries anything he had all the other prominent inquisitorial retinues to worry about. Even assuming this plan isn't absurd (it is) it disregards all the conspiracies that go above Fyodor's pay grade, like the Hydra, which seems to be the imperial couple's independent military ordo that operates with a governing body independent even to them, or the Omega legion, or the Illuminate, not to mention diplomatic accords with the Necron Star Empire or the Harlequins.

In short, Fyodor can't do shit, because the Inquisition is the ATF when compared to the Hydra or Harlequins' SCP

>>52790292
Fair point.

Should we keep the rebellion as an Inquisition civil war or dump it altogether?

>>52790292
I wouldn't go that far, that's underselling the Inquisition a fair bit and is replacing Inquisition wank with Alpha Legion wank, which I personally find more annoying because it's so ill defined. High level Inquisitor Lords are gonna be punching up there with the big sneaky players considering the vast resources at their disposal.

>>52790631
Fair enough, and I'd like to add that we've had the alpha legion, omega legion, and the Hydra as distinct organizations out of universe, only necessarily inscrutable in character. There was a lot of good development done on the resources available to the forces of the Hydra, and who they ultimately answer to. The fact that there is no single head is a feature, not a flaw.

>>52789579
I concur with the below anon that I like the idea of Karamazov being essentially a vanilla Inquisitor ported to Nobledark, but the degree to which he tries to pull off his coup is a little ridiculous. If anything, he would be trying to enforce his own ideal of justice and causing a schism in the Inquisition while ducking Imperial retaliation. Trying to assassinate the big E would be suicide unless you had Vandire-level control of things.

However, I do not like the idea of the Inquisition being the "little leagues" compared to the Alpha Legion. That is literally the job the Inquisition was made for.

>>52791307
I'm now coming round to this opinion. I regret writing this

>>52785226

It does seem out of place now.

I'd have him demoted to head of a radical faction rather than outright arch-traitor and attempted Vandire.

The Inquisition is only in little leagues because it is an answerable government agency. whilst this does hamstring them in what they can do a little they also get better legitimate funding.

>>52791460
I would say the Inquisition is better funded and better equipped than the Alpha Legion and related groups. If there's an unknown threat (say a previously unknown Xenos Horrificus or a destructive Xenos or DaoT artifact of unknown origin) the Inquisition is better suited for it. The Alpha Legion is better with the "usual suspects" (i.e., Chaos).

>>52790631
>>52790883
Inquisition seems to be court intelligence, Hydra-alpha/omega legion seems much more like a modern/post-modern intelligence apparatus. The imperium's military/fleet intelligence could be presumed to do their respective fields.

>>52791460
No regrets friend, OC is always welcome and it spurred good discussion

>>52791460

You are wrong the Inquisition is peerless and has no one to answer to other than the Emperor of Mankind. They wield unlimited authority to carry out their judgement.

>>52792643
So they are answerable then.

And it's been stated that they are no unlimited in their authority.

Some writefaggotory last thread where they were capped at a retinue size of 100 (so no outright commandeering armies) and no ship larger than a frigate.

Not that this is ever going to be too much of a problem.

100 cream of the crop, the 0.01% best of the best of any word you visit and a frigate sized ship pimped out with the best the Tau + Eldar + Mechanicus + Hubworlder + Anything else you like the look of is a holy fucking shit levels of badass.

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>>52793155
As small as the inquisitorial retinue is, the inquisitors can still request direct command over armadas and regiments. When asking about this request, the other branches of the Imperium can tell the Inquisition to fuck off or let them take command. In theory, an inquisitor can command a battlefleet or a corp, but that almost never happens because the current officer commanding over these groups won't even think about handing them over to the Inquisition.

>Enter Clearance
>Password: ******************************
>Verifying...
>Commencing biometric scan...
>Verified. Welcome, Inquisitor.

>Opening file...

OPERATION: BLACK BRASS PIG (Onyx Desert 22)
SOURCE: Ordo Malleus, Task Force MUSTARD-3
AUTHOR: Interrogator NACRE NETWORK
[Context: personal report from NACRE NETWORK to DIAMOND STAG, regarding cleanup efforts in the wake of the 8th Black Crusade]

Our worst fears have been realized. While physically relatively unscathed by their seven-month captivity at the hands of the Chaos Eldar, deep psychic trawls have revealed extensive mental tampering. Testing of 500 randomly-selected individuals out of the seven million survivors indicate at least half the population of Merriman's World are affected.

The exact purpose of the tampering is still unknown, and I must admit the technicalities are beyond me. Attached is a more detailed report by Primaris Xavier and Seer Iyonais. [Attached File: (Onyx Desert 20) Deep Probe Trawl Results] We do know there are two parts to the tampering. The first is a simple memory edit, evidently to replace any memories of the tampering itself with memories of the long-term confinement and neglect reported by the initial liberation teams. The second is a 'knot' of psychic energy hidden deep within the victim's mind, requiring deep probing to uncover. The exact function of this knot is unclear, but we can safely assume it to be a booby-trap of some variety.

This poses a dilemma. Releasing the survivors of Merriman's World into the Imperium before they have been screened is obviously impossible, when any one of them could be a ticking time-bomb. However, scanning all seven million of them would take resources that are simply not available, not with the counter-attack under way. The alternative, simply killing them all, is unpalatable. Perhaps you have an alternative, Lord?
>End file

A look into the aftermath of the Black Crusades. Thoughts?

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>>52794673
>Chaos Eldar fucks with the Imperium in a creative way after the Black Crusade ends
>Black Crusades are about wasting time, men, and materials for the Imperium more then Chaos can lose
>Each of these wars slowly detroit all of civilization
>Necrons and Tyranids are just icing on the cake
I like it.

>>52790883
>>52791642
>>52791687
What did we end up with about the AL? I didn't know of anything other than the ominous stuff I put in the primarch chart (which by lucky coincidence fit really well with the column titles)

>>52795400
They're doing some shady shit somewhere.

>>52794972
>slowly detroit all of civilization
I mean, the Imperium's going the way of the city, so...

>>52794673
>it's there solely to get them to waste their time/pointlessly kill people, it doesn't actually do anything

>>52794972
Other methods of fucking with the Imperium include, but are not limited to:
-Deliberately saturating the planet with Ork spores
-Leaving caches of captured Guard weapons around for the use of said Orks once they mature
-Leaving behind bunches of genestealers in suspended animation
-Infecting the entire biosphere with Nurgle's plagues
-Keep enough Meltheads around to completely saturate the atmosphere with psychic nerve gas
-Turn the entire (former) population into undead mutant abominations using Meatweavers
-Massive nuclear bombardment with warheads tuned to maximize fallout
-Asteroid impact
-And the classis, sacrificing the population in blasphemous rituals to transform it into a daemon world.

>>52769445
>tfw you spend the majority of your life working and staying fit but all you just wana do is eat delicious junk food

Poor Queen Lily.

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Page 9 nope

>>52796286
That would be pretty funny.

>>52793934
So would that sort of relationship be forbidden or just mildly naughty?

>>52799234
thats why vect got malys to do it

>>52799646
I'd say disapproved of as it might lead to unprofessional conduct but not outright forbidden by law because compared to all the other far worse shit an Inquisitor could potentially be doing fucking the retinue is pretty fucking petty.

>>52775192
>>52775161
>Strogg
>Rak'Gol

Hot damn those two go together well.

Strogg are obviously human, or at least close enough to legally pass for human in this Imperium, and the Rak'Gol are very not.

Rak'Gol and the humans are both semi-lobotomized and forcibly implanted with hardware and programed to war. Always and only war. The humans did not start out that way and so presumably neither did the Rak'Gol.

The cybernetics are the Strogg. Where did they originate and what started them? Nobody knows for sure. They inhabit a halo of systems around the Hadex Anomaly at the boundary. The effects of the anomaly at that range is enough to make living there unpleasant for everyone but not to the point of total uninhabitability.

The Rak'Gol are a species now totally subsumed into the Strogg and because that is not considered living the Rak'Gol are officially extinct. As are whatever abhuman strain once dwelt in that region of space.

The Hadex Anomaly is known to cause disruptions in time and it is unknown if the Strogg dwel near it because that is where it has been driven to or because that is where they are from. Some in the Inquisition an the Seer Councils are of the opinion that the Anomaly is going to be caused by humanity some time in the distant future and the hole will travel back. Therefore the unique stroggified abhuman strain is in fact a descendant branch of humanity rather than an ancient now extinct offshoot. This is not a popular view but it is very possible. If true then the Strogg are attempting to carve out their empire early to remove whoever drove them back through time.

The only good point of the Strogg is that they are as lethal to everyone else as they are to the Imperium, are immune to the temptations of Chaos, can't be infected by gene-stealer and have incorporated resilient enough nano-tech to counter Necron Grey Fog.

>>52801525
Take this with it
>>52775603
The Mechanicus recognize them, oh yes they do. They seem so very familiar. They are them, their mirror image. It is Machine with no spirit, soulless abominations made in mockery of the Omnissiah.

Is this them from some hideous future shat out by the Hadex?

The flesh was human once, the machine looks not unlike a wicked incarnation of man might make.

It is Abomination before the Omnissiah.

Bump

>>52802786
>>52801525
It could work but good God it needs refining. The inclusion of the Hadex Anomaly is good because that shit is odd even by 40K standards. I like that it seems to be more like the Borg rather than it being a race in it's own right.

I don't think bolting down their origins is a good idea if we are going to be basing them of the Strogg (are we really going with that name?). Big thing about the Strogg is that how they got so fucked up was a mystery.

>>52791460

As to the power and independence of the Inquisition, what I think would be right is:
- direct (combat) power is limited so they cannot take over other structures of the Imperium or start civil wars.
- as the best people at finding things out, only very special characters like Trazyn can evade or subvert the Inquisition, and not always
- conversely, someone with enough sympathizers among the Inquisition (like a rogue ex-inquisitor) can stay in hiding pretty much indefinitely. As covert aid is provided, investigations slow walked or sabotaged and so on.
- so limited power on strategic level, but high on a personal level


And for Karamazov, I think the "judge" aspect should be played up. Something like this:
Fyodor Karamazov was a capable and brilliant Malleus inquisitor
But unlike other inquisitors who battle demons in person, or infiltrate cults he was more focused on the aftermath of warp incursions: finding out what happened, who was at fault, punishing the guilty and negligent so it does not happen again.
Karamazov became famous for his impartiality and harsh yet fair judgments. Earned a lot of enemies and special attention from Chaos as he tended to mess up their longer term projects.
Then Black Crusade happens and shit is crazy with cults showing their hand on almost every world in Obscurus.
Karamazov goes into overdrive, starts to err on the side of burning. Secretly starts to enjoy the power of judging and punishing others.
At Salem he goes too far and local government/military drives him offworld while they petition Imperium to put a leash on the guy.
Karamazov declares Salem beyond redemption and does Exterminatus.
Oscar finds out and tells Inquisition to fix their shit. Isha may or may not call in an outside party to assist because she FELT billions of her (adopted) children die.
Karamazov goes underground but has enough covert support to stay out of reach while still showing up in random isolated places to burn "weaklings and traitors".

>>52806851
This is a considerable improvement.

Like holy fucking Jesus so much better.

Of the old story all I would keep is Isha going to the Space Sharks as it shows that she is, as a previous anon put it, nature red in tooth and claw and has absolutely no problem with killing or arranging the killing of those she deems beyond redemption. Also given that she is sibling to Khine she would probably consider the Carcharodons, progeny of Curze as they are, perfectly normal.

Also to explain why the Space Sharks won't let go of the Nicor despite being a 2nd or more founding with no direct link to the damn thing.

>>52801525
>>52802786
Wait, are we seriously considering adding factions from other universes into this? Because that feels like it's crossing a line akin to "too obvious of a reference".

>>52808006
Well, presumably it would be re-named. But this is supposed to be a relatively light re-write; no reason not to leave the Rak'Gol as they are.

>>52808006
Out of all faction from other universes the Strogg are the most 40k but I see what you mean.

We could just have it where the Rak'Gol have been converting humans and built up a an empire around the Hadex on this stolen strength.

Rak'Gol are just as fucking awful in this AU as Vanilla it seems so lets run with it and make them the worst of the Strogg and the Borg rolled in there as well.

For extra points the Iron Hands could have been the Great Crusade Expeditionary force that found them first and at first assumed hey were humans uplifted by union with the Machine. Certainly they looked like half the people in Antarctica when the Gorgon was growing up.

Then they find out what is going on. The soulless horror of it all.

Since then there have been numerous wars between the Imperium and the Rak'Gol with casualties on both sides quite horrendous. But they aren't bothered by the dead like real people are.

>>52808006
>>52808189
>>52808274
I'm really, really against this desu - honestly, I don't know much about the Rak'Gol to start with, but I feel like we should give the big xenos players a little more love before moving onto every other race ever mentioned in the fluff.

>Threadly reminder that we are still primarily here to tweak or change Vanilla,
not outright rewrite or expand on it, and certainly not to make shitty crossover fanfiction.

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>>52808391
Rak'Gol are the bastard child of a Xenomorph and a Centaur with a love of brutal looking but effective cybernetics.

4 arms, 4 legs, 1 tail with technology slightly behind the Imperium but not so much as to make them unable to compete. A pack mentality that borders on swarm behavior. Highly aggressive. Also seem to be extremely radiation resistant if their ships are anything to go by. As they age they become more mechanical, much like the AdMech.

I just thought that we need another "Bad Guy" faction to keep the Nobledark dark and be they outside antithesis of the AdMech.

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>>52808006
Like this guy >>52791687 said, Inquisitors are the intelligence service meant for the Imperium's galactic court intrigues, and best suited for such, while the Alpha/Omega legion is better arranged for paramilitary conspiracies

>>52808621
meant to link to this >>52806851

>>52775161
Sure. Why not some Men of Iron shenanigans?

>>52808761
>>52775161
I think we've got enough factions already. If we want a counterpoint to the Mechanicus/Borg ripoff, we've already got one in the form of the Dark Mechanicus. I think it would be a better idea to expand on them than introduce a new faction.

>>52808870
I'm just thinking fluffwise.

