E.L.F, Extraterrestrial Lifeform

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Shujin said:
It's definitely post-Fall. First chapter has a vision including Imperial Guardsmen.
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The possibility of a meta answer aside the guardsmen uniform has very likely been in use since the Dark Age of Technology.

Also it might have been a Vison of an Eldar having a vision about the future. :lol
 
Well I'm a bit dumb... Thought this was Witch for some reason, was like "Holy shit have Cauldron found out about her and have managed to track her down", then "waaaaaaait a minute!" - geez :oops:
 
defenestrator said:
This is pedantry.
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Actually it's necessary, without a Wraithbone Matrix a Spirit Stone is pretty much just a hunk of glowing rock to any Eldar that isn't a Spiritseer.

And well you don't want Taylor to be a Spirit Seer, they're crazy, delusional, and at times actively suicidal due to incompatibilities between the dead and living.
 
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Mandabar said:
...

I read this post and immediately thought that their entire race meets recruitment metrics for the incubators. Space warp magic elves that are also magical girls eldritch abominations
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That is so cruel, and they deserve it. it'll even save universe? Maybe. Eldar will be happy with not-Warp-fuckery though.
 
Larekko12 said:
I read that at as, "Ready to kill Eidolon?"
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That would be a terrible waste. Eidolon is overwhelmingly powerful. Together with GU (who mainly provided flight) he was able to overwhelm Scion and cause him to flee. When Scion did manage to kill him it was through exploiting a weakness in the man, not the powers. The world would be far better served with a thinker revealing how Eidolon's powers work and helping him come to terms with the fact that he controls the Endbringers (assuming Shujin buys that theory). Imagine Eidolon at full power if he activated the 20 or so Endbringers Scion mentions in his interlude and has them fight alongside him. Scion could still handle it if he took out Eidolons shard (shards?) directly, maybe, but since he didn't do so in canon he might not choose to do unless utterly backed into a corner. And that's assuming Eidolon plus Endbringers can't stay on top of him and prevent him from doing so.
 
Ok, I feel I have to speak up here, thus I'm going to reveal something to the readers, and I'm saying this as one of Shujin's betas no less. Consider it a public service announcement if you wish.

Ahem.

Each and every thing Vaermina has stated in this thread is wrong. Even the things he got right were still wrong due to how he went about them.

That is all. Thank you. ^_^
 
Controcetica said:
That would be a terrible waste. Eidolon is overwhelmingly powerful. Together with GU (who mainly provided flight) he was able to overwhelm Scion and cause him to flee. When Scion did manage to kill him it was through exploiting a weakness in the man, not the powers.
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Scion was never in any danger. Scion could have ended the fight at any time via the method he choose, Path-to-Victory, he just let it go on because he wanted to crush Eidolon when the man thought he was winning.
 
Robo Jesus said:
Each and every thing Vaermina has stated in this thread is wrong. Even the things he got right were still wrong due to how he went about them.
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Except not!
Eldar Codex 7e

Chilling, otherworldly energies coil around the Spiritseers as they pad softly towards the foe.
Half in the world of the living, and half in the world of dead, they see mortality as a fluttering
veil across which the soul can cross with the right ritual and emotion. Because of their ability
to commune with the departed, it falls to the Spiritseers to guide the wraith hosts into battle,
directing their fire and marking out targets for them to destroy. It is a vital gift indeed, for the
dead do not adapt well to the real world, their spectral senses struggling to make sense of the
material dimension they left long behind them. Even Spiritseers sometimes struggle to cling
to reality, for the whispers of the dead ever beckon them into the realm beyond. For minds as
prone to obsession as those of the Eldar, to be steeped in the deathless limbo of the afterlife
is an all-consuming experience that stains the soul.

The first Spiritseers emerged in the wake of the creation of the infinity circuits. No longer did
the deceased travel into the beyond to reincarnated, but were instead interred within spirit
stones. From these crystalline prisons, the souls whispered to the living, but there were those
among the Eldar who heard them with greater clarity than the rest. When one of these
mystical pioneers answered the call of his departed lover, he became the first Spiritseer. Since
that day many have followed his path, for the Eldar have come to rely upon their dead almost
as much as their living.
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W40k Codex 7e

6 - VORTEX OF DOOM - Warp Charge 3
The psyker rends the material realm asunder, tearing a rift between the material realm
and the howling destruction of the Warp, condemning his foes to total destruction.

