˙ʞɹoʍ ɹǝʇɟɐ ʇɥƃiuoʇ ƃuiƃƃɐɟǝʇiɹʍ ǝɯos op oʇ ƃuioƃ ɯɐ I osl∀

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJzPhRJRgFA

ʞliℲ ɥʇiʍ ʇnq

dɯnq ɟlǝs pɐs ɔiʇɔɐɯilɔiʇu∀

>>53339410
>upside-down posting
This technomancy must be banned!

Continuing the conversation on Castigator started last thread >>53317806

I see what you mean about "too many superweapons", but I would disagree with making Castigator a threat that shows up once in M33-M35. It makes him just another "unknown or long lost entity that briefly poses a threat to the Imperium but then is quickly defeated with few long-term implications on the setting". We already have the Harrowing, the M34 World Engine, and the "probable Man of Gold", two of which already tie into overarching plot elements of the setting and, if the latter is the same as the Cacodominus, all occur between M33-35.

That was the problem with Castigator in canon. He was a character with an interesting concept that showed up halfway through the last book in a series, and then was unceremoniously killed off by its end before the idea could be explored.

Also, does Chaos even have any superweapons yet in this timeline? All I can think of is the Planet Killer, and that's not so much a superweapon in use as one whose potential is being wasted by Erebus using it as his pimp-ship.

Maybe we should have Castigator's initial appearance on the galactic stage be then, but then through some contrivance he is only able to show up sporadically since then. Or tweak his power levels.

Castigator wouldn't be much of an issue with the established power-structure, because he's not a player on the board. For all his power, he's too narrow-minded to be a leader on his own. The three big Chaos warlords play him like a fiddle. Oscar, Malys, Be'lakor, Isha, and possibly even the Swarmlord could dismember him, as could sufficient (and more importantly, achievable) numbers of conventional forces. Castigator in canon was killed by a bunch of Grey Knights. A good comparison might be with a primarch like Magnus. Powerful, but not to the point where he's game breaking and you have to plan around him. Castigator would be less a superweapon and more a titan-scale hero unit you use in Epic.

>>53339995
How far up the tech tree and down the damnation path is Castigator?

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>>53340531
Castigator is the original titan. Or at least, the original DaoT design the Mechanicus titans were based off of. He has been described in these threads (somewhat accurately) as "an Evangelion with a gun that shoots daemons". Though in this case Evangelion in the sense of "big stompy organic-esque mecha" (Castigator has artificial musculature), not "become God and turn the world into orange drink". That said, he's "only" about the size of an Imperator titan if it stood up straight (most Imperial titans having that hunched over stance, Castigator is said to look like pre-godlike Amazo from Justice League).

As for damnation, he's really, really damned. In canon he was nuts enough to make a pact with Chaos and try to join Abbadon. If the previous description in this timeline holds he's gone off the deep end. In personality, he's basically like Kratos or the Count of Monte Cristo but he never has a moment of realized how fucked up the things he is doing are. At this point even if he did realize it, he would probably rationalizd it thinking there's no turning back now.

>>53340751
He sounds like he could be a Dark parallel to Elmo.

Both are relics of a greater era, both are veterans of the Age of Strife. One rose to the occasion and became better, one allowed themselves to fall.

Is Chaplain Xavier(?) Of the Salamanders old enough to remember Vulkan?

>>53342300
In canon Xavier was born in the first decade of M41. So assuming that he would be separated from Vulkan by a few millennia. However we have played fast and loose with the "born in" dates for many characters (Machairius being somewhere between M32 and M36, Kryptman being born in M37, Farsight and Shadowsun being born in M39), so he could have been born earlier in this timeline.

Is the Last Chancers penal regiment still a thing and how grimdark should they be?

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>>53339410
Honestly The Golden Vanity, the shanty that song is based on, works as well if not better for the tone of Nobledark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j0EA_YH61I

>>53342580
I'm going to suggest that the date b fudged on this as well.

Xavier was recruited some time in the last 30 years of the Centuries of Silence and is the last Salamander of that age.

He knows or at least knew what happened to Vulkan, it impossible for it to be otherwise.

If he remembers he refuses to say.

>>53341406
Castigator might have succeeded in getting to the Eye or Maelstrom and got inducted into the intrigues of Chaos. Since its initial activation and the accompanying conflicts Castigator has just been living in Shaa-Dome like a giant successful mercenary/warlord on the dime of whatever patron he might find. He's thought of by the Crones as a big exotic hero from the neighbor of the Old Empire, and in general the Crones might like to belittle humanity by insisting the Men of Stone weren't the real citizens of the Great and Bountiful Human Dominion, instead giving that title to the Iron Minds and their subsidiaries like Castigator. The Crones might use Castigator as something between the archeotech Titan he is and treating him like a warrior in their employ, and just like Crone footsoldiers will gladly be daemon hosts to let their allies into the materium Castigator will employ the same tactic on a much larger scale. Often Castigator would be paid by a major daemon to be their body on some realspace escapade, and as such Castigator has brought greater daemons of every god into the world for horrific jaunts through the Imperium.

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A while back, we were talking about the Kinebrach and their blades, and how they related to the Interex and their sagittars. I decided to try and expand on that idea, especially since we don’t have much on the Interex in the first place.

https://pastebin.com/837jbpE8

I was having a hard time balancing the sagittars to not make them seem useless while at the same time justifying why the whole Imperium doesn’t just train everyone who can't become an Astartes as sagittar pilots. In canon, sagittars are said to be almost the equal of Space Marines, with sagittars in Horus Rising able to kill several Space Marines when fighting breaks out, which puts them in the same ballpark as Aspect Warriors or Mont'Kau battlesuits.

I was trying to aim for something like the Catachan Jungle Fighters or the battlesuits of the Tau, a unique method of fighting that certain planets or member civilizations swear by, but for various reasons just aren’t super common. The idea to justify this was despite their effectiveness, sagittars are still cavalry or cavalry-infantry hybrids at best, and so they don’t have a ton of niches in the Imperial Army.

Whereas Space Marines perform better than similar types of soldiers in sheer power and durability, and Aspect Warriors do the same in agility and dexterity, sagittars outperform the other types of elite soldiers in their overall mobility. They’re also kind of like the Mont’kau in that they’re more replaceable than Aspect Warriors or Space Marines, but whereas Mont’kau suits are specialized for defense and tanking damage, sagittars are more for fast attack. They’re kind of like halfway between Mont’kau and Aspect Warriors, with the agility replaced with mobility.

For those of you wondering what sagittars are supposed to look like in canon, they are basically described as hoplites with metal instead of horsehair crests on top of Big Dog-esque mechanical steeds

>>53345875
It could be that most units that fall under the label of cyberized or super enhanced cavalry are lumped in with sagittars, so you might actually have quite a number of high mobility, relatively high cost advanced cavalry, but its less effective in a galactic economy of scale so they are mostly units assembled by Imperial member governments and aristocracy. Sagittars and the other forces that are filed with them would serve mostly as irregulars or auxiliaries to the Imperial army in major wars, but otherwise their remit and deployment would usually be tied up with their commander's personal power.

>>53345875
Interesting. Probably a major feature of Macharius organizational doctine as well.

>>53345875
That is really good

>>53348191
The Machairians would love these guys. They just point to them and say "See them? Just try and fit them into your so-called Cadian gospel. This is why it's better to play each world's strengths to your advantage rather than force everyone into a one-size fits all mold".

>>53346061
>>53349470
Combine these and you have an interesting dynamic where Macharian doctrine might be favored by various aristocratic officers that have the resources to supplement Imperial regulars with local elite forces or their own retainers. Essentially you could have Imperial commanders that are military xenophiles in a way that never happens in canon, and without the impetus of a crusade to gather an eclectic army they'd resort to rogue trader style love for exotic auxiliaries.

>>53350217
So the Cadian response to >>53349470 would be "Yeah that's all well and good, lets see what happens when you actually have to arm a force with limited resources."

And of course the Krieger response which is "..."

Though in practice I suppose things would vary. People in the extreme Segmentum Pacificus and Ultima would probably find it just as easy to field a mixed bag of weirdos and Cadian shock troopers. Sagittars work just as well as normal bike cavalry in a Cadian arrangement and they hit harder than a baseline human so they can fill the role of "diet Space Marines" you get the Sisters or Aspect Warriors in on occasion.

Just look at Armageddon. Cadian-style Steel Legion with decidedly not Cadian-style Outriders who keep screaming "Ancestors witness me!" before they charge into battle.

>>53345875
How many types of Xeno were in the Interex?

>>53351675
I'd assume around 5 or 6. They might have kept adding some even after incorporation into the Imperium.

>>53350453
It was a lovely day, such a lovely day!

Have the religions been called dibs on?

I remember at one point someone started on them, did a bit then stopped. Is it alright to do more or will I be stepping on someone else's toes?

>>53351675
Just two mentioned in canon. The kinebrach were said to be the first non-human species who joined as a client race. It was mentioned this was the first time they had to translate their language to another species and a first contact war had resulted due to mistranslstion.

There were also the Megarachnids, who were not allies but prisoners in a demilitarized zone. The Interex tried to reason with them but found they could not, apparently even though they could translate their language. So the Interex ended up fighting them back to their planet and confining them there, destroying all of their spaceflight technology. Then they left buoys around the planet telling people not to land. So it was kind of Interex-controlled space, even if theh were just the wardens.

Is anyone going to do the much needed Dorn fluffing?

>>53356107
There was someone who said either they had something or was going to try and tackle it, but they wanted to wait for Fulgrimfag to finish.

IIRC, didn't primarchfag have something on him too, or was that the alternate Fulgrim piece? There's also the little bit on his odd friendship with Perturabo.

What happened to most of the usual writefags anyway? They all seem to have disappeared.

>>53356185
I already wrote past the point where fulgrim's history bears on Dorn's, there's nothing stopping Dotn fluff. The part of Fulgrim's bio that's archived but not on the wiki covers the end of the Merikan war, what I still have to write is post unification stuff.

>>53356185
Still here

Work is holy shit who turned on the flood gate why does everything hurt when I move 72 hours no sleep need moar coffee levels of stupid crazy busy at the moment or I would be writing more.

I started writing a sub-mediocre alternate fulgrim piece when fulgrimfag seemed to vanish.

>>53356725
I might do some on Dorn when can stop and rest a little.

Might.

If anyone else takes it on first then they are welcome to it.

Dorn I'm imagining as being the son of a Merikan lesser officer and a native Calbi tribal woman. Unlike most such unions he was not a rape child.

He grew up and joined his father's people, joined the army, moved up the ranks and ended up as part of the Calbi garrison forces because he could speak at least one of the languages.

>>53356185
Angron is still underway, but progressing slowly since I got sidetracked on a piece of fluff for the CSMs.

>>53358177
How would he have gotten the early Mk I augments?

>>53358177
Part of what made Merika so tough was that unlike the Chaos touched megalomania of Ursh it was pretty coherent and efficient. While Ursh was the same horrific synthesis of refined decadence and dedicated, self conscious barbarity as the Croneworlders, Merika was just the right mix of Brave New World and 1984 to weild human and technological assets and fight the Imperium on the same strategic footing. Merika was like an industrialized, even more militarized Classical republic, and as such it was completely fucked up, but it was coherent enough to justify itself.

>>53358663
Presumably after he took command of the garrison, rallied his supporters and purged the ranks of the Merikan loyalists.

Presumably he either got the bootleg augmentations from Fulgrim or he got them from the Imperium later on.

Mk1 was more widely compatible so, as long as Dorn managed to stay robustly healthy, he could have been upgraded later in life.

>>53358177
Dorn also ended up being the military governor of Calbi, which was a Merikan vassal. I can see the Merikans putting him in there because he was part of the Merikan military structure but at the same time he was one of "them" (the Calbians), so the Merikans thought he'd be better accepted by the Calbian people. It bit them in the ass when they led a revolt.

How close were Fulgrim and Dorn anyway? There was a suggestion that Dorn was one of the people who vouched for Fulgrim to the Warlord, but that would be out the window since A&O were the ones to bring Fulgrim into the fold. There was also a mention of Fulgrim being the one to tell Perturabo "Dorn could come up with a better defense plan than you", mirroring canon. At the very least I can see them being relatively closer to one another due to the shared Calbian-Merikan culture.

>>53358904
That could have been how he got his masochism problem. Khan was a Mark I and he didn't seem to have any problems.

>>53359537
Glitches were common for the Mk1 but I don't think they have ever been said to be universal. Khan could have been lucky.

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If Dorn's mother is a tribal of Calbi what name should she have?

Also I'm going, unless someone objects and can name a better place, have the capital of Calbi be the ruins of Toronto. I'm thinking of it being the City of Onto Rontus because I'm an unimaginative hack.

I'm imagining that Dorn and Fulgrim were allies of necessity rather than friends considering that one is a high society gentleman soldier and social climber and the other is a half tribal who doesn't give a shit what those around him think.

Also on a possibly unrelated note the genetic modifiers of the Rocky Mountains.

Each fortified commune I'm seeing as a group of splice-hippies who do the day to day mundane work to support the work of a Biodruid. In exchange the Biodruid bestows upon his supporters good health, new strains of crops immune to the recent bout of Strife bullshit and minor upgrades like slightly better night vision and shit. Or a pet six legged dog because Biodruid.

They operate out of old hidden/forgotten installations out in the mountains or other suitable place full of places to hide. Typically but not always underground often the entrance looks like a natural cave. They did not build these installations, some previous and now forgotten nation did. Possibly the biodruids can trace an unbroken line of master and student all the way back to before the Strife when some ancient predecessor actually earned a real wage from a legitimate government and wore a white lab coat.

Whatever pussified pacifist hippies used to be they sure as shit are not by the time Merika starts moving in. Not outright war like they will defend their communes with every blessing bestowed upon them by their biodruids and with home made glands oozing strange alchemy through their veins they could postpone pain and fear admirably. They might not have been warriors and they might have been driven out in the end but they weren't a push over.

>>53359537
Dorn's rebellion started when Fulgrim was a kid, and had become an intractable frozen quagmire in the west by the time Fulgrim was in the military. Dorn was a generation before him and Lucius, and he could have been receiving semi-covert Imperial support from early in his revolt, including mk I Astartes treatment.

>>53360858
It was mentioned that the capital of Calbi is on the western side of the continent, probably north of Vancouver. If you superimpose a map of the modern world on AoS earth, you can see that Merika has apparently expanded northward past it's current borders and has eaten up a lot of the nicer land in southern Calbi (including southern Ontario, you can see the vestiges of the Great Lakes). Which explains why Calbi was so dependent on Merikan imports.

This is probably going to be the stupidest thing anyone has said in this project so far, but I’ve been thinking about the climate and ocean currents of Old Earth just before the Unification Wars. Ocean currents can have a huge impact on the climate of a region; it’s why London is merely rainy and overcast despite being further north than Calgary at the same latitude as the southernmost part of Hudson Bay.

Because of geoengineering projects during the Dark Age of Technology the Gulf Stream would have shut down and very little of the water in the North Atlantic Ocean reached the tropics. This would force cool water to circulate south from the north, cooling the surrounding area. By contrast, the north Pacific has no connection to the Arctic Ocean anymore, which would cause currents to bring warm water north from the equator. This would make the Amur River an even better place to settle than normal (explaining Ursh).