>>52808621
Oh fuck dat filename.

I chuckled sensibly.

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>>52797475
What would the Dark City version of junk food even be?

>>52809015
>huge
>charming
>fond of their scenic starship and permissive legal system
>very happy to beat you to death with a power-club studded with adamantine shark teeth

>>52809836
That's Isha's new pet project. Getting the Carcharodons from here to that once this job is over.

Not because she has a problem with a race of murdering predator people but because their new and improved role in the galaxy demands a level of civility. Or at least the public impression of it.

glurgle gurf my past rises again to fuck my brain

argh why

erlangaerlang
a
erhknealknannnnnnnnnnn
But anyway, ORKZ.

I imagine that orkz have got a small religious civil war going on. Not that any ork would agree necessarily, but the proliferation of chaos worship throughout their ranks has to be of concern to greater ork kind. Even if they are not existentially opposed to Chaos, it just ain't orky to not be worshipping Gork (Or Mork).

Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka is the biggest and the baddest, and thus an example that ork bosses look to and hope to pound. Right now, Ghazghkull is tolerating the Chaos gits. He has Chaos orks under his banner, bears dark eldar visitors, and has been rumored to have taken a drink from Nurgle's Brew and attained the questionable blessings thereof. But, he hasn't taken a bow to any God, and has rejected the mark of Chaos Undivided. Which is a bit of a problem to Malys. Vect has always been the more pragmatic of the pair, and has convinced Malys to set aside the religious quibble for now, but he is suspicious.

Brain boyz exist. There is no doubt about that. But they are also frustratingly hard to find. Ghazghkull has flatly denied any attempts to identify his brain boyz, and for good reason. Vect has been known to put out bounties on uncooperative brain boyz, to keep orkz reliant on Eldar advisors. Ghazghkull seems to hold no grudge over this, and is content to lend his horde's strength when the Unholy Pair ask. But he isn't telling them where his brain boyz are.

In a probably unrelated point, Makari the Banner Waver is always close to Ghazghkull. Even when Ghazghkull was starving in the Siege of Callow, he chose to eat his nobs before his beloved banner waver.

Vect isn't stupid. He checked Makari. By all surreptitious psychic probings, the gretchin is an idiot, even by gretchin standards. But still, it's suspicious how attached Ghazghkull is to this annoying little wretch...

>>52809731
>pic related

>>52811694
Any word on Gorgutz?

>>52811941
I like Gorgutz. I'm not sure if he can be relevant on a galactic scale though. Well, I could think of ways to make him such, but I don't know if anybody would want that.

I'm kind of tempted to make him a long running nemesis of Colonel-Farseer Taldeer, but that might be a bit too much.

>>52808576
We have the Dark Mechanicus.

Indeed, I was going to bring this up back during the last Fulgrimdump, but we may need to do some expanding on how Mars joined the Imperium. It turns out in canon the union between Mars and Earth wasn't as cozy as most people thought it was. Mars sent a fuckhuge fleet to keep Earth from unifying, and the Emperor beat them so badly only one in ten made it back. Then the Emperor showed up with his fleet in Martian orbit, and the Mechanicum surrendered and got a peace with generous terms. The whole “were forced to join at gunpoint” was written out of history. It’s why the Dark Mechanicum were such an issue during the Horus Heresy.

Obviously, this "fake treaty that was really signed at the barrel of a gun and was subsequently edited to be rosy by history" wouldn't fit with the themes here. We discussed in previous threads that the Unification of Mars happened about the same time as that of Earth, but the Warlord got done earlier and therefore got established in space and controlled most of the inner Solar System before Mars gets their shit together.

I was thinking of what the Martian leadership like during this period. The Fabricator-General during the Great Crusade is probably one of those figures like Jenetia Krole, Malcador, or Arik Taranis that despite not being a primarch was still an important figure in the early Imperium. I was thinking that maybe the Fabricator-General was someone who was relatively charismatic for a magos similar to Arkhan Land (but probably not the same guy, as Land was someone who hated sitting still), who saw the Imperium’s burgeoning empire as an opportunity to exploit rather than a crisis. If Mars joined up, they would be able to use the Imperium’s expansion to reconnect to all the lost forge worlds and get access to all the STCs that Mars didn’t have the resources to get to outside the Sol system.

>>52812029 (cont.)
Obviously more factors contributed than this, but it might be one reason why Mars just didn’t dismiss the Imperium out of hand. It also didn't hurt that the Warlord didn't burn down the Antarctic Mechanicus enclaves in this timeline.

But then you get some big schism in the Mechanicus. Possibly from the AdMech trying to enforce uniformity among groups that had not communicated for thousands of years. Possibly because some tech-priests resented joining the Imperium. Possibly because some of the other tech-priests resented MARS telling them what to do.

Eventually some guy (maybe Anacharis Scoria) goes "You know what? I'll make my own Mechanicum. With mecha-blackjack and hooker servitors" and causes the Mechanicus to rip itself a new one. It ends up being a "minor" war in Imperial history, because it wasn't coupled with the WotB like the Schism of Mars was with the Horus Heresy, and the AdMech don't end up like the Assassins because the loyalists were enraged and fought as hard as the rest of the Imperium to stamp them out, but it means there are subsequently a lot more crazy tech-priests in the Eye of Terror.

>>52811694
>In a probably unrelated point, Makari the Banner Waver is always close to Ghazghkull. Even when Ghazghkull was starving in the Siege of Callow, he chose to eat his nobs before his beloved banner waver.

Vect isn't stupid. He checked Makari. By all surreptitious psychic probings, the gretchin is an idiot, even by gretchin standards. But still, it's suspicious how attached Ghazghkull is to this annoying little wretch...

I like this. It plays up the ambiguity regarding "who's the Brain Boy" without making a commitment. If Makari's the Brain Boy, it means he's smart enough to hide it from a Dark Eldar probe. If Ghazzy's the Brain Boy, all of a sudden Malys has to deal with the fact that the unofficial face of Ork-kind is also the worst kind of security risk. And if they're both Brain Boyz?

>>52811694
Interesting. I was also thinking about the relationship between the Orks and Chaos, and how Chaos directs the Orks. Simply leading them to good fights would be insufficient, since it's not like there's a shortage of those. You mention advisors filling in for Brain Boyz, which could work. In fact, if it's been going on for 10,000 years it's probably tradition at this point.
Another option I was considering was bribery, providing flash dakka in exchange for attacks on certain targets. Almost certainly not enough to outfit entire warbands, but you only need to bribe the Warboss.
Third- slavery. Farm Ork spores under controlled conditions, deny the new spawn any chance to organize, insert yourself as their Warboss, and then throw them at what you want gone. Doing this would probably be what pisses Ghazzy off more than anything. Also probably relatively rare, due to the inherent difficulties in farming Orks.

>>52811694
>>52812158
>>52812856
>Ghazghkull seems to hold no grudge over this, and is content to lend his horde's strength when the Unholy Pair ask
Nah, this put the Orks and Chaos way too close together, as well as Ghazzy taking Nurgle blessings. I thought we agreed a long time ago that Ghazzy was upending the established order because he hated Chaos and was looking to purge its influence from Ork-kind? The Beast was unique because he was the only major Warboss that actually full embraced Chaos, every other Warboss has considered them allies of convenience.

I mentioned this last thread but it's still relevant here:
"Narratively speaking, the Orks have always been a wacky wild card and to tie them too closely to Chaos would be to lose some of their flavor, otherwise you couldn't have shit like the Warboss that Waaagh'd into the Eye of Terror and fought daemons for eternity. Not mention Chaos has gotten a significant buff now that they're allied to the DE."

>>52813407
Yeah, but orks effectively replaced the chaos space marines I thought? There are chaos space marines out there, but not nearly as many as there are in vanilla. I wasn't making Ghazghkull one and the same as the rest of chaos (The Nurgle brew line I intended as more of a brag than a communion with Nurgle, but that's not clear, my bad), but that Ghazzy feels currently, he is gaining more than he's losing to Chaos at the moment. A fragile alliance that he'd be backstabbing with brain boy help as soon as he carves a power base out of the Imperium. Vect and Malys are also watching Ghazzy.

I revise it anyway. We have to come up with more Ork bosses anyway. Maybe an OC Donut Steel that's all for Chaos rah rah rah that the other orks hold in contempt can provide all the cannon fodder for the Chaos attacks.

>>52813407
>>52813749
Perhaps dissociate Chaos and the regular Orks, and emphasize the Chaos Orks more? We still have basically nothing about them, beyond the fact that they exist.

>>52813407
>>52813749
>>52813892
I would say that the replacement of the CSM isn't really a 1:1 kind of thing. On the one hand you have the Cronedar, who are the most prominent Chaos champions and actually outnumber the vanilla CSMs by a large margin (There's roughly 1 million canon loyalists, assuming for the moment the same number of traitors Cronedar outnumber them by several orders of magnitude).

Then you have the Orks. Not really associated with Chaos beyond the odd Boy, they tend to occupy the "heavy hitting muscle" role that CSMs had in many Chaos campaigns. End result is both Chaos and Orks are better organized than canon. At the same time Chaos is slamming their head against the wall over the fact that they can't seem to corrupt the Orks wholesale beyond the odd straggler.

Then you have the Fallen, which are CSMs, but rarer.

The Orks can easily do the same stuff like WAAAGHing into the Eye of Terror if they were Chaos-aligned. Chaos is inherently self-fighting after all. But they aren't aligned with Chaos like the Cronedar are. They are manipulated by the Cronedar or joined in alliances of convenience. Because they are not really integrated into Chaos, you get shit like Tuska Daemonkilla and other wacky stuff all the time because there's no channels of communication and no way for anyone, even the Dark Gods to tell an Ork to stop beyond it being taken as a mere suggestion.

>>52813407 (cont.)
>Ghazghkull seems to hold no grudge over this, and is content to lend his horde's strength when the Unholy Pair ask

I think this is more supposed to be Ghazzy lulling Malys into a false sense of security, while at the same time thinking of how their heads would look on his boss-pole. Ghazzy can think ahead. Same with the Nurgle thing (which could just be a rumor).

The other thing to point out is the alliance with the Dark Eldar has only been within the last millennium or so. Every Black Crusade before that has used the Orks as cannon fodder. Dark Eldar just scavenging weakened worlds, they don't want anything to do with Chaos and would bug out if it wasn't in their best interests (Vect has forced them into their current position). But then again those crusades didn't have Brain Boyz around. The alliance between Orks and Cronedar was one of convenience, and now it is...no longer convenient.

Also, I'd say that Ork-Chaos alliances are more common with Black Crusades and the big offensives. Little podunk war and the Cronedar are on their own.

>>52813749
I agree that an actual Chaos Ork warboss would be a good idea. I think this was brought up in a previous thread.

Has Ciaphas Cain nailed an Eldar in this timeline?

>>52815375
Nope.

All elder are psychic. If he gets that close and intimate with one she will be able to see all of his dirty little lies and secrets. It would be the end of his reputation and probably career

>>52815491
They're not that psychic. At least, general population isn't.

>>52815534
Still an unreasonable risk.

>>52815857
>>52815534
>>52815491
>>52815375
It's also a matter of personal taste as well. He might find women taller and skinnier than he is unattractive.

Also his girlfriend is an Inquisitor.

>>52812117
>>52812029
Is this Vanilla Canon or Nobledark Canon?

In this Nobledark it's already been, with broad strokes and nothing concrete, jotted down thusly;

>2 big powers in the Sol system, disorganized Mars and a long way behind it Voidborn Migrant Fleet
>Warlord starts his campaign to unite Old Earth. laughing_cogs.pict good look with that.
>Carves out a big nation by unifying/subjugating the smaller nations. laughing_adepts.holo enjoy getting Urshed
>Starts kicking the shit out of Ursh
>Wat?
>Starts taking ground from Ursh and Pan-Pacific Empire
>WTF!
>Drives back Ursh to it's last strongholds and Americas brough itno the fold
>OH FUCKINGSHIT UNIFY! UNIFY ALL OF THE THINGS!
>Migrant Fleet joins Old Earth
>FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu--------------
>Luna follows because Voidborn
>OH FUCKINGSHITTWATCUNTINGDICKNIPPLES!!!!
>Old Earth is now out of fucking nowhere the dominant power in Sol. Mars a distant second.
>Mars almost totally unified when Steward turns up at the head of the diplomacy convoy (ships borrowed from Horus).
>Olympus Mons priesthood head of ~70% of Mars priesthoods.
>Olympus Mons signs partnership agreement
>~30% are salty as fuck. Piss of into the inky black to start their own Mechanicum without all these rules and shit
>Mars Mechnicum piggybacks on the Expedition Fleets to bring the forgeworlds and old outposts back under Mars rule.

>>52817825
It doesn't automatically follow that all of the 30% ran off straight to Chaos. Many would have founded little closed hermit brotherhoods of their own.

Lets say that of the original Martians only 5% went to The Dark Side.

There might also have been older brotherhoods on far flung forgeworlds and outposts that fell of their own accord during the Age of Strife also.

In any case with cloning, forcible recruitment and intensive breeding programs there is not reason for them not to have built up their numbers considerably by the War of The Beast. Especially unconstrained by all notions of good and evil.

The original bastards that came back to Mars during the War of The Beast were the real problem as they were seen by the more gullible idiots in the lower ranks as returning messiahs who had gone to the wilderness and found enlightenment. And they knew the land better and, armed with strange new knowledge, could open the locked away shit in the Labyrinth of Night. Void Dragon almost got accidently freed at this time.

Oscar and Magnus used this as a great demonstration that not educating the plebs about Chaos is a really fucking stupid idea that will always, always result in colossal fuck ups.

Zagreus Kane deposed the Fabricator General of Mars in the aftermath of the WoTB and set about a series of reforms. He has seen the previous order as betraying the principles of the priesthood by embracing ignorance with their withholding of vital information from the population in general. The ruination Mars was suffering was a direct result of this. His reforms had a prodigious body count as he servitorized or executed those he held responsible. It was in these reforms that the AdBio was inducted into the AdMech and then encouraged to set up shop some distance away.

Zagreus Kane's reign for the next 1,500 years was hard but fair. He enacted no more purges of that nature, once was enough.

