>>57452096
So, this may be an in joke or something, but what the hell is the Hydra? I've seen it mentioned in relation to the Alpha Legion and the Illuminati and the Cthonia ringworld, but its really vague and sometimes contradictory. I've tried to look through the archives, but that isn't super helpful because it mostly comes up in totally oblique references and mentions of goals and relationships to other organizations that don't seem to be mentioned anywhere else.

The wiki pages seem intentionally uninformative.

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For years, the Tau Empire has had problems with Dark Eldar. Every time the Tau Empire have had a problem, whether A.I. rebellion or tyranid invasion, the Dark Eldar are always there like the vultures they are ready to prey on the vulnerable and the helpless. The primary source of these problems is Archon Andross Klax of the Kabal of the Hand of Deft Spite. The Tau Empire is effectively “his” space, at least by the standards of Commorragh, and other Kabals had to treat with him if they wanted to privilege of raiding there.

The Tau were fed up with Klax. The bounty on his head was staggering. The Tau usually don’t believe in bounty hunting, feeling that if you do kill it should be for duty or defense or something a little more noble than simply selfish greed. With Klax they’ve just stopped caring, the Empire want him dead. Especially Aun’Va, who had to put up with Klax’s shit more than anyone else. Klax was enough to make Aun’Va wistful for the old days of the Mont’au, back when you wanted someone dead you raised an army to do it and told the troops to put the offender’s head on a stick to make sure they were gone.

In M39, after an invasion by a tendril of Hive Fleet Leviathan resulted in a series of pyrrhic victories that only ended with Imperial assistance, the Tau Empire was once again considering closer relations with the Imperium. This would have been a disaster for Klax, for whom Imperial support and resources would have meant an end to the easy raiding he had been enjoying for the last one and a half millennia. And so to preserve his hunting grounds Archon Klax hatched a cunning scheme.

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>>57452462
In 876.M39, Klax created a false flag operation, making it seem like the Maiden World of Lilarsus was really a Dark Eldar and Klax’s base of operations. The Kabal of the Hand of Deft Spite planted chemical evidence in the atmosphere, making it seem like the planet was experiencing substantial industrialization and spaceship traffic despite its primordial veneer. Surface observations would have shown the planet’s population was mostly Eldar, which would hopefully damn Lilarsus further in the eyes of the Tau. To someone who wasn’t familiar with how the Exodites worked, it looked like a textbook pirate hideout. The hope was that the Tau would attack Lilarsus and provoke a Tau-Imperium skirmish, souring relationships between the Imperium and the Tau. At best, it was hoped the act would spark the Tau-Imperium war both the Dark Eldar and their more debauched Crone World kin had always desired.

The Tau, already incensed with the Kabal of the Hand of Deft Spite for their raid on the Sept of Kel’Shan shortly after the tyranid invasion, took the bait. The Ethereals ordered Lilarsus burned to the ground in order to wipe out the space pirate and his cronies once and for all. The Tau attack took the form of nuking the population centers from orbit and letting the fallout from the airburst kill the rest. It was cheap, quick, and effective, especially since this was back in the days when the Tau were only just developing more extensive and expensive methods of Exterminatus for scouring tyranid-infested worlds to the bedrock. Thousands died. Fortunately, because the bombardment was focused on population centers not every Exodite died in the bombardment and the World Tree wasn’t compromised in the attack. This one of the few things that kept the situation from escalating faster than it already did.

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>>57452478
It was only after the bombardment that the Tau realized that Lilarsus wasn’t a Dark Eldar world. The Tau tried to apologized to Lilarsus’ patron Craftworld of Iyanden and offered to help repair the damage they had done, but found their offers icily ignored. However, for Iyanden it wasn’t enough. Klax would pay in time, but the Tau had offered them an insult that couldn’t go unanswered. In the months following the bombardment of Lilarsus several Ethereals were subject to assassination attempts by Iyanden rangers, and the commander of the ill-fated expedition was found impaled on a wraithbone spear along with his command staff.

These assassinations in spite of the Tau’s offers of weregild enraged the Ethereal council, and the Tau Empire mobilized to go to war. The response of Craftworld Iyanden, who had the largest space navy of any Craftworld, was in effect “bring it”, and the eldar began to assemble their own retaliatory fleet. The two fleets intercepted each other in a dead star system to the galactic west of the Damocles Gulf. However, as the Eldar and Tau fleets squared off, suddenly an unknown fleet translated into the system and the Eldar and Tau’s ships stalled. The Tau didn’t know what to make of this. It wasn’t like their ships had been hit by an EMP, as life support systems and artificial gravity were still on and they didn’t even know what an EMP would do to Eldar ships, it was like their ships were being…physically restrained.

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Up until this point, the Tau had comforted themselves by believing that the border skirmishes they had fought with the Imperium in the past were evidence that their great and mighty fleets were capable of holding off the aggressive and might of the "whole Imperial war machine". The more knowledgeable among the Ethereals and Fire Caste knew that it was merely the navy of the Segmentum Ultima, but they still figured that was a sizeable portion of the Imperium’s military might, and liked their odds in the event of a confrontation.

That was until the Tau got a good look at the Bucephalus and its hangers-on translating into the system. Those weren’t any Segmentum Ultima navy ships they had ever seen before. Hell, they hadn’t seen most of those ship classes before. And perhaps more importantly, this new fleet not only outnumbered but outgunned both the Tau fleet and Eldar fleet put together. If people started shooting this new fleet would curbstomp both of them, only stopping to wipe the ship debris off its metaphorical boot.

And then the face of Oscar, Last of the Golden Men, Emperor of the Empty Throne, Servus Servorum Imperium, Emperor-Consort of the All-Mother and Defender of the Realms Uncounted appeared on the Tau’s communication array to request the presence of their leader at his next earliest convenience to discuss "recent events". The Tau were just as surprised at the appearance of the Emperor’s face on their screens as they were at the arrival of the Bucephalus, this being was clearly different from any gue’la they had ever seen. He told them they wouldn’t have to worry about Iyanden striking while they were distracted as his wife just told the other side to go home and tend their wounds and sure enough Iyanden, who seemed previously out for blood, was doing so and without hesitation or complaint to the surprise of the Tau commanders.

>>57452824
It would be at that moment, that exact moment, that every Fire Caste present would realize just deep the pit they are standing over really is, and the Tau Empire realized that the “tall tales” of Por’O M’arc visiting the Imperial capital were more than just tall tales.

Not entirely sure how to end it, the idea was that the Emperor and Isha talk both sides down, and Lilarsus is garrisoned by Iyanden Aspect Warriors/wraithguard and Tau battlesuits. Iyanden said the Tau didn't have to be there, but the Tau insisted in order to atone for their mistake. I thought I heard somewhere that some of the battlesuits do double duty as hazard suits and the Tau use the opportunity to scrub radiation from the major habitable zones to try and make the cleaning of the fallout go faster.

After the stand-off, Spiritseer-Admiral Iyanna Arienal, essentially the "face" of Iyanden's seer council, went off the grid for a few months. When asked where her only answer to where she was was "with Yriel". Not coincidentally, Klax was never heard from again.

>>57452962
That sounds like a pretty fitting end, and while you already do it well, I might encourage you to linger on/play up the deific quality of the Emperor and its odd contrast to his scholarly bearing and polite demeanor, and Isha as well though she isn't really present in the Tau side of the story. If I were the one writing I would probably get sucked into some sort of Catalogue Of Ships for the three fleets that appear because it would be a fun opportunity to go into the details and contrast the technology of the Eldar and Tau, then set both in contrast to the Traveling Court.

Also, I now really want to read the tall tales of Por'O M'arc's trip to sol, to the point that I might write them up myself if I ever finish my other projects. I welcome anybody else interested to beat me to it, because me getting around to it seems somewhat unlikely. I recall someone in a past thread saying something to the effect of the Emperor being in a way an inverse Chaos God, with a realm as vast and mighty as any of the big four, but for all their realms' incomprehensibility and madness his realm is civilized and set to order and rights, and for all the horror of their thrones, his is glorious. For somebody not accustomed to a galactic civilization, the heart of the Imperium could be as mind boggling as the horrors of the warp, and only less damaging because the truth that is revealed by looking upon it is not terrible.

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>>57452096
Soon

>>57452962
Yeah, agreed with a lot of what >>57453343 had to say. Props for getting it written it up so fast, but I noticed bits of it were copy-pasted from the brainstorming posts from the last thread, so a bit of polish and elbow grease might be in order.

Did we agree that Yriel was active at this time? If so, he definitely should get a mention because he's not the type to let something like this go without fucking shit up. Also, I don't think Iyanden would accept with any Tau military presence on the world, it would be way too much of a sore point. At most, it would probably be a contingent of unfortunate Earth caste engineers that the Eldar hand a mop to and say, "you broke this shit, you fix it."

Lastly, minor thing: it really isn't the Empty Throne of Earth anymore is it? The vacancy got filled when Vandire was crowned Emperor, and Oscar took over the crown after the Civil War. Pretty sure it's just the Golden Throne now.

>>57453343
>>57454087
It is copy-pasted from the brainstorming posts in the last thread. I make no claims to the originality of any of it, just wanted to get it into a semi-decent form so it doesn't get lost on the Notes page like so much else.

It really does need more elbow grease and polish, and I agree about the appearance of the Emperor, as well as building up the contrast between the fleets of the Eldar, Tau, and the collection of guns and gold from at least two species that is the Traveling Court.

>Did we agree that Yriel was active at this time?
Yeah, that definitely needs mention. Had the bit about Yriel and Iyanna going Klax-hunting at the end of it, but he would definitely do something.

Could say he was off in the Segmentum Pacificus at the time and it took him that long to get back to Iyanden, but that seems like a cop out especially with the Webway.

>Tau on Lilarsus
The idea of the Tau on Lilarsus is a point in favor of the Tau. Iyanden probably didn't want them there at all but the Tau insisted as a matter of personal honor. The Tau made a mistake by bombing Lilarsus, they insist they make amends and help clean things up as an apology to Iyanden. The presence of Tau battlesuits isn't supposed to be a military presence but a bunch of hazard suits scrubbing radiation.

>Lastly, minor thing: it really isn't the Empty Throne of Earth anymore is it?
Shit you're right.

>>57454087
The question of Yriel was given a loud yes last thread, and the story seems to imply his targeting of Klax, which fits his character and is a fitting adventure. He may also have been involved in the original reprisals against the Tau, but it doesn’t seem like his style to get in formation with the battlefleet when it marshals for the escalating conflict.

>>57454745
Sneaking a bunch of Rangers into Tau territory and back without anyone being the wiser sounds exactly like something Yriel would do.

Also put the info on Shaa-Dome's moons on the Notes page. Just called them "the Cursed Moons" as a placeholder since we never figured out names (not to mention the Crones would call them something different). Did I get everything we talked about? I keep worrying that I'm not picking up everything of importance in the threads.

Was thinking of putting the bits on Arhra's thought process and the god's personalities too if that was okay.

>>57453406
What are you planning anon? Some kind of hubworld adventure?

>>57452457
Hydra is the "in" group of Oscar's inner circle, the Alpha Legion is their Black Ops chapter. Versus the Illuminati which is a decentralized group, more of a networking group, of similarly mined higher ups who have their own ideas on how the Imperium should be run.

>>57456631
I destincly remember us going into much more detail some threads back. Idk if it ever got ported over to the wiki.

>>57456631
>>57456642
I don't think it was every defined that clearly, certainly note to the point where we established they're Oscar's buddies. The vague hints and suggestions we have probably communicate the idea of the Hydra better than anything we come up with as concrete fluff probably won't live up to the reputed mind-boggling complexity and secrecy they're supposed to have in-universe.

Broadly speaking, didn't we say the Hydra is a pro-Imperium conspiracy with connections to the Alpha Legion and Omega Marines, where as the Illuminati are those that realize Oscar is a Man of Gold and want to try to hijack his programming? (Having the AL be solely under the command of the Hydra seems wanky to me, I'm pretty sure we said they report directly to the High Lords / High Command of the Guard / whatever delegation of responsibility seems appropriate)

>>57452962
>Por’O M’arc

That is brilliant.

>>57457997
I might have to try and write up his journey to Earth at some point.

>>57458057
It would to the Tau read something like the Voyage of Saint Brendan the Navigator.

It contains a whole bunch of shit the Tau do not actually believe and assume to be either exaggeration or outright fabrication. They assume that Por’O M’arc has either had an elaborate and extended theatre played for him or that they Imperial Authorities have told him what to say. On the basis that he has been told what to say they don't push the issue so that Por’O M’arc can save face but just annotate the official report.

Old Earth has 64 orbital tethers and a railway encircling the globe at the geosynchronous height of the tether-top stations? Bullshit. Maybe it has one or two stations and tethers with adjacent facilities attached remotely. That’s more likely.

There is an irradiated world devoid of joy where the people use conventional war as a training exercise and the people have bar-codes and numbers but no name? Possibly some truth but obviously and exaggeration.

A world on the doorstep of Hell where the people all have purple eyes and have lived in nothing but a state of war for 10,000 years? Again probably an exaggeration. An extended period of war that extends beyond living memory (that’s like 70 -80 for humans, right?) and they live next to an anomaly.

Emperor is the same entity that founded the Imperium himself a relic of another era that can bend reality to his will. And is married to a literal goddess of the eldar people. Calling bullshit. Emperor politically married an eldar High Priestess (who are known to live for stupid long time), inherited name and rank form a predecessor and just happens to be an above average “psyker”. Everything else is clearly just media manipulation. Next you’ll be trying to claim Old Man Va is the First Disciple and other such tinfoil hattery.

>>57459124
Fleets that outnumber the stars, Craftworlds the size of large moons, the teeming numbers of the Hive Worlds, the vastness of the Imperium, the age of the Imperium, the number of member species of the Imperium, the lethality of it’s warrior elite and all the rest of it? All exaggerations at best. Oh don’t get me worng; Por’O M’arc is a well-respected member of the government whose character is beyond question but he is one man and he had Imperial guides who would want him to see only what they wanted him to see.

Then they finally see the Traveling Court and they realize that there may, only may mind you, be some more truth to what Por’O M’arc reported. It’s not until they join the Imperium proper that they get to send their missionaries and observers deeper into Imperial Space. They keep expecting to reach the other end of the Imeprium at some point, they had until fairly recently assumed that Vast and Ancient Ultramar was the core of the Imperium and all this talk of an ancient homeworld out there somewhere was just Atlantis myths to make themselves feel better. But the Imperium just keeps on going and going and going.

By the time they have started to get Tau in the Inquisition in capacities more than just hired help (950M41ish?) they are truly aware of the scale of the pond in which they are very, very small fish and they go over the original copy of the reports written by Por’O M’arc and start comparing it to the things being reported by multiple other sources and they come to a new conclusion; Por’O M’arc didn’t see even a fraction of the fucked up shit out there.

>>57452096
are we keeping admech the same or changing them?
A change that wouldn't drastically change admech could be keeping the legio cybernetica if the emperor decided to let them stay

>>57459185
AdMech are more or less the same. Maybe slightly less arseholeish, more internal factions and factions that get put under the AdMech umbrella by the Imperium at large but have officially told Mars to go fuck itself.

Legio Cybernetica are primarily used by the Hubworlders. Hubworld Engineer Brotherhoods loosely come under the AdMech umbrella but pre-date the Imperium and made it quite clear that they weren't swearing loyalty to the Olympus Mons Brotherhood.

Hubworlders are socialists have universal Longevity among it's citizenry. It's not brilliant. It's not as good as Rejuvinants. It doesn't make or keep you young and you will spend most of your life grey and old. Extremely healthy and spry but ultimately old. As a result of most of the population being old and the young being a small minority they can't afford to field as many soldiers due to the slow rate that their population replenished because of the lack of breeding pairs. To this end they invest heavily in the Legio Cybernetica.

It was described previously that most of the robots have the brain power somewhere between a well-trained dog and a cuttlefish. They don't break the First Commandment because they aren't intelligent enough to be A.I.

AdMech insist that degrees of heresy is still heresy. Hubworlders tell them to go fuck themselves. AdMech erroneously class the Hubworlders as Abhuman because they can be petty bastards.

>>57456125
>Dorf fortress (or something like it) is a training simulator for Hubworld officers.

Who is King of the Hubworlders?

Do they have one? Is it like on Discworld where every group has a king and there is one High/Low King that they all get a say in electing?

>>57460627
They don't have one. The colonies have a board of administrators with an elected head administrator, because although they're socialist space cowboys they know that they have to have some body of people in charge to make decisions. Also the Imperium needs at least one person to be responsible for things that come up and act as a liason (planetary governor), and they don't care if thos person is a king or elected representative or whatever. Hubworlders are a Survivor Civilization and get away with a lot, but they still need someone who nominally speaks for them.

The administrators serve the people, and they're very conscinenscious of that (usually, there are always exceptions). The whole system dates back to the days when the Hub was mainly mining operations run by corporations and colonies.

I don't know how Discworld dwarfs work. It could be that the nominal head of the Hubworld League is voted on by the heads of each hold, but what it really amounts to is who represents the League to the greater Imperium.

>>57460627

A High Foreman? High Representative of Worker's Unions?

They're based off a miner culture, right?

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>>57456631
>>57456642
>>57457398
To be honest, I think a lot of us have no clue what's going on with the secret societies. The closest I remember is there's the Hydra, which is pro-Imperium and includes the Alpha Legion and their black ops division the Omega Marines, and then there's the Illuminati, which tend to be bored aristocrats and power-hungry adepts whose motivations range anywhere from benign (seeking knowledge for its own sake, but with a bad habit of poking Tomb Worlds) to dangerous (know Oscar is a Man of Gold and want to reprogram him because they don't like that a human creation is leading humanity).

I think it's not that the Alpha Legion reports to the Hydra, it's that the Hydra refers to Alpha Legion + non-Astartes agents (mostly humans), who technically report to the High Lords but do a lot of shady stuff off the books in the name of stability. A sword to the Inquisition's shield.

At least I think. I think at least some of it might be wrong. And it's possible for someone to play both sides.

>>57459612
This would explain Lusitan.

>>57459124
>Por’O M’arc didn’t see even a fraction of the fucked up shit out there
"To be honest, we didn't show you Savlar or Medusa, because well...they're kind of weird places".

>Next you’ll be trying to claim Old Man Va is the First Disciple and other such tinfoil hattery.
Pic related.

>>57461459
It could be that they have a House of Representatives that rules over them from which is chose an Emissary to speak on behalf of the House to the Imperium.

Emissary is a highly respected position given only to someone of immaculate character, whose voice speaks only truth and whose heart is sturdy as granite. It's just not a job that has any power or authority with it.

>>57453343
>>57454604
Would the Tau even notice the deific qualities of the Emperor? They'd notice the bling, but they're muted to the Warp and I'm not sure if they'd notice the psychic power.

>>57460627
>>57461378
>>57461459
>>57463463
Each colony having a board of administrators that handle local business, who send a representative to a House of Representatives who handle Hub-wide business, who in turn choose an Emissary whose main purpose is to speak on their behalf to the Imperium sounds good to me.

>>57463480
You tend to notice someone switching your ship off remotely.

They wouldn't understand much of what he was doing but the results are very observable.

>>57463480
well, he's an eight foot tall, serene, somewhat inhuman statesman with slightly metallic flesh and ancient golden eyes, and also a super advanced FTL communications transmitter/receiver. I can imagine even the Tau would feel something unnatural in his immediate presence, under his direct attention, and it would be all the more notable for its unfamiliarity. They may not have the frame of reference to know that they're only sensing a fraction of Oscar's psychic presence, and only feel the supernatural glory one could expect from a powerful psyker, but facing the Emperor they stand at the center of an enormous storm of immaterial power, one that even they should have some little sense of. It may not be over or clear to them, but it would probably be the force in their minds that makes them recognize intuitively that they were faced by the fabled 10,000 year old lord of men.

>>57464452
>>57464454
This is definitely true. The Tau would definitely notice this is not your normal gue'la (hell, he doesn't even look like any Space Marine they've seen).

Also thinking about the Croneworlders, would this be a good quote in relation to how the other factions view them?