The same warm water current that benefited Ursh would also warm the western coast of Calbi. Therefore, the best place to build a civilization and the place that could probably support the highest population density would be on the western side, whereas the eastern side would have been much colder.

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>>53361981
I imagined the Merikan industrial heartland as a massive sprawl of ancient geoengineering projects heaped over each other where once was New England, the eastern seaboard, and the basins of the great lakes. There would be massive embankments and terraces overgrown and resettled too many times to count, and the cities would be stubby proto-hives that have risen and fallen out of disrepair again too many times to count. The same could be said for the ancient cities all over earth in the Unification era, but Merika's landscape really does have the feeling of the engineering being the landscape's very substrate.

Much like the Ziggurat motif was taken up by Ursh in a characteristic bout of imperialistic arrogance, the sheer sides of Merika's pyramid shaped bunker fortresses were built out of sheer practicality, but had since come to be affiliated with ancient lore and motifs already present in the land's customs. Later Merikan pyramidal bunkers would be crowned by Intelligence-Observation hubs, and those would be gaudily adorned atriums of communications and spy equipment.

What is the biggest hub of scum and villainy in the Nobledark Imperium? Outside of it, it's probably going to be Comorragh, but what about inside of the (nominal) domain of the Emperor and Empress?

>>53363802
>it's probably going to be Comorragh
>Comorragh
>the city that's absolutely assured to be preferable to Shaa-Dome, almost by definition
>worse than Shaa-Dome

>>53364210
Ehh, well I meant a lawless metropolis that is teetering on the line between 'crime ridden hellhole' and 'murderpit.' A place that would allow people to come and go, rather than a fuckprison. I'm sure Shaa-Dome is worse than Comorragh, but would it be worse than Slaanesh's personal pad?

I just wanted a place where adventurers would naturally gravitate for jobs/bounties/information/rare goods for an RPG.

>>53363802
>>53364210
Shaa-dome is beholden to no laws that are not based on the wills of the Prince of Pleasure or the Daemon Queen or are otherwise backed by violence. These include such laws as morality, causality, and physics.

By contrast, Commorragh is just a city full of fedora-tipping edgelords.

>>53364279
Shaa-Dome is Slaanesh's personal pad. Or at least the guest room next door.

If you want dens of scum and villainy for RPG hooks, Necromunda would fit well of the worlds written so far.

>>53364314
Necromunda would almost certainly be the highest-profile example, as a Survivor Civilization and early member of the Imperium.

>>53364345
Necromunda is like Vegas and Monoco tag teamed Amsterdam. It's a high class sort of sleaze, if only due to scale and history.

Rum-and-poor would be closer to the sort of cantina vibe, if only because it's not a whole planet.

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>>53364279
>>53364424
Rum-and-poor would be a good one. If you’re running a game pre-M40, you could use Commorragh, since the Crones hadn’t taken over the asylum by that point. However, both here and in canon, Commorragh isn’t really a place where people can easily come and go. Commorragh is really only “safe” (and I use that word generously) for the Dark Eldar and maybe the Crones. Dark Eldar because they can walk through the streets without getting knifed for being a mon-keigh (no guarantees are made for any other reason for knifing). Crones because Crones are violent and crazy and those two traits are a good knife deterrent in a bad neighborhood like Commorragh.

Commorragh likes to present itself as a libertarian meritocratic utopia where everyone is free to do as they please without having to bow to the will of gods, kings, or any other authority. It’s unclear who they’re trying to convince with this message, as the Imperium sees them as a bunch of thieves and pirates, the Crones see them as prudes in denial, and the Necrons don’t really give a shit. In truth, they’re really, really not. You can get really far in Commorragh, but only if you’re a) an eldar (no mon-keigh need apply), b) a DARK eldar (no Craftworlders or Exodites need apply), and c) a TRUEBORN Dark Eldar (no tankbred need apply). Commorragh in canon has this weird habit where even though they hate each other’s guts, they hate the idea of an outsider with power even more. You have to be a Fabius Bile-level sick fuck for them to accept you as one of their own.

And of course, even if you manage to claw your way to the top of the heap, there’s still Commorragh’s number one rule: don’t fuck with Asdrubael Vect. Better eldar than you have tried.

>>53365273 (cont.)
That said, a well-known Imperial "hive of scum and villainy" might be a good idea. There's probably sleaze on every planet, especially since the underhives are starting to break down from lack of maintenance. Necromunda may be a high class sleazeball, but it's underhive is almost certainly worse.

Every sector probably has its own local shady region.

But thinking about an Imperium-sized Tatooine/Omega? How about something from one of the survivor civilizations or xenos races? Semi-autonomous status means that just about anything can go on beyond behind closed doors so long as it doesn't break the five golden rules so Imperial authority and the Arbites can't get a pretext to invade.

I can see the crime lords in such a situation having a unwritten rule to immediately hand anyone breaking said laws over to the Imperium so they can keep their little quasi-legal game running. Like someone slaving from an Imperial World or making treasonous deals with the Dark Eldar or Crones.

As for who...Demiurg? They're one of the merchant societies we've mentioned (along with squats and voidborn), but the latter two are distinctly community-oriented (as in there's probably a squat mafia but they're not looked favorably upon).

>>53365491
Shit, there was a supplement for Dark Heresy that mentioned a world that would be perfect for that that was a hub of the 'Cold Trade' (The trading of xenos artifacts). I'll need to go through my books, be back in a while.

Bumf

>>53365491
>as in there's probably a squat mafia but they're not looked favorably upon
There were major Voidborn mafias back in the age of strife, but they all seem to vanish around the same time the house of Horus got in the game. One might wonder why, and one might be denied an answer by fleet intelligence, because nobody saw nothing, and that nothing certainly didn't go down in Horus's used starship lot when some nosey fools asked pointed questions.

>>53365491
Squat Mafia I'm imagining as that they see themselves as holding up traditional Hubworld values an keeping society organized, orderly and happy. In truth they are a bunch of protection racket runners, drug dealers, smugglers and whore dealers.

But then it gets a bit weird. They have been doing this for so long that they have started to believe and try to live up to their own hype.

So whilst they still do a lot of shady shit they also do a lot of non-shady shit that ingratiate themselves to the population in general.

>>53368286
That would explain how Horus and his father got so powerful so fast.

>>53364424
Necromunda would be like that only in the lower mid-hives to underhives.

It gets progressively more polite the further up the hive you get to the courts of the spire-top kings who are, at least when at the spire tops, incredibly formal bordering on ritual and very polite. And very boring.

Spire-top kings often visit lower down the hives, anonymously if they are smart, to visit the casinos, the ale houses, the music halls, the night clubs, the bordellos, the feasting halls and myriad other entertainment facilities.

This is allowed and even encouraged as the Spire-top Kings tend to spend big, invite all their friends and tip like happy drunk sailors. Possibly they do this as social posturing to display their wealth. Either way it helps keep the coinage circulating.

As you get further down the hive it gets less clean. Bordellos turn into brothels and are referred to as such, burlesque houses are replaced by opium dens and such.

The there is a bizarre reversal in the Sump and the Warrens where what the up-hive people call the crime lords hold sway. Equally as proud as any Spire-top King they impose order as order is good for business, they all know that they are potentially only an hour away from a lynch mob or the arbiters and so they have standards and take at least some care of their subjects.

It is also rumoured that a Night Lords splinter group has set up a discreet recruitment station in the very lowest levels of the sub-Sump Warrens without the permission of the Imperial Fists descendant chapter that maintains a recruitment station on Necromunda. They have done.

There have been several attacks on the Necromunda hives by opportunistic but small time Dark Eldar kabals and at least one minor WAAAAGH!!!. They went into the lower hives and were never seen again.

I swear I'm working on the Dorn fluff bumping for time.

A question on the Dorn.

Is there an a character from the Imperial Fists who could be an old comrade in arms for Dorn?

>>53371423
Sigismund maybe?

>>53372006
I think we've already had him mentioned as the founder of Nurgle's brand of Fallen marines.

>>53372074
at which time he was first captain of the Imperial fists. Sigismund is definitely an option.

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>>53368286
The voidborn probably don't look very favorably on crime, since out in space every morsel you illegitimately put in your mouth is one you had to take out of the mouth of someone else. On the other hand, the voidborn might see very little difference between organized crime the usual state of affairs. The only difference being crime directly harms people or society as a whole.

This would lead to some weird social norms compared to the groundpounders. Selling vices is okay because it's business and no one's being forced to do anything. Selling shitty tech is a no no because if your oxygen recycler blows then you have no air to breathe. But haggling is A-OK because why would you not want a better deal?

There also might be gangs of rambunctious youth in the bowels of the ships simply due to their sheer size. Back when we were talking about Horus' youth I almost suggested him having run with one of the undership gangs in his youth to explain how he was so good with organizing people (and how he understood a bit of violence could oil the wheels of negotiation) and to refer back to his canon origins. But I think that's not possible now.

>>53373134
There is nothing to suggest Horus didn't dabble in a bit of what outsiders might consider shifty behaviour.

Also he did manage to become the king of an entire subspecies of humanity. You have to wonder what happened to the dissenters.

Void Born might not be against reasonable violence on a cultural level. It being the other thing that differentiates them from the Diasporax.

>>53374344
Yeah, voidborn are merchants and traders by nature. They would definitely not be against a little justified violence when need be. Space may be a good reason for banding together, but it isn't free of people who would engage in violence. Diasporex are a religious movement who engage in trade because everyone has to eat. They're Silk Road merchants crossed with Silk Road missionaries or monks with a religion resembling ancient perceptions of the stars.

Sol voidborn also had close ties with the Mechanicum pre-Warlord. It's not unlikely they had to engage in a bit of outer space violence to get things done when hired by the Mechanicum.

Doing the writing up of the Dorn fluff. Run into problem.

I don't know shit about native North American naming traditions. I have no fucking idea what to call Dorn's mum.

Anyone got any suggestions?

>>53377451
It's 30,000 years in the future, make some shit up.

>>53377506
I can't seem to, I am trying.

>>53377564
Make a joke about Canadians currently inhabiting the region you want and go from there. Most of our OC names have been gags at first.

>>53377451
Keep in mind too that "tribal" in this case not only means descendants of the Native Americans, but of basically everyone who lived in Canada or the Pacific Northwest. Like how in Fallout you get tribals whose ancestors come from all over.

So there's a lot more flexibility in the names that could be used.

Also if you need help just look up Pacific Northwest First Nations culture stuff.

You know, I was just thinking, the fact that sagittar armor acts as artificial limbs is just asking for a character that has lost their legs and uses sagittar armor as a prosthetic. A true merger between man and machine.

It’s certainly a common theme in 40k. The Space Marines have their dreadnaughts. The Mechanicus often replace perfectly good limbs with prosthetics. Heck, even the Tau have their token "requires military-grade prosthetics to live" character in Bravestorm. Why not the Interex? It would also make up for the lack of Interex characters, of which we have almost none in canon.

I was thinking of something like a combination between Queen Tomyris of the Scythians and Chiron, to continue the centaur/horseman theme of the Interex heavy infantry. Whereas Chiron in Greek Mythology is known for being the most level-headed member of a race of hotheads, this character is the most warlike member of a race of peaceniks. The Interex in general love math, but rather than peaceful purposes this character is one of the Interex’s best strategists and prefers to use it for tactics and thrives on the battlefield. The Interex don’t like war, even though they acknowledge its necessity, and are rather unsettled by her agressiveness and decide to send her far away along with the like-minded soldiers, kind of like the Foreign Legion, which is one way in which you get sagittars on battlefields outside of Interex territory. However, when she gets out among the greater Imperium, it turns out she is only bloodthirsty by Interex standards, and in reality is only slightly more bloodthirsty than average. 0.5 Machariuses at the most.

I had the idea but wanted to bring it up before I wrote anything in case it sounded too weird.

>>53377451
>>53377506
>>53377564
>>53377767
We're keeping the post-Unification and personality stuff we have for Dorn, right?

>>53378700
Yes so far as I know.

bump while I write thing

An idea I had for a Cronedar special unit/weapon.

>Qlippoth
The Qlippoth began as something of a science project deep within the bowels of Shaa-Dom. An attempt at creating emotion and sensation unprecedented even to gods, creating zones of altered space equally foreign to both the Materium and Empyrean and minds to inhabit them- to be consumed. Born to die.

It worked. Croneworld legend holds that everyone even tangentially involved with the project was immediately elevated to Daemon Princedom for creating sensations previously unknown to even the Prince of Excess, but the actual truth could be anything.

Qlippoth intended for war use are transported within ghastbone containment/support wombs, which are in turn locked within stasis fields. Once on the battlefield, the stasis fields are deactivated and the contained micro-universe and inhabiting Qlippoth(s) begin eating their way out of the containment womb and leaking into the outside universe.

It begins with a psychic howl, an utterly alien psyche pressing down on the mind and soul. Devastating and incapacitating. Permanent damage is likely. Closer to the epicenter, total mind erasure.

Then, physical effects, as the containment womb starts to collapse entirely and the micro-universe within starts to force its way out, resulting in a zone of overlapping physics within both the Materium and Immaterium. The exact effects are never the same twice, each Qlippoth and its substrate being utterly unique, but they are invariably devastating. Not even daemons take well to the laws of physics changing underneath them.

Finally, the utter collapse of the containment womb and the release of the Qlippoth itself. Without the womb maintaining its form and feeding it energy, it will only live for a handful of minutes, but will cause enormous destruction in those few minutes before the laws of nature finally reassert themselves. Even so, the scars on both Materium and Immaterium will linger indefinitely.

Thoughts?

>>53382084
So, it's a Cronedar Exterminatus?

>>53382793
Probably varies based on the size, but I was thinking about a high-end Deathstrike on average, city and regiment-killing but not really planetary. You probably could have an Exterminatus-grade Qlippoth, but they would be special and rare.

>>53369592
It was talked about that the really high population hive worlds are populous enough to support multiple chapters. Armageddon has five, but that might also be because it's Armageddon.

The Imperial Fist descendants potential unhappiness with the Night Lords descendants setting up shop in the underhives might be less because they're edging in on IF territory and more because they're Night Lords.

I would suggest that the eighteen First Founding chapters all have a "Right of Recruitment", the right to recruit aspirants from Old Earth itself. This wouldn't just be symbolic, gene-seed was originally designed on Earth and so has the highest compatibility rates.

In practice, almost no one ever uses it. Space Wolves don't because Canis Helix doesn't work well outside of the Fenrisian Worlds. Iron Hands don't because Mars provides them with all the manpower they could need. The others don't really use it either, but in a situation similar to vanilla Warzone Fenris or IFs in WOTB it would allow the chapter to recover and find a new home world instead of being condemned to extinction or having to beg marines from other chapters (though they would probably consider it an honor to transfer to the founder chapter).

Do Liivi and Taldeer exist in this setting yet?

>>53384871
Absolutely do.

>>53384506
Which chapters have presence on Armageddon?

>>53384965
No clue. We just decided on five because that way there would be one for each hive and there would be more than a couple (which was thought to be too low, IIRC).