Do the Tau have equivalent of Inquisitors?

>>52816799
I'd say this is the more likely reason. Cain was only stationed on Biel-Tan after he knew Vale. Also the Biel-Tan Eldar that are in the right age bracket for him to be attracted to don't like him too much because they think he is holding Biel-Tan back from Glorious Conquest.

Still you never know.

>>52817825
The "peace at the barrel of a gun" and "Mars tries to invade Earth, only 1 in 10 survive"? That's vanilla canon. That's why I was bringing it up since it doesn't really fit the thematic tone of the nobledark setting.

>>52818747
Why would the Fab-General get deposed in this timeline?

>>52819873
I'd say they probably have actual Inquisitors. It was said before on several occasions that there are Eldar inquisitors and the Eldar are gung-ho in favor of an Inquisition. The Inquisition is probably pretty open as to who can join, so long as you're talented enough and you aren't going to prioritize your own people's needs over that of the Imperium. That's not just a problem for Tau, but any world (I.e., a Vostroyan Inquisitor making decisions that benefit Vostroya but harm the Imperium as a whole).

>>52820684
The tau are a little different due to their rigid caste system. I imagine that might be a source of some tension between the imperium and the tau. Could fire caste warriors bear the insult of an earth caste inquisitor directing their army? Could an air caste be trusted to properly investigate an ethereal?

>>52814287
More than that, we need enough warbosses of each god that the Tzeentchian Warboss cult that Fulgrim fought isn't a total impossibility.

>>52820684
>Why would the Fab-General get deposed in this timeline?

For being hideously unprepared and pursuing policies of information suppression rather than informing the lower orders of the risks.

This was directly responsible, they felt, for bad shit getting worse. Like any dangerously defective component they were removed from the machine and recycled.

>>52820792
the Tau are a client state being subsumed by a much larger, older power. The much of the caste system has broken down and much of the young generation of Ethereals have a keen interest in interstellar Imperial custom.

>>52820792
Inquisitors don't generally seize control of regular units as often in Nobledark (unless things are REALLY going to shit), since they have the Sororitas as their dedicated muscle, so that's not really much of an issue - and in any case, the Tau caste system means that you'll probably only end up with fire or water caste as the type who'd end up being Inquisitors.

>>52820984
>much of the caste system has broken down
It's literally a biological thing, so I'm not sure how that'd work - and besides, the Tau are by far the most intact of the "client" states that've joined the Imperium (Eldar are more of a full partner); it's been said a few times before, for example, that Tau regiments are self-contained units instead of being merged into IG regiments, purely because of their effectiveness at combined arms

>>52820792
It's possible that any Tau Inquisitors would not be welcome in their old home for breaking caste.

There's always work elsewhere in the galaxy.

>>52821395
That might be a solution. A 6th unofficial caste in Tau society for those that leave the septs. Purely a social construction, and not necessarily one reviled. Just that those who leave home can't come back because the tau fear for their culture.

>>52821536
What would this unofficial sixth caste be called?

>>52822787
I dunno. "Carbon."

>>52820792
I would say the Tau have the hardest time of any of the non-human/Eldar races at getting the hand of being an Inquisitor because of the caste system. I suppose the lines would be heavily drawn depending on what the Inquisitor did. If it was an Earth Caste Inquisitor studying tyranids and applying their findings to the battlefield, that would probably fly. Ethereals in general would get a free pass among the Tau because they're supposed to be commanding and investigating.

At the same time, if the Tau can't get their shit together, it means dealing with more non-Tau inquisitors (the Tau would probably sooner listen to a Tau Inquisitor than an offworld one in a politically sensitive matter) and losing a potential opportunity for political advancement in the Imperium.

However, in response to >>52820984, I'd say the Caste system hasn't so much broken down as it's become more flexible. You get some Tau in positions that aren't quite what they used to be, but are tangentially related to what they would be doing anyway. Like Aun'Shi. He's commanding like an Ethereal is supposed to be doing, but he's doing it on the front lines while fighting the enemy like a Fire Warrior would, and O'Vesa, who works with battlesuits like one would expect an Earth Caste to do but uses them to fight like a Fire Warrior.

>>52822787
Void? As in they have no caste, and their previous affiliation is "voided". They walk outside the caste system for the Greater Good.

>>52823732
Could work.

The derogatory name for them being Outcaste which has the connotations of being forcibly kicked out of society rather than being placed outside for a constructive purpose.

On a related note the Farsight Enclave is Outcaste on all official documents because fuck that guy.

The Tau in the Nemesor Zahndrekh's fifedom are unknown to the Tau Empire due to distance. They would probably get classed as proto-Tau or possibly Casteless. Or Yokel-Tau if the classification is done by a Water Caste and it's been a long day.

>>52823732
I like void.

>>52820526
Foolish youngsters barely on their first Path think that.

Anyone with any years behind them have heard the stories, seen the reports. The things he did on Gravalax, Perlia, Periremunda, Adumbria and Simia Orichalcae among many others. Only then, only as a warrior of such supreme skill and devotion and unmatched accomplishment, would the High Lords allow him to be their voice to mighty Biel-tan.

He is as near to an Autarch as a human can get. His name is Cain, it sounds like Khain. Coincidence? Possibly not. He is as Biel-tan as a human can be. But humans live shirt lives. He has lived hard and fast and left a scar on the unjust universe a mile wide. By eldar standards he is little more than a child but his age betrays his wisdom. He knows not to throw lives away in unwinnable battles but to march to battles where victory is possible, and with him as their herald that's more than should be. He is not pointless battle, he is conquest measured and sure in it's veteran's confident and unhurried march.

Adolescents might think he is some grey haired human in a funny hat but by Khine if you follow him you know that battle is as good as won.

>>52825288
So some might like him for his track record? Fair enough.

Though I thought Creed was the human the Eldar consider closest to an Autarch, in part because he lives on Cadia (whose culture is heavily Eldar-influenced) and because CREEEED!

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>>52825464
That's Ulthwe.

Biel-tan is not Ulthwe.

The eldar are not a unified people.

Each craftworld is the equivalent of a survivor civilization in it's own right and they are all suspicious of each other.

Which human is closest to an autarch Cain or CREEEEEEEED!!!!!!!!!!!!? depends on who is asked and what their idea of an ideal autarch is.

Creed is a cunning and scheming fucker who considers "cheating" the same as trying. And that suits the Farseer lead Ulthwe down fine.

Cain, or at least the mask he wears, is a direct fuck your shit up measured and meticulous campaign monster who will fuck your shit up on the large scale deployments and in person. This is the perfect warrior to the Autarch lead Biel-tan.

Cain also has links to the Inquisition and, the adolescents of the craftworld snigger, managed to tame one of them.

Also he has a daughter by Revered Mother Jubblowski who is oh holy fucking shit what the fuck slow down you crazy bitch levels of meat grinder and commands a brotherhood of Word Bearers.

Creed has Taldeer and LIIVI and can seemingly materialize baneblades out of places too small for baneblades to hide in but he is a creature of a different culture to glorious Biel-tan.

Given that in this AU Fenrisian wolves are technically a descendant species of humanity but with only ~5% human DNA and shit is generally less retarded what should Canis Wolfborn be?

I'm all for having him be just a "regular" Wolfen with the exception that his brain more or less still works. He is a tireless and high speed mauler that leads a pack of similar but less brilliant fuck ups to glory

>>52825633
What is this characterization of Cain? He's a diplomat, not a general so where this stuff about leading large deployments coming from? Let's remember he's still cowardly/competent like the canon Mitchell novels, and since he's diplomat and not a commissar there's no direct reason for him to end up in battle. He still has his hilarious bad luck so probably winds up in fights anyway (like say, Chaos Eldar try to assassinate an important Farseer and he happens to be there at the time), but not as a general leading armies.

>>52826323
My guess? The Wulfen are aspirants whose splicing initiation went a little sideways. Russ ironed out the kinks in the splicing process to prevent people from turning into wolf monsters. He didn't make it perfect. Those Space Wolves whose enhancements fall a bit too far on the bestial side end up getting sent to the 13th Company. Which is good, because the people there know how to keep such initiates more feral instincts under control. A lot of Lone Wolves end up there too, because the 13th know what it’s like to be an oddball. The 13th are especially good at mobility and fast assault combat, fighting with a ferocity comparable to the Blood Angels 1st company.

Also considering that Space Wolves are made via genetic splicing rather than gene-seed implants (which may be yet another reason why the Space Marine design won out), and the general nature of the Space Wolves it may be that some of the mutation have trickled down to everyone on Fenris. Not enough to be abhuman, but minor things like cold resistance or improved senses of smell.

Ironically, given that Space Wolves and Iron Hands don’t use gene-seed and aren’t technically Space Marines, they’re the only “Space Marine” groups where you could find female Space Marines. Although given that the Iron Hands are all basically Thallaxi or some Skitarii variant, the difference is basically moot. Had a funny idea of Cain meeting back up with The Reclaimers only to find Felicia among them, and trying to not freak out over the fact that his ex is now a foot taller than him and can crush him into a meat-basketball.

>>52826830
I think this is in-universe, with the people who buy into his hype.

>>52826830
He was... some sort of military before he was ambassador to Biel-Tan, because Biel-Tan would only accept a respected warrior as Ambassador. I forget if he was still a Commissar or something else, though.

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>>52826897
Related, a suggestion I had been thinking about for a while now.

The Daughters of Russ, better known as the Valkyries, are a Sororitas sisterhood unique for only recruiting from Fenris and the Fenrisian colonies. The Daughters claim to be matrilineal descendants of Leman Russ via his many daughters, but given the size of Leman Russ' family and the amount of time that has passd since Russ came to Fenris, it is likely that everyone on the Fenrisian Worlds can trace their ancestry back to Leman Russ in some way.

The Daughters of Russ are best known for their ferocity. Although the Sororitas in general are well known for their aggression and their single-mindedness, the Valkyries fight with a viciousness that seems almost inhuman. In addition, the Valkyries also exhibit senses and other abilities that seem beyond standard Sororitas-level augmentation, leading some to suspect that the Sororitas enhancements either enhance the effect of the Canis Helix genes present in the general Fenrisian population or reawaken Canis Helix genes that were formerly dormant. Surprisingly, the Daughters are otherwise rather conservative for Sororitas, looking down on the sisterhoods who add additional augmentations like kill-glands. To the Valkyries, such additions mock and taint the skill of an individual in battle.

However, at the same time the Daughters are also well-known for their talents in medicine. The Valkyries have close ties with the Sisters Hospitalier, and often find themselves being sent to reinforce flagging battalions and save as many of the wounded as they can. It is these practices that led the first leader of the Daughters of Russ to say “it is our job to look Morkai in the eye and tell him, ‘you will not touch them today’”, which eventually became shortened into the motto of the order.

Tl;dr: semi-werewolf valkyries. It's amazing that for all their Norse influences, the Space Wolves have nothing like valkyries.

>>52826830
He became a diplomat after March of the Liberator. Also the in universe hype train.

>>52828951
I like it. Kind of mirrors the White Scars.

>>52828951
>>52826897
I'm all for this although it needs to be stated that the inhuman genes very rarely get passed down from Space Wolves into the general population. The slightly enhanced ability to deal with extreme cold and the slightly better sense of smell have been present in the population for thousands of years but have not gotten any more extreme despite thousands of years of Space Wolves interbreeding with the baseline population.

Which is good because otherwise they would on average be getting more an more fucked up each generation as the inhuman genes trickle into the gene-pool.

>>52826323
The actual Fenrisian Wolves, the dog looking creatures the size of a donkey, are not considered human descendant for legal reasons. They aren't sapient and there isn't enough human left in them to repair them.

Also nobody in the Imperium knew what they were until relatively recently beyond "domesticated wolf-bear" because Fenris is a shit hole of interest to nobody bar the people that live there.

They might have started out as escaped lab experiments of Russ that were still mostly human but there was a broad selection inhuman genes to draw from across all the various strains of failures and generation after generation the human genes faded away as the "species" cross bred and stabilized with each other.

Fenrisian wolves have more in common with, bear, wolf, honey badger and whatever else genes Russ was working with at the time than they do with human. The only vestiges of human left are something odd about the eyes and the front paws have opposable digits.

But since they stabilized and returned to sanity, though not human level intelligence, they have been domesticated because Fenris has no real wolves and you need something to help round up the mammoths with.

>>52824177
I think that Nemesor Zahndrekh's realm is referred to as his estate. Because tweed and sovereignty.

Is there any physically apparent difference between Fenrisians and Baseline humans in this AU if they are all slightly mutated?

>>52834212

Fenrisian would be stronger, more agile, higher sense of smell, hearing, etc. With the cost of them being a bit more... wild then usual.

>>52834692

Kinda like Saim-hains to Biel-tainis to Ulthruans for example

What are the Demiurg like in this AU? We already have the Hubworlders and a 2nd type of dorfs in space seems a bit much. Is there anything that is or can be used to differentiate the two?

>>52835545
Could they be more nomadic like the Bentusii from Homeworld maybe?

>>52832108
Definitely, the suggestion was the "trickle-down" from Space Wolves having kids with the native Fenrisians is no more notable than, say, Cadian's purple eyes, the repeated evolution of lactose digestion in human beings, or the ability of people in the Himalayas to do just fine at high altitudes. Genetic variation, but still human in every sense of the word and not even enough to be abhuman.

It would also be the same genes trickling down, so at worst you would get someone no worse than a Space Wolf. Which while not ideal, is better than ending up with Fenris Wolves 2.0. The implication was the Valkyries are like mini-Space Wolves because their implants end up augmenting whatever does trickle down and the genes that are dormant for whatever reason.

Fenris wolves are the descendants of Leman Russ' first experiments and an entirely different story. Yes, they were once a man/woman, but they've got big chunks of wolf/grizzly bear/honey badger/chimpanzee in them, or some other issue in the splicing process. Probably more of the human genes survived than you would think. Enough that a Fenris wolf could theoretically breed with humans (i.e., abhuman), but in practice could never occur because they are so much larger and the two don't see each other as potential mates. Like chihuahuas and great danes, massive physical differences on the ends of a spectrum. Probably about as different as Beastment. IIRC, they are on the AdBio's list, they just are worried about any attempts to uplift the wolves screwing up the people of the Fenrisian colonies because they would have to target similar genetic markers.

