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>>55824461

First with a image for the thread

I think we need more on Isha to be honest. All we have on her, correct me of i'm wrong, is that she's a highly protective pure slut.

>>55825810
She also has a creepy ex-husband and a creepy, clingy, self appointed daughter

Going to get my computer fixed tomorrow, planning to write for much of the weekend. I know how I'm gonna finish my primarch, it's been about a year since I started on him now, but I'd be happy to hear suggestions for the taskmaster and Lucius and his chapter's post WoB fall after Fulgrim fails to grant him immortality.

>>55826205
Oh shit, the hype is killing me

>>55826116
At the 999M41 stage is she still having nightmares?

How is Isha viewed in the Tau Empire? Do they understand what she is?

Also does Ceggers take the Dark Carnival to those worlds and if does what do they think?

I may have some writefagging brewing if I can get to a computer soon.

Also which caste does the police work in the Tau Empire? First instinct is to say Fire but actually keeping the peace is probably more Water than just Fire beating into submission.

>>55826722
probably water if civilian police

>>55826722
>>55827836
Water in general with some specialist Fire SWAT teams, etc?

>>55826430
I imagine she is somewhat still haunted by what happened to her.

on a similar subject what would her daemons look like if she regained her place in the Realm of Chaos?

>>55829844
I'm going to guess that the lesser deamons, if that even is the right name, wouod look somewhat like the WHFB dryads. Greater deamons look like Groot or possiboy an ent.

But unlike Chaos she isn't about power for powers sake. A lot ofnwhat she is would be spent in additional deamons to protect a garden big enough for all of her children. So as an individual she would be way weaker than her peers whilst commanding a much larger army.

Of course if she returns to former glory it will be because Chaos has been dealt with, one way or another. She won't need such a big army to hold the same amout of space and her Garden will expand hugely.

>>55829844
Do the Eldar gods even have daemons? I know rule-wise the Avatar for all intents and purposes is daemonic possession (functions the same, now with 50% less Chaos)

>>55826722
>>55827836
>>55829012
Fire Caste. Water Caste are diplomats, merchants, bureaucrats, and anything requiring good accounting or social skills. Fire Caste are military police in addition to soldiers according to the Fire Warrior novelization. The line between Fire Warrior soldier and cop is probably thin to non-existant.

Think of the Fire Caste as the Sejuk Turks under the Abbasid Caliphate. Originally nomadic outsiders living on the grasslands who used to make life hell for the city folk, until they converted to the same religion and became the empire's military and police force. It's just been so many millennia that the Fire Caste has forgotten a lot of their old traditions.

Guy who was writing a couple Tarrellians worlds, continuing the discussion from the last thread.

I think >>55810215 had some good ideas. Tikal was always a world of over-cramped cities, but it was one of the larger Tarrellian worlds to survive the 'nid invasion. Tikal would get huge amounts of refugees, requiring more construction and turning Itza into a hive almost out of necessity.

The one thing is that Tarellians were originally arid desert-dwellers and are about as home in the rainforest as humans are. The environment and natives of Tikal are oddballs by the Tarellian norm. You probably have a whole bunch of worlds of more typical Tarellians (taller, less vibrant markings, etc.) with more favorable climates, mostly resettled from the tyranid invasion, which individually don't support as many people as Tikal because desert but in total outnumber the Tikaleze (not counting refugees). And then you probably have more verdant resettled worlds with larger populations and their own customs.

The Tarellians probably lost a lot of nice worlds because of the 'nids (I know we had casualty rates, did we ever have percent territory loss prior to resettlement on other worlds?)

>>55831155
Police work is more than kicking down doors and bashing heads. A lot of it is being reasonable in the face of adversity and talking people out of doing something stupid, something which the Water caste are made for and the Fire caste aren't.

>>55831254
No. I expect it would not be too high. Tarrellians are established as preferring self sustaining worlds that would be deemed agri-worlds in the wider Imperium.

So for them going down it would have been relatively light in casualties.

Presumably there were more Tikal's before. Those would have been VERY costly in lives. If they were like true hive worlds with the hundred billion per planet then it's distinctly possible that the vast majority of them are now bug food.

On the bright side there would be space to spare on the surviving agri-worlds for a large percentage of the now homeless.

>>55831284
The Fire Caste seem to function more as a gendarmie than anything else, tasked with maintaining the security both within and outside the territories.

From the perspective of the Ethereals, it also gives the Fire Caste something to do other than all out warfare. Otherwise you have a very large army with nothing to do (which would have been worse in the early days before the Tau discovered, say, Orks, but even since then war is mostly boredom punctuated by brief intervals of terror), which has never worked for any civilization ever (unless you count ants, but Tau aren't as lobotomized as ants). I don't know if Tau do the "arts and poetry" thing to keep their warriors busy, O'Kais himself in canon said he wasn't creative enough to be a poet.

The main issue is the Ethereals don't have the brainwashing they do in canon, which means there are a lot more opportunities for criminal behavior (and that canon doesn't really have to touch the issue). The Tau do live in fear of ever returning to the Mont'au, so murder is unlikely, but there's still potential issues like disorderly conduct or inter-caste violence.

In canon, it's mentioned that Fire Caste who fail to pass their rite of passage when they come of age are disappeared. Maybe this is where they end up since the Tau are less grimdark here. But that raises the issue of Fire Caste soldiers seeing them as defectives or getting cushy jobs while they die for the empire.

Or maybe that's too much of an anthropocentric view of things.

>>55832918
Maybe this time the caste system isn't super enforced. 90+% of the time a child follows the caste of their parents. The remainder are reassigned. If they make a shit soldier maybe they can join the street sweepers of the Earth caste or the lowest rank of the Water caste.

Or maybe there are the 4 Big castes but as the years went by they found that it was practical to cultivate lesser castes.

Or maybe they had sub-groups within the castes on the basis that there's boud to be a tangentially related job you aren't totally shit at.

>>55833219
It’s worth noting that the Tau have been in the shadow of the Imperium for their entire modern history. Though every rejection of their offers and counsel, and each ‘apocalypse’ in Tau space, the Imperium has been a constant. Dispite what the Tau of the time would consider massive wars fought against them the Imperium has always been shockingly generous and conciliatory (because to them it was a series of brushfire conflicts). The Imperium’s mere province of Ultramar has always loomed in the Tau conscious as the monumental alternative system, predating their order, withstanding it, and even humoring them with offers of aid and supplies when their society was periodically bulldozed. Even if they never cribbed notes from the Imperium they had a long enough history together even before unification to observe them as adapt without even noticing. I suppose I mean that it follows that they would probably diversify caste roles just to fill the gaps Ultramar might point out to them.

This would be something Farsight would eagerly eliminate in his enclave, even though Aun’va had overseen and approved the whole multi cententury process.

>>55833219
I'd probably say the latter. The Tau are proud of their caste system, and they think it's what makes them more civilized and organized than everyone else, and hence why the Tau'va is the superior belief.

I'd say maybe we should take cues from the Qunari as an example of a caste system where people are not brainwashed but just really zealous, but the Qunari have castless jobs where they kick all the people who don't fit in with their niche much like how in tribal human societies the oddballs typically ended up as shamans or medicine men.

Alright, so here is my rewrite of the Lion-Luther duel. I had been wanting to do this for a while, since I feel it has the potential to be one of the more dramatic moments in our AU. It's meant to be read as a continuation of what is currently in the wiki for Lion. ("Finally, years after the War of the Beast had ended, the Lion received the news he had waited so long for. The Rock, and by extension Luther, had reappeared.")

>>55834820
The Dark Angels and the rest of the Unforgiven fell upon the Rock swift as a flock of ravens, hounding it from system to system in a series of skirmishes until they finally cornered the Fallen Angels on a long forgotten feral world. Amidst the twilight murk and murmuring rustle of a primeval forest the once comrades faced each other after long centuries of hunting and waiting. The trees bore silent witness as loyalist and traitor slaughtered one another with a fury born of the void left by brotherhood and filled by hate, the quiet split by the roar of bolters and the scream of chainswords on ceramite. Bodies clad in green and black fell soundlessly to the mossy undergrowth, and the soil drank deep of rich dark blood.

Lion was unstoppable that day as he stalked the battlefield with his Deathwing honor guard, the Lion Sword flashing red as the Fallen fled before the Primarch. Yet the scum before him did not interest Lion; he had come with only one goal, and fate would soon see it fulfilled. In the tangled forest the Primarch soon was separated from his honor guard and found himself alone at the edge of a clearing.

He brushed aside the foliage in time to see a lone figure in black cut down the last of a squad of Dark Angels, carving through their armor with contemptuous ease. Lion did not need to see the golden fleur de lis on the horned onyx helm to know who the traitor was. His stance, the arrogant grace with which he moved, the way his sword danced in his hand like an extension of his arm. Luther.

>>55834845
Luther turned at the sound of Lion’s footsteps. The clearing was quiet as the eyes of the two brothers met behind the mirrored lenses of their helms, then Luther raised his sword in an old Franjish dueling salute, half mocking and half earnest. Lion did not return the gesture. Then sudden and swift as his namesake, he charged. The Lion Sword descended in a shining blur, faintly glowing with a pale inner light, and their blades met with a shivering clang as the Arch-Traitor blocked the Primarch’s savage strike, the Sword of Luther wreathed in a delicate corona of the void, tendrils of the Immaterium spilling forth from the edges of the blade. The sound of swords rang through the forest as back and forth the brothers traded blows, each unable to take the advantage as Lion’s cold ferocity and superior augmentations were matched by Luther’s consummate skill and the blessings of Chaos Undivided.

So bathed in the dappled light of the setting sun Lion and Luther did battle. Against the backdrop of the ancient giants of the forest, they might have been boys playfighting with sticks, swatting at each other with wild abandon; but this was no game, and these were not the familiar old oaks of Franj. Bright gashes appeared on the brothers’ green and black armor where they found openings in the other’s defense, and blood trickled out where the blades had pierced the flesh beneath before the wounds were stanched by their superhuman physiologies. Pressed by his brother’s assault, Luther eventually began to tire, yet Lion remained as unrelenting as ever. Sensing victory, he battered Luther with a flurry of blows, tearing off the helmet with a glancing slash to the head, and finally drove his blade into his brother’s leg. Luther fell to one knee, and before he could react the Lion Sword was at his throat, the tip pressed against his bare neck.

>>55834868
For a moment the two men were motionless. Then Lion removed his winged helm with one hand and let it fall to the ground, and for the first time in a century the brothers looked each other face to face. Under his matted blond hair Lion’s eyes were red and wet. Another moment of stillness, then the Lion Sword dipped, and lowered away. Sharp as a whipcrack, Lion said only one word: “Why?”

The accusation in his brother’s voice struck Luther like a hammer, and emotions welled up within him. Rage. Humiliation. Guilt. Shame.

How could he have lost to Lion? Never before had Lion bested him in their sparring, except the few times when he had allowed it. But he deserved this. He betrayed his brother, and the Imperium, and had nearly damned humanity to extinction.

No, no! His plan had been sound, and with a single stroke they could have rid humanity of xenos influences and secured a future for Franj among the stars. If only Lion had listened and followed. Lion had always sought his counsel and followed him in matters of import, never defying him until that fateful day.

Yes, with that once act of defiance, of betrayal, Lion had doomed his plan and consigned him to a life of furtive scavenging and raiding. It was Lion!

LION!

>>55834918
With a cry Luther burst upwards, his sword a malign black blur streaking towards Lion’s throat. Surprised, Lion threw himself back and raised his sword to parry, but it was no use; against foe as deadly as Luther, even an inch of an opening would have been fatal. But the Chaos Gods were not done with their servant yet. In a final act of malicious caprice, they lifted the scales of madness from Luther’s eyes and allowed him to see with a clear mind what he had done.

In that moment Luther saw: Lion as the solemn boy he had taught to swing a sword, who wanted so much to be like his famed older brother; as the young man he had personally knighted, a rare, sweet smile spreading across those stern features; as the man he had fought and laughed and bled with on the battlefields of a thousand worlds, side by side. And he saw the brother that he had just killed, the tip of his sword cutting smoothly through a pale throat, a thin spray of blood in its wake.

>>55834936
Something within Luther broke. Beneath the horror of this realization, his tortured psyche fell to pieces, and when the Deathwing finally came upon the clearing they found a screaming Luther kneeling over Lion’s still body. Their act of domination complete, the warp echoed with dark laughter as the Chaos gods spirited Luther away amidst a hail of bolter fire.

The Deathwing immediately recovered Lion, and in a battle barge in orbit the Chief Apothecary and his team fought to save Lion’s life. Indeed, it was a miracle that Lion had survived so long, made possible only through the astounding power of the Mk III S augmentations. Even a Sus-an coma would not have saved a normal Astartes from such a grievous wound. Yet while the apothecaries could stabilize Lion, they could not restore him. A slash from a mundane weapon would have soon been healed by Lion’s regenerative abilities, but Luther’s cursed blade had inflicted a wound that would not close, the treatments and medications unable to take hold on the tainted flesh. Lion was slipping away, and with no other options, the apothecaries could only seal Lion in a stasis-coffin, and hope that some day a cure would be found.

>>55834953

---

To this day, Luther is still a broken man, given to wild swings of mood as his mind flits to and from the scattered shards of his personality, from charming magnanimity to unbridled rage to brooding despair. Yet buried within the dark cage of madness lies the last piece of good within Luther’s heart, his nobility and honor and love for his brother. And once in a rare while that light emerges from its prison, and Luther awakens to the reality of the nightmare around him and the horror that is his life. He screams then, and as he slaughters the Fallen around him he weeps and begs Lion for forgiveness. Inevitably, that moment of lucidity is swallowed again by warp-fueled madness as the Chaos gods reassert their power over their servant. But that piece of goodness remains, perhaps as the last spark of hope for Luther’s redemption.

Lion still sleeps in his coffin, his features peaceful beneath the crystal cover, frozen in time on the precipice between life and death. He would surely perish were he removed to perform the canticles of purification to cleanse his wound, and so he remains in his millennia-long slumber. Entreaties to Isha have proved fruitless, for she has said healing Lion would be beyond ever her powers as the Goddess of Life; Lion is too far into the realm of death for her to exercise sole influence over him. Indeed, it would take another god, a God of the Dead, in conjunction with her powers to restore Lion to life, and surely no such god exists. But the Dark Angels are not deterred; they wait and dream, sure that one day the last remaining Primarch will return and lead them all to their long-promised salvation.

FIN

>>55834971
Here are a few of my thoughts regarding this is anyone cares to read them:

No insult intended to the anon who originally wrote it up, but I thought it was a bit of a strange choice to have Lion put into a coma by a random traitor. Since we no longer have the canon Horus-Emps fight to fulfill of our quota of tragic duels between family members, I appropriated some of those themes here, as well as a bit of Fulgrim's canon fall for Luther.

I'm a bit unsure if it works as a piece of writing, as it starts 3rd person then switches to Luther's internal thoughts. The prose may be a little over dramatic as well, would appreciate people's thoughts there.

>>55835037
It is wonderful. Please somebody put it up on the 1d4chan page.

At first I though having him be in stasis was a bit far after we've always referred to him as being in a coma but the implications about the god of the dead make up for it.

>>55834121
But given the shape of Tau society and their tendency towads neatness wouldn't those casteless jobs just become castes in themselves?

bump

>>55835037
Guy who wrote Lion stuff here. I like it, but I don't get where it sounded previously like Lion got put in a coma by a random traitor. Lion's Last Battle was always meant to be against Luther in a deliberate parallel to the canon duel between Horus and the Emperor (and also a bit of Arthur and Mordred at Camlann). Indeed, that's why I was never able to write the scene, I couldn't think of how to give the scene the necessary pathos one would expect between two formerly-close brothers dueling to the death.

Also fits pretty well with how Luther went from skilled tactician to uber-paranoid leader of the Fallen.

I only wish we could have kept Lion going apeshit when Luther told him he did everything to save Franj and Lion points out Franj is a wasteland due to Luther's actions, its vineyards burnt and its cities ash. But that might not work in the current context unless you want to put it in after Lion asks why.

Also, >>55835371 might have a point about the stasis thing. It would make more sense that they have him in a stasis chamber that got "lost" as opposed to medical equipment that would presumably need repairing.

tl;dr: You don't have to worry about a thing.

>>55836490
They'd probably just expand caste definitions to encompass new jobs. The Air Caste pilot Tau spacecraft and yet the Tau were at medieval-level tech when the Tau'va was adopted.

>>55825810
I think most of this is on the Notes page, but she basically sees the Imperium as her new adopted extended family following the Fall of the Eldar, and is determined to not let the same mistakes that led to the Fall of the Eldar happen ever again.