It was mentioned that different hives or planets in regions where multiple Astartes chapters are common tend to treat Astartes chapters like sports teams. I.e., local pride and rivalry with nearby hives ("Silver Snakes are the best." "No Diamond Crushers are the best, Snakes suck.") Obviously worse in some cases like Mordia and Praetoria and likely more of a hive thing than anything else.

The popularity of the Feast of Blades (Lion's team-building exercize turned Imperium-wide training spectacle) doesn't help.

>>53382084
Even by Chaos standards this is delightfully weird.

Does it have any connection to the Forgotten Apocalypse?

>>53385447
I'm not sure what you're referring to.

>>53385535
The Harrowing was an attempt by another universe to impose itself on our universe.

Maybe the Chaos Eldar accidentally attracted it with their insane weapons.

>>53385980
Actually, I was thinking that the Harrowing in this universe could potentially be Outsider-related, since the canon Imperial reaction to the Harrowing (erase all information) is identical to the appropriate course of action for dealing with the Outsider.

>>53382084
It's weaponized Zalgo.

It's beautiful.

>>53384965
>Which chapters have presence on Armageddon?

This is something we need to know.

Preferably adapted official chapters that contrast each other.

Should we have a vote on it?

>>53387042
The Harrowing is pretty well defined in canon as "universe full of magnetic lifeforms that didn't obey physics tried to forcefully impose itself on ours". The reason all information on the Harrowing was lost in canon was because the Imperium suppressed it to keep the masses calm. Here they're a bit more honest and tried to keep notes on it. You'd think if there was a massive galaxy-threatening event that took ridiculous pains to stop the Imperium would at least try to keep notes on what happened and how to stop it. Even if it was the Outsider, they would keep a list of "in case of something that wants to be forgotten, do this".

It's also been mentioned that the Imperium doesn't really know what the Outsider wants or where he is. The Inquisition know that the Lyrixian mega-structure exists and that it tends to kill any team that goes in there, but they keep assuming the team befell some kind of defense mechanism as opposed to what's actually in there. They have no clue that they're poking a bear, one that could have disasterous consequences on the Imperium if they wake it up.

On the other hand, that doesn't mean we can't have another major event, this one Outsider related.

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>>53390245
>Magnetic lifeforms
Thank God the Harlequins were there to save the day.

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>>53391277
fucking kek

>>53391583
>>53391277
I don't get it.

>>53391277
To be honest that's probably how the Harlequins reacted to the whole affair.

"We are under attack by a mysterious foe! Harlequins, what can your vast and priceless source of ancient knowledge tell us about this enemy?"

"Um, yeah, we literally know nothing about these guys, which is really saying something. Also, what we have seen seems to work completely at odds with all knows laws of how the Materium or the Warp works. I dunno, maybe they run on miracles or something".

>>53389421
For this we need 5 chapters of diverse ideology but no stated home world in Vanilla.

We need distinctive colours and simple, bold symbols to easily identify teams.

I'm going to suggest one be the Hammers of Dorn for that sweet black and gold colour scheme. Also as the Codex is this time guidelines only their deal could be that they study to point of obsession a wide number of martial doctrines to become perfect strategist and tacticians.

>>53392967
https://g.co/kgs/HfldJC

Let's see if this fancy link works. If it doesn't, just google "fucking magnets."

>>53393961
But now I'm just more confused.

>>53395028
That's standard upon witnessing Insane Clown Posse.

>>53390245
Knowing you poked the bear, and that there is a bear in the giant space orb, is exactly what sets the bear off.

Sometimes when Trayzn wants someone dead he has them peek inside the mystery box he keeps and read the files inside, and then mark will die soon after.

>>53395911
So what would happen if some colossal asshole accumulated as much info on the Outsider as possible and broadcast it across the communications networks of every planet in the Imperium with the technology to do so?

>>53397284
>nobledark Max Headroom when

>>53397284
Hideous murder on scale unimaginable, I imagine.

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>>53397284

This (>>53398751). Outsider keeps going until someone puts him down. Although he has no noticeable Warp signature, he's still the last of the pure C'tan, which means it would take the Void Dragon, Nightbringer, or one of the Chaos Gods to kill him.

Is the Diasporex (the pilgrim fleet) policed and protected by the Imperium? Cause that is one big giant target for Chaos to infiltrate in there.

>>53398962
Not as such but they aren't stupid either.

They know about Chaos, how could they not, and they have survived pure and inviolate for this long. Must be doing something and doing it right.

>>53398943
let khorne kill him. khorne is fucking cool

Dorn stuff taking longer than I thought it would.

Sorry.

>>53399102
>>53399102

Do the Imperium support them in anyway? Like, a helping hand here, a few gifts there, things like that. The fleet is helping the Imperium, a messenger service and trading fleet. Even if the fleet does not fall TO Chaos, it might fall BECAUSE OF Chaos (or similiar shits), and you would want them not to, right?

>>53398962
Diasporex are part of Imperium by M41. They would have been assimilated sooner but Imperial policy was clear at the time that they're out to protect human and eldar population not every single xenos race. Interex weren't a problem because they were human led and Kinebrach were allied but essentially a client race.

Diasporex it's clear that no one was really in charge. It would be like if you encountered a world ruled by a democracy where the ruling senate includes humans, kinebrach, sslyth, tarellians, and more living in harmony, and no one species holds the reins. What the fuck do you do?

Solution was to give Diasporex a voice in Imperial government as a Survivor civilization that they never use to resolve trade disputes. After AoA it's a moot point as xenos are being let in to the Imperium.

Diasporex wouldn't be a popular target for Chaos corruption. They're ascetics and their religion doesn't have enough blood, self-indulgence, plans, or despair to satisfy the Chaos gods. Also non-Chaos faith works as a minor daemon deterrent. They'd still be popular targets for Dark Eldar raiding parties or the Crones/Ork in general. And that's not saying individuals could not be corrupted.

In fact, IIRC, the founders of the Diasporex were from a world that was lost to Chaos, so they for sure would know what it was.

>>53399209
The last time Khorne won against a major god he crowned himself Blood Lord of the Galaxy. Do you really want to encourage that?

>>53401031
Khorne insists he's still sovereign king of daemon kind, thus the warp, thus the Galaxy, says all the other gods are arrayed beneath him in a pantheon, and every other power is false as he victoriously leads the Galaxy to war, but net even the rest of Chaos thinks this isn't bullshit.

>>53399209
Khorne's a one-note hack, the Child Goddess can do everything he does and better.

bumping with dialogue:

>"Tehahaha, hey guys. Eldar slave, wat do?"

>>53403837
Slaanesh need has ADHD.

How long should Dorn's education last assuming he is extraordinarily talented.

Assuming he went to Merika age 16.

I'm picturing him coming back to in his mid 20s as a lieutenant fresh from the academy.

Does this seem right?

>>53393752
2nd of the 5 could be Crimson Sons.

KSons descendant chapter with, in Vanilla, some ties to Ahriman. In this one they could be implicated but never proven to be covertly supplying and offering a hiding place for the Deamon Breakers. Shady as all fuck but good luck ever proving anything. Their biggest redeaming feature is that they also help the Ordo Malleus.

Much like the Hammers of Dorn they are warrior scholars but specializing in forbidden lore. Tendency to collect the scriptures and tomes of the cults they purge. Books typically kept in lead boxes with electrum warding inlaid.

Slightly higher number of Battle-Psykers. Per head of the chapter it's about on par with the Blood Ravens.

Also we need to get down an at least basic notion of what the Armageddon Games are like.

I'm picturing the usual basic Olympic Games + Ritual combat. Does there need to be moar?

Also has it been opened to other non-Armageddon chapters in some parallel to the Feast of Blades that the Dark Angels enjoy?

>>53406882
The Feast of Blades got open to non-Dark Angels at some point. Not sure when. It was said it got open to public viewing when some Inquisitor thought it was a Khornate ritual.

It's possible that there is no longer just one Feast of Blades but several scattered around the galaxy where the local Astartes chapters go to the nearest one.

>>53407908
So by 999M41 is it the case that most Chapters participate in it?

>>53408981
I would say so. Aside from chapters like Marines Malevolent who probably aren't invited.

>>53410060
If we assume that most of the Vanilla Chaos warbands are present in this AU as chapters given the rarity of The Fallen that means that there could be as many as 3,000 chapters.

Let's assume that most attend with a few exceptions. GKs opted out due to good sportsmanship as did the Sons of Anteus. Psykers aren't allowed in for safety reasons so KSons stay out. Night Lords typically are either not invited or intentionally don't participate so as to not sully the event but do get tickets to watch. Iron Hands and spawn don't because they aren't Space Marines and consider games beneath them.

Let's say that this leaves ~2,500 chapters probably a bit less.

That's 2,500 teams competing in the Super Soldier Olympics.

That's fucking insane.

It also means that anybody that actually gets a medal, especially in the combat events, is a monster among monsters.

>>53410670
>kilometer minimum Javelin throw and hammer throw
>at eachother

>>53410670
3,000 chapters is actually too low. We agreed that there were 10,000,000 marines with chapter sizes ranging from 1000 to 1500, so if we average out to 1250 then it's actually 8,000 chapters.

I like the above anon's idea of regional, maybe Segmentum level trials/prelims, so the guys who end up in the final Feast of Blades are some of the hardest fuckers in the galaxy.

>>53410670
As mentioned by >>53407908, it may be that there are several hubs for the Feast of Blades instead of one major one. It takes months to travel the length of the Imperium on a good day, and having all the chapters gather for some huge festival means huge sections of the Imperium are going to be left Space Marine-less.

>>53411571
Isn't this a canon event in the Feast of Blades?

>>53412698
It wouldn't be the entire Chapter going for a walk. It would be, at most, 10 marines and maybe 2 or 3 serfs each.

If the contests and trials are held at regular intervals and they are on a rota of know worlds they wouldn't even need a ship of their own, they could get lifts on the merchant ships and ferries and such.

Effects on the war effort would be fairly minimal.

Bump

>>53410670

Wonder what the Eldar thinks of this. Probably don't join, but I wouldn't be surprised if some are really interested in them.

Hm... wonder if Chaos had tried to attack on the finals. It wouldn't end well.

>>53416891
The Eldar probably have their own equivalents, and there's probably at least an informal cross-species contest.

Well, it depends on how they attack. A ground assault would go terribly. (Wouldn't stop a Khornate warband from trying.) Smuggling in a vortex bomb would reap great dividends.

>>53416998
How well would that work? I mean how would a normal human or eldar expect to win against a kinebrach or Beastman auroch in a contest of strength? Or nearly anybody against an eldar in a contest of agility?

>>53416891
Chaos tried attacking the Saim-Hann Iron Storm once. They did quite a bit of damage but since then the Saim-Hann have been very vigilant about keeping people from interrupting their great race.

In the interest of providing new stuff for the thread, here is that bit on Lugft Huron mentioned last thread. Back when we were talking about potential sources of Fallen, Lugft Huron was brought up as a potential source for a large number of Fallen space marines that didn’t come from the initial betrayal of the majority of the Dark Angels during the War of the Beast. Consider this just a first draft, something that can be changed as needed.

---

Near the center of the Milky Way galaxy is the Maelstrom, a lightyears-wide patch of incrossable space and the biggest Warp Storm outside of the Eye of Terror. For obvious reasons, the Administratum recognized the potential threat the Maelstrom represented and stationed five Astartes chapters to guard it, as the Maelstrom Warders: the Brothers of the Anvil, the Wind Riders, the Charnel Guards, the Crystal Wyverns, and the Astral Claws. On paper, the five chapters were all equals amongst one another. In practice, however, the Astral Claws were the oldest and most experienced of the five chapters, and so the other chapters tended to defer to the Astral Claws for leadership.

>>53419290
At the turn of the 41st millennium, the Chapter Master of the Astral Claws was a man named Lugft Huron. Despite the presence of five Space Marine chapters, Huron felt the High Lords of Terra were not taking the Maelstrom as seriously as they should have. In contrast to the Eye of Terror, which was located on the edges of Imperial territory, the Maelstrom was located near the very heart of the Imperium, and so any Chaos incursions there would be much more unpredictable and much more likely to strike at something vital. And unlike the Eye of Terror, there were no equivalent to the Cadian Gates to funnel the movement of Chaos forces in and out of the Maelstrom. The Eye of Terror had the Black Legion, numerous Guard regiments, and all the forces Cadia and Ulthwé could bring to bear guarding its gates. And what did the Maelstrom have? Five chapters of Space Marines. Huron made these concerns known in a message to the Administratum and the High Lords of Terra.

Unfortunately, this request was made during the 12th Black Crusade, when the Imperium was understandably focused on more important things. The High Lords reportedly did send a message back to Huron saying they would consider his request when they had the opportunity, but it is unknown if Huron ever received it. Whatever the case, Huron took the apparent lack of concern about the Maelstrom and his situation personally. He claimed to the Astral Claws and the other Maelstrom Warders that the Imperium had abandoned them, and that it was their duty to secure the Maelstrom and the Badab Sector by any means necessary. To this end they carved out their own little petty empire in the Badab Sector, seizing control of the inhabited worlds for supplies and aspirants.

>>53419307
At first, the Imperium did not notice anything was wrong, being too busy taking stock of the losses from the 12th Black Crusade. However the Imperium quickly did notice the situation in Badab when ships from the Badab Sector started raiding Imperial Worlds in other sectors for materiel and aspirants. The Emperor in particular was outraged at the system Huron had set up, wherein the Astartes acted as a military aristocracy over the baseline citizens. In his mind the Astartes, like himself, were duty-bound to serve mankind, not lord over them.

The Badab War was a particularly bloody one. Numerous Imperial regiments were still on active duty due to the 12th Black Crusade, so Imperial forces simply poured into the Badab Sector. However, it was not that easy. Huron had rebuilt many of the buildings of the Badab Sector, including the infamous “Palace of Thorns” on Badab Primaris, in the expectation of facing a Chaos attack from the Maelstrom, only now he was facing a siege from the other direction. Nevertheless, the Imperium continued to steadily gain ground, and it was clear that the Imperium would not be merciful to the traitors. As a result, Huron found himself accepting the aid of an ally he never thought he’d side with: the Chaos Gods.

>>53419337
Accepting the aid of Chaos caused a brief resurgence by the Empire of Badab, making it even harder for the Imperium to proceed, but the Imperium still managed to press on. Eventually, the Imperium reached the heart of the Empire of Badab, but the five traitor chapters fled into the Maelstrom at the behest of the Chaos Gods. Imperial Forces tried to follow the traitor chapters into the Maelstrom, attempting to kill them before they could escape and join with Chaos forces, but the Ruinous Powers threw up a Warp Storm that prevented all efforts at pursuit. Once in the Warp, each of the Maelstrom Warders fell to a different Chaos Gods, the Brothers of the Anvil (now Deathmongers) to Khorne, the Wind Riders to Slaanesh, the Charnel Guards to Nurgle, and the Crystal Wyverns to Tzeentch, with Lugft Huron and his Astral Claws, now rechristened the Red Corsairs, following Chaos Undivided.