>>52835545
>>52836823
The squats were also supposed to be nomadic in vanilla lore, though I think we have a better case here for making the squats sedentary and the demiurge nomadic. I agree we need to flesh out and distinguish the two more.

>>52836850
>Fenris wolf could theoretically breed with humans

Take the Knot!

>>52837564
In all seriousness, it would be a really bad idea, seeing as a best you're sexually molesting what is basically a mentally handicapped human that fails the Harkness test, and at worst you're trying to force intercourse on an animal that at adulthood is the size of a bear at minimum and just keeps growing.

Also it is likely that their reproductive organs are not canine-like, given the large amount of primate DNA.

Still, this doesn't stop some people from calling Fenrisians "wolf-fuckers", even though they are no such thing, much like Cadians are called "meatshields" or Martians get called "rustbuckets".

>>52836882
Well we already have the squats as a very culturally distinct, human descended, survivor civilization adapted to high gravity environments. There was even a bit of fluff where the mechanichus classified them as non-human out of spite because the hubworld smithies were their biggest competitor. We also had them concentrated in the galactic core region. Aside from also having a dwarf motif, the demiurg are none of those things.

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If we're going with Valkyrie Sisters than I'm going to suggest that they be drop troops because flying obviously, although I would draw the line at having a prominent figure called Brynhildr or some shit.

Although it does raise the question as to what their in-universe purpose is and how they fit in to the Space Wolves hierarcy.

Clearly they aren't part of the Adeptus Securitas as they are part of the people that they are meant to be monitor and correct and are therefore automatically considered unreliable. So they are a Warrior Sisterhood but obviously a local one with no political authority outside Fenris and it's colony worlds.

From this we can assume that they are part of the Space Wolves in some way because they wear power armour and have jump packs, both of which are expensive as shit to buy without access to the Space Marine requisition forms.

I would have it where they are a parallel organization to the Space Wolves that serve the same function as the official Sisterhoods in that they monitor the Brotherhood and police the Fenrisian Colonies. It's like the Adeptus Securitas but in microcosm. They do not directly answer to the High King of the Dog Soldiers and Fenris but to the High Priest of the Old Gods. At the moment this is Ulfrik the Slayer who does answer to High King Logan Grimnar but it's slightly complicated.

Logan is the secular leader of Fenris, his authority is undisputed in all matters save that of The Faith. He has minimal impact on the colony worlds who are fiercely independent. Ulfrik has no real authority on anything but The Faith but he holds as much sway on the colonies as he does on his forzen troll infested homeworld. Ulfrik, on paper, is subordinate in Logan in the military hierarchy but nobody can ever remember a time when he gave him an actual order. Logan requests and those requests are graciously agreed to. Ulfrik advises and that advice is wisely heeded.

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>>52840464
This is effectively power sharing between High Priest and High King. In the past there have been disagreements.

Side effect of the mildly anti-freeze laced blood and astounding stamina in native Fenrisians is that, the men in particular, are slightly more aggressive on average and have territorial instincts. The Canis Helix exagerates this somewhat. The sort of time when an High Priest and High King would disagree publicly is usually an emergency and in an emergency clear authority needs to be established. So they fight. It is an official duel as between two men of equal standing, firm in body and mind and as such is perfectly lawful and not murder. And it would otherwise be murder because such duels are to the death. The leading cause of death for High Priests and High Kings is death by the others hand. It is the way of things.

It's not as disorganized as it sounds as such an occurrence has not happened in over 500 years. For these centuries there has been Logar and Ulfrik and they have always been good friends.

With such close ties between state and faith the Valkyrie Sisterhood has been used by the High King to bring the colony worlds into closer alliance via the High Priest. The Fenrisians are becoming a genuine interstellar power in their own right recently, rather than a bunch of freaks living on borderline uninhabitable shit holes nobody else wants.

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A bit of a 40k Sisters of Sigmar/Cult of Ulric mash up eh? I like it.

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>>52840728
I don't know shit about WHFB.

I was just going for feral warriors women with jetpacks screaming pagan war prayers as they descend from a thunderhawk variant on wings of fire.

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>>52841044
>feral warriors women with jetpacks screaming pagan war prayers
So literally Cult of Ulric but in SPACE or maybe Sisters of Fenris.

>>52841044
Ah, sorry, the tensions mentioned reminded me of whfb. Your concept is pretty cool and very fitting anyway.

>>52840464
>Clearly they aren't part of the Adeptus Securitas as they are part of the people that they are meant to be monitor and correct and are therefore automatically considered unreliable. So they are a Warrior Sisterhood but obviously a local one with no political authority outside Fenris and it's colony worlds.

Good point. Although I think in canon there are some parts of the Sororitas that are restricted to certain worlds. However, with the Sororitas part of the Securitas here that probably wouldn't fly.

>>52840663
So it's kind of like early American history where in the middle of actual politicking you get duels between higher-ups where they feel their honor has been insulted (i.e., Burr v. Hamilton)?

Quick question to test the waters here, is everyone okay with the way the Fenrisians are going? I don't have a problem with it, but I recall we were trying to aim more for Norsemen and Gustavus Adolphus IN SPESS than wulfy wulf wulf. Having it so the Fenrisians are forming an actual society (albeit a rather hot-blooded one) than a bunch of tribal savages bonking each other with iron weapons.

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>>52841044
There is Valkia the Bloody that was so badass that when she died, Khorne was saddened with the loss of a great warrior that he decided to resurrect her as a daemon princess.

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>>52841472
I'm happy with it.

It isn't so much wolf wolfy wolfing wolves. So far the only wolfing seems to be the title Space Wolves.

Presumably a title chosen by Russ to differentiate between the new version and faulty old Dog Soldiers like himself. That and the Wulfen are still a thing.

As for them building an interstellar society and abandoning their older and stupider ways, it is happening. They've settle many worlds and made them their own, established trading deals and exchanged the services of Navigators for providing the very best bodyguards.

As of 999M41 Ulfrik and Logar it seems are in the process of stitching it all together into a cohesive whole. It will be the Norseman equivalent of Ultramar, but more diffused within the Imperium.

>>52836882
How about the Demiurg being a lot less numerous than their collective fleets would suggest.

They seldom leave their ships, trade is done, for preference, in orbit or deeper into space. When they need to fuck around on a planet they use semi-autonomous drones slaved to the will of their owners.

Their soldiery is likewise made up of artificial constructs. Often they look sort of like spiders.

It is suspected that there is in fact only one Demiurg per ship, but there is no way of knowing if this is true or not. If true they have a galactic population of much less than one million.

How long they live, what they are made of and indeed if the short sturdy figure is the Demiurg and not just some sort of avatar is impossible to say with certainty.

It is possible that they are a brain in a jar somewhere within the ship, or a spider looking creature like the warrior forms they build or they might not be organic at all. They might be the ship.

Their dislike of the eldar stems from the fact that their homeworld is now some distance inside the Eye of Terror.

>>52842244
Demiurg space gnomes. Squats/hubworlders space dwarves.

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>>52837564

>>52842244
The Demiurg are well defined in canon as reptilian (kinda) SPESS dwarves with a clan-like structure. They fly around in ships that house the majority of their clan. The Tau in vanilla deals with them on a brotherhood by brotherhood basis and like the Kroot can't seem to get them to deal only with the Tau.

IIRC, in vanilla they are also one of the few xenos that aren't shot on sight by the Imperium.

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Wait, so are we saying the Canus Helix genes are heritable? Because according to this chart we made a while back it should simply be part of the geneseed that's implanted. Like I'm not sure what >>52826897 means, the Canus Helix genes simply boost senses and instincts, you still need the rest of the standard geneseed to turn a man into 8 ft of muscle and for the Black Carapace to operate power armor.

>>52841744
>exchanged the services of Navigators for providing the very best bodyguards.
>Varangian Guard IN SPESS

I see what you did there.

>As of 999M41 Ulfrik and Logar it seems are in the process of stitching it all together into a cohesive whole. It will be the Norseman equivalent of Ultramar, but more diffused within the Imperium.

Ho boy. Looks like things are gonna get crazy if the Imperium survives the big upcoming war. A bunch of people are keeping quiet for now so they can push for a bigger say in the Imperium when/if it rebuilds. And they'll use the gratitude from their service during the war as a bargaining chip.

Fenris wants to be elevated to the level of the Survivor civilizations, which no administrated world has done before. The Tau want a seat at the big table, which will conceivably open the door for the Tarellians, Demiurge, and others abhumans and xenos races. Void Dragon is going to have to be dealt with somehow no matter what his alignment, even though it probably feels politics is beneath it. Separatism might flare up because people believe the worst is over and we don't need Imperial protection anymore.

That's not even getting into the political situation if Big E does die, Eldrad dies, or if the Starchild is running around.

>>52841515
A not-Valkia the Bloody would sound more like a fallen version of the same. One who got too Khornate for their own good.

>>52840464
So if they aren't necessarily Sororitas because they don't watch the watchmen, does this mean the Valkyries are basically just female Space Wolves as mentioned by >>52826897? Organized in a quasi-Sororitas manner because that's what the Imperium is used to?

>>52845416
Canis Helix involves splicing large amounts of non-human DNA into the human genome. Gene-seed involves growing artificially designed organs in-vitro and implanting them in a human.

Thunder warrior augmentations were said to be a mix of genetic therapies, some implants, and just plain chemicals. Buff as Astartes, but not as versatile or stable. Gene-seed only started being a thing about Mark I or so.

Canis Helix was deemed a failure by the Imperium when they tried figuring out "lets try something less horrible than Thunder Warrior procedures". Probably because of its low success rate, probably because it is genetic splicing, and therefore to some degree heritable. Probably all of the gene-patenting the Imperium can figure out goes on them too, to reduce heritability and reverse engineering.

Leman was really insistent on "Canis Helix really works you guys" and went to Fenris, which at that time was a black site populated by tribals, to implement it. Got it to work, but not without the first iterations producing horrible monsters. The ones who were smart enough to escape and stable enough to not be ravening monsters were the proto-Fenris wolves. Canis Helix would have to be heritable for them to even exist.

Space Wolves and descendants are said to not use Black Carapace. Only Mark I on do. Space Wolves use non-standard cranial implant that's hella expensive, but has allowed the Space Wolves to work as well as other groups.

>>52845518
>not-Valkia the Bloody
Just like every favorite champion of Chaos, they keep coming back from death cause they are too good at their job.

>>52845856
How often do champions come back in canon? 40k or Fantasy?

I know Kharn and Lucius do but that might be because they don't have the self-preservation to do otherwise.

Daemon princes/princesses do because they're daemons, what did you expect.

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bumps

>>52845681
>>52845416

The final version of the Canis Helix is not heritable. At least not reliably.

After 10,000 years of interbreeding with the tribals only the barest minimum of unusual traits have been passed on.

The original Canis Helix was designed under orders of Oscar, so we can assume it was gender specific intentionally.

Russ married young, had 2 wives and they all lived and remained biologically young for centuries. In that time they had many daughters but no sons. So it's possible that the Canis Helix in some way attaches itself to the Y chromosome but also alters it to the point where it can't be used to make another viable organism.

Any odd traits passed on to the daughters would be freak occurrences but 10,000 years is a long enough time for a lot of freak occurrences to happen.

Fenrisian Wolves were fuck ups on every level

Found a brief discussion of what Slaaneshi Chaos Eldar would be like on another forum:
"It would involve cloning and body-hopping like the Dark Eldar do. Combat platforms would be Wraithbone constructs and artificial monsters in all shapes and sizes that the Eldar may choose to upload themselves in and out of, the better to add their psychic power to the platform and also experience the sensations of battle with their own minds. Unlike the Beast, they would not have Daemons, and actually look kind of like a really messed up version of all those high-freedom posthuman civilizations like the Culture."
We've already gone a different direction, but worth a thought.

>>52849595
There is absolutely no reason there couldn't be a faction of the Chaos Eldar that works like that.

Maybe the ones that invaded and set up shop on fallen Altensar.

>>52845518
>Varangian Guard
In all fairness this is in Vanilla. In Vanilla the wolves have a deal with house Belisarius (because fuck subtlety) that amounts to Bodyguards in exchange for Navigators.

It's already been hinted at that the Imperium is going to have no choice but to undergo reforms if it survives the shit oncoming shit storm.

When the Imperium contacted most of the worlds that make up the Imperium Proper (those under direct Imperial Governance) they were regressed and/or dying backwaters.

But because of the hands off approach and the drive to uplift it's worlds + 10,000 years of development most if not all of those worlds are now strong in their own right and had they been encountered in their current state would be considered Survivor Civilizations.

They don't want to leave the Imperium, fuck no they aren't suicidal, they just don't see why after thousands of years places like Ultramar have more benefits than they do. In the early days it was understandable but now they have paid back what the Imperium invested in them ten fold over.

And the Imperium takes another step towards how Horus envisioned it.

>>52769445
desu i thought she was drinking through the straw while sucking a huge dick

>>52849957
Altansar could have been an invasion planed by punk kids who are sick of living in their parents shadow and want a tree house of their own to commit their own atrocities in.

Do the Sisters, Valkyrie and otherwise, allow psychics into their ranks?

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>>52853982
Restrained and trained psykers, sure why not? But don't be confused if they don't act like Librarians because they don't serve the same role. If anything, it would be more like oddly Warp resistant Sisters and Valkyries than battle-mages.

>>52847164
Taldeer looks less than impressed.

>>52856311
If you'll notice, Lofn's pet ripper isn't quite giddy either.

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>>52854372
Would a Survivor Civilization have the rights to train their psykers how they see fit or is this something too dangerous for the small people to have their own say in?

Fenris and colonies are not SCs but they are fiercely protective of what is theirs. I can imagine them trying to maintain independence in this as well despite having no official legal grounds to do so.

It would cause mild internal conflicts.

Given that the original Librarians are still going to have been from Old Earth and the less knowledgeable Fenrisian witches would have found that shit useful it would still be a mutated version of the official curriculum but with a more master and apprentice feel to it rather than more modern school based Hogwarts education.