She kind of sees herself and the Emperor as the new Asuryan (as in, the ones who set the rules). Asuryan used to make the rules. Those rules (in her mind) were stupid, prevented the Eldar gods from averting the Fall, and led directly to most of them getting killed. She won't make the same mistakes he did.

>>55840392
Does this sense of family extend to the other peoples or is it just humans?

>>55841187
Eldar, humans, Tau, kinebrach. Isha already was the Eldar friend to all living things in canon, whispering cures to Nurgle's plagues regardless of species, here she just has more chances to show it.

Except Necrons. Because fuck them. The closest the alliance came to falling apart was when Emperor tried to be reasonable with Necrons. Emps managed to convince Isha to begrudgingly tolerate the Silent King's rejects because it's better to have them in pissing out rather than out pissing in (or worse, give them a reason to run back to the Silent King). She still refuses to be in the same room (or planet) as Zahndrekh and the like.

She is also repulsed by the Crones, and I assume she doesn't have much love for tyranids and the like. Dark Eldar didn't make the shit list until the Wedding like they did for Cegorach, IIRC.

No clue on orks. IIRC, we don't even know what she was doing during the War of the Beast. She saw Earth prior to the War of the Beast, but the Alliance wasn't cemented until afterwards so I doubt the Eldar would let the mon-keigh protect their biggest VIP. There's probably some epic tale of the Phoenix Warriors playing keepaway or something there.

>>55840008
Hm, maybe I misremembered what you wrote. In your version wasn't Lion stabbed by a chaos sorcerer or something?

Luther flipping out would be pretty easy to integrate I think, the reaction section could stay pretty much the same, I'd just need dialogue for the two of them.

>>55835371
>>55840008
I guess a coma is a bit closer to canon Lion being asleep inside the depths of the Rock rather than a Guilliman stasis situation, though I did want to leave the very slight chance of Lion coming back in this AU via Ynnead.

>>55843872
There's a chance he might still come back in hour of need to assist the creation/rise of Ynnead. It's more Arthurian that way.

>>55842921
I think the Deldar were on the shit list but with the possibility of getting of it. They were a continuation of the Old Empire rather than the Crondar conclusion of it.

Kill on sight but listen to if they look like they might honestly be seeking redemption.

Now its just "kill on sight. Do not talk to them. Do not listen to them. Burn the bodies" .

They are now not just damned but forsaken.

How many Necrons have sided with the Imperium?

>>55845212
One Necron Lord has actually joined the Imperium, that being Zahndrekh. Trazyn has declared his independence from the Necron Star Empire and gathers hereteks and various experts to serve forever as his vassals and curators on Solomance, and Orikan is building up his golden vampire pyramid scheme from within his golden vampire pyramid, which involves working with Imperial strigoi he has sired.

>>55844547
Which also works considering his kinebrach sword is in The Rock.

bump

>>55845544
I don't think Zahndrekh's actually joined, just allied himself with the Imperium (who he thinks are surviving Necrontyr).

>>55848307
If we're going to assume that there are other lesser nobles of the necrons allied with the Imperium I imagine that they would also be on that sort of a deal, minus the delusions.

Are there any other Vanilla Necrons who might join or do we have to make some up? Or steal and adapt some Tomb Kings from WHFB maybe?

>>55848673
If there are they'd probably be the oddballs and the eccentrics. Anyone close to "normal" (and I use that term loosely, look at Imotekh) would be controllable by the Silent King.

>>55849429
If there aren't any more named neurons to use then what if making some or stealing from WHFB?

Hey do you guys have a discord?

>>55835371
This. Also why did they go down to the planet?

Other than that it's some damn fine writefaggatory.

>>55850520
I don't understand.

>>55851436
Probably because the Rock got boarded and they couldn't hold it, I imagined the Fallen fleeing the ship in escape pods or landing craft.

>>55852343
A discord server, to talk about things in a more organic manner than waiting for posts and bumping to keep threads alive.

>>55850137
Sounds good, just make sure to put some effort into it

>>55852393
No, we have trouble even maintaining the pages on 1d4chan

So on the notes page under the heading “random stupidity” there’s a description of some kind of doomed Ork panopticon reform project, and it mentions some sort of minor mechanicus sect called the Psychologicus or something of that nature.

Was this just a one-off thing or has it ever been elaborated on? It seems like a good chance to show that the Imperium sometime fucks up and isn’t always right.

>>55852975
A discord server is great for organization and fixing up spread sheets, timelines, and 1d4chan pages because people can talk to each other more coherently.

I set up an alternate universe general discord in the anticipation of an /aug/ where people can talk about their Primarchs, AU projects and fan rewrites as well as share art and fluff for feedback. I know there's a few people on there with strong wiki-fu that may be willing to lend you guys a hand if you guys want a link

A link to the discord, if you guys want to check it out https://discord.gg/djdHA5

>>55853742

er uh what if orks

>>55857620
if orks, than everything smash
is not rocket science

>>55852356
This. The Unforgiven probably attacked the Rock so hard there was no way the Fallen could hold it. So the Fallen bailed and tried to lose their pursuers, but underestimated just how much the Unforgiven wanted their heads.

>>55853081
We talked about it but it could really use elaborating on. I agree it's a good opportunity to show the flaws in the Imperium.

One of the big in-universe flaws with the Imperium in this universe is that they think they're the greatest thing since sliced bread. While they're certainly better than the theocratic dystopian hellhole that is vanilla, they certainly aren't as good as they think they are. This leads to all sorts of mistakes like thinking "the orks can be civilized because civilization is the true way", as well as glossing over their own mistakes sort of like the Romans did. It's likely a result of the Eldar worldview meeting the general human one.

>>55859129
Also misremembered stories of the War in Heaven.

>>55852962
>>55850137
My Tomb Kings knowledge is weak.

Are there """ reasonable """ Tomb Kings?

>>55852356
>>55851436
I don't know how I missed that, thank you.

So Luther is alive and active in 999M41? I am very okay with this.

>>55860093
I always assumed that after the Old Ones asked Khorne to go tame Gork and Mork and he ballesed it up they then went to the eldar to manipulate the orks directly.

Eldar are naturally good at precognition, almost certainly bred into them by the Old Ones, and would be able to predict with some reliability the outcomes of their prodding. Orks have never been prodded before and go more or less where they are meant to.

This is remembered by the eldar gods and their servants as a very effective and viable strategy. Skip forward several million years to more modern times and you have the Cronedar and the Craftworlders.

Cronedar leaders are getting their information from the Chaos gods, most notably Khorne in matters of the simpler and more direct methods of warfare, and know damn well that you can't give orders to orks. The best you can do is prod them in the direction you want, stand well back and hope for the best. An attitude that has worked very well right up until Ghazzy turns up and becomes one half of a Brain Boyz.

Craftworlders get their knowledge of this shit from Ceggers who is fundamentally less honest than Khorne though safer to be around. Usually.

The Craftworld scholars know that they could only ever prod the orks and it sometimes bit them in the ass. Such an ass bite in their current state would be potentially fatal, Cronedar have the resources to risk the loss but they don't.

Younger and more ignorant craftworlders hear that they used to control the orks but don't listen to the subtleties of the relationship. They tell the some human nobles and together they start planning a doomed project of raising some spores into a disposable domesticated ork army. Predictably it soon bites them in the ass.

>>55834971
Beautiful piece of write-fagging. Only quibble is
>>55835371

The DAs all claim that he is still alive because he is still breathing under his own power and has been observed to do so by members of the chapter leadership.

Many other chapters don't believe because it's been 10,000 years and the last of the original Mk3S space marines died over three thousand years ago.

DAs claim that Lion remains in perfect health (bar not waking up) because he has had 0% wear and tear on his body. There is no evidence one way or the other if this would have any effect.

DAs won't let the outsiders see the last primarch for security reasons but do point out that he is still on the official books as alive, stable but unresponsive. Outsiders claim that records can be made to fit any narrative that suits the DAs.

DAs know that the rest of the galaxy is going to be in for a bit of a shock when Lion gets up and starts kicking all of the ass again. Most of everyone else just thinks they've bought into their own fairy stories.

Emperor refuses to comment either way. He knows Lion was put in to a coma but he hasn't seen him since. He could invoke his authority to make sure but what then? Best case he sees an old friend unresponsive and broken. Worst case the legends are false and he knows that his old friend has gone and a legend is false. And it will annoy the DAs either way.

So the matter lies for most as a matter of faith and everyone is happy. Or tolerably but equally grumpy.

>>55831455
So Tikal, and specifically, Itza are now the Tarrellian cultural and religious capital but wield surprisingly little real power due to each world being self-sufficient and independent (under the aegis and law of the Imperium).

Do they have a spiritual leader remaining?

At these their ruling caste?
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Slann

There could be a few thousand of them left. Enough to make a stable population but not much more than that. They used to rule the Tarrellians a handful per planet and a fair few hundred per Capital World. Then the 'Nids came and almost drove them to extinction.

They are old. They are not the Old Ones. They arose originally in the desolation of the post-War in Heaven, in the wastelands left behind by the Enslavers. It's possible that they met some remnant of the Old Ones in that time before they finally faded away but it is unknown.

Much of their history was lost due to wars with the early eldar (one of the reason they didn't want to join the Imperium). At some point they got knocked so far down that the old eldar believed them extinct or near enough and more or less forgot about them.

The Slanni migrate to some ass-backwards systems to lick their wounds and try to rebuild without drawing attention to themselves. They do this and eventually start making a few colonies and sending out expeditions, ever carful to avoid the eldar. It's possible that the eldar would have known about them but just didn't care as by this point they were falling into decadence and debauchery and dancing with the Dark Muses.

It's during this time that the Slanni discover the Tarrellians. Simple cave dwelling and nomadic lizards. Some had discovered bronze but it's use was not yet widespread.

>>55863875
They uplift the Tarrellians. Now when they send out expeditions it's the Tarrellians doing it and they can remain hidden. They build the Tarrellians Cooperative worlds and foster in them the need for self sufficiency in the event of everything being ruined for them by outside forces.

It's a mutually beneficial arrangement. Tarrellian's don't produce psychics and Slanni do. A small choir can send a short message several light years. They could set up choir halls at the top of each pyramid-city and make a network and sing across space.

They managed to survive the worst of the AoS. Tarrellian can't into psychic so that was helpful and Slanni knew all about deamons and were so cold blood and dispassionate that there was usually tastier things elsewhere. A few peripheral colonies and new outposts were abandoned but nothing too drastic.

They endured stable and sound through the AoS, Great Crusade, WoTB and much of the Imperial Era by imitating Switzerland. Then the 'Nids came.

There are no eldar on the ambassadorial team that stays in Itza.

>>55860593
i only know what I can get of 1d4chan, but Settra, Khalida, and Arkahn the Black all seemed relatively reasonable.

Of course, the Silent King is basically Lawful Evil-ish Settra, Arkhan the Black is reasonable and evil and is basically Obyron, and Khalida seems more like the type of Necron who would serve the Silent King.

>>55863937
I like that. I also like the idea that they might have tried to bullshit humanity and claimed to be the descendants of the Old Ones.

Then Isha arrives and asks them if they remember her. They drop the bullshit after that.

>>55863937
I'd suggest that the Slann psychic ability is universal but weaker than eldar. They make up for this with thejr boring as fuck passionlessness. It allows them to mesh together easier and long distance communicate better. Still out performed by astropaths.

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I have a question

How diffused across the general Imperium are the Harlequins and how well known are they? Beyond the fact that Krieg knows who they are and still throws artillery shells at them.

Would their appearance be at first considered some sort of Pennywise style OH GOD WAT! or would they be welcomed wherever they go. They see the whole Imperium as the new eldar empire so it's safe to assume that they see no problem with prancing across a purely human world.

Also how safe are they for the common pleb to approach in the wild? Are they going to expect at worst a custard pie to the face or at worst a potential slit throat?

It's safe to assume that when not performing they speak in riddles and sing gibberish in a Tom Bombodil sort of way but does their closenes to Cegger give them some sort of precognitive ability (or even just activating the eldar talent?)? Because recording their gibberish might be enlightening.

>>55865011
Poor Isha. Keeps looking for survivors of the Age of Strife. Keeps finding none.

>>55863937
The only thing is the Tarellians were said to have been fucked up during the Age of Strife just like everyone else. It's the reason why there is a Tarellian Confederacy as opposed to a Tarellian Empire or Republic. All of the Tarellians worlds got cut off from each other due to the warp storms created by the build-up to and aftermath of the birth of Slaanesh, and so many worlds (such as mining worlds) that depended on imports of food or certain technology to survive died off from starvation. It’s the reason the Tarellian have such a self-sufficiency boner when the Imperium met them. In their mind, if another Age of Strife hits, the best thing to do is have every planet be able to take care of itself until the Warp Storms abate. To them, settling on some otherwise uninhabitable rock is just asking for it.

This leads to the other Tarellian world I had an idea for (was the one who did Tikal).

Of all the Tarellian worlds that survived the Age of Strife, none were more surprising so than Maza. According to the few Tarellian records that pre-date the Age of Strife, Maza was a world that had just been discovered by the expanding Tarellian species. Maza was a wetter, cooler world than the Tarellians preferred, with trees as tall as Titans lining deep rift valleys at the center of a supercontinent. A few years after the first settlers to Maza arrived, the first warp storms of the Age of Strife hit and all communication was lost. At the time, the Tarellian population on Maza numbered no more than a few hundred individuals, and the colony was still dependent on imports of technology and manufactured goods from the Tarellian core worlds to survive, and so the planet was deemed lost.

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>>55869285
When the Tarellians expanded outwards once again after the Age of Strife, Maza was a planet high on their list. Though they didn’t expect to find any living survivors, the planet was still a habitable one with plenty of areas for growing crops and building cities. To the Tarellian explorers’ surprise, when they landed on Maza they found the planet already inhabited. A society of Stone Age hunter-gatherer Tarellians were already present on the surface and were unhappy with the idea of these new Tarellians from the stars claiming their planet for themselves. Even more unusual was the fact that these Stone Age Tarellians were all females.

The survival of the native population of Maza was nothing short of a miracle. When the colony was first isolated during the Age of Strife, medical supplies quickly ran low and the population began dwindling. To make matters worse, soon after their isolation a plague swept through the small population of Mazon survivors, killing off all of their males. The surviving Mazons lamented and resigned themselves to extinction. However, a chance event ended up saving the population. A mutation occurred in the population that allowed a few individuals to reproduce parthenogenetically, and within a few years the entire population of Maza was parthenogenetic.

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>>55869297
The Mazon are relatively tall for Tarellians, but also much more lightly built. In contrast to the stereotypical browns, reds, and yellows of most arid-dwelling Tarellians, their scales tend to come in colors of blues and greens, all the better to hide in the dense foliage of their homeworld. And, of course, the most notable feature of the native Mazons is that they are all female. The exact methods of the Mazons’ parthenogenesis are unknown, and the Mazons are highly secretive about their breeding practices, seeing how they were nearly wiped out once. Even when breeding with non-Mazon Tarellians, the offspring of such unions tend to be heavily female and the females strongly resemble the mother. Mazons are also known for favoring guerilla warfare and hit-and-run tactics in battle, in contrast to the more organized battalions or hunter-killer teams of other Tarellian worlds.

Maza was on the coreward side of the Tarellian confederacy, so when the tyranids invaded it was on the right side of the Confederacy to avoid getting eaten. This was all the better for the native Mazons, for if the tyranids had come from the other direction, Maza would not have survived. Fiercely isolationist even by Tarellian standards, the Mazons had traded with neighboring worlds for technology and resources but had remained thinly populated and poorly industrialized. They would have stood no chance against the tyranids. Nevertheless, the Mazons have suffered the aftereffects of the tyranids invasion just as much as any other Tarellian world. The sheer number of refugees from elsewhere in the empire has forced the Mazons to open their doors, and Maza is currently in the midst of a cultural conflict between the mostly pastoral natives and the refugees used to a more industrialized, arid world.

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>>55860708
Oh my yes. He’s the one who has control of the majority of the original Fallen (the ones who were DAs, not the later ones or ones from other legions). As someone previously put it…

>He's a crazy paranoid old nutcase whose one flaw in his elaborately constructed physical and psychological defenses is he still feels guilty on some level for putting his little brother in a coma. Someone showed a picture of what they thought he might look like without his armor and he look like some kind of Space Marine Gollum between the minor mutations and the wild-eyed look.

>But that's only when he's on whatever planet he calls home. Otherwise he's still the most terrifying Fallen known to the Imperium.

The picture in question was this one.

It's mentioned in question he's ridiculously paranoid that everyone's out to get him, which to be fair is partly true, but they're not out to get him right now. He's one of those people who looks sane on the outside (or at least as sane as you can get when you're Chaos) but the more you delve into his mind the more screwed up you realize he is.