"First rule of fighting Crones? Don't let 'em take you alive."
- Random Imperial Guardsmen

>>57465153
From the perspective of the average grunt, certainly. Oddball forces like the Daemon Breakers, Arteus’s Chosen, Alpha and Omega Legions, and some of the cadian based Void Wolf descendants might not hold the same view, if only because they have a chance at turnabout or gaining useful info.

>>57463442
Also, the Omega legion is the one that does Crone false flag operations and infiltrating the Fallen, so capture by Crones might occasionally figure into their plans.

Have the Hrud made it to Tau Space yet?

If so have the Tau found out yet?

>>57466450
Depends when now is, but even at the latest point they probably aren’t present in sufficient numbers to gain the notice of the Tau.

Has anyone kept track of our conversations about Macha’s fusion with Isha, Macha’s pre-Raid personality, and the nature of her connection with her goddess. I remember that there was some debate as to whether Isha ‘possessed’ Macha without her consent or if it was a matter of instant and natural compatibility of their beings.

>>57466450
>>57466883
Depends on where Hrudworld is too. In canon there are reports of Hrud on Saim-Hann in the Segmentum Pacificus and Haakoneth and Cinchare in the Segmentum Obscurus.

>>57466998
I think we never got a clear handle on it. The gist of it that I remember was that at the time of the Raid Macha was depressed. Like really, really depressed. She had once been her aggro self that people knew from vanilla, but that had been gradually overlain by despair as years passed since the Fall and it was clear the Eldar Empire was never coming back.

Macha went on the Raid with no expectations. She fully didn't care if she lived or died, heck perhaps if she did die her death would actually accomplish something. But then the Raid actually managed to free Isha and bring her back into realspace, and when they made it out of the Webway gate Macha fell to her knees and felt something she hadn't felt in a long time. Hope.

When Isha was brought through the Webway she stood in her full glory for a brief moment before letting out a peal of pure innocent laughter at finally being freed from that fat bastard before vanished in a flash of light. But then she appeared before Macha. Isha needed a host (she couldn't go back to the Immaterium), and Macha was the best person there in terms of her mindset and openness to the possibility of Isha returning. Macha agreed, and the two basically did a Phoenix Warrior-style fusion dance into the current Isha. This agreement being conducted purely by thought, it took place in the instant between the immaterial Isha vanishing and the new All-Mother arising.

At least that was what I could remember. I think there was something about Macha trying to fill the void by finding religion and becoming an Isha worshipper, which was another reason why Isha appeared before her.

The priesthood of Isha might tell the story of Macha as a morality tale of the importance of keeping faith and hope even in the darkest of hours.

>>57467610
That sounds like a lot of what we had, it would be cool to work that into a writeup somewhere.

>>57467610
Sounds about right, but we should note that only a significant fragment of Isha is in Macha, as no mortal vessel could handle containing the full power of a god. The rest is probably chilling in whatever corner of the Warp Ceggie hangs out in, communicating with and healing her followers through the World Trees and shrines and whatnot.

>>57468090
It's implied that both Ceggers and Isha have downsized in order to stay in the Materium. The mass they have had to loose, rather than just casting it away, is stored in their most devout followers.

In the case of Ceggers thats the Harlequins, Grey Seers and Keepers of the Black Library.

In the case of Isha it's her Handmaidens and Priestesses.

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>>57468367
>Grey Seers
I think that may be a typo.

>>57468367
>>57467721
Isha needs a write-up, as does the Emperor and Cegorach, and this would definitely be something that would be worth going in there. I think everyone is generally leery about doing a writeup of the big players because the Emperor, Isha, etc. are such important parts of the setting and so are afraid of making something that doesn't sound right including me.

There was also a mention that Isha tends to limit how much power she channels through Macha because she doesn't want to overload her and burn her out. "Limit" is a bit misleading, because she's capable of channeling Emperor-level power and that's not considered "too much power".

There was a suggestion in an old thread that if Isha made daemons they would probably look like treekin from Warhammer Fantasy. Though this seems like something she would only do in the case of the Rhana Dandra (i.e., versus Nurgle, ecosystem versus ecosystem) or once it's safe to try things without getting instagibbed by Slaanesh. When downsizing/multitasking, the Eldar gods seem more of the mindset of supercharging their followers than making independent entities. Ceggers is implied to have only ever made a grand total of one daemon, and he's the only one crazy enough to consider the idea.

Was going to change the dates to make Krieg fit better with the timeline, when I noticed that Krieg was connected to a whole bunch of other things and pulling on one pulled on everything.

The Ulthran Cartel’s were said to be involved in the financial fiasco that led to Krieg being…Krieg. However Sreta, who founded the Cartel, is said to be only 2300 years old.

There’s also an issue with Yriel (and by proxy Iyanna)’s age. Based on their current birth date they are old for Eldar, right in the typical life expectancy. Eldar don’t get old like humans do (at least not until they reach Eldrad-tiers of age), but it still runs the risk of either of them keeling over at any moment.

The suggested changes are this
- Make Calamity of Krieg between 433.M38 and 616.M38 (maybe a little later). Initial insult that started the whole thing is Administratum putting a price ceiling on guns because of Behemoth because tyranids are now a thing since M37 and we need ALL THE GUNS. Only problem is it shortens Krieg war from 500 years to about 200.
- Make Sreta about 3900 years old. This would make her about late middle age for an eldar circa 999.M41. Sreta would have found her calling in business at about 300.M38, which would mean the Ulthran Cartel had about 130 years for her to come to power and become a Name in business.
- Move Yriel’s birth up 500-1000 years. Right now he’s 4750, which is putting him close to “average” life expectancy for Eldar. Moving him up a millennium would make him about 600-1100 when Kraken happens, which makes sense given that this was one of his first claims to fame. Yriel would be about 3750-4250 as of 999.M41 (and gives us Yriel drama about the eldar equivalent of going gray/midlife crisis [getting “wraithy”?]).
- Kraken hits at the very end of M38 (along with associated events like the Battle of Iyanden and the Tarellian Confederacy). Leviathan hits shortly after in M39, making it a one-two punch the Imperium reels from.

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So I know we've had several comments in the previous threads before on what the various factions (usually Tau, Necrons, Dark Eldar, and Chaos) have been up to and where they are compared to canon, so I put together a little primer on the 1d4chan on what each of the canon races have been doing as well as the general shape of the universe for people who are new to Nobledark Imperium.

Any thoughts or criticisms on it as well as areas it can be improved would seriously be welcome. I was going to post it here, but I feared it would take up too much space and it includes a lot of formatting. If people don't like it I will take it down.

>>57470942
I don't think I know enough to be able to give a satisfactory answer, but this seems like it should be fine provided it doesn't mess up a bunch of other things as well.

When did Yriel transport the Kriegers to Iyanden to stop the Tyranids? And does this affect any Tanith characters that we have?

>>57473215
Battle of Iyanden. The big one. Iyanna Arienal and the eldar of Iyanden pull all the stops out to beat Hive Fleet Kraken, including mass resurrections of wraithguard and the Avatar of Khaine getting in a fight with a dozen carnifexes. Then Yriel marches half a million Kriegers through the Webway as reinforcements and turns it into a two-front war. Breaks the back of Kraken and marks the turning point in the war.

Kriegers have minds like cold steel boxes. They don't think that much, so they're unlikely to damage the Webway, and you can tell them to just focus on where they're going and don't get distracted by the Webway and they'll do it. They're about the best army you could march through the Webway on short notice aside from the Tau. Yriel still got shit for it afterwards.

Tanith seems to be much later, in the first years of M41.

Only issue seems to be Yriel got his Writ of Trade for saving Tanith, so he was operating as an unlicensed Rogue Trader for at least two millennia beforehand.

>>57473509
>so he was operating as an unlicensed Rogue Trader for at least two millennia beforehand

Privateer Prince, get it right, and he had the approval of the Voidborn, somehow, and of various outcast mechanicus brotherhoods. Really it was all so very legitimate, officer. And might I ask if you have any interest in our goods from far off Stillness, or the exotic wastes of Savlar?

>>57473129
I think its pretty good, there are a number of typos in the teams section, but otherwise all pretty good. It might be good to add a section on Crone factions to make them a more apparent threat.

>>57473129
Pastebin is an option if you want to share something on the thread without making a dozen posts.

The entry seems pretty good but minor quibble regarding the bit about power levels: individual power levels at the top end are down a bit, but overall from a faction perspective they're up. Obviously we have a bunch of the major factions from canon combined into the Imperium, and Imperial tech is probably better than in canon because of cross species tech sharing and because old tech wasn't lost (because no HH). Like modern day humanity in this AU still has things that are gone in canon like volkite weapons and jetbikes, though they are expensive and uncommon.

On the enemy side, the Orks are better organized and all around scarier, the actual main hive fleets have hit for the Nids, there are more awakened Necrons and they're more unified because the Silent King has greater direct control, and the Chaos Gods seem to be more involved in realspace and less so in their Great Game warp shenanigans. So pretty much a big ol clusterfuck all around.

>>57473129
The raid was into the Realm of Chaos not the Eye of Terror.

Most of the Legions split in the lifetimes of their primarchs

>>57469997
Grey Seers in 40k are a secretive order of eldar who have somehow severed their connection to fate. They upset the other eldar by their presence.

They seem to be connected to the Black Library in some manner.

Is there still a penal legion and the Last Chancers?

What are the Vespid like in this AU? I'm assuming that the Tau didn't brain rape them this time around.

>>57477680
The only thing that's been said as of yet is they're one of the few races that joined the Tau Empire before the Imperium, due to their presence in the Tau cluster. I think it was mentioned they saw a lot of similarities between their philosophy and the Tau'va.

>>57476707
Hard to say. It was discussed a bit in previous threads but not much came out of it. One issue with penal legions from a logistical standpoint is they have no innate loyalty and don't want to be there. As was pointed out in another fan project, in a universe with a malevolent, corruptive force like Chaos it's really hard to keep the desperate in line because they have nothing to lose. If it's child's play to perform a ritual that results in daemons in your anus there is little you can do but try to avoid those situations, and authoritarianism is just going to make it worse (more desperation, less care the daemons will eat you too).

Any penal legion not composed of legit volunteers will try to jump chance they get and potentially join Chaos. Even a commissar can only do so much.

On the other hand, the Imperium is very utilitarian, and penal legions sounds like what they would do. Not to mention recruiting a rag-tag team of misfits and crooks is always a thing.

>>57467610
>>57466998
It's also the case that it isn't possession as such. Not the usual kind at least. More like two liquids being poured together.

Isha wasn't an Iron Matron previously. She is now. If she had been before as she is now she would have tried to kick Khaine in the bollock when he started killing eldar before going to the boss.

Presumably if Macha ever dies she will be just Isha again briefly before possessing the nearest suitable Handmaiden.

>>57463540
What is Hubworlder religion like?

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>>57480450
There was some talk about it. The Mechanicus who escaped to the Hubworld League brought Omnissiah worship with them. Prometheanism is also popular because it fits naturally with the Hubworlder ideals of communal strength (and because the Hubworld League is within spitting distance of Nocturne). There is also, of course, traditional ancestor worship.

Exactly which, if any, was predominant was never agreed upon.

>>57479845
Part of it was also said to be intentional on Isha's part. Isha knew the galaxy has become a tougher place and she had to get tougher in response. Easiest way is to let more Macha traits in. However, Macha is basically just a few drops in a whole ocean of Isha, so Isha basically just absorbed her.

It may be something like with the Phoenix Lords. I don't know if we ever hammered out exactly how they work (besides reincarnating), but one suggestion is their personalities and memories subtly change with each host like Time Lords, which is why the Craftworlds can't just grill them for answers on what the Empire was like Pre-Fall (except Maugan Ra, but good luck with that). Jain Zar might remember being born on some Exodite world, but she also remembers being born on Alaitoc, and Biel-Tan, and Iyanden. Fuegan has two contradictory sets of memories where he both likes and hates ploins. Their broad personality is preserved but the details change. The idea being that the Rhana Dandra is when their memories will snap together into one cohesive whole (hence them "returning").

Working in the Taskmaster writeup, trying to create an interesting dynamic for the Slaaneshi order in Shaa-Dome and an interesting origin for the Taskmaster. I’m aware that the Taskmaster has a noted interest in industry and ships an an expression of slaaneshi excess, and is chosen from among the worshipers of Slaanesh to run the show so that the god/ess and inner circle can play. As opposed to how Arrotyr is obsessed with restoring the Old Empire and cleansing it, etc, the Slaaneshi faction insist they are the Old Empire, and that it never fell and goes on in glory. I need to decide if the Taskmaster is another prefall eldar or if it was born under the reign of the dark prince.

Also, which of the Crone forces are specifically slaaneshi? I remember the puppets/dolls and various flesh crafters, and slaughtermen and phalanx seem pretty slaaneshi, I’m trying to decide what forces the Taskmaster should be bossing around.

>>57482375
As opposed to how Arrotyr is obsessed with restoring the Old Empire and cleansing it, etc, the Slaaneshi faction insist they are the Old Empire, and that it never fell and goes on in glory.

>I need to decide if the Taskmaster is another prefall eldar or if it was born under the reign of the dark prince.
Arrotyr's fluff has the Taskmaster killstealing from Arrotyr when he attacked the Temple of Isha on Shaa-Dome. You could always say the Taskmaster has been killed and replaced, but IIRC, part of the charm of the four main followers of the Chaos Gods is that they hate each other on a personal level beyond simply worshipping different gods. As a previous anon said...

>Arrotyr hates Slaaneshis in general for ruining the Old Empire, the Taskmaster in particular for defeating him in the Fall, Nimina for being an obnoxious Isha-loving slag that escaped him, and The Indigo Crow for being a Tzeentchian and a fuckup
>Nimina hates Arrontyr with a passion for burning the grand temple of Isha, despises Slaanesh but currys favor with the Taskmaster for ships and preaching grounds, and loathes the Indigo Crow for being the Tzeentchian lunatic fuckup that lost her her idol
>The Crow thinks Arrotyr is a small minded and dim impediment to the Old Empire, that the Taskmaster is an easily manipulated pawn that got lucky, and that Nimina is a pathetic liability to Nurgle that should be capitalized on

This could even be expanded for the few cases on which the hatred seems more religion-based than personal hatred.

>>57482789 (cont.)
>Also, which of the Crone forces are specifically slaaneshi?
Crone Chaos worship tends to be Slaaneshi in flavor even when it is based on Khorne, Tzeentch, or Nurgle (case in point, look at Nimina and Malaria). So a lot of them could be non-Slaaneshi. On the other hand most Crones are Slaaneshi or punchclock Chaos Undivided (worship all the gods, but don't actively try to court the blessings of all four).

The correct answer might technically be all of them. As you point out the Slaaneshis think they are the Old Empire, so they might try to boss everyone around. Whether or not they actually listen is another story (see: Arrotyr). Slaanesh is the god of excess after all.

Also, am I the only one who thinks the Taskmaster needs a whip, or is that too much of a Khorne thing?

>>57473765
>>57474041
>>57475272
Okay, added in all suggestions and fixed as many typos as I could find. Only question is a little clarification on what is meant by "add a section on Crone factions".

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Ambassador Cyrus Kebede was not typically used to being summoned at such an unreasonable hour. No day in his opinion should contain more than one five o’clock. He knew it wasn’t the Por’s fault. The blue bastards had applied for a replacement Aun three years ago and were still waiting. Por’El Sana’ta Atha was doing the best he could with what he had. For one thing he was still and El when he should by all justice have been and O and that wasn’t making his job any easier, Acting O was a poor substitute for actual O. Especially with rival El’s on the register sheet. But truth be told O or not Tau biologically required less sleep than humans. Or at least less sleep than Ambassador Cyrus Kebede did, especially at the age he was with his grey hair and clicking knees.

Two lean and powerful Fire Caste stood before the door, splendid in their gear and menacing in their armaments as was proper. The inside of the room was… comfy Cyrus assumed. Or at least tried to be by Administratum style. Books around the walls, a desk, dark green leather chairs and carpet. He couldn’t be mad about it, not really. They got heir ideas of what was in style from what they saw on vids. Hw knew damn well that Tau had shot kneel-stools that they half knelt and half stat on and their desks were tables and much shorter.

The ornately decorated door parted and indeed he did see something that was of interest to him. The chair with it’s back to him was not as he had assumed as empty as it looked and a diminutive figure sat in it, covered in layers of old looking cloth.

“Oh” Cyrus said rather flatly. “Oh”.

“You have met them? Good, that’s going to save us all a lot of time” Por Atha said. Clearly he was happy or at least relieved about something.

>>57483841
Cyrus hesitantly walked around to the front of the chair and let out an involuntary groan. “It’s a Hrud. Late juvenile, young adult judging by the size”.

“Wonderful, you have familiarity!”

“Sadly”. Ambassador Cyrus turned towards the figure in the chair several sizes too big for it, it’s feet hidden by rags but presumably dangling above the floor. “how many are coming?”

The hood of the heavy layered robes turned towards him, he caught a glint of what might have been compound eye and a voice like something slithering over a tomb a thousand years dry “Me. Me my kin. Me my folk. Other folk. Time is now of travel, time is now of move. Me my kin, others. We move. Need come here, need scurry, have night here, have places of night always here. Me my kin we Linger here”.

“Can we persuade you not to?” Asked ambassador Cyrus who was fully expecting a weeks worth of duplicate form filling by this time tomorrow. Or actually later today.

“Hold on, hold on. This is a Tau world, I invited you her for your experience, not to claim authority in the matter” said the water caste. It wasn’t an angry statement, they had known each other too long.

“Maybe, Maybe for me my kin. Not for others. We not asking. Can’t stop. Mirror Devils, Mirror Devils awaken from long sleep. Long time. We hide now for now. Hide in the shadows of others. Linger. Once we once built such worlds as this, now no more. Now Linger. Hide. Scurry far from light. Stay safe. Linger. So our Lord tell us. So we do. Maybe me my kin, maybe we leave if asked. Not others. They not me my kin. They come. Can’t stop”. The figure reached a hand further than expected, slowly towards the tea tray on the desk and from the overlong sleeves fell a carved bone totem. The sleeve retracted with the jar of honey.

>>57483857
“Is this a Migration?” Asked the increasingly old feeling Kebede

“Maybe. Maybe more yes. More yes then no. Other come. The godly but godless they build places to hide. We linger there. We linger here. Need to linger and hide”.

“Atha, my friend, I would advise that you don’t try to stop them. You won’t be able to if you tried”.

“Why is th-“ started the grey skinned tau.

Cyrus hoped that what he saw was an optical illusion. He really did no creature should be able to survive being folded 270 degrees on a horizontal axis and then folded in on itself like a collapsing house of cards. The creature vanished and the quill fell from Por’El Sana’ta Atha’s hand as they both stared in horror at the place the chair and it’s occupant had been.

“How did he do that?”

“No idea.”

“Is it teleporting?”

“No”

“Then he is still here but hiding”

“No. He’s gone. The door isn’t air tight”

“It hasn’t opened since you came in, Cy”

“Doesn’t matter. It will have folded itself thin enough to get between the door and the frame or under the door maybe. We don’t know how they do it”.

“Then how can the Empire-“

“Listen, my good friend Atha, there is an old saying amongst my people; Better in here pissing out than out there pissing in. This applies to the Hrud. They are only dangerous if cornered and they don’t take what will be missed. They instinctively try to hide and so will try not to be noticed by you and you people. If they are here the only way to stop them getting to the rest of your Empire would be to quarantine this planet for the rest of time. I suspect that’s not an option”

“It is most certainly is not”

“Then the Tau Empire is going to get a Hrud colony. Don’t worry the rest of the Imperium has them, even the craftworlds”.

>>57483677
The bloody minded space fairy daemon cults lead by the lunatics mentioned here>>57482833

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I just realized something. If Be'lakor is the Last of the Old Ones, and the Navigators were made by splicing Old One DNA into humans, does that mean Be'lakor is known as the Three Eyed King in this timeline?

Also what kind of weapons does Be'lakor wield when he goes to war. As the Last of the Old Ones one would think he would have access to the good shit or know where it was buried. Or does he just snap his fingers and turn his enemies inside out?

>>57483871
Interesting. Like the tone of talking with a non-hostile xenos that clearly doesn't think in human terms.

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>>57484629
He's a proto-Old One.

After he became a deamon-prince they continued to evolve. He's some stone age throw back compared to what they became.

