>>62076622
I really like the idea of them being stern, authoritarian, but relatively “gentle” giants. Not gentle giants in the manner of the kinebrach, they are still soldiers and fighters and can be rather strict to those under their aegis, but gentle in the fact that despite being slabs of meat and armor they tend to be rather benign to those under their rule (compared to, say, Orks).

It also makes for a really nice contrast with the Tarellians. When things changed the Ulmeatheans understood their situation and quickly adapted to their new place in the social hierarchy. The Tarellians with their pack-hunter mentality have always chafed at the idea of following a leader that they did not either directly or indirectly choose to follow, but had no choice at the time.

>>62077544
>Put another way, the Ulmeathians are fond of writing poetry and stoneworking, with proficiency in both being expected- sort of like how nobles were expected to know etiquette and such.

Was actually going to make the comparison to samurai when I noticed you brought it up.

>>62080264
For the Ff'eng, one of the other subjugated peoples of the Ulmeathic, OP's pic is making me think of the Star Wars Sand People. The Ulmeathics viewed them back in the day as pretty fucking useless at almost everything except thriving on their homeworld which other people could barely survive on.

Mostly nocturnal and spent the daylight hours in borrows. They had primitive firearms, some success with agriculture and a very limited industrial base when the Ulmeathics discovered them. In their way the Ulmeathics took pity on them and conquered them for their own good. All in all they were better off under League rule and in the end, when Hive Fleet Naga came calling, the lizards fought hard to buy some of the Ff'eng time to escape their doomed world.

Other than the Feast of Blades are there any interstellar sporting events? Is there Blood Bowl?

>>62080203
Its been two years?!
Holy shit

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>>62080264
>was going to make the comparison to Samurai
Well now I'm imagining Ulmeathians wielding katanas, only they're Croxigor-sized meaning they look more like a slab of metal from a construction site than a sword, and with swordsmanship to back it up.
The first thought somebody would have seeing it would be of it being slow-but-powerful, like a warhammer or club, but bladed. Then the giant lizard starts actually using it with about the same speed as a human using a blade, only because it's scaled up to monster-lizard-size the swings are making tangible gusts of air and can slice up actual trees in a manner similar to those rolled-up mats you always see swordspeople cutting up.
It's not even enhanced speed like you'd see from space marines, it's just that relatively-normal speeds scaled up to Kroxigor size are fucking terrifying.

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>>62082632
It's been a fun ride so far, and just keeps getting better as we go. Here's hoping we've got a few more years left in us.

>>62083456

How do the Cadians, Kriegans, Catachans and other famous guard-exporters think of the Ulmethic (and vice versa)?

>>62086217
Hard to say. Those three are all on the opposite side of the galaxy from them, unless the Ulmetheans got resettled there. Kronus has a lot of Cadians and is by Tau space, but then again Kronus is used to weird stuff.

Kriegers hate xenos. The fact that the Derivatives on Terranis have softened their views mostly due to hrud assistance is considered weird to them.

>>62086217
>>62086268
This anon's right about those guard-exporting planets being on the other side of the galaxy, and thus unlikely to have interacted with them that much.

Tarellian reactions are a bit of a mixed bag. On an individual level they can get along pretty well, but on a societal level the Tarellians recognize the tale of the Ulmeathians mirrors their own, and whether that's a good or bad thing is a debate that tends to get very heated. Some argue that if such a strong group has willingly joined the Imperium and hasn't lost their culture due to it, then they could do the same and maybe get more troops and resources to help brace for the next wave of Tyranids. The other group considers them a cautionary tale about the dangers of not being self-sufficient, a warning rather than an example.

Tau, ironically enough, don't seem to get along with them that much; while the Kroot at least try to maintain the societal expectations in place (even if it's just setup for one of their pranks), the Ulmeathians have no qualms about being extremely rude and informing the Tau quite pointedly about what they see as them doing something wrong or calling them "soft." The Ulmeathians see it as trying to help out the well-meaning but hopelessly naive softlings that have reverted to a restrictive caste system rather than using the much more logical metric of strength to determine social hierarchy. The fact that the weakest group of Tau are their leaders is just completely backwards to them.

Kryptmann respects them for having not only stayed behind to hold off the Tyranids, but actually succeeding in slowing them down. He's already got plans to start shipping the first batches of new Ulmeathian soldiers to the planets most likely to be in the Tyranid's path once they've reached fighting age in ten or fifteen years. His support staff are groaning about the sheer volume of paperwork it would take to make that plan a feasible reality.

>>62080203
>Anything that gets stuff off of the Notes page or floating around in space and into concrete codex entries would be appreciated.
Has the Notes page ever decreased in size? I think your only hope for sorting this project out is to hire writers.

>>62086607
Eh, it's a work in progress, and it's fine if the stuff we get off the Notes page gets replace with three more entries; that just means the project is still growing. We'll get there eventually.

>>62086591
Will they have colonial rights the kind Cadians do, with veteran guard regiments given right to settle worlds?

Men of Gold, Justinian's psi-disruptor, Fra'al, bolters, and Istvaan III are all up. Going to try to get the Ulmeathic League and Prometheanism next. Did we decide on going with the "Pieces of God in all things" interpretation of the world, I can't remember?

Might try pulling Féin-Cineál Enclaves together if no one is going to write that up.

Didn't hear any comments on Daemonifuge, wondering if that was a yes or a no. It seemed okay to me.

Enoulians and some other minor things are on Notes page and need a little bit of work before going up.

>>62086607
Some stuff has gotten off the Notes page, most notably the Hrud and Qah, the Mon-Keigh, and some other things. There's some other things that are pretty close to going up but just need some touch up (removing direct references to other works of fiction as analogies or direct comparisons with canon instead of "wink wink, nudge nudge").

But with the number of entries that pop up for every one that goes off I half expecting it to claim it’s Alpharius at some point. Even the backlog is pretty big.

Help is always appreciated.

it would be cool to hear if anyone has run games in the setting

>>62085074
>no bully Smurf

>>62086979
I'd think that any Imperial military formation has that right, regardless of who they are or where they're from.

What I'd like to know is what happens when Ulmeathics and Beastmen settle on a single world. The former believe in power through strength, but the latter want to keep their bestial emotions in check- what happens if Ulmeathics start encouraging rawer (or at least more dramatic) displays of power from the Beastmen?

>>62089800
It is not about power, it is about control. Control in all things. The beast is powerful but it is stupid and has no discipline, thus it is useless and dangerous to both the self and the collective.

The beastmen have built a strong society, they have endured for thousands of years. They export soldiers that the Imperium values for their strength of arms and hard discipline. The beastmen are also subservient to the dream of the Imperium. They would recognise each other.

>>62087874
If it seemed okay to you then you go for it, as the one most willing to do the power is yours.

>>62082564
hmmm... how could blood bowl work.

I don't think the Imperium as a whole would approve of a sport as violent and bloody (though cheerful!) as blood bowl. Isolated worlds, sure, but good luck having anything beyond a backwater sector broadcast without getting the door kicked in by the arbites.

Perhaps a less lethal version of blood bowl with all the horrid, bone splintering potential but with docs immediately on hand to try to piece players back together. And less brazenly corrupt refs.

Or maybe as background, there's a certain world out there ruled by a rather honor bound daemon prince of khorne that has grown jaded and bored with the usual "grab sword and bathe in the blood of millions" warfare. No, no, there has to be presentation, some elegance, rules...And cleats. Shoulder pads. And refs, but refs that can be easily convinced to turn the other way. Knowledge of this strange world somehow has promulgated across the galaxy, of hard luck teams of outcasts and renegades and the truly desperate somehow surviving and seeing miracles performed- sight restored to the blind, mountains of thrones that'd make megacorps look like paupers, ancient artifacts from the dark age of technology...

So they keep coming from across the galaxy, forming teams and playing for the amusement of this daemon prince. Of course, the easy part is getting there, the hard part is getting out...Or even wanting to get out. Awful lot of players suddenly take a liking to the world, and this strange ritual game...

The world has many tournaments with many different rules, many fabulous prizes, and entry is open to all. And the daemon prince keeps by his word- no corruption, mutation, or soul stealing if you win. But if you lose, well...

Or maybe that's too silly. Which is a shame, cause I goddamn love blood bowl. But it's always been cheery sociopathic fun.

Come to think of it orks would goddamn love blood bowl. Forget the daemon prince.

>>62091634
Part of me wants to suggest that the Imperium has a safer, friendlier version that they play.

But that what you have is all so perfect.The

Could be an ork deamon-prince. He was elevated without Khorne asking him first because Khorne looked down from his throne ant this new point of bloodlust where he knew there was no war, he watched a game and then another and another and roared "give that green bastard a deamonhood!"

>>62087874

I´m actually working in the Daemonifuge/ND Chapter-1. I am now a bit busy, so don´t know when will be finished. Whit luck before the end of this thread. If somebody wants to give their opinion, I am open to critics.

The basic synopsis of CH-1 will be that Stern is healing in an Inquisition base. He is suffering PTSD, partial amnesia and the fact that she is a psyker. As they try to gauge her capacities, somebody moves to kill/capture her.

>>62080916
Other than the Ff'eng who do we have?

>>62094289
We've got the avians from last thread (which I think we could call Passeri/Passerians, after the clade-name for songbirds) who were once-equals to the Ulmeathians, but fell under their rule due to the unnamed foe. We could probably stand to add a few minor races who were also under the unnamed foe's thumb, and thus got folded into the Ulmeathic Empire when they came out on top in that fight.

The crazy thing about all this is that it's coming together as this great ballad of sacrifice and nobility and would be a story worthy of a setting all of it's own, but to the Imperium it's basically a footnote in the backwaters of the galaxy that's interesting but not very relevant in the grand scheme of things. It kind puts the sheer scale of the universe into perspective.

>>62089800
>>62090288
I would agree. The Ulmeatheans are heavily into discipline. They may be a lot more militaristic than the Beastmen (who are a weird combination of Prussians with some cultural influences from other places like India rather than a warrior caste), but they're a restrained warrior caste with a code of honor. Heck, they'd probably love the Beastmen due to the similar outlooks.

The Ulmeatheans remind me a lot of the Sangheili and the Covenant from Halo, only the Sangheili and not the space popes are calling the shots. Their society is heavily dependent on vassal species performing day to day duties while they focus on the military side. They provide protection, but at the same time the awkward truth is that they're on top because they'd win in any appeal to force.

