Interesting, it reminds me somewhat of the Planet or Chiron from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (SMAC), which over the course of the game is discovered by the human colonists to be a planet-wide neural network directing the planet's native ecology, whether against or in cooperation with the human intruders - although interestingly through human interaction is developing accelerated complexity and intelligence, although not yet truly sapiant, dubbed the 'Planetmind'
The Piscarians are God-Emperor-loving and faithful, hard-working, tithe-paying, honest souls working around the clock to ensure that, though they are Abhumans whose ancestors have strayed from the human form in some madness-induced insanity or other horrific reasoning too terrible to contemplate, the souls of their people are slowly, over generations, cleansed and purified so that their souls may be judged by the God-Emperor one after the other by their faith and work, rather than the sins they are born with in body and flesh.
Any insinuation that they are Xenos is heretical, treasonous, and to be reported to the nearest Arbite or Ecclesiarchical official for immediate correction and judgment of no less than ten years of harsh labor in a penal colony or one year of service in a penal battalion.
ohhhh, okay than. I didn't expect that at all. either actual Abhumans that had experiments or modifications done on them to improve or adapt them or actual Xenos pretending to be human and gaslit themselves into wholeheartly believing it. Still they are loyal to the God-Emperor and based a around it and they are born with sin due to their straying from the human form. At least they aren't going the route of supremacy or the like.
It is a good way to get the population to work hard, still that bit of even thinking they are 'Xenos' being that harsh... I don't know the truth of it at all.
Although the bodies of the Homo Sapiens Scutum may be frightful to look upon, scaled as they are, and their legs and body morphology may not be as aligned to that of the blessed human form, they are nonetheless members of the human species, and faithful laborers under the graces and mercy of the God-Emperor and His Servants. By pick and shovel, with hoe and scythe, these men and women dutifully labor every day in their lives to deliver unto the God-Emperor his tithe and willingly donate enough to the local Shrine World of Katzan to raise the same from Decuma Tertius to Exactis Particular, a noble endeavor proving, beyond doubt, their commitment to the God-Emperor and their deliverance from the sins of their ancestors by His grace.
Though there are some of His subjects who do not see their labors and quiet faith that gives them the strength to deliver them as a condemnation to their own lack of fervor as pure humans, choosing, instead, to wallow in indulgences and the pleasures of the self over the labors of the many. Indeed, though settlements of pure humans exist on Piscariii's Fortress, those settlements are filled with rabble-rousers, Iconoclasts, liberals, criminals, apostates, deserters, and worse, and have always been the first port of call whenever a local Ecclesiarchical representative visited to deliver unto them the Judgement of the God-Emperor with the faithful natives of the world ready to aid His Servants without complaint nor lacking zeal.
They have the right naming scheme at least and seem to still be bipedal and have scales I think, but holy shit if any more Dogmatic or Imperium proper forces came here they would have just offed them all based on that. Kinda feel bad we didn't come down this route before and help them out before. Huh they work and leave the offering there.... I guess the Imperium here before didn't care if it meant more workforce and resources?
Fair enough, for all the hardworkers there are those who wallow in the circumstances and the like and just falling into a depression.
OH there are baseline humans there just hold up in there with every damn alignment and way of life in a settlement but binded in being pre humans on the planet.....OH is that how it is veiwed? the Abhumans being viewed as a slave workforce and the pure humans being the ruling class and making them the movers and shakers? Makes sense and makes this world very colorful.
It was hardly surprising then that those same settlements sought to deliver "righteous justice and vengeance" upon the Piscarians despite them being nothing more than tools wielded to burn out their corruption, depravity, and vices. A "righteous justice and vengeance" that, in all honesty, was more akin to them sitting in their towns and villages, armed with lasguns and an odd mortar, waving them threateningly at a juvenile Piscarian chucking the good book at them when bored or challenged to by their peers as proof of faith or daring.