Also if the Witch Fenrisians and by extension later Rune Priests have been influenced by Old Earth teachings then as much as they don't want to admit it they are using shit originally penned by Magnus the Red. Russ would not be livid about it, at least not old man Russ, but he would be grumpy as fuck.

>>52857804
Well that depends. Are we going to hold over the 'every psyker is a potential screaming hole into the warp from which daemons can pour forth' element from vanilla 40k?

>>52857804
Fenrisian psyker are in part derived from the practices of the Nordyc and Leman Russ. Who was also one of the "normies" who helped draw up the Imperial psyker policy. So I doubt Fenrisian psykery differs too much from the Imperial standard, at least in the ways that matter.

Psyker policy is probably too big of a deal to leave unnoticed. Black Ships are an Imperium-wide institution. Leave a place too insular and the next thing you know Chaos has its hooks in. However, there's probably much less of an issue in letting people dress it up in their own traditions, so long as the traditions don't involve orgies, human sacrifice, or daemon summoning.

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>>52858641
The rules of the setting haven't changed, warp is still inimical to standard life and full of unpleasant things, Chaos is actively malevolent and the deamons still hunger for your souls.

All that has really changed is the people aren't absolute shit stains and extrapolate from there.

>>52858686
>>52858686
>No orgies

What a grimdark world.

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>>52859221
It is made up for. Felinids are no longer stuck on their homeworld and there are Qunari looking equivalents.

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>>52859221
>>52860389
In the name of the esteemed houses of the Navis Nobilite, countless sister superiors of the Sororitas, Terra's Sons and Blood Angels descendants, and Arch-magos of the Mechanicus, the august aristocracy of Necromunda, Praetoria, Ultramar, Vostroya, Sevarin, etc., etc. and in defense of the reputation of much of the bureaucracy of the Administratum, Madam Jubblowski must attest that no such policy stands in the Imperium. There's a world of difference between ritual toaster-fuckings, railing/spankings of the neophytes, and the demands of cultured life vs. Eldar empire style murder cult orgies.

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>>52860626
I suppose if somebody would be knowledgeable of the laws of such things it would be her.

>>52859221
>>52860626
You know the kind of orgies I mean. The kind that are basically just open invitations to Slaanesh.

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Okay, so I finally, FINALLY got the writeup for the Five Big Bastards done.

https://pastebin.com/fpakrtBG

Couple things in it need adjusting or clarification.

Did we ever decide if the ship Ollie used to ram the Beast's Attack Moon was the Phalanx? And was it salvaged if so?

Also the text mentions Macharian Crusade, but that was before the age was debated and I assumed it was right after the WotB from previous stuff. The right term for the event probably needs to be put in, whatever it is.

>>52861356
Good stuff, fun to imagine chunks of the terminus est becoming long standing orbital instalations and fortresses around Necromunda even if the ship is ever destroyed. If we ever bring this over to the wiki page entries on the Tomb of Horus and any other major ships could be a nice addition.

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Drawfag here, I'm really having trouble with getting any Isha sketches to come out well, will probably take a good bit more work. Any other characters people would be interested in in the meantime?

>>52861776
We got Olly Pi yet?

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>>52860389
I always thought Felinids were more like wolf people rather than cat-girls because the name means "hairy people". Where they have fur-like hair on all parts of their body except for the palms, soles, and face like monkeys. Nocturnal vision might be a thing for Felinids because cats can hunt in the dark but mass gene splicing might be a thing, or the warp fucked the collective DNA to have almost the same mutation. The canine teeth could be unusually large due to the preventive meat diet on their home world and cultural encouragement similar to Japan.

I'm just justifying why I like Felinids to look like pic related

>>52862282
Nope

>>52861776
Maybe a change of pace might be good? How about drawing up one of the Big Bastard ships? Or an Attack Moon? Or Void Station Iyanden?

Basically, some kind of Nobledark tech. No human involved.

>>52861640
Had an idea about the Tomb of Horus. But to understand the Tomb of Horus, you have to understand the Mournival. The Mournival was an old Voidborn tradition, in which the leader of a clan would pick an advising council based on the wisest members of his close family. This was true even if the leader claimed the loyalty of multiple clans, like Horus. Many in the greater Imperium decried this as nepotism. The ever-clannish Migrant Fleet replied that this was simply Voidborn tradition, and told whoever thought otherwise to politely go fuck themselves.

Abbadon was the closest to Horus, due to actually having been raised by him since he was about six. No Migrant Fleet tradition about this, just an uncle doing his fucking job and raising his orphaned nephew as if he were his own. We all know how Abbadon turned out.

Garviel Loken was the only member of the Mournival who was actually an Astartes. Not sure if he was one of the lucky Sol Fleet Voidborn who were compatible with the procedure or one of the immigrants to the Migrant Fleet. Despite all this he tended to be the moderating voice among the Mournival whenever they butted heads. Loken went a bit loopy after Horus died. Started calling himself Cerberus and waged a PTSD and guilt-fueled one-man campaign on Chaos cults from Interex space to the Gothic Sector. Unfortunately, he ended up dying about the same time as Abbadon during the first black Crusade.

No clue about Tarik. Not really sure what he was like.

>>52863312 (cont.)
Horus Aximand, named “Horus” in honor of his uncle but more often referred to by his last name to avoid confusion, was the one who took after Horus the most. He was the charming diplomat, the shrewd politician and businessman, but unlike Horus he had enough enthusiasm that he came off as genuine. When Horus couldn’t negotiate in person, Aximand was usually the one with the job.

Sometime between Horus’ death and his funeral, Aximand and found religion. Real fanatic about it too. It could have been from hanging around with the Diasporex too long, but he was no diasporite. So when Aximand’s fleet comes across this great, big impossibly ancient alien construct less than a month on the journey “home” from Horus’ funeral, he declares this to be a sign from the universe. Ends up sprucing it up, calling in the Eldar to help him figure out how to turn the lights on, and turns it into a big turbo-dreadnaught/mystic temple/tourist trap. Uncle Horus would be proud. And that’s how the Sons of Horus were formed.

>>52863254
What should the Big Bastards look like? I keep picturing something like a cross between an Imperial battleship and a Star Wars Imperial Destroyer, but that may be because I'm thinking of the canon description of the Rock too much (which is kind of ovoid).

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>>52863399
Drawfag again. Posted this detail shot a while back of some of my stuff thinking it kinda fit

>>52863673
I like it.

Ok, so this is like 3 threads late, but I'm finally posting the Angron update I promised a while back. I still feel like it's not done but I'm tired of sitting on it, so here it is. Going to repost from the start since I only posted about half a page of content the first time.

I have a lot of thoughts regarding it but I'll post those after people have had a chance to react, feedback very 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.

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 a 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 made 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.

>>52863853
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, and so their northern brethren faced the rage of the Afrikaan utterly alone.

The Padishah’s regular forces had been decimated by the war with Europa, and in a desperate show of might he turned to the cruelest monsters and technologies hidden within the Conclaves. Upon the Afrique League he unleashed lumbering arco-flagellants, limbs replaced by electrowhips and hydraulic mauls; screaming berserker slaves, hippocampuses mangled by crude cybernetics to increase aggression; cackling Volkite cultists, who unleashed the terrible heat of their weapons to praise their Burning God and the Devouring Flame; shriveled moisture cannibals from the deep deserts, who ripped men apart to drink of the precious water in their bodies and harvest the fluids for dark rituals; and a hundred other varieties of horrors and monstrosities forgotten to history, each worse than the last.

>>52863872
The Afrikaan host swept over the border unimpeded as the scattered militias of Timbuk were blown aside before the Padishah’s storm of ravening terrors, the regular Afrique soldiers having long withdrawn to fortify the coastal cities. Angron’s town was one of the first to fall, and the Afrikaan marauders slaked their bloodlust on the terrified citizens through all manners of torture and slaughter. The details around what happened to Angron during this time are scarce: Angron himself understandably did not speak much of this event and the only written comments involve a short line in one of his final writings. The only clues are from the journals of a minor officer of the Padishah’s elite Janissor Corps who was assigned to oversee the sacking of Angron’s village, where he writes of an incident regarding a young boy who leapt from the rafters of a burning bakery and stabbed one of his men to death, and who then almost escaped on foot before being shot down by a stun dart to be taken as a slave.

From ruins of his village, Angron was taken to a loot caravan along with the few other survivors, mostly young children like himself who would sell well at the slave markets. On camelback they were carried overland through the scorching heat and swirling sands of the Afrikaan deserts until at last they reached their destination: Karthago, called Carthisisia in the Afrikaan tongue, oldest of the Nord Afrik city-states, seat of His Ascendancy the Padishah. Perched upon the western bank of the great God’s Eye Lake, it was a dusty city of brass and stone, its red stone walls a crumbling reminder of a long and cultured past, its glittering pyramids and temples casting long shadows over the slave bazaars reeking of blood.

>>52863889
In the auction houses, the fierce young boy drew great interest from the old gladiator houses, for a star pit fighter would bring great riches and prestige to anyone who owned him, and when the auctioneer’s hammer finally fell after a round of exorbitant bidding, it was the infamous slaver Nuceria, Queen of Flesh, who won the right to Angron’s collar. After the auction he received Nuceria’s slave mark, the inverted red triangle upon his forehead that marked him as her property, a tattoo he would have for the rest of his life.

The next twelve years of Angron’s life were a nightmare of the most brutal training imaginable, designed to break and beat him into a instrument of slaughter, a sadistic crucible to purify him into a weapon unhindered by morality or humanity. From sunup to sundown on the grounds of Nuceria’s palatial manor Angron was forced to train and fight until his entire body was a tight knot of agony, and every slight failure, misstep, or distraction was punished with beatings. In his first year he was given a puppy to raise and to serve as his companion, and on his birthday the next year he was ordered to strangle it with his bare hands. When he refused, he received the first of many electro-whippings. As Angron grew older, Nuceria used him as her headsman, forcing him to mete out the punishments to her other slaves, like cutting off the feet of escapees and executing anyone who disobeyed.

In this hell Angron grew into a man. At eighteen he already stood well over 6 feet tall, his dusky frame thick with corded muscle, and he was excellent with the sword, superb with the mace, and unmatched with the axe. During one sparring match he killed three of the trainers that had tortured him since his childhood with a blunted training sword until the others managed to intervene, and when Nuceria heard she laughed and said the dead men had done their jobs well.

>>52863905
Yet for all their efforts, they had not broken him. Beneath all the years of horrors and scars upon Angron’s psyche, there was still the core of the simple young boy from Timbuk, the son of parents he no longer remembered, born in a village that no longer existed. It would have been easier to break, to place the blame for all the atrocities he had committed on Nuceria and the others who forced his hand, but instead Angron chose to face and accept all that he had done, and when he woke at night, gasping and sweating from the nightmares that haunted him, all he could do was swear to make things right, some way, some how.

When it was time for Angron’s first fight in the pits, to Nuceria’s fury it was to be against Tigris of Franj, a knight taken as a prisoner of war long ago and a long-time veteran of the pits. Nuceria had seen too many promising young talents cut down before their prime by facing wily old fighters before they were ready, and on this match she saw the mark of the other gladiator houses, conspiring with the gamemasters to kill her most promising fighter before he could bloom. For all her rage Nuceria could not challenge their combined authority, and so as Angron stepped out in the sandy arena to face the Franjish knight, she resigned herself to losing a decade of investment.

Angron won in less than 5 minutes. With dispassionate, overwhelming strikes of his axe he dismantled his opponent’s defense piece by piece before battering him down with a furious rain of blows. When the crowd called for Tigris’ death, in defiance of pit custom Angron refused to perform the traditional execution of disemboweling his opponent and strangling him with his own intestines. Instead, he cleanly decapitated Tigris in a single blow, leaving the crowd in a momentary stunned silence before they rose to their in feet in an approving roar to cheer the masterful performance by the young fighter.

>>52863960
Elated, Nuceria took Angron to her slave pens and allowed him to choose any of the slave girls to be his personal courtesan, a prize usually reserved for gladiators that had won ten fights. To Nuceria’s surprise he walked past the cells of beautiful young women to the cells of children. They were frightened, furtive little things, and there Angron picked up a little boy with dark eyes full of defiance and loss, so very much like his own, and said this boy was to be no slave, but his son. And so Angron had found the first of his children, Kharn.

In the next few years Angron became a legend, his matches televised throughout the Conclaves, defeating champion after champion in an unbroken chain of victories. The crowds called him the “Lord of the Red Sands” while Nuceria lavished gifts and privileges on him for his victories, and so Angron’s little family grew as he took several more children under his wing as his sons and daughters. Yet for all his successes and outward displays of obedience, Angron was still haunted by his sins and seethed with hate for Nuceria, and the chance for his atonement finally came when he was approached by a group of slaves, who asked that he aid them in their escape attempt by killing the guards the protected the motor pool. In return, they would take him and his children with them to freedom in far off Franj. Angron agreed without reservation, and the preparations were made.

>>52863976
Yet things were rarely ever so simple. The night before the planned escape, Angron returned to his quarters after training to find his children’s rooms empty. Nuceria was sitting in her study when Angron burst through the door, his axe dripping with gore from the guards he had slaughtered outside, and froze when he saw his youngest son Macer upon her lap, the baby giggling as the slaver cooed and bounced him in her lap in a mockery of motherhood. Angron demanded to know where his children were. Nuceria replied that they were safe, for the moment, but only if Angron the revealed the names of the conspirators of his escape. Remain silent, she added, and his children would die screaming, and suddenly there was a stiletto in her hand, delicately tracing a line across the baby’s neck. Falling to his knees weeping tears of helpless rage, Angron made his choice, and Nuceria smiled. In the morning, there were dozens of new crucifixes in the courtyard, and the moans and cries of the dying escapees echoed through the manor. Angron could only look on at the new nightmare that would haunt his dreams, and swear a dozen new vows of bloody vengeance.