Today, the Red Corsairs and their following chapters act more like mercenaries than cultists, willing to support any major Chaos warband as long as the pay is good. Surprisingly, the five chapters still cooperate with one another as well as they did when they were loyal to the Imperium, despite worshipping different gods. The Red Corsairs’ mercenarial nature is one of the ways people like Malys and Be'lakor get their hands on Chaos Space Marines without having to deal with Luther and his ilk. Currently, Huron and the Red Corsairs have thrown in their lot with Lady Malys and her forces, having seen the writing on the wall.

>>53419352 (same)
Had a real hard time finding good traitor chapters from Lexicanum. Most of them have names that are really, really obviously Chaos-aligned, and in most cases they’ve changed their names from what they were originally. I tried using chapters from the Abyssal Crusade, since I don’t think that event would have gone down quite the same as in canon and so those chapters are up in the air.

On writing this down, I realized that the Badab traitors would have a good niche post-Badab if they were well-coordinated. The Slaaneshi are fast attack scouts and cavalry like the White Scars in the Dornian Heresy, the Khornates are the heavy hitters, the Nurglites act as sappers/besiegers, the Tzeentchians provide intel and psykery, and the Red Corsairs are the good all-rounders. In essence, they’re a little bit of all the aspects of Chaos packaged in one little bundle, and their strengths tend to balance each other out.

The downside is there is only about 5,000 of them at most (and rarely do they commit their full force at any given time) so there aren’t very many of them (and in fact if there were more of them, they wouldn’t be as well-coordinated). They also aren’t very well-liked by the gods because they (usually) don’t go slaughtering each other for worshipping different gods.

>>53419352
>without having to deal with Luther and his ilk
speaking of the xenophobic old bastard, since he would hate Shaa-Dome and its rulers would hate him back, where could he have holled up in the eye?

>>53419973
He could have holed up in some planet in the Warp. The Crone Eldar might not like Luther too much, but the Chaos Gods are smart enough to not let their prize pawns kill each other while they're still useful (aside from the eternal Nurgle-Tzeentch and Slaanesh-Khorne rivalries). Emperor's Children and Ksons, among others, get their own demense in the Warp in canon, so why not Luther's Fallen?

It's been mentioned that Erebus has been able to cajole Luther into putting aside his dislike for Malys long enough to pitch in with the major Black Crusades, which tend to be when the three major warlords of Chaos (Malys, Luther, and Be'lakor) put their differences aside and Get Shit Done.

>>53405338
I don't know. Google says that training times for U.S. ground troop recruits last 10-13 weeks, but that's for adults. This sounds like it would be a combination military boarding academy and officer school, so it might be much longer for general education and tactics and the like.

Not to mention what a Merikan officer is expected to know might be vastly different from a modern officer.

>>53406882
Maybe an Iron Warriors chapter, for that glorious rivalry. Plus fortifying the hives is a big deal on Armageddon.

Maybe a chapter dedicated to going into the bowels of Armageddon to root out major ork infestations before they turn critorkal. Raven Guard descendants?

>>53420211
Fulgrim had to go and wrangle an ad-hoc rank that he turned into a legitimate position, but he already grew up as a prodigy within the Merikan military-industrial complex. It seemed like Lucius was born and raised to be an officer, and the fulgrim stuff in the archive refers to established houses in the officer corps. Dorn might come in with existing military training after living on the Merikan frontier, and learn as lieutenant to some merikan general. I'd take a lot of inspiration from early north american colonial military exploits.

>>53419352
>>53419395
Interesting, but I'd change a few things.

First, Space Marines are part of the Imperial Army in this timeline instead of being independent, autonomous forces. Therefore, if the Chapters assigned to the defense went rogue then presumably large parts of the local Army would have as well, and play a major role in the course of the war. Perhaps Huron is a high commander in the Army, as well as/instead of an Astartes?

Second, I'd expand the timescale of Huron's takeover. Subversion of civil as well as military authorities, taking place over centuries, one emergency decree at a time, his treason discovered almost by accident.

Third, since the number of Astartes here is ten times vanilla, I'd increase the number of chapters assigned to the Maelstrom- 10 or 20.

>>53421111
>>53420211
So Dorn goes back to Calbi in early 20s, apprenticeships to the man he's going to replace for a year, serves in that job for one or maybe two years, "surreptitiously" kills the military governor and then jumps on to Fulgrim's rebellion aged 25ish.

Does this add up right?

>>53419395
I think this needs going on the 1d4chan

How is any of this relatively a light rewrite?

>>53422302
no, because his rebellion is already ongoing in fulgrim's young adulthood, years before he becomes an officer or begins the Merikan coup. He was dug in and fighting for years in the fulgrim bio, and seemed to have been going long enough to have received his mk1 astartes treatment as surreptitious aid from the imperium.

>>53422734
we're only attempting to make the setting follow some sensical historic or thematic arc, whereas the others replace things whole cloth.

>>53422906
Then the dates are all pushed back a bit and it's really Dorn's prolonged rebellion that Fulgrim joins, Dorn by this point possibly being in his 40s and having received the Mk1 treatments some time beforehand.

>>53420211
The Iron Warrior faction of Armageddon could be the Steel Brethren based on the fact that in Vanilla they are described on the Lexicanum as specializing in siege warfare. Given that Armageddon is always waiting for the next WAAAAAAAGH!!! this fits.

Also dat glorious rivalry. The Steel Brethren and the Hammers of Dorn would without doubt send their best and brightest to meet in an arena to engage in a game of Chess. It can be no other way.

Hammers consider the Brethren to be too single minded. Hammers try to excel at all things, Brethren accept that they were sent to Armageddon to basically build and man walls and in this they excel and are content.

>>53422734
Light-hearted, it should probably say. It's still the same fucked-over universe as in canon, it's just individuals aren't as shitty to one another. So life doesn't suck as much, but you're still probably going to be eaten by tyranids.

It's "relatively" light because compared to Hektor Heresy, Imperium Asunder, and vanilla, just about anything less dark looks light-hearted in comparison.

>>53404517
Depends on who it is taking the eldar as a slave and which type of eldar it is.

Dark Eldar will have all sorts of insane technology to fuck you up

Chaos Eldar will have all sorts of deamonic shit to fuck you up

Imperial Eldar has friends and they are going to fucking kill you

>>53421202
>Third, since the number of Astartes here is ten times vanilla, I'd increase the number of chapters assigned to the Maelstrom- 10 or 20.

That could be one of the reasons Huron was so pissed. Huron is written as someone who is very prideful and resents the fact that no one seems to appreciate what he does. He's understaffed and underfunded and he knows it.

Maelstrom had only three chapters in canon, Charnel Guards being reassigned because of manpower issues. It could be that the High Lords were focusing on overcompensating on Cadia because only minor Chaos incursions like the occassional unnumbered Black Crusade (at worst) were coming through the Maelstrom. Then Huron points out "guys, we literally have a skeleton crew guarding our back door" and the High Lords realize he's got a point.

It could be that there were one or two chapters that realized "we're the baddies Hanz" and threw themselves on the mercy of the Imperium and didn't fall to Chaos or follow Huron.

There probably would be Guard detachments, but the issue to worry about would be the more people packed into the Maelstrom, the more likely it is that someone would get out and blab that Huron's setting up his own petty empire.

The emergency orders to despot transition sounds really fantastic though.

>>53426935
Setting up your own mini-empire doesn't seem to be something the Imperium is against. Space Wolves are basically doing exactly that.

It's setting up a mini-empire outside the Imperium that is the issue.

>>53421202
>>53426935
>>53428008

You know, Huron in canon is said to have baseline human soldiers referred to as "reavers" under his command, and is often referred to as "the Blood Reaver". Maybe there were a number of native Guard regiments that defected along with Huron and fled into the Maelstrom.

It would make sense. Depending on how long it took for Huron to build up his empire after saying "fuck it" during the 12th Black Crusade, you could have an entire generation of people who know nothing but life under Huron's rule. By their logic, Huron is "obviously" the guy in the right, because he's the one looking out for them as opposed to the High Lords and Imperium who "abandoned" them.

Old hands with access to rejuvenant technology and knowledge of how things really are tend to be killed in “populist” “uprisings”.

>>53428644
Depending on how functional Huron's Empire is they might be genuine uprisings and actual spontaneous lynch mobs.

What should the Maelstrom Empire be like to live in?

>>53428644
It seems likely that the human soldiers and command would also feel abandoned by Terra. A bigger question would be what the Eldar are doing in all this. I would expect an entire sector to have at least a few Seers and their Aspect Warrior retinues kicking around in the upper echelons, and they'd hardly be standing passively by.

>>53429642
Either they joined in and went to Chaos or, more likely, were purged from the realm along with the commissairs.

Eldar know where that path leads. They have walked it before.

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>>53429614
Pre-Badab War if the people who know Huron's just doing this to quench his own ego are getting lynched it could be something like North Korea or Mao's China where the elders in the know are killed off or encouraged to be ostracized so they can't provide a contrary narrative to the glorious leader, combined with some completely militaristic society where everything is devoted to the war effort. In theory this would be for fighting against nasties coming from the Maelstrom, but it would work just as well when the Imperium comes knocking.

Post-Badab War the remnants of the empire are mercenaries for hire in the Warp. They probably don't have much of a civilization or if they do it looks like Outer Heaven on warp dust.

>>53429722
As opposed to canon, where Eldar never fall to Chaos (for obvious reasons), it's entirely possible in this timeline for Eldar to fall and join the forces of Chaos.

Lugganath was mentioned to have one Dark Eldar wannabe who slaughtered the seer council and ran off to Commorragh (based on the same event happening in canon). That's the Dark Eldar, not the Crones, but it shows that Eldar switching lifestyles is possible.

Poster of >>53378178 here. Since nobody really had any major issues or problems with this idea, I thought I’d throw this out there and see what people thought. Hopefully it doesn’t sound too stupid.

The Interex are well known for their agreeable, peaceful nature, almost to the point of indolence. They dislike war (more specifically calling it "disharmonious"), though they are more than capable of it, as indicated by their war with the megarachnids, their first contact war with the kinebrach, and of course the numerous military actions they have participated in as part of the Imperium. However, no culture is homogenous in thought, and all societies have their cultural outliers, as is the case for Tamerlane, the Herald of Destruction.

Tamerlane’s interest and skill in military matters was apparent even as a child, showing a greater affinity for sagittar piloting than learning philosophy. Whereas most Interex revere mathematics as a universal concept, considering it the universal unifier and treating it almost as religious in nature, Tamerlane only saw mathematics as a means to outmaneuver and outflank the enemy. While this made her an excellent strategist and logistician, it did not make her popular amongst the Interex, many of whom saw her as a barbarian that represented everything they strove to avoid. Nevertheless, in the dark days of the 41st millennium, the people of the Interex needed soldiers more than they needed philosophers. Tamerlane rose through the ranks of the Interex military, eventually becoming Lieutenant of her division. This state of affairs lasted until a botched operation against an Ork warboss, where an Ork choppa cut through the “waist” of her sagittar and took both her legs with it.

>>53430598 (cont.)
The loss of both her legs should have been the end of Tamerlane's military career. Instead, she refused to back down, using a modified Mark VIII Chiron sagittar armor as a prosthetic to replace her missing limbs. Now a true integration between man and machine, Tamerlane extensive time using her new prosthetic gave her a greater degree of experience and skill in operating a sagittar, making her capable of performing feats with her new chassis almost as if she had been born with it. The loss of her legs had, if anything, only made her a greater danger on the battlefield.
The Interex were rather disturbed by the fact that Tamerlane had not used her injury as an opportunity to step away from the battlefield. As a result, when Tamerlane became fit for duty once again the Interex assigned her to the Black Chargers, one of the military batallions operating outside of Interex space as part of the Interex’s military support to the greater Imperium. This was not an official banishment per se, but it was a good excuse to keep Tamerlane far away from Interex space for as long as possible. The post was initially a demotion for Tamerlane, but eventually she managed to work her way up until she was in command of the Black Chargers.

>>53430613 (cont.)
Despite the politics behind her posting, Tamerlane herself found that her assignment was actually a net positive. Whereas Tamerlane was seen as an atavistic savage amongst her own people, she found the generals and strategists of the greater Imperium to be more kindred spirits. Tamerlane was still a rather ruthless general and a bit of a taskmaster with an eye for iron-hard discipline, but by Imperial standards she was far from the brute the Interex saw. Today Tamerlane still leads the Black Chargers, being one of the most well-known Interex military leaders and leading one of the largest divisions of Interex sagittars outside of Interex territory.

It is rather ironic that the Interex's most prominent military leader is also their most prominent black sheep.

>>53430626 (cont.)
A bit of explanation might be in order. The Interex in canon are basically described as Star Trek meets the aesthetics of ancient Greece. They’ll fight, but they prefer to reason with and understand their enemy. They prefer their generals to be like Captain Picard. Tamerlane is the Worf in the room, the one guy saying “shoot them in the head” while the others are trying the more peaceable solution.

When Tamerlane was crippled, the Interex hoped this would calm her down and she’d retire to teach at a military academy or something. Her getting back on the horse (rather literally) showed the Interex that she was not going to change. Rather than force Tamerlane to retire and risk her proving a bad influence on the Interex youth with her “sometimes violence is the answer” shtick, the Interex sent her away with the rest of the rabble-rousers to go make trouble somewhere else.

The name Tamerlane just came up as a name that sounded like Tomyris but wasn’t the same, with bonus points for that sweet historical allusion and title (plus the historical Tamerlane actually went by the name Timur). I’m open to a different title than “Herald of Destruction” though. If we did a 1-1 port of Timur’s title, it would have been “Princess of Destruction”, which sounds frankly ridiculous. That’s about all the similarities. A figure based on the actual Timur’s exploits would make a better Chaos character than an Interex one.

I was almost tempted to call Tamurlane’s unit the “Winged Hussars” but thought that might be a reference too far.

>>53430641
Winged Hussars would have been a step too far. As it is it is lovely.

Alternate name could be Angel of the Interex. Or maybe Reaper of the Interex.

>>53430922
Reaper of the Interex actually sounds better than Herald of Destruction.

Would it be too much of an alteration to change the type of Super Soldier that Dorn was from Mk1 Astartes?

Would it be possible for him to be a home made job from the Biodruids of Calbi?

>>53432263
Fulgrim was able to get something like a Mk 2, better in some ways ,worse in others, by combining the gene-hippies tech, Merikan tech, and reversed engineered Astartes mods, after decades of work. If Dorn is to have gene-hippie mods they should probably be pretty minor, else he'd be equipped with the equivalent of ancient druidic lore and tech, which is kinda far from the direction his pre-existing stuff suggests.

>>53432376
My idea was that he was gifted with imperfect upgrades when shit reaches the tipping point with the unjust Praefectus of Calbi and he turns on his masters for the sake of his mothers people.

Also he doesn't really need much in terms of druidic lore to be the recipient of their gifts. He just needs to sign a consent form and get on the operating slab.

Also Rogal Dorn is Gaelic for Imperial Fist so it's not like there is no slight connection in Vanilla.

>>53432263
Does Calbi even have any bio-druids? What is Calbi's pre-Merikan government even like? I thought the bio-druids were mostly hidden in the mountain valleys in the Cordillera between the Rockies and Cascades where between the radioactive dead zones and the mountains Merika couldn't touch them.