Until 888.M42, when a trader from Gigachad took offense at the Abhumans living on the planet after mistaking them for Xenos, which they aren't, and provided the inhabitants with weapons, industries, and schematics to ferry out their justice in full.
Ohhhh boy, so it was fine as the Pure Humans were just grumpy trigger happy sitting on the pounch with a las gun and telling the Abhumans to stay off their property, heavily armed but not able to project and move beyond the settlements in meaningful numbers. overall peaceful.... until fucking traders from Gigachad gave enough of everything to the pure humans on Piscariii to actually wage a war. damn it all.
War followed in all its terrible awesome glory, from the dead judging the living with glassy eyes to the children with missing limbs staring lifelessly as their guts were set upon by flies and scavengers.
Revenge followed, turning that wheel so well oiled by the blood of innocents, and the other riders were no more than a few steps behind, reaping what hatred had sown endlessly, again and again, without care or stay of hand.
It would have continued that way, perhaps until one side exterminated the other, perhaps until one side dominated the other, perhaps until a new side overthrew both, perhaps until there was nothing more to fight over. Still, it ended all the same: with the roar and crash of Ork Rokks falling upon their shared world, unleashing tidal waves of horrifying destruction upon the people, before the Orks came in their multitudes to holler and laugh in glee with Shootas, Boomsticks, and Deffguns aligned with the humans of this world like so many others before them.
Yup that's about right and given the cycle of revenge and how the war escalated after the general atrocities committed on both sides and how it would have resulted in one side destroyed if the Orks didn't come crashing in. So that does explain the whole thing of 'makes for strange bed fellows' since how this all went before the Orks came around. Again another situation that would have needed intervention and actions for this.
Hatred is a funny thing. It burns. It burns beyond fire, beyond plasma, beyond anything that can put it out...but it does not burn endlessly unless fed.
Hatred yet burns on Fortress; it burns deep in the souls of the people and the soldiers in that forgotten world. Yet, hatred does not burn to kill each other's humanity, but to protect it.
There are many faults to charge man with, but let it never be said that they are unwilling to stay their hand when a greater monster than their fellow man needs to be slain.
Yup, Hatred is weird sometimes as it can lead to pushing beyond and blinding one's self. but at least they'll stop killing each other for now during this.
Although the bodies of the Homo Sapiens Scutum may be frightful to look upon, scaled as they are, and their legs and body morphology may not be as aligned to that of the blessed human form,
It was a volcanic world covered in rivers of lava snaking from the mountains that continually spewed ash, molten rock, and worse into the atmosphere, where towns, cities, and villages were constructed on the few islands of safety that did not periodically erupt into torrents of burning stone. A world that knew not the sunrise as anything but utter beauty, that knew not the dawn and dusk as a time when the heavens themselves were lit aflame by their sun and stars, and a world that drunk deep of the minerals and material wealth granted to them by the volcanoes spewing their endless bounties from beneath the crust to the surface world.
It was also a world that knew well, beyond any other world in the Sub-Sector, maybe even in the Sector, of the powers of flame. In their hands, they held rods of molten metal when they became adults as a rite of passage; in their temples to the glory of the Imperious God-Smith stood statues wavering with heat and melting bronze, casting down ever-changing faces staring contemptuously down at those striving to become even a fraction as good as the uniter of mankind and His son. By their works in forges and smelters did they cast great works of metal unto the world, from gargantuan cannons to minuscule blades, the hammers and tools of their labors never resting and never ceasing to build unto their arsenals yet another marvel of weaponry and armor.
Klybessa was, is renowned for nothing less than the best arms and armor one could purchase in the Sector, and its people pride themselves on providing the Imperium of Man with the war machines, weapons, and armors its soldiers wear and use against the Xenos, the Heretic, and the Witch above all other things. It is with sweltering chant and billowing air that the Techpriests of Klybessa bring forth the Machine-Spirits that will be housed in those venerable armaments, and it is by their faith and the burning dedication of their minds that the world has never known defeat or suffered the injustice of invasion...for long.