Vortex of Doom is a witchfire power with the profile below. If, when using this power,
the Psyker fails his Psychic test, he automatically suffers Perils of the Warp.
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W40k Codex 7e

Perils of the Warp
The Warp is the source of all psychic powers, but there are many dangers for
those who utilise this wellspring of otherworldly energy. When a Psyker
suffers Perils of the Warp, it indicates that something horrible has happened to
the Psyker, the forces of the Daemon-haunted Warp clawing at the Psyker's
mind, threatening to engulf and destroy him.
If a unit suffers Perils of the Warp, roll a D6 and consult the Perils of the Warp
table below. If the unit has the Brotherhood of Psykers/Sorcerers special rule,
the effects of the Perils of the Warp result apply a randomly determined model
in the unit who has the Brotherhood of Psykers/Sorcerers special rule.
Note that suffering Perils of the Warp does not necessarily mean that a psychic
power fails to manifest. Assuming that the Psychic test was successful and any
Deny the Witch test failed, the psychic power still manifests, regardless of
whether or not the Psyker in question suffers a Wound or is slain by Perils of
the Warp.
D6 - Result
1 - Dragged into the Warp: The Psyker must take a Leadership test. If the test
is passed, the Psyker suffers 1 Wound/glancing hit with no saves of any kind
allowed. If the test is failed, the Psyker is removed as a casualty and his unit
suffers D6 Strength 6 AP1 hits. For Wound allocation purposes, assume the
attack is coming from the Psyker that suffered Perils of the Warp.
2 - Mental Purge: The Psyker suffers 1 Wound/glancing hit with no saves of
any kind allowed. In addition, randomly select one psychic power known to the
Psyker. That power is immediately lost, and cannot be used by the Psyker for
the rest of the battle.
3 - Power Drain: The Psyker suffers 1 Wound/glancing hit with no saves of
any kind allowed. In addition, if it is currently the Psychic phase, roll a D3;
both players lose a number of Warp Charge points equal to the result.
4 - Psychic Backlash: The Psyker suffers 1 Wound/glancing hit with no saves
of any kind allowed.
5 - Empyric Feedback: The Psyker must take a Leadership test. If the test is
failed, the Psyker suffers 1 Wound/glancing hit with no saves of any kind
allowed. If the test is passed, the Psyker suffers no ill effects… this time.
6 - Warp Surge: The Psyker must take a Leadership test. If the test is failed,
the Psyker suffers 1 Wound/glancing hit with no saves of any kind allowed. If
the test is passed, the Psyker gains a 3+ Invulnerable save as well as the
Fleshbane, Armourbane and Smash special rules, until the start of the next
friendly Psychic phase.
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serra2 said:
Scion was never in any danger. Scion could have ended the fight at any time via the method he choose, Path-to-Victory, he just let it go on because he wanted to crush Eidolon when the man thought he was winning.
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So? Scion could have killed Khepri at any time too. He chose to torment her instead when he had her dead to rights during the battle. I mean if he wanted to Scion could have just destroyed the continent or planet Khepri and her army were on. Eidolon could survive that through dimensional travel. Danger with regards to Scion is complex. Anyway, all I am saying is Eidolon would be a massive boon to any attempt to defeat Scion and it would be wasteful to kill him.

Derail aside I am really looking forward to seeing this story move forward. Both for the Eldar Thinkering, and the parts where Taylor finds herself unable to resist hitting her enemies with a stick instead of doing the smart thing. :)
 
Metamorphose.6
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    • Metamorphose​

    This was a test, I thought.

    The emotional high I had been riding on drained away.

    The whiteboard on wheels was covered with incident reports that mapped the entire timeline of Earth Bet's trouble with Endbringers. No one knew exactly what they were. Insanely powerful villain capes? Aliens? Monsters? Behemoth and Leviathan were only vaguely humanoid, but the Simurgh looked like she could have been a fifteen-foot cape. Who they were or what they wanted were mysteries. Only one thing was certain: They were the reason the entire world was going down the drain.

    "There are some rules they follow. One at a time, three to four months apart stretching to six months, and they don't hit the same place twice in a short amount of time." The Number Man's pen spun faster. "They are drawn to areas of vulnerability, where they can cause the most damage."

    The oldest event listed on the board was the sighting of Behemoth on December, 13th​, 1992 in an Iranian oil field about three years before I was born. Behemoth was a dynakinetic, capable of manipulating all forms of energy. From kinetic to radiation. I wasn't an expert on Behemoth, but already something wasn't fitting quite right.

    "Why an oil field?"

    There was a quiet slapping sound as the Number Man caught his spinning pen. "The world economy is dependent on oil. The loss of the second largest oil field in Iran inflated the prices, prices that didn't go back down."

    His thoughts were still strange. Somehow, he'd bent himself to think in numbers. Bits of data flashed by almost too fast for me to grasp so eventually, I stopped trying. The trick wasn't perfect. I could still follow the gist of what he was thinking in concepts and images. It was as if I saw exactly what he was thinking, but it just wasn't mapping to comprehension right. Sometimes a thought or two escaped whatever he was doing and came through loud and clear.