The chance would come sooner than Angron ever imagined. War came once again to the Nord Afrik Conclaves, but this time in the form of an overwhelming invasion from a mysterious warlord from the Terrawatt Clan. At first, the Afrikaan nobility was filled with bluster, boasting that they would crush this upstart and take him as a slave to be paraded in the streets, yet in only a few short months the main armies of the Conclaves were crushed. The shahs of the Conclaves had imploded into panicked infighting and blame, and whispers spread throughout the fearful streets of Karthago of invincible steel-clad giants who marched in the vanguard of the invading army, crushing all resistance beneath the roar of their guns.

>>52863992
With the deed done, Angron took his axe and retreated to his quarters with his children, barricading the door as the sounds of fighting grew ever closer. Soon, he could hear echoing footsteps inside the manor, and he gripped his axe tightly as they drew closer down the hallway.

The door crashed open in a cloud of splinters and dust, and a hulking armored figure ducked through the doorway with a massive gun in its grip. From behind, Angron leapt forward and kicked the back of the intruder’s leg, causing the giant to stumble forward slightly, and with a roar swung his axe two-handed at its vulnerable head. The axe struck true and hard, and bounced off harmlessly with a clang. The giant turned, and in response drove its armored fist into Angron’s chest. Never in all his training, sparring, or duels had Angron been hit so hard, and he was flung backwards against the wall, vision flickering, gasping and coughing blood through broken ribs and crushed lungs.

The giant stood over him and leveled the gaping muzzle of its gun at Angron’s head, dim light glinting balefully from the red lenses of its helmet, when there was a sudden movement. It was Kharn, screaming and beating at the giant’s leg with his thin arms. The giant looked down at the boy flailing helplessly at its leg, and turned towards the sounds of whimpers from the other side of the room where the rest of Angron’s children huddled weeping behind the bed, then looked back down at Angron. Wordlessly, the giant plucked Kharn off its leg and tossed him aside, turned, and walked out of the room.

>Shit, this chunk should go before >>52864005
Soon the enemy army was at the gates of Karthago, and the siege was brief, the spirit of the defending soldiers already broken and the conscripted slaves unwilling to waste their lives for their hated masters. As the walls fell and the fighting neared the estate, Angron knew he would have no better chance to fulfill his vows. In the chaos he pushed his way through panicking servants and slaves to the motor pool, where he found Nuceria with a few guards preparing an armored car for her escape. The guards he swiftly killed before they even had a chance to draw their weapons. For Nuceria, Angron gave her the death she deserved: the gladiator’s death, cutting open her belly and strangling her with her own entrails as she screamed and begged for mercy she had never shown, a final act of irony he hoped would appease his fallen comrades.

>>52864005
The next few days were a haze of pain as Angron lay in his bed, tended by a few of the old healers who had remained. The city had fallen, they told him, and to their surprise there had been no looting or raping or murder. Instead, the corrupt of the city had been dragged into the streets and purged, all the old slavers and fat nobles and decadent priests, though the Padishah had long fled. So when word spread that the warlord that had taken their city would be coming to visit his new territory, Angron dragged himself out of his bed through the agony of his chest, and made his way down to the city gates where this Warlord would be arriving to take stock of the man who had conquered them so easily.

When the Warlord walked through the city gates, there was a murmur of hushed awe. He was young, his face unlined and dark hair falling to his shoulders, and he towered well above the steel giants beside him, his gold-armored frame standing well over 8 ft tall. In unison, the crowds lining the road began to kneeling, an instinct drilled into each of them by their years of service to their Afrikaan masters. But as their knees began to bend, each person felt an invisible seize them, holding them before they could kneel.

>>52864042
A presence touched their thoughts, vast and overwhelming, yet somehow warm and protective, and it spoke in ringing tones that echoed soundlessly within their minds:

-Do not kneel, for I am no king or conqueror.-

-Do not kneel, for you are slaves and servants to the unworthy no longer.-

-Do not kneel, for all of you are precious and worthy to me.-

-Instead, I bid you: STAND.-

And every onlooker felt the force around their bodies reverse, pulling them gently but firmly upwards, until even the most stoopbacked old men found themselves standing as tall and proud as they did in the flower of their youth. They looked up with clear eyes upon the golden stranger before them, gazing at them intently but benevolently, and a cry rushed through the crowd as they called out in tongues from a dozen lands.

“Liberator!”

“Breaker of chains!”

“Savior!”

And that is when Angron knew he would fight and die for the Warlord.

---

>FIN for now

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>>52863778
Another one. Agri world towns

>>52864060
Noice. Can't wait to see more.

Only thing to note is that Egypt isn't part of the Nord Afrik Enclaves. The area of northeastern...what we would call Africa today is Gyptous.

>>52864477
>everything looks like a bunker
Surprisingly fitting considering this AU is even more paranoid about invasions than vanilla.

>>52864603
I'm imagining lots of gold Imperial architecture, with the towns built up inside massive DAoT foundations that served as walls through old night

>>52847164
>>52856311
>>52856352
I still don't get wh Livvi and Taldeer seem disapproving of that young teen hitting on Lofn. Judging by that uniform and appearance he seems to have good manners, attitude, and genes too. Does it have to do with him looking like a non-imperial human?

>>52866525

Well, parents are kinda wary of their children's potential relationships. Especially if she is kinda a chosen one (cosmic test trial) and they are so used to baddies constantly trying to kill them and their girl.

>>52866525
I'd imagine Dark Eldar and Fallen Marines would try to kill Lofn at least three times due to their hate boner of hybrids.

>>52866723

Thats not counting the human and eldar purity-supremacists

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>>52864060
I have no pic that can describe the how awesome this is or how much I'm going to be looking forward to any new sections of this story.

>>52861640
>>52861356
I too like the idea of the Terminus Est being used as a make shift Starfort.

After it got rekt in the Armageddon War some very senior tech-priests gave it a look over and declared it no longer warp-worthy. The Gellar Field assembly would need to be entirely replaced, the warp drive had essentially melted and it's sub-light engines were only to be considered even semi-functional on a good day. There were many other problems as well across the whole ship.

Point is that they would have had to disassemble the entire ship and reassemble it around the new parts to say nothing of the irreplaceable Dark Age components and systems that were now scrapped. It would, in effect, be cheaper to build a new one.

Under normal circumstances when a ship gets that broken it would be broken down for parts and material but nobody wanted to be the man who gave the order to put to rest such an important cultural and historical relic.

So it has it's war engines and Gellar field stripped out and most of the sub-light drives removed beyond those needed to adjust it's orbit.

Given the way they were designed to be sustainable for decades, even centuries, between friendly ports there are families on board who can trace an ancestor all the way back as far as the Great Crusade. It is in effect now a highly militarized trader city cut adrift in the inky black.

Does the Inquisition has a Representative as a High Lord of Terra? If so, who?

Could Fyodor -used- to be one before his downfall?

>>52868044
According to the 1d4chan page they have a representative on the Council of High Lords.

Who is occupying it is not stated. Presumably Fyodor was on that seat until he really started to go off the rails.

He is no longer recognized as an Inquisitor but it's hard to convince his followers that. His official removal from office would have been retroactively declared to the date he either went on a "burn them all" mission or the date he dropped the exterminatus and refused to attend trial over it.

But he still has his following in the Inquisition itself. The Inquisition Civil War is very much and for the most part kept inside the Inquisition rather than it being a faction of the Inquisition declaring war on the Imperium. This is not to say that there has not been civilian and bystander casualties aplenty. If it had been an ideological shift and done with some level of discretion in house there would be no problem and nobody would much care. It also wouldn't be the first time Inquisitors have murdered each other.

Fyodor Karamazov and all followers are also being officially declared open game for the Carcharodons with all the official paper work to make that legal, not that the Sharks care much about legality.

As to who is appointed the new Inquisitorial Representative; it's still an ongoing discussion within the ranks of the actual inquisition.

I'd suggest that Helynna Valeria is their current favourite and although not actually sworn in yet.

In this AU she did not get mind shackled by Trazyn the Infinite and executed.

She is a moderate but for her interests in the teachings of Magnus and Ahriman. For her it's all about knowing the knowledge so as to be able to make informed decisions on the circumstances. She is not herself psychic and so can't make practical use out of most of what she learns.

>>52868823
As an alternative to Inquisitor Helynna Valeria getting shackled when she went sneaking around on Solemnace I'm thinking Trazyn, being on far better terms with the Imperium in this AU, captured her in a Tesseract and posted her back to the Imperium.

30 years of prodding later and the acolytes of her old crew are no nearer to getting her out of her extra dimensional prison. In desperation they take the hypercube to Nemensor Zahndrekh and ask for his help.

To the Nemensor it's the equivalent of a Rubik's Cube and he claimed he used to have one of these as a toy when he was a small child. A few years later he manages to twist it in the right direction and frees the Inquisitor. He asks for nothing in return as he found the challenge something to do on rainy afternoons.

Inquisitor Valeria then enjoys a few days touring Zahndrekh' royal gardens and makes her way back to the Imperium.

>>52869897

That's very... Zahndrekh of him.

Still, he now has a favor from the Representative (and High Lord) Inquisitor.

What are the chances of them asking a favor from the Nemessor to help with the Civil Wargh?

>>52869923
Inquisitor Valeria might consider that she owes him but he probably wouldn't see it that way. He doesn't have as many guests as he would like to his remote estate and he was just grateful to see a new face and have someone to talk to.

After hearing her talk about the Imperium's going on, over a well prepared dinner, he intends to visit some of the more cosmopolitan worlds a bit more often.

>>52869923
Not high chance of his getting involved in the civil war. It wouldn't be proper to get involved.

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Bump

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>>52868823
Her rival to the seat could be Ravenor.

It is the most polite rivalry in Inquisition History.

Both want what's best for the Inquisition and the Imperium so they get on with their jobs as they always have done and wait for the committee to decide.

https://youtu.be/OzgzOqm1A40

Somebody is making a fan animation of LCB. Along with original music of it. This is the original music. It's good.

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So we have a bit of characterization for Imotekh the Stormlord, Nemesor Zahndrekh, Trayzn the Infinite, and I think a bit for Arynkyr the Traveler? Any thoughts in particular for where some of the named Crypteks ended up?

The Emperor is unwell.

It is a miracle that the Avatar of Isha is by his side- the Men of Gold were never meant to be alone. They were envisaged as a network to hold the galaxy together. There were supposed to be hundreds of them. Not just one of them. Not meant to be at the center of galactic power, and serving in so many roles. And though he has weathered every attempt on his life, he has not escaped unscathed every time. And though he has a goddess at his shoulder to mend him and care for him, even divine power has its limits. And though he attempted a peaceful transfer of power, attempted to found an empire that would no longer need an emperor, he fears another Vandire will arise.

The Emperor never wanted to start a dynasty. But now his thoughts turn to inheritance. The Avatar of Isha has mixed feelings herself, but the godly part of her sees nothing wrong with the thought of a divine, ruling caste. An heir might be able to take up the father's mantle. Or be a second Vandire, with holy blood to back up the megalomania.

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>>52869897
I like this. Valeria (or some of her goons) tries to discretely break into Trazyn’s collection to get access to its lost knowledge. Trazyn catches her in the act, traps her in what amounts to a cheap dimestone Tesseract Labyrinth, and ships her back to the Imperium as a message. The Imperium might not be happy with one of their Inquisitors being trapped in a Tesseract Labyrinth, but there’s no way to lodge a formal complaint without admitting that they were poking around somewhere they weren’t.

As in canon, Trazyn sees Valeria as kind of a kindred spirit, both being xenoanthropologists with a habit of collecting things. Trazyn’s kind of disappointed that the Imperium went to Zahndrekh for help, instead of Valeria figuring out how to get out on her own. Of course, Valeria wasn’t even aware it was possible to break out of a Tesseract Labryinth from the inside, being more familiar with the high-end stuff build for C’tan that doesn’t contain an emergency off switch.

One problem though is that vanilla Valeria is a Xanthite. A.k.a., those guys who think it’s a good idea to use Chaos against Chaos. I would say in this universe play up the adventurer archaeologist angle as opposed to the Xanthite one. Valeria in canon is said to be all about looking through old ruins for lost ancient knowledge of any kind that would benefit the Imperium, but draws the line at anything Warp corrupted. She’s willing to look into Necron stuff because at least Necron tech isn’t likely to steal your soul (I said likely).

Valeria also comes ready made with her own nemesis, Emil Darkhammer. Crazy monodominant who in canon was known to burn an entire hive world on the mere suspicion that Valeria might think whatever she is looking for is there out of spite. Could have joined Fyodor like the other monodominants because he gets to openly pursue his obsession during the civil war.

Also thread needs archiving.

>>52877226
We have mention of "renegade" crypteks abducting populations for biotransference experiments.

Orikan is said to be around, and has something to do with the C'tan. Either he's dead and what we think is the old Orikan is just a C'tan wearing his face, he's become a C'tan vampire, or he's become a C'tan vampire in reverse, usurping the shard of a minor C'tan to keep him powered instead of the other way around. He may have something to do with the vampires in the first place.

>>52877360
The Men of Gold probably all developed radically different approaches to life due to serving on so many worlds. When the Age of Strife happened and some of the Men of Gold invaded the Warp, they would have been seriously dangerous if they could have organized and fought as soldiers.

But they didn't. Because they were more like Greek demigods or superheroes than super-soldiers, each with their own style of combat and their own twists on their psychic abilities, than a cohesive unit.

This actually helped baseline humanity, as the Men of Gold were just as likely to fight each other as work together, but it made each Man or Woman of Gold a unique nightmare to face.

>>52877436
>I would say in this universe play up the adventurer archaeologist angle as opposed to the Xanthite one. Valeria in canon is said to be all about looking through old ruins for lost ancient knowledge of any kind that would benefit the Imperium
It would work really well to give her contacts with Ahriman's Daemon Breakers, which keeps her Xanthite angle while keeping her within the bounds of acceptability for the upper echelon of the Imperium, if not the breadth of the Inquisition. Getting involved with Trayzn might also get her either owing or being owed by the Blood Ravens.