Not to mention the Chaos Gods love his brand of paranoia. It’s like watching a little hyperactive hamster run around in his cage.

>>55867803
In canon, the Harlequins travel across the galaxy to all inhabited worlds (even unaffiliated human worlds or Imperial worlds that don't realize they're Xenos) to make sure absolutely everyone knows the details of the Fall so nothing like that happens to anyone ever again. One of the great ironies of vanilla!40k is that Cegorach and Isha give more of a shit about non-Eldar than actual Eldar do.

I don't know if they travel to Tau worlds. I would assume they would (it'd be easier than Imperial worlds) but then again the vanilla!Tau want to keep the whole "Chaos" thing hush-hush.

They already go prancing through human worlds in canon, so they would probably do even moreso here since there are little to no boundaries preventing them from doing so.

On the other hand, I'd say the Harlequins are also feared, and for good reason. It was said in a previous thread that Cegorach has a small portion of his power invested in them, which is why they have such super-eldar abilities and why Ceggers gets to arm-wrestle Slaanesh for their soul when they die. This would put a Harlequin way above an Aspect Warrior in terms of power, possibly on par with a Handmaiden or Grey Knight (at least the really powerful ones). They're not feared because they're Pennywise-style OH GOD WAT, they're feared because they're essentially mercurial Eldar super-soldiers and everyone knows what they're capable of.

As for safety? I'd say custard pie or slit throat depends on the context. Harlequins with the Dark Carnival might tend to be safer, because it's party time and they tend to be on their best behavior. Harlequins on Harlequin business? Tend to have shorter patience.

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>>55869312
>>55869297
>>55869285
That is damn fine addition to the fluff.

Also AMazan. I fucking like it.

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>>55869285
>Poor Isha. Keeps looking for survivors of the Age of Strife. Keeps finding none.

Oh sweet Jesus, that hit rather more than it should have.

>>55869786
Eh, I think most of the more backwater-Imperium worlds don't know all the details of exactly how dangerous certain groups are, or why they would be more dangerous than other Eldar, they'd just know that now they've got to deal with these weird clown-faced elves who showed up out of nowhere and started disrupting production with a massive party.

>>55873212
Not all the Harlequins are part of the Dark Carnival. A lot of them are off doing Ceggers keikaku-work and keeping the major threats out there on their toes.

Speaking of which, I had an idea for the Harlequins in this timelime. In canon, the Harlequins first appeared in 641.M33 when they showed up out of fucking nowhere to bail Ulthwé’s ass out of the fire at Llayen Nuadh by fighting off a huge horde of Slaaneshi daemons. They then went on to do the same for other Craftworlds, but this was the first. The idea was that during the War of the Beast, Ulthwé came under attack by a shit-ton of daemons and Cronedar, hoping to turn the Craftworld into a second Altansar, due to them having to go right through Ulthwé’s territory as they left the Eye to attack the rest of the galaxy. This was one of the events that Eldrad had to bail on to go save the galaxy that he regretted (and the other Eldar resented) for years to come. Ulthwé has few to no Aspect Temples. Ulthwé was almost overrun by daemons, only for the arrival of the Harlequins to turn the tide and at least keep the Craftworld out of daemon hands and save at least part of the Craftworld’s population in a parallel to the above.

However, then I realized that the Harlequins had already existed before this point in the timeline, with the most dangerous of their number having participated along with the primarchs and the future Phoenix Warriors in the Raid. This wouldn’t be the first case of the timeline fucking with the Harlequins, in canon they weren’t supposed to exist until M33 yet were involved in the War of the Beast. It doesn’t stop it from happening but it loses the “we’re back”-ness of it.

Another thought (am >>55874276) regarding parallels to canon events. Was looking up the Tau and according to canon after being woken up from cryostasis Aun'Va took Shadowsun aside and told her how Farsight went off the reservation, leading her to have a rage moment.

What if in this timeline after the Schism turned violent it was Shadowsun came to Aun'Va personally and told him how Farsight had escalated the whole thing, instead of the other way around. Aun'Va is beside himself with rage because Shadowsun and Farsight were supposed to be his two aces in the hole, and now that plan's shot to hell. However, at the same time the fact that Shadowsun came to him personally and told him what happened showed him how reliable she was and really elevated her in his eyes, which is why he has trusted her with so much and been willing to cut corners to extend her lifespan.

>>55874276
It also seems that the Aspect Temples came before the Phoenix Lords. Or possibility they all started out as Dire Avengers.

>>55869312
I just realized the full implications of this. If they weren't so isolationist they would become the dominant subspecies very quickly.

Could this be a source of internal social worry?

Should the Tarellians have their own weaponry or should they be importing it from the Imperium?

Are they at the stubber or laser level for basic soldiers?

>>55876781
I would suggest that they retain their fiercely independent character and not start using foreign import weapons. They know how to make laser weapons but because each world is expected to be self sufficient few of them have the industrial base to do so for anything but the elite of their armed forces and most rely on auto-stubbers.

The big exception being Mazon which has auto-stubbers for it's elite and crossbows (sometimes even just long/hunting bows) for it's regular soldiers.

Itza is the only Tarellian world that can afford to equip the rank and file with full laser weapons.

Same principle for the armour. Most of them are on Kevlar and ceramic plates. Itza is on flack and carapace. Mazon is on silk and leather.

>>55869285
So we keeping the Slanni or not? I'm all for it if it gives Isha another attack of the feels. It draws a little more in universe attention to the ancient days of myth-made-real when gods walked amongst men and the implication and foreboding that those days might be coming back for Ragnarök.

>>55875848
The first PL was up and about in that time and went on the raid so young he may only have been on his second host.

The Dire Avengers are generalists but specific temples would maybe have had specialist leanings. The Phoenix Lord to be would have exemplified the leanings of their particular temples and these would have eventually become the full specializations we know in 999M41.

Dire Avengers are still the most popular shrine to the point were more than half of the eldar of any real age have gone on it at least for a short while, numbers boosted by craftworlds that require military service for full citizenship.

Also I think it was in a previous thread that the Noble Dark equivalent of Tyrion has been on all of the major War Paths and a few of the minor ones so it's not like you can't pick and mix to some extent even if it does mean you have to hop borders.

Has anything been written about Nork Deaddog? Cleverestest of Ogryn.

>>55875848
In canon, Asurmen was the first Phoenix Lord, and was much older than all his students. He was the one who set the standard for all future Aspect Warriors to follow, and was flexible enough in combat strategy that just about anyone could function as a Dire Avenger. So it's possible.

Also it is very much possible to hop between Aspect Temples. You have to do it at least a few times to be an autarch. It's just that Ulthwé is infamous in canon for having poor attendance of the Aspect Temples, so they have to use the Black Guardians to compensate.

Also there was like 100-150 years between the Raid and the War of the Beast.

>>55877828
Well I vote for keeping the Space Frogs.

>>55863875
>>55863937
I will be honest - as much as I like the lizardmen, I'm not sure bringing the frogs over as-is as well is a good idea. A bit too on the nose, considering what's been written so far.

>>55877828
Tarellians are said to have their own unique brand of range weaponry, disruptor rifles. I think the only mention of their weaponry in canon was that they use sound, which 1d4chan pointed out was too similar to the vespid, so we went with their suggestion that it's more of a molecular disruptor than sound waves.

Regardless, the fact that they prefer their own homemade weaponry and auto-stubbers over Imperial-made weapons (they'd probably trade for some but see it kind of like Batman: it's worth having around but it's not worth trusting your life on the thing. If your planet isn't smart enough to know to be able to make your own weapons you qualify for a Darwin award) reinforces the whole self-sufficiency theme of theirs. I'd say disruptor rifles are probably a bit more powerful than autostubbers or lasguns, but less so than plasma or pulse weapons (which are essentially the same thing). The problem with disruptor rifles is they can't be reloaded as easily as lasguns and they don't fire as fast (so the best you can make them is semi-auto, and that's more by having multiple barrels than increasing rate of fire).

>>55877828
>>55881221
>>55882202
I feel I have to agree with >>55882202. Bringing the Slaan over seems a bit too on the nose with comparisons to Fantasy, especially when we have the Old Ones who are basically the Slaan anyway and are even implied to be called Slaan in their own tongue. It also sounds really similar to the Slaugth and the Rangda Abomination (race known for independence is formed into an organized intergalactic society as a front by a second race of highly powerful psykers) and diminishes the Tarellians' ability to self-determinate.

I like the idea of giving Isha an attack of the feels, though.

We could have it that the Slaan are another Tarellian colony world, like Tarellian Prospero. Either they end up being chunky for Tarellians because of genetics or lifestyle, or the most prominent member of them is known for being a bit of a lard-ass. Though they'd probably look more like a chuckwalla than a frog.

>>55882560
Perhaps, on the feels bit, it's part of their religion?
They worship the Elder Ones, who they believe created all, etc etc, and though there's obviously been a lot of differences and enough to doubt, there's a bit too much to be a coincidence.
And they act as though their gods walk amongst them. "Come, let me bring you to Lord Wh'tevr" and then she's brought to a shrine empty bar a few devotees and a statue.

>>55882560
So the Tarellian High Priesthood/Council/Whatever tried to pull a fast one on the Imperium. Presumably they knew of the Old Ones from archaeological digs on one of their worlds with some ruins but no surviving god-tech.

Isha saw pictures of the Tarellians and they kind of looked like the Old Ones did when she first saw one if they took another less drastic path to self improvement.

Although she revealed their ruse as just a bunch of little newts sitting in the ruins of things infinitely their greater she also found no joy. She had so hoped to find a friendly face from the old days.

>>55882560
>>55883788
>>55884082
Old One worship and ritually chubby psychic lizard priests sounds good, and actually plays into the Imperium's in-universe idealism that comes before they absorb or obliterate you. Thinking the species that made Khorne (though they don't know this) could be nice and diplomatically reasonable goes hand in hand with trying to make peace with the immortal skeleton men that have decided to make all reality follow their order.

Actually, its neat to see that between Cegorach, Isha, Khaine, and Oscar, the Imperial Court/Pantheon is pretty optimistic compared to the galaxy at large. In the face of all the horrible gods in the Galaxy, the Imperium holds the votives of joyful wit, nurturing compassion, bold retribution, and incisive comprehension as their gods. Last on the list is the Mechanicus and the Omnissiah, a god of invention, technology, and unification that for all their faults they remain cautions with and protective of. It says something for the imperium that their 'gods' are good, even if their actions in dire straits are questionable.

>>55883788
>>55884082
There was a suggestion that the Tarellians and the Old Ones were connected in some way. Like not direct descendants but maybe from the same biosphere or something. It would make sense that the Tarellians would dig up Old One artifacts all across their worlds and think that they were once the tools of gods (to be fair, given the Old Ones, they're not that far off).

>Thinking the species that made Khorne (though they don't know this) could be nice and diplomatically reasonable goes hand in hand with trying to make peace with the immortal skeleton men that have decided to make all reality follow their order.

Reminds me of what happened with Mass Effect 3 and the Protheans. The Asari, being the first to find Prothean Ruins, projected their own view onto them and saw them as a bunch of wise, benevolent scholars. Then they actually wake one up from cold sleep and it turns out, nah, they were a bunch of Space Romans. By the end it turns out that the situation is sort of like Halo and the Forerunners, the empire was expansionistic and hegemonic, and there were quite a few militant assholes among them, but there were also a few who had moral standards as well.

>>55869920
I'm glad someone got it.

>>55876025
I left how the Mazons reproduce ambiguous because I wasnt sure how to handle it. The idea was basically a group of literal Amazons based on the parthenogenetic whiptail lizard, but the whiptails method of reproduction is distinctly /d/ lesbian lizard ladies, which I felt would put too much magical realm in the high concept of "literal Amazons".

Also, there's the issue that if they were entirely parthenogenetic they would have problems with genetic diversity and they would have been wiped out by the Tarellian equivalent of smallpox when the first explorers showed up.

There are other possible options. There are some species of all-female guppies that are able to get extra genetic variation by mating with males and essentially "spitting out" part or most of the male's genome. But that sounds a bit too much like Mass Effect's Asari. They could have used what little genetic technology they had to enable some diversity, but that feels like it's getting too close to the Lizardmen birthing pits, which feels like its too on the nose to Fantasy.

So I just wrote it as they can mate with males but most prefer not to due to cultural norms. The female offspring tend to take after the mother more strongly than in most Tarellians, but not as much the males.

Bump

So I was reading the section on Ultramar, specifically the part where Gaufrid took the name Guilliman instead of Fouché because it implied authority. Does that mean in this timeline the title of Lord Guilliman refers to whoever is the prime minister/leader/whatever of Ultramar?

>>55892996
Probably not Gaufrid needed all the authority he could muster because he was an outsider trying to impose change on a Survivor Civilisation.

Going to be a fun day when the Lizards meet Be'Lakor

>>55883788
The things that they discover, so as not to have them develop into living gods over night, could be the runis of the simpler shit. Big stone buildings, statues and some decorative wall carvings.

No traces of real surviving technology. The only two planets of theirs that had Old One junk left on them were their old homeworld which is lost and all such artefacts destroyed and one of their colony worlds.

This begs a question. Beyond presumably reptilian or possibly amphibian do we know anything about what the Old Ones looked like?

Also if the Tarellians found wall carvings presumably they found writing and may be able to translate some of it in a crude way even if a lot of it only works in context with the pictures.

They know that the gods were in a war with anti-gods and that they spawned a race of dark gods to help them. They know that they made lesser beings to act as soldiers.

They believe that the stylized bipeds at the right hand of the gods are the kings and queens of their ancestors and the little people under them are their subjectsit's not. They are actually the eldar gods and the eldar but don't try telling them that. Isha recognized herself in the carvings, and Kurnous.

Page 9 bump

So are we having it where the Tarellians are ruled by their psychics?

How many astropaths should there be per planet?

>>55894195
>SCREAMING
>WITH ROCKS

>>55897464
I am neutral on the subject. I just think it sounds nest to have the Tarellians led by Tarellians, especially given their "strong, independent lizard who don't need no human" schtick.

>>55898484
Any idea of how many there are per planet in canon?

>>55898819
I didn't even catch this. Kek.

>>55897464
I'd say that the traditions of leadership should vary from world to world.

Mazon could have a council of elder shamens as it adds to the whole mystic space lizard look

>>55898819
I don't get it

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>>55900873
It's a bit of a dumb joke, but long story short, there was a battle report in a White Dwarf where a Bel'akor figurine substituted a daemon prince. It died ignominiously from a bunch of rocks dropped on it from terradons.

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>>55899961
With Mazon, it would by definition have to be a matriarchy (of shamans likely). Mazon being less populated means the tribes are spread further out, making it easier to have a council than a more centralized government (just one more reason the Mazons are salty, it means that the shamans have to act as a full-time government instead of a part-time one like they used to).

The leaders of Tikal might wear feathered headdresses (or ones made of modern composites that look that way), not only to continue the urban Mayan-Aztec theme, but because Tarellians have expandable neck frills that help indicate emotion, and an expanded frill likely is a sign of aggression or dominance. Having a fake neck frill that is essentially always extended is like saying "I'm in charge, and don't you forget it".

Given they have no real clear-cut distinction between soldiers and civilians, a lot of Tarellian worlds probably have some sort of hierarchical government.

>>55895186
>They believe that the stylized bipeds at the right hand of the gods are the kings and queens of their ancestors and the little people under them are their subjectsit's not. They are actually the eldar gods and the eldar but don't try telling them that. Isha recognized herself in the carvings, and Kurnous.

It might not just be the Eldar Gods, but the gods of the other uplifted races (like Qah, Gork and Mork, and whatever gods the long-dead Knib had), with few to no mortals. It says a lot about the Old Ones when the stylized figures depicted in the way peasants are depicted in Egyptian hieroglyphics are the gods of the races they uplifted, and the actual mortal members are nowhere to be seen.

>>55893673
I was thinking more of Gaufrid's decision led to later leaders adopting the term, like how "Caesar" led to "Kaiser" and "Czar".

>>55901415
Wasn't that like the last time the model was used even, and Be'lakor hasn't been mentioned since? Or something silly and coincidental like that but nonetheless amusing.

>>55902144
That works much better. It shows the greatness and/or vanity of the Old Ones.

what would the name be shortened to?

>hektor heresy ded
>imperium asunder ded
>nobledark imperium page 8

are all /tg/ rewrites destined to die or what

>>55904539
Well, it's a Monday, so most of the writefags are probably stuck at work.

>>55904539
Everything dies eventually.

On the other hand, last AU standing.

>>55904682
Didn't we also start later?