    Ready to save the world?

    "That's all economic impact. Was there a city or something built on that oil field?"

    "No," he said.

    If I had power over radiation and wanted to kill a lot of people, I would just make a bomb and it wouldn't be in an oil field. It was Behemoth's first appearance, so it was too early to say it was the smoking gun.

    But I felt like it was the smoking gun.

    Leviathan four years later on June 9th​, 1996 in Oslo, Norway. He was a powerful hydrokinetic, capable of causing tidal waves and storms. Oslo was coastal city, so superficially that fit but Norway? Maybe that was just my American bias speaking, but couldn't it have picked a better place than Norway? If it wanted to cause damage, what about New York? Or Shanghai?

    I searched the board. He had hit Shanghai, but over five years later. Behemoth had attacked New York, but Leviathan had just allowed it to be rebuilt. He sunk Kyushu and Newfoundland. Why? To attack a place of vulnerability, meant to rub salt into the wound. To destroy rebuilding efforts, to turn a bad situation worse.

    Newfoundland was gone.

    What vulnerability did he attack? He sunk a piece of the North American coast. He sunk an entire island.

    Why did he only do that twice?

    The Simurgh appeared five years after Leviathan, December 31st​, 2002 in Lausanne, Switzerland. The newspaper clipping was paradoxically benign compared to the rest. The authorities had thought her similar to Scion. Strange, mute, somewhat cooperative and clearly parahuman. Case 53? The article's writer had asked leading to a small tangent about the 'monstrous' capes that were just beginning to be recognized as a phenomenon.

    And then a few months later the country exploded in violence. The country's declining nuclear weapons program saw a dramatic spike in activity declared an adjacent report. A spokesperson for the Federal council of Switzerland raving on television with bloodshot eyes was captured as an image. Under imminent nuclear threat, the world mobilized. The entire nation of Switzerland was eventually quarantined.

    The Simurgh was known for creating 'time-bombs' out of people. A city that was deemed 'too exposed' to her was shut away. There was a report speculating that she had tried to use Switzerland to cripple Earth's defense against the Endbringers.

    If that was her goal, then the Simurgh was an idiot.

    She could have waited years. She could have played us for fools for as long as she wanted. She could fly, she could have traveled to other countries. She could have pretended to be a cape like we had thought she was. She could have chosen a country that already had an active nuclear weapons program. When the time-bomb finally went off, there would have been no resistance.

    None of this was making any sense!

    Dylan Brandough, the Number Man was looking at me. "Figured something out?"

    "They could do more damage. A lot more. They aren't." His head cocked to the side and I pointed at the board. "Newfoundland and Kyushu."

    "Ah," he said and looked at the board as well.

    "The Simurgh chose Switzerland, a country without nuclear bombs."

    He nodded amiably. He already knew this. I wasn't pointing out anything special. I chewed on the inside of my cheek. What reason would a being as powerful as the Endbringers have for being so tactically retarded? Were they just strong but stupid?

    Like Scion, I thought. I felt bad after I thought it. It was true though. The man had no sense of priorities at all. I read stories on the PHO of him rescuing a boy and his dog in a tsunami, and letting a hospital be swept away. He stopped the tidal waves about an hour later.

    I tapped my fingers on my arm rest. If the Endbringers were stupid, then that didn't explain why they only attacked one at a time. That suggested coordination, and more importantly coordination not to divide and conquer. They show up, do damage and then let themselves be driven off.

    My fingers stopped tapping.

    Let?

    My eyes found the board again. Newfoundland and Kyushu.

    Yes, let.

    The Endbringers never won, but Leviathan proved that if they wanted to, they wouldn't lose.

    "I'm going to look at Behemoth's first sighting," I said. I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes. It took about a minute of slow breathing but eventually, I could feel the waves inside my head. Behemoth. I shifted through the ripples. There were three beings on Earth that were holes in the in between. The Simurgh's strange effect I left completely alone, which left two others. The area directly around them was still, no ripples, waves or currents.

    I could see them, why didn't my power work? I shoved my agitation out of my skull and tried to focus. Dylan Brandough's emotions were bland, almost damaged. I shifted and found my father, impatient and bored. I touched everyone in the building and felt their emotions wash over me.

    Emotions.

    I willed myself to look at the Simurgh. To really look at her. She was at the center of a tangled skein of her own making, yes, but she was empty.

    "The Endbringers have no emotions," I said out loud.

    "You can see them, all of them?" Mr. Brandough asked. I could hear him writing something down.