>Emil Darkhammer. Crazy monodominant who in canon was known to burn an entire hive world on the mere suspicion that Valeria might think whatever she is looking for is there out of spite.
Sounds like a perfect member for Fyodor's faction. While the coup was a step too far, having Fyodor cherry-pick fanatics not just from the Inquisition, but in the sectors run by the theocracies and feudal that have massive and long standing Sororitas and (and rare Fraternitas) military traditions. Likewise with death cults, probably much like the salt spire assassins had they never had the imperium and remained planetary curiosities. Fyodor's Monodominant conspiracy would really run on coopting opportunists and imperial fanatics more ideological than they actually are truly loyal, so he would probably need hidden backers as well if he's to avoid becoming little more than a pirate on a galactic scale, fleeing space sharks.

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>>52877360
Not sure I feel happy about the Emperor succumbing to what is basically old age.

It has previously been stated that he is not built to be alone, and neither was Isha. He was supposed to be part of a network and she part of a pantheon, together they provide what the other needs.

His mind would turn to posterity even if he wasn't dying. He might be ageless but he isn't indestructible. Necron weapons like a C'tan phase blade through the head or a big enough gauss blast would probably be fatal for example.

And they can't have a natural child.

Emperor is sterile as Dark Age copyright protection and also to ensure that the tools of humanity don't become their successors. Isha is probably very fertile but because she is a faithful wife she will never know because Emperor is sterile and even if he wasn't he is a different species. They want children, that's why they have adopted legions of orphans over the centuries. They have spent ten thousand years trying to start a family. Their only hope in this regard is the Starchild Prophesies. At some point (probably) Macha Isha will conceive a child by (probably) the Emperor and it will (probably) be born healthy and strong and either a genuine new god or a demigod herald of a new era.

Given that Lofn (at the stroke of last midnight of 999M41) is only a few days away from being born as the test to see if a hybrid child is possible even with divine intervention an imperial heir might be not far away.

>>52877897
Wait, that's what the post was talking about? I thought it was just talking about the toll on the Emperor's mind of having to go through thousands of years with essentially everyone he knows dead and himself very lonely.

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>>52877638
>Either he's dead and what we think is the old Orikan is just a C'tan wearing his face, he's become a C'tan vampire, or he's become a C'tan vampire in reverse, usurping the shard of a minor C'tan to keep him powered instead of the other way around
gave me some ideas. Kinda pictured Orikan as a Cain sort of sire for a bunch of Victorian aristocratic vampire Strigoi, and the pyramid motifs fit well. I'm picturing Crowley-esque vampire space aristocrats on the human side, and a few necrons that Orikan put Deceiver shards in that came out like Archeologists in requiem.

Orikan just being in possession of a significant Deceiver sliver, whether or not its embedded in him, may make him count as a powerful Strigoi. He might have fractal gold creeping through his cold metal bones, he might not, and it could just as well be the lying star god's motif that dictates his actions, or that of the long dead, mad Necrotyr mystic. In any case he has a sliver of The Deceiver in his possession, he has sired Strigoi from it with the apparent intent of expanding his access to The Deceiver's pool of psychic power and shard material for experimentation, and conducts vast and subtle intrigues in both the Imperium and Necron Star Empire. Even if the Diviner is not a vampire in nature, it appears to be in effect, standing as the progenitor and involved master of one of the eldest traceable lines of Strigoi.

Many of the powerful Vampires but a few degrees removed from his early experiments millennia ago are now well established sires in their own right, either deeply embedded in or legendary hated by the Imperium or Necrons. Those human sires that have risen to the great progenitor's attention over the centuries might be backed by trifles of Necron technology, and this in turn would give rise to legends of vampire lords wielding macabre wonders even beyond the ken of the eldest of their kind.

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And Archived
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Nobledark

>>52878808
He's running a vampire pyramid scheme for magic from an office in an actual magic pyramid. I can't quite express how fucking great that is.

Also top, 2nd from right is riding a Necron Unicorn.

>>52878633
I hope it is that because otherwie it doesn't fit right to my mind. Gold was always associated with immortality, it's why the Philosophers Stone could transform base metal into gold and make you immortal.

>>52877806
So the next head of the Inquisition could be well versed bordering on obsessed with deamon lore, connected with the Deamon Breakers and Blood Ravens, prods things best left unprodded and disliked by puritans. Is reincarnation possible? Because I think Magnus has come back.

What does she look like?

>>52876286
>>52879069
But according to the Lexicanum you need to be an Inquisitor Lord to be nominated for Inquisitorial Representative, and Valeria and Ravenor are both fairly minor players in the grand scheme of the Inquisition especially when compared to someone like Lord Hector "I kick Bloodthirsters in the balls" Rex (though for a front line guy like Rex who is uninterested in politics, having to chum around with the High Lords would probably feel like a demotion).

>>52877436
What does the inside of a Tesseract look like?

I'm going to assume it depends on what it's set to. In this case something like

http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-432

Because Trazyn can be quite unpleasant sometimes.

>>52879069
Have to second the notion that the emperor really shouldn't be breaking down from old age. The golden throne is breaking down in canon around the same time, and if our Emperor who isn't on life support and explicitly has the medical attention of a fertility goddess is gonna be ailing and close to death that's pathetic. He's an immortal Man of Gold, and while he's lost a lot over his long life he's many times the junior of the vanilla emperor and all the other gods in our setting. He's been looking to posterity, but only because that's his actual temperament.

Even though he's outlived many of his greatest friends by millennia he has a pretty solid court of immortals and semi-immortals around him. A bunch of what we've written about him even seems to hint at potential to true godlike power like >>52877638 talks about, if he were to dedicate the necessary technology and new sorcerous knowledge to the ascension, and its mostly his dedication to humanity and his place as servant and not god that stops him. There was even some fluff about Isha pushing him to be more godlike and elevated, mostly just from her own habits, but also because as a fuller god-being he might become more fertile due to metaphysical shenanigans.

>>52879955
Alright. How about Lord Inquisitor Torquemada Coteaz as one of the candidates?

There is always the possibility of being promoted just so that they can become the Representative. There have been popes back in the day that did this.

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>>52879955
we could just kick the aforementioned nominees further down their career paths to make it work.

I was imagining this sort of armor on the front line Vuna Wolves descendants that are stationed around cadia.

>>52880111
Have we discussed power armour yet?

>>52880555
We did talk about how Sisters and Inquisitorial Power Armor would work.

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>>52880555
not really, its essentially been taken as ubiquitous in the post age of strife Imperium but beyond most worlds' expertise to produce, thus you find it manufactured since before the Imperium in places like Forgeworlds of the Mechanicus, the Hubworlds of the Squats, the workshops of some very ancient Hive Worlds and as relics in the hands of many Survivor Civilization. The Imperium was mentioned to have a pretty deco vibe to a lot of Terran influenced power armor, but because space marines are much more localized, or attached to the imperial army or navy, there tends to be massive proliferation of all sorts of power armor makes over the years.

>>52849595
>>52849957
I decided to take a stab at this:
The 'puppets' or 'dolls', as they are known to Imperial soldiers, are one of the stranger factions of the Croneworld Eldar. Totally abandoning the normal unlanded warrior/noble officer structure of most Croneworld raiding bands, they advance to war 'wearing' a dizzying array of vat-grown and ghastbone bodies, transferring their minds into new bodies by sorcery and surgery, or piloting them from afar via MIU-analogues. Although the politics of Shaa-Dome are opaque to the Imperium, it seems that the puppet clades are distant from the normal courts, almost never fighting in the same theaters as the more 'normal' Croneworld forces, even in the middle of the Black Crusade. There is evidently some ideological animosity between the dolls and the great lords of Shaa-Dome, and they make their homes far from the center of power.

In combat, the puppets are more variable than even the normal run of Chaos warbands. Their war-bodies vary in mind as much as body, each one possessing its own unique patterns of thought. The mind is a plaything of the body; a fluid takes the shape of its container. Most of the older puppets are no longer recognizable, in both body and mind, as having ever been Eldar.

Thoughts?

>>52881871
The puppets make sense with how we've built up Slaanesh as the God with the biggest material base in the eye of terror, most horded tech, Shaa-Dome real estate, etc. The puppets sound like messed up, transhumanist pre-fall hedonists, still fully enmeshed in the immorality tech that let them snuff each other until Slaanesh was born. It could even be that the puppets are one of the many debauched revels of Slaanesh's chosen concubines, the same set of nominal rulers the Taskmaster covers for. That would explain the distaste of nearly all crimes but the already pretty slaaneshi rabble.

>>52882070
>That would explain the distaste of nearly all crimes
I'm not quite sure how to parse this; they're not any better than any other Slaaneshi faction, as you seem to be implying. They've got an overwhelming number of atrocities to their name, although probably of a different type than the usual warbands. I'm envisioning giant prison-megastructures, city-scale Skinner boxes which break down people mentally and rebuild them until they're no longer recognizable psychologically as human, even if their bodies remain untouched. Seeking out new and exciting types of mental perversion and malfunction.

>>52863673
What's this a detail shot of? I don't recognize what that structure is supposed to be.

>>52882874
Sorry, that was auto correct, crimes was meant to be something like factions, I'm not sure what happened. I was meaning to say they were ur slaaneshis from thir god's inner cult, so making them more tame is pretty nonsensical.

>>52883100
Crones, that's what it changed from
>>52883100
It was supposed to be a giant gold starship docking above a mountain. Its prow is pointing right and towards the viewer.

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>>52880555
>There was also the skeletal reinforcement via hyperdiamond and plasteel struts inlaid into the bones after the completion of the growth.

I would have no Black Carapace. It makes the armour still wearable but more clunky, thus differentiating them from the astartes.

Astartes should be the only ones with Black Carapace. It being one of the upgrades that made them superior to the old Thunder Warriors.

Space Wolves use an expensive mind-to-machine interface unit designed by their Iron Priests. Sadly not compatible with non-Space Wolves.
and
>I was the one that said that quote. Something like the Black Carapace would mean a Sister has those sockets all over her body to be attached to the armor. That appearance in it of itself is a dead giveaway to anybody that can see her limbs, effectively preventing them from infiltrating as spies. Allowing them to move as gracefully as Space Marines in Power Armor would take away from the fact non-mutated humans shouldn't be able to do that. They should be slower and clumsy in their movements compared to Space Marines but are still much better than a Guardsman. In just about every way the Sisters' pattern Power Armor is superior to Flak Armor in almost every way. The only problem of not using the Black Carapace while in Power Armor is that if the joints every malfunction, the limbs of the wearer could be snapped like a twig. The hydrologics or motors inside the limb armoring would push/pull beyond the intended amount to rip muscles and break bones. The reality is, Sisters' Power Armor is not actually Power Armor, more like skin tight Exo-suits.

From Thread XIV

>>52883100
Being early adopters of the cult doesn't seem to jive with being politically marginalized; seems like it would result in more political power, not less.

>>52864502
>>52866980
Thanks for reading homies.

My main gripe with it right now is that it seems to long to me, and I think the narrative gets a bit bogged down in the details (and this is already after I cut some of the extraneous worldbuilding details). Do people like the extra bits like the description of Angron's first fight? Because if not, that's something I could cut to streamline it a bit.

I'm also trying to portray Angron someone as driven by a desire to protect those he cares about and crippled by PTSD and survivor's guilt rather than an angry anarchist nihilist who only wants to kill things. The irony I'd like to play up is that Angron out of all the Primarchs was the one who most wanted a quiet life with his kids, but kept getting it snatched away. Hopefully this becomes more evident with more fluff.

And then there's the simple issue of the prose, which for whatever reason I feel is clunkier than some of the other stuff I've written. If there are any other literary types out there who care about this kind of thing, thoughts would very much be welcome.

>>52883677
Imagine the slaaneshi establishment is the Catholic Church for the crimes. A bunch of cardinals in the church of murder orgies are running around the war zone in their prize combat gimp/stud bodies. Sure you'll acknowledge them, you even let them pick the fights the most want, and off the battlefield you're happy to have their attention and favor, but when they're having their special time you stay out of their way. High favored of the other gods would hold them in low regard, because that's how the other gods view Slaanesh, as with any Crone nobles that lean toward the other gods. The masses and the Slaaneshi leaning nobility would love them, and might even look at them like the crone version of Harlequins. The original post even calls the internalities of crone politics 'opaque' to the imperium, and just says the Puppets operate mostly unsupported by the other nobility.

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>>52879968
I was going to say "infinite labyrinth in which the maze always seems to extend through quantum fuckery so the exit is just out of reach", but then I read the SCP and it's basically the same thing.

Keep in mind the bigger C'tan shards do enough damage to the Labyrinths that they have to be constantly repaired by automated Canoptek Leeches. It's how the Deciever got out during the Long Sleep. Of course since when have the C'tan ever played by the rules of physics.

>>52878808
So he's like Nicodemus from Dresden Files? Everyone thinks the Deceiver is possessing him, when it is more like a mutual partnership?

Sounds like Orikan went "alright, if y'all are going to be stupid and disregard my advice, maybe I'll go do something stupid myself. Go with the flow."

>>52884290
>I'm also trying to portray Angron someone as driven by a desire to protect those he cares about and crippled by PTSD and survivor's guilt rather than an angry anarchist nihilist who only wants to kill things. The irony I'd like to play up is that Angron out of all the Primarchs was the one who most wanted a quiet life with his kids, but kept getting it snatched away. Hopefully this becomes more evident with more fluff.

I like this. It meshes well both with what we've established for Angron so far, and the canon theme of Angron never seems to get what he wants no matter how hard he tries.

Honestly the length isn't an issue.

>>52884302
Not what I was thinking, but there's no reason for the puppets not to be a lot of different factions using the same technology. The custom murder-bodies of the nobility, bizarre post-Eldar hive minds and mind hives, priests seeking extremes of experience impossible in an unmodified brain and solitary killers so radically modified they can no longer meaningfully communicate. All radically different, and yet essentially identical from the perspective of the Guardsman on the ground.

>>52884290
Length is not an issue as it was good to read.

The extra details about the surrounding world only makes it better to me. It makes it more real seeming and adds context.

That's how I see Angron in this AU. A good man whose been through too much.

It reads well. Moar play plz.

>>52878808
Does the Deceiver actually have an end goal here? Are all his conspiracies and infiltration in service of something, or is he doing it just because that's what he does?