Also Dorn had malfunctions in his augmentations. The bio-druids were real heavy into quality-of-life (which put them at odds with the genesmiths), which would seemingly be at odds with putting augments in someone that got messed up.

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>>53432638
Dorn could have taken on the Praefect before getting augmented. Doing so could have brought him to the Warlord's attention and resulted in pic related (plus Astartes augments).

>>53430641
Canon Interex are pacifists in 30k; I'm not sure they would still be so after 10,000 years of Black Crusades and integration with the wider Imperium.

>>53432844
So where the Diasporex. Then they were told to look good and hard into the abyss and look upon the faces of their friends and family and consider what was worth fighting.

filk possibly related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pq4SSlsZ_p0

>>53432844
>>53432891
In canon, the Interex went up against the Megarachnids, an interstellar space-faring species. They defeated them so badly they were able to force them back to their homeworld of Urisarach and strip them of the technology needed to travel off-world. They fought a century-long war with the Kinebrach over what essentially amounts to a malfunction in translation technology. When they thought Horus and the Luna Wolves were really servants of the Chaos Gods due to Erebus being a thieving magpie, they didn’t hesitate to draw weapons on them and try and turn them into swiss cheese.

The same goes for the Diasporex. The Diasporex tried to run at first in canon, but when the Imperium threatened something they could not afford to lose they turned up and fought anyway, despite being massively outgunned by the Imperium. Ferrus offered to spare the humans among them if they would turn on their xenos allies, but they refused and preferred to die with their allies to the last man. This baffled some of the Iron Hands to no end.

I would say the two groups are not so much pacifists as reluctant warriors. They would go to war, but they would hate every minute of it and wish there was a better way to solve their problems. Given the reaction of the Interex to Chaos in canon, and the nature of most of the foes faced by the Imperium, it sounds like the Interex and Diasporex would rapidly agree that Chaos, Orks, Necrons (barring a few exceptions), and tyranids are groups that cannot to be negotiated with. Like how the Tau wrote off the Orks, tyranids, and Dark Eldar in canon.

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bamp

>>53437305
>PDF.jpg
For some reason they look like a brutal people.

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>>53430145
I'd imagine the fighting in the Badab War would be devastating as this is one of the few times (not in a Black Crusade) where you see large scale SM on SM fighting. Knowing the Imperium is absolutely ruthless in publicly mass torture executing rebels, it might push even the civilian population into accepting Chaos as a saving grace than face punishment.

>>53437893
>the Imperium is absolutely ruthless in publicly mass torture executing rebels
Not here, I wouldn't think. Nobledark, remember?

>>53438313
Public executions are still a possibility.

>>53437738
If that's a PDF force it would be from somewhere like Stillness.

>>53432832
For that he would have had to take him out in either his late teens to mid twenties.

So we have to push the birth of Dorn back a bit so that he can be in an already protracted slow burn war with Merika by the time Fulgrim starts his rebellion.

Which means that he would have to have had prior contact and covert backing from Oscar. But that means that Oscar would need a reason for not intervening directly and hard sooner to stop the war from dragging on, as a more humanitarian Oscar would want the war over and done with as expediently as possible.

By that time It's possible Oscars offensive into deep Ursh territory was in full swing and he just couldn't spare the man power for an all out war with Merika and it not turn out to costly in lives on both sides.

Keep in mind that Oscar is built and knowns it to tend to the greater good of Humanity, not just the nation he happens to be standing in. He is genuinely concerned with liberating Merika and Calbi for the sake of it's people same as with Ursh.

also implies that Dorn started his rebellion independent of meeting Oscar, as Oscar would have deemed it unwise at that time.

>>53438501
Probably. There would be little need for torture, but the Imperium might try to make an example out of them.

>>53437893
Huron managed to get himself on Oscar's personal shit list. The kind of list usually reserved for people with a lot more power to call on. That's not a nice place to be.

>>53439853
They do look like Skitarii.

>>53441261
Maybe he thought that Merika could barely hold on to Calbi in the first place, and all Dorn needed was a little push to help his rebellion succeed.

IIRC, wasn't Oscar going to leave Merika alone like Hy Braseal until they started funneling supplies to Ursh and later Urshii insurgents? That could be one reason to support Calbi, especially when things with Merika haven't blown up into all-out war yet and Oscar doesn't have the manpower to spare.

Either that or this is one of Taranis' dumb "go behind Oscar's back" schemes.

>>53354435
Orange Catholic Bible should be the way in 40k

>>53437893
Badab would have been a meat-grinder. Huron would have been at a disadvantage in troop size, but he would have had as long as he wanted to dig in and prepare for a siege. And if what we're saying about the populace was true, then they wouldn't be very inclined to surrender even when faced with overwhelming odds.

And you know what they say about troops fighting to break a siege. It tends to make them very ornery and very unreasonable.

The worst part is the Cronedar are probably laughing their asses off saying this is the best wedding gift the Imperium could have given them.

>>53442404
We already have the Katholians.

The big 3 Abrahamic religion equivalents, though not direct analogues, are Yechudism, Katholians and the Promethean Creed.

>>53438501
>>53441737
I can see public execution being a thing, depending on social norms of the world in question, but not public torture.

At least not unless it's the Night Lords and they want to make a point.

>>53442648
Then, of course, you have Omnissiah worship, the Tau'va, worship of the Eldar pantheon (probably like in Fantasy, where there are non-Eldar who worship the Eldar gods), and innumerable local religions such as Fenrisian Paganism, Outrider Ancestor Worship, Catachan Gods of Blood and Wood, Tanith Small Gods, the Death Cults (a.k.a. the Tacitum fanboys, who are in fact still around), a bunch of minor cults, and more.

Trying to catalog the religions of the Imperium would be like trying to catalog every species of bird on present-day Earth.

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>>53441753
I always pictured the Skitarii of Stillness looking at least sort of like Strogg for obvious reasons.

Thread archived, in case it goes under.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/53338185/

>>53444132
The Imperium might have called in the Night Lords for this one. Badab was a bunch of Space Marines saying screw the Imperium and setting up their own independent empire. The Imperium had to come down hard on them or else it might make the Imperium look weak to other sectors thinking about seceding or places where Space Marines might have the opportunity to go full ubermensch (Fenris, Nocturne and Ultramar come to mind. Yeah they aren't disgruntled like Badab was, but if you had an equivalent of Ultramar that was disgruntled and didn't care about civilians the marines could try to decapitate the current government and set themselves up as god-kings).

Badab War in canon had to get the Carcharodons involved to stop it. Carcharodons as you might expect from canon wandered in, took a chomp out of Badab, and then wandered off with a bunch of the populace's children.

>>53446229
would our badab war involve pre or post Isha Carcharodons?

>Oscar going to leave Merika alone like Hy Braseal until they started funneling supplies to Ursh and later Urshii insurgents
Thats more or less what I remember, that and seizing that artificial atlantis continent to prepare for war.

>>53446670
Probably pre-Isha, since humans with rejuvenants live at most about 1k years and Fyodor isn't keeling over from old age in 999.M41. Carcharodons may have found and started arguing with the Administratum over Nicor though.

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>>53446229
Maelstrom is Eye of Terror in microcosm.

The followers of Huron are contained without the blessings of Chaos any force going into the corrupted space is going to have an uphill battle and navigation becomes approaching impossible.

It's probable, if not certain, that the the Imperium would have appointed new chapters to watch and guard that doorway.

>>53448520
Huron signed on with Chaos by the end of the Badab War and fled into the Maelstrom. It would be easy for the Big Four to move their new toys through the Maelstrom into the Eye for maximum damage. They've been mentioned to be hired as mercenaries by various warlords in the Eye.

But the Maelstrom is probably fortified out the wazoo now.

I intended to do finally get my shit sorted on the Dorn thing tonight.

But now so much new shit to take into account. I promise I will get it done.

Every Imperial institution seems to have a bunch of Space Marines that associate with them.

What would one that associates with the AdBio be like?

Would they be a chapter like the Iron Snakes with their love of genetic purity?

Or could their equivalent force be something like the Gland Soldiers or the Arlfriel (sp?) Strain?

I remember someone saying that after the WotB the Geno Five-Two Chiliad remnants were taken by either the Alpha Legion or the Inquisition to the Cthonian Ring to rebuild their numbers. Is this still truth?

>>53450539
>Geno Five-Two Chilliad

I don't know. It was suggested that Uxor Honen Mu was high up in the Emperor's inner circle, but like Jenetia Krole was never named a primarch.

We don't have much on Honen Mu at all though. I'm almost tempted to say they came from Ind, since we don't have any heroes of the Imperium from that country (in fact, almost nothing on the country at all beyond "Ursh Vassal"), but that would sound horrifically racist. Also, Honen Mu is apparently more of an east Asian name.

Lexicanum says that the Uxors of the Geno Five-Two Chillad tended to have their powers burn out about age 30. Perhaps Honen Mu was an individual that showed so much tactical skill with her troops the Imperium decided to keep her around for long-term strategy planning, even after her connection to her children burned out.

In canon, they seem to have a close relationship to the Alpha Legion (at least one Uxor became a baseline operative for the Alpha Legion after her powers burned out). So if anyone would help the Chiliad rebuild their numbers, it would be them.

I compiled some of the stuff from previous threads into an introduction for the Crone Eldar on 1d4chan, possibly headed by that quote from Uthan the Perverse from last thread.

https://pastebin.com/URqwxyxR

The bits on Slaaneshi and Tzeentchian Cronedar are a bit sparse, but they can be expanded on.

IIRC the main political struggle between the Slaaneshi and Chaos Undivided Cronedar, Nurglite, Khornate, and Tzeentchian Eldar being specialists with their own distinct subcultures. Slaaneshi and Undivided Cronedar are more numerous and squabble over which direction the Cronedar should go. Is that about right?

>>53453350
Very nice.

>>53453350
It's a pretty good summary.

>>53452165
It could also be the case that the Geno Five-Two Chillad soldiers could have their useful oddity extended with rejuvanats. They essentially stay within the 15 - 30 group for centuries, biologically.

Also I can't see a problem with her being from Ind. People move around a lot.

>>53446229
In general I don't think that the Night Lords would be permitted to abduct children as a means of perpetuating their chapter.

Also there would be little point. You can't tell at age 10 how badass/monstrous they are going to become. Also given the more relaxed upper limit on when you can undergo Astartes augmentation there is little point when you can just open a recruitment station in some gang infested underhive. With the population numbers in the hives even a small sliver of the population considering joining is basically all the recruits you could need and then some more, and they are already familiar with basic weapons and prepared to kill.

>>53457650
The point was more that in canon the Inperium called in the Night Lord-iest chapter they could find. I agree that the Imperium would never allow for the mass-kidnap of children like that.

>>53442404
>>53442648
You know, it was said that the current religions are in part the result of generations of evolution and mish-mash of old religions. It makes sense that a lot of the old religion ideals and snappy one-liners would be reused. The story of Aphrodite and Adonis is essentially copied wholesale from Ishtar/Astarte and Tammuz, same as with Noah and Utnapishtim.

>>53455893
The problem could come from the biological factor. The weirdness was genetic. If she came from Ind then the rest of the Geno Soldiers must probably do also.

Is there a problem with them coming from Ind? Despite the name they can't come from Chile as that would make them soldiers of Hy Brasil.

>>53455893
>>53459799
The issue is it would mean the Chilliad, whose specialties involve being able to rapidly replace their losses via having a large number of children born from a single mother, would be coming from India, one of the two countries who currently have a bit of a bad reputation for overpopulation and high population growth.

I don't think the Chilliad would have been from Chile. In canon, the Chilliad was one of the 100 Terran baseline soldier regiments allowed to keep their arms and insignia and fight alongside the Space Marines in the Great Crusade. Hy Braseal was still an independent nation that was not associated with the Imperium up until the Horus Heresy.

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>>53460619
I'll be honest and admit that I don't really know much about the Geno Soldiers beyond the female commanders were linked to their soldiers telepathically up until about age 30ish.

Is it necessary for them to be biological children? Could they be artificially cultivated in a lab and the link still work?

Also could the oddity be passed on into the daughters of the male soldiers or did it have to be strictly matrilineal line?

>>53462170
According to Lexicanum, the Uxors (the female commanders) had their ovaries removed as teenagers and the eggs used to mass produce soldiers and more Uxors through artificial fertilization. For some unknown reason, the weak telepathic connection between the Uxors and their soldiers only worked between mother and child, father-child links never being a thing. As a result, the Uxors were all female.

How intelligent are the Legio Cybernetica?

>>53463650
People have said like dog or cuttlefish intelligence.

In canon, there is one type of Cybernetica robot that is smarter than the others and has a serious sadistic streak and the AdMech suspect its STC builds for a machine with artificial intelligence. Many are calling for its use to be banned in canon.

A suggestion for another possible Nobledark battle.

Just before the Second Black Crusade, the Imperium gets wind of Malys' intentions early and decided to reinforce the Cadian Gate with a massive armada, with the end goal of stopping this so-called "Second Black Crusade" flat at the Cadian Gate with overwhelming power.

However, to do so, the Imperial Armada had to rally around a pre-planned location in order to standardize the positioning of the fleet due to the unpredictable nature of Warp jumps. Bad idea.

The Crones end up summoning a massive Warp storm, which wrecks half the fleet and damages most of the rest. Indeed, this may have been part of the goal in the first place, to make sure larger numbers of the Black Crusade got through this time. The end result is that the huge fleet the Imperium had been expecting to reinforce the Cadian Gate get smashed, and Malys' forces steam past Cadia. Cadia manages to hold, but barely, and the Crones that spill past Cadia do a lot more damage to the Imperium than in the first Black Crusade.

This might be the event in which the Nicor was lost.

>>53467466
Good idea.

>>53426935
Perhaps there WERE ten or more originally, but due to other concerns going on some of them got called off temporarily but that 'temporarily' turned out to be rather extended? One gets so mangled it needs time to rebuild, one ends up getting relocated to a place they THOUGHT was temp but needs more time being watched, one ends up chasing some shits for a long time and haven't caught them yet, that kind of stuff
Combine that with what you say there and that gives a bit more reasonable starting point while also giving him more reason to be pissy about what's going on.

>>53467466
Orders Securitas had been intercepting an increase in encrypted orders for Chaos cultists near the Eye of Terror for a few years prior to the Second Black Crusade. With blood-letting and drawing complex geometric shapes, the messages are complete non-sense for any unintended recipient without the properly established telepathic link. Informants leaking the enemy intelligence to the Inquisition can make little to no understanding of the orders. After the help of some unknown double agent within the Imperial Army had the Imperium received enough information to act as they found out these cults had been sabotaging and spying on the defenses of Cadia for years. Expecting to smash another Black Crusade right at the entrance of the Eye of Terror like the last time, the Imperial Navy set a rallying point over Vigilantum, the naval training world near Cadia inside the system. The assembling grand armada was halved as those ships were destroyed in transit by the Warp storm "Hollowing Hull" created by Chaos. The rest trickled into the system to be isolated then be hunted down as small pockets of resistance formed to fight the Cronefleets as they retreated in the 'Battle over Vigilantum'. Although the Cronefleets can't directly travel to Terra as the Imperial Guard still held the planet, they simply circumnavigated around it to attack other sub-sectors while blockading the world. The purpose of this Black Crusade was not to raze Terra like the last time but to test the Imperium in their reaction and experiment if fleets from the Eye can bypass the Cadian Gate. For the first few months of the campaign, the Imperial Navy had to smuggle in troops to the front as the Battlefleets had been scattered by the Warp storm. Unable to effectively operate as a coherent whole prevented the Battlefleets from conducting any offensive operations until the end of the Black Crusade.