I guess in that way that makes them even more like Saurus despite being physically more like Kroxigors (though still with more agency because it's cultural and not programmed into them), compared to the Velociraptor Iriquois of the standard Tarrellian.

>>62095825
A dark side to them could be that in the days of the League they killed their psykers (and the psykers of their vassals). They didn't enjoy it but it was deemed necessary for good of everyone.

Now they round them up somewhere that can afford being nuked in an emergency and send for the Black Ships.

On the question of current Ulmeathic leadership- ie who's in charge now that they're effectively refugees within the Imperium- I've come up with two answers that could technically count as one.

The on-paper answer to "Who leads the Ulmeathians currently?" is Nakaidos, Son of Nakai the White, one of the Ulmeathians' greatest warriors and perhaps the reason the refugee fleet survived; the opening their ships used to escape was created when the Hive-fleet found the defense he led on the planet was so stiff they decided to bomb him from orbit rather than keep wasting time with their usual wave tactics. Nakaidos was sent with the evacuees because he was too young to fight at the time. He's inherited his father's albino scales, as well as his hulking form and hide, making him big and tough even by Ulmeathian standards. Even if he wasn't descended from a hero, his strength would have won him the position anyway, not to mention his mind for fighting both on a personal and tactical level. The issue for him is that he's YOUNG, and fully aware of the enormous gaps that's left in both practical knowledge and experience for him. He's practically a child, yet the weight of a broken peoples and their beneficiaries are on his shoulders and he can't shirk those responsibilities because he's the strongest. He sees the problems his people face, but doesn't have the wisdom to find the solutions, so instead he puts on the brave face expected of him and does his best, and for all his failings at least recognizes that the counsel of others older and wiser can do wonders to fill in the gaps.

>>62097351
This is why there is a second answer; for practical purposes, the one doing most of the legwork of leading at the moment is Admiral Oscen, the Passerian who was in charge of the refugee fleet by virtue of being the highest-ranking survivor. He's missing an arm due to a Hormagaunt from when the Tyranids tried to take his ship, and he's missing an eye from when he shoved a Lictor into an airlock. Despite that, his demeanor is closer to that of a fond grandfather than a hardened general- his smile is still brilliant and warm, and his voice calming and filled with cheer. As the Passeri would say, "his song is still sweet." That more than anything is why even Ulmeathians listen to him- despite going through what might have been some of the worst fighting of the retreat to Imperial space and facing down horrors he shouldn't have needed to face, he not only perservered, but came out the other side unjaded and unbroken. Or is very very good at hiding his pain. That strength of spirit is something they respect- and the fact that he is very good at wording his commands as requests or suggestions doesn't hurt.
Nakaidos relies heavily on his council when faced with dilemmas that leave him at a loss, and Oscen delights in the opportunity to groom the leader who's going to need to guide their combined peoples under their new circumstances as part of the Imperium, and most of the Ulmeathians he could take guidance from are either very old and stuck in their ways or as young as Nakaidos and subject to the hormones and emotions of youth. The fact that having Nakaidos' backing helps push through things he wouldn't be able to manage on his own authority also helps.

So, the Lacrymole and the Simulacra. Once horus hired a Lacrymole to kill the rulers of a system in the great crusade, but since then their relationship with the Imperium has soured quite a bit.

>>62087874
>I half expecting it to claim it’s Alpharius at some point
NOBODY expects the Alpha Legion! Their chief weapons are fear and surprise...

>>62097351
>>62097569
Part of the appeal of this idea is that it does a bit to highlight some of the potential flaws with the "Strength = Authority" mentality- Nakaidos hit the genetic lottery for his race and has the instincts, training, and resources to already be a nigh-unstoppable monster, but that doesn't really transition into being fit to rule, especially because he's barely old enough to be considered an adult- think of all the examples of child-monarchs through history, and most of them became either brutal dictators who trusted no-one (with good reason), or became figureheads getting used for the ends of royal advisors.
In this case, however, it works out, because his closest advisor is actually a good guy who's got the experience and wisdom to fill in the gaps in Nakaidos' skillset, while also training him for the day when Oscen will no longer be around. Conversely, Oscen is able to keep his power in a system that usually would have seen him deposed by the first upstart-runt who challenged the cripple and inevitably won, because he's backed by a living weapon who can break any and all challengers at once.

Also because some outsiders *cough*theTau*cough* imagine their close relationship to go beyond that of student and mentor, partly to make a jab at the Ulmeathians because Oscen is starting to go grey in the feathers so that makes it creepy because age-gaps are always evil and gross, and partly because their dynamic and mutual trust is so strong it makes it easy to ship them together.
I'd personally leave it vague/unconfirmed to avoid making the 'canon' dynamic weird, but I also can't help but ship them myself. That's just me though, and I'd rather not ruin a good dynamic by mixing in something that might put people off.

>>62099342
I'm imagining them as more of a father and son relationship. Oscen might have been a regional administrator or an assistant to an Ulmeathian warrior-noble back before everything went to shit. He's old, experienced, respected by the establishment (what's left of it), seems to know everyone and has been doing this job since Nakai's predecessor wad on the throne. Nakaidos listens to the old man because he's smart and knows what he's doing and in the words of an almost sober Guardsman he once met "none of us can be as strong as all of us".

As leader he sees it as his duty to be strong enough to bind the remnants of his people together, to harness the strength of the collective to rebuild something of the old world in this new order. For that he needs someone to do the heavy thinking and he's smart enough to recognise that. He will not be the last King of the Ulmeathic.

>>62100560
True, the father-son dynamic fits them well, hence why I refrain from inserting my own shipping-goggles into the canon.

The rumors still exist of course, but that has more to do with the fact that they're somewhat inspired by the Samurai type of system, and they sort of had a thing for student-mentor relationships. I'd say it's something similar to things like David and Jonathan in the Bible, where their relationship is so strong that people far removed from the reality go "See? It's obvious that they're fucking," because obviously the only type of intimate relationship is a romantic one. Also the Ulmeathians having rather stunted sex-drives greatly reduces the chances of the rumors being true.

In other words, it's just degenerates being degenerates and reading too much into the situation. Dang Tau with their weird hentau holodocs and such.

looks good, bump

>>62098583
It could be the Lacrymole are another race that fell. They weren't all Chaos corrupted at the time of the Great Crusade, but they sure aren't friendly now. Either that or they all got a case of C'tan vampirism like suggested last thread.

>>62099342
>think of all the examples of child-monarchs through history, and most of them became either brutal dictators who trusted no-one (with good reason), or became figureheads getting used for the ends of royal advisors.

Szarekh flashbacks intensify.

>>62102181
might be cool to flesh out the shard idea

>>62102181
wasn't even thinking of that, lol.
Still, it's a good comparison for the sake of showing how much difference having even one person on your side can make in the development of young monarchs. Szarekh had no one, so he grew jaded and callous. Nakaidos had Oscen not only trusting him, but guiding him and giving him purpose. Just that one difference of having someone to rely on does so much to teach empathy and collaboration.

>>62102248
The only difficult I can think of is the Lacrymole were already blood-drinkers when they started out. It's how they shape-shift, they drink the blood of their target and shape-shift into them. Though more like fleas than "drink you dry" vampires.

In canon Horus somehow got a sample from a Custodes and got the Lacrymole to turn into one of them.

>>62102181
Horus in this AU is a slightly suspect second hand star ship salesman. It's doubtful he would knowingly employ something that sees people as food.

>>62091634
>>62092878
I really, really like this. Like holy shit I really like this. On the surface it looks stupid as all fuck but it's something I could actually see happening in this AU.

Nobody dares using Blood Bowl as an opportunity to kill a shit load of rivals all gathered together because despite the slaughter usually being quite pleasing to Khorne a thing that isn't pleasing is interrupting the entertainment. Nobody likes having a can of beer the size of small hill thrown at them and that has happened in the past.

Because it's something he cares about the other gods have made their own teams and on the occasions they beat his team Khorne gets real fucking salty.

There has only ever been one instance of what looked like loyalists getting involved in the game and that was a bunch of totally-not-Omega-marines. They had no interest in actually winning, they just wanted to kill a particularly bothersome Tzneetchian sorcerer and they only time they could be absolutely certain he would be anywhere was when he was on the field.

The Chaos Eldar have their teams and typically throw Serena Williams tantrums when things don't go their way.

Dark Eldar field teams on the occasions when Vect and Malys are getting along but don't risk it otherwise. Needless to say they are always on ALL OF THE DRUGS before, during and after the game. This is not considered cheating, drugs are available to everyone so fairness is maintained.

>>62080916
>Ulmeathics took pity on them and conquered them for their own good.

That could be mildly hilarious. Ff'eng isn't their word for Ff'eng, it's actually derived from a slightly obscene word in base-Ulmeathic that could translate to moron. The planet was called Nok-Ff'eng which was Idiot Town for all intents and purposes. The Ff'eng had no word for themselves as a species that didn't just mean "people" (and therefore excluded everyone not from their world and quickly fell from common usage) and had no actual word for the planet as a whole.

The Chief Commander who took over the running of Nok-Ff'eng was unusual and was almost certainly given the "great honour" of being a planetary overseer fore being so unusual. Jovial Ulmeathics do not exist or if they do they are so rare as to be not a consideration and are considered by their peers to be damaged in some way.

Krupfoth was possibly a female of good cheer but it was channelled into the usual displays of power and authority that so characterize her kind. Having been given rulership of the Worst Planet in the League she set about making it less shit.

She made all wars illegal on the planet without her permission and declared that she would eat the chief of which ever tribe instigated hostilities. After a few Ff'eng chiefs being invited to dinner the message was taken seriously.

The energies of the tribes were then set to more constructive uses. Mostly this consisted of diverting or damming rivers, building vast irrigation systems, and generally maximizing the usefulness of what water the planet had whilst simultaneously getting the orbiting patrol boats to nudge chunks of space ice into the path of the planet. As the first stages of the work were reaching completion fruit trees were planted along the banks of new waterways and lakes to hold the earth together.

>>62110375
Krupfoth was not popular with the Ff'eng as they saw her as enslaving them to her will and denying them the freedoms they had enjoyed as little as a generation ago. But she did not care for the petulant mewling of idiots and her fellow Ulmeathic enforcers ensured that rebellions were short lived and ended brutally.