>>52887722
ever since it got a physical form, The Deceiver was a fractal made of lies. It lies to cells that its alive, it lies on the atomic level saying its gold, it lies on the subatomic level that its producing all sorts of strange properties. On the scale of a person The Deceiver is a charismatic compulsive liar, in a small settlement its a gossip, and in a city it is the master of a conspiracy of stupendous fiction. The Deceiver falsifies and actualizes falsehood as a function of its being in the same way The Nightbringer kills and propagates death by proxy, and both inverse to The Outsider denying itself and destroying all knowledge of itself.

>>52887917
So lying to as many people as possible is its goal?

How would the relationship between Boaz 2000% Ahab Kryptman and Nemessor Zahndrekh be? As Kryptman only cares about whether you can fuck 'nids up or not while Zanny really likes big 'nids hunting and brings a lot of good toy to fuck the bugs up. A little payback for wrecking the shit of his vassals up, he said.

>>52888919
He would approve greatly of him despite the fact that he's dead. Nemessor Zahndrekh understands the need to exterminate that which threatens civilization.

He might get a bit frustrated at the need to take an entire Bio-titan skull home as a trophy as it slows the killing down but it is made up for the fact that he's just blatted a bio-titan.

>>52889021

Why am I already imagining a scene where the two of them stand triumphantly over a dead Stormlord laughing like the maniacs they are, or the scene where they take turns bragging about their trophies or even them fucking nids up back to back...

>>52889199
Zahndrekh of the Zahndrekh Estate wears a pith helmet of the sort worn by the Praetorian Guard and a sort of cross between a tweed jacket and a Phearon robe of office.

His manservant and head of the household guard (and unofficial bodyguard and hitman) Obyron is the one who carries his Titan hunting rifle.

The rifle is a modified gauss weapon that can fire a more powerful blast at slightly longer range but requires an entire energy cell per shot. It is Obyron's job to hand the Nemessor a new cell between shots.

Nemessor Zahndrekh likes the big game hunting because it's a good excuse to get the cart out and tear around the landscape. The cart being an extremely fast and agile anti-grav scow of highly customized design.

It's also worth remembering that although Nemessor Zahndrekh might believe he is a necrontyr man of late middle age and have the manner of an old country gentleman he is capable of easily lifting an ork above his head and ripping it in half. The most physically impressive thing he has ever done and been witnessed was picking up a small groundcar and throwing it at a carnifex hard enough to break it's neck. Nemessor Zahndrekh claims that he is just very spry for his age and does not boast of such thing. It would be ungentlemanly

Obyron knows his master is not seeing things as they are. But he isn't going to be the one to break the illusion. The illusion is all that is possibly all that is stopping the Silent King from assuming direct control, scooping out Zahndrekh and installing a more compliant Lord in his place from the personalities stored In the archives. Due to the pyramid shaped and feudal nature of Necron society underlings are bound to their Lords. Silent King can't remotely violate the servants of Zahndrekh without first going through Zahndrekh. So long as Zahndrekh remains in his current state all is well. The rest of the court and servants of the Nemessor as well as the diplomatic staff of the Imperium are happy to play along

>>52890969
>a necrontyr man of late middle age
>capable of easily lifting an ork above his head and ripping it in half
>claims that he is just very spry for his age
The Tyranids came out of left field for pretty much every faction in the galaxy, but even they didn't quite count on just how fucking insane it was.
They were ready and able to adapt to the Eldar hammer and the Imperium's anvil, the Tau combined arms blitzkrieg, and even Chaos's infinite warp fuckery.
But they didn't expect an Inquisitor's autistic genocidal rage, or a Necron going big game hunting.

I love it.

>>52887985
>>52887917
You also have to take into account that the Dragon, Nightbringer and Outsider all have a "main" shard that the others all sync to when they can and acts as a driving and direction giving force.

Deciever not so much. There is not main shard to the deceiver. They are all doing their own thing, often against each other.

>>52892506
What's a good simple prime directive for the Void Dragon? I'm imagining something like observe and record, and propagate that function. That would be a pretty effective way to parse its motive with the mechanicus while keeping it vague enough to allow future developments. One problem I see is translating that from scientific inclinations in voidy to the machine clergy.

On that note, when a random workshop leader caves to temptation and listens to the void dragon's whisper, builds a macro-cannon that fires shells through time to ensure they hit their target when they're in the shell's path, and gets found out by his superiors, what happens to the macro-cannon? Is it destroyed, or sent to ganymede with 'don't ask us' on the acquisition papers, or does mars keep their own proprietary Ganymede equivalent somewhere for this precise reason? I could see everything Void Dragon related getting shoved in the Noctis Labyrinth, but since there was talk of the mechanicus (among other interested parties) trying to set up shop in the Cthonian Ring. The project to move the mechanicus capital away from mars to get it away from the Void Dragon was unrealistic, but the installation that came of it was well suited for holding all of the associated bullshit that's appeared over the years and would be obviously unsafe to keep anywhere near the Dragon's body.

>>52893355
AdMech have been dumping weird shit in the basement of Mars since the early days of the Age of Strife. I can't see them changing.

>>52893355
Not sure if that workshop leader could make that cannon unless Voidy can bestow MAD SCIENCE upon people.
Which he just might, considering the Necrons ancient society.

>>52894033
So Mars went and found at very least planet's worth of impenetrable vaults hidden away somewhere obscure in an abandoned ringworld, made plans to start putting the crazy mad science tech delivered to them by word of mad science God there instead of their basement under the capital, but never actually did it because of organizational inertia. Sounds about right.

>>52895185
Also they probably wouldn't want to store the best toys there until they have already moved there. If they are in the Olympus Mons basement then the Mars Priesthood can be absolutely sure they have them and, more importantly, no other rival priesthood does.

>>52895888
More the fear is that inventions inspired by the Void Dragon could easily be different pieces that he could free himself with when put together. The mechanicus isn't sure the Dragon is trustworthy, and so they reduce to treat the designs he offers them without suspicion. Void Dragon tech might be stored in vaults alongside archeotech wonders and impounded creations of the dark Mechanicus, but that would mostly to be to keep their source hidden from the rest of the imperium.

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>>52881121
I would imagine that there would be variation in exact configuration and the aesthetics that would differ greatly from world to world if for no other reason than to differentiate themselves from each other. With the less of a drive for homogeneity in the Imperium you would have the major powers trying to make themselves distinguishable and it's only going to be the major powers that can build or commission power armour.

But because it's all or nearly all being built by the cog botherers they would still be using the same parts to make it out of for that awesome Mechanicum interchangeability.

Pic related would be the shit being built on Necromunda, as it's a prominent Black Templar world it's what many Black Templars wear.

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>>52893355
Probably the same as Autochthon from Exalted. Learn everything and build everything you can, just because you can. Figure out how everything works. Just because.

Void Dragon, like all the god-like beings in the galaxy, has a duality. In this case, creation and destruction. Penicillin and the atom bomb. The Void Dragon would build a doomsday weapon, not to use it, but simply to make one. And then forget about it or give it to the first person who asks because he certainly isn't using it.

That said, he can be motivated to actually plan things for a reason. Much like the Eldar gods and other C'tan, he's not as monomaniacal as the Chaos Gods. And he's not Tzeentch, he prefers functionality and improvement over gribbly, random mutations. Though with his imprisonment, trolling and observing is a decent substitute for physically doing stuff at the moment.

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>>52898180
I like that description but not the pic. Not really seeing him as the Cave Jonson type. He wouldn't violate his secretary for example. He would give her the option of biotransferance but he is the devil in chrome, he would provide the means of doing it but not insist you do it.

I do like the idea that he has what might be considered doomsday devices, but only to see if he could build them. Not to actually use them.

When he finds out what happened to Vaul all bets on that will be off.

>>52898180
Void Dragon seems the opposite of the Deceiver and the Outsider the inverse of the Nightbringer. The first two aspire to universal empirical truth and all-encompassing deception respectively, the latter are either absolute in their respective destruction and denial of self or others. The fact that our four physical-only star gods that accumulated 'mirror images of their presence in the warp' from their temporal deeds have also worked out along an axis similar to the four chaos gods is interesting.

cont.

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>>52899412
It may not be good to tie them together, but it would make sense that when these four C'tan were first gaining wisps of warp presence some portion of it was from the powers in the warp, as well as the galaxy spanning legends of power that also provided their presence. It may even be because these four had basic natures that formed feedback loops with the gods that they gained warp presence and the other C'tan didn't. That is to say, The Nightbringer, without worshiping or even acknowledging khorne, was the most khornate thing in the galaxy, The Deceiver the most tzeentchian, and the Outsider for either nurgle or malal, such that between first gaining slight psychic influence and full realization of the warp's potential on the C'tan's part they coasted on their incidental similarity to the existing chaos gods.

Problem for this scheme is that Slaanesh wasn't born yet, and works the worst with the C'tan survivors. But I like the idea that part of the reason the Outsider is so nuts is that it once ran Malal.exe just by being similar to the lord of denial back when he was still relevant, making it a into weird relic of the metaphysical damage the war in heaven did the galaxy. Similarly, the Void Dragon doesn't fit well with any of the chaos gods even in that era, and was already supposed to be semi-warp aware and already long imprisoned. I figure Voidy could have meshed with Nurgle back in the realm of souls era when the latter was the galaxy's preserver and governor of nature, and that would explain why he ended up so much more pleasant than the others. I figure this would stay vague background lore, not really relevant to the current state of any of the nine gods involved, but it adds way more interaction between War in Heaven era pantheons.

>>52899497
It would also mean that the reason AI, Men of Iron, Iron Minds, etc. are susceptible to chaos is not the lack of soul or human bounds, but specifically because they simulate natural thought and so are susceptible to the emotional-parasite super-organisms in the warp. These four C'tan were super powerful, totally non-psychic, naturally occurring AI, just on the cusp between being susceptible to the current reigning chaos gods. Had these four's monomaniacal obsessions matched up any more with the chaos gods of the time they would have been subsumed, any less and they would be too alien. It worked because all four of their prime directives just happened to figure into the collective unconscious in a way that saw them personified and resembled archetypal characters. The other C'tan, with their other prime directives determined by nature, simply weren't.

This would also make the Eldar gods and Golden Men AI, as has been mentioned, in the sense that they are constructed, and they with any Iron Mind with strong enough barriers differ from the C'tan more in their being modeled on life rather than extracted from a natural fractal and by their inclusion of hard/wetware modeled on natural psychics to directly interface with the warp rather than the C'tan's single degree of separation.

>>52899738
Too much?

>>52899291
Oh yeah, definitely. Pic was more for the "Science isn't about why, it's about why not" quote. Void Dragon would be more likely to take his human buddies on a field trip to do all sorts of experiments with, but he'd forget things like "humans can't survive in the void unaided" or "humans can't breathe ammonia" or "warp energy is really, really bad for living things".

Also I was totally thinking of that exact scene when writing the post.

>>52899497
I agree that tying them together might not be good. Though if I had to, I'd say Nightbringer is the most Nurglite (being all about death and the fear thereof). Void Dragon's pretty Tzeentch-like, but the Deceiver easily outstrips him in that category.

Also Void Dragon didn't get a warp reflection until long after the War in Heaven when the AdMech started inadvertently worshipping him. Before the War in Heaven he thought souls were just some useless vestigial thing. Now that he has a warp reflection and knows the warp is a thing, he realizes that his followers need one or something similar to function well, and that he fucked up with the biotransference.

Oh don't get me wrong, he's still all about the biotransference. Indeed he probably thinks "this time it will work for sure". "Necron 2.0" is probably on his list of things to do right below "poke Eye of Terror with a stick" and "murder siblings horribly".

>>52899738
I think "simulate natural thought"="souls" in the 40k verse. It's possible to not have a soul and still be capable of thoughts and emotions, but normally that's how it happens and you almost have to be custom-built for it to be otherwise (blanks, Necrons). C'tan might be the evolutionary equivalent of the New Worlders building huge empires while seeing no point in this "wheel" thing beyond children's toys.

>>52901899
Might be a bit much.

>>52902274
>It's possible to not have a soul and still be capable of thoughts and emotions, but normally that's how it happens and you almost have to be custom-built for it to be otherwise (blanks, Necrons)
I know that's how it is in canon. What I'm proposing is that the thinking things considered 'soulless', be they an insignificant blank or a star-God (excluding the four survivors that are beginning to blur the line) aren't actually disconnected from the warp. Instead they're all just as present as soul bearing creatures, but so removed from the norm of the last several trillion years their imprint is unrecognized, if not incomprehensible, to all psychic beings. It's only because they have material bodies that any soul-bearing being knows of them at all.

So I guess what I propose is that blanks and C'tan have the soul equivalents of dark matter. On top of that, the sharded C'tan in the silent king's thrall would represent a library of different fractaly nested God-mind not just incompatible with chaos at a fundamental level, but alien and incomprehensible even to the ruinous powers. The free C'tan might be gleaming gods, the imprisoned C'tan are essentially weaponized living super symmetry.

If you couldn't tell, I'm really digging the idea of large scale cosmic phenomenon mingled with galactic myth and theology.

>>52901899
Not a fan of the C'tan being analogous to the Chaos if I'm totally honest. It makes it too Lucas Pottery.

I'm more of the opinion that Blanks and to an extent Tau have stealth souls. They obviously have something given that even rocks have a slight warp presence and it is possible to erode Pariah/Blankness away with constant and sustained effort by a strong enough psychic. The then blankless blank is normal.

>>52892087
It was noted in a previous thread that life in the Galaxy might survive to some extent not because we fought of the Great Devourer but because we were so toxic that we gave it a terminal case of the trots and it did the equivalent of shitting itself to death whilst gangrene spread and the poison seeped into it's blood.

It is not HFY! because we still lost the war hard in any way that matters it's more HWTF?

By that time life that is left will be little pockets that were missed and residue hiding in the corners of the galaxy. Like freezer ships in deep space, hidden bunkers on the dark side of rocks tidally locked to neutron stars, barricaded webway cul-de-sacs and The Ark Ship.

So how many Necron Lords are there on the side of the Imperium or at least neutral?

>>52909162
I think we're leaving it open so that if people get necron ideas we don't stifle them.

Wait are we past bump limit?