>>55904539
forgot to mention warmasters triumvirate there

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>>55904539
Not before the tales of Fulgrim and Angron are done I hope.

Given the way in which Nemesor Zahndrekh gained independence from the Silent King is pretty unique in it's bat shittery what other ways could other necrons have to prevent Assuming Direct Control?

I'm trying but I'm just not seeing any other mid to big lords and such siding with the Imperium even as just allies rather than members. On the other hands there are a lot of necrons and there are bound to be exceptions and accidents. Necrons that do join the Imperium for the vast majority will be in some way impaired and they will be either going on their own or in small groups with little to their names bar maybe a small ship at most and possibly as little as on bare feet and naked.

They would, without access to the necron resurrection network, be mortal. Kill them and they die (unlike the good Nemesor) but unlike their old countrymen they feel alive.

So my computer is still messed up, doing some writing on my phone but it’s not going quickly, and I’m probably gonna have to focus on an essay when it is fixed. Still working on it, still gonna post the end as soon as I can.

So does anyone think Oscar should actually be spelled Oskar in the case of the steward? More likely with the Terrawatt mission that found him.

>>55905727
He was named after the uncle of the ships janitor. Presumably that is how it was spelled.

Also Oscar Awards.

>>55904726
We started a little over a year ago, Heresy was something like 2 or so years ago.

>>55906092
They were kind of off and on there. Didn't they move to Discord?

>>55906157
Yes. Actually, there's a single discord for all the /tg/ 40k AUs, for some reason.

In this AU are space marines sterile?

>>55906544
Yes. Some have had kids, but its usually via frozen sperm samples prior to getting augmented. Specifically designed that way so that the augments can't breed true and you end up with a superhuman ruling class oppressing everyone else.

Khan, Vulkan, and Sanguinius are all Space Marines that are known to have had children. Guilliman and Russ too, but they weren't technically Space Marines.

They can probably still have sex (assuming they don't crush their partner), but they'd be shooting blanks.

Same with Sisters. Augments are not genetically passed on, no matter how much the Dark Eldar tried.

Space Wolves, being the result of copious genetic engineering rather than stuffing bootleg demigod organs into ones' body, can and do have children after augmentation. However, they were designed with old Dark Age gene-copyrighting techniques, so that the genes from augmentation auto-shutoff in offspring. Fact that it wasn't 100% successful due to fluke mutations was one of the many reasons Canis Helix soldiers ended up not being favored by the Imperium.

>>55907537
Hm, I don't think Space Marines necessarily have to be sterile, it just could be that the augmentations don't affect the genetic content of their sperm (because why would they?) so they would still carry the baseline genes of the Marine in question. The scenario someone had for Sangy meeting Cyrene was definitely after his augmentations at the end of the Unification Wars, and I doubt Sangy was freezing sperm as a teen...

>>55908312
>Pre-Warlord Ducht Jemanic
>Not freezing sperm

Sanguinius was born in a freaking lab, they probably had his DNA on file. Presumably destroyed along with most of the rest of Ducht Jemanic during the War of the Beast.

>>55906324
Well, Discord's convenient for conversations, and is surprisingly light on data usage, so it's great for if you're stuck on mobile most of the time.
As for having all the alternate universes on one channel, that's probably because of both project overlap (one guy working on two universes), and the fact that the number of people involved in any one of these AUs might not be big enough to justify their own private Discord channel, so having them all together just works out better.

>>55908312
>why would genetic augmentations be in semen
I don't know. Maybe the same reason you have an extra one if you're asking that kind of retarded question. You do realize that sperm isn't random shit and reproduction is a biological process that exchanges DNA right? If your DNA has weird shit in it, it'll get passed on like anything else.

Eggs and sperm are little genetic copies of what you are that combine with the other to make a hybrid of two people.

>>55908312
>>55909131
In humans, sperm is produced constantly from germ cells, whereas eggs are produced all in one go during embryonic development. Sperm has a turnover rate of a few days.

That would mean that if you wanted to make sure genetic augmentations don't get passed on from parent to offspring, you would have to use some sort of self-suppressing mechanism to make sure the gene doesn't activate (this happens in genetics, it's basically messing with a few base pairs in copying so the body either doesn't recognize the gene or the instructions are garbled).

That said, Space Marines are basically bioborgs. They're not getting genetic modification, they're getting extra organs implanted in them. So they wouldn't pass on things like an Ossmundula or a Progenoid, just like how someone with a pacemaker won't have kids born with pacemakers.

>>55909131
Easy on the aspie rage, cowboy. >>55910084
expressed what I meant more clearly: that SMs don't actually have their genes modified, they just have stuff implanted that affects their physiology. I'm looking over the Lexicanum article on the implants and nowhere does it say the genes are actually changed, only space magic stuff about hormones being secreted from the implant and what not. Hence, my point about the augmentation not affect sperm, unless the Primaris have a testicle implant I'm unaware of.

Dragon Squadron then made a wide turn to try to get to the tail of the Talons but two of the Talons realigned themselves to be leveled with the Furies. They predicted the Furies were going to be 45° to their right coming in at above their 4. So the Talons adjusted turning to the right and using only their thrusters to follow the path of the wide turn. To those that looked on a leveled field, it seems like the Talons slid along a flat surface like on a frozen lake when they ripped Dragon Squadron apart. The first shot missed the target to only clip the fins of the flight leader then the next shot from the first Falcon hit the engines of the flight wingman. The resulting explosion shook the other Furies near it and the Talons now switched to rapid fire. The steady stream of blinking Las-shots tore through the last two in the squadron as one was ripped in half by an internal explosion and another hit the cockpit. The one which exploded was punched through where it held the bolter munitions. One Las-cannon beam fried all the instruments in the cockpit along with the pilot into a mashed Human meat and sending the limbs flying into the void when all the air was sucked out. Dragon flight leader still tried to fire on the Talons once he made it behind them but the Talons chasing him were now in front of him. Still using just their thrusters, the two Talons were flying backward when they shot at the Fury and the Fury had to cut his engines to prevent ramming them. With his speed reduced, the Fury was easy pray from the two Talons with insane accuracy and Dragon squadron was killed without harming a single Talon.
>Does this sound like how tough Fallen Marine starfighter pilots would be?

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>>55912040
When the Imperials were about to start their first attack run, the enemy squadron suddenly accelerated to arrive right on top of the formation. It looked like the enemy would try to ram the Imperial voidcrafts, causing many to break formation and try to dodge the enemy. When the enemy was about to come into contact with the Imperials, they just cut their engines and used their frame thrusters to turn on a coin pulling up to 10 G's. That would have knocked out most Humans or Abhuman as a matter of a fact, but these pilots have been fighting the Imperium for centuries. Their bodies have been modified just for the task of operating voidcrafts willingly or otherwise. Clipper and Jester broke away from each other to avoid ramming into the enemy but in the process, messed up the other formations behind them.
>I think Astartes pilots can pull off bullshit stunts like this
>Especially the Fallen Marines

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>>55910084
So Battle Sister on Space Marine action is still al good?

>>55907537
>assuming they don't crush their partner

They are capable of delicate movement and it's not likely that they are going to collapse from exhaustion easily

>>55909075
got an invite link for that discord?

>>55912818
https://discord.gg/McR27

>>55902690
Then there needs to be a Lizard vs Chaos battle where he gets a rock landed on him.

Bumpin bumperino it's 10 am in Italino

>>55912884
>invalid or expired

>>55913006
This. Maybe he attacked one of their priests who, rather than trying to best him in a game of psychic shin kicking, opted to telekinetically heft a large rock at him or knocked a house sized boulder off of a cliff face and squashed him flat.

The sheer absurdity of the whole thing halted the incursion.

Motivation could have been Be'Lakor having found out that they worshiped his people and being the last of them is by right their inherited master by default. He and his court of Deep Warp Far Land bottom feeders go to claim what is by right theirs.

Tarellians bend their knee to no outsiders and sure as shit not to some warp dwelling abyssal catfish pretending to be one of their gods.

It could have been their biggest war since the 'Nids fucked them up. Afterwards they were renewed and reborn. They knew now with certainty that the Imperium was genuine when it offered them sanctuary as one neighbour helping another in a lean year. It wasn't a partnership born of charity or worst still pity. They were still strong. They were still Tarellians.

And they managed to do it all without sending out for assistance.

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>>55912477
The Securitas aren't part of the military so it's not actually illegal. It is probably frowned upon due to the potential conflict of loyalties.

>>55904910
Are there any batshit Necrons who still legitimately worship the C'tan?

>>55916606
Probably not given the rarity and how bad they fucked them over.

>>55913533
God damn it. Okay, try this one. https://discord.gg/wgsC7We

>>55918053
thanks anon

>>55917916
there's been mention of some minor Necron Lords going vampire, but that's not worship so much as fractally enforced thralldom

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Does moar need to be done on Legienstrasse?

Consider that she may have Alex Mercer levels of abilities to forge undifferentiated tissue into highly complex and functioning biological systems on a whim, regenerate from nearly any injury with enough biological matter to eat/assimilate, can rearrange her form to fit theoretically any environment carbon-based life can possibly survive in and can potentially eat anything even going so far as to turn into a "meat-tree" and live off of soil, water and sunlight.

She demonstrates average intelligence but total loyalty even up to the point of helping to kill her fucked up daughter and even more fucked up grand children.

She could be the greatest warrior the Imperium has that isn't a Man of Gold but the Imperium can't deploy her for fear of Chaos using her to breed an army or possibly worse Tyranids eating her or a piece of her.

And so Legienstrasse remains in her cell with the unlocked door in the guest wing of Ganymede Vault Complex 19, the nearest she has to a friend is Inquisitor Jaq "hold my beer and watch this" Draco. Everyone else is scared of her but fear is one of the many words that Jaq doesn't know the meaning of.

Titan has an insanely highly webway gate and Inquisitor Draco is the only known human capable of navigating the webway. Clandestine adventures are not impossible to have been had.

>>55920723
They also have Apep, pharaoh of Denial, and a stash of Void Dragon inspired tech that they barely understand and the Mechanicus failed tp hoover up.

>>55921595
What other whacky and/or disturbing things could or should be in those vaults?

>>55923526
I’m gonna forward for the sake of my eventually finished story that the blade of Laer was there for a while before Lucius busted in and stole it.

Other things that jump to mind include corrupted Man of Iron AIs the Imperium has collected over the years, and in general most dangerous tech heresies that the Imperial government get to before the Marsian Brotherhood. Xenos AI, anomalous pretenders to the title Man of Gold, Crone captives and captured weapons of note.

One thing is that the Imperium and Mechanicus don’t have any policies saying they have to share corrupted tech, only working salvage, so the vaults on Ganymede and corresponding ones on Mars are probably stuffed with all the corrupted super tech that was too tainted to put to use, but still worth studying.

>>55921595
To be fair, one of those is a recaff maker. Another one is a mechadendrite polisher. Oh, and that one is a planet crusher.

>>55920723
Legienstrausse is another good example of an Imperial fuck-up. Yes they got one well-adjusted Maerorus out of it, but because out-of-universe we can't let the Imperium get nice things like that for free we have a Maerorus problem at least ten times worse than canon.

On the other hand, Legienstrausse is potentially the straight man to Jaq Draco. Isha preserve us.

>>55924905
Did Lucius steal it? I thought that was one of his long term goals in his pursuit of immortality?

>>55921595
>Pharaoh of Denial

I like this title.

>>55923526
Anything that is a clear danger to the Imperium but can't be conventionally killed or disposed of. Apep will just come back again if killed. Other artifacts might create a black hole or release some ultimate evil that has been imprisoned for 10,000 years. Legienstrausse and Draco are just too dangerous to leave walking around. APEX twins might end up here if they got caught. Just weird stuff would be kept far away from Sol. Ganymede does have the Grey Knights next door, but it's also the location of Earth and Mars.

>>55923526
>>55925039
If the Necrons are egyptian-inspired now, does that mean that somewhere out there, they've got a Pharaoh of Kek? Would the Kek-crons be Imperium-aligned, or allied with the Silent King?

>>55916606
In canon, Necrons who are heavily damaged and retain no sense of their original personality can be overridden and used as cannon fodder by the C'tan. They're mindless Oldcrons, but it gives the C'tan something to throw at people.

The way we've kind of worded the Silent King's betrayal is that the C'tan made him a minor admin in a sick version of gratitude for his service (meaning anything he said had to be obeyed unless countermanded by a C'tan). When the C'tan had their little spat, Silent King used that power to smash Nightbringer and Deciever while they were too gorged from eating their cousins to react. Then the Necrons hoovered up all the shards as well as the bits of other C'tan that were not eaten (missing the Outsider, the Endless Swarm, and most of the Void Dragon for obvious reasons) and the Silent King essentially changed the codes so that the hierarchy of obidience went from C'tan > SK > Self to SK > Self > C'tan. He couldn't completely keep them out but he could make their influence so minor that a Necron would have to be brain-dead for a C'tan to control them.

>>55925154
he also figured himself into a relatively safe place in the Outsider's do-loop to slam the invincible robot into his foes.

>>55916606
If we really wanted one, we could use the Maynarkh Dynasty.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Maynarkh_Dynasty

In canon, the Maynarkh Dynasty was the one to take out Llandu’gor, the Flayer, who was the only C’tan to ever be outright killed as opposed to simply sharded. However, whatever methods the Necrons used to do so were so hazardous to causality that the Silent King decided to shard the remaining C’tan and imprison them in Tesseract Labyrinths, despite all the extra work and danger that entailed. Outright killing a C’tan caused that much collateral damage.

The Maynarkh Dynasty are known for their brutality and cruelty. They’ve basically been described as Oldcrons meets Newcrons. Their Pharakh, Xun’bakyr, aims for the systematic extermination of all life in the galaxy. This is extreme even by the Silent King’s standards, who wants to only wipe out all life in the galaxy *once* to kill off the Warp and ensure the future of the Necron race. Indeed, in canon, several Phaerons suggested that the Maynarkh Dynasty should have an “accident” during the Great Sleep because they are so crazy. There are also suggestions that Xun’bakyr was yandere for Szarekh, but I can’t seem to find any source anywhere.

Given this unusual behavior, maybe Xun’bakyr isn’t yandere for Szarekh. Maybe she’s yandere for the Nightbringer, basically making her Thanos with a stainless steel chestplate. She’s so crazy she cannot be controlled like Zahndrekh, but she’s much more dangerous. Explains all her creative and violent projects to destroy reality. Szarekh may have used a different dynasty to kill Llandu’gor, since she wouldn’t have been for a plan that could be used to kill the Nightbringer, and may have actually tried to knock her off during the Great Sleep.

Alternatively, she’s just another one of Szarekh’s heavies, but a much, much less nice one than Imotekh or Anrakyr. If Szarekh couldn’t override her he’d be worried.

>>55926265
I like the idea of the powerful and inventive Pharakh yandere for Nightbringer, it goes well with Orikan's alignment with the Deceiver. Should she be a Nosferatu, having once been "kissed" by her love and wanting more, or is she the sort of lunatic even the Unliving God of Death would keep at arm's length for fear of being caged by his admirer?

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>>55926601
I'd say the latter. Nosferatu gives her an "out" as opposed to "no, girl be crazy". Also Nosferatu have their hunger to worry about. Xun'bakyr seems too creative to worry about that, doing things like ordering her crypteks to figure out a way TO KILL TIME ITSELF (insert dramatic voice as appropriate).

It also implies Nightbringer-sempai has noticed her, when he probably doesn't work like that. Xun'bakyr has all these creative plans to kill reality as we know it to try and impress Nightbringer, not knowing that he's really in this for his gluttony and he would rather like causality to keep existing (in his own image of course) too.

The only thing I worry about is moving too close to Lady Malys BUT A NECRON!

>>55927038
Malys is manic and hyperactive, able to do the will of all four gods at once by virtue of her lunatic speed and shattered comprehension. She has split personalities running different plans in parallel and addictions that actually feed the Black Crusades.

Xun'bakyr Is obsessive and meticulous, in the long term focused absolutely on her deadly Idol, in the short term honing and perfecting some novel variety of star eater, 4D ionized shrapnel projector, or reality-pin to nail down certain doom. Xun'bakyr isn't a large scale threat only because she is so narrow in the scope of her ambitions. Her armies march along in the wake of the Nightbringer dealing death, and her scouts proceed him demonstrating their queen's new horrors. A blow from one will often be followed by a blow from the other, and together they make a horrible local threat and disaster within a sector, but beyond an additional horror following the Nightbringer's aimless killing spree they are not strategically significant. Xun'bakyr's universe destroying plans coming to fruition is an existential threat, but one that is sadly insignificant compared to many others.