It could not be denied by sensible Ff'eng that thigs were objectively better for the average subject if they kept their heads down and didn't cause trouble. They were better fed, less likely to die in skirmishes and raids, there didn't seem to be as many virulent diseases as there used to be and it wasn't as if the Chief was working them to death.

Many of Krupfoth's public speeches had such wonderful lines in them as
>Cower before the might of League engineering prowess
>Plague and Contagion are slain without mercy
>Resistance to my agricultural reforms are futile
>All will tremble as I take your wastelands and beat them into gardens
>Your petty squabbles are nothing compared to the might of League Law
>Quake in fear as I call for rain upon the desert
>Your homes are being protected, peace is been imposed and nothing you can do can stop this

Nobody could tell if she was taking the piss or not because all Ulmeathic public announcements blatantly emphasise the strength of the current leader, what that strength is being directed towards and a declaration of challenge to any opposition.

Krupfoth was a 112 and very grey in the scales when the Hive Fleet arrived. She did not survive but many of her subjects did. The Ff'eng no longer hate her, time has changed her in the memories from a tyrant to a noble protector.

>>62110464

Did she die fighting?

>>62111330
Presumably. 'Nids make no distinction between the young and the old and the Ulmeathic instinctive attitude to solving a problem is to punch it until it stops being a problem.

>>62108696
He is but back in the old days they might not have all been vampires and the Imperium hadn't heard of the C'tan (because Mars are secretive assholes).

Lacrymole fall some time early in Imperial history but after the WoTB. They seemed to be undergoing a cultural shift of some sort. Some sort of religious reforms. New blood drinking rituals and such. It's a bit weird but some humans do weirder and they keep it to themselves. There was no evidence of Chaos corruption so it wasn't unitl ██████ ██ ████ ████████ ████████ ███ ██████████ ███ ████████████ █████ ███████ █████████████ █ ██ ██ ███████ ███ ██████ ██ ████ by Inquisitor Gründvald when he barely escaped from Betacairn. The Inquisitor calls a cross ordo quorum of Inquisitors together because he knows ████ ████ ███ █████ ██████ and really doesn't know who to trust and if not totally alone has to be in a group of at least seven other people or he starts screaming and trying to stab everyone. He recovered, more or less, eventually. As a side note this is when las-weapons with the UV power guzzling setting started to appear.

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>>62089734
How else do you get them to pay attention?

>>62106755
They might have been the people who sold the Imperium the recipe for polymorphine.

>>62112754
>t. Mira

>>62109735
I imagine the orks are the biggest faction there is still the orks by reason of being more of them.

>>62112097
Could be that the Lacrymole were the eldest or at least most built up lineage of the Deceiver prior to Orikan and the Golden Pyramid

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Speaking of orks, I had an idea for a Not!Skarsnikk character that might fits pretty well given the lore of the setting (plus we need more Ork characters). Not!Skarsnikk answers the rather interesting question posed by the setting of “what happens to a Brain Boy if their twin gets killed”? Normally, Brain Boyz rise to the top of the social heap regardless of their situation, because in a fight between two evenly matched Orks the Brain Boyz is going to win because they are willing to use joint locks, throws, and other such forms of brutal cunning rather than just relying on brute strength to overpower their opponent. In some cases, like with Ghazghull who was born on the small side for an ork, this allows them to defeat opponents slightly larger than they are, and because to orks bigger equals boss the victor will grow to match their expectations and the situation resolves itself. And in the case of the grot, nobody will touch the warboss’ “little buddy” for fear of retribution, and even if they do, Orks have this weird built-in aversion to actually killing a Brain Boyz grot that even they can’t explain (Roughing them up, yes. Killing them, no.)

Not!Skarsnikk was a Brain Boyz grot whose Ork counterpart had the misfortune of being killed by a challenging ork rather soon after becoming warboss. Orks only have two real rules in their society: listen to the Brain Boyz and the biggest Ork is the boss. And in this case the sheer size difference between Not!Skarsnikk and the Boyz was enough to override any proclivities to obey a Brain Boy. Not!Skarsnikk was big for a gretchin, but even the strongest grot has no chance of defeating an ork in a fair fight (unless you’re Snikrot, but Snikrot and “fighting fair” almost never go together in the same sentence). Not only did Not!Skarsnikk lose his brother, he lost his entire standing in Ork society in the process and now nobody would listen to him anymore.

>>62109735
>Nobody likes having a can of beer the size of small hill thrown at them

I love the image of this. "BUNCHA GODDAMN BUMS, STOP RUNNING THE BALL AND START FOULING! THEIR BLITZER WAS LAYING THERE FOR MINUTES!"

>>62114681
I imagine that there's several layers of leagues- the ork leagues taking place in real space are dominated by ork players. There are other teams though it's rare for any to last long. That means when it comes to the big leagues, the largest pool of skilled experienced players are naturally orks.

And strangely, it's not just love of violence that draws orks to blood bowl. For them, there is also the matter of religious schism. Gork and Mork are also keenly interested in the sport, and take great pride in seeing the gods competing for their followers humbled. In fact, the followers of Gork and Mork claim their gods to be the inventors of blood bowl, a claim ridiculous and rage inducing to the followers of Khorne. It's got blood in name, it's OBVIOUS Khorne invented it.

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>>62116238
Skarsnikk got angry, and then he got mean. The Orks won’t listen to him anymore? Fine. They can go zog off and die for all he cares. He decided to split off and form his own WAAAGH!, with the only orkoids that were still willing to listen to him, the other gretchin.

Most people, when they hear the word “gretchin”, think of small, cowardly creatures about the size of a human child, terrified of the concept of a fair fight and running away from any opponent who isn’t. Let them find peace in their ignorance. Not!Skarnsnikk is different. Not!Skarsnikk stands about as tall as an average-sized human, his body lined with lean and wiry muscle in the manner of a coyote or an alley cat. Most grots will break and run if you make eye contact with them and there isn’t a bigger ork to scare them forward. Not!Skarsnikk just stares you down, and then you realize that he’s sizing you up with those beady little eyes and he’s trying to figure out what he can take from you.

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>>62116261
Additionally, because not!Skarsnikk’s gretchin are fightin’ and winnin’, and there are no orks around to slap them down, some of them are getting pretty big. Not as big as not!Skarsnikk Typically the most aggressive, crazy ones with relatively little self-preservation instinct. This means that Not!Skarsnikk can do more with the grots at his disposal than just using them in human wave attacks. Mostly things that an Ork can’t do without being painted purple on account of being slabs of walking muscle. Things like “sneaking up to them in their beds and slaughtering them with their own weapons counts as a fair fight”, stabbing one git in the leg and dragging him off into the night to leave a trail for the rest of them to follow into a trap, or making use of squig pits, leg snares, and other such contraptions to whittle down their numbers in order to make the actual fight easier. Of course, that doesn’t mean he’ll avoid human wave attacks if he deems them necessary, though he tends to use the smaller gretchin rather than his “shock grots”.

Not!Skarsnikk is a hateful, spiteful creature, and he may have bitten off more than he can chew. He has essentially declared a three-way WAAAGH! between his Boyz, the rest of Ork-kind, and everybody else, a war which he can fight very effectively with his guerilla tactics but is unlikely to win. He doesn’t like how the Orks treat grots, and while he’s more tolerant of them he especially doesn’t like how Brain Boy gretchin seem to be content with the status quo (whereas he doesn’t see the big picture of total WAAAGH!). Some might say he is like a gretchin Urlakk Urg in this respect, in that his single-minded hatred is going to get himself killed. However, when push comes to shove, he will very reluctantly team up with other WAAAGH!s to face an even greater threat, though this usually only lasts the bare minimum of time until the enemy is defeated and usually ends with his knife in someone’s back

>>62116276
At first I was thinking of just using Da Red Gobbo, but the Gretchin Revolutionary Committee (even though we’ve said it exists in this timeline and is a big larger than in canon) is supposed to be a more humorous concept and using Da Red Gobbo as such kind of casts a darker shadow over the events of Gorkamorka (though I think in canon the events of Gorkamorka already happened pre-999.M41 and in the “present” it is now a fully operational Tomb World). Plus Da Red Gobbo in canon is said to be a legacy title.

>>62116290
>>62116276
>>62116261
>>62116238
Yes! All of my Yes. This needs to be a thing.

Also it's been speculated that Ghazghull is a giant gretchin and Makari is a midget ork. Not sure if it's true, an in-universe rumour or true of all Brain Boys but the dividing line between Grot and Ork gets a bit thin as the ork component usually starts a bit smaller in life to teach them Kunnin and the grot half starts a bit bigger to encourage brutal.

>>62098583
Simulacra don't seem to be related to the Lacrymole in any way. Lacrymole are insect looking in their natural state but with a slightly metalic looking shell, although in this AU the metallic nature could be a result of the C'tan influence with the now very rare examples of the species having having normal insect shell. Simulacra are purple and soft looking in their natural state and are capable of imitation any humanoid, carbon based life form of similar mass by ingesting a substantial mouthful of it's flesh and can assume it's memories and imitate the personality and mannerisms perfectly by devouring the brain.

Simulacra is almost certainly artificially created with some hints of it being a creation of some ambitious biological sculptors of the Old Eldar Empire. Their mission was to kill the leaders of empires outside the Old Empire's borders, eat their brains, assume their jobs, and steer the foreign empire into serving or at least not interfering with the Eldar Empire. At least that was the intent. Sadly the Simulacra were unruly, disobedient, prone to going feral and worst of all their mimetic properties were temporary. In time the faults could undoubtedly have been corrected, but the whole thing was just too much effort. Perhaps out of indifference, or kindness and pity to their creations or just out of mild background malice to the rest of the galaxy the creators of these monsters let them out of the cage to wander the galaxy. And they have spread.

How they reproduce is a mystery, it is assumed to be some sort of parthenogenesis as no conventional reproductive organs have been found and it's almost unheard of for more than one to be found on any given planet. It is unknown how long they live for. It is unknown exactly how intelligent they are between masquerades, intelligent to count as sapient for sure but beyond that it's quite hard to say.

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An idea for Ingethel the Ascended.