Only thing he could know is where the Old One homeworld was, and that's probably not worth knowing. Be'lakor is a fuck up and a worthless relic with a court made of rejects. He has delusions of greatness because he thinks that Old = Important when old can just mean obsolete.

Here, have a pic of the original orks. How long would they last in M41?

>>57484783
I agree that compared to the Chaos Gods, C'tan, Gork and Mork, and the like he's small pickings, and he's nowhere near what he claims he is/wants to be, but he's still one of the big warlords of Chaos.

He probably doesn't have access to anything that can make the Chaos Gods sneeze, and he'd probably go down to the likes of Oscar, Isha, Lady Malys, and the Swarmlord, but just because he's obsolete by the standards of the Chaos Gods doesn't mean he wouldn't be a nightmare for say an Astartes chapter.

I mean the Tarellians dropped him down a chasm and he retaliated by steering Kraken right through their space.

>>57481864
>However, Macha is basically just a few drops in a whole ocean of Isha, so Isha basically just absorbed her.
Except that the nature of the prayers to her, the belief in her, that nature has changed and so she is slowly changing to follow that. She is totally unaware of this as it is slow and subtle, a change over the millennia. The changes that she has noticed she's put down to Macha, and that's not wrong as such, but it ain't the whole story.

Do we have anything in the notes about Tsar Doombreed's tinpot dictatorship beyond the eye? I remember there was some fun stuff about him exporting heldrakes and getting in fights with the commanders of the Fallen that Malys needs to arbitrate to preserve Black Crusades.

>>57487315
You've pretty much summed it up. Invented Helldrakes, which are made with regular plebs horribly fleshmelded into aerial machines to make Daemon Engines (when he was mortal they were "just" physically integrated into the plane like a dreadnaught), and is another important Chaos player if for no other reason than he runs the most organized group of the Lost and the Damned who actually have an industry base rather than relying on being raiders and doing temp work for the Dark Mechanicus.

Someone was writing up Doombreed's fight with the four primarchs (and hence the origins of the Blood Pact), but it never materialized.

I think was mentioned (and in hindsight it's pretty obvious) that the Blood Pact's heavily favors an interpretation of Chaos which puts Khorne as the dominant Chaos God and all other gods are subordinate to him (BLOOD KING OF THE GALAXY), seeing as Khorne is Doombreed's patron and saved him from dissipating in the Warp without getting his revenge.

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So this is 200% non-canon and way too much of a “reference for the sake of reference” thing, but it’s something goofy I thought that others would just find fun to read.

He rushed through the door, the elevatus doors clicking shut behind him. Kais fell to his knees and breathed a sigh of relief as he heard the splat of Blue Horrors against the door behind him. It was only when he had a moment to catch his breath that Kais realized he was separated from his team. Alone. Again.

Kais wasn’t superstitious, but the number of times this happened was almost enough to make him believe this “Murphy” the others in the Gue’vash’vre’s retinue kept talking about really existed.

The Gue’vash’vre, the Inquisitor, had been investigating a trading company looking to exploit suspicious goods that had been obtained from a Rogue Trader. The goods, sure enough, had been artifacts tainted by the Warp, and when the Gue’vash’vre had tried to intervene things had of course Gone Horribly Wrong and the artifacts had summoned daemons.

Daemons. It always had to be daemons. Or cultists. Or genestealers. Why couldn’t the Gue’vash’vre ever uncover a conspiracy that was devoted to breeding fluffy gyrinxes or something.

The vox speaker in the elevatus suddenly crackled to life. Kais perked up. He didn’t know the vox systems were still working down here. If anything it would have to be one of the traders, who he had seen run deeper into the facility when the daemons attacked.

“I’m willing to take responsibility for the horrible events of the last twenty-four hours,” the raspy voice claimed, “but you must understand, our interest in the Warp was purely for the greater good…”

Greater good? What did this gue’la take him for, a Shas’Saal? Did he think that just by saying the name of the Tau’va it would miraculously make everything that had happened justified?

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>>57488844 (cont.)
He couldn’t stand these kind of people. The ones who thought hyperspace and the things inside it were just a toy. He could understand it back home in the Empire, but here? They played with fire, but they weren’t the only ones to suffer the consequences when everyone else got burned.

“Everything has clearly gotten out of hand now…”

Kais stood and took a moment to examine the corpse sharing the elevatus with him. Ever since the events of Dolumnar IV he had become familiar with the sight of death at the hands of the Neverborn. Far too familiar. He only got a glance before he had to look away, but the image was burned into his brain. He wanted to tell himself that the gue’la had died in some other way, but he knew that wasn’t true.

The man had died screaming.

Kais felt a chill run down his spine. There it was again, the same feeling he had felt on Dolumnar IV. He tried to keep it locked up, and on most days he succeeded, but sometimes it couldn’t help but get out, especially when exposed to this…this injustice.

The people he had met across the galaxy called it many things. Righteous fury. The warrior’s madness. Kais knew all they were but flowery names for what it really was.

Anger.

“…but it was worth the risk, I assure you.”

Kais put his fist through the voxcaster.

>>57488844
>>57488858
Well, even if it's a bit heavy-handed with the references, it was indeed fun to read and the explanation is pretty plausible. And knowing the Imperium's luck, any fluffy gyrinx breeding program is likely corrupted by Slaaneshi magics or influenced by pain and suffering extracted from Dark Eldar/Mechanicus soul-sucking machinery.

In the name of the Imperium, this thread is bumped. The Emperor and Empress shall know of our efforts to hold back the sword above our heads that is known as autosaging!

>>57483841
>>57483857
In all seriousness, do we have title suggestions for this? It provides a nice little demonstration of how the Hrud are strange to other sapient species.

For some reason I can imagine "learning like a blue traveler" or "curious as a Tau" becoming sayings among Imperials after their induction, but the Tau themselves being a bit put off or patronized with how they're being seen as eager students

>>57488858
Nice. Someone's going to get fucked yp.

I will try my hand at some more writefaggatory if thread still up after work

>>57490553
New Neighbors?

>>57489568
I got the idea when I realized how easily Hayden's infamous speech could be tweaked into "the Greater Good", and if you said that in front of Kais he'd go "U wot m8?".

>>57493273
That sounds good.

>>57488844
>So this is 200% non-canon

Sadly. It's great and fits.

I hadn't gone on the 1d4chan page in a while so I took this as a chance to take a read through and I have a few thoughts:

1. Holy fuck our fluff is in depth, especially the notes page, which I guess is the inevitable result of a dedicated group of nerds sperging out for 2+ years now (and I mean this in the best way possible).
2. The Phoenix Lords need more fluff throughout Imperial history, as they're Primarch-tier figures and, as the Eldar smugly note, are still alive and kicking. Perhaps we graft them into some battles that have already been written, or do some more canon importing?
3. In the Notes page, Legienstrasse is mentioned to be one of hundreds of Maerorus assassins, the rest of which have gone rogue. Not sure I'm on board with this, as I don't think whoever wrote that considered the ridiculousness of having that many Maerorus running around. In canon Legie required Imperial Fist veterans, an Emperor's Champion, 2 grandmaster Assassins, an Eversor, and Darnath Motherfucking Lysander to take out, which in terms of power levels makes her one of the strongest figures in 40k and probably above a Bloodthirster. Hence it's probably a bit ridiculous of hundreds of them are running wild in this AU.

>>57497616
In terms of Legienstrasse the others are Maerorus but they are not assassins and never were. All the other test subjects were failures.

The rest of the Maerorus population are her children and grand children.

Also the Vanilla Legienstrasse was so hard to take down because the Imperium had no prior experience. They do now. Now they know that telekinesis and fire are good. Lift it off the ground and burn it, can't regenerate from ash.

>>57483841
>He knew damn well that Tau had shot kneel-stools that they half knelt and half stat on and their desks were tables and much shorter.

This raises the question. Do Eldar, who in terms of real-life culture are equal parts inspired by the Celts, Chinese, Japanese, Greek city-states pre- and post-Rome, etc. have tables? What do they look like? Do they have normal chairs and humans basically have to sit at one of those high bar seats or do they stand?

>>57497616
>Holy shit the fluff
And it's not even all there.

>Legienstrausse
There was a lot of debate over where the other Maerorus came from. Some say they are Legi's children, other point out letting your part kroot, part tyranid assassin whose capabilities are unknown breed naturally is Darwin Award level stupidity. Others suggested that a few other Maerorus survived, and it's them and their children that's the problem. I think the joke was that there were 10,000 candidates, hence they were legion. However, it was suggested only like 100 survived, and of those only Legi wasn't crazy.

>Phoenix Lords
Battle of Anaen needs fluff. Happened at same time as WotB and primarchs being awesome, Maugan Ra and Baharroth fighting back and back to save Baharroth's home (only managed to save some of the populace, but still).

>>57485449
He is on par with Doombreed in terms of actual ability.

The big difference is that Doombreed is happy to serve so long as he gets to rebuild Ursh v2.0, Be'Lakor dreams of being a god himself and not just that but over-god of all. He is an Old One, last of and therefore heir and once upon a time the gods were beneath his people on the pecking order and so he believes he should be above them.

>>57499045
Which of the Phoenix Lords would be most/least in favour of the Imperium?

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>>57501359
>Be'lakor's power level.

This makes perfect sense. Be'lakor is dangerous, but he likes to hype himself up as a lot more dangerous than he actually is. He sees himself as a natural god when at best he is evil amphibian Neil Armstrong.

>Phoenix Lords in regards to the Imperium
Just going by the previous fluff.

Asurmen - Technically pro-Imperium. Extreme pragmatist, willing to throw old attitudes out the window if it meant the eldar survived (he agreed to the Raid, after all). Doesn't get as much shit over it compared to Eldrad because Eldrad is willing to publicly thumb his nose at the seer councils when he thinks they're being stupid whereas Asurmen tends to ignore politics. Asurmen and Eldrad butt heads sometimes, but they have the same goals.
Arhra - Liked the idea of Imperium as meatshields. Didn't like the idea of the Imperium and Eldar pissing off Cthulhu and friends.
Baharroth - Eldar's burden. Feels it's up to the children of Isha to save the rest of the galaxy from themselves.
Fuegan - Gets along with just about everyone.
Jain Zar - Most pro-Imperium out of any of the Phoenix Lords. Has no rosy memories of the Old Empire, seeing them as a bunch of hedonistic nutjobs, and sees Dark and Crone Eldar as an extension of their depravity.
Maugan Ra - Probably second-most pro-Imperium, potentially tied with Asuryan. Cynic who sees everyone (including himself) as an equally big fuck-up, so no point in anyone trying to put on airs (ironic for Baharroth's brother).
Karandas- Unknown.
Irillyth - Unknown. From Myrmeara which might affect things.
Drastanta - Unknown.
Lhykosidae - We don't even know if the guy exists. If he does he might be from Kaelor...

Am I remembering correctly that the Savlar Chem Dogs are technobarbarian mobile infantry with broken down relics of the Great and Bountiful Human Dominion preserved by the savlar brotherhood?

>>57502808
Basically yes.

>>57501777
Given the existence of Irillyth and Lhykosidae being from craftworlds that came late to the party it would seem that they must have developed independent of Asurmen.

>>57502808
I'm not sure, Savlar is on the 1d4chan page so it might say there.

A quick question. I'm working on an idea for the Croneworlders, and I'm wondering what the title would be for someone whose job it is to capture, create, and break the various abominations the Cronedar use in battle or sell to the Dark Eldar. I was going to call them "beastmasters", until I noticed that was already a Dark Eldar thing.

Then I thought about calling them "taskmasters", since it makes sense that in addition to "The" Taskmaster you would have lesser ones that keep the Crones on track, wrangle marionettes, etc. However, I noticed that those all seem to be separate ranks (marionettes are controlled by Masters, Crone Infantry are commanded by Subjugators), so whoever controls the warp beasts needs their own title.

>>57503041
Nightmare Herder

Handler

Neverborn Shepard

Summoner

Houndbinder

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>>57502870
So what boundaries should I try to stick to writing a story about them on deployment? I'm trying to get a sense of the proportion I guess.

>>57503123
binder or summoner sound good, particularly if they tent to also call on daemons. They may even 'tame' their beasts by opening them to possession.

>>57503151
In what way?

Also Savlars or PLs?

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>>57503123
>Nightmare Herder
Oh the irony.

Okay, here's the idea. One is a Cronedar unit the other is a Cronedar special character. Not sure how well the first is written, it's more to get the idea out there than anything else.

Nightmares are some of the most depraved of all Crone Eldar creations, living siege engines that lay waste to anything in their path. Nightmares are in effect perversions of spirit stone technology, the same technology that keeps the souls of Craftworlders from being eaten by She Who Thirsts upon their demise. Crone Eldar normally hate spirit stones, calling them “soul traps” and seeing them as barriers that keep eldar from being closer to their gods, but they are more than creative enough to turn this technology to their own needs. Although spirit stones are normally used to protect the recently dead, they can also be used as holding vessels for souls forcibly ripped out of their host bodies. Dark Eldar have used this to forcibly swap the souls of different races as part of their sick pleasures. Crone Eldar have taken this concept and weaponized it. And being on the Crone Worlds, the developed worlds of the Old Eldar Empire, the Crone Eldar have a lot of spirit stones to work with.

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>>57503240
Nightmares are massive goliaths, made of hundreds of stolen souls linked together into wraithbone lattices and clothed in warp-tainted flesh often stolen from the bodies of slaves. The souls that compose a Nightmare are all aware of their situation and feel the sensation of their entire body, but are typically only able to control a small portion of their form. This decentralization makes Nightmares incredibly hard to kill, as they are able to ignore most forms of pain not specifically tailored to harm them by their masters and will keep fighting until they are too damaged to move. In order to impose some degree of control over the Nightmare, all of the souls composing the abomination are linked to a single empty spirit stone, which is able to coordinate the movements of the entire monstrosity despite each individual soul only able to control a small portion of the beast. Typically, the only way is to destroy this linking spirit stone, and sets the component souls of the Nighmare free (to where is unknown, but it is arguable that even oblivion is preferable to life as a component of a Nightmare).

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>>57503252
Being living macabre works of “art”, no two Nightmares are the same, whether in the number of eyes, number of arms, number of heads, even the very souls that make up their being are often taken from a multitude of species. The only similarity is that all Nightmares fear the lashes of the Taskmasters that drive them into battle. The only pleasure they ever receive is the flood of endorphins remotby remote control at the end of each successful battle, which coincidentally sedate a Nightmare and make it possible for other Crone Eldar to wrangle it back into containment. On rare occasion, a particularly brave or foolish Crone Eldar will actuall be able to break an abomination and ride it into battle, typically those Eldar devoted to courting the favor of all four Chaos Gods simultaneously, seeing as they tend to not have much of a survival reflex in the first place.

In terms of appearance I was thinking a "generic" Nightmare looks somewhat apelike, maybe something like Sammael from the first Hellboy movie with a latticework of spirit stones covering it's body and a lizard-like tail.

>>57503205
Savlar, and I'm trying to decide how powerful the Chem Dogs and their weapons should be, and their general look. The far ends of what I'm picturing are the golden gun I posted versus the aesthetic of something like this pic. Then in terms of power, are they equivalent to other guard, Securitas, do they approach Astartes?

Savlar wasn't really a true survivor civilization and was only designated as one for political reasons, and thus had and probably still any significant interstellar ships, but their warriors could pe pretty powerful and mostly limited by scarcity.

And here's the character(s). The name thing is just a placeholder.

Deep at the center of the Eye of Terror, the shellworld of Shaa-Dome is a hive of industry. However, the employment opportunities offered on this world would be alien to any sane eyes, including such things as “daemon whisperer”, “ghastbone singer”, and “(whatever we decide the name is)”. NAME are the Crone Eldar that handle the various warp abominations the Cronedar capture or create, breaking them for use as warbeasts or trading them to their kin in Commorragh. Among the most well-known NAME is Kaimon Adrande, a Slaaneshi and the self-proclaimed “King of Beastmasters”. Such an appellation seems confusing at first, given that he counts sentient creatures among his chattel, until you realize that he considers most sentient creatures, including humans, orks, non-Crone Eldar, and even Crone Eldar he deems not sufficiently ambitious enough to count as übermenschen as opposed to sheep to be “beasts”. To the Slaaneshi the world is divided into the dominators and the dominated, there is no middle ground. Kaimon is well-known among the Croneworlders for his brash and arrogant attitude, even among Crone Eldar, attempting feats which most Crone Eldar would consider suicidal. He considers no feat too impossible, no feat too daring, and no beast which cannot be broken to his will.

>>57503355
Although Kaimon has created and broken many war-beasts over the years, he considers his greatest creation to be his so-called “harem”, his confidant and personal warsteed, the Choir of Despair. It is unknown if the Choir of Despair is a true Nightmare animated by soul stones, or is some other form of Crone Eldar abomination made of ghastbone and twisted flesh. In contrast to most Nightmares, which are made up of hundreds of individuals, the Choir of Despair is only made up of eight souls. Kaimon claims they were a series of eight eldar sisters that he fused together into a single entity, though exactly where and how he got these souls is not clear. They could be Croneworlders, eldar kidnapped from an Exodite world, or it could be that Kaimon’s claim is merely a lie and the sisters of the Choir are merely eight random eldar merged into a single being (possibly not even all eldar). Regardless, Kaimon loves to regale people on the years the Choir spent in horror of their new form as he tried to break them, whether or not listeners want to hear it.

>>57503347
General rule of thumb is three Securitas more or less equal one Astartes. Securitas augmentations are less extreme, making them more like Halo Spartans in comparison to Astartes walking tanks.

>>57503388
From the waist up, the Choir resemble attractive eldar females attached by serpentine necks to the body of a great armored ghastbone beast. This armor is not put on in the manner of a warhorse, but is outright fused with their flesh. Their humanoid bodies are similarly modified, their hair replaced with segmented ghastbone tendrils and their body covered in chitinous ghastbone armor. Although each head has its own slightly different thoughts and opinions, they no longer have any sense of individuality and consider themselves a single entity. In battle, the heads of the Choir pick out and rip apart targets, tearing at their victims like piranhas as their body smashes through infantry lines, as if taking out their frustrations on the damned. Off the battlefield, the Choir serve, among other things, as Kaimon’s personal advisors, confidants, and quite frankly the only beings Kaimon actually trusts. Kaimon trusts the Choir implicitly, as he considers them to be so broken there is no chance of them attempting any treachery (indeed, it is likely that Kaimon is incapable of trusting any being unless they were broken to his will), and he relies on their many heads to offer him alternative perspectives and keep him informed of anything they see.

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>>57503347
forgot pic

>>57503405
However, there are whispers that the Choir is not as loyal as it might appear. The sisters of the Choir remember the indignities they have suffered from Kaimon upon their twisted flesh, and now they plot revenge. Over the years, the Choir has been advising Kaimon to undertake ever more brazen actions of increasing dangers, perhaps in the hopes that one of these outings will eventually kill him. If this were ever the case, it is likely the Choir would take the opportunity to sacrifice Kaimon’s soul as an offering to their own patron deity, Tzeentch.

tl;dr: Kaimon is an arrogant jackass who is completely oblivious to the concept that his beasts could disobey him because he thinks they're all broken to his will, despite the fact that his masterpiece creation is sentient and is secretly worshipping another Chaos god, and he's probably going to get killed for it.

>>57503347
>>57503388
The Savlar Chem Dogs, while an interesting and highly effective guard regiment, aren't even in the same conversation as SoBs, much less SMs.

While we rehabilitated them from being a grimdark penal regiment so they could fit in this AU, they should still stick to that general concept from canon of undisciplined/barbaric light infantry that excel in confined harsh environment. Any archeotech and whatnot they utilize is invariably less effective due to being exposed to Savlar's corrosive environment for thousands of years and the Chem Dogs lackadaisical attitude towards maintenance.

As for how to write them, that depends on if you are doing a squad level piece which will be character driven or a broader faux-historical write up dealing with big events.

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Working on a battlecruiser loosely based off the Mars-class and Mercury-class. The general Mechanicus has held pretty close to the Gothic aesthetic, hasn't it? Do they also build Art Deco-style ships, or is that someone else's domain?