>>53470185
Nice.

>>53460619
What about Persepotropolis?

I don't think we have anyone having come from there yet.

All we have on that nation is that they maintained a great store of pre-strife information and kept it hidden from Ursh.

Given the name I'm imagining them as being Persian or at least Persian influenced.

Given the Uxor's name it's still the wrong place but Sino was under Ursh control for almost up until the very end so it's probable that they would not have been of sufficient numbers to form an army after the war if they were there.

Also we have the option with Persepotropolis of the Geno soldiers being the hereditary guardians of the hidden archives who joined the Imperium and surrendered their old knowledge after Persepotropolis was taken by the Imperium and a few years once it became apparent they were being ruled over by a genuinely good man.

>>53432122
Does/can she have multiple sets of artificial limbs?

>>53473360
Well, she’s using a modified sagittar armor to replace her legs, which basically makes her a full-blown cyborg centaur at this point. She’s basically an Interex dreadnaught. I imagine any kind of cybernetic would work, as long as it was modified to account for her lack of legs.

Of course this is counterweighed by several things, which all boil down to the fact that despite her fancy prosthetics she has no flesh and blood legs of her own. Unless that suit is heavily modified, going to the bathroom or taking a bath must be a nightmare (though the former might be less problematic given that other armored Imperial soldiers have ways around it). Several combat maneuvers, such as riding in and then disembarking and using your sagittar as cover, are unavailable to her. Despite it being fun towering over your troops on a daily basis and scaring the shit out of them, doors can be a bit of a pain. Thank god the Imperium typically builds doors with Space Marines in mind.

It could be that the Interex didn’t provide money for more typical cybernetics because they wanted her off the battlefield, and it just so happened that the retirement on disability package would have been able to pay for more typical cybernetics. Tamerlane probably gave their plan the finger (or some other rude Interex gesture), if she had to have robot legs, she’d rather go with the robot legs that were more familiar to her than adapt to a completely new system AND be forced to give up the thing she loves doing.

>>53470185
Sounds good, though did the Securitas exist at that point? I thought they were founded after the Age of Apostasy? Though I remember someone saying that maybe they were pre-Age of Apostasy, and it's just that they were the equivalent of a watchdog with no teeth at the time.

>>53471741
Found the description for what the Five-Two Chilliad dressed like, maybe it sounds more like Persepotropolis than Ind.

"The Geno wore a bulky-seeming uniform that nevertheless allowed them to operate with some grace of movement. A thick leather and armourchain bodyglove formed the main item of clothing, with waist-length coats and waist-length capes of yellow Terran silk commonly worn over the top. Their armour segments were lined with fur, and coats and capes were embroidered with company symbols and other military devices. Helmets were of the spiked variety, often trimmed with beads or fur. Standard issue gear was carried in a lightweight pack, with a long sword-bayonet slung at the waist. Uxors wore black, lightweight variants of the uniform, often covered over with gray cloaks or coats."

>>53474751
Given that she is out of Interex Space and in the wider Imperium how do the AdMech view her legs?

>>53476027
Wasn't there some tech priest in canon who did the same thing. Only go nuts with it and add a billion mechadendrites to it because this is the Mechanicum we are talking about.

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Are there still Living Saints in this AU?

If so what are they?

>>53478554
Maybe blessed by Isha? There could be a lot of untapped psychic juju leftover from the Eldar pantheon in the warp. Some grains and shards of that divine power might be getting guided back to worthy mortals.

>>53479253
You would think Slaanesh would have absorbed the majority of it.

>>53480744
I'll admit, I'm reaching. I like saints and sororitas in
40k, but I'm not sure how they would fit in the more reasonable annd secular nobledark.

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>>53480804
It could be a sort of Gork and Mork effect.

Enough people believe something hard enough, billions we are talking as a bare minimum. This all starts to pool and build up in the Warp.

Along comes someone who exemplifies the flavour of pooled belief. In extreme circumstances they can tap into that pool and be the lightning rod. For as long as it takes the pool to deplete they are awesome.

The wall between Reality and Warp getting thinner makes it easier to tap into the pool.

This may or may not be total bullshit but it seems to follow what looks like happens.

Shas'O "Doomguy" Kais may or may not have been tapping into the Greater Good assisted by the fraying of reality during his infamous rampage.

>>53481237
The concept that the Living Saints could be drawing their power off of could be the very idea of civilization and empire itself. In ancient times, the Romans held the concept of empire in civilization in such esteem that they actually had a goddess, Roma, who was a personification of it.

All across the Imperium, you have billions of individuals believing in the idea of civilization and order. Not “madness of order” like the Necrons are, but just order. It’s been mentioned in this timeline people have been starting to see the Imperium as civilization in and of itself. It doesn’t matter whether you believe in the Promethean Creed or the Greater Good or whatever, at some level what you are believing in is the idea of civilization being a good and righteous thing, and a little bit of energy end up being bled off into that concept.

However, most races in the galaxy aren’t built to take advantage of this effect like the Orks do, so you end up having this massive thunderhead of emotional energy building up that only occasionally discharges itself like lightning strikes. Attempts to study this phenomenon fail because no one knows how to trigger it much less monitor it.

The reason you don’t have all this energy just coalesce into a new Warp God from the quadrillions of humans, eldar, tau, kinebrach, watchers, tarellians, kroot, etc. feeding this concept is that it already has a symbol it can be directed towards. First the Golden Throne as the emblem of civilization itself, then later the Emperor and Empress.

It would also explain why Living Saints are getting more frequent as you get closer to M41. That’s a lot of energy and as the thunderhead keeps building up lightning strikes are just going to get more and more frequent.

>>53481565
It could also not be forming into anything cohesive because everybody has a slightly different vision of what True Civilization is.

Which might work out well. Starchild/Ynnead will need a soul and that could be used to make on.

But whatever it is that's building up it is building up big.

The Katholians of Ophelia tell of a new arch-angel being born and his choir are being made manifest before him. Are they heralding or are they warning? Depends on which side of the asskicking you believe you will be on.

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>>53474807
There was no Securitas before Vandire so there would be a weaker equivalent during this time like the Hydra or something like that. Just some sort of offical or unofficial organization that would supply the Imperium with intelligent without the authority of the Inquisition to act upon it. Which would explain why even knowing these orders, the Imperials can't run counter-intelligence because they might lack the resources to do such a thing.

Do cats still exist in the nobledark?

>>53482453
Gyrinxes do.

>>53482453
Yes this is not Fallout.

>>53484289
You forget Fallout 4© by Bethesda Softworks™ that reintroduced cats to the lore!

>>53485770
Sythcats.

You think it was a cooincidence they were introduced in the same game? No, that's the exact kind of Faux-deep "Spooky" writing Bethesda loves.

>>53485894
fuck you're probably right

>>53478554
>>53479253
Showing my oldfag status in these threads and posting some stuff regarding Isha's blessings from very early threads that may be of interest.

>It would be interesting if in the same way psykers can be soul bound to the Emperor to gain a fraction of his power and will, Isha can grant mortals Memories, her recollection of the heroic traits of the dead Eldar pantheon. A young Eldar boy was found to have been granted the Memory of Vaul when in his first bonesinging lesson he sang a lump of unrefined wraithbone into an exact replica of Anaris, last blade of Vaul and the sword with which Eldanesh challenged Khaine.

>It might be that these memories of her old friends and family are in fact the fragments of their souls she managed to save from She Who Thirsts. For this she is hated beyond madness by the Chaos Eldar. But these are living souls and so they need to live. But these are broken souls and they can not live on their own. They live now borrowed lives. There would be a limit to how many there could be as these are only half living fragments.

>>53486958
>Not sure if the Memories should be actual pieces of the Eldar gods' souls though. Even a sliver of one would be incredible powerful, since tiny fragments of Khaine are enough to animate a statue into a walking avatar of death. You'd potentially have a bunch of demi-god ubermensches walking around. That's why I think it makes a bit more sense to have them be gifts from Isha: they're really just echos of the lost majesty of the gods, her fading memories of her dead family. After all, just like soul binding, people with the Memories aren't all that powerful. Jubblowski just gets visions, the guy with the Memory of Kurnous is just fast and fierce, the kid with the Memory of Vaul is just good at smithing (though in retrospect being able to craft Anaris as a child is completely OP, so we can remove that).

>Sounds about right. Maybe Isha is trying to recreate her old family, maybe she can't let go or maybe she just sees some mortals as embodying aspects of beings she once knew and loved and so believes that they should be rewarded accordingly. As for the Vaul kid, he makes good shit. He is a bonesinger prodigy. He is mortal so his shit will never match that of the real Vaul but when he makes a thing it is worthy of kings. It's also worth noting that when he makes swords they carry a great resemblance, though less godly in quality, to a sword held by an infamous Tau general.


Wasn't there also a suggestion that the Living Saints with wings and glowy auras like canon were extremely rare descendants of Sanguinius whose hidden supergenes expressed themselves instead of being recessive?

Given what the Umbra are and the goodish relations with the Hrud how does the Imperial Navy deal with Umbra on the warp engines?

So for the Dorn writefagging it is, at this point

>Born from a mixed family
>Calbi recently annexed but under the command of a quite decent old Praefectus
>Went to Merika to become an officer like dad
>Came back some year later
>New Praefectus is a total borderline Nazi asshole
>serves under him for some time until shit comes to a head
>Kills the praefectus, makes half hearted attempt to make it look like an accident
>Appointed as the new praefectus
>Tries to be as good a praefectus as possible
>Increasingly fascist Merika keeps ordering him to fuck up the local
>Rebellion
>Imperium has been watching, sends Omegon to talk with him (as Alpharius was talking to Fulgrim)
>Imperium deplores his bad timing, had this happened some years later, ten at most, they could probably have offed full military support
>Funnel as much as they feel that they can spare to aid the rebellion
>Dorn gets early astartes augmentation
>Calbi fortified enclaves are now all under siege. Dorn has to hold out until the Imperium has finished with Ursh and can spare the soldiers to come relive his siege
>Fulgrim rebels and takes some of the Merikan attention off of Calbi
>Eventually Imperium comes marching in as promised, though later than they intended.
>Fulgrim and Oscar present to the people of Merika the image that Fulgrim negotiated hard on their behalf good terms of inclusion in the Imperium
>Calbi allowed to join Imperium as a separate nation, Imperium sets about the rebuilding of Calbi
>A few years later Oscar looks to the stars
>Unification starts to move off world to Luna with eyes on Mars next. Primarchs appointed, Dorn among them.

>>53487637
Maybe they're seen as good luck charms in this AU if Qah was a decent god.

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>>53488757
I assume the asshole praefectus was very depressed, if you know what I mean.

>>53490359
The Umbra are still dangerous to have around. Even though Qah was the bro god, his fragments are so tiny they're almost animalistic in intelligence, and they have a tendency to attack people if they feel threatened. We mentioned in a previous thread that one of the "good" things Hrud have been known to do is steer non-Hrud away from the Umbra. It could be that the Umbra are just smart enough to realize the Hrud are not a threat, but not smart enough to extend that to other beings. The Hrud are scatter-brained enough to do something in the moment, but never really tell people what the Umbra are except on a few rare occasions (alternatively, they don't say anything out of embarassment/sorrow).

On a related note, one reason why the Hrud may have left their homeworld (also called Hrud in canon, but called Hrudworld here for the sake of my sanity) is that while the Imperium may not have been able to see anything, the Hrud with their senses may have been able to see they were living under the shadow of the half-decaying corpse of their god after the Warp spit him out.

Something was seriously wrong on Hrudworld, and the Hrud wanted off.

>>53492275
Or the Hrud could have been anxious to get out of confinement because being stuck on only 1 planet in the 40k universe is very risky and likely to result in extinction eventually.

Also their god told them to stay hidden. Being hidden all in one place when that place is known is not doing the will of their god very well.

>>53493897
Of course, but they still did pack up entirely and left no Hrud behind on their homeworld. They seemed to not just qant to spread through the galaxy, they wanted to get off that one world as fast as possible.

>>53495088
What danger do you suggest slept on their old world?

>>53496175
See >>53492275 (am same person). Possibly the massive decaying corpse of the largest chunk of Qah after the Warp spit him out.

To mundanes Hrudworld looks perfectly normal, although even with the Hrud gone people get the feeling there's something distinctly "wrong" about the place. Like they shouldn't be there. Psykers (including minor psykers like the Hrud) look around and HOLY SHIT THERE'S A DECAYING CORPSE STRADDLED OVER THAT MOUNTAIN RANGE!

>>53497631
I like that explanation. Hrudworld doesn't frighten the Hrud, it saddens them. Their god is dead and his corpse, or something very like it, is always there to remind them.

It appears on the horizon, or at least at a distance. Strewn over a mountain range, lying in a canyon, floating face down in the ocean, half buried in the ice of the north. It's likely not a "real" body as a corps miles thick would probably distort the ground beneath it considerably to say nothing of what a new mountain might do to local climate. It also is always too distant to be touched. It can be assumed that it is a really consistent shared hallucination shared by the People of Quh and the psychically inclined.

The corpse looks like a giant Hrud, more or less. There are anatomical differences. Two sets of insectile wings not dissimilar to a very large beetle and two pairs of antenna upon it's brow, one behind the other.

It is assumed that these additional features denote nobility to the Hrud in the same way that bird wings or a lions mane sometimes are used as artistic additions in human art.

The phenomenon is present on no other world of the Imperium even in the cases of a large Hrud populations.

Of the few Hrud elders and lore-masters asked of it they would volunteer no hard information beyond that it brings them great sorrow.

>>53498356
I was thinking, since Qah is supposed to be a shadow deity, Qah might look like that, but seemingly carved from living shadow. Unlike the Hrud today, Qah might be dressed in the hooded clothes the Hrud used to wear when they were masters of their own world (thinking like a weird sleeveless cloak with a hood, to allow the Hrud's limbs freedom of movement), as opposed to the rags and scraps they wear now as their entropy fields break down most of what they try to wear. Just another example of how much the Hrud have lost.

Put a summation of the notes on the Hrud and Qah from the last thread on the Notes page.

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>>53500096
It's a nice summery.

>>53498856
The Hrud will rise again should the Imperium survive The Day of Reckoning.

Isha will take the pieces of Qah and plant them in her garden when she takes back her throne. Maybe Qah will spring for from the ground, a fresh flower after a very long winter. Maybe his ghosts will finally be laid to rest and his postmortem suffering will be over.

Either way the Hrud will be able to move on.

>>53471741
That might make the Geno Soldiers some watered down or low end surviving Bio-engineering from the Dark Age. That and Alma.

I really like the idea.