The people of Cadia have never had much love for Chaos. Although the Cadian Pillars may have kept the planet from being dragged into the Warp wholesale like the Eye, this did not stop daemons from temporarily manifesting on the planet just long enough to drag people off into the night. And while the neverborn of Chaos may have had trouble remaining corporeal on the surface of Cadia, this did not stop hunting parties from the fallen Eldar Empire from raiding the planet for slaves, sacrifices, and entertainment. However, at the same time, there have always been those insane or broken enough to see the truth of Chaos, to see its awfulness and self-destructiveness, and pledge themselves to it body and soul nevertheless. Such is the case with Ingethel the Ascended.

Ingethel was a hedge witch who lived on Cadia about the time the Imperium first visited the planet. She lived in the caverns beneath a great mountain in the wilderness, away from civilization but close enough to numerous villages to practice her dark craft. It is not clear why the dark gods allowed Ingethel to exist as she did. Normally a psyker such as Ingethel would have been carried off by daemons long before reaching adulthood, their souls a tastier than average treat. Perhaps Ingethel and her ilk were granted the protection of the Chaos Gods because of their whole-hearted devotion to and their wicked ways. Or perhaps, as the Imperium uplifted the planet and drove the monsters back into the dark, the dark gods realized they needed more forces “on the ground” so to speak to go to bat for them.

>>62122313
Ingethel was well-known to the natives of Cadia. The people of villages surrounding Ingethel’s mountain had stories about her, about babies being stolen in the dead of night for ritual sacrifice and young men being spirited away by a seemingly nubile and doe-eyed maiden for nefarious purposes. To the Imperium, who had come to teach the Cadians one did not have to hide from those lurking in the dark, such a thing was unacceptable. A force of twenty Word Bearers and a host of Imperial Guardsmen were dispatched to Ingethel’s mountain, determined to end the threat of the witch once and for all. However, this decision proved to be a mistake when Ingethel collapsed the caverns of her mountain home on top of them, burying them alive. At the same time, Ingethel used their life essence to fuel a ritual to daemonhood, which among other things involved ritual self-disembowelment. With their sacrifice, Ingethel ascending into a daemon princess of Slaanesh, becoming a four-armed creature seemingly equal parts snake, shark, and worm.

In the long term, Ingethel’s trap did little to halt the advance of the Imperium across Cadia, but it did put the fear of Chaos back into the natives of Cadia, which was the Ruinous Powers’ intention all along.

Reading this over, maybe it needs to be expanded a bit. Like maybe Ingethel was some kind of witch-terrorist who was a pain in the Imperium's side for years, and collapsing the cavern was just icing on the cake.

Wasn't sure if the number of deaths is too few. Ingethel in canon was elevated after killing a mere ten people.

Also wasn't sure whether Ingethel should work alone or be part of a coven. The general theme for pre-Imperium Cadia seems to be it's a place where every pre-Industrial nightmare of humanity, every monster, witch, boogeyman, or ghost story, is not only real but very dangerous. Thus an almost literal fairy tale witch/stone age witch doctor in the middle of Cadia.

>>62119042
Sounds quite a lot like

Speaking of which, we really need a name for the changelings (the Crone Eldar body-swaps) to differentiate them from "the" Changeling, if only to avoid confusion. Unfortunately, I don't think there's any readily recognizable word for "changeling" in other folklores, as the idea of a changeling seems to be mostly a Celtic and Scandinavian idea.

>>62123241
Dang it, meant it sounds quite a lot like the Crone Eldar changelings.

So here's a dumb, nitpicky question about the universe:

Are mixed marriages (such as human/eldar, tau/eldar, tau/human, etc.) common or are they treated exceptions rather than the rule? Corollary to that, would a mixed family actually work?

I ask because I'm a nerd and because I'm genuinely curious.

>>62123722
They happen. They're not super common, but they're not super weird. People like to focus on them because it's something you don't see in canon and is different. In-universe reactions to them depends on who you're talking to, some react super negatively (e.g., Alaitoc), some could care less.

Mixed families is a tricky question. Specifically because humans, eldar, and tau are all very different biologically and cannot naturally have children. Aside from a few expensive and inefficient AdBio/Haemonuculi vanity projects the one case was literally an act of a god. Adoption happens, and it's kind of a statement on the nature of the universe that despite adoption happening more frequently than the modern day the Schola Progenum is still glutted with war orphans. There is still a lot of death, even relative to the huge population size of the Imperium.

Given that the galaxy is big enough that many humans never see a non-human their entire life (and vice versa to lesser extents), an individual in one of the most cosmopolitan places (like a hive with a sizeable enclave) might know of a couple people in a long-term relationship. Flings are more common because eldar, tau, and humans have relatively similar reproductive habits and anyone is young and more willing to experiment at some point in their lives.

>>62119042
I'd actually been going with the idea that the Simulacra was a GaBHD bioform gone feral, though there was absolutely nothing to support such a thing

>>62124518
There's nothing to support the belief that it was the eldar either. It's just in universe musings.

>>62124250
Do the Tau even have a tradition of marriage?

>>62125687
It doesn't seem so. The board of genetics determines who you would have the best children with, then you have children with them. Romance is for decadent fools.

>>62124250
AdBio and presumably Haemonuculi vanity projects also run into the problem that they have to cut and stitch and add and take away from the genes of the parents of the hybrids to such a degree that it's only marginally their child anymore a it would probably have been easier to just invest in surrogates if they wanted children. Then Taldeer got pregnant with a hybrid child and everyone flipped the fuck out

>>62124518
It could be that either side blame the other for them.

Humans blam eldar because of the above reasons.

Eldar, especially Dorhi, claim that they were infiltration organisms designed by the Iron Minds to infiltrate the Eldar Empire and subvert it but they didn't work because humans are stupid and eldar are psychic.

It could be either as records are hard to find from those long dead dead regimes and also in both cases they were covert operations so records would have been scarce in any case.

The simulacra themselves offer no clueto their origin.

>>62126918
>flipped the fuck out
WILL flip the fuck out. The truth of the matter is a tightly-guarded secret for a reason, and the parents are very good at violently rebuffing uncomfortable questions.

>>62125687
Adding to what >>62126449 said, they might have way back in the day, but now the closest thing they have is Ta'liserra, a platonic blood-brother bonding ceremony between close friends, which is the closest you get to a family unit.

>>62124250
One big concern in human-eldar relationships is loss. Eldar with their OCD don't take loss well and are likely to outlive a vast majority of humans (there's a sliding scale of rejuvenant availability but most can't afford the good stuff, and even that only gets you to 1000 or so). So some eldar see it as setting yourself up for despair.

>>62129092
Do Tau accept other species as platonic blood-brothers in these rituals? Ones that have already dedicated themselves to the furtherance of the Greater Good, obviously.

>>62128748
This. The regiment and others who meet her know she's pregnant, it pretty hard to miss. It is assumed that the father is just some eldar she had fun with off duty.

The older veterans in the regiment who have known her a long time suspect something and they have noticed that lanky unnerving assassin is always in her shadow. But they are very careful in the questions they don't ask.

Of those that do know the number is few. Taldeer herself, LIVII, the regimental medic, at least one AdBio consultant and a few higher ups in the Inquisition.

But she will have the child any day now (as of the last midnight 999M41) and once that happens news of Lofn the hybrid will get much harder to contain.

Eldrad has forseen her birth. He will not live long enough to see her with his own eyes.

>>62129460
I would like to think so. Could get weird if an eldar joins given that they will outlast every other member a dozen times over.

>>62129460
interesting to think about how the Greater Good will interact with other cultural power blocks in the Imperium, such as the Katholians, Prometheans, Diasporites, the Voidborn and Rogue Trader corporate complexes, as well as other cultural powerhouses besides Ultramar among the Survivor Civs, and colonial projects like Cadia and Fenris, let alone the Traveling Court, an almost literal cultural juggernaut. After millennia of total ideological dominance in Tau culture, the Greater Good has become a provincial philosophy most relevant in the eyes of the galaxy for its passing novelty. It's quite an adjustment for the Ethereals and Water Caste to make in their messaging, let alone their worldview, and as evidenced by the second war in the Damocles Gulf it was obviously too much for some to handle.

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>>62119042
>>62124518
>>62127602
The idea of the Simulacra being some biological construct made by the Old Eldar Empire and their reaction when they didn't work out sounds pretty funny. The Old Empire might have seen it as an act of pity and kindness but in reality it was an act of apathy and it made life worse for a whole lot of people many years down the road, especially since their idea of mercy was to just let them go and ignore them since there was nothing they could do to harm the Empire. A really twisted play on the idea of "noble(-ish) intentions, dark universe".

Of course, the idea of it being "no one knows" and just pointing fingers at each other is equally funny.

>>62117582
>>62116290
Still needs a name. There don't seem to be many named grots in canon besides Da Red Gobbo, Makari, and one that apparently works on Wazdakka's bike.

If we do leave the Gretchin Revolutionary Committee and not-Skarsnikk separate, it could be that Skarsnikk is based in a different part of the galaxy from Gorkamorka, which is up on the border with the Ghoul Stars. Somehow the GRC managed to get off the planet on the spaceship the orks launched in ~M39 or so before the planet turned into a Tomb World, and now the GRC is a minor thing among WAAAGH!s in the galactic northeast. Which means it's mostly the Arch-Mangler of Bork's problem. Not-Skarsnikk has never met up with them but likes the cut of their jib.

>>62127602
I dig it. It might actually be interesting to limit Simulacra's transformation to the more humanoid of Xenos, and be wholly biological instead of using a psychic power. They might not show up in records until around the GaBHD golden age, when the Iron minds were at peak meddling, fucking with Be'lakor and what not. Actually, the Iron Minds themselves might be a strike against them being Old Empire infiltrators, at least against the children of Sol. It's hard to impersonate an Iron Mind without at very least being one yourself.

>>62133266
That said, you do get people converting and immigrating to the Tau Empire. It's just the galaxy is so huge what counts as a demographic shift to the Tau Empire is only of minor note to everyone else (the Tau Empire being about the size of Ultramar, and the two seem to be the two largest independent polities).

Prometheans and Tau'va missionaries are said to hate each other, not because the two beliefs are so incompatible but because the two are so similar at their core, and they either see each other as not so different or quibble over minutia. The primary point of contention IIRC was said to be "strength through unity" versus "unity through strength".