Added all the recent stuff to 1d4chan, including Praetoria, the Tarellian worlds, the end to Lion, and the Sarosh story (put on there under OP's "My Dinner with the Emperor" since there didn't seem to be any other suggestions). Edited the Tikal and Sarosh sections with the comments in the thread to what was talked about. We can add in Lion's flipping out if we want to later.

>>55928981
Nice.

>>55928981
Thank you

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>>55927616
>>55926265
So Maynarkh is the ultimate mortality/termination fangirl who has attached her obsession to the Nightbringer. I am surprisingly happy about this.

Especially Nightbringer thinking she's a bit of an idiot.

>>55925039
>Legienstrausse is potentially the straight man to Jaq Draco

What an age to be alive.

This list

http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/the-things-dr-bright-is-not-allowed-to-do-at-the-foundation

There must be an equivalent for Inquisitor Jaq Draco

How many Shellworlds do the Cronedar have? Or is it just the one?

>>55925154
Are there any genuinely benevolent C'tan shards bar the Void Dragon?

>>55925039
I don't think that he's too dangerous as such to let loose. I think that it's because he's got the right combination of aptitudes, brains and crazy to be sitting on a heap of reality violations and all manner of awful risking constantly fates exotic and worse than death.

Also he tends to annoy a lot of people.

>>55933092
I think only one survived The Fall. But it has population in the high trillions so you only need one.

>>55924905
Are there other surviving A.I.?

>>55936478
There's Stillness, a DAOT Tickle Me Elmo that now semi-secretly controls an entire planet as part of the Imperium.

>>55935120
He was bad enough and racked up enough of a body count that the Grey Knights were sent to kill him twelve times.

>>55936027
There are a bunch of other Crone Worlds in the Eye in canon. Given Slaanesh's "I'll just have a quadruple cheeseburger, chili fries, lard milkshake, and a diet coke and it'll turn out fine attitude in this universe, quite a few of them would have survived. Might not be shellworlds though. Shellworlds seem to happen when you have a critical mass of important stuff.

>>55937005
I'm going to suggest that he isn't that level of overtly dangerous batshit

>>55937005
There were other Crone worlds in the Eye that still exist, and often fall under the control of Arrontyr seeing as he has the most advanced navy in the eye, the others would probably be held by the Taskmaster, with the largest navy, Luther holding lots of non-Crone worlds in the eye with his Fallen navy, and the other two Crone leaders are noted to have few real territorial holdings, the Crow's base being in the fringes of the webway at the edge of the Eye, and Nimina holding whatever she can get of the other powers' leftovers.

Other Crone worlds might be shell-worlds on the order of magnitude of Old Earth. Shaa-Dome is at least the diameter of Jupiter, has webway gates built into its infrastructure from when it was the heart of the Old Empire, and the spaces within created by the fall and Slaanesh's birth have made it even more voluminous. Commorragh is a webway bourn district of Shaa-Dome, shorn off in the fall and turned into an independent state.

>>55940814
Then given the numbers involved in such a structure to mention nothing of other habitations we must conclude something like

>Each one of the fuckers that own land there must have a mansion and an estate each
>Most of their energy is directed inwards into a combination of "arts" and shanking each other in a high society way
>They won't side (for long) with rivals to go on crusade and almost everyone is rivals

If they Could get along, had the numbers implied by the size of the Shaa-Dome and gave a shit about anything then Shaa-Dome on it's own would be a rival to the Imperium.

A thing that big could hold hundreds of trillions and it's safe to assume that most have at least a minor blessing of at least 1 god giving them mad buffs. This added to basic eldar abilities and they would have them fucking the galaxy.

But each of those eldar each have lets say an average of 1,000 slaves/servants that are non-eldar (legally). That put's the population down to the relatively low of hundreds of billions of actual eldar although it could be assumed that at least some of those slaves will fight for their master if only out of fear of what will happen to them if they don't and also the jobs of at least some of those slaves will be keeping the slaves in line and bodyguarding.

Lets say that the other Shellworlds are way, way smaller than Shaa-Dome. Lets say that it pushes it over the edge into the tens of trillions.

Still sounds like peanuts compared to the low quadrillions of the Imperium but the vast majority of the Imperium is civilians who can hold a gun right way best of 3.

The galaxies greatest friend is that the catherding skills needed to herd Chaos eldar would be legendary. That is the real reason why Lady Malys is much of the threat, being one of the greatest combatants in the galaxy is just a side effect of it.

Do the Crones or the DEldar have a Khine avatar?

>>55941238
Shaa-Dome is fairly depopulated by the Fall and the Birth of Slaanesh, who ate a good portion of the inhabitants, and the multitudes it could house are reduced to the high trillions as anon said. Those that don't own land or industrial hubs are in servitude under the nobility or vagabond. Each of the masters of the Crones holds a part of the capital, Arrotyr has been noted to still possess much of the surface and upper layers, the Taskmaster presumably has power further in towards the portal to Slaanesh's realm, and Nimina and the Crow's vassals would likely exist as a buffer between the more numerous forces in the shellworld, seeing as Nimina is supposed to have few landowners in the capital but support from the bound servile Crones, and the Crow's power is mostly in the broken and fallen Webway fortresses and redoubts around the rim of the Eye, but also has court sorcerers in the Slaaneshi portion of the Capital.

One wonders if Malys would deign to have her palace and estate in the Territory of the Taskmaster nearer the core, or if she would carve out her own domain for Chaos Undivided in the middle layers.

>>55943238
The Crones stole one from Altansar and kitbashed it until it became an Avatar of Khorne instead. As in, if they give it enough Blood for the Blood God and Skulls for the Skull Throne you get a physical avatar of one of the Big Four walking around for about an hour. Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

Dark Eldar probably don't have the psychic juice to maintain an Avatar, and even if they did they probably wouldn't use it, seeing how they see their gods as weak for failing to defeat Slaanesh.

>>55941238
That sounds about right. We said that by M41 Crones outnumber Imperial Eldar 11 to 1 and 12 to one, respectively. Slaanesh probably ate 90% or more of the Old Empire's population, as mentioned by >>55943962, but I'd imagine that the population did do some bouncing back between the Fall and the Raid (which were about 5000 years apart, and hey, most of them are Slaaneshi).

Imperial Eldar were said to number in the trillion with Iyanden being somewhere between 10 trillion and 100 trillion pre-Kraken (I think we went with the former).

>>55940814
Forgot about Luther. Plus there are whatever worlds exist just on the other side of the Eye in the Warp (daemon worlds).

>>55938786
Apep wasn't put on Ganymede because he was friendly. It's like what they say about the SCP Foundation, "contained" does not mean "safe". They've managed to trap him in one place and control his behavior using bars of his own logic, but he's still a frickin' daemon prince. One whose patron is known to empower single individuals of mass destruction and sic them on whoever seems to be winning at the moment (and Chaos, just because).

Thread archived.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/55824461/

Do the Vampires have souls or is that something that they have to give up?

Because if yes then they could be an interesting Chaos Faction.

bump

Was there anything decided on how the Judges were ordered?

>>55951587
I don't think so.

>>55949645
I think we have it so that a new vampire is born when a vampire leaves shards behind after it sucks out a person's soul. The whole vampire thing is one big pyramid scheme as the energy drained by the vampires goes up the chain to their respective sires. So it might be the case where the body retains its memories and personality, but the soul is gone (or so vestigial it doesn't matter).

That might make an interesting angle. Lahmians might have to feed more regularly to maintain their strength, since they are more warpy than "telling the laws of physics go to sit down in the corner and cry" than the other two.

Has the Silent King ever tried to bring Nemesor Zandrekh back into line?

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>>55953023
From a few threads back I think e got something like this

But I'm kind of hazy about the whole thing as I was quite ill at the time.

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>>55954057
It also supports the idea that the vampires don't truly have free will as the C'tan shard plants thoughts, not of the vampire. Pretty much meaning each vampire thinks their own grand plan is an original concept when in actuality, they are following the will of their C'tan overlord.

>>55954953

Yep. Sent Imotekh to do it. Found Obyron waiting for him at the docks ready to challenge him to an honor duel. Imotekh being Imotekh he couldn't refuse. Obyron kicked his ass and Imotekh left.

Apparently, one lord holding a handful of planets is not enough to justify the Silent King bringing down the full wrath of the Star Empire down on them.

>>55956375
Doubly so in the case of the Deceiver, who seems to cultivate Multiple Personality Disorder as a hobby and in canon is implied to have partially orchestrated the events of his shattering so he could simultaneously dick around with people on opposite sides of the galaxy. For all we know the shard could be lying to itself that it's not the Deceiver and it is the original, only for it to be at best partially true. The greatest lies are those we tell ourselves.

Orikan, if he is a vampire, wouldn't be that stupid though. He would be more in a partnership with the Deceiver (or whatever sized shard), aided by the fact that he's already a skele-bot with no soul to be supplanted. Both the Deceiver and Orikan would be in his head.

Necrons might accuse Orikan of being a C'tan, but he says he's all himself. The most believable lies are the ones that are 99% truth.

>>55956448
That is a beautiful image.

Imotekh demands that all bow before the Silent King

Obyron declares; No. Nothing else. Just a blank No.

>Imotekh : Do you know who I am? I was trained by Ana'mhashark in the temple of Djomo!

>Obyron: I grew up in the streets of Telhemerarch. Leave now or I might cut you up a little bit you inbred aristocratic little shit.

When next Obyron meets Nemensor Zahndrekh his master notes that he has a new arm. Obyron thanks him for noticing, the old one got damaged in some accident whilst he went about his duties. It's amazing what a good doctor can do these days.

Zahndrekh doesn't need to know about Imotekh.

That day Obyron and Zahndrekh go for a walk about the royal garden. At the evening hour they stop by the Imperial Embassy to catch up on the news. Zahndrekh, Obyron and the Imperial Ambassador end the day sipping brandy by the heating unit in a garden shed some miles from the palace.

The night ends with Ambassador giving Obyron a hug. She can't officially admit that she knows what she has done, but she can blame it on the brandy. Obyron pats her hair as softly as he can and holds her gently. He doens't understand.

>>55945279
How much freedom does Apep have?

Is he allowed to use the canteen?

>>55959355
He might be, but only because he'd been told in no uncertain terms that he must vacate his cell and never return to ganymede, or something like that, such that his contradictory will would compel him to remain there. Apep might be allowed into the canteen, theoretically, but that makes it almost certain he won't ever go there, and if he did it would mean the protocols that keep him on ganymede are breaking down.

>>55959705
Unless he has been told that he not allowed free meals.

If such a prohibition has been placed he will be waiting in line very breakfast, dinner and tea for sammiches.

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>>55959355
Does he even need to use the bathroom? He's a giant shape-shifting spider made of sand nanobots, after all?

Do you think LIIVI and Taldeer hold hands in public?

>>55966333
Probably not. Their relationship was not illegal but was very nearly so.

Also Taldeer is a hard brutal Cadian woman and LIVVI is an assassin so public displays of affection is unlikely.

Private hand holding and other so sweet it gave me diabeetus behaviour is a certainty.

>>55967372
>>55966333
LEWD!

>>55957053
The duel needs to be writefagged and I might actually give it a try once I get home from work.

How clever are basic necrons?

>>55969120
There was a little bit more in the last thread on how the reason Obyron challenged Imotekh at the docks is because he knew Imotekh wouldn't hold anything back and tell Zahndrekh everything that had happened (repeatedly, at great length) and would send Zahndrekh into a full-blown Nam Dog/Alzheimers-esque meltdown.

Challenging Imotekh was simply using Imotekh's own rules against him.

>>55970548
It still needs a write up.

There is potential for characterization.

What sort of character does Obyron have in this AU?

>>55970907
He's essentially the same, doesn't actually kill political prisoners or guests unless they try anything, mostly just gets them off the planet as quickly as his master will permit.

>>55970092
Not very. Obedience, not smarts, were what The Silent King wanted.

Possibly and hopefully their themness is stored somewhere on a just in case and it's a hardware thing.

I think someone a few threads ago put forth that Zahndrekh's necrons are more animated than the Silent King's. I'm all for them being real people.

>>55970907
Oh yes, just wanted to point that out for whoever did the writeup.

>>55971781
Pretty much this. He's made it pretty clear that as long as the Imperium plays along with Zahndrekh's little delusion no "accidents" will happen. He's a bit exasperated by the Nemesor's behavior sometimes (think Kif Kroker meets Jaime Lannister), but as long as he serves Zahndrekh he doesn’t have to listen to Szarekh through clever use of loopholes because he’s “obeying his lord”. He also tends to keep the Gidrim nobles in line.

Zahndrekh is also basically his honorary uncle/father figure. Obyron was a gutter urchin that the Nemesor took into his court. Despite all the Nemesor's eccentricities and his condition Obyron still loves his lord and owes him so very much.

https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#Nemesor_Zandrekh
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#Obyron_and_the_nobility_of_Gidrim

>>55972216
I'd say the average rank and file are slightly smarter than canon. Slightly. Enough to do some simple problem solving and talk, though they usually have nothing to say. That said whatever they've gained in intelligence they've lost in obedience. Any personality traits that further the goals of the Star Empire are retained. Anything extraneous is suppressed, removed, or overriden when necessary.

Part of the horror of the Necrons in this timeline besides the usual affairs is the fact that you have beings that seem perfectly normal and then at the drop of a hat reveal themselves to be so horrifically machine-like in personality.

Necrons of independent dynasties usually have at least one degree of crazy between the Silent King and them, so they have an outsider's perspective of the situation and see just how wrong it is. They're all terrified the Silent King is going to come along, kill their lord, and take a melon baller to their CPU. Loyalty was a major virtue in Necrontyr culture but it was culturally engrained, not hard-coded.

Has it ever been said why the Silent King is such a fuck up?

>>55824461
Hi Nobledark, I'm interested in your setting and I have a dew questions:

Are you making new factions? Like a new space marine faction or a new alien faction.
Are you making codexes as well or do you just use GW's codexes?

>>55974434
We're mainly adapting canon SM chapters and aliens where possible, but you're free to introduce new chapters and minor alien species.

We have no plans for crunch at this time. At least, not that I'm aware of.

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>>55973857
The Silent King, in turn, got the Star Empire in a war with the Old Ones, oversaw first contact with the C'tan, sold his people's souls for the power to defeat the space frogs, and was responsible for a war that was so bad it damaged the fabric of reality and turned the Immaterium into a hellhole. All of which he realizes were bad moves in hindsight.

Part of this may be because while he's a damn good ruler, he came to the throne as a child after the assassination of his father, had little formal education as to how to play politics, and nearly every two-bit lord tried to make him a puppet king until he put the hurt on and showed them who’s in charge. So he's self-taught by experience, but he tends to go with his gut as opposed to ask others for help.

He wants to clean up the mess from the War in Heaven and restore the Necrontyr Star Empire to its rightful glory as a way to restore his honor and atone for the mistakes that he made. He doesn't even care that much about the glorified cavemen the Old Ones gave rayguns to; his beef was with the frog-men. The problem is that now those cavemen just happen to be In. His. Way.

Imagine if the British Empire found out that the Fountain of Youth was in some foreign country. Or better yet, think of the Spanish and El Dorado. They wouldn't hesitate to bulldoze an entire culture just to get what they want. The only difference is the tech gap between the Imperium and Star Empire isn't that great, so it would be more like all out war between Imperial Britain and 18th century China.

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>>55974573
Given that Space Marines are allowed to marry, the Crimson Fists being even in Vanilla better at being people and the infatuation that Rynn's World's governor had for the Chapter Master would it be too far to have them be married?

It could be more of a ceremonial thing going back to the days of Rynn when the Exiled King married his daughter and heir to the head the military in the convoy, a Space Marine of great wisdom called Alexis Polux.

It is a tradition known as the everlasting marriage to symbolize the eternal bond between Rynn's World and the Imperium. The marriage is everlasting because when one dies the surviving member has to marry the replacement. Needless to say this has resulted in the royal title being strictly matrilineal despite the rest of the aristocracy being cognatic. Should either party to assume the position be already married then the other half in this arrangement becomes a secondary wife/husband, in such cases the marriage does not need to be consummated as that would/might infringe on per-existing vows.

It also results in stability as there is no question of succession as upon the death of one the other takes their title, lands and possessions until the replacement marriage ceremony which does mean that in the days between between partners the title of Chapter Master is held by a woman which is possibly unprecedented.

This breakdown of a clear dividing line between the baseline humans and Space Marines, and indeed between military rank and the aristocratic hierarchy, has in the years since Rynn and Polux permeated totally in society. Although the commoners can not become nobility save through special and rare appointment by the Queen or by marriage into the nobility the rank of (usually) unlanded-nobility is traditionally handed out with promotion to officer.