>>53501241
If you believe the Star Child prophecy where Isha and the Emperor will have four children to overthrow and replace the gods of Chaos, Qah might end up being reborn as one of those children, similar to how Horus in Egyptian mythology was sometimes both the sibling and child of Osiris and Isis. As a god of community and brotherhood, Qah would be the perfect person to overthrow that fat fuck Nurgle and take his place as Isha's final revenge.

Despite both being gods of community and the themes of decay (Qah being a god of an opportunistic scavenger race and Nurgle being...Nurgle), Qah is essentially the anti-Nurgle. Nurgle has sympathy for others but no empathy. He doesn't get why his affections cause people pain, and he wouldn't change if you forced him to confront the fact, rather prioritizing the bacteria in your gut over you. He is also desperate to be loved, even though he's unwilling to change his behavior to where that's possible.

Qah on the other hand has high empathy despite his nature. You might personally find him grotesque, or disgusting, but he doesn't care. He cares that you are suffering and he wants to do whatever he can to make you feel better, regardless of what you think of him. He doesn't just shower people with gifts like Nurgle because that's not what people need all the time.

Of course, I would leave that more as a potential hook for someone wanting to do a post-M41 campaign, where everything is essentially a potential alternate future. It sets nothing in stone and keeps Qah from clogging up the list of active deities. Can Qah come back or not? Who knows. It's as up in the air as Khaine being reforged (both getting splattered in about the same way).

>>53501241
we actually could have the Geno start off as envoys of Hy-Braseal, from their super soldier program that was semi-comparable to the astartes, and post unification they would have been Hy-Braseal's only legion abroad in the universe, brought along by the Imperium for the great crusade. It would stress the weird relationship with Hy-Braseal, which exists solely at the pleasure of the Imperium, but is nominally closed to them and independen, and Hy-Braseal as the weird little nearly irrelevant enclave it was in the wider scope of the galaxy. It would also explain why they faded from note after the war of the beast, because Hy-Braseal joined the Imperium.

>>53501656
The big difference between Khine and Qah is that Khine is just alive enough to not be dead. Qah is just too dead to be alive.

They are both right next to the border of life and death, but on different sides.

>>53501709
They also faded because there was so few of them left. They can't recruit from outside, they are in effect their own little sub-species like the Navigators.

In theory so long as a single Geno woman of breeding age survives to have daughters they could rebuild in time, but it would take a lot of time.

Also they were close to the Alpha Legion. What of them survived The War of the Beast were taken by them to the Cthonian Ring and became difficult to trace after that.

Presumably they are something to do with the ever so well coordinated soldiery of the Inquisition or as the human backup rarely witnessed with the Alpha Legion.

>>53501817
It's fine with me if we want to go this way, but in canon the seniormost field rank among the Chilliad, the Hetman, was held by an outsider male, whose genetic material they used to fertilize the eggs. Though genetic fuckery might be a good explanation as to why the Chilliad had so much trouble rebuilding their numbers.

>>53501709
Didn't Hy Braseal forswear any ties with the Imperium after the Imperium absorbed (sided with in their opinion) the Antarctic AdMech?

So what does Chaos use for assault/fast attack in this timeline? Given that the two closest things to the Crone Eldar in vanilla are the Chaos Space Marines and the Dark Eldar, I imagine it would be something like a Scourge or a Warp Talon.

Maybe something that looks like someone slapped a one-man helldrake onto a Cronedar with metal “feathers” that can be shot off, since the Dark Eldar tend towards biotech and Crone Eldar don’t care what they use as long as it’s warpy. I dunno, they need a distinct motif to set them apart from the Warp Talons and Scourges.

And of course the Raptor cults likely still exist for the Fallen out of fallen Ravenwing, at the very least.

>>53505680
>Maybe something that looks like someone slapped a one-man helldrake onto a Cronedar with metal “feathers” that can be shot off
That sounds about right. Demonic cybernetics.

>>53502824
They did, but the entire earth getting fucked by Giga Ork and pals might have been the final push to change their minds.
The Orks wouldn't have cared that those humies weren't technically with those other humies. Buncha humies needed stompan, so they got stomped.

>>53507586
When The Beast made it to Old Earth By Brasil fought alongside the Imperium but was not a part of it.

It wasn't until after the war was over and everything needed rebuilding and they were so very broken that they joined.

>>53501656
Assuming that all comes to pass and the gods on the side of civilization triumph over the gods of barbarity you possibly have;

Dragon inheriting the Soul Forge

Isha taking the borderlands of Nurgle's forest and annexing huge swathes of Slaanesh's land to make her garden

Qah and/or Ynnead inheriting the Mansion of Nurgle and the landfill and swamps surrounding it and repairing the place.

Khine takes back his throne of Brass and Bone from Khorne.

Tzneetch's schemes all start to unravel as Ceggers comes dancing through his labyrinth of crystal leading the merry troupe.

What happens to Malal?

Am I missing any?

>>53505680
Jetbikes powered by tears and warp fumes.

>>53498356
A difference between the Hrud and elder that led the eldar to being assholes and the hrud to being humble is that the Hrud are the people chosen but not made by their god.

Eldar are the literal children of their gods and, the croneworlders would claim, their heirs.

>>53509561
What about Malal?

Also Ynnead might also steal Nightlight's stuff when he usurps the God of Death position. Changing death from something to be feared to something that is harsh, but fair (especially if Eldar-style reincarnation is a thing for more than just Eldar due to Ynnead possibly being a liminal figure between species).

>>53507586
>>53508605
Which begs the question what were the Chilliad doing if we assume they were from Hy Braseal and they were fighting in the Great Crusade.

I got a chance to look at one of the books talking about the Geno Five-Two. They really sound like a group that would come from Persepotroplis or Ind, in addition to Honen Mu they have names like Namitjira and Rukhsana, and their native tongue is said to be something called "Scythian".

>>53512466
Given that Qah is a shadow god, and the Hrud are nocturnal, the Hrud might see shadows as a good thing, indicative of your "true nature" or "moral conscious" or "angel on your shoulder". Qah in this case would be metaphorically the "shadow conscious" of the Hrud as a whole, though in reality things aren't quite like that, just like how the Eldar didn't suddenly forget metalworking when Vaul died.

>>53512556
Khaine was the one to steal the Nightbringer's scythe, alluded to be a massive inertialess-drive warship, and crash/hide it somewhere shortly before the fall.

Malal was rendered a subsidiary of Khorne when the latter usurped the domain of destruction. Khorne has some shard or version of Malal he keeps in his realm as a captive/advisor, and Malal is the only real answer Khorne has to the machinations of Tzeentch, and is the prototypical Khornate sorceror. Around the same time in the War of Heaven as the usurpation of the realm of destruction the Outsider coincidentally mantled Malal and went batshit insane, by way of going batshit insane, and having their states of self denial match up.

>>53513201
And as of 999M41 the Beil-tan Khine has remained active waiting for his "war chariot".

At some point Khine and Nightbringer are going to finish that fight they started in a long forgotten age and at the end of that day one of them is going to have the pimp-ship.

>>53513201
>Khorne has some shard or version of Malal he keeps in his realm as a captive/advisor, and Malal is the only real answer Khorne has to the machinations of Tzeentch.

Well, that explains Apep. Also...

Khorne: Tzeentch has unveiled a duplicitous and overly complex plan. Malal, what should I do?
Malal: BREAK SHIT!

It's like a magic 8 ball, only there is only one answer.

>>53513958
Are there any Necrons that side with Khine over Nightbringer?

>>53515422
Are you kidding? The Necrons hate the Nightbringer. The only Necrons he is able to control are the braindead ones who don't have a functioning Necron Lord to tie them into the chain of command. And Khaine is one of those gods the fucking Old Ones taught their cannon fodder barbarians how to make. If Khaine and the Nightbringer square off the Necrons will pull up chairs and sell tickets. Whoever loses, they win.

Of the two, the Necrons would probably root for Khaine more, because he is "just" a god of their enemies whereas the Nightbringer is one of the omnicidal maniacs who trapped them in this hell.

>>53481741
It sounds like it would be something that either the Inquisition or the Alpha Legion would have discovered, those being the two groups that actually go out and try to figure out what Chaos is doing as opposed to stamping out cultist infestations.

>>53514011
>MALAL! THAT WITCH-BITCH TZEENTCH IS INFILTRATING THE LATEST GALACTIC BLOOD MARCH AND TURNING IT TO HIS ENDS. HOW BEST SHALL THE BIRD BE SMASHED AND GROUND TO BLUE PASTE AND DRAINED OF BLOOD?
>Its simple my lord, ruin whatever dear Tzeentch seems most attached to at the moment. All his plans will come to naught, all his tricks will spiral into oblivion, destroy his favored playthings.
>I AGREE, PATHETIC LITTLE BLACKHOLE! AND WHERE SHALL I FIND HIS FAVORED CHAMPIONS TO ENGAGE IN GLORIOUS WAR!
>Nowhere sire, there will be no great clash of arms, it shall be a wretched collapse, the blood march must turn on itself to eviscerate the infiltrators. BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!
>BURN AND SMASH TZEENTCH, DAMNATION AND CURSES UPON THE PLOTTING FILTHY WARPCROW, FIRE AND AXES AND CURSES UPON IT! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE, SO SAYS THE BLOODY KING OF THE GALAXY!

>>53517395
MALAL! TZEENTCH HAS ESCAPED! RECRUIT TEENAGE HUMANS WITH ATTITUDE!

On a non-related note, I moved the stuff on Erebus from the Notes page to the main page to clear out some of the clutter. I tried to reword the stuff so that the two aspects on which there was disagreement (how Erebus joined the Word Bearers and when was his corruption discovered) are a bit ambiguous for now.

Perhaps we should throw in the part where Erebus' origin is mostly coming from Erebus' mouth himself, since the Word Bearers don't recall anyone named Erebus joining the legion. The Word Bearers of M30 most certainly remember one of their own falling to Chaos, being put in the hospital after spitting in Lorgar's face, and then chasing him across the galaxy when he escaped, but they didn't know him as Erebus (even though that's the name he took when corrupting others) and 10,000 years of historical drift and Erebus destroying records means that his true name and the hard records of such an event are lost to time. Just as Erebus wants it.

>>53513958
What kind of an effect would an always active avatar of war have on the psychology of a craft world? That has to be trouble.

>>53519831
I'm tempted to say "it's Biel-Tan, no one noticed any difference", but that would be low-hanging fruit.

Are the Avatar chambers psychically isolated from the rest of the Craftworld? I don't know too much about the Avatar of Khaine but don't the Eldar basically keep it in the Craftworld's equivalent of a temple-basement because they are a little uncomfortable of what it represents?

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>>53519831
And Ambassador Cain is right in the middle of it all, on the most warlike craftworld, with a permanently active personification of Murder, his rabble rousing daughter and her pet Word Bearers are visiting and with the Day of Reckoning drawing ever nearer.

And his job is to keep everyone calm.

And Alfred just handed him a letter with the mark of the Inquisition on it.

It's not the end of the road, but he thinks he can see it from here.

The effects of an active avatar seem to be that everyone within range or affiliated with it starts to get their dander right up, their need to get shit done increases and thoughts turn to not just survival but getting even and/or conquest. A permanently active Avatar is all that 24 hours a day every day rather than just a few days until the battle is over.

Biel-Tan is in a permanent state of needing to get shit done now and are positively chomping at the bit, there are bar fights and brawls and duels and general increases in aggressive behavior with also an increase in post-fight sex so at least there will be replacement population to offset the inevitable attrition.

>>53520681
In Path of the Warrior the Alaitoc Avatar was kept in an isolated one room shrine at the end of a long path in a garden.

so we were discussing the tzeentchian plot orchestrated by the Indigo Crow that got the raid into the garden of Nurgle last thread. How was it figured to go, I'm meaning to write more for the crones?

>>53521217
He reasoned that he couldn't loose because;

Outcome 1. Raid fails. Chaos now has the last surviving Man of Gold, the Phoenix Lords and a bunch of literally whos humans to play with for ever and ever and ever. Also the Craftworlds start to get desperate and more of them fall to Chaos. No large scale civilized galactic society forms and Chaos gets to treat the galaxy as their playground. Good for Chaos overall, including him and his master.

Outcome 2. Nurgle looses Isha and Tzneetch fucking hates Nurgle. Also the upset in the Great Game means change and influence peddling time on a greater scale. Good for him and his master. Also if this alliance between human and eldar sticks and forms The Imperium then highest members of it's society will ow him personally a big favour.

From his point of view the game was rigged so he couldn't loose.

It looked like "Just As Planned" time too. Then Eldrad tried to shank him because Eldrad wasn't a fucking fool and knew what games the Indigo Crow as playing. Crow escaped because Crow always expects to be stabbed in the back as part of his job and has got very adept at knowing when to cut losses and bolt for the horizon.

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>>53521774
It might be that the Indigo Crow provided the “how” to the Raid on Nurgle’s Mansion as opposed to the “why”. Eldrad was already looking for a way to free Isha from Nurgle’s Mansion according to the previous fluff. The eldar had listened to him at first, because the Fall was a veritable Bavarian fire drill situation and he happened to be the one yelling the loudest. However, as time went on and things settled down, Eldrad was losing more and more control over the Craftworlds. Eldrad didn’t mind not being the one in charge, but somebody had to be. Otherwise the Craftworlds would all go their separate ways and get picked off one by one or worse actually start warring with each other.

The only people the eldar race seemed willing to listen to as a whole were him, Asurmen, or one of their gods, and his control was slipping, Asurmen was (sorta-)dead, and the only god left was Cegorach, who was anti-authoritarian and missing most of the time (forming the Harlequins). Then comes this seer who claims he found a back door into Nurgle’s realm through some super-duper secret, esoteric…lost literature….yes…that would allow them to free Isha in a smash-and-grab operation. Eldrad was getting desperate, and it seemed almost too good to be true.

Of course, Eldrad wasn’t stupid, and at some point he realized something was wrong. Rescuing Isha was too easy. Yes it was a horrible slog despite being a smash-and-grab, numerous warriors were killed or driven mad in the effort, but it was still too easy. Even if the seer had known some super-duper secret back door into Nurgle’s Mansion (which how could he), Chaos should have still dog-piled them the minute they entered the Warp. So he decides to go give this guy a little Necromundan handshake. Problem is said guy expects receiving said handshake and buggers off into the Warp.

>>53524349 (cont.)
It also provides an amusing parallel with history. Just like in real-life history, two chance events that shouldn’t have gone the way they did end up shaping the course of history and creating a massive problem the Chaos Gods have to deal with to the present day. Tzeentch and/or the Indigo Crow thought their plan was so perfect it “couldn’t fail”, and then subsequently rolled two critical failures on a 1d100 in a row.

I updated the 1d4chan page with the fulgrim stuff from the archives, might need some editing

>>53527744
Thank you.

Bump

>>53492275
>I assume the asshole praefectus was very depressed, if you know what I mean.
Yes. You can tell by how he shot himself in the back of the head with a shotgun. Very depressed.

So was there some talk in a previous thread about Sangy having a son, hence why some of the Living Saints have wings. Did anything come of that?

Also did Dorn ever start a family?

>>53534365
For Sangy, all that's written in stone so far is he had at least one biological son, Belarius.