This is why the Ethereals are very reluctantly relaxing their grip on how orthodox the Tau'va is. They still believe wholeheartedly that the Tau'va is the correct way, but they realize they need to adapt with the times and be willing to adapt what works from other beliefs or else they are going to get left to the wayside (as a certain hermit commune has demonstrated). Da and the early Tau'va adherents never really had to deal with an alternate school of thought.

>>62130852
The funny thing is of the two of them LIVII has been said to be the cooler headed of the two. IIRC (forgive me if I say something incorrect, I thought was from one of the early threads) When Lofn is born LIVII wants to use Lofn's status to send her to Old Earth to keep her safe. Lofn's status as the first hybrid would be a Big Deal, and Old Earth is so heavily fortified there would be no way for anyone to get to her short of the apocalypse. Kronus isn't. LIVII is a Vindicare. Taldeer is a farseer. They can take care of themselves. Lofn can't. Taldeer on the other hand wants her to go to Cadian boot camp, on the grounds that being the first hybrid is going to put a massive target on your back, and you can't expect to survive in the world unless you learn to fight for yourself.

bump

>>62133620
It was also the case that LIVII was probably trained on Old Earth, to him it offers the best of everything.

>>62129092
One of the reasons for so many human/eldar couples on Cadia is that mortality is far more evident. Take an eldar lover, take a human lover but it's all the same if shit goes bad and they won't live longer no matter what they are. Death is more accepted by the Ulthwe and Cadian eldar.

Bumpan

>>62129460
Pretty sure the platonic blood-brothers thing is done on an individual basis. In other words, the ones who interact with aliens on a regular basis are more likely to do it with non-Tau.

In the interests of getting things off the Notes page, I reformatted the Nicassar section into something a little bit more coherent. It's mostly just formatting changes, but I put it here to see if it is okay.

https://pastebin.com/bGcM3Lht

So, we mention a spaceport in the Savlar system, if the only thing that could be scrounged up to justify their survivor civ status when the Imperium first arrived was a ship with a drive nobody would dare test there would need to have been a lot of development in the system since then. Between the neutronium foundry, free brotherhood, indigenous technobarbarians, and free flowing drugs there would be plenty of material.

>>62139958
The neutronium in and of itself would draw the commerce. The Imperium can't scavenge orbital tethers forever and trying to use wraithbone wouldn't work even if the AdMech wouldn't REEEE about it.

By the way, was anyone going to expand on Luther's personal forge world? The one that was trying to recreate neutronium?

>>62140176
This was something I missed. What has been written so far?

>>62133298
Or both sides invented them at the same time under Tzneetchian influence.

>>62133266
How much do we know about the Diasporites beyond attempted pacifism and anti-materialistic?

>>62123722
>>62135602
I'd say that while human/eldar relationships outside of Cadia are very uncommon for reasons already listed, the average tau lifespan is what, a decade or so less than an average human's? More than enough variation for there to be a long-term relationship with one, assuming the tau is familiar enough with human culture to understand the differences between a marriage and blood-bonding.

>>62133266
The less a particular faith strictly enforces societal structures as part of it's core scripture the more likely it is to be compatible with the tenants of The Greater Good. Aun'Da put forth a shit load of ideology and social reforms but didn't really touch on the notions of gods. On the whole The Greater Good neither acknowledges nor refutes the existence of god/s.

What would anyone in the Imperium consider if a company were to offer the following to its employees:

Paid time off such as PTO, sick days, and vacation days
Health insurance
Life insurance
Dental insurance
Vision insurance
Retirement benefits or accounts
Healthcare spending or reimbursement accounts, such as HSAs, FSAs, HRPs, and HRAs
Long term disability insurance
Short term disability insurance
Tuition reimbursement
Childcare benefits
Gym memberships or discounts
Wellness programs
Relocation assistance
Commuting/travel assistance
Telecommuting options
Workplace perks such as recreation activities, food and coffee, and flexible work schedules

There's several downsides for working here e.g. Difficult/dangerous work environment, your children live on site, 65 year contract but there's plenty of time to relax (vacation time is nine weeks mandatory annually). Given this situation I was hoping for some thoughts on this.

What Ordos was Robin in?

>>62142312
Securitas. Most of the shit he would be dealing with would be homegrown threats eating the Imperium from within. Some of the threats weren't home grown but Inquisitors can deal with shit outside of their specialist subject.

>>62141970
The Imperium itself would give exactly 0 shits because this is a local affair, with local people that deals with local laws regarding local employment of local people. Slavery (regulated slavery) is legal in the Imperium for example, Oscar and Angron had angry shouting matches on the subject. Oscar maintained that people have always found ways of fucking over their fellow man with slavery by other names and at least this way we can regulate it and impose some standards to maintain some of the human dignity of the slaves and a standard of living. Angron maintained that a slave was a slave no matter what fancy words and widow dressing you shat onto the word.

Angron had been a slave in one of the worst regimes of Old Earth and his perceptions were influenced by that.

Eventually a compromise was reached. Slavery would be legal so long as the slaves weren't mistreated or abused. It was never set in stone exactly all the ways that "mistreated" or "abused" could be measured because then people would go right up to that limit and find loopholes. Then he handed over the responsibility of enforcing this to Angron.

All of that in an unbreakable 65 year contract would be classed as slavery, but extremely well kept slavery presumably offered to high skill, highly educated and highly diligent people. I can see eldar from the enclaves leaping and competing for a contract like that because its' not that long of a time for them.

>>62142527

Thanks for answering. I just wanted to know what such a contract would be accepted or considered within the wider Imperium if it was say for a single planet or a Rogue Trader Dynasty.

Quick question: Is a Rogue Trader Dynasty 875 years old, made up of 10 million members and 2.75 starships considered a prestigious dynasty?

How would they be treated? Reduced further -

How would a rogue traders dynasty made up of 12,000 members and with 4,000 starship be treated?

>>62143183
Depends how rich they are. Numbers of people in the Dyansty means nothing if it's poor as balls. Same with the ships. Big ships, with fast engines and good armaments are always worth more than just having a few slow old rusty boats.

How the individuals of the dynasty would be treated further matters on how the dynasty is organized. If it's a main line with wealth diminishing the further from it you are then the distant branches are going to only be marginally better off than the average pleb in that they could find it easier to get a job but it's still sweeping the lower decks.

Or they could be operating on a tribal or clannish collective ownership of the family everyday expenses account with the business account being needing permission from the patriarch/matriarch of the family.

With the RT families they are not respected because they are an old name. The old name is respected because it's swimming in cash.

>>62140176
>>62140639
Calling it a "Forge World" is a gross overestimation of their capacities. It's a Spaceport/dry-dock for the construction of spaceships, which is nothing unusual. The thing with this one is that the cogboys were trying to find a way to recreate neutronium, and figured that the best way to make something that broke most laws of physics was to work someplace where the laws of physics do not apply and equipped their dock with gellar fields and warp engines.
Long story short, the Imperium found out and wasn't happy about it, Luther found out and was ecstatic, and the dockyard is permanently moored in the warp, pumping out ships with their newest attempts at recreating neutronium.
They aren't even close to getting it right, but the product does imply that they might have had the right idea- the ships they make are notoriously tough, and while a bit light on the weapons side have armor that makes the only way to kill them a prolonged engagement or overwhelming firepower. It's got a few drawbacks (they need the resources for shipbuilding brought to them regularly, and the drydock isn't big enough for them to build any of the larger ship-types like battleships), but Luther guards it jealously because it's one of the very few sources of ships he has that is 100% xenos-free.

>>62143466
In this case the starships are war ships , mostly escort class ships. The members are only those who are included in the main line. Bastards, or anyone who has fallen out of favor isn't counted. The dynasty operates in a manner and efficiency where a duo or single descendent is sent under tutelage of an older member who would then teach them their ways. It is their expected goal to eventually gain a smaller warship/trading vessel of their own which they earn from their own efforts and assistance of noteworthy vessels.

In keeping up with the dynasty quota there are four major divisions by prestige and character though outliers exist.

Human to Xenos relations are the most prestigious, then human to human, then Xenos to Xenos and finally exploratory where all the fuck ups are sent to prove some value to their organization and dynasty.

As a whole they only operate primarily in one segmentum of the imperium though primary because they are still not "large sized".

As a whole they dynasty can thus be considered fairly wealthy.

>>62143652
It also possibly helps that they don't worship Chaos. Luther doesn't worship Chaos and neither do his old school Fallen but trying to get a ship that doesn't have deamons lodged in every system in the Eye of Terror is no easy task, but these guys do it. Any deamons on the ship are uninvited and not actually running anything so you can boot them out.

It's possible that Luther convinced the dock-yard (do we need a name?) to join him by seiging the shit out of the place. He pointed out that if he needed to he would let them all die and take his chances getting more compliant cog-botherers to try and figure out what they were doing when he gives them the dock-yard. Seeing that he was deadly serious and that he would probably also protect them out of jealousy from other marauders if they agreed they decided to take him up on his offer.

They don't much like Luther and Luther doesn't much like them on a personal level no matter what state of mind he's in but they are in a mutually beneficial relationship.

>>62144232
A neat idea, but from what's already been written they probably joined up with him because he sent ships to help stall the Admech and Imperium fleets long enough for the drydock's engines to warm up enough to submerge the entire station into the warp permanently. All they want is to keep trying to find the secret of Neutronium, and Luther was the first benefactor who was perfectly willing to not only allow their experiments, but actively encourage them, supply them, and even take the failed prototypes off of their hands.

The point about not worshipping Chaos is also good though; they initially were in it just because it was the only place they could work without getting shut down. Now it's evolved into single-minded neurosis; the only thing they think about, care about, and work towards is finding a way to replicate neutronium. The fact that this neurosis may be part of the reason why they have yet to succeed is thankfully one they are no longer capable of comprehending. Such single-mindedness doesn't leave much leeway for worship of higher powers.

>>62140825
Tzeentch must have loved the DaoT. So much political ambition and skullduggery to exploit.

>>62141571
They're basically a cross between monks and Silk Road merchants IN SPACE with sun-guns and a religion loosely based on old Ptolemaic views of the cosmos and astrology (hence the "music of the spheres").

>>62144232
We need a name. I might suggest Kai but a Forge World that bought its survival with a gun that allows its users to hate people to death is to good to pass up (not to mentiom get the BLOOD KING OF THE GALAXY's seal of approval.