>>55975233 (cont.)
On top of all this, due to the nature of his position, Szarekh not used to dealing with the fact that people might have different opinions that actually matter. Most people wouldn’t talk back to him, and now fewer people even can talk back to him. Given the values of the old Star Empire, Szarekh would have been considered a paragon of virtue, but Imperial mores are different and to them he comes off as megalomaniacal and barbaric.

The thing about the Necrons in this timeline is that they’re semi-well intentioned extremists, as opposed to the mustache-twirlingly evil Chaos, ravenous tyranids. Noble in that they want to do something that would technically be good for everyone (mostly out of their own self-interest), but Dark in that they give zero shits about who has to die to make it happen and they see the Star Empire’s position and long-term benefit in cold, perfectly logical terms. Or, to boil it down as one anon pointed out.

> Necrons: Look guys, we're trying to permanently remove the worse evil in the universe.
>Imperium: Not really OK with our extinction to make it happen.

On top of all this, Szarekh is stubborn and he's not always right. Because of the way the Star Empire works, there are few people around to suggest alternatives or convince him that he's wrong. Zu'se found a way for Necrons to have improved quality of life. Szarekh didn't like it because it implied that all his talk on reversing the biotransferrence and getting retribution on the C'tan were just childish revenge plots and got him branded an exile (plus from the description Zu'se doesn't seem to be the one to give constructive criticism well). The Imperium slapped down his demands for biotransferrence subjects, then gave his reputation a black eye when he tried to impose his will, and now he's more focused on slapping the big red button on Cadia than trying to find an alternate solution that everyone would agree to.

>>55975472 (cont.)
Unlike the other major threats to the Imperium, Szarekh has at least some redeeming features, and is by far the most reasonable (though he's still clearly Lawful Evil by DnD standards). The problem is he's a colossal asshole who needs to get over himself first before anything could get accomplished.

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>>55975366
With the marriage of Chapter to the Aristocracy and every Space Marine having been trained to be officers of one sort or another this has resulted in the Chapter becoming a not insubstantial part of the landed gentry. Every marine has an estate, a patch of their homeworld that they call their own. Due to them having no real interest in such things this is typically the less sought after land in inhospitable places. The craggy mountains around their fortress, deserts and the wind swept and salt spray blasted islands in the far north and south. The few hardy inhabitants of these remote lands appreciate that there are masters who will lend a hand if needed but tend to live in those lands because they don't care for authority above them and so value the Space Marines lack of any real interest.

Rynn's World was not the original home of the chapter, at first they were nomadic and had been since they were the 405th Company of Dorn's Legion. It was by attaching their forces to Rynn's colony fleet as it set out to resettle an exterminated world in the time of The Rebuilding that they came to enjoy their more permanent habitation.

Pedro Kantor is the current commander of the remnants of his chapter, King of a world brought to ruin and husband of Queen Maia Cagliestra who actually rules the planet when it's not being raped to death by orks.

The Crimson Fists did boast ~2,100 members all accounted, now down to 128. The Fortress has been relocated to New Rynn City. As the world is rebuilt and the other lesser cities reestablished the intention is to appoint each company to a city and diffuse the chapter. Next time it's going to take more than 1 malfunctioning nuclear missile to devastate them. The Immortal Captain Alessio Cortezwill be put in command of the fortress to be rebuilt Caltara and will have the dubious honour of owning the crater of Arx Tyrranis when the time comes.

>>55975366
>>55975909
>Sexy Spanish marines

O...oh my.

>>55974434
Most of us are more storytellers than crunch makers. Indeed, it's been mentioned a couple of times that Nobledark makes for a more flexible setting for Dark Heresy than tabletop because it allows for more curveballs to be thrown at players.

We did have some discussion of rules for Malys and Kryptmann.

There are new "factions", if you could call it that, but it's mostly just fluffing chapters and factions who were mentioned in canon but never given any love by GW. Some of the more dangerous characters in this timeline are interesting concepts that canon talked about for all of two pages and then forgot about.

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>>55975920
In the book Rynn's World by Steve Parker the governor of the planet, Maia Cagliestra, was absolutely infatuated with Pedro Kantor even going so far as to buy an antique statute that looked just like him that she kept in her bedroom.

It is genuinely a very good book and despite being a Space Marine book it's far more than bolter porn.

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>>55975541
I suppose that also after the Old One war there was nobody else to contend with.

He was the absolute ruler of the only people left. He had no peers.

Waking up must have come as a shock.

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>>55824461
How do you guys portray necrons? Are they the mindless killing machines seeking to revive the C'tan like the oldcrons or are they space Egyptians seeking to establish their own kingdoms like the newcrons?

Also, how's Tzeentch, he's my favorite chaos god because I always felt that he gave you more options as a follower (and some of them being really good) so I wonder how you guys portray him here.

>>55977472
Tzeentch is joint oldest god with Malal, creation and destruction. The ever overflowing cup and the bottomless pit.

He became the Tzeentch we all know and love when everything went to shit in the War in Heaven.

Necrons are for the most part the Spess Egyptians ruled by the aforementioned bastard of a king.

That and the renegades.

Nemesor Zandrekh is an old country gentleman of late middle years allied with the Imperium. He is not a skele-bot and anyone trying to tell him otherwise is obviously insane. Quite a nice old boy, owns a planet with an unofficial tau colony on it.

>>55977472
>>55977586
The Star Empire is still out to still out to kill all life, but it's more because the galaxy's a fucking mess and Chaos is the biggest contributor to that. Nothing is ever going to get done as long as they're around, and the only way to get rid of them is either have another god beat the shit out of them or use the Cadian pillars to separate the Warp from the Materium. The Necrons don't see how the former could be done, so the latter's their best option. Yeah a few quadrillion sentient beings will be killed in the process, but they're all primitives who were going to die anyway.

The Necrons also have a bit of British Empire in them as well as SPESS Egyptians.

The closest we have to Oldcrons is Xun'bakyr above.

Nightbringer is actually free, thanks to Ultramarine accident. Due to the whole "associating himself with the concept of death", he has a reflection in the Warp which he uses to compensate for his missing pieces, so now he is a literal undead Star God.

Also there are the C'tan vampires.

>>55974434
>>55974573

>you're free to introduce new chapters and minor alien species.

Hard no on this, homie. We don't really post it any more but we used to have a recurring reminder that we are trying to keep this AU as more of a reinterpretation rather than an outright rewrite. At least in the beginning, we went at it with the philosophy of changing base assumptions (like the Emps-Isha marriage, Primarchs not falling traitor, etc) and seeing how those affected the rest of the universe. This helps keeps things recognizable for someone new who is familiar with 40k and it avoids the "literally who/what" syndrome of some of the other AUs.

So reinterpret and tweak things from canon to your heart's content, but this really isn't the place for OC steel donuts. The C'tan vamps and a few other items are exceptions, but there really is enough material in canon not to have to introduce new stuff.

Okay, trying to write up something on the Maynarkh Dynasty since it seems to be a cool idea and it would a shame to let it languish in the notes. Here's what I have so far...

Of all the independent Necron dynasties, the Maynarkh Dynasty is perhaps the biggest threat to the Imperium. Even as far back as the War in Heaven, the Maynarkh Dynasty were known for their brutality and cruelty, acting as the Silent King’s pet monsters and wetwork agents. This behavior was no different under the Maynarkh Dynasty’s last and latest Phaerakh: Xun’bakyr, the Mother of Oblivion. Eldar Harlequins speak of countless atrocities and genocides, all perpetrated by Necrons in glowing colors of brass and orange. Indeed, the brutality of Xun’bakyr and the Maynarkh Dynasty was so great that just before the Great Sleep several Phaerons, normally so subservient as to the point of indolence, approached the Silent King to suggest that the Silent King take steps to make sure Xun’bakyr…didn’t wake up from the Great Sleep. It is rather telling that the Silent King actually agreed with this proposal.

The Silent King may have had more than one reason to try and kill off the Maynarkh Dynasty. Phaerarch Xun’bakyr was, to put it bluntly, obsessed with the Nightbringer. When the Silent King gave the order for the Drazak Dynasty to kill Llandu’gor the Flayer, he had to noticeably take precautions to avoid letting the information reach Xun’bakyr, given that any weapon that could conceivably be used against the object of her obsession would likely cause her to react poorly. Even when the C’tan were shattered and the Silent King ordered the Necrons to go into their long hibernation, the news was kept hidden from the Maynarkh Dynasty, who went to sleep still believing they were following orders from their C’tan overlords.

>>55979550 (cont.)
The Silent King may have been able to directly override the free will of Xun’bakyr, but given her instability, he didn’t want to risk the chance of her slipping her leash.

Unfortunately, the Silent King’s plan to wipe out the Maynarkh Dynasty didn’t take. The Silent King put the Maynarkh Dynasty in hibernation in what would become the Orpheus Sector, a high-density stellar cluster full of numerous late-stage stars that his Crypteks predicted would go nova over the next sixty six millennia and, equally important, far away from most of the major Tomb Worlds. The Silent King hoped that the constant bombardment of electromagnetic pulses from exploding stars would damage the Maynarkh Dynasty to the point that they would never wake up from the Great Sleep, or else be so damaged that they could no longer pose a threat to anybody. It didn’t work. Although the Maynarkh Dynasty was damaged, they still awoke from the Great Sleep along with everyone else. Xun’bakyr’s madness was, if anything, worsened by the damage from the Great Sleep, to the point that the Silent King could no longer assert any control over her.

>>55979560 (cont.)
This is where I run into problems. First, should Xun'bakyr have developed her obsession before going into stasis, or have it developed afterwards like Zahndrekh and his robo-Alzheimers? I like the idea of Szarekh trying to off Xun'bakyr after the war for being too big of a liability, but I'm not sure if the obsession works.

The Silent King may have been able to keep Llandu'gor secret, but could the Silent King really be able to keep the fact that the C'tan were suddenly gone hidden from Xun'bakyr?

And why would the Maynarkh be put into hibernation on the far side of the galaxy? Wouldn't they just go to their own tomb worlds? I like the idea of the Silent King making sure their tomb world happens to be right next to something like a quasar (mirroring what happened in canon, where he went out of the way to protect the Maynarkh and use a supernova to recharge them), but it seems hard to pull off.

>>55979606 (cont.)
After this the stuff is basically an extension of what's been discussed earlier in the thread.

- Xun'bakyr wants Nightbringer-sempai to notice her, and so commissions her crypteks to do crazy existential projects like killing time itself to get his attention, oblivious to the fact that despite being the face of death the Nightbringer would rather like to keep causality the way it is.
- The rest of the Dynasty do not share her obsession, but they were always a bunch of monsters anyway and jump at the chance to kill people in new and creative ways.
- The Maynarch Dynasty basically cleared out the Orpheus sector when they woke up, their first overt sign of action being when the Caracol binary system spontaneously went nova. Imperials assume it was an intentional action. It was a weapons test of one of Xun'bakyr's dumbass projects akin to a short-range Celestial Orrery. The slaughter that followed was mostly unrelated.

>>55979606
Perhaps, rather than being relocated, they are indeed where they've always been, but were given wrong information on how long the Great Sleep would actually last and thus were told they'd be up before Shit Happened.
Or the stars were meddled with intentionally to cause those effects, and they can just blame something else if asked why it wasn't predicted (chaos, lesser beings, etc)

>>55980053
Oh shit you're right. The Star Empire has the Celestial Orrery. They could just "happen" to poke a few of the stars in the Orpheus cluster to go nova early.

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Okay, so for Szarekh, it kind of sounds like the timeline we're getting is this.

Silent King Atenakhen (or just Akhen if that’s too on the nose) is assassinated by his fellow triarchs. Szarekh is about the Necrontyr equivalent of ten at the time. Szarekh promptly put on the throne. Everyone assumes that Szarekh will be a pushover who’s easy to manipulate because he’s a kid and he’s young and impressionable.

Necrontyr colonies hear of the news and go “holy shit, every Necrontyr for themselves” and kick off the Second Wars of Succession, aided by the fact that the colony worlds never really liked the fact that they had to listen to those idiots on the homeworld in the first place.

Fast forward a few years. Szarekh is now the Necrontyr equivalent of twenty-one and it’s clear that he’s nobody’s tool. Between his natural charisma and ability to politically outmaneuver people he is able to gain power and make it clear exactly who is in charge. The defining moment of this was when he tried his fellow Triarchs for conspiracy in murdering his father and sentenced them to death by exposure to Aza’gorod.

Now that the homeworld has been sufficiently cock-slapped into submission and Szarekh has replaced the Triarch with members he know won’t stab him in the back it’s time for the rest of the empire. The homeworld always has the largest supply of inertialess drive ships, which made it child’s play to re-establish the Silent King’s rule. Between the inertialess drives and the stasis chambers Szarekh is about the Necrontyr equivalent of thirty by the time that it’s all done.

A few years of peace. Necrontyr technology advances slightly and life is relatively good despite the cancer. If this is how the rest of his reign was going to be Szarekh would have been happy.

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>>55981329
Unfortunately, this is about the time when things start breaking down on the Old One front. Nobody’s really clear what happened. The Necrontyr say the Old Ones are a bunch of delusional maniacs who play God with the rest of the universe. The Old Ones say the Necrontyr are a bunch of greedy upstarts who want everything but know nothing. War is declared.

Bad move. Regardless of who has the moral high ground in this situation the Old Ones are still on a level of technology the Necrontyr are only barely able to grasp. The half-material, half-immaterial lizard wizards beat the Necrontyr back to their core territories within a year (few years?), almost as a statement more than anything else. The Necrontyr have inertialess drives but that doesn’t matter much when only the biggest ships have them and the Old Ones can just walk from planet to planet.

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>>55981349
Silent King is sitting in his chambers on the homeworld wondering if he’s going to be the person who signed the death warrant of the Necrontyr when a Cryptek comes in. They were performing studies on Aza’gorod and it turns out there’s something living in the sun. Something that’s giving off more power than the Old Ones, and could possibly be communicated with and drawn into a Necrodermis body to act as a weapon against them.

Silent King says do it. Then find every other star that shows a similar signature and to it to them as well. Despite first contact with the Nightbringer goes horribly, before long Silent King has a small army of star monstrosities. Name them after the old half-forgotten Necrontyr pantheon, because what else are you going to call them?

Tide of the war starts to turn. Mag’ladroth, despite being named after the Necrontyr god of oblivion, turns out to be a huge nerd and helps advance Necrontyr technology. Builds dampening devices to force Old Ones to fight on Necrontyr terms. Nyadra’zatha shows the Necrontyr how to strike at the Old Ones on their own turf. Old Ones start dying.

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>>55981359
Old Ones get desperate. Start uplifting races with features they think will make good soldiers. First the Aeldari. Then the Hrud. Then, when they get really desperate, the Krork. It’s a bloodbath. Mephet’ran comes to Silent King and says Mag’ladroth has an idea that will not only give the Necrontyr the power to win over the Necrons, but will make them immortal as well. Silent King accepts, not only for the benefit of the Star Empire but possibly because he also has a cancer in his stomach.

Biotransference happens. Silent King goes through it and realizes it was not worth it. But the C’tan-Necron alliance is winning. War gets really crazy as the real reality-destroying superweapons start getting thrown around. C’tan give Szarekh control over the Necrons second only to them in a sick parody of gratitude. Mag’ladroth gets pissy about something and goes to confront his brethren while they’re in some third-rate Old One genestock system. Never comes back.

Szarekh starts plotting revenge against the C’tan. First try: destroy Llandu’gor the Flayer with experimental weaponry. Despite working, is highly dangerous, almost breaks reality, and results in the Flayer curse. Need backup plan. Second try: convince C’tan to kill each other. Old Ones’ almost extinct at this point and the question starts becoming who gets the galaxy afterwards. Szarekh pushes Outsider to kill other C’tan. Unbeknownst to him Cegorach and Deceiver are doing the same for Nightbringer and the other C’tan.

>>55981370
Ends in a bloodbath with only Outsider, Deceiver, and Nightbringer standing. Outsider grows a conscience and multiple personality disorder from siblings screaming in his head and runs off crying. Deceiver and Nightbringer too out of it to notice when Szarekh gives the order to fire. Weaponry used was horribly destructive and reality-violating, but causes less collateral damage than whatever it was that killed Llandu’gor. Downside is shards have to be vacuumed up and kept in Tesseract labyrinths because they’re still active.

Now what. Galaxy is an uninhabitable shithole. Enslavers everywhere. No way to restore empire or reverse biotransference. No clue what happened to Old Ones’ toy soldiers. Orikan comes to Szarekh with an idea. He sees that sixty six million years in the future the galaxy will be at a point where the Old One slave races and whatever other species that have arisen since that time will be at an all-time ebb. If the Empire hibernates and wakes up at that point in time, they can steamroll the galaxy and reassert the dominance of the Star Empire.