We always assumed that Dorn was too married to his work to start a family and saw the IF as his family, but there's nothing stopping you if you want to go for it. Dorn is right on the edge of "could have had a family" like Guilliman and "doubtful he could ever have biological kids" like Perturabo.

>>53534775
I'm leaning towards "no family but regrets it somewhat in later life", I just wanted to make sure before I started writing shit down properly.

>>53534775
Has anything been written about Belarius?

Should he have some sort of position in the Blood Angels?

>>53520801
Being Cain is suffering

>>53520801
BielTan sounds a little dark elfish. No crazy backstabbing, slaving, and ritual sacrifice yet, but the fighting/fucking cycle wouldn't be far from Malekith's court.

>>53536702
He became a Blood Angel. Was the highest ranked official survivor of the War of the Beast and was expected to take up command of the legion after his father was turned into chicken nuggets. Said no, because he knew he'd be in his father's shadow the entire time (and probably out of respect) and instead took command of a more reasonable size contingent of Blood Angels who were all Siege of Terra survivors. Those ended up becoming the Blood Angels proper and partially set the standard for legions fragmenting after the death of their primarch (though War Hounds and Void Wolves stuck together for another generation via Kharn and Abbadon).

>>53537392
Biel-Tan is more Feanor and his line than Malekith. Someone even described them as "Space Noldor" in a previous thread IIRC. They're more like, restore the glory of the Old Eldar Emprie, reconquest now! And they were this way before Khaine got stuck waiting for his space-Uber.

>>53537606
the Noldor are themselves the epitome of nobledark, they're absolutely honorable and noble, but they're also violent bloody minded lunatics that want to rule the world, and this is only eclipsed by the presence of hell on earth and their eternal war against it.

>>53338185

Shit, I regret not getting in on this now. Just started reading and it actually seems pretty awesome.

>>53539136
what's your favorite part so far?

>>53539371

I actually really love the Emperor as a Man of Gold. One of my favorite character archetypes is a man who doesn't wish to lead, but is forced into it because his people need him, so that shit is my jam.

The changes to the primarchs are interesting, I'm still a little unclear about what you all have done with them, but they are interesting. I'd appreciate some more info, the wiki page didn't really ex plain much about them.

I admit the various xenos alliances kind of throw me for a loop. I don't dislike them, but it seems like they are kind of just there. Again, this could be because the article was brief, but I feel like it just kind of happened. I like the concept of xenos alliances, but I don't know enough about the execution to really form too much of an opinion.

I just have so many questions.

Okay, I have a question. So I was just looking at the Imperial Forces page, and I see Krieg briefly referenced, but there doesn't appear to be any information on them other than the name drop. Have you all done anything with them? And if you haven't may I throw out some suggestions?

>>53539545
Hopefully this might provide some answers, this seems to be what things are like right now.

>primarchs
The primarchs were simply the Warlord’s twenty-ish best commanders during the Unification of Earth charged with uniting the long lost human colonies with the homeworld. There are some qualifiers to that, the selection was slightly politically influenced and some people didn’t get in for several reasons, and some such as Conrad “I terrify the terrorists” Kurze and “vermin lord” Mortarion, were outright controversial. Nevertheless, even those that would argue the appointment of one individual as primarch over another would admit that the people the Emperor chose were among the best of the best.

>>53539899

So just regular humans then?

>>53539628
Krieg has a page under Notable Planets, that outlines the clusterfuck that happened there. Really, the wiki page needs more potholes to the right articles.

For example, Solemnace right now covers both the planet itself and Trazyn the Infinite. And the Saga of Fedor Jiao both explains the Navigators as well as discusses what happened to Fedor in particular.

>>53539913
Yes and no. They weren't demigods, but the majority of them were Space Marines of some stripe. Sanguinius, Lion, and Vulkan were the most physically powerful and were about Grey Knight level. Magnus was the post powerful psionically and was just plain weird.

In general, the "sane" factions in the setting (humans, eldar, tau) have gotten a drop in power levels in exchange for a dose of sanity.

>>53539927

Would you mind terribly if I proposed an alternative? Right now there isn't much, and it seems to sort of follow standard cannon, in that the autokrats attempted to succeed.

If no one liked it my proposal can just be ignored, but I'd like to at least put it out there.

>>53539964
Actually, the Imperial species have gotten buffs compared to canon even without accounting for interspecies cooperation. Humanity, for example, is integrating xeno-tech (albeit very slowly due to the Mechanicus) and has retained tech like jetbikes that were otherwise lost after the Great Crusade, whereas the Eldar are more effective because they're more unified and optimistic.

This is balanced out by the fact that the bad xenos have gotten a huge bump, most notable the Orks, who really have their shit together in this AU, and the Tyranids, since their main Hive Fleet has hit the galaxy instead of just scouting fleets. Chaos, as far as I can tell, is at about the same power level as canon, with the CSMs swapped out for Chaos Eldar.

>>53540021
>Right now there isn't much

https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Krieg

Looks like enough to me.

I like the current Krieg section. It shows how even with slightly more sanity shit can get fucked up and contrasts nicely the more noble parts of the setting.

>>53540772

Ah, I see what you mean, I had missed the expand button. Well i'm retarded. Shit, and I spent an hour typing my ideas out too...oh well.

>>53539545
>xenos alliances
As brief of an explanation as possible.

Humanity wasn't as trigger-happy this time around. The point of the Great Crusade was to unite humanity, and picking a thousand unnecessary border wars ran counter to that goal. They would be minor wars, but they would still spread forces thin and result in death of a thousand cuts. Emperor never got a hateboner for xenos in this timeline because he never lived through the Age of Strife. So the Imperium operated on the general policy of "you stay on your side of the galaxy, we'll stay on ours".

Nevertheless, there were still a lot of races who still were active threats to humanity and had to be wiped out (Laer, Nephilem). Due to the birth of Slaanesh, every xenos species got the same Mad Max treatment as humanity. The reason why humanity's alien allies never came to help with the Men of Iron is they had their own societies collapsing to worry about. And a lot were still anarchic societies of marauders when the Great Crusade came through.

Don't think the Imperium justified this to themselves as putting down a mad animal. They had no clue what had happened and to them it was a simple matter of survival.

>>53542394 (cont.)
Then came the Age of Apostasy. Imperium got big help from the Demiurg in exchange for entrance into the Imperium. Gave Imperium the idea of uniting the races to oppose Chaos. Not everyone joined at once. Some had been waiting a while (watchers, kinebrach), whereas others joined much later (tarellians, tau). Helps that just about everyone hates Chaos/Necrons/tyranids.

It helps that for Survivor civilizations and xenos races the Imperium is essentially just a mutual protection pact. You help us out with Chaos/Necrons/tyranids and we give you free trade and help you out with the former. Imperium doesn't care what you do as long as you follow the global rules.

The kinebrach, watchers, and diasporex are bad examples of how xenos alliances came about. They came under the Imperial aegis through weird means.

>>53540392
Chaos gets CSM and Crazy Unseelie/Wild Hunt fae-style lunatics to use. At the same time.

And the Chaos Gods have what is perhaps the most terrifying buff of all: reason. Like Slaanesh going "you know, maybe I shouldn't eat ALL of my followers immediately after my birth". And so we get the Cronedar.

>>53540392
in general the Imperium is closer to 30k tech, and the DAoT has much more evident remnants of superstructures and sensible super-technology, but the individual heroes are shorter lived (excluding the emperor) and generally more dependent on good organization and far more reliable advanced technology and warp-lore than on vast personal power.

I've been thinking that this setting would play well in one of the 40k rpgs

>Curze orders his own execution

F

>>53542462
even worse, some of the Slaanesh notes have it get weird and kinky at existential levels instead of just being a volume obsessed hedonist, and this leads it to focus on non-chaos politics and tech far more than the other three gods. This gives it a smaller warp presence, but way more power to effect the actual galaxy, and Slaanesh apparently wants to become the luciferian archfoe to the Imperium's deific monarchy as a way to make the other gods revolve around it.

>>53542591
Curze ordered himself to be brought to trial, not his execution. He had, in his own mind, outlived his usefulness to the Imperium and had only one lesson left to teach; nobody, regardless of rank, is beyond the law. The people had to see a Primarch brought down and held accountable, not just killed. It had to be a legitimate execution.

"I am not a decent man." ~ Only defence given at trial; last known words.

Also Inquisitor Boaz "2,000% AHAB" Kryptman

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztB_q1YgcsY

Because sometimes hunting that damn whale really is the only option left.

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>>53543082
He probably made sure to do so despite having a while left to live, to show that it was an actual punishment and not just an old man who didn't have much longer to live trying to greet the reaper early.

>>53541468
What were your ideas?

>>53543919

Honestly the stuff they already have is better probably , but I'll put up what I have when I get back to my computer because why not. I can give you the jist in the meantime if you like.

>>53544131
I'd like a jist, if you have the time/inclination.

>>53544781

Sure, I can take a moment to give you the broad strokes for now.

The largest deviation from cannon, and the narative already in use here, was that this rendition of the Death Korps did not originate in a civil war. Rather, the planet was cut of and isolated by a warp stomach before being assaulted by devotees of nurgle.

Most of the planet was overwhelmed, and eventually Hive Ferrograd was left as the last bastion of the Imperium under Colonel Jurten, and he enacted "the purge" of the planet by nuclear fire, same as always.

They then spend generations fighting for survival against the forces of chaos, forced to ever greater extremes by the simple fact that they cannot afford to loose or they die. They must win, no matter the cost. This mentality gets propigated until it's the default mindset.

In addition to this, generations of exposure to radiation, use of the vitae womb, and various viral agents damage their genetic structure, drastically reducing their life expectancy. At best, they might live to be thirty before they suffer horrendously painful massive organ failure. They are, in effect, dead men walking.

Eventually the warpstorm blows over and with the help of an imperial relief fleet they manage to finally retake all of krieg.

They are reintigrated into the imperium at large, and efforts are made to repair their genome and atmosphere. While these efforts are as of yet unsuccessful, the Krieg nevertheless feel an immense gratitude and debt to the imperium, for helping to retake the planet and working to ensure Krieg has a future. They owe the imperium for the promise of hope, and have but one currency with which to repay them, the Death Korps. All they know is war, so they wage war in the name of a brighter future, and they give of their own short lives so that those with the promise of a full life don't have to.

>>53545151

I wanted to keep the fatalism, the willingness to die, but I felt it needed a different source, since religion isn't a major power in this au like it is in the main 40k verse.

So rather than religious motivation I decided on the knowledge that they don't have long to live anyway, and a will to sacrifice for the future, which I felt was more appropriate for "nobledark". They still throw themselves forward with no regard for their own lives, but the tone has shifted a bit. I don't know, honestly it's not that great of a concept, it was just what came to mind.

>>53545197

This... sounds really good. And much more fitting, to be honest.

>>53545151
>>53545815
I'm always happy to see fresh ideas in the project, but I kind of liked Krieg the way it was.

I liked the "blotches of grimdark and noblebright" approach to show that even if the universe as a whole is nobledark, it's not uniformly so, and what keeps it that way is the efforts of people. The only thing necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing and the like. It shows how easy it is to slip from nobledark with how certain factions of the military love the Krieger ideal of disposable soldier, which disgust the otherwise opposed Machairians and Cadian doctrine followers. And with how a nobledark world can turn into a clusterfuck of a grimdark one.

>>53546269

There is no reason the bit about the different factions in the military can't be preserved and applied to this.

That bit was great, but that's how the setting interacts with them, not the krieg itself. Krieg itself was for all intents and purposes a copy paste of Krieg from the original universe. Personally I kinda like what this guy's proposing.

>>53546324
It kinda makes the krieg-doctrine faction even worse, seeing as they'd likely also be trying to export and replicate the dysfunctional culture that goes along with Krieg's mass produced and disposable soldiers.

>>53545151
What if, due to the purge, one of the other Hives that wasn't dead yet turned to Nurgle? Or even have a bit of it going beforehand, which is what drew the enemy forces there in the first place?
Then you've still got the Krieger vs Krieger stuff, and the survivors feeling they need to pay back the Imperium not just for the aid, but for what their planet did in the first place. Those in charge may not place the blame on them (since obviously they didn't turn to Chaos), but they themselves do, and thus they feel they aren't worthy of receiving the genome/etc repairs until THAT debt is paid first.

>>53546543

Same as before really. Besides, what if they were just covertly preventing the reclamation and repatriation efforts on krieg from going forward and funneling them resources to step up production?
>>53546546

Could be done. Maybe some faltered along the way and gave into despair and the rest carry the shame of their fall to chaos.

>>53546543

Wouldn't they have been trying to do that anyway in the one we already have?

>>53546543
The only thing that might cause issues is that the Kriegers' lifespan would be comparable to the Tau pre-rejuvenant development. And the Kriegers have an even more reduced childhood than the Tau.

Other than that it does add some depth to Krieg. As well as some diversity of thought about Krieg. You might even get some Kriegers following orders like always but internally thinking "You want to make more people as fucked up as us? What is wrong with you?"

It does explain why Krieg keeps importing military officers from off-world beyond "we need someone who can think laterally and isn't numbed by Krieg being, well, Krieg".

>>53547158

It'd be fairly easy to handwoven rejuvenates as not or king with their damaged genome. After all they only work for so long on healthy people before they can't do anymore because the persons genetics gets unstable. With how messed up these kriegers are the rejuvenates wouldn't do didley. Maybe give them a year or two.

>>53547336

Damn autocorrect

Handwoven as not working.

>>53547353
Well, to be fair, they aren't orking either.

I much prefer Krieg's original ambiguous morality. The point of Krieg was that it was almost entirely self inflicted, aside from the threat of famine. Not everything has to be laid at the feet of the dark gods, humanity can muster its own suffering as well. Which I liked. Making Kriegers yet another viictim of the dark gods washes away some of that uniqueness. Aside from that, I think the new origin is the same as the Tallarn except driven up to eleven.

>>53547158

It does lead to an interesting dynamic. You might get kriegers as high as lieutenant, maybe captain, but all of the colonels and generals would be non krieg, since they'd have much more experience and it just wouldn't be practical to have krieg generals since they'd probably only be twenty somethings. You'd have the junior officers pushing for tactics the high command thinks are ludicrous, but they insist work and if you give them their head it actual does lead to victories. Maybe you get guys who get desensitized after a while, forget their ordering thousands into the meat grinder. After all they are happy to go, and you come out the other end with a new victory on your record. Generals who slowly loose their human empathy and compassion to expedience and glory seeking.

>>53547502

We haven't adopted anything, the anons are just kicking the idea around. Thank you for sharing your opinion.

Personally I didn't care for the current Krieg because it is just a exact copy of the original cannon with a famine slapped on top. It's kind of boring to me. Maybe this new proposal isn't perfect, but it's new, and this is an alternate universe so it's nice to see things being well alternate.

If you don't like the dark gods bit keep lobbying for the original, or propose something besides the dark gods as a catalyst.

>>53547533

I do get where your coming from with the tallarn thing though. There are similarities.

>>53547701
Meant for
>>53547502

Everyone die? Or are you all just waiting for new thread?

Also what the fuck is up with jubblowski?

>>53549067
>Jubblowski
Fetish shit inserted in the project while it was very young. Very old, minor part of the setting, so it has hung around ever since.