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>>57503284
You know, thinking about it, the image I had in my head was almost more like a Khemrian warsphinx with a more ape-like body and no howdah, since the Nightmares are more like living siege weapons and line breakers that are more chucked into things than can be reliably ridden. Maybe I've been thinking about Tomb Kings too much due to Total Warhammer 2.

Any thoughts? I was trying to go for the "oh god why" reaction one would expect from the Crone Eldar, who seem to treat their creative endeavors like mad artists, but I don't know if I hit it right.

>>57506085
General Imperium is Art Deco
Mechanicus is Gothic
Hubworlders are more industrial. Hard and uncompromising-looking.

>>57506191
That is to say ships built by imperial court and navy shipyards, like the one at Luna, are golden and Art Deco. Also survivor civilizations are all at least nominally capable of building and maintaining their own interstellar ships, so Ultramar fields designs that look like something between Greek architecture and Greek ships, Fenris fields their ‘definitely not raiders’, Praetorian ships really play up the age of the sail vibes, Necromundian yachts and galleons are pimped out and their average vessel could be mistaken for something cyberpunkish, etc.

Also, seeing as they are weapons of war made by the Old Ones, shouldn’t the blackstone fortresses be a bit less inert, and a bit more made out of extraspacial thought magic? Are they just an example of what the Old Ones we’re capable of even just working with mater, or do they have some subtle power in the warp that goes unnoticed?

>>57507622
>shouldn’t the blackstone fortresses be a bit less inert, and a bit more made out of extraspacial thought magic

I think they might be, at least to some degree. I remember reading vanilla!Eldrad's "death", he went into one of the fortresses and basically went "okay what the fuck am I looking at". The fortresses seemed to be made of something weird that clearly wasn't necrodermis or wraithbone.

The fortresses are also alive. They were capable of activating on their own, glowed bioluminescent patterns along their passageways (which are described like veins or arteries) when they detected threats, and were advanced enough that Chaos was able to scoop out whatever intelligence was in there and have them be possessed by Slaanesh.

They seem to be alive in this timeline as well, given that the one the Tau have "sings" to them in their dreams.

>>57503252
>>57503240
>>57503284
>>57506140
Definitely disturbing. I will say that the control method for the Nightmares sounds very similar to that of Arco-Flagellants in vanilla!40K, but otherwise I don't think there's much I can add here.

>>57503355
>>57503388
>>57503405
>>57503472
"NAME" could just be "beast master," it would fit in with the mundanity of the other titles provided. Are there any other noteworthy accomplishments that Kaimon can lay claim to?

>>57503472
>>57503284
Shit these are good. Is there moar?

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Bump with related image.

>>57508674
The main issue is there are already Dark Eldar "beastmasters", who supply beasts to the Wych cults for their shows. That said, they don't seem to use their monsters in battles all that much.

But "King of Beastmasters" was too good a pun to pass up.

Kaimon's probably done a bunch of audacious shit. He's an arrogant Slaaneshi asshole who's a bad boss even by Crone standards. Can't think of anything off the top of my head.

>>57509168
That's pretty much all I got. The only other idea I had were "revenants", which are based on the same soulstone tech but are essentially mass raised corpses using stolen souls the Cronedar use as cannon fodder when they are desperate/lazy. Cronedar armies seem to rely on a lot of chaff, although they outnumber their Imperial kin or Astartes they can't bring the numbers the Imperial Guard can, so they seem to rely on cannon fodder (marionettes, manipulated Orks, Lost and Damned) or inflicting terror (horrible monstrosities and other awfulness) to make up for it.

Revenants are basically held together by technosorcery and have little offensive capabilities, but they soak up ammo and cause fear.

Because Cronedar "science" isn't about "why", it's about "why not?"

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>>57508674
>control mechanism

It's a little different. Arco-flagellants are suicide units who are pumped full of chemicals and go full eversor. Nightmares are massive elephantine monsters that are goaded into battle by the fear of pain, then sedated into oblivion once the battle is over so the Crones can get them into a cage without getting smashed. Because Nightmares are actually intended to survive their battles, because otherwise it's a waste of resources.

>>57508466
They might be alive but their intelligence is questionable.

>>57514545
The Webway might be the same way. It's intelligent but it's an entirely different kind of intelligence than mortals are used to, and it probably sees the world in ways that are utterly alien to mortals.

Tzeentch, Malal, Nurgle, and Khorne were made to do things and so had some degree of indepedent thought (not to mentiom growing in power and as individuals since the War in Heaven). The Fortresses and Webway had one job and their minds are tailored for that. Like Demonsreach in the Dresden Files, who only sees the world in terms of whether any entity is going to aid or hinder it in performing it's job.

It's the kind of alien mind that is somewhat reminiscent of the Iron Minds (though the Iron Minds weren't single minded), and humanity needed interpreters for, only on a much bigger scale. The Old Ones, which by the time of the War in Heaven were part immaterial, part material physical gods, could probably talk with them directly.

>>57508674
I'm up for brainstorming more escapades of individual Crones. Especially the big four servants. Right now their achievements consist of Arrotyr being constantly murdercock-blocked, Nimina trying to entice Isha back to Nurgle's garden and giving Isha a PTSD episode (and getting splattered as a result), and the Indigo Crow pulling an Anansi and otherwise just dawdling around. Malys is the only one who has been specifically fucking up other people's stuff. What we have so far is good, but we need more on why exactly the Imperium is so afraid of these guys specifically (as opposed to the Crones in general, as seen in the Phinean Massacre and "these animals").

>>57515428
The implication being that the webway is alive. It can heal slowly or it would have broken down completely a long time ago.

Also it moves. Presumably there is some cause to it's movements if not a pattern and the eldar who get in touch with it on some level can guide through it.

But it shouldn't be smart. It doesn't need to be clever. It just needs to be. Coral reef springs to mind, or mangrove roots.

>>57515749
The Webway in canon is known to actively try to kill any Necrons who try to go through it using Dolmen gates. But then again, our bodies unconsciously hunt down and destroy anything deemed a pathogen in them, and you wouldn't call us sapient just by looking at our immune system.

>>57503355
Could be known as the Nameless. Names are a vulnerability when dealing with deamons.

>>57518422
Though one would think that actually dealing with daemons would be a different person's job, like some kind of priest, seeing as Crone Eldar worship daemons and see them as emissaries of their gods. Other than maybe a daemon beast they wouldn't try to break them, but beseech them. Nameless might work for these guys, or possibly something more ominous that means the same thing.

The people being talked about above would be dealing the likes of Astral Hounds, Khymera, Medusae, Rakasya, Chaos Spawn, and anything the Crone Eldar cook up themselves to add to this atrocious mix.

Is there like some old word for zookeeper? Like keeper of a menagerie? Reusing archaic words is always a go-to in 40k.

Bump

>>57515428
The Taskmaster has been said to love its ships and armies, and Slaanesh wants to get a lot of attention from the Imperium so it gets more warp juice. It would make sense that the Taskmaster would be in support of realspace raiding at least as much as the Dark Eldar, and might even go itself since it may have Slaanesh to resurrect it whenever it falls.

What are the Crone equivalents of anti-armor weapons? Right now it looks like Crone armies are heavily designed around tearing up light masses of infantry and causing fear and terror. They would eat Guard for breakfast. But at the same time they seem to not have a lot of weapons that are cost-effective and can pierce armor (Qlippoth might, but if you're using a Qlippoth to get rid of a Leman Russ you're doing something wrong).

What do they do about tanks, much less Astartes, who have heavy armor and a greatly reduced sense of fear?

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>>57521477
Phalanx seem to be the ghastbone equivalent to terminator armor, and presumably come packing comparably heavy weapons, and Slaughtermen seem like horrible cyborg demon elf commandos that would fight like a horrible mix between all of the assassin temples and the worst of the skitarii.

We haven't actually come up with many of their heavy weapons or tanks. I've been imagining the weapons tend towards warp induced corruption, transmutation, and disintegration, aggressive use of teleporters to displace chunks of enemy vehicles and armored targets, as well as all sorts of horrible possessed munitions and daemon inhabited smart weapons. Their vehicles would lean towards the more fanciful of daemon engine and eldar wraithlord and superheavy models and kingdom death monsters, with war machines that take the shapes of sculpted delights and horrors, with many legs, arms, turrets, blades, sensor arrays, mechanical and organic phalluses, burning eyes and hanging banners, integrated claws and manipulating tentacles, bristling with weapons and clambering hangers on, and of course decorated with the most garish and riotous ornament possible. You could expect a super heavy tank that has the appearance of a many armed, many breasted daemonette-centaur mecha with a massive possessed plasms canon slung under its torso and flamethrowers built into its giant obsidian hoofs, with numerous cackling Crone riders astride its back taking potshots, and sponsons in its flanks launching missiles that turn into giant demonic serpents on impact.

>>57521477
>>57522165
Some of this sounds good, but there’s also the possibility that the drones just don’t do that well against armor, as each faction has its strengths and weaknesses. In the canon HH, it was shown that the Night Lords got their asses kicked by the Ultramarines because terror tactics don’t work on people who can’t feel fear, and their ambushes failed against the highly disciplined and organized smurfs.

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>>57522408
At the same time, the Night Lords have an infamous problem in that their terror tactics don't work against most of the galaxy. Terror is distinctly less effective against Space Marines, Orks, tyranids, Necrons and...dark eldar? Do dark eldar suffer from fear and terror? I get the need for each faction having its strengths and weaknesses, but on the other hand it's hard to see the Crones if a bunch of Space Marines in Land Raiders can hard counter them every time.

That said, I like the idea that the Cronedar’s weakness is a relative lack of armor piercing. It fits from a thematic perspective. Crone Eldar are bullies, like Orks and Dark Eldar, and as a result they excel at fighting foes who are weaker than they are. The difference is that whereas Dark Eldar are hit and run attackers that run away when they hit a pocket of hard resistance the Crones bite back because they're a bunch of methheads, even though they're now out of their element. Additionally, while they are excellent at sowing fear and suffering, aside from the plotters like Lady Malys they often tend to not thing far enough ahead to bring AP weapons.

So far the only things I can think of that have been explicitly described the Crones have access to that can deal with space marines or tanks are Phalanxes, but only on defense, Slaughtermen, depending on exactly what their ammo is, and maybe Meltheads on full blast. Nightmares are an option, but all they can do is slug it out and bolters would make mincemeat out of them. That or get the Fallen, but that would piss the Crones off to no end that they have literally the entire industrial output of Shaa-Dome at their disposal yet can't figure out how to deal with a tank.

It makes sense that Cronedar would have weak points, but more in the way of them not performing well in this area than having no option at all. Heck in this universe the Tau can even into melee, even if they aren't good at it.

>>57522165
>aggressive use of teleporters to displace chunks of enemy vehicles and armored targets
This makes sense. If Craftworlders in vanilla already use D-cannons and D-scythes then it makes sense that Croneworlders use them too. And they have much less compunctions about using weaponry that sends things into the Warp for various reasons.

>with a massive possessed plasma canon slung under its torso
Pyrovore-tier freudian imagery. Damn Slaaneshis.

>>57523585
I think teleporting chunks out of their enemies is fittingly brutal and technologically advanced for the Crones' anti-armor capacity, and they presumably have various deathrays that could get through a heavy tank, but it does make sense that those weapons would be rarer than their fun torture toys. It would also make sense if their response to hardened targets like tanks and bunkers is slipping inside somehow and returning to their favored close combat within, and they could definitely contrive the means technologically.

>>57523585
Pretty sure orks feel fear, there’s mentions of them routing in canon and not just infighting, and they run when the daemons and Nemeroth first appear in the Space Marine game.

Also pretty sure it’s canonical that DE are actually extra cowardly, since they know they’re going straight into Slaanesh’s maw for an eternity of soul rape if they die.

>>57523725
I'm reminded of the Zzap Gun. I would be surprised if they don't try teleporting gribllies into their targets just because.

>>57525284
Wouldn't be surprised if the Crone Eldar tried a variation of the boarding torpedo for when they really want a ship wrecked beyond all hope of recovery: a torpedo with an automated ritual on board, that when it hits its target the ritual activates and summons a daemon. Eventually the ritual runs out of juice and the daemon can't stay in realspace, but until then it can go running around destroying important machinery and killing crew.

Maybe named after some kind of ghost that haunts ships.

Wrote up the bit about Iyanden and their wraithguards from the Notes page and thread 18 so we can add it to the Craftworld page (if it sounds okay, that is).

The other notable feature of Craftworld Iyanden is its use of wraithguards. The Iyanden Infinity Circuit has been noted to be rather odd compared to other Craftworlds. The Infinity Circuits of most Craftworlds are often described as cold, cloying, and lifeless. The dead wish to be left to their rest and although it is possible to coax a spirit out to give guidance to their living descendants spending too much time in the Infinity Circuit makes most spiritseers depressed, grow tired of living, and eventually abandon their physical forms. The Iyanden Infinity Circuit is different. Rather than being composed of eldar that died to various causes and lived a relatively long life, at one point in time the vast majority of Iyanden’s dead were composed of eldar whose lives were cut dramatically short by the arrival of Hive Fleet Kraken.

This created a very different environment in the Infinity Circuit. The newly-arrived Iyanden dead didn’t want to rest, they wanted out, whether it was due to the fact that their home was still being ravaged by tyranids or because they weren’t yet ready to die in the first place. This created a psychic feedback cycle typical of the eldar, whose unstoppable momentum ended up transforming the overall nature of the Infinity Circuit. As a result, the atmosphere of the Iyanden Infinity Circuit is very different from that of other Craftworlds, having a nearly electric atmosphere of anticipation and energy than a tranquil air of finality. As a result, Iyanden spiritseers are somewhat odd even compared to the spiritseers of other Craftworlds. When trying to describe the experience, Iyanden spiritseers have compared communing with the Iyanden Infinity Circuit to sticking your tongue in a light socket.

>>57525421 (cont.)
By the end of rebuilding from the arrival of Hive Fleet Kraken, wraithguards outnumbered the living population by nearly ten to one. Wraithguard body stockpiles were rapidly depleted, and it took bonesingers more than sixty years to make up the deficit. The ratio of living to walking dead has become more reasonable in the years since, but Iyanden still has more active wraithguard than any other Craftworld. Wraithguard actively patrol Iyanden’s streets like British Beefeaters, rather than waiting to be summoned in the Craftworld’s most desperate hour, seemingly stoic and oblivious to the world around them but more than capable of responding should their ire be raised. Post-Kraken, the Iyanden Infinity Circuit is less a resting place for the dead and more a waiting room until the next bonesinger can sing you a new wraithguard body into existence. Drawing comparisons between the wraithguard of Iyanden and the Necrons is ill-advised.

The Eldar of other Craftworlds frown on this practice, saying the dead should be allowed to rest. The Iyanden dead rather pointedly tell the other Craftworlds to stay out of this, saying that they asked for this and they could at least have the decency to let the dead speak for themselves. To them, their lives were stolen from them before their time, and accepting death at this point would feel too much like admitting defeat.

>>57525438
This sounds good, any more on the way?

>>57525438
Sounds damn fine although it does now mean that we need some named wraithguard character. Maybe. Maybe not.

Also Iyanden has a fuck hueg amount of traffic going through it. The reactions of visitors, human and eldar, to the walking dead could be interesting.

>>57525284
I was thinking something similar. In-universe it could be a matter of scholarly debate as to whether the Orks or Crones were the first to use teleporters on the field of battle in such a way, be it Orks making an insane gun out a vicious Crone tactic or the other way around.

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>>57526589
There's always Leithon.

Was thinking that Spiritseer-Admiral Iyanna Arienal had a personal ship called the Wraith's Vengeance as in, a phantom menace given that she is basically a cross between a necromancer and Yi Sun-sin which would be the perfect opportunity to give her her own ghost ship. Though I don't think wraithguard are very good pilots or drivers.

>>57528565
How well can they see?

>>57529092
They're technically blind because they have no eyes, but they can psy-echolocate to sense the world around them. Daemons actually see the world the same way if they haven't fully manifested yet (fluff describes daemons as having trouble physically seeing Tau, but when they do lock onto them the Tau are as dead as anyone else).

This is why in canon they typically have spiritseers to spot targets for them.

>>57530405
So they would be able to function in a society and not, for example, constantly walk into people and walls?

I'm assuming that they don't constantly in everyday life need a trained handler I what I'm getting at.

>>57531481
To some degree probably. They are said to be able to function on their own but spiritseers help.

It would be like being slightly handicapped to the degree that you can't function as well as the average person, but can still make it work enough that you don't need help in day-to-day life (though you do need help in a split-second, fight or flight situation).

One thing that has been mentioned in canon is that the Ynnari are able to make wraithguards who have a better sense of sensation. It could be just deity stuff, but it could also mean there is room for the Eldar to improve wraithguards.

If this is the case, then Iyanden has a strong impetus to make improved wraithguard tech simply because so much of their populace is living that way. Maybe not to the degree of Ynnead in canon but simple quality of life improvements. It's mostly an Iyanden-only thing because they are the only Craftworld that uses a lot of permanently active wraithguard. Other Craftworlds (particularly Alaitoc) dislike it because they claim it incentivizes other Craftworlds to desecrate their dead and resurrect them as wraithguards when it should be an absolute last resort. Iyanden retorts that it’s a simple matter of quality of life and to not do it is simply inhumane.

Or maybe that's a bit too much happy, especially since it took Ynnead to improve quality of life for wraithguard in canon. Was thinking of it as a recent development that gets the Craftworlds bickering among each other that "Craftworld X is doing it wrong. Again".

>>57531701
In Vanilla is there only one shape/make of Wraithguard or does it vary from craftworld to craftworld?

>>57528565
There's also Delgaranor, if the interpretation of him dying and becoming a Wraithguard/Wraithlord is true.

>>57523725
Killing your enemies in a pragmatic, straightforward manner that doesn't allow you to savor their screams of misery and despair? This is starting to sound suspiciously like work.

>>57532717
I'm all for Crones using short range teleportation to pop inside tanks and make them into cans of ground soldier. I'm sure that after several thousand years Imperial tank crews would be pretty tough on the inside as well, but that wouldn't really discourage the Crones.

Arrotyr's forces wouldn't really have this antiarmor deficiency, they seem to be all about superheated weaponry and melting enemies and the hills behind them with deathrays, and if that fails attacking with demonic weapons of the Old Empire to carve up survivors.

>>57532687
WraithLORDS are said to differ between Craftworlds, Iyanden's bonus is just that they are tankier. Wraithguard in this timeline were suggested to be reverse engineered from pre-Fall robots so instead of being extra sets of hands they can serve as spare bodies so it makes sense that there would be some changes.

The exact nature of Wraithsight has also changed from edition to edition. It used to be that Wraithguard would just veg out if a Spiritseer wasn't nearby. Now it's just they have trouble seeing fast moving targets and I think at least some sensation loss due to basically being a full body prosthetic.

It could also be a matter of familiarity. Most wraithguard in canon are ripped out of the IC, stuffed in a shell, and told to go kill things despite still trying to figure out how this riot of colors corresponds to realspace. Iyanden wraithguard have been in their bodies for much longer and have learned how to compensate.

On the one hand, it makes sense that Iyanden would have buffed wraithguard, because Iyanden is the wraithguard Craftworld. On the other, it probably wouldn't be a good idea to completely negate the sadder aspects of wraithguards or make spiritseers superfluous, since their "eldar necromancer" motif is awesome.

Can wraithguard hold place in the running of the Craftworld?

>>57533275
>>57534870
Imo, Wraithguard should likely have worse reaction times than the Tau without a Spiritseer to guide them. Iyanden Wraithguard/Lords might be more powerful, and more experienced, but otherwise they would be hampered by all the usual issues that come with being stuck in a artificial body with senses that are pretty alien for Eldar who haven't been a Seer at some point. Are there canon examples that show what goes on in a Wraithguard's mind when they're awake? I'm thinking that they seem slow and dull without something very straightforward to focus on, a quality which wouldn't make them very fit for leadership of normal Eldar on a Craftworld.

>>57536625
>Imo, Wraithguard should likely have worse reaction times than the Tau without a Spiritseer to guide them. Iyanden Wraithguard/Lords might be more powerful, and more experienced, but otherwise they would be hampered by all the usual issues that come with being stuck in a artificial body with senses that are pretty alien for Eldar who haven't been a Seer at some point.