Worth mentioning that Luther also helps scare some of the Crones away. Won't keep Arrotyr or Kaimon away, but the small fry know Luther would wreck their shit. Malys might even leave it alone if she's lucid enough and not bored because of how big of an asset it is.

>>62144457
He might have been their first benefactor but now he might be there only one.

He stuck his neck out to save their asses and in return he expects some measure of exclusivity. They can disagree if they wish but he can stop their food shipments so they don't push him on it. He might permit them to sell shit to human Chaos worshipers on the side, he is a generous master.

>>62139958
Having a space port and a (marginally) working starship adds too much credibility to their status. Mars' displeasure and the implied insult would be lessened if there was any possible justification.

>>62143652
Does the dock yard ever leave the warp?

>>62146200
Does it have the capacity to leave the warp? Certainly; the whole thing was originally designed to 'dip' into the warp for the forging processes on the ships they would build.

DOES it leave the warp? Fuck no.

Firstly, the Imperium is aware of it, and the Murder-class cruisers it produces have become a notorious thorn in the Imperium's side. They would jump at the chance to take out the shipyard producing them, and it's a dockyard, not a ship, so the process of entering and exiting the warp is long and tedious compared to the average vessel. Plus the overall lack of armaments or armor, so it can't really defend itself.
Besides, why would it leave? Resources? those get shipped in by vessels better suited for the journey, and though it might mean slower production the risks of reentering the Materium are too great. That's assuming Luther didn't forbid it on principle; reliable(ish) providers of working vessels are something he does not have ready access to, so he's not going to tolerate anything that jeopardizes the one he's got.

>>62141811
One thing we've mentioned is that Tau just have a hard time concieving of the notion of spirituality due to their psychology and dim souls (though the Necrontyr didn't have the same issue suggests it is a Tau thing). They have a hard time concieving of souls, gods, or daemons that other species instinctively accept, much less the idea that the inhabitants of one dimension could bleed out into another without an obvious door. So a lot of their "religions" tend to be secular and focus on the material world or society, like human Confuscianism or Legalism. Of course many humans have been known to treat ideology as religion too.

To put it another way, the Tau would be more likely to believe in bigfoot over ghosts. A large, humanoid creature that lives out in the middle of nowhere where not many people are looking? Yeah, I can see that. An immortal part of the self that lives on and haunts reality after the body has died that is somehow intangible, invisible, and unable to be seen despite supposedly everyone has one. Not buying it.

>>62142693
Rogue trader dynasties would up the perks as well as the risks and binding clauses. You could get roped into a multi-century binding contract, get pumped full of complementary rejuveants to see it through, and come out at the end either lost to the warp or with your own moon, starship, and a minor star to settle with some work friends.

>>62143654
>Human to Xenos relations are the most prestigious, then human to human, then Xenos to Xenos and finally exploratory where all the fuck ups are sent to prove some value to their organization and dynasty.

This reminds me that the fortunes and organization of a Rogue trader house would actually be dependent on the glacial shift of Imperial politics, somewhat unlike canon. I wonder if the priorities above mesh with how the role of Rogue traders changed, and what era they come from, since as the Imperium expanded and brought in member states the border areas outside the normal Imperial economic sphere where Rogue Traders were conceived of to operate shrunk. By the current millenium most rogue trader dynasties have made the jump to commerce within the Imperium, in the era of the Great Crusade and Great Hunt they were at peak exploration and shadiness (though this would be looked back on as their venerable golden age), and it was around the era of the civil war many of the older and bigger names reaching their organizational and financial peaks in the wake of the dissolution of numerous rivals that threw in with Vandire.

Also, this makes me wonder if the Imperium files uncontacted human civilizations (and unreliable Eldar subgroups like Il-Kaith) as Xenos Independens, and civilizations like the Blood Pact as Horribilus.

>>62145808
The whole point is that the space port must not have been there when Savlar's status was granted and the neutronium clad insult delivered. Since then the opportunities for the production of exportable drugs, the heretek friendly cyberware using technobarbarian population, and the obvious value of neutronium would have brought some degree of tech/industrial and shipping capital into the system. The fact that Mars and Earth both need a place to house their emissaries (and their massive stores of Thrones) to buy up the neutronium as it leaves the foundry, a place to moor cargo ships and veritable fleets of heavily armed escorts, and a place to stay that isn't actually on Savlar, means that a space port is absolutely necessary. Ironically it probably isn't an elevator, the locals don't want one and in all of Old Night the Savlar brotherhood never even seriously considered it, the Imperium has a long list of other places its needed first and can throw money at the problem of getting it out of Savlar's gravity well, and suggesting the OMB build their own with part of the batches they purchase through intermediaries has been considered a followup to the original insult.

>>62146462
I think they might actually latch onto some version of the Mon'keigh that had been filtered through millennia of Imperial culture to become the perfect avatar of "Xenos Horribilis" beyond even Orks. They would be the almost nonsensical ogres behind the next hill, something the Tau suspected were out there since their days in herds, taken to a folkloric extreme in Imperial movies and text.

>>62145808
I agree with this. Part of the point of Savlar's point is that literally the only thing making it worth the trouble is that it's the only place in the galaxy still capable of producing neutronium.

>>62149181
its a fine thematic point, but to maintain it from the great crusade to the current era requires the setting to behave in ways that don't make sense. The trouble that the Neutronium is worth is making the infrastructure to ship it to other parts of the Imperium to be used, so building that port is a practical necessity, especially because Savlar certainly didn't have the means to ship it.

>>62147329
>Tau are into horror stories about a bigfoot-mon-keigh combination through cultural osmosis.
Kek. Although Shadowsun in canon is a big fan of ghost stories and horror stories, of all things.

The Mont'kau battlesuits were named after a creature that terrorized the Tau back in their Stone Age days. I had always thought that it looked like a cross between a tyrannosaur and a killer whale (with a large brain to hunt the similarly intelligent Tau). Nowadays it would be largely confined to zoos or biological research facilities.

Speaking of Tau animals, did we decide to keep Shadowsun and Farsight's ironically reversed opinions on the clonebeast hunt, with the young Farsight (being ever the rebel) wanting to use pulse weapons instead of the traditional spears and bows, and Shadowsun admonising him that it's against the spirit of the thing? The irony being that now Farsight is the one who thinks the old traditions need to be kept alive and considers his former opinion to be young and foolish, and Shadowsun realizing that the Tau need to adapt and is more willing to bend rules (though probably not enough to bring a pulse carbine to a bow hunt).

>>62149360
Oh, building a port for them makes sense, it's them having one when first getting found by the Imperium that wouldn't make sense.

Bump

>>62129092
>>One big concern in human-eldar relationships is loss. Eldar with their OCD don't take loss well and are likely to outlive a vast majority of humans (there's a sliding scale of rejuvenant availability but most can't afford the good stuff, and even that only gets you to 1000 or so). So some eldar see it as setting yourself up for despair.
This won't be necessarily be a problem anymore if the whole starchild thing goes well for the Imperium though.

>>62147038

From what I've gathered interacting with Xenos Independens is their primarily job for the Rogue Traders which means selling the idea of the Imperium to them.

I can imagine the breakdown of galactic races by following percentages (Using Best Diplomacy Skills):

Friendly Races - 9%
Independis - 21%
Hostile - 70%

Altogether this means that the Imperium Rogue Traders are are heavily armed diplomats/traders who encourage possible Independis into becoming part of the Imperium. More often than not it ends badly but that itself is a risk most traders are willing to take nowadays especially because the Imperium is willing to let said dynasties spend centuries on the endeavour and allow them to profit from it. There are limits though and the Imperium eventually expects and answer and classification.

Also does anyone know how to avoid the "I'm not a robot" thing. It's getting quite annoying.

In Canon they're like this:

Merchant Prince Rogue Traders are entirely consumed by the quest for riches, gained not by the crude application of threats or violence, but the shrewdly negotiated contract. The Merchant Prince seeks to establish the most lucrative of trading contracts, ensuring that the other party benefits from the deal, but not nearly so much as he does. Merchant Rogue Traders will go to great lengths to avoid military action, believing it a waste of resources. Yet they have no qualms about employing the trappings of military power as an aid to negotiations when necessary. Furthermore, no Rogue Trader would be so foolish as to neglect the defence of his assets, and the Merchant Prince understands the value of his resources better than most. He will as such take great steps to protect his investments against competitors and pirates and maintain the very best personal guards.

The merchant Rogue Trader seeks to establish vast networks of profit, negotiating exclusive trading rights throughout the regions he explores. This has on occasion landed such individuals in conflict with the Imperium's authorities, as the Rogue Trader deals with aliens he should destroy, or allows long-lost human civilisations to remain lost to all bar him so that he has exclusive access to the archeotech that is so valued by the Adeptus Mechanicus and coveted by the idle rich of the Imperium's noble houses.

In Nobledark setting what are they like and what's different?

>>62147038
The list on the wiki suggests they do it based on the status of the group, but I would suggest they do it based on the entirety of the species. Xenos Horribilis is an outright biological declaration of war. Declaration of Xenos Horribilis is the Imperium saying it's okay to try and kill them on sight and they wholeheartedly recommend you do so. Necrons should technically be Independens. Silent King and his ilk are omnicidal jerks who want to kill everyone but nobody want the diplomatic consequences of trying to light up Trazyn the Infinite or Nemesor Zahndrekh, and the galaxy is so big you can't be guaranteed that everyone will know the exceptions in the footnote to the notice.

Eldar are distinct enough that anyone who can't tell a Crone or Dark Eldar who is not posing as a Craftworlder from a Craftworlder is dense. The reason the Imperium can't tell the difference in canon is 1) they don't care anyway, 2) it's mostly corsairs who act like Dark Eldar, 3) the Craftworlders will most often side with the corsairs or will often side with the Dark Eldar over anyone else, despite the Dark Eldar hunting Craftworlders (particularly Aspect Warriors) for sport and considering Exodites to have the most exquisite, innocent souls that break the best under torture.

>>62154514
>>62154630
>In Nobledark setting what are they like and what's different?

Not much, surprisingly. The Imperium likes to use Rogue Traders as the weak link in the chain when dealing with independent civilizations that they can't vet. If that civilization falls to Chaos or the Rogue Trader house decides to trade in tainted goods only that Rogue Trader house in particular is going to be affected, and can be easily culled. It's not like you have tainted foodstuffs spread across six sectors due to open borders.