Silent King decides to do it. Misses the alarm by five thousand years (oh come on, it was literally a .000075% error). And the rest, they say, is history.

>>55981439
just to add, Khorne was one of the Old Ones reality warping weapons, and the Gorkamorka and whaaag was formed in that time as well.

>>55981561
Yeah, just noticed that. Gorkamorka comes along when the Old Ones pull the crazy shit out. Krork were a lot more work and alteration than the Aeldari, Hrud, K'nib, and all the rest.

Total reality warping war period would also be when Mags and Vaul had their little scrap, and Khaine kicked Nightbringer in the crotch and stole his stuff.

>>55975920
>>55975909
>>55975366
So is it a good idea or not?

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>>55982844
On the whole I'd say yes.

Also worth mentioning is that it puts the Chapter Master as the head of the armed forces. In this AU that is not typical.

I'd also, if I may, add my own shit to the mix.

In the wake of the devestation caused by Snagrod the province of Dorado in he north of the west continent was completely depopulated as people fled to the safety of Santoris, the only city in that land.

When the walls fell nobody was spared. Those that fled or had previously tried to hide in the wilderness were hunted down in the following months as sport. If there were as many as a hundred survivors left it would be miraculous and what few there were wandered south to warmer climes in the search for other survivors.

It was not until a few years later when expeditionary forces sent before settlement teams sailed north from Port Calina that they found that Dorado had now gained new inhabitants. The royal court of Rynn's World had by satellite imagery been aware of activity in that province and had hoped that it was a previously hidden survivor population coming back out into the open or unofficial land grabbers that could be reasoned with and made into the basis of the recolonization. What they were dreading was a feral ork resurgence.

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>>55983613
It was none of these things. With ample fertile land lying unclaimed exodites had moved in rather than let those fields become totally overgrown. They seemed uninterested in leaving as they had just set up their modest houses, sown their seeds and had even planted a new wraith-tree (itself a monumental occasion). Although Chapter Master Kantor was all for forcibly relocating them off the planet, as illegal squatters they had no rights, this was not a military matter unless things went very wrong. After due consideration Queen Cagliestra allowed them to stay on the principle that exodites were typically polite to their hosts and didn't cause trouble. And also the planet was still pretty empty considering that the only real body of survivors had been the Silver Citadel at the heart of the capital city.

In gratitude the exodites promised to hand over any surplus produce from their new homeland as a form of rent. As this was not massively different to the way things were before and the cost of resettlement was being paid by someone else everyone was happy, or only mildly cantankerous.

The chapter itself raised the matter of rebuilding with it's neighbouring chapters at the Feast of Blades held in the following year. Due to the increasing strains of an increasingly hostile galaxy none promised and assistance in the rebuilding, preoccupied with their own troubles as they were.

Rynn's World was just one little agri-world after all and not so broken that it couldn't heal on it's own.

>>55943238
Presumably there was one on Altansar when it fell.

Presumably it now holds the spirit of Khorne rather than Khine.

>>55943238
>>55984612
Khaine.
Khaine.
Khaine Khaine Khaine Khaine Khaine Khaine Khaine
Kaela Mensha Khaine.

>>55985148
Has Isha forgiven him yet?

>>55986393
For killing a fairly large proportion of her people/children? Fuck no, not ever. She's just trying not to think about it.

So what is with The Sarkoni Emperor in this timeline?

bump

>>55987055
She probably views him as the bad guy in a film that gets brain damage.

Yeah, he's a piece of shit, and all he's done is awful shitty and she hates him, but...Right now Khaine's in such a pathetic state she can't muster that hatred. All these shards of what was once a mighty god, reduced to nothing more than a glorified daemon let off the leash from time to time.

If she was aware of Biel Tan's avatar of Khaine though she might revise her opinion.

>>55990082
There's also the point that he is the devil that they know and something is going to arise on the throne of brass and bone when Khorne is cast down.

It's either something like him going to coalesce, one of the bigger deamon princes or greater deaomons or possibly Malal gets his old job back.

Unless they get some other worthy arse on the chair first.

Khaine is a bastard but a bastard you can deal with most of the time.

And hopefully his time brought low will have taught him some humility, but that's probably pushing it.

With no Codex being strictly enforced how big is a chapter allowed to get before people start to ask serious questions?

>>55992674
I could have sworn we had this on the 1d4chan page but I can't find it anywhere. IIRC it's about 2000-2500 or so, maybe up to 3000. Basically Guilliman said "You should aim for about 1,000. Over or under isn't too much of a problem, but if you have so many marines you can almost fill out two chapters by yourself you should probably do so".

Chapters are formed on a case-by-case basis usually by sending in a proposal to the Administratum to be red-stamped (and usually for the new chapter to get assigned to an area that needs one). There haven't been many mass foundings since the beginnings of the Great Crusade, which is one of the reason Titus' "The Tyranids Are Coming!" Primaris Initiative is raising so many eyebrows.

The Black Templars have more than the normal number as in canon, but the Templars are as much a philosophical movement as a chapter in this timeline (of guess what) and so you have the Red Templars, etc. who aren't necessarily Black Templars but all following the Black Templars' lead.

Grey Knights don't follow the normal rules either, because they don't act like a normal chapter and the Imperium needs all the Grey Knights it can get. Max number of them was 7,500, but they're currently about 3,000.

>>55992674
>>55994930 (same)

Forgot to mention, but a lot of how hard the Imperium scrutinizes you has a lot to do with your reputation. The Imperium can't focus its attention everywhere at once, so where it does tends to be where the complaining is and how bad the complaints are.

Hence Rynn's World >>55983613 and Nocturne tend to be not as looked at as heavily because in the former's case the Chapter Master isn't technically in charge, his wife is. Nocturne because the Astartes in charge was friggin' Vulkan and he was a philosopher king, not an autocrat.

On the other hand you have Badab, where the Imperium gets reports of Lugft Huron setting up Space Cambodia from the people fleeing that regime, and it's officially spanking time.

Also IIRC Astartes homeworlds are treated like military bases. It's okay for Astartes to be in command or have some say in the government there, because it's their world and if they can't run themselves it's a risk to Imperial security. It's when Astartes start unilaterally imposing their will on other worlds that trouble starts up.

That said, this means that it's possible for people to get away with bad things in this timeline by simply preventing word from getting out, since the Imperium otherwise has so many things above them on its shit list.

Time permitting I'm going to flesh out the High Lords. Are there any already fleshed out?

Unless they are being kept intentionally empty

>>55997186
I think there was something about the inquisitorial representative. Also, there is no grandmaster of the assassins. There's only an empty chair.

>>55997280
The Inquisitorial Representative is a rotating thing so the High Lords usually have the best person handy to help deal with the crisis of the decade and so that no one Inquisitor ever becomes entrenched in Old Earth politics and gains power to the point that they might be a danger to the rest of the Inquisition (not to mention forget what it's like to be a regular Inquisitor).

Current Inqusitorial Representative is Hector Rex, he's got a bit of a bio on the Notes page.

>>55997917
I think that there was Voke as his predecessor.

Voke survived the Thracian Atrocity because although the APEX Twins were present it was not as trophies in the parade but as bystanders eating candy floss.

At some point in the horrors they and Voke meet and team up.

>>55997186
Irthu Haemotalion is the Master of the Administratum and, at lest believed among his fellow scribes, primus inter pares of the High Lords. Maybe there is some truth to that as the Administratum does generally know the overt doings of the other High Lords and their business and is best suited to draw the attention of the Emperor to things that could be of interest.

High Lord Haemotalion is a man who genuinely did start in gutters. He never knew his parents and was raised by his guardsman veteran uncle in a two roomed tenement in the Gethsemane capital hive, Gothic Sector.

His uncle intentionally pushed him for that career due to Irthu finishing his education as a nine stone flat footed asthmatic with a slight case of near sightedness. Had Irthu turned out to have been a prime specimen of vigorous masculinity he would probably have still been encouraged in that direction as it was a s far from the Guard as possible. His uncle had seen some terrible things in his time and had no desire to let his nephew wake up screaming every 3AM.

Low Scribe Haemotalion's first job as an acne spotted teen was assistant to the pipe maintenance overseer for the sewage transport and treatment system in the lower rent districts of his hive. It was a far from glamourous job that necessitated him being in close proximity to human waste as pipe inspection note taker was one of his many and varied duties.

And it was a duty he excelled at. He loved his job and found no shame in it's low status. Six months into his duties and he was pointing out old and persistent problems with the organization of the maintenance team organization and presented his superiors with solutions.

Those solutions were works of simple genius. By the end of the following year, to his aging uncles pride, he was Master of Sheet Street Time Tables.

>>55999389
His duties expanded and his competence grew ahead of his elevation. By the time he was 30 he was the Sewer High Forman (Shit Lord) of the entire hive, practically aristocracy. But down to earth aristocracy, a Commoner Lord feared by the nobility and loved by the plebeians. A man of such elevated status so young and with such minimal formal education was unprecedented on the records.

By age 40 he had handed over his job to his most capable apprentice and traded his job of managing the waste of the hive to the management of the storm drains and the rain collection.

By the time he was 50 he was Master of Waterworks. It was at this time he started on the rejuvenants.

When it came to managing complex, interconnected, half understood systems and beating them into some semblance of order he had no peer. It was a peculiar sort of genius, and inglorious greatness and one much needed by the maddening complexity of lofty Imperial High Office.

By age 200 he was managing the requisition forms of the Merchant Navy for the entire Gothic Sector and haggling with the most prestigious of the old 'Trader Dynasties, not as a lower creature that they must deal with but as an equal. And maybe, it was whispered by the veteran Quartermaster Masters who knew of him, as a natural superior.

His rise to prominence, his hyper competence, his tirelessness and seemingly infinite patience won him promotion after promotion. Always he rose to the occasion and did not settle for being merely capable at his job but for being masterful at it. Scribes apprenticed to him were only the most promising and they left his tutelage feared by whatever branch of the Administratum they were settled in. Many of his old apprentices became Dark Clerks and Grim Statisticians of whose names and deeds are spoken of in fearful whispers were ever professional quill pushers gather to drink away their frustrations.

>>55999479
Irthu Haemotalion was a mere 560 when he was given the Big Chair, the padded swivel office chair with the adjustable backrest and padding even on the armrests, the Big Chair of the highest scribe in all the Imperium.

From his point of view his career has gone full circle. He started his career wading through shit and now he's knee deep in shit once more. A fact that he has let his co-workers know.

He only wished his uncle wasn't over five centuries dead. If he could see him now he hopes he would be proud.

Of High Shit Lord Irthu Haemotalion as a person; he is still a weedy manlet with his acne swapped for a hairline in full retreat. His breathing problems have cleared up by having had his lungs removed and replaced with mechanical improvements. His hands and wrists are also cybernetic due to arthritis but other than that he remains mostly human.

His personality is what one would expect of a scribe of his rank and years. Dour at first but with a dry and deadpan humour so practiced that none can tell if he is taking the piss or not, he invariably is. His patience remains infinite and the other High Lords mark it on a calendar the occasion he has been observed to blink. Some claim that he is some sort of reptile in an immaculate suit. He is also the only person capable of equalling Inquisitor Hector Rex at common card games.

>Am I doing it right?

Next on the list of High Lords to put a short blurb on is Fabricator General Oud Oudia Raskian.

Inquisitorial one is already done.

Navigators are between High Lords.

Any advice?

>>55999569
>High Shitlord
Why does this amuse me so much

>>55990082
Is the avatar staying awake common knowledge on that craftworld?

If it isn't have the citizens of it started to wonder why society has jumped into a higher gear? Surely the other craftworlds would have noticed.

Bump

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>>55999569
Excellently. Also, dudes like that are essentially the reason Servo-Brains were re-sanctified by the Mechanicus. Were Haemotalion's health to begin failing he'd be one of the prime recipients of a shiny golden flying reliquary for his brain, letting him carry on for centuries more.

>>56001363
Cain doesn't know (yet), and you'd think spending his time as ambassador to the least experienced Eldar with the lowest inhibitions in the Imperium someone would have otherwise spilled the beans by now. Quite a few people on the Craftworld obviously do know, the autarchs etc., but where exactly the threshhold of knowledge is is unclear.

As for everyone else. It's Biel-tan. Many probably don't notice the difference. Remember how they got frothing at the mouth about Dorhai right before the Swarmlord showed up (and, by definition, would be before the Avatar refused to go to sleep). On the other hand, the older generation (including some humans) would definitely notice their centuries-old friends from Biel-Tan having a sudden shift in behavior.

bump

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>>56000354
Fabricator-General Oud Oudia Raskian began his life much as the famous Gorgon Primarch in the days of yore but unlike the aesthetically displeasing primarch he was crafted with an actual purpose in mind beyond "we need more bodies".

Oud Oudia Raskian was commissioned by his predecessor in Fabricator-General's twilight years. He was not alone as the Fabricator-General Tataraskiv was unwilling to leave anything up to chance at that stage. Raskian was the the brightest of his class and as he matured learned well and deep of the Omnissiah's mysteries and scriptures, doctrines and rituals. As a mere technotheologian this would have been enough but as an exemplar he must excel at all matters. The training regime was brutal, inhuman and inhumane. Many of his hundreds of classmates failed. The brighter of them were shuffled off to other areas of the Olympus Mons Brotherhood, those who were found truly wanting were made useful as servitors. Of those that reached maturity and were deemed at least acceptable they were taken to hallowed and forbidden ground

The young men and women, terrified and disgustingly organic as they were, stepped across the pale into the place where no map could be made or mind comprehend the twisting of the pathways. The place where Old Night was kept. Deep in unknowable depths the Noctis Labyrinthus, in the halls of things that should never have been born of mans folly and hubris ███████ ████████ ████████████ ██████ ████████████ ████ █████████ ███ █████████ ████████████ ██ ███████████████████ ███ ████ ███████████████ ██████████ ███████████████ ███ ███████ █████████ ██████████████

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>>56007106
And of those that approached and of those that recoiled none were permitted to live. The galaxy was not for the incautious and it was not for the timid and those of both wisdom and authority that were either would only lead humanity to ruin.

Of those little more than children only Raskian survived. It is not enough, for the greatest position in the Imperium and the Mechanicum, to have merely possess the physical manifestations of the blessings of the machine. A true leader must have steel unrusting in his very soul, he must look upon damnation and not be damned himself.

Tataraskiv had found his one worthy disciple, his apprentice. Tataraskiv survived another two centuries before the meat parts of his brain degraded beyond usefulness and he had to be brought to termination. In those years Raskian learned much. He didn't consider his master a friend, given the people and the circumstances friendship was never an option, but he did respect the old man-machine greatly. Tataraskiv was disassembled and his salvageable components distributed amongst the Olympus Mons Brotherhood according to need.

In the yeas that followed Fabricator-General Oud Oudia Raskian, despite his relative youth compared to the ancient once-man he was replacing, proved to be every bit as wise and ruthless as his position demanded. As he became burdened with ever increasing secrets he was uplifted by the most beautiful augmetics from the staggering breadth of his great realm. Weariness of spirit and frailty of the flesh were replaced with mechanical resolve and technological strength.

I've been out of the loop for about a year
Is Tau getting a new codex for 8th edition? I heard they were shit now.
I'm not shitposting and I don't know this thread's memes, I'm genuinely asking.

>>56007555
Wrong thread. This is an AU fluff project, you want the real general.

>>56007625
Oh man, I didn't even notice. I'm sorry.

>>56008030
No worries.

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>>56007528
For the last 700 years Oud Oudia Raskianhas been present at the gathering of the High Lords. He considers himself their better thought he would never admit it, the Mechanicum an equal partner in his mid to the Imperium rather than a member of it. Although they can request of him, and out of mutual benefit he often agrees, they have little that he needs from them. The Mechanicum could survive easier without the rest of the Imperium than the rest of the Imperium could survive without his people though he knows that both would be diminished without the other.

To put it another way he's an arrogant condescending twat and although his accomplishments are great he is not the center of the universe as he seems to think.

But for all that he is more than competent at his job, so he is tolerated even if the grinding of teeth he can cause is a genuine health hazard.

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>>56008482
I'll do the other High Lords tomorrow time permitting.

Unless someone tells me to stop.

I'll be honest here I have no idea what I'm doing

>>56008792
You could've fooled me.

>>56008482
One thing about the high lords here as opposed to canon is that they have the emperor around to remind them that they're imperial administrators or representatives, and and there is some political mechanism by which they and the immortal steward's wills are reconciled. Most would probably be well aware that their position was one of distinct elevation above the notable and noble figures from across the imperial government, military, and aristocracy that comprised the Imperial Court, but still below the royal family, which has been essentially unchanging and clear since the civil war.