Makes sense. Normally slow and sluggish, but they hit like a truck. One of the Horus Heresy books with Fulgrim describes the Wraithguard as fast, but other say they are slow by eldar standards. They might be more like Sloth from Full Metal Alchemist, mostly slow with brief bursts of power when they find you.

>Are there canon examples that show what goes on in a Wraithguard's mind when they're awake? I'm thinking that they seem slow and dull without something very straightforward to focus on, a quality which wouldn't make them very fit for leadership of normal Eldar on a Craftworld.

I don't think there are. Just a few blurbs and some stuff that is non-canon. The main part is how they are blind and see the world with their psychic senses, which is typically very disorienting.

GW tend to avoid describing the galaxy from the perspective of the non-human races in order to avoid making them look sympathetic. Path of the Eldar and a few Tau books being the notable exceptions. This doesn't mean much for the Orks and tyranids, but it makes figuring out how the Tau and Eldar work maddening.

I think part of it is the Wraithguard just plain don't want to be around in the first place. They'd rather be back in the Infinity Circuit. So they tend to space out without someone to prod them.

>>57537667 (cont.)
That said, I agree that it's probably not a good idea to have them on the ball enough that they can be on a seer council. Otherwise it raises the question of why the eldar don't go entirely to a post-organic necrocracy beyond squeamishness. I mean, they are basically eldar dreadnaughts. Iyanden wraithguard are maybe a little better, because they're more experienced and more interested in being alive, the shells have slight improvements due to interests in quality of life and the fact that bonesingers have been building them like crazy, but they still tend to do menial stuff like patrol. It's a half-life to be sure, but half a life is better than no life.

Another thing to consider is Eldrad's plan B in the case of his death is to come back as a wraithseer. Some of the Starchild Prophecies mention him dying but he figures coming back as a wraithseer is enough of a loophole to get around it as he refuses to die before his great work is finished. That said, fluff explicitly says wraithseers do not suffer the problems that wraithguards do, specifically they "function in death as they did in life" and are "able to perceive the world with greater clarity without the need for Spiritseers", to the point that they can act as a spiritseer for a group of wraithguard, but that is likely because they were all seers in life and therefore they know how to handle psychic sense.

Bump.

The dead are supposed to be the things in the IC that run all of the "automated" things. They must be doing a lot more by hand now.

Speaking of wraith constructs, here's a potential suggestion. In canon the eldar have the Wraithblades, which are absolutely nuts wraithguard who act like Chaos Dreadnoughts, and have to be kept physically separated from other wraithguard because otherwise they infect them with their rage.

Now the question exists why the hell do the eldar put up with them in the first place? Making a wraithguard that has the potential to infect all the other wraithguards seems crazy.
If you want a melee weapon it almost sounds better to give a regular wraithguard a sword and tell them to start chopping, because at least they're not berserkers and they'll listen when you tell them to stop. Hell even an exarch has some discipline. Not to mention if just being near them is enough to corrupt regular wraithguard, what does that mean for the Infinity Circuit. Do the eldar just keep wraithblades spirit stones in a secret box? One could always argue that it is out of desperation, but if it wasn't for being said wraithblades are a Craftworlder construct, they'd almost seem like they come from the Dark Eldar.

And here's the thing. Also in canon, Asdrubael Vect was said to have completely depopulated a small isolated Craftworld (so about Kaelor size). The Craftworld had been isolated since the Fall and had no idea of the state of the galaxy, and Vect and the Dark Eldar approached them claiming they were surviving remnants of the Pre-Fall empire that weren't shitty and the planet got...culturally exchanged. It was so bad the Harlequins had to cover it up for fear the other Craftworlds would go to war with the Dark Eldar over it (which again raises the question of why the Craftworlders put up with the Dark Eldar's shit). Vect used the Craftworld's population to make his own personal wraithguard army.

>>57542218
So what if in this timeline the wraithblades aren't a Craftworlder construction but Vect's personal ghost warrior army? Vect depopulates the Craftworld, takes all of the souls in it, and basically tortured them until they're at their wits end (hey, Dark Eldar, if you expected anything different I'd be surprised). The souls are basically kept in this state of frothing pain and madness and then given a pair of melee weapons and sicced on the enemy. It's yet another one of Vect's ways of enforcing power in Commorragh and getting rid of particularly troublesome Kabals. Compared to normal wraithguard these things are glass cannons because all they can do is kill, but by Dark Eldar standards they're heavily armored despite dual-wielding melee weapons.

>>57542127
That's a good point. And Iyanden is a big Craftworld (the biggest both in canon and here). That could prove to be really problematic.

Ironically looking in the fluff Infinity Circuits are said to not exist until M33. If that's the case what the the eldar do for three thousand years, float in space on dead hunks of wraithbone and let Slaanesh nom them? But then again the eldar timeline in official fluff is completely screwed up and makes no sense anyway and it got thrown out the window or heavily modified to make a modicum of sense in this timeline (see: Harlequins).

>>57524226
How does the orks' sense of fear work? In the fluff it's made very clear that they don't have much of a fear of death, but at the same time in canon in addition to the aforementioned instances they show fear of the Luna Wolves, Flesh Tearers, Farsight, and Commissar Yarrick, to the point that the black and white of the Goffs is said to have been inspired by the curbstomping the Luna Wolves gave them.

Is it just a different type of fear than humans would describe it? I'd say it's survival instinct, but that crosses over into "fear of death" real quickly.

>>57542593
Ork fear could be the prospect of getting killed so hard that they would be dead before they can put up a good fight

>>57542593
They are compelled to seek victory. If victory is impossible they regroup and try something else. It's not retreat, it's a tactical withdrawal.

>>57542218
Makes you wonder if Vect has a wraithbody for himself in case of the unthinkable happening

>>57543670
>Vect ended up using some of the secrets he extracted during the Cthonian raid to enhance his wraithbody with Man of Gold psychic bio-android tech
well that's certainly a tantalizing possible answer for what he got out of it.

>>57544565
I still like the idea that he got the greatest of all weapons; love.

>>57544584
Given that he met Lady Malys on the rading of the ringworld that's actually true.

is there complete info on what the former legions and current chapters operate in this setting? tactics and wargear?

all i know is that the Death Guard remained a legion while everyone else broke up.

>>57545241
A little bit on the Notes page, scattered elsewhere. Not a lot so for example we don't know if a lot of chapters perform the rituals with a high dropout rate (looking at you Vlka Fenryka, Blood Angels, Black Templars, and the like). All that's generally known is the rule of thumb is geneseed isn't the crippling issue it once was (it comes in barrels for Throne's sake, bigger issue is compatibility) and the general grim aspects are dialed way down (so no Chapters making children knife-fight to the death in general).

Most of what has been written has focused on the eighteen original legions and a few of their most famous descendants (Lamenters, Carcharodons, Minotaurs, Black Templar, Black Legion). Even then it's mostly what they do as opposed to chapter organization.

>>57545241
Core group of Death Guard built around Typhus the Pilgrim and his Black Templars operate as a Legion more or less.

Most of the other Legions brok down into chapters in accordance with Guilliman's Codex. Most have formed into something not unlike Vanilla but with greater variation between chapters based on local tradition and only takign the Codex as a book of helpful advice to dip into.

There is procedure in place for the rebuilding of the Legions in case of shit getting realer than usual penned by Dorn called something like "the rebuilding of The Wall".

Guilliman lived longer in this AU and so was also around to keep updating his Big Book of War. He also unashamedly took the best ideas from the other military leaders and stuck them in the book. Hence why a shit load of chapters that have nothing to do with the Dark Angels are organized like Frajic knightly orders.

Wargear is slightly better on average than in Vanilla. Jetbikes are still a thing, though expensive. Mostly the chapters get whatever their homeworld makes best or what can be traded for with neighbours.

Space Mariens are way closer to the Imperial Guard than in Vanilla and are more or less subservient to it's higher officers. They are the elite branch of super-soldiers but soldiers never the less. Exceptions for the Iron Hands and their progeny who are Skitarii and Night Lords who Do Not Play Well With Others and so opperate independently.

This is all on the 1d4chan, most of it in the Imperial Forces though some spread in other places.

>>57533275
Would a wraithguard be able to be a bonesinger?

Have there ever been renegade Gene-Stealer cults?

>>57546743
I don't think there are any examples in canon. It depends on how wraithguards work, how bonesinging works, and how much psychic power souls have freely available when they are put in wraithguard.

Also thread is archived.
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/57452096/

>>57547361
I think not. Chaos resistant hiveminds would be OP as fuck

>>57545120
It's a distinct possibility that Ceggers done goofed a little with that "hilarious" note.

>>57532953
Arrotyr the tank buster sounds like a good idea. He has the most pre-Fall military tech and it gives him a more defined motif in combat.

>>57543670
He'd probably just regenerate from a Haemonculus or, more likely, Bile. Bile wouldn't dare screw him over because Vect keeps him funded and protected from unfriendly Haemonculi covens (and uses Bile's presence to antagonize them into doing work, but Vect is skilled at the art of killing multiple birds with a single stone).

Plus there is the ever looming threat of Malys over everyone's head. If Vect dies, whoever killed him and any daemon that wants his soul better watch out. Although their relationship has been on-again, off-again and there were periods where Malys would have paid to see Vect dead, that is not always the case. And if Vect dies, there's nothing stopping Malys from violently taking over Commorragh, especially if the usurper is still trying to consolidate power.

His love life may be his hobby, but Vect is politically skilled enough to make the very presence of his waifu a veiled threat.

Wait a minute...
>Stole Men of Gold data from Cthonia
>Employs Fabius Bile

Oh shit.

>>57550388
It's doubtful that they found anything useful in the ringworld. Thousands of years of scavengers and the A.I. going Skynet: Event Horizon probably made Oscar being in working ordered would be a miracle.

Also Ceggers leaving a stupid message in a safe in a maximum security armoury with the door still Apparently locked Is a prank that needs to happen as it makes Ceggers more of a lovable asshole who may or may not have DaoT WMDs.

>>57551894
Glad people liked my off the cuff suggestion, I figured we needed to spread the universe’s black comedy around.

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I visited Iyanden in my youth, the first visit is a memory that stands out more than most and I still remember it vividly despite the many years and strange things seen since in service to Her Majesties Inquisition. My life up until that point had been a small one; I was young, only having past the age of majority a year prior and having spent most of that time in the Eldar Enclaves of Corvus Majoris hives. The journey was my first interstellar voyage, indeed my first trip out of a gravity well and despite my initial excitement the three month voyage in the “economy deck” proved to be less than pleasant. My dear father told me that under ideal circumstances we would have travelled via the webway but for the scarcity of guides, it would be many years later I would understand the events that were taking up their attention at that time.

But that is another and someone else’s story.

It was we relief that I first stepped foot on the craftworld that my mother and father had themselves grown up on and it was a splendid sight. Spires that curved gracefully out of the ground, thick as a dozen scrumball pitches that arched overhead and forked like the limbs of some impossibly vast tree of vibrant hue and between those limbs a sheet of diamond laced with silversteel in geometric and pleasing patterns as in the distance limbs became intertwined with another, and the mind scarcely able to grasp the scale. Above the limbs met in the form of great dome through which the stars could not be seen for the clouds that gathered there and I was told later was the abode of the fabled Swooping Hawks and the lovely stardancers who sang such haunting and sad hymns to our dead gods.

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>>57553712
I walked in a daze from the space port, my parents unconcerned with my safety in this place, and found myself leaning on a rail overlooking what I assumed would be some sort of sports arena or parkland only to find myself above a gaping void miles deep and a city made tiny by distance. It was then that I realized the bustling metropolis I had been wandering through was a balcony of tourist shops selling trinkets to backwater rubes with stars in their eyes and pockets full of rare earths, myself very much counted among that number.

I couldn’t grasp the scale of it, the grandeur of it. Sounds of billions of my kind going about their business at once a deafening roar and a persistent gentle whisper. The hive of Awauwell Principa I had spent my life and thought massive beyond compare was but a foothill to this mountain. I couldn’t guess what the population would be. And then I remembered the view from the ship on approach and looked up into the apex of the dome where a veritable fleet of ships hung against the fathomless speckled black. This was just one dome. I had seen many. A tear ran down my cheek as I gazed in awe and the legacy of my people truly, for the first time, sank in. And the knowledge of old history lessons sank in. This would be the least of our accomplishments compared to the great and terrible things before The Fall. How like gods we must have been, how my people must have fallen.

But there were more than just my people here. There were throngs of humans, many wearing garb of navy men, Void Born tall as eldar and pale as ghosts, clusters of tau scurrying hastily from one undoubtedly important task to another, a glittering demiurg accompanied by what looked like a large clockwork spider and other thing, other people, I had seen only in curiosity books and some utterly alien.

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>>57553726
And then I saw them. The Dead Walking, the Wraithguard. They stood head and shoulders above the crowd like icebergs in a careless sea, each holding with casual and well-practiced ease a weapon that could cripple a tank and there were so many of them. How serene they looked, how timeless and wise beyond mortal years. In death they still served and were glad to serve, on Iyanden the dead lived among the living and would suffer no harm to them. On Iyanden the dead walked and offered their hard won wisdom freely to all who would listen, Death was the ultimate leveller and none in it’s embrace was high and mighty but also none were low and unloved.

I was young in those days, young and brash and not particularly wise. There were other things I wanted to do on this visit more than listen to the wisest of our elders. I wanted to see the great shipyards where the fleets were built and maintained, I wanted to watch the Aspect Warriors hone their skills, I wanted to witness a Harlequin performance and relive a day from legend and, being very young, I wanted to visit a Temple of Isha and partake in a ritual with a Disciple of the All-Mother. In time my blood would cool with age and I would become less of an idiot, despite what several of my colleagues will claim to the contrary. In time I again visited fair and grand Iyanden and often I would talk to the dead. They were, for the most part, happy to share their stories and their wisdom and I have in the many years since those carefree days profited greatly from their experiences. Certainly were it not for their advice I would probably have been killed several times in my duties by now.

When I die, and if I may, I would like to have my soul taken to wondrous Iyanden that I might walk again in death and share what I have learned with young fools that they might live to grow into less foolish ways.

>Any good?

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>>57553523
Love can change the world. Through the brutal mass murder of billions, if not trillions of individuals by a pair of psychotic rape-elves.

>>57551894
If anything, the promise of the little bit of DaoT information in the form of half-burned schematics might be enough for Vect to have originally bribed Bile. They may be essentially useless without the machinery, but there may be enough to give Bile some idea of where to go.

>How serene they looked, how timeless and wise beyond mortal years. In death they still served and were glad to serve, on Iyanden the dead lived among the living and would suffer no harm to them.
This is perfect Iyanden wraithguard. They don't rush from place to place like the living. They stand like statues, silent yet very aware of what is going on around them (at least in terms of hearing). They don't need to keep themselves busy to validate their existence. They're just happy to be alive.

Tis good.

>>57553795
Very good, and I would love to see more Eldar perspective piece, you captured the insularity, timelessness, grandeur, and growing cosmopolitanism of the craftworlds in a really cool way.
>>57554833
I'm kinda reminded of the angels from Kill Six Billion Demons, if they were more like their ideal past state and not their corrupt form

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>>57542127
It could be that it's not all of the IC is in wraithguard bodies, just more than other Craftworlds. If everyone was out of the Infinity Circuit, we would have hundreds of trillions of wraithguard running around, Iyanden being the biggest of the Craftworlds and having a living population of 10-100 trillion pre-Kraken based on our estimates. You have enough cycling between the Infinity Circuit and wraithguard bodies that the circuit is weird, and a long line of pissed off space elf souls waiting in line for their turn in a wraithguard body.

>>57518422
>>57519234
Some kind of "warden" might work. Both in the sense of a "game warden" in reference to the overall self-claimed aristocratic feel of the Crones and "warden" as in someone who runs a prison, for obvious reasons. But it's not obvious enough. Beastmaster would have been perfect if the Dark Eldar didn't already use that.

Most of the stuff so far in this thread is ready to go on 1d4chan with the exception of figuring out what to call the Crones who wrangle and create monsters.

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>>57553795
Very nicely done. Its tone felt very fitting, especially due to how well it used the other elements of Craftworld Iyanden alongside the Wraithguard themselves. Is there a title in mind for this? If not, I propose "The Dead Walking" for it.

>>57557839
Flesh warden? It's appropriately edgy for the Croneldar.

>>57558813
The Dead Walking sounds great

>>57555250
Keep in mind that it's only been a few eldar generations since The Fall

>>57554833
I makes you wonder what the requirements of the Wraithguard are.

They don't eat or drink so whatever they get paid isn't going on sustenance. They don’t seem to sleep so they don’t need a bed. They don’t suffer from the elements unless it’s raining rocks or some extreme shit. They may require the occasional bit of repair or maintenance work but they are built for durability so that's not often

Their lives are unhurried because they have literally nothing left to hurry for. They are done. They have lived and they have died and they are so fucking done with scurrying around like they are late for an appointment all the time.

If they don’t get to work on time what can anyone do to them? Kick them out of their apartment that they don’t use? Withdraw their wages that they don’t need? Imprison a creature that can stand still as a statue for months at a time and not even start to get bored?

On the other hand why would they not patrol the craftworld? They don’t get bored or tired anymore so that’s not any sort of deciding factor one way or the other and they chose to come out of “retirement” for the good of the craftworld in the first place so a sense of duty must be a driving force for them. Also maybe curiosity.

>>57560874
But enough that there would have been entire turnover of the population, pre-Fall weirdos excluded.

>>57562807
My point is that the number of wriathguard, even if they woke up everything in the Infinity Circuit, might "only" be three or four times the number of currently living eldar.

It's still a fuck load.

Does the population number for Iyanden include just the living or the living and the walking dead?

>>57563722
You mean the trillions number? That was pre-Kraken, before the Hive Fleets hit and Iyanden was doing its Sakoku Japan impression and the wraithguard weren't walking around all the time.

>>57561760
They have to get power from somewhere, but that could just as easily be the psychic backdrop of the Infinity Circuit.

Though most Craftworlds don't seem to keep large numbers of wraithguard active. The souls normally have to be cajoled out of the Infinity Circuit kicking and screaming. The Eldar also typically hate doing this because they consider it desecration of the dead. Wraithguard who are active and are out doing things more complex than menial stuff, like Leithon, possibly Delgaranor if we decide he ended up one, and Eldrad in the event he dies (as well as spiritseers in general) are rare.

>>57558813
Flesh warden sounds sufficiently edgy.

>>57553523
It was a stupidly nice image considering all the shit Vect and Malys would have had to wade through to get to it.

>>57563896
Given that they "see" using the warp its possible that they are powered by skimming the surface of the warp or happy thpughts.

>>57459124
>>57459136

makes you wonder what the ever loving fuck the Tau thought when they first saw a deamon horde.

Put the new stuff up on the 1d4chan page.

Went with "Flesh Wardens" for now since it seems to be sufficiently edgy. We can always change it later if it doesn't sound good.

Changed one thing in "New Neighbors" from Por Atha to El'Atha, following Tau naming customs. Hopefully didn't mess up some hilarious pun.

The debacle of Lilarsus was put on the Notes page for now, since there was some talk about it needing to be rewritten or expanded.

Could the ordo chronos actually time travel in this AU?

I seem to sort of remember someone saying something about Tindalos Hounds seeing you if you do and *frumple* which would mean it's possible just prohibitively hazardous.

I was thinking about ways to add a little more dark to the Imperial side of the universe.

It’s been mentioned before that in this timeline, commissars and Guard commanders are on average more like Gaunt or Creed in terms of disposition than the BLAM-happy commissars and the “life is cheap” Guard commanders of canon. Key word is average. BLAM-happy commissars and general rippers still exist, the only difference is that there are fewer of them than in canon and the Imperium cares enough to give them a military tribunal and/or BLAMing when/if they get wind of their actions. That’s cold comfort to all of the people that died under their incompetence or cruelty.

As a comparison, look at how a nobledark Inquisitor is supposed to act, then look at someone like Fyodor Karamazov. Even in a universe where people at their core tend to be good, doesn’t mean everyone is that way.

Although the Emperor and Isha might disapprove of such behaviors, they have a lot on their plate and can’t be everywhere. As a point of comparison, Kaelor, a Craftworld of millions, has been on Isha’s “to do list” for somewhere between two and three millennia, and she still hasn’t had time to pencil it in. That’s how busy they are. It took Iyanden nearly starting a war with the Tau Empire to get the Emperor and Isha to drop everything and intervene.