I would point out that Rogue Traders were likely intended to be permanent at first. The Imperium wasn't letting other races in at first, and Rogue Traders would be necessary to manage trade between the friendly and Independens species out there.

The biggest difference is that as time goes on the Rogue Traders have started changing their assets to focusing inward, as there are increasingly few people outside the citadel of civilization and Szarekh, the Crones, the Commorrites, the Orks (with the notable exception of the Blood Axes), and the tyranids don't want to trade.

Additionally, the Writ of Trade is not divine right under another name like it is in canon. Screw up and you get an Eversor on your butt.

Rogue Traders can be assholes. Indeed, they tend to be more than the average person in the same way that conquistadors tended to be bigger assholes than the average 16th century Spaniard due to greed. See "Eversor" and "Rogue Trader's War" for details. Also there was a bit with Kais that we said while not canon (it was a Doom reference) is almost exactly what would have happened (Kais finding out that despite their bravado the Imperium isn't as clean as they like to project, and grows more rounded in disposition via his time with the Inquisition). Also some asshole is selling reverse-engineered Yu'vath technology to rich, gullible idiots on Necromunda and other hive worlds.

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Speaking of Rogue Traders I was thinking a bit of Carlos McConnell (the planet and the person), and why exactly did the planet’s inhabitants not protest about the mix-up since the Imperium cares about what happens to abhumans as much as baseline worlds. The best I could think of is that Carlos McConnell was seen in a positive light by the people of the planet, sort of analogous to how some people in Africa view Richard Livingstone (disclaimer, do not know this first hand, only through some books on African history which could be wrong). Livingstone was liked for his efforts to end the slave trade in Africa, Carlos McConnell was viewed positively as the one who brought modern technology to the medieval-era People of the Islands (as opposed to the Continental Tribes, who are still mostly hunter-gatherers) and exposed them to the wider galaxy in a way that allowed them to thrive.

It didn’t hurt that he’d married one of the natives. That’s one way to make people not see you as an outsider.

Carlos McConnell made the planet his base of operations, as he found no shortage of willing employees who wanted to go out into the stars and bring back resources to support their families. As technology and wealth flowed into Carlos McConnell the planet’s inhabitants we, and skyscrapers gradually replaced feudal castles. Like all Rogue Trader dynasties, the Carlos McConnell started looking inward as trading opportunities dried up. Now the Carlos McConnell Corporation is a business power that rivals some individual megacorps on Kiavahr, selling everything from dried goods to acting as a middle man for Mechanicus products. The inhabitants of the felinid homeworld were always hunters, they just traded warpaint for business suits.

The company’s mascot is a cutesy-stylized felinid tested by focus groups for maximum appeal (read: Hello Kitty-esque moe catgirl), recognized throughout the Segmentum Tempestus. Few people realize it barely looks anything like an actual felinid.

>>62155757
I can also imagine Carlos McConnell becoming a sort of folkloric character who did lots of improbable or impossible things. Like putting a flag on the moon by throwing it really hard.

>>62157328

Which he might have, by standing on his spaceship in space.

>>62155427

Hey! "Spaniard" here! The "conquistadores" weren't... Well... They were... Look, is complicated... Ejem.

One thing to understand about the Rogue Traders is that they have a very important secondary function. Between apocalyptic events, they are the guys who re-start exploration, colonization and commerce. Liberating the imperial forces for decades-long mop-up operations

>>62115552
That would make sense. They would occupy a sort of elder vampire role in the loose societies of the vampires. One of the reasons that the Deciever likes humanity over them is because there seems to be a level cap on how far a shard can advance before it slows right down or halts in it's development due to a bizarre alien physiology. The shard can push further but it just outright kills the host which is counterproductive. The Lacrymole are therefore great facilitators in the Deciever's endless games but terrible incubators.

If they could reach the high levels then they would have been a great deal more of a problem as the infection was more or less the entire species. The war was still hard and messy and, for such a comparatively small number of combatants, costly in lives and still they were not all culled and endure today.

It is one of the cases where the Imperium did do everything reasonable in it's power to supress the memory of the war in the populace. There was no extermination of witnesses or shit like that but by deleting all the records of it quietly years after the fact and carefully removing monuments or changing details on the monuments it was all starting to get very blurry on the details less than a century later. A few generations after that and it is all but forgotten bar by those that need to know.

>>62155757
The idea of a Sabre-Toothed Felinid running the complaints department desk is now stuck with me forever. It's just slightly smaller than a grizzly bear and uses a voice synthesizer to talk and wears a suit that must have been made for an ogryn. There is a ball of wool on the desk. Do not try and take the ball of wool away. There are still stains on the wall from the last person who touched the wool.

It will be right to say, in planetary profile, that there is a Fortress-Monastery of the Order of Our Martyred Lady/Order of the Fiery Heart?

>>62159316
Presumably those still exist in a different form.

>>62159316
>>62159802

i was thinking that even being seglar, they have the same need for drama that the Astartes, but going more whit the religious motive.

>>62160123

I mean secular

>>62160123
I don't understand. Especially this bit.
>they have the same need for drama that the Astartes

>>62161182

Like in Vanilla, The Astartes, have all this Space Knight flavor, that affect their image. The sisters are the same, but with a religious/Joan of Arc motif.

>>62157328
>>62157594
>Carlos McConnell is a Paul Bunyan folk hero for catpeople after 10k millenia.
>Did all sorts of things that are technically true, but distorted and blown out of proportion by retelling.

That made me laugh more than I should have.

>>62162953
We need a list of things they claim he did. So far we have threw a flag onto the moon.

Also they believe he had a gold fish that the put in the sea and created the sea serpents.

bumping to read and write

>>62158515
Well, it is preferable not to have a culture of paranoia about bodysnatchers, though eventually genestealers made that into a very healthy fear of bodysnatchers, so a rediscovery of Lacrymole where they become a problem is often in order. They would represent a separate branch of the Strigoi from the Golden Pyramid, with the shapeshifters heralding shards form the old lineage to worthy human hosts after the destruction of their original courts.

So, any ideas about Goge Vandire's illustrious career pre-coronation? Essentially feats that would put him on a level where its not totally absurd to enthrone him, because short of those it would seem pretty silly.

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Decided to try to write up a previous nobledark battle suggestion. Might take a while.

Every legion at a role to play in the War of the Beast, even if that role wasn’t immediately obvious. Such was the case with the Alpha Legion. When war broke out, the Hydra continued its work in the shadows, though they weren’t too happy about it. It was not the job of the Alpha Legion to fight on the front lines. It was their job to find the source of the threat, the man behind the man, and stop the problem at its root. Urlakk Urg was the obvious threat to the Imperium, but there was clearly more going on. One did not just go from being a former warboss with no empire to his name to head of a galaxy-spanning WAAAGH! in less than six standard years. Chaos was clearly a factor, but beyond the four Ruinous Powers there were other players behind the scenes vying for power, ones the Imperium did not even know about yet.

The Alpha Legion was first put onto the scent of one of these players after the end of the Nurthene Campaign, which had ended in disaster when the natives, who considered autoguns and tanks to be the cutting edge of warfare, had unexpectedly gotten their hands on Chaotic Exterminatus-class weaponry and the means to fleshcraft nightmarish golems in the image of their animalistic gods. Despite stymying assets of the Imperial Army, Astartes, and even a Titan legion, the Nurthene insurgents known as the Echvehnurth could only slow, not stop, the Imperial advance, and in a grand act of salting the earth the Echvehnurth activated a Chaotic weapon known as a Black Cube. The Black Cube stripped Nurth of all life and left it an uninhabitable, primordial wasteland, killing all upon it but at the same time denying it to the Imperium and inflicting heavy casualties.

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>>62166136
The Alpha Legion were perplexed by this turn of events. Never before had their intelligence apparatus failed them so. It is possible they would have continued to be perplexed had they not heard from their contact with the Cabal, John Grammaticus. Alpharius and Omegon had heard from Grammaticus and the Cabal several times before, the two organizations having shared useful intel, but this time all Grammaticus had was a single cryptic line courtesy of the mysterious Gahet.

“Go to Eolith. The answers you seek will be there.”

As fellow espionists themselves, the primarchs of the Alpha Legion were at first unsure of whether or not to believe Grammaticus, but ultimately decide to investigate it for themselves. They didn’t fully trust the Cabal, but the Cabal’s goals were straightforward and their information had been reliable in the past. Additionally, even if the Cabal’s weren’t telling the whole truth, that didn’t mean what they said was incorrect. An expeditionary force was dispatched to investigate the Cabal’s claims, consisting of several cells of Alpha Legionnaires as well as reinforcement by the Geno Five-Two Chilliad. The Chilliad’s knack for pinpoint coordination and tactical adaptability had impressed the Legion’s twin primarchs, and meshed well with their own combat sensibilities. What’s more, the Chilliad knew how to keep a secret. The Chilliad and Alpha Legion had worked together several times in the past, and when the Alpha Legion was in need of more traditional military assistance the Chiliad was normally who they thought of. However, Uxor Honen Mu was not at the head of this expedition, having stepped down following her loss of cept many years ago at the beginning of the Great Crusade. Instead, the Imperial army detachment was commanded by Teng Namantjira, the commander who had overseen the Nurthene disaster.

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>>62166177
Namantjira’s record had been spotless until Nurth, and the commander was eager to discover whether some external force had caused his offensive to fail.

Their destination was a world which the Imperium had cataloged and ignored during a routine survey as 42 Hydra Tertius, but the source knew as Eolith. Eolith was a strange world. At first glance it seemed utterly out of the ordinary, but closer inspection revealed otherwise. Surveys of the planet found plateaus with perfectly sheer faces and straight lines buried in silt under the ocean’s continental shelf, resembling starship landing pads. Nature does not build in straight lines. The rest of the planet was also more abnormal than it appeared, basins were exposed hundreds of meters below sea level, while the planet’s core suggested a lack of rotation that made it hard to imagine how the planet could sustain a breathable atmosphere or magnetosphere. Indeed, in other respects the planet was almost too ordinary, having an atmosphere that was almost identical to Earth’s, albeit with more neon and oxygen and less argon and nitrogen in the atmosphere, and a gravity 1.5 times that of Earth, despite its diameter suggesting it should have had a gravity twice that. At the north pole of the planet found an unusual energy signature, suggestive of a continuously open portal into the eldar Webway, but the records the Imperium had gained on the labyrinthine dimension from the eldar never indicated that any such portal existed here.