    "Yes." I couldn't see them directly, then what about indirectly? I settled again, listening to the waves. It occurred to me then, that I had no idea how to do this. I wasn't going to say that though. The last time I did things I had no idea I could do I had been apocalyptically angry. Making myself angry wasn't a desirable situation for anybody in Brockton Bay. So, I did the next best thing.

    I opened myself up to the space in between. The whispers came back. The light in the room flickered. The space in between pressed into me, and then began to sluggishly flow through. I stopped for a moment. Was closing myself off to this my Manton Limit? It wasn't something I was doing consciously. It felt like letting my guard down.

    I breathed and let the rest of the barriers fall. My mind drifted on a current, backwards. December 13th​, 1992, I thought dimly. I pulled myself along by floating threads. Images flashed by in my mind. Winters became falls became summer then spring, over and over. I rewound through history, flashing all over the globe. The whispers were almost comprehensible now, saying strange things and distracting me. I batted them away.

    There!

    I grabbed onto threads and slowed. An image I had just glimpsed out the corner of my awareness floated back into reach as I let the threads gently slip through my grasp until I had just one. My grip on it tightened.

    Show me.

    My power obliged.

    ___________​

    The girl in the chair was crackling with lightning.

    "He appeared miles away from the oil field," Maelstrom said in a voice that seemed to echo into his head. "The parahumans on site, the Protectorate and local heroes, Iranian military are there for disaster relief. Earthquake. It has been hours and the aftershocks were getting stronger until they stopped."

    The Number Man ignored the goosebumps prickling on his skin. The room had gotten colder. He considered what he just been told. She can see Eidolon. "I've read those reports. What stands out to you?"

    "The theatrics." She murmured a word that wasn't in any language he had ever heard of. "He moves slowly."

    "What about it is theatrics?"

    "He has a destination. He is moving. You have a destination. You drive there. A few miles away, do you get out of your car to walk?"

    "He wanted people to see him coming," he muttered, thinking it over.

    "Wanted?" Maelstrom paused. "Showmanship implies an ego, pride. The Endbringers do not feel. Eidolon strikes it with a bolt of energy, blood spurts and it reacts, but it does not flinch." Underneath her eyelids, her eyes move rapidly back and forth as if in REM sleep. She has moved from addressing Behemoth as 'he' to 'it.' He noted this down. "It has set the oil field alight. The local authorities have been destroyed by arcing lightning and burning from the inside out. Hero sets the urgency, the evacuation."

    "What is Behemoth trying to do, what his goal?"

    "It is fighting the Triumvirate. Eidolon and Alexandria are unaffected at close range. Legend is using his Breaker state to heal periodic damage, burst eardrums and eyes, internal hemorrhaging. It is taking a lot of damage but it is not noticeably hindered." She stopped. "Eye is not vulnerable, no effect. Moves at the same speed. Unaffected by blood loss. No change in blood pressure, no arteries."

    The Endbringers were not Case 53s. That he knew for a fact.

    Maelstrom's hands clenched on the arm rests as the lights flickered again. Number Man looked up. The PHQ had its own power generators. There shouldn't be a power incontinence issue.

    "Behemoth is no longer moving forward. It is not hindered. This is its goal. Fighting." She flinched. "It could have killed Eidolon," she said slowly. "It didn't."

    The Number Man sucked in a breath. A half formed suspicion rose in his mind. For years, Eidolon had been almost a god amongst gods. Ten years ago, the claim that Behemoth could have killed him would have been dismissed out of hand. "How do you know?"

    "The scene repeats over and over," she said faintly. "It's a show, a play, a drama. Alexandria is hitting, but her physical strength pales. Legend is buzzing, swatted at like a fly. Insignificant. It is only the man in green. It's always him. He is at the epicenter."

    "Of the fight?"

    Maelstrom's eyes opened. They were sparking with energy. "Of everything."

    The Number Man stared. Frost was beginning to form on the walls and the tiled floor. He breathed and it came out as a white mist.

    "The fights Eidolon isn't the leading man; they do more damage. Kysushu and Newfoundland. Moscow. Ankara. Shanghai and Bogota. When he is there, it is a dance."

    "He's the strongest parahuman after Scion," the Number Man said. He began to spin his pen out of sheer nerves. He found himself wishing he hadn't closed the door. "He has the ability to direct the battlefield."

    The corner of Maelstrom's lips turned up. "I can see Eidolon weakening. The decline over the past ten years has been sharp. Why has Scion not taken his place as the harlequin in the masque?"

    She jerked suddenly, as if having a seizure. "Something's coming."
     
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    • Oh dear. First rule of the warp Taylor: Dare not look too long or deep into the Abyss, lest it look into you, or worse, lest something within reach out and touch you.
     
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