As a result, I was thinking of porting someone like Commander Chenkov into Nobledark mostly unaltered, sort of like how Karamazov is a grimdark Inquisitor ported into a nobledark world. Chenkov may not be able to get away with the extremes he did in canon, since at some point even the Imperium would take notice, but by the time anyone with the power to stop him found out that his reputation as a butcher was more than just rumor what he had done numerous people had died for little reason.

>>57568633
I think it was kept deliberately vague on purpose. The Ordo's purpose was to investigate time disruptions and Warp shenanigans involving the fabric of space time. Possibly to prevent someone like Chaos or Szarekh from ret-goning the Imperium. Then they disappeared, and they seem to pop in and out occasionally.

Time travel is always possible via the Warp, but I think it's said in canon that Warp currents that actually go back in time are much rarer.

Orikan is capable of using some kind of time travel bullshit to give him a do-over when he fucks up, but it's limited and making too big of a change tends to make things worse (so making sure your pyramid doesn't kill you A-OK, retcon the destruction of a Tomb World by Space Marines and it gets invaded by Brain Boyz instead). In canon it's said he's one of the few, possibly the only Chronomancer who knows enough about time to actually travel backwards, which in this timeline may or may not be due to a certain golden-abbed energy being. It was suggested putting limits on his time travel to not make him too bullshit, but not too much because time travel is a key part of his character.

>>57568758
There is also the trying to keep the parts of the Imperium as autonomous as possible.

>>57568758
Chenkov would in this timeline not be Valhallen. Valhalla isn't a snowball hiveworld, it's an agri-world with presumably a much lower population.

Vostroyan is the "Russian" world. It's also rumoured to be a recruitment world for Night Lords. Chenkov might be from there but if he remains the same as he is in Vanilla then he is living on borrowed time. The Night Lords can get "funny" about people in the Imperium who are not them acting monsterous and they always need new training excercises for the fresh recruits.

Which is not to say that he isn't alive and active and unrepentantly awful as of 999M41, just that he won't live much past 000M42 once the stories get back home and get confirmed.

Give the less Grimderp how do Night Lords recruit?

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Did a write-up of the Hrud and Qah with some expansion. Some of it is a revamp of stuff on the Notes page, thought it would be a good thing to get off the Notes page especially since the Hrud are the textbook example of Xenos Independens. Hopefully this fixes the Iron Warrior continuity issue. Didn't add too much on stuff that is essentially same as in canon (masstribe, migration). Maybe that is a mistake. Any thoughts would be welcome.

https://pastebin.com/K0870S2G

>>57571251
Can't speak for present day, but Curze went around specifically looking for children who lived awful lives in broken regimes, much like he did. The idea was that they would know perfectly the need for law and order and how it must be maintained by any means necessary.

This bit him in the ass during the War of the Beast, where the ones who were truly broken and joined to get their jollies off turned. Night Lords along with Dark Angels, Imperial Fists, and Vlka Fenryka were the legions with some of the biggest traitor problems. There's a big chunk of traitors who are Slaaneshi Night Lords. The modern Night Lords and their descendants really hate their traitorous kin with zeal, seeing them as repesenting everything Curze said they shouldn't be.

>>57572381
It looks good and should definately go on the 1d4chan

Only quibble, and it is a small one, is that the Hrud are capable of folding space as much as they are about just changing shape.

>>57572381
>goth ninja hrud
WHO DID THIS

>>57572535
>>57571251
I think a good way for 999M41 NLs and friends to recruit would be mind wiping deathrow inmates. Granted that they were going to die they wouod not be bothered if it fucked up.

>>57568758
>>57570287
The only quibble is that part of the basis of this universe is trying to apply more reason and realism to the 40k universe (within its limits of course, we still have magic space knights and space demons from space hell). So in that regard, Chenkov doesn't fit in as well because his tactics are classic GW grimderp: they try to portray him as a brutal but effective commander who throws bodies at his problems until they go away, whereas in real life human wave tactics will usually just leave you with a pile of your own men's corpses, as the Soviets and Japanese found out in WWII. Even effective uses of overwhelming manpower like Grant in the US Civil War and China in the Korean War required careful tactical application: the Chinese were very effective at infiltration and encirclement of NATO positions before launching their assaults, and Grant, as uncreative as he was, still tried to maneuver so that he could use the bulk of his forces to break through the weakest parts Lee's lines.

All this stems from the fact that GW writers either don't care or know about military tactics or disregard them for the sake of the grimdark atmosphere, which, to be fair, is a legitimate creative choice but one we are explicitly rejecting in this universe. That's not to say Chenkov can't exist in some form here; in an empire of a million worlds, there are more bad officers than the Administratum can count just by sheer virtue of numbers. But given the Imperium's more reasonable attitudes and the increased scariness of enemy factions, by the Darwinism of the battlefield I can't see Chenkov making it much farther than Lieutenant or maybe Captain before getting killed or blammed, much less getting to Commander and having a decades-long career to build up his reputation as a butcher. Even the Kriegers, the grimmest part of our universe, would object to his tactics: they don't care about casualties, but they also don't condone waste or inefficiency.

>>57576619
(cont.)

So Chenkov in our AU is probably a particularly bad Captain who was recently promoted and despised by his troops (think Captain McGraw from Generation Kill). He got to where his is probably by luck; maybe the previous Captain got sniped, and the Commissar overseeing the regiment also died before he could BLAM Chenkov. However, if there's one constant in this AU, it's that luck doesn't last long, so Chekov is probably on his way out, whether by Ork choppa or military tribunal.

>>57576760
He could have a "catachan accident" .

>>57575949
Only quibble is that's what turned the canon Nigh Lords into lunatics. They were already borderline lunatics when they were recruiting from Terra's prison underhives. Then they started recruiting from Nostroman supermax prisons and any sense of morality and order flew out the window. The issue with recruiting from prisons is you are getting a high rate of genuine lunatics. The kind that don't listen to their superior officer and care more about killing, raping, looting, and pillaging than deliberate terror tactics. On the other hand they would be the least likely to balk at the things the Night Lords are required to do.

>>57576760
Agreed. While it's a good idea to use him as an example of bad Imperial officers, there's a limit to how far he could get before he gets BLAMed. He might be able to get away with some attritional tactics. Stuff like making a wall out of people's bodies is straight out. And by 999.M41 there are probably people getting very interested in putting him on military trial if he isn't there already. He might have gotten away with earlier schenanigans if the commissar with him wouldn't report it and his troops were too intimidated to give more than rumors. Still, someone would find out eventually.

>>57575949
>>57577114
We've said that the NL are kept on the borders of the Imperium or behind enemy lines away from population centers, essentially on permanent Penitent Crusade, so I could see them recruiting from orphans left by raids or from human slaves liberated from xenos/Chaos. As a plus those recruits would probably be pretty eager for revenge and be intimately familiar with by the galaxy needs law and order imposed by any means necessary.

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>>57577114
>>57577274
If the deviant behavior is learned rather than caused by a deformed brain then scrubbing it clean might work so long as it's actually destroyed and not just half arsed papered over. Pic related.

Did the Vanilla NLs mind wipe people?

It could be that Chenkov is a commander in the Severite Dominiate or one of Inquisitor Karamazov's commanders.

>>57577274
This might work. It would require extensive testing to make sure no one is a potential corrupted sleeper agent, but anyone who can survive in one piece has to be tough/resistant to corruption. In addition, it also gives them a good reason to hate Chaos. To them Chaos/Xenos Horribilis is the force it took their families and made their lives hell. The Imperium gave them the first breath of fresh air in years. They would also be much more willing to adopt Night Lord tactics.

The only issue is possible corruption. Of course, there are always plenty of orphans in the darkness of the far future. Heck, CREED in canon was an orphan found after a Chaos Raid. If there weren't any changes to his backstory, Creed could have ended up a Night Lord.

>>57577521
It's an open question if the canon Imperium is even capable of distinguishing genetic problems from learned behavior. It's made clear in canon that people have no idea what mental disorders are. Perturabo was clearly bipolar (to the point of being described by an old term used to refer to bipolar individuals) and yet no one figured it out, and in one of the novels (either Cain, Gaunt, or Last Chancers) there is an individual who is clearly suffering from OCD or schizophrenia (he claims to be hearing voices, but there's no sign of Chaos corruption) and everyone around him can't figure out what's going on and think it's some unknown form of daemonic possession (likely intentional by the author to show how regressive the Imperium is). In canon people can't conceive of the idea of someone acting strange without daemons or genestealers being involved. And even if they did know they wouldn't care or consider it divine punishment for some form of heresy.

>Did the Vanilla NLs mind wipe people?
Canon has been really vague on how much space marines are mindwiped. In some cases it's complete erasure, in others it's not.

So what is the ratio of living to walking dead on Iyanden?

Natives, not tourists.

Who is leader of the Night Lords now?

Also what are the Excorcists like?

>>57582329
Nothing has been said about the modern Night Lords beyond "on permanent penitent crusade in all but name, Munitorum doesn't like them and they tend not to get the best supplies due to their behavior".

Exorcists are Thousand Sons descendants. Trying to remember if anything more was said about them.

>>57580864
After Kraken the wraithguard-to-living ratio was 10:1. We've never really agreed on the population of Iyanden but the estimates tend to be between 10 to 100 trillion, with the other four big Craftworlds (Ulthwe, Saim-Hann, Biel-Tan, and Alaitoc) being in the "low" trillions (like single digit). Closer to the lower end seems more likely. Imperial Eldar as a whole are said to number "about" 100 trillion all together, compared to the low quadrillions of humanity.

Assuming 1 trillion Iyanden eldar were left after Kraken, and going by the rate of increase for Imperial Eldar from M30 to M41, there would be only 1.34 trillion eldar on Iyanden in 999.M41.

However, there are two caveats to this. Assuming the population growth rate is constant (as in, no "glad we're not eaten by tyranids sex" leading to a post war baby boom), and immigration. Iyanden set up the most enclaves out of any Craftworld. There might be a huge migration back to Iyanden to support family members and such. Iyanden's still nowhere near it's glory days though (I think the holder of the title for "most populous Craftworld" is actually Biel-Tan now, if I remember correctly).

>>57582329
the Carcharodons might be a descendant chapter of theirs, which leads to the interesting image of Kruze or one of his successors deciding to at least somewhat adopt Guilliman's big book of war, probably much to the legion's chagrin.

>>57583339
I think the Carcharodons are said to be a confirmed descendant chapter of theirs in Nobledark. I think they were a fleet-based chapter until they found the carcass of the Nicor, or am I remembering things wrong?

Also, a quick question. How are the Securitas organized in this timeline? In canon they have ranks like Abbess, Canoness, convent, etc., which I assume would not go down well because the Sisters aren't a religious organization (Oscar's Rule 4), despite many of their members being highly religious (even then they aren't all the same religion).

Did we ever come up with a title for the four chosen champions of the Chaos Gods? As in, Arrotyr, Nimina, the Crow, and the Taskmaster? Their counterparts in canon seem to form a pretty clear quadrumvirate, but as a group they don't seem to have a name we could use (besides maybe "Champions of the Gods").

>>57572535
Also, did we ever decide to do anything with Skyrar and the Dark Wolves? Skyrar was said to be a big deal during the War of the Beast, Space Wolves had the second biggest number of traitors after Dark Angels and Skyrar was high up enough in the hierarchy that "Russ would have once called him brother".

>>57585199 (cont.)
Forgot to ask, on a related note, is the Steward and Malys' duel during the 1st Black Crusade still canon? The one where the two fought, the Steward just barely managed to kill her, and then when the Crusade was over he got a taunting message from the supposed-to-be-dead Cronedar bitch along the lines of "That was fun, we should do it again some time sweetheart" to show how the Imperium knows only the Steward is a match for her one on one comes from? I remember we said a hard no on the Emperor preventing a repeat performance of Malys cheating death by obliterating Malys' soul with mind bullets, but is the rest of it canon?

>>57584263
You are correct about the Carcharodons and the Nicor. They are currently using the Nicor as a mobile base/strategic asset, aka it's parked above the heads of the Imperium's enemies in the galactic south as a constant threat to their lives while providing safe haven to the Space Marines and other Imperial forces that need backup.

On the Adepta Securitas, they seem to mainly be used as small squads in the manner of Space!Seal Team Six or Halo Spartans, but from what we've seen so far, do belong to separate Orders with differing methodologies like in canon. Presumably the times when they used en masse is rare, and we never really got into the whole ranking/organization system discussion. Excessive religious terminology probably would be problematic in the eyes of the Emperor, maybe something like "Prioris Wing" and "Sanctorum Wing" could replace their respective canon convent counterparts? Interestingly, the Lexicanum page for the Adepta Sororitas offers some alternatives to convents, breaking down major orders into Orders, Preceptory, Commandery, and Missions, which for the most part don't share the same sort of religious connotations. And the Canoness part could be removed from "Canoness Superior," "Canoness Preceptor," and "Canoness Commander," without really losing their definitions.

Also the Sisters of Battle are basically the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Securitas if IIRC. Total numbers weren't established, neither was how widespread they are in the Imperial Army/Guard.

>>57585199
It seems to be a 'no' for both of these questions.

>>57585566
On the Notes and the Draft pages for the Black Crusades the fight between Malys and Oscar isn't mentioned. Was it in a story? Can't find it, but due to the vagueness of the write-ups it could probably be worked in if it fits.

>>57586794
I'm definitely down to read a duel between Malys and Oscar in what would become the heroic age of the Imperium if someone writes it. I remember there was a story where Malys easily killed some people, but the fighting wasn't particularly even or important. It would be cool to see someone use that burning telekinetic force sword we tossed around for the Steward's flaming sword.

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>>57572381
Good shit

Are the AdMech still as augment happt?

>>57585566
I have never seen this battle. I really want to.

>>57586794
I'd say with the acquisition of the Nicor the Carcharodons have usurped the Night Lords ad the prominent Curze chapter.

>>57586794
It isn't. As one of the guys who typically gets stuff archived on the Notes page, I wanted to check before I put it in there.

The original idea was specifically
>This would be at the time of Malys' first death, either before or during the first Black Crusade. At that time the Steward thinks Malys is just some two-bit warlord who managed to get the various factions of Chaos to stop fighting for once. Next thing he knows he's fighting a psychotic, malicious she-Eldar who seems to have caffeine for blood and is so powerful and vicious even he has trouble keeping up. Manages to eventually put Malys down after a brutal fight and thinks that's the end of it. That is, until he returns to the Imperial Palace and finds a message transmitted from the Eye of Terror courtesy of what should be a dead woman.

>"That was fun. Lets do it again sometime sweetheart.

>>57586876
>>57588289
I keep having this image of the Steward going to track down Malys or getting ambushed by her. All of a sudden the lights flicker and go out. The Steward tells everyone to group up with him and pulls out his flaming sword for light. And then there's this psychotic female Crone with the biggest slasher smile you can imagine standing feet away from him like a scene out of a slasher movie.

This would be long before Malys got Drach'nyen, so she would be using more conventional weapons. I could see her using multiple swords, switching as they keep breaking as she batters at the Emperor like a madwoman.

The only question is how many guards does the Steward have with him. If Malys and Emperor were evenly matched in 1 on 1, Emperor plus Custodes would result in bad times for Malys. Sort of like how Oscar would probably beat the Swarmlord, but lose if the Swarmlord brought his back up dancers.

>>57589798
It's probable that Malys had her own hangers on with her

>>57586876
What could have killed Malys was her assuming the Steward's weapon was a physical weapon, as opposed to a psychic construct that can do things physical weapons can't.

The Steward underestimated Malys and it nearly got him killed, Malys did the same and it would have gotten her perma-killed if she wasn't the Chaos Gods' favorite (being the first person since the Beast to get the forces of Chaos to actually do something and getting within spitting distance of killing the Steward).

>>57589798
There's nothing that indicates the Swarmlord even approaches Chaos Horus in power, which is about where Oscar was during his fight with the Beast, and he's only gotten stronger since then. So Oscar only loses to the Swarmlord and his hanger ons if the hanger ons happen to be a dozen Hive Tyrants and a Tyrannofex (maybe a bit hyperbolic, but you get my point).

The First Black Crusade was Malys's rise to prominence, so Oscar didn't splat her soul like Big E did to Horus because he had no idea who she was. I imagine they've somehow managed to avoid bumping into each other since then despite taking to the battlefield in the same conflicts, and Malys has pulled even with current day Oscar in power due to obtaining Drach'nyen and ridiculous Chaos buffs from proving herself as the most favored champion of Chaos.

Their strengths are pretty different though; I would say Malys is likely to be the better duelist, but even with Tzeentch buffs she's not gonna be able to disable an entire battlefleet with her mind like Oscar. A fight between them in the present might be kinda like a flipped Yoda-Palpatine fight, with Oscar throwing out absurd amounts of lightning and warpfire that could casually vaporize Titans while Malys does dodges and tries to get into melee range, since even with the protection of Khorne she's not going to be able to tank Oscar's attacks.

>>57589134
Doubtful. As a First Founding chapter the NLs are much more (in)famous and still have the right to call for the Reformation of the Legion, which even the Carcharodons despite their authority issues would be loath to disregard.

>>57592526
What you said made me picture Malys and Oscar locking blades in a final clash with their surroundings in ruins, and before Malys can rear back and stick one of her many knives in Oscar's face his sword seems to pour from his hands, instantly becoming a stream of force and sun-hot fire that hits her like an avalanche. The fact that her body withstands the deluge of psychic fire long enough to be knocked across the room and pinned down my the impact would still be a testament to her disturbing durability, but within a few seconds she would be burned away, with the Steward hoping she would be gone for good.

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>>57590906
Maybe some Phalanxes and/or heavily-mutated Astartes as her bodyguards? What kind of environment would Lady Malys thrive in the most against the Steward? On the Writing page there's a story called "Me TIme," where she wipes the floor with a pair of Warhound Titans, and then the Cadian Stormtroopers defending an Inquisition installation, which is probably what >>57586876 is referring to. I can imagine Oscar and co. hunting "a two-bit warlord" through the ruins of a Chaos fortress and walking into an ambush in the process.

>>57592526
This could work, it's not like either had ever fought the other before. The Steward thought no one could ever come near his level/the Beast because it would be ridiculous, Malys was full of the condescension and arrogance typical of Croneldar royalty and campy villains with insane power levels.

>>57587814
Yes they are, both the main Mechanicus branch and the Biologis branch.

>>57592674
Generally it's been thrown around in the threads that Oscar, Isha, Malys, and the Swarmlord are about in the same ballpark of power. Swarmlord less so because it's a custom meat avatar of the Hive Mind, though the first one did take multiple shots from a Baneblade to finally go down. Isha seems less powerful than Oscar and Malys, but it's mostly because she's specced differently.

>Soul splattering
The general talk when the idea was brought up was that Oscar didn't have the power to do that in this timeline, though it was suggested if Oscar and Isha were both in the room Malys would be a dead woman. At least that was the suggestion. That said both Oscar and Malys have learned from the experience. Oscar learns to be more careful and Malys learns not to take on Oscar unless the odds are strongly in her favor.

When did Malys get the Mark of Chaos Ascendant?

>Flipped Yoda-Palpatine
This is kind of what I was thinking of. Excuse the anime references, but I keep visualizing something like Hollow Ichigo vs. Ichigo in Bleach or Boros vs. Saitama in One Punch Man (without Saitama's OP plz nerf-ness), where the more aggressive combatant is swinging wildly one-handed and the more reserved combatant is mostly parrying the attacks and looking for the right opening to retaliate. Malys isn't stupid enough to leave herself open, but she expects her natural Eldar agility to allow her to switch from offense to defense faster than her opponent can respond. She's not used to a mon-keigh being able to keep up with her.

Malys is said to be the Murderwings to Abbadon's Smashfucker, and has been said to be a bit more of a glass canon compared to Oscar. The two have 50:50 odds of winning in a matchup, mostly depending on Malys doing more damage than she takes early on.

That said, Malys has the Mark of Nurgle and Khorne. She's going to be tankier than the average Crone.

>>57592986
This. Oscar would definitely burn the body to make sure she never comes back. And then she does.