>>62166273
Given such an anomaly, the first place to look seemed obvious. Taking half of the forces of the Chilliad with them, the Alpha Legion descended upon the basin at the planet’s northern pole. There, sitting in a basin that was supposed to be three hundred meters below sea level, was what looked like an open Webway gate, albeit one that didn’t look like it was made from wraithbone, but instead an eerie black stone that resembled obsidian, but seemed to reflect no light. The members of the Chiliad were commanded to secure the margins of the basin, while the Alpha Legionaires would act as the tip of the spear and enter the portal first. Nobody wanted an enemy force potentially attacking them from behind, and if there was something nasty on the other side better the Astartes go first.

Upon entering the portal the Alpha Legion found themselves in a shrine dedicated to a being older than recorded history and an evil older than man. The reliquary was lined with numerous paraphernalia and artifacts atop singular pedestals, fossilized statues of a horned and winged being carved out of fossilized bone, five thousand year old scrolls from the Age of Strife made from tanned human skin and written in blood, horn fragments that seemed to be both material and immaterial at the same time, all illuminated in an eerie half-light that seemed to come from spotlights that did not exist. More recent items were also present, grisly trophies from the Massacre of Teuthowald, the Battle of Pydinia and the Nurthene Campaign, all Imperial defeats or losses that had seemed to have no real culprit, at least until now. The halls were lined with cyclopean blocks of stone, inscribed with writing and hieroglyphs that no one had ever seen before.

>>62166348
At the very back was the centerpiece of the shrine, a massive mural several stories high. One of the Alpha Legion, a Katholian, immediately made the holy symbol of Quolious for protection upon seeing it. It depicted a single entity surrounded by flames, vaguely reptilian in countenance, with forward curved horns and three eyes, shrouded by a pair of leathery wings. One of the Alpha Legionnaires remarked that it vaguely resembled depictions of the devil in their home planet’s religion. The face of the being was hard to read due to the lighting in the room, but the shadows gave the impression of a vengeful god with power over life and death. Strange beings were on their knees surrounding the creature, supplicating it for mercy but seemingly receiving none. The beings were abstract and almost devoid of detail, akin to ancient Grecian black pottery, but the Alpha Legion recognized some that looked disturbingly similar to simplified humans or eldar.

The Alpha Legion may not have been able to read the stone carvings, but the text on the scrolls was decipherable, resembling an extinct dialect spoken on a world the Word Bearers had reluctantly purged for being violently insane and too extensively tainted by Chaos. It spoke extensively of the writer’s lord, a being it referred to as “Be’lakor” and called “The First Prince of Chaos”. To the Alpha Legion, it seemed clear the writings spoke of a Daemon Prince, but one on a scale in which the Imperium had never seen before, and which the Imperium knew nothing about. Having seen the scale of the den of iniquity they had found themselves in, the Alpha Legionaires turned to each other and grimly nodded to one another. The Steward had to know about this. The Alpha Legion set about meticulously documenting the scene, taking vid-picts of every artifact and helmet cam footage of the entire sordid shrine. Even if they didn’t know the meaning of every symbol, that did not mean someone else might.

>>62166372
Then, the Alpha Legionnaire Mathias Herzog made a fatal mistake.

He reached out and touched the stone mural.

At once the shrine reacted to the Alpha Legionnaires presence, much like an immune system suddenly recognizing the presence of an invader. The chamber began to shudder and contract, wretched artifacts rattling and falling off of their pedestals. The Alpha Legion made for the exit at once. But where their trip into the portal had been uneventful, now all the sudden the space within the pocket dimension was like quicksand, actively fighting their attempts to try and escape, the short space to the exit seeming to telescope endlessly. The Alpha Legionnaires could see what was going on outside the portal but were helpless to do anything about it. All they could do was watch what happened next.

It was not just the dark shrine that had reacted to the Alpha Legion’s presence. As the Alpha Legion struggled to escape, the planet itself seemed to break apart, whatever force was holding it together seemingly relinquishing its ownership. The planet’s atmosphere vented itself into space as if realizing it wasn’t supposed to be there, whereas whatever artificial force was holding the oceans the way they were suddenly dissipated leaving the oceans to slosh around the planet as intended by the laws of gravity once more. Including into the basin below sea level where the portal had been.

>>62165313
I was going over the reason we listed for why the Steward wanted to name Sanguinius Emperor and why he considered the other nineteen to not be worthy to try to get that section off the Notes page. Based on that here are several potential reasons.

1) He was good at organizing things. The Imperium is big, and you need someone who can juggle a lot of plates to keep it running. Vandire was already a talented Administratum adept when he was coronated. We also kind of alluded to how this was so much of a problem when he snapped, because he could keep track of numerous secret goon squads and keep them afraid of one another.
2) He was well-liked. He might have had a rather humble personality (which would have won him points with Oscar). Which, again, turned into problems when he retained just enough charisma to paint his batshit ideas as reasonable, and for people in the outlands to go “Vandire? Rounding up people and executing them? He’s too nice to do something like that.”
3) He wasn’t racist to the eldar. Putting someone like that in charge would be a huge mistake, as the eldar make up a significant demographic and the Steward didn’t want to alienate them. Plus several Craftworlds sent him “bodyguards” (depending on who you ask), which would have looked out of place if he outright hated them.

Nobody knew he would snap when he was hired, he was actually highly skilled and normal when he started out. It’s just that you gave one person a superhuman workload and the Steward as his point to measure up to. And the name “Vandire” could be a corruption of “van Dire”, suggesting he was a descendant of some minor noble house way back in history.

Can’t think of any good ideas for specific events that would bring Vandire to the Steward’s attention, though.

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>>62166588
The Alpha Legion tried to make it through the portal to warn the Chilliad of the oncoming flood, having been aware of the planet’s self-destruction before they were, but were unable to escape from their own predicament in time. Nor could the ships in orbit provide any assistance. As rescue craft descended towards the planet, space-time seemed to ooze around them, slowing their descent to a crawl as they pushed their engines to the limit trying to reach the surface before the planet fell apart. They didn’t make it in time to save the Chilliad forces on the ground. The lucky ones died when the ocean reclaimed the basin. The unlucky ones asphyxiated when the atmosphere dissipated. When the Alpha Legion emerged from the portal, protected from the changed planet by their power armor, they did so at the bottom of the ocean and surrounded by the bodies of their dead comrades.

It wasn’t until the return trip from Eolith that the Alpha Legion noticed something else was amiss. At first it was relatively minor. Shadows out of the corner of one’s eye, strange flickering of the lights when people occasionally entered a room, nothing unusual to see on an old void ship. Then people started to get the feeling they were being watched, and some claimed to see the silhouette of a humanoid figure standing in the doorway in their peripheral vision that disappeared when they turned to look. Then people started having “accidents”. Then they just started to disappear.

>>62166955
The Alpha Legion quickly noticed that the people who were dying were not random, but were all people who had entered the portal on Eolith. At the same time, the shadowy phantoms became bolder, no longer disappearing when people turned their gaze and bearing a striking resemblance to the statue the Alpha Legion had seen on Eolith. When Mathias Herzog turned up dead, not vanished like all the others but his flayed body simply appearing in the middle of the mess hall between a brief flicker of the lights, it seemed clear what was happening. Be’lakor, the being referenced in the shrine on Eolith, had discovered their trespassing and was now following them.

As the days went on more people continued to die, first the last of the Alpha Legionnaires who had survived the portal on Eolith and then all who they had told what they saw. Be'lakor seemed to know exactly who had learned the secret on Eolith and who had not. People started to survive just long enough to describe what was happening to them. Be’lakor was no longer content to hover over people’s shoulder menacingly, but was now coming after his victims with a slow, predatory walk. Victims would burst into rooms, begging for help from phantoms only they could see, only for their would be rescuers to die in turn. But the Alpha Legion was determined. They had to get the information out there, no matter the cost.

>>62167468
And so began the ultimate game of cat and mouse. No matter how far they ran, and how fast, it always seemed like Be’lakor was just two steps behind them. Nothing the Alpha Legion could do seemed to stop it. Be’lakor was implacable, unstoppable, more like a villain from a slasher movie than anything else. All the Alpha Legionnaires could do was keep the intel alive, passing the information on to as many operatives as possible in the form of encryptions and secret codes hopefully below the daemon's notice, and then buy as much time as they could before inevitably dying. Then their comrades would pick up the information, and the hunt would begin anew.

When Be’lakor did catch them, he either killed them on the spot or took what information he needed out of them to continue his hunt, relying on torture techniques honed over sixty six million years of cruelty. However, Be’lakor’s strategy was starting to exhibit a major flaw. He had spent so much time toying with the Alpha Legionnaires, punishing them for daring to trespass on the hallowed ground of the Old Ones, that the Alpha Legion were getting further and further ahead. First by minutes, then by hours, then by days. A told secret tends to spread exponentially, and before long the Alpha Legion were reporting their findings to the highest levels of the Imperial military. The secret was out, and the truth had become so widely disseminated there was no way Be’lakor could ever cover it back up again.

>>62167556
Be’lakor was informed of this fact by one Alpha Legionnaire, who cheekily called himself "Alpharius", though he almost certainly was not. Be’lakor had started to become worried after he noticed that cleaning up this little operation was taking longer than expected, but after hearing those fears confirmed, Be’lakor’s rage was explosive and immediate. The Alpha Legion could not say to have won, having lost too many men over the course of the operation to claim the most pyrrhic of victories, but then neither had Be’lakor. The Imperium still does not know the whole story, believing Be’lakor to be an impossibly ancient Daemon Prince rather than his true nature, but they know he exists. And that is enough.

The loss of fully half the Chilliad and the Alpha Legion’s helplessness to do anything to stop the death of their long-term allies is thought to have been another contributing factor to the Alpha Legion helping the Chilliad disappear after the War of the Beast. The Alpha Legion and its primarchs had done their share of horrible things throughout the years, often to people who did not deserve it. But that does not mean they were incapable of caring about others. After all, if they did not care, how could they call themselves human?

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>>62167626
Holy shit that's good. It adds an almost Lovecraftian vibe to the deamon-prince whilst still keeping him as petty as ever.