The Fabricator General, having the attitude you described, would probably be loath to leave Holy Mars to visit Old Earth. He would only do so with sufficient pomp and accompaniment to make it appear and feel like he stood on the same political footing as Oscar and Isha, and generally do his best to make it as clear that the Mechanicus is a distinct interstellar empire of greater age and dignity, also based in the Sol system, without ever actually saying it and causing a diplomatic incident. The Fabricator General wouldn't accompany the traveling court for its century-ish crawl around the Imperium, unless he could pass it off as an independent tour of important forgeworlds. At least within the Sol system this lopsided rivalry would be so old as to have become pageantry and Oscar would fully expect Oud to be followed by trains of chrome servitors and pretend forgeworlds don't run on imported resources.

>>56009549
I don't think the High Lords follow the Travelling Court around. The whole point of the Steward making the High Lords is so that someone else could run the country and he could exist in a sort of "hands off" oversight role and didn't have to make all the decisions.

Hence why the High Lords are on Old Earth (and Mars), which is where things are optimized to get to fastest, where things are built up the most, etc. Trying to make it so all news goes straight to the Travelling Court would be a nightmare.

The royal family probably pop in a few times every year (or even once every few years) just to make sure everything is okay via Webway as they criss-cross across the galaxy. Earth is stationary, the Travelling Court is not, so its easy to go from the latter to the former.

>>56008792
Sounds fine to me.

>>55999569
Love it, especially the titles and "grim statisticians," which makes me think of grizzled old bureaucrats keeping the sewage running and postage going in the Imperium's darkest hour.

>>56011628
In the Imperium's grimmest hour in the 41st millenium, there is only math.

>>55894195
>>55898819
>>55901415
>>55913006
>>55914024
I like this. I really, really like this.

Be'lakor likes setting himself up as the power behind civilizations in canon. By this time, the Tarellians would have been one of the last big independent powers along with the Q'orl and Tau, and Be'lakor has a potential in with the Tarellians.

One possible expansion of this (not tied to it, could hew closer to >>55914024's version) is Be'lakor feels the time is right to make contact with one of the Tarellian colony worlds. King Sotek or Krok or whatever title/ruler the world has seems willing to go along with Be'lakor at first, telling Be'lakor that he and the elders will meet Be'lakor at the ancient meeting grounds to consecrate his reign.

At the "sacred meeting grounds", they drop the act and Be'lakor realizes for the first time in a long time that he fucked up. Tarellians are largely meritocratic. Border between civilian and military is murky, and people are promoted to higher ranks for their deeds. For Be’lakor to show up and claim that the Tarellians should fall to their knees and worship him because he is one of their long lost gods for the simple reason of being a god is highly insulting. So, they tell him, that means there are two possible options. Either he is a fake god who is stealing someone else's title and accomplishments for his own ends, or he is a shit god with no glory to his name who doesn't deserve to be worshipped in the first place.

That's the point where they reveal the "ancient meeting grounds" are really a fake wired with explosives built over a massive cavern system. They trigger the explosives and send him screaming down a mile-deep crevasse, the following rock slide sealing the entrance.

>>56013459
The only thing is this is Be’lakor. Mr. Long Term Planning himself. If the Tarellians made a fool out of him, he’d most likely seek revenge on the Tarellians in some fashion. Like blow up one of the world's moons and let the debris drop on them (*coughcough*) or possibly even manipulate the tyranids to go that way in the first place.

Also, if Be'lakor did ruin one of the worlds, it sounds like it would be the one the Slaan-like ones are from (did we ever figure out what to do with them?). Which sounds a bit like Prospero getting wrecked, a bit too much of a coincidence that all the psychically potent planets keep getting destroyed.

So does the Szarekh timeline sound okay, barring the part where the Krork, Khorne, etc. got glossed over in the "everyone tried firing everything at everyone" part of the War in Heaven?

>>56013532
It would work well as a reason for Tyranids to get to the tarellian worlds in significant force well before really steamrolling the Tau and Ultramar, and smacking Be'lakor is a good feat for the Tarellians on their lonesome.

Its also not really a coincidence that Psyker majority planets with significant populations tend to get wrecked without the support of significantly powerful interstellar organizations, particularly on the trailing end of Old Night. They get wrecked because the ruinous powers and the fairies of damnation tend to notice them, come to play, and wreck them within a decade at very most. There is an active force that pervades the galaxy dedicated to wrecking them. The Imperium would probably have a long list of promising Psychic worlds and civilizations that appeared in Old Night and were despoiled by Chaos, leaving only ruins.

>>56015060
yep

>>56015169
>>56013532
>>56013459
This is beautiful

Was going to start on the head of the Judges but run into problem. In vanilla according to Lexicanum the Grand Provost Marshal name is Aveliza Drachmar.

I have no idea what sort of name Aveliza is. To put it bluntly is this a man or a woman's name?

>>56011628
I imagine that the Grim Statisticians are the ones who specialize in calculating shit that nobody want to have to calculate.

Things like "New Hive Fleet; Where can we draw the line and which worlds are going to be left to die?". The position of the Kryptman Line would have been decided by these people.

Dark Clerks are the ones who are sent to look into irregularities in the records that point to misconduct. Misconduct at high levels can indirectly result in millions dying. When that happens, or is suspected to have happened, one of these humourless, merciless Assassin dropouts (rumoured) appears at your door. You then cooperate. As they are agents of the Throne failure to cooperate allows them to execute at their discretion.

It's a hard job. If they find something or someone gets spooked that they could find something they often die.

Basically Administratum internal police.

>>56018019
A woman's name apparently from Google, it sounds like the more Germanic names of Ave and Liza combined. Like the name Lisbet is the Danish version of the name Elizabeth.

>>56018019
Grand Provost Marshal Aveliza Drachmar started life as a graduate of the Schola Progenium of Hive Ferax of Thracian Primaris. Her parents that she never knew were killed in the cannibal uprising of 071M41. It was a nast, brutal little war that saw an astounding number of people killed, mutilated and consumed, the half gnawed bodies then twisted into grotesqueries until put down by a force spearheaded by the Sons of Midnight.

Her life in the Schola Progenium quickly saw Aveliza Drachmar earmarked for the Adepta Securitas due to her fervent loyalty and belief in the rightness of the Imperium as a whole.

She would have made a fine sister of battle, she was fast, athletic and possessed of a quick mind. But her path took a different turn as her schola tutors found that her mind was exceptional. She could read an entire page of text in mere moments and retain and process all the information and when they gave her access to the library she devoured it's contents with a reckless appetite.

Her favoured subject, the words that settled hard and left a deep impression, was the Law and matters relating to it. It confirmed her childhood beliefs and proved the rightness of the Imperium to rule the galaxy. Only from just Law and the adherence to it could true civilization be derived. By the time she was 17 she had been given the genetic alterations of the Securitas battle sisters, a considerable investment, but by the time she was 18 her tutors had demanded of their superiors that she be transferred. They did not do this lightly as she would indeed have been a boon to that order but she would have been settling for second place to the benefit society would have gotten out of her as a Judge.

>>56021719
Accepting a Rookie for training at such late age was not unheard of but it was unusual and normally would have put the student at a considerable disadvantage. It was a pleasant surprise then that her tutors found her already word perfect in The Law, major precedents and many minor and obscure precedents of interest and curiosity. Also her physical training was excellent and made magnificent by the costly genetic augmentation she had already undergone.

Due to a somewhat aggressive nature, blamed sometimes without real proof on her genetic alterations but more often on her training, she was deemed too volatile to send to the Imperial Lawyers to administer Law in a court room but to the Street Judges to bring the Law to the Lawless.

In only a mere month she was handed over to a Senior Street Judge for training.

>will continue tonight

>>56015060
Looks very good. Thank you.

Do arbiters typically get any genetic engineering?

>>56023589
I'd probably say no, at least not beyond what Inquisitors or other Imperial officials get. They mostly deal with threats like crime syndicates like the squat Yakuza, so while it makes sense that they'd have higher end gear to enforce The Law it's probably not the sort of thing that requires massive, expensive genetic modification.

If an arbiter is in a situation where genetic engineering would be required it would honestly be a better idea to just call in the Sororitas.

>>56025015
I don't think that the cost of sororitas style has ever been discussed. I'm putting forth that it's massively expensive. Not Space Marine levels expensive but not insubstantial.

Hector Rex has the same upgrades Man Edition as do a few others but it's rare outside the Sisters of Battle. If you are going to make super soldiers you don't typically go for half measures and the differences in cost makes it usually more economical to find a better candidate and do it properly.

>>56022062
From there onward Aveliza's rise was nothing shot of legendary. From overseeing extermination raids on gene-stealer nests to courtroom prosecutions her victories quickly became uncountable. He became a full Judge in only five years and Senior Judge in only a further ten. She became the face of The Law on Ferax from the Warrens to the Spire Tops, she was in her duties without fear or favour showing equal levels of courtesy to the lowest beggars and Spire Lords by age 120 she was Lady High Justice of the Thracian system and surrounding sector commanding over a thousands of Imperial Lawyers and Judges across thousands of jurisdictions.

Her fire had been tamed as her years and wisdom increased, from the hot headed youth full of passion and fury to the rumbling storm whose lightning struck with precision those who thought themselves above or beyond The Law.

When the Grand Provost Marshal retired from ill health in 674M41 the Law Master Moot held not for the usual months but for only a single afternoon before all agreed upon fearsome Drachmar, cleansing flame of Scarus Sector.

For long centuries no in the dying days of 999M41 she has served unwavering, unbending and diligent in service to the Imperium. She has forsaken all ties of friendship, all hope of love, all possibility of a real life for the good of the Imperium. For the rightness of it.

In her time she has stared down Space Marines, Autarchs and far more terrifying things though none that have met her suspect that anything could be much more terrifying than her.

>Is it acceptable? I think it's a bit rushed(?) but I can't think of what else to write.

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>>56027900
I was torn on this. At first, I thought “why would they give her Sororitas augmentation if they were just going to transfer her a year later, surely they would have noticed her beforehand and that kind of decision would be made when weighing the cost/benefit analysis of transferring her versus making her a Sororitas”. However, the idea of her being discriminated against because of her Sororitas augmentations making people see her as a blunt instrument (including possibly some of the people in/around the High Lords) when she just has a very black and white idea of what constitutes the Law sounds like a very, very interesting idea.

Also I looked up the High Lords to see if there was any more on her and I found out that the canon Ecclesiarch's name is Baldo. Decius XII's original name before he took the position?

>>56028182
That was more or less what I was aiming for.

She would also be extremely old by now in a Judge Dredd held together with grafts, synth-skin and prosthetics sort of way but refusing to stop because it's all she has ever known and if she stopped it would probably kill her in any case.

Maybe I'll redo it at some point unless someone else redoes it properly.

>>55912040
>>55912092
Caught your work on fanfiction.net

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12688935/1/Broadside

Looks pretty good, needs a few tweaks for flow, but does a very good job at showing what life is like both on the Imperial and Chaos side of things.

Only thing I wonder is when the Heldrakes show up. In this timeline they're made from ordinary humans forcibly meshed and permanently interred into a machine, so you think they'd show up as part of the Chaos forces.

Then again it's said they're an Urshii idea that was exported to the other branches of Chaos, so maybe they're less common outside of the Blood Pact.

>>56029864
I dig the idea of the blood pact being a horrible little regional power in the periods between the Imperium stomping their shit and Doombreed manifesting again and building the whole thing over. Being on the far side of the Eye of Terror they can build up in the shadow of the Old Empire as long as they keep making proper offerings to Malys, the Gods, and their champions. As long as they keep in good graces with them in The Eye Doombreed has the fleets of the Crones and Fallen between him and any imperial operation that might come for him, letting him resubjugate his patch of stars and wipe out whatever governments the administratum installed there. He can never expand too far, he’ll either run out of ships and manpower trying to manage a rimward frontier, or get too much toward the Cadian side of The Eye and inevitably lose that expansion to Imperial fleets, but in the interim before the sanguine tzar forgets every lesson he’s learned and goes out to kill Magnus again, or signs the whole dominion up for the recent black crusade, the Blood Pact becomes the scourge of the northwestern rim.

I can picture them exporting mercenary regiments to every two bit renegade planetary governor, secret cult, and unscrupulous Rogue Trader too unestablished or feckless to raise their own shock troops. Doombreed himself would know the value of advanced technology after such a disparity lost him the kingdom of his forefathers, and would grab up every heretek he could to make heldrakes and other daemon engines, as much to proliferate them among the foes of the Imperium as for their actual use. Blood Pact made, Urshian pattern stubbers would be found across the galaxy in the hands of any given fighting force, even a few PDFs, and they would bear internal runes that sing the praises of Doombreed in the sound of their firing.

finally done with the essay, computer is running well, tired but full of ideas, wondering if I should try to get the end of the story this thread or in the next one, sorry I've been jerking you guys around for weeks.

Almost 300 posts. I better start getting a new thread ready to replace this dead husk.

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>>56029864
Thanks for reading my story. I do write on FF just to flush out the setting and improve my skill.

>Heldrakes
They would show up for both void and atmosphere combat as it is one of the few crafts that can fly in both. Although due to the very nature of being constructed from a deamon engine means they show up rearly. I would imagine that that the Crones have something far worst to use then the normal Dark Mechanicus. Like a flying Flayed One made from the flesh of it's victims, deamon engine, and ghastbones.

When I was writing Broadside, I was also watching Battlestar Galactica too for inspiration. I also looked up what space fighter combat would be like on Youtube. That's why the voidcrafts (even though using the same names) moves and looks weird compared to vanilla!40K. Things like turning on a dime is possible for most voidcrafts as long as the pilot won't get killed from the G's. Also flying backwards while shooting is a thing skilled people can do.

I tried to retain the Age of Sail feeling that the capital ships have in this AU by introducing solor sails to most ships. Things like loading shells are done manually or via simply machines like cranes and pulleys. There was also taking into account ships can fight in a 3D plane so a Crone cruiser can sail above the Imperial ships, then point it's bow (where all the main guns are at to shoot) at the targets from the top.

>>56034543
I could try doing some minor prose editing on that and Gege just to make things flow a little better if you'd like. Though only with your permission, I don't want anyone to feel like their creative voice is being drowned out.

>>56031208
Probably should wait until the next thread, let this one tie up its loose ends. Really excited to hear about new writing from here though.

Are there any other named members of the Bloodpact?

>>56029864
That was a good read .

bump

>>56037214
The Gege one is pretty good too, especially after the first chapter.

So uh how about like orks and stuff.

anyone have an idea for the theme for next thread?

>>56041242
Oh yea the first chapter I wrote in a barely awake writing session at 2:00. That and it was meant to be a one-off story with nothing after the ending. It became a multi-chapter story once I came up with a coherent plot.

>>56043438
Necrons, since we've been talking about them. Spooky scary skele-bots just in time for Halloween.

>>56043438
>>56044424
Agreed, there should be a real emphasis on how the Necrones are a threat to all life in the galexy. They should be more about trying to turn back into organics or turning organics into livestock, maybe at least killing all sapient life to destroy Chaos. Instead of the "kill all life Skynet" approach they have in vanilla.

>>56044560
Itw worth recalling the idea posed that the Necron Star Empire is the Victorian England to the Imperium's 1800's enlightenment vibe. This is already written into Orikan, Trazyn, and Zahndrekh, and is probably good for the nobility of the most imperious empire in the galaxy, and much of the egyptian vibes have been in the dynastic politics.

Also there's been some mention of the cadian pylons being related to Necron experiments with an artificial waaahg effect to enforce their prefered physical constants, done during the War in Heaven when turning the tide on the Krosk, which might be fun to elaborate on.

>>56045063
The Cadian pillars are the Necron win condition, much like killing Emps and Isha is for Chaos or the rebirth of the Emperor/birth of Ynnead is supposed to be in vanilla. Pylons are part of a network designed to cut off the Warp from Realspace, choking Chaos to death and reverting the Warp to the Realm of Souls. It just so happens that doing this would kill everything except for blanks and Necrons. Then once Chaos has finished death spasming, deactivate the pylons and biotransfer the first poor saps to evolve once the slate is wiped clean. It's been this way since like thread 8. This way we get a Star Empire that's the best of Oldcrons (want to kill everything) the best of Newcrons (Necrons with personalities), plus a bit of post-heroic, post-individual singularity horror (like Borg plus Plato's Republic) and British Empire meets Space Egypt.

>>56045293
Aren't there a lot more pylon worlds than just Cadia?

>>56046714
I think Cadia is supposed to be the keystone here. As in it is the master control for the other pylon worlds (hence why Cadia is, well, Cadia).