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>>57593570
>>57592995
Maybe Phalanxes. Although the Black Crusades generally tend to be when Luther, Malys, and Be'lakor can agree to disagree for long enough to put their mutual hateboner for the Imperium to good use, Malys wouldn't trust Luther enough to have Fallen bodyguards unless they were mercenaries like Huron's bunch. The question is how many would it take to overwhelm a Custodian. A 1:1 matchup would seemingly go poorly.

This is probably early enough in history that the Handmaidens wouldn't be there. Isha did not get her full Iron Matron on until around the time of the 1st Black Crusade, and the Handmaidens wouldn't allow Isha to be put into a position where she could be kidnapped. Even if Malys turned out to not be what she claimed, Nimina could have been hiding in the shadows waiting to grab her. Plus eldar and humans weren't as closely associated despite having officially allied then (not really starting to work together until the alliance had it's trial by fire in the 1st Black Crusade) and if the Handmaidens were there the ambush would have gone poorly.

>>57590906
>>57589798
>Light go off, no one else in the room
>Lights go on, suddenly Cronedar

>>57593627
The events that could have caused the need for the founding of the Handmaidens could have occurred in the 1st Black Crusade. The event itself has been suggested in earlier threads.

Isha and Oscar go to make contact with a new world. It's obviously got a human population existing in a pre-black powder state but who are surprisingly peaceful with few actual wars between neighbors. They also have stories of the Fey-Folk who are tall and graceful and live in the woods the by law must remain untouched. It is a regressed human world with exodites camping in the forests.

Oscar goes to the capital city of the biggest nation on the planet to see about unifying and uplifting the planet and getting it to join the Imperium. Isha sets about looking for her missing children so that she can lead them out of the dark. She's still looking for them when Nurglites attack, fucking thousands of them and maybe even tens of thousands. rotting and stinking and singing and all about them the droning of deamons and the possessed.

Isha and her Custodeus bodyguards sprint as fast as they can back to the mountain fortress they had set out from. Close the door and desperately try to send out a psychic or radio communication to The Steward. Steward was at that time throwing the emperors and kings of that world a polite feast on the deck with the big window that they could see the beauty of their world from above. In any case no messages were getting out.

Alone and surrounded by a seemingly endless sea of half-dead nurglites Isha, the squad of custodeus and a few native sword and board soldiery prepare to endure a long siege. Isha stand on the wall and looks over the sea of damnation. One of them steps forth and, in the name of the Grandfather, bids her to return to His everlasting garden and His warm and loving embrace. They beg her to renounce this false husband, this unworthy lord, and return to His safety.

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>>57594283
Isha leaps over the parapet and the moat and starts sprinting towards the horde. The defenders are aghast, they believe that it's some left over subliminal programing from her time in The Mansion and believe for one awful moment that she is returning to Nurgle. Then she punches the speaker so hard it breaks him in half and uses his carcass to beat another cultist to death with and she just keeps on going. The cultists don't know what to do. On the one hand they want to defend themselves but on the other they know that if they hurt Isha in any way Nurgle will be livid. They try to run but they are all mortals in poor physical condition and she is neither of those things.

The Custodeus and the mortal soldiers try to join in but they are pretty much relegated to dispatching the crippled and wounded by that point, there is no way they could keep up with the mad screaming goddess who demonstrably can punch a man so hard that, helmet or not, his head turns to pulp.

When they eventually do find Isha she is in a ruined and long abandoned farmstead, curled up in a potato cellar, her pretty dress is little more than scraps hanging off of her and she is covered head to toe in other peoples blood. It's not until Oscar finally hears of this and makes all speed to her that she makes any response and she clings to him so hard it leaves an impression in his ceremonial carapace.

After that the Handmaidens start to turn up, typically drawn from either the Aspect Temples, usually the Banshees, or from the acolytes of her priesthood too belligerent and aggressive for that life. The eldar didn't go through so much shit just to loose her again.

>>57594283
One would think this would be slightly before the First Black Crusade. If it was during the First Black Crusade it would have been all hands on deck and Oscar would be busy coordinating the war effort (especially as this was the first time such an event occurred) rather than going about usual diplomatic business.

Also I think the Handmaidens were formed because there's no way the Eldar would allow their goddess to be guarded solely by mon-keigh. Not only because of the implications at that time of humans not being skilled enough to protect Isha, but also if things went south and the alliance was dissolved, it would be child's play for humanity to hold Isha hostage. Indeed, the current fluff for the Handmaidens has them formed after the Raid from the Isha cults that sprung up following her rescue, and it's likely they were formed to bodyguard her before there was an alliance and the Eldar could count on glorious golden banana men to protect Isha as well as Wood Elf ninjas.

It would seem more likely that these events happened because the Custodians and Handmaidens underestimated how insidious Chaos could be. They let Isha travel out with a token escort because she was going to a little city less than a few hours travel away from where the Steward was and they didn't see how anything could happen without everyone else noticing. They didn't realize when people said Chaos could strike anywhere, they meant ANYWHERE anywhere. They just got lucky it was a bunch of Nurglites deluded enough to think Isha would come back to them willingly as opposed to Arrotyr or the Taskmaster.

Maybe it was on Agorhu, which was mentioned as having a native human and Exodite population. Biel-Tan is usually pretty proactive about keeping people off of Exodites' lawns, especially since in this timeline part of the agreement with the eldar was to respect the eldar's claim to the Maiden Worlds.

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How are Squats, Ratlings, Ogryns, and Beastmen treated in the Nobledark Imperium?

>>57593570
I’d say Isha-Macha is below Oscar and Malys in combat power, both at the strategic and tactical scale, but Isha the warp entity is more spiritually powerful and influential, seeing as the All Mother contests Slaanesh’s grip on the Eldar and her presence shelters the souls of humanity after death.

>>57593627
Malys could have some Fallen guides with her retinue to help seek out Oscar, seeing as they worked with him in unification to the great crusade, if we want some included for flavor.

>>57594868
Pretty well. Squats and Ratlings are legally human.

Beastmen and Ogryn depending on how well the AdBio have repaired them are treated as only slightly less than human in terms of rights and responsibilities.

>>57594719
All that does make moar sense.

>>57594868
>>57595011
To clarify, squats are human, their frames are due to living in a high-gravity environment. The amount of genetic differences between squats and Earth humans is minor, comparable to Cadians. Squat navy is composed of normally proportioned people.

Squats got classified as abhumans because AdMech didn't like that they wouldn't roll over to Mars and are petty bastards.

Ratlings, as well as felinids and Voidborn (which are also abhumans) are legally human.

Nova Beastmen are kind of like Qunari, live in highly disciplined societies specifically because they want to keep control on their animal instincts. They sort of have a bovine theme naming going on so far (auroch, brahmin [pun on brahma bull]).

Nova Ogryn are kind of like Warcraft Orcs meets Neanderthals. With the exception of BONEheads, on average they tend to be dumber than a human, but not by a huge margin.

Imperium tends to treat them pretty well. Beastmen generally get treated better because they're smarter, but they have issues with genetic instability and are monitored. Ogyrn tend to be more closely watched because they are comparable to Feral Worlders.

>>57595149
As a bonus, Agorhu has a corrupted Webway gate, and the description of what the Elohim/Eldar did sounds a lot like them frantically boarding up the Webway to keep the Crones out.

>>57589134
>>57592674
The Carcharodons are said to primarily recruit from the underhives of the Segmentum Tempestus, so it sounds like they might be marginally more liked than the Night Lords. Then again the Carcharodons mostly seem to fight Orks and xenos invasions rather than Chaos.

Then again it sounds like Curze and Zso Sahaal were trying to turn the legion from a bunch of useful monsters to a bunch of acceptable ones, so who knows how well that went. Wonder what happened to Sevatar.

What's the significance of Agorhu in 40K canon? Google isn't telling much, and all I know from this thread is that it's a planet where humans and Exodite Eldar have coexisted in some way on it.

>>57600421
Aghoru (we've been misspelling it) was a planet found by the Thousand Sons during the Great Crusade. It was inhabited by humans, but the natives claimed the planet was once inhabited by a people they called the Elohim, who were so narcissistic they fell in love with their own appearance and devoted their lived to hedonism and pleasure until the entities they harnessed for such a purpose turned on them and wiped out their interstellar empire almost immediately.

Most of the ones that survived became the Daiesthai, dark and perverted versions of the Elohim that the Elohim sealed away in a massive construct called "the Mountain" which the locals fed their dead to in order to keep the Daiesthai sealed.

To drive the point home, a remembrancer finds what looks like a Howling Banshee helmet, the Mountain is guarded by two titans that turn out to be Wraithlords in all but name, "the Mountain" is blocking a portal to what appears to be the Webway, and Ahriman even notes the similarities to Eldar. There is a special illustration of them in one of the books and the titans are clearly wraithlords.

The suggestion was that in this timeline the Eldar of Aghoru didn't die out, but merely declined in population, and Magnus' encounter was one of the first "non-official" encounters between humanity and the eldar.

That said Aghoru is supposedly a dry and mostly barren world, which doesn't fit with the Nurglites materializing out of the woods like creepy hillbillies.

However, there are other examples of Exodites and humans coexisting in the fluff. In Promethean Sun Vulkan comes across an Exodite world with a native human population (Caledra). The Exodites had beaten the crap out of a Dark Eldar raiding party, then when they found out there were human captives (specifically, humans from Nocturne) liberated them and let them live on their homeworld. The two were actually coexisting when Vulkan showed up.

Also Vulkan kills an unarmed Eldar child begging for mercy. Grimdark.

>>57601278 (cont.)
He also ordered the Nocturne refugees massacred when he realized they wouldn't accept Imperial rule after the Imperium just finished butchering their rescuers and neighbors.

In a more general sense, human-Exodite coexistence during the Great Crusade would be possible but depend heavily on the environment. First thing to consider are the attitudes of the locals. Some might be willing to do a reverse Colchis or less shitty Brettonia-style arrangement, some want humans to stay off their worlds.

Second thing to consider is the local Craftworlds. The Craftworlds like to claim sovereignty over Exodite worlds (particularly Biel-Tan, and to a lesser degree Iyanden), the Exodites don't particularly like it but they not going to complain when the Craftworlders send reinforcements during a planetary invasion. Biel-Tan in canon (and here too) doesn't like humans on Exodite worlds. What they do with them depends on their mood. Sometimes a Craftworld will offer people a lift to the nearest human world on the condition they never come back, other times they say they have one day to leave, other times they just kill everyone.

So an Exodite world who wants to be a good Samaritan and coexist with humans had better hope that Biel-Tan isn't claiming dominion over them, or they'd have to go against what Biel-Tan wants.

Bump

>>57601397
>>57601278
Dosn't sound like Vulkan, even by canon standards.

>>57601397
Vulkan is a bit racist towards eildar in this AU but he is not anywhere near that level.

Similarly Biel-Tan would be far more likely to go for the relocation method of keeping the Maiden Worlds.

>>57603040
Yeah, in canon Vulkan is really only a bro towards humans, he’s just as xenophobic as any of the other Primarchs really. Contrast with the glorious golden hawkboy, who even the goddamn Necrons liked.

>>57603040
>>57603136
That is canon Vulkan, not nobledark!Vulkan. Nobledark Vulkan would probably insist the humans of Caledra be relocated back to their own people on Nocturne away from the eldar. The Caledrans would probably refuse, having lived there for generations and preferring to be on a planet that isn't a tectonic time bomb.

Similarly, Biel-Tan would probably give a lift to humans for the sake of getting rid of them (though until the alliance they might not care what world they dumped them on as long as it had humans on it), or tell humanity "Hey, your people are tresspassing on our lawn. Do something about it" when diplomatic channels opened up.

>>57603136
>>57603245
Haven’t we established that Biel-Tan sees the Imperium as the rebirth of the old Eldar Empire, being the militaristic and imperialist nutters that they are? In that case, I imagine they would consider humans on their maiden worlds to be their lawful subjects. They may treat humans a bit worse given their arrogance, but not to the extent it would make Emps or Isha intervene, and certainly not to the extent they would feel the need for mass deportation.

>>57603424
Beil-tan still get grumpy about humans on their lawn. Just not murderous and they can be reasoned with.

New Tanith for example.

Bump

>>57603424
>>57603654
I think it's more that Biel-Tan wants to keep the Maiden Worlds primarily eldar first and foremost. It's been mentioned that the oldest, most developed enclave worlds have some non-eldar population, but only after the point where the eldar are so entrenched it's impossible for someone else to claim the world as theirs. Even though Biel-Tan wants to rebuild the Eldar Empire they don't want people taking what they see as their personal stuff. The eldar put a lot of work into the Maiden Worlds and the idea of someone just coming along and taking advantage of that feel like theft to them.

Making progress on the Taskmaster's story, the lyrics to Ode to Joy are stuck in my head and a Slaaneshi version may work its way into his story in some way.

Also, did we decide that the Malstrom is the old, scabbed over wound from Khorne's birth? I'm intending to use it as such in part of the story if so, and that's what seems to be the case in the origin of Khorne story.

>>57608629
Yes, the Maelstrom is said to be the giant galactic axe wound from which Khorne was born

>>57608753
Cool, and would it be too much if the chains that Khorne was meant to bind the Gorkamorka with were possessed by the Old Eldar Empire as a particularly powerful relic for the Taskmaster and Arrotyr to fight over?

>>57601397
If they went against Biel-Tan they could offer fealty to another craftworld. Saim-hann for example might offer them protection just for them having the balls to tell Biel-Tan to get fucked.

It could be a moment of standing their ground. The humans, they see it as, refuse to abandon friendship for a ticket home. They stand with their friends.

Saim-Hann just want to annoy Biel-Tan.

>>57609487
In canon, it seems like the Exodites don't get much of a choice in patrons. It's more like one Craftworld shows up and claims sovereignty whether the Exodites like it or not. That said, Saim-Hann is large enough that Biel-Tan would have to sit up and pay attention. Saim-Hann also tends to be the "nice guy" Craftworld in canon, they dislike Biel-Tan's genocide policy and the idea of making unprovoked attacks on people. They wouldn't give a shit what the humans do as long as the Exodites say its okay.

The mass deportation of humans would mostly happen during the Great Crusade, when humanity and eldar weren't fully allied yet and border issues were still an issue. Biel-Tan wouldn't have seen the Imperium as part of the new Eldar empire yet and would have still seen the Maiden Worlds as their primary site for future expansion.

Also most of the Exodites do want to be left alone. So to sum it up Human-Exodite coexistence would be very possible in Nobledark and such worlds probably exist (including the ones mentioned above as well as Rynn's World), but significant human populations would only be on a minority of Maiden Worlds.

>>57608992
I have no problem with it, but I'm just one anon.

>>57610686
Rynn's World doesn't really count as it is a human world with no history as a Maiden World and only got a colony of Exodites because orks completely depopulated an entire continent. Then the Exodites moved in because it was good farmland going to waste otherwise and nobody objected.

bump

>>57611397
Meant more in the sense of human-Exodite coexistence.

>>57598568
Sevatar could maybe the name of the current Master of the Night Lords. Born on Nostramo in this era rather than in antiquity. He is a showman as much as anything. He has encouraged his brothers to sculpt their armour in the form of monsters and broadcasts public executions for the masses to see.

He isn't one of the broken children usually adopted by the chapter nor is he a mind wiped executed. He actually joined the chapter willingly for no other reason than a sense of duty, which was pretty fucking unique in the chapter's history. So far as anyone can tell he was perfectly normal, happily married parents, brother and sister and ordinary extended family. Why join the Night Lords? Because he felt his theatrical abilities would be most useful there. And they have been.

Curze committed atrocities and for every field of impaled corpses a dozen foes surrendered peacfully. Sevatar attempts to accomplish this with an imagined and staged awfulness.

For sure he has done very bad things but not so many as people believe. If anything his reign has been the most bloodless in the chapter's history. Not that you would know by asking or checking records. If you go by the stories he is a rabid monster the likes of which would be fit to be the heir of Curze.

>>57610686
Do we have any named Exodite characters?

>>57616556
I don't think there are. Exodites have got royally screwed over in canon despite being dinosaur-riding space Elves, they have no codex, no named characters, and generally exist to be the victim of the week.

Had an idea floating around for a Kroq-Gar expy who had a tamed dinosaur called a "Kurnousaur". Was originally going to suggest it for the current leader of Nova Tarellia, but then I realized it wouldn't work well for the Tarellians, who have few mounts and no indication of dinosaurs in their ecosystem. Then I realized it would work better for an Exodite or Disciple of Kurnous.

Then the name "Kurnousaur" popped into my head. Kurnous being the God of the Hunt and of animals (to Isha's plants), it makes sense that a dinosaur would be seen as his symbol. Eldar spread out from Shaa-Dome and Kurnous sees these things and thinks they're awesome. Like the rest of the megadons/dragons/creatures of Cretacia it's possible they are actual dinosaurs due to the Old Ones using Cretaceous Earth as one of their sources for seeding life on planets. Was thinking of something that looked like a tyrannosaur with big curving horns over its brow.

Some of the leader of Nova Tarellia idea might still work on its own.

How much does the average pleb eldar known about the Old Ones?

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>>57619022
The Eldar are probably the biggest source of information the Imperium has on the Old Ones, along with the Hrud, the other elder races, and the Necrons if Szarekh is feeling chatty before he opens fire.

The Eldar believe the Old Ones left the galaxy to them when they died. It's not clear where they go that because the Old Ones certainly weren't planning to die in the War in Heaven. This idea could take a variety of forms. You could get Eldar who believe the Old Ones' declaration makes them the chosen people, or others who think that it's the Eldar's job to lead the peoples of the galaxy like the High Elves from fantasy.

This interpretation would obviously vary based on culture, the former interpretation being popular before the Fall, the latter after the romanticization of the alliance.

However, at the same time it's been pointed out the Eldar didn't know the Old Ones as well as they thought they did. They kind of idolized them, because they were the god-like aliens that appeared on the planet right after the fended off an invasion from what are basically Fantasy Ogres IN SPACE back when the Eldar thought bronze was cutting edge.

At the same time they aren't aware of the Old Ones' darker side. Creating the Krork, creating Khorne, what they may have done to the Necrontyr, their distinctly alien morality compared to virtually all the mortal races.

The eldar might see the Old Ones as only second to their gods in importance, because the Old Ones helped make them what they are today.

>>57619684
Did we ever decide what the original Mon-Keigh were?

>>57620511
The description from canon describes them as "mutated misshapen cannibalistic monstrosities" that terrorized the Eldar back in the day. The Eldar wiped them out right before the Old Ones showed up. They're part of the reason the Eldar are so paranoid about other species, their first contact was people coming down from the sky to butcher and eat them.

This is just my two cents but from what it sounds like the Mon-Keigh suffered from a bad case of Predator syndrome like the Kroot. That is, they were capable of building starships, but the footsloggers were using primitive tech in comparison. If they were like Warhammer Ogres, this makes a lot of sense. If your primary goal in invading planets is to find new and delicious things to devour, then something like a bolter or a volkite ray defeats the purpose. They literally invented spaceships to find new foods to eat. Of course, this turns out to be a liability when you realize that the locals you’ve come to eat A) outnumber you, B) are better organized than you (we’ve generally said the Eldar were about Trojan War-level when the Mon-Keigh came, and there are some minor suggestions in canon that this is what unified the species), and C) can fall back on guerilla tactics and asymmetrical warfare if and when their initial offensive fails.

There was a suggestion that they were the original Eldar before the Old Ones came, but it didn't make a lot of sense. Eldar have the ability to selectively express their genetic code (this is a case of life imitating art, called epigenetics), and it seems likely that this was what drew the Old Ones to them in the first place, similar to the proto-Orks and their ability to reproduce upon death. The Old Ones’ train of thought was probably “A Bronze Age people with the ability to turn traits on and off at will that managed to defeat a minor (albeit primitive) starfaring species? They’ll make great shock troopers.”

>>57621550 (cont.)
If that was the case there was no reason for the Old Ones to not scoop up the entire species and modify them. Any combat augmentations could just be turned on and off as needed (you still see this in modern Eldar, i.e., seers and Aspect Warriors). From the Old One perspective, leaving behind unaugmented Eldar, especially to the point that you have the original versions and your new shiny prototypes killing each other, is just wasting bodies. The Eldar were also just given the super soldier treatment and not a complete overhaul like the Orks (which suggests their chromosomal structure and epigenetic ability is not tailored in by the Old Ones). They don’t reproduce really fast, so there’s no reason to burn the old order to the ground to grow a crop of Krork in a few years. Plus this was back when the Old Ones had a sense of quality control.

There are even individual pre-Old One Eldar (Eldanesh and Uthanesh) who lived long enough to fight against the Mon-Keigh and live through the entire War in Heaven before finally dying in the years in which the Eldar were becoming a superpower.

From a thematic perspective, it was also brought up that having the Mon-Keigh be the proto-Eldar also threw too much shade on their history. The Eldar have plenty of fuck-ups in their history between being self-centered assholes for most of the Dark Age of Technology and, you know, the whole Slaanesh thing. Having their entire society be built on eugenics, genocide, and lies seemed a bit too much.

>>57614909
That makes sense, and fits with canon where he calls Curze out on his bullshit pretty hard. Since in canon he's famed as one of the greatest warriors of the Legiones Astartes and broke Sigismund's duel win streak (by cheating, granted), maybe in this AU he's the one who finally manages to kill the corrupted Sigismund in the 13th Black Crusade?

Also, someone mentioned before that the scope of enemies affected by the Night Lords terror tactics is pretty limited, since of the major enemy factions only Orks and Dark Eldar really feel fear (Did we agree that Orks feel fear when they are so outmatched they won't get a good fight?) So on that front, I could see them trying to come up with some ways to fuck with the other enemies.

For Chaos Eldar, since no amount of pain or brutality is going to shock them, maybe they take the opposite tactic. When they ambush CE, the NLs could tag them with soulstones so that when the CE die, they face what they fear most: nothingness. No pain, no pleasure, no sensation. Their soul is sucked into the colorless void of a soulstone, deprived of the embrace of their gods, leaving them to scream away at the blankness for eternity, which might be something that would scare a CE.

For Tyranids, they could come up with a way to manipulate pheromones and psychic pulses to block synapse creature signals and causing the individual Nids to revert to their feral state where they eat each other. This could be one Kryptman's prototypes, who worked out an agreement with the NLs to test it.

Necrons are probably the ones who are most immune to the NLs unless they come up with a way to subvert or override the Silent King's command signal, but I don't anyone within the Imperium has shown that level of tech sophistication yet.

>>57576760
This feels... too simple somehow. Here's my idea.

Commander Chenkov is a genuinely good commander. He's no genius, but he is adept at attritional warfare, at cornering the enemy, denying them room to maneuver, and then grinding them down in a hailstorm of Basilisk shells. He is well regarded by his fellow officers and superiors. Although his style of command, regarding the men under him as simply another resource to be optimized, expended in carefully calculated fashion, is distasteful, he is perfectly affable in person. And every Imperial officer knows that being too frugal with the lives of your soldiers can be as great a sin as being too careless, if it costs victory. Chenkov delivers victories.

This is the face he presents to his peers, his superiors, the commissars attached to his headquarters, anyone capable of censuring him. A capable commander. Perhaps more temperamentally suited to commanding men of Krieg than leading men of Vostroya, but that is hardly something worthy of censure. His outward face.

His inward face, the one presented to his subordinates, is quite different.

Chenkov is a sociopath, an abuser, of classic mould. His facade is nearly perfect, but to people he has power over he lets it drop. Dispensing punishment with one hand and reward with the other, unpredictably and capriciously, denying any sort of stability or refuge except through fanatical, unquestioning loyalty to him. He encourages them to turn on each other for his favor. His staff and immediate subordinates are as so many well-trained, beaten dogs. Love and hate intertwined. New transfers in quickly learn their place, the rest helping their master tear the newcomer down and remolding them in the desired image.

>>57622998
From the outside, Chenkov looks 'firm but fair'. He is a master of appearances. A few have some suspicions, but nothing concrete. Nothing actionable. A few officers have noticed odd habits on the part of people transferred out of Chenkov's HQ; odd flinches and nervous tics. A couple others have noticed unusually high rates of suicide or mental breakdown in his staff. But nobody has been in a position to put together the pieces yet.

It has been noted, in after-action reports and award citations, that Chenkov displays an exceptional ability in fighting the Chaos Eldar; an uncanny ability to get inside their heads, out-guess them, pre-empt their moves, and destroy them. It is an ability that has seen him rise high in the ranks, and set to rise further still. The deeper implication escapes observers.

>>57623027
That's an interesting character, but at that point is it even really Chenkov? In his limited canon fluff, the core of Chenkov's character is that he's the grimderp logical extreme of Imperial Guard commanders who drowns his enemies in his men's bodies. Your description of an competent, affable sociopath sounds more like our description of pre-betrayal/coup Karamazov.

>>57622981
Sevatar and Curze in this AU would never have met if Sevatar is the current master of the Night Lords.

>>57623300
A good point. I feel like we can do /something/ more interesting with Chenkov than 'a low-ranking and soon-to-be-executed incompetent', if not necessarily this.

>>57623468
I meant that it fits thematically, not literally, as Sevatar is questioning/rejecting Curze’s methods.

>>57623554
I think it works well, and it would be cool to see some more night lords stuff, particularly closer to m41
>>57623548
we could make him part of the Kreig-doctrinist faction of Astra Militarum officers, those that (despite the wishes of the Kriegers) wish to export and syndicate death korps style regiments, societies, and training across the Imperium.

>>57622981
Chaos Eldar feel fear. It's mentioned in Curze's bio. They are probably more likely to be afraid when something is being done to them than them doing something to others. And their standards might be a lot higher.

>>57623548
Good point. Plus he's basically following the same path as Karamazov, asshole who gets a lot of power before crossing a line and getting on the bad side of a bunch of Night Lords or their descendants.

Not >>57622998, but I will admit this was kind of what I was thinking for Chenkov. But I see why other people might not like it and am not attached to it.

>>57623300
In canon, Chenkov's only redeemable feature was he was willing to fight on the front lines (unless he was using his men as mine sweepers). Canon Chenkov wants glory. Nobledark!Karamazov thinks he's doing humanity a favor. Though I see your point.

>>57624498
That's actually a good point. What happens when you apply Krieger tactics to people who actually have a sensr of self-preservation and don't want to die? Part of the reason the Cadian doctrine works so well is involved applying dakka from a distance so that by the time the forces meet the enemy will be whittled down, their heavies will hopefully be dead, and a lot fewer troops die.

>>57623554
He'd see it as refining those methods.

>>57621550
Mon-Keigh presumably came from somewhere. They probably went to more than one other planet for sport.

To that end, if the Mon-Keigh are extinct, then one of three things happened to them. Trodden on in the War in Heaven, didn't survive the Enslaver Plague or were hunted to extinction by angry eldar.

It makes you wonder then why the Old Ones never tried to uplift them. Perhaps they did and rather than be herded to warzones they just wandered off in search of entertainment and sport.

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>>57629563
Probably because the Old Ones didn't give a shit. Necrontyr developed advanced technology and all the Old Ones did is go "neat". They only made contact after they got interstellar flight despite knowing of them since they gained sapience, and even then it was in kind of a hands off way.

Heck, if the idea that Old Ones were grooming the Necrontyr to become their starfaring sidekicks is true, they may have ignored the Mon-Keigh because they didn't see any way the Mon-Keigh could be anything more than gut-led savages, whereas they could see the Necrontyr calming the balls down and becoming worthy vassals.

The extremely cynical might wonder if the Old Ones intentionally directed the Mon-Keigh to Shaa-Dome as an experiment. They could have snapped their fingers and sent the Mon-Keigh into a star after they messed up so many of their experiments.

>>57625707
forced imprisonment of the soul in a soulstone, away from their god, sounds like something they would loath, and they probably 'fear' defeat and frustration of their goals, so stuff like political killings/decapitation of armies and other acts of infiltration and sabotage would affect their morale. If officers are getting bumped off and their souls bound to those Isha devised gems, warbands might start peeling off from whatever objective, because their masters don't want to personally be targeted.

>>57627126
also having pre-existing Kreig-doctrinists would make his behavior more normalized and dimissable, part of a larger internal political argument in the guard, not a particular officer. He would probably still have some of that vineer of affability and sanity, seeing as he would still ultimately answer to the Imperium and it has expectations for its noble, honored officers.

>>57630154
Being dumped in a sensory deprivation tank is the go-to method for torturing Slaaneshis according to Dark Heresy.

Would expect being a soul stone free of an Infinity Circuit or a wraithguard to be similar (unless canon says otherwise). Kind of like that one story where some Chaos Space Marines put a loyalist in a dread sarcophagus but don't hook it up to a machine.

>>57629973
>they may have ignored the Mon-Keigh because they didn't see any way the Mon-Keigh could be anything more than gut-led savages
>The extremely cynical might wonder if the Old Ones intentionally directed the Mon-Keigh to Shaa-Dome as an experiment. They could have snapped their fingers and sent the Mon-Keigh into a star after they messed up so many of their experiments.
I like the idea that the Old Ones either made or permitted the Mon-Keigh to go on because in their inscrutable lizard wizard ways they found them slightly useful and somewhat hilarious. They were the ant hill to the Tyranids' swarm of locust, easily and with them lightly scourging the galaxy the Old Ones could spot worth in growing species and then reveal themselves as patrons all the easier. I'm also imagining the Old Ones set the Krork on the Mon-Keigh when the war was ramping up, and let the mushroom men eat them, which the Old Ones also found hilarious.

>>57630391
One of the craftworlds, the matriarchial one, has close ties to The Sons of Midnight. Presumably they get their soulstones through this arrangement.

>>57593570
The Swarmlord got beaten by an exhausted Dante in canon recently, and while it could be buffed in this universe, it would be pretty goddamn big buff to put it on Oscar and Malys' level (who are above Chaos Horus). Pretty sure its best straight combat feat in canon is cutting through the Ultramarines Honor Guard and lopping Calgar's limbs off, which while impressive is not at Chaos Horus level.

Besides, the Tyranids aren't the faction really known for their individual heavy hitters, the core of their identity is ridiculous numbers and the reason the Swarmlord is pants-shittingly terrifying should really center on its ability to command and coordinate in a way normal Hive Tyrants can't. Like a symphony, it orchestrates billions of creatures like one entity, the entire swarm reacting perfectly at the speed of thought while the defenders are crippled by panic and miscommunication and hastily shouted orders. Every creature from tiny Ripper to massive Trigon is the Swarmlord's eyes and ears, and any opening or weakness spotted will immediately be set upon by the weight of the entire swarm.

>>57630154
Also true, the Chaos gods aren't known for being particularly forgiving of failure, and even a CE could fear being turned into a Chaos spawn.

>>57633017
Swarmlord got a major buff in this timeline.

https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Nobledark_Imperium_Drafts#The_Swarmlord

It's basically the custom meat suit the Hive Mind makes when it needs to break a stalemate, kind of what Macha-Isha is to Isha. That said it's better interpreted as a specialized sensory organ than a distinct entity, or as one anon put it "a particularly large lump in the Hive Mind soup".

It's less powerful than Oscar, Malys, and Isha, but that's more because it's mass-produced and like Isha it's not specced for combat. It's a melee monster but as you point out it's real threat is it's ability to orchestrate the various hive organisms. It also can't throw around Warp power like Oscar, Malys, or Isha can.

In a one-on-one matchup Oscar or Malys would probably beat the Swarmlord 85% or more of the time, the problem is the Swarmlord is rarely alone. As mentioned above Swarmlord < Oscar < Swarmlord + backup dancers (read: a dozen Hive Tyrants). Oscar and Swarmlord might be on the same "level", but that's like saying an arbitrary rating of 50,000 is close to 30,000 when the average human or tyranid is like 5.

>>57633512
I'm aware (I wrote the "dozen hive tyrants and a tyrannofex" comment), I'm just disputing the degree of the buff because of thematic reasons (because Nids are the absurd numbers faction and don't necessarily need a solo combat monster on that tier) and adherence to canon (that big of a buff seems out of place when we have stuck pretty close to canon power levels for other characters). I see where you're coming from, this is just my 2 cents.

How common are Bug Boyz?

Are they found outside the Octavius Clusterfuck?

>>57634297
not that I'm aware

>>57634297
There was a suggestion that the current Overfiend is trying to make more use of Bug Boyz, but the motivations of the current Overfiend, Arch-Arsonist, and Arch-Mangler weren't really discussed further.

>>57628638
Sevatar is actually kind of creepier than Curze in some ways if that is the case. Curze you could at least understand why he was the way he was when you looked at where he came from. He was a street orphan in the Pan-Pacific Empire, who grew up in a brutal world and thought brutality was the best answer to brutality.

Sevatar is different. He grew up in a perfectly stable life, barring the fact that it was on Nostramo. And while he does a lot of the same stuff Curze did, in some ways he's actually worse because he makes such a spectacle out of it. But yet he's actually killed fewer people than Curze did, he just makes the ones he does do extra dramatic because he knows how to frame something to make humans and eldar freak out. And while he may not be the nicest guy, at the very least he's not a sociopath. It makes you wonder what the fuck is going on with his mind. He sounds like a combination between Vlad Tepes and Marilyn Manson.

Kind of interesting if he is a Nostraman, since IIRC the planet is a big Arbites producer. To be honest it's hard to see what Nostramo's economy is based off of. It used to have huge deposite of adamantium but the planet is so heavily mined out that even during the Crusade era Curze's pod punched straight through to the core of the planet and what was supposed to be surface bombardment turned the planet into rubble. Though don't people still try to mine the remaining chunks of Nostramo in present day vanilla?

Also looking at a star map Nostramo in canon is right next to the Necron Star Empire, and in fact is probably pretty close to where the old Necrontyr homeworld might have been. Maybe we should move it.

>>57630429
Hey, got to clear out the old experiments somehow. It's like adding penicillin to a bacterial colony to see which ones develop resistance and forcing evolutionary change.

Bump

>>57638760
It could be that the planet is more or less abandoned. There's the Judge training facilities and support structures and industries and sweet bugger all else.

Sevatar does what he does for the good of the many.

>>57639854
It's pretty interesting to imagine a world of constant night that is full of ancient derelict industry and an ancient, distinguished, but impoverished society that mostly services and provides recruits for galactic law enforcement. Seems gotham-tastic.

I just read the Cthonia entry in the notable planets section, and I really want to run a Dark Heresy game or something set in the port colony there. It seems amazingly conducive to great adventures even in some kind of adapted deathwatch or only war campaign exploring the dangerous depths of the ring, or encountering all the pilgrims and weirdos from throughout the Imperium and beyond that come to see the ancient former capital. It could be fun to set it right at the midnight point for the setting, since Cthonia is pretty far out of the way of the end times and you could have a campaign happen there without getting caught up, but still have some reverberations from galaxy shaking events, or at some interesting time in the colony's history, like a craftworld passing somewhat close to the ring or a visit from the Traveling Court.

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>>57630429
>>57638760
It could also have been that the Mon-Keigh were kind of successful. They were uplifted by the Old Ones to fuck up the Necrontyr when they started to get uppity. They were annoying and noisy more than in any way threatening at the time but the Old Ones wouldn't stoop to getting their own hands dirty if there was the possibility of getting someone else to do the job for them.

Mon-Keigh were already pretty smart but it was all directed to killing and eating each other and hunting big game. Old Ones just tampered with them a little bit, gave them a tech boost and pointed them at the Necrontyr. It worked well enough at first. The Mon-Keigh woudl have liked to have eaten Old Ones but after he first few attempts and getting immediately atomized they gave up and directed their attentions where they were supposed to.

Something in Mon-Keigh culture/psychology makes them compelled to be the top of any food chain and achieve that by eating the top of the food chain. They couldn't eat Old Ones but they could eat 2nd place.

Then the Necrons started turning into metal skelebots and that fucked that plan up. Also they had better guns now.

Mon-Keigh now have no incentive to do anything that the Old Ones want and just kind of fuck around the galaxy being worthless and tormenting more primative people and near-people that they find. Most of thses people are mostly peacefully inclined and therefore of limited use to the Old Ones. It's during this stage that they find Shaa-Dome (presumably also the Rashan and K'Nib homeworlds) and these were the creatures that actually put up a real fight.

Old Ones now have replacements for the Mon-Keigh who are more likely to do what they are told. Old Ones shed not one tear when the Eldar drive the Mon-Keigh to near extinction.

A few bands the ancient eldar didn't know of survived for a time around the ragged edge of the galaxy, trying to stay away from everyone and everything. They didn't survive the Enslavers.

>>57641454
I imagine it is also an NL recruitment station given Curze's interest in the place

>>57642266
It's a nice image but it doesn't really fit with the timeline of the War in Heaven. Both here and in canon, the Old Ones fought the first part of the war by themselves and didn't get desperate enough to uplift races and chuck them at the Necrontyr until the C'tan entered the equation. By the time the Necrontyr had gone full robo-skeleton the Eldar and other races had already been uplifted. And if that weren't the case it is likely the Eldar would have seen the Mon-Keigh fighting under the banner of the Old Ones and got suspicious.

In addition, the Necrontyr were still the second most advanced race in the galaxy. They had aleady invented inertialess drives, though it was even rarer than it is now. If the proto-Eldar were able to beat the bunch of Mon-Keigh that landed on their world the Necrontyr would have curbstomped them.

Are the Rashan and K'Nib still around by 999M41?

>>57645820
K'nib are dead IIRC. They survived the War in Heaven mostly intact like the Eldar. When they started spreading across the galaxy, someone had the bright idea of trying of reverse-engineering necrodermis from a Tomb World. When the inevitable fuckup happened and everyone died, he refused to admit it was his fault he lost everything he cared about and blamed literally everyone else.

This pleased Malal, who had recently been beaten up and mugged in a dark alley in the Warp by Tzeentch, Nurgle, and Khorne. And so Apep, sole daemon prince of Malal, the Pharaoh of Denial, was born.

>>57645941
I thought that was just their homeworld and the survivors became nomadic.

>>57645062
By the time they sacked the Eldar homeworld the Old Ones might have stopped sponsoring them.

Also who was going to trll the eldar who the previous favourite pet was?

>>57645062
>>57648814
I think we may have made a mistake. Elronhir is credited with getting rid of the Mon-Keigh, not Eldanesh, though Eldanesh seems to have been involved in a conflict with something called Hresh-Selain that do the exact same thing as the Mon-Keigh (invade early Shaa-Dome, get BTFO, Old Ones show up after).

Here's my proposed solution. The Mon-Keigh who attacked Shaa-Dome were led by a warlord named Hresh-Selain. We have two proposals for Eldanesh last thread. Lets use both. Elronhir is the badass old dude (60's equivalent) who unites the various factions of Eldar to tell the Mon-Keigh to get off their planet. Eldanesh and Uthanesh helped in the unification and war, but were young talented footsoldiers at most (Eldar teens). By the time the Old Ones came Elronhir was too old to fight another war and just wanted to pass away peacefully. Eldanesh and Uthanesh were in their prime and ended up leading the Eldar during the War in Heaven.

>>57648814
It could be the Mon-Keigh never knew they were sponsored. Old Ones may have just pushed them enough to get them to successfully into space as opposed to stagnating on their homeworld. Mon-Keigh think they are in control of their own destiny, though they occasionally get warnings from some unknown power that a particular system is off-limits. Mon-Keigh fleets who go where they're told not to go tend to disappear, except in the rare cases the Old Ones aren't paying attention.

>>57646631
We could leave it open. All that is set in stone is the K'nib homeworld got screwed up and Apep was born out of that mess. That way if someone comes up with a cool idea for the K'nib we have an out.

>>57650374
The suggestions made in this could work, anyone disagree with a part of it?

Still working on a Imperial Battlecruiser drawing and some Tyranid splinter fleet vs. Imperial Guard/Navy combat writing, but they're pretty far away from completion.

>>57651676
Trying to get Lion finished up so we can put that one to bed, but no promises.

Would try attempting Isha on the human-Exodite world or Malys versus the Emperor, but I don't think I can write battle scenes well enough for that.

What should the theme of the next thread be?

>>57653534
We’ve had a lot to say about the war in heaven era setting, let’s go with that

>>57653762
Maybe the Big Slapfight In Heaven?

Bamp

>>57653762
>>57654178
I guess that settles it. Will try to put up a new thread in the morning my time if no one else wants to.