Yet, it is by the decree of the Orks and their misbegotten Heretek leader that perverts holy technology with every breath and every second of its existence that Klybessa finds itself under attack, scores of Orks screaming and streaming from their crashed Rokks unto the fortresses and manufacturies of the world in their endless greed for battle and the weapons used against them.
But Klybessa burns. And so do the Orks.
In their multitudes do they come, these Orks in their Killa Kans, sending Gretchin at the front by the will of their Runtherds to soak up the fires and the flames.
In their multitudes are these clanking war machines and hordes of fodder charred, leaving behind nothing but burned-out wrecks half-melted by the heat of rockets and turned into so much coal and charred bones by artillery leaving behind burning seas of promethium and worse.
They try with cackling glee and bellowing "WAAAAGHS!" to break through the walls of Klybessan towns and cities with their Gun Krews and Meks firing Rokkits by the thousands, only to be turned into smelted flesh fusing with the metals of their weapons by the heat of Klybessan Confessor-Flamers firing their triple-stream seas of burning chemicals nearly five-hundred meters away.
Even as the Orks adapted and began to field Chinorks to land troops with Supa-Skorchas behind lines, supported by Deffkoptas flying interference as Burna-Bommers shot Skorcha-Missiles and Burna Bombs by the hundreds, they fail to overcome the heat that the Klybessans bring in fury and defiance. When flames fail, metal must do, and melted streams of those minerals once mined from the ground sear the Xenos that dare to set foot upon their world. By the Inferno, the Incinerator, the Balefire, and the Dragon's Blood are the Orks beat back, once, twice, a dozen times.
Klybessa Burns.
Klybessa Burns.
Klybessa Burns.
And it resounds with the mad laughter of the Orks.
Sophian Paradise was a system devoid of any planets. What planetoids existed were pitiful and not worth any closer examination, with the bounty of the system to be found in its vast and gargantuan asteroid fields. To that end, stations upon stations had been constructed there, thousands upon thousands of them, to the point where even the Families themselves, nominally the rulers of this system, had no idea how many, or how few, of those stations, existed or paid tribute and tithe.
All Admiral Astana van Dune knew was that the SAGs of the Federation were hard at work exterminating the last dredges of the Orks from the system as they knew it, with any further extermination missions the problem of the natives, and only for the Federation should they fail to do their duty to wipe the Ork scum out completely.
That was their duty. Astana's duty was to ensure that the Orks drawn to Paradise would be exterminated to the last, their ships hunted, their leaders executed, and the last of their misbegotten kind set upon by orbital fire once their fleets were smashed. A tall order that she was more than willing to stand up to and more than eager to deliver upon.
And an order that the Orks were willing to throw themselves against, the very fabric of the Veil straining upon the entry of their fleet, hundreds of vessels roaring into the Materium with ignited engines and burning hulls, the blood of the Boyz pumping and thundering for more krumpin' after their latest bout with the denizens of the Warp.
And, with the shouting of Gretchin spying the combined fleets of the Glimmering Federation, Lamenters, Ashan Families, and vengeful survivors of Macabre vying for blood in their lookouts in the void of space, so too do the sensor specialists of the same fleets report back the positions and headings of the Orks.
Admiral Astana van Dune smiled. War was beating its drum, and the Star Child would not find them wanting as the Pantagruel watched serenely.
Last Minute Battle Preparations: (6-Hour Moratorium) [] (Write-In)
[] Proceed As Planned
Enemy Forces Confirmed:
1x Ork Hulk 'Big Shokk's Shop'
(Noted as freshly produced by melting the orbital infrastructure of Gigachad together. Total strength or combat effectiveness unknown.)
~13x Battlekroozers
~40x Kroozers
~70x Escorts
Current Plan:
Sector Battle Group Spinx, Centaur, Werewolf, Minotaur, Leviathan, and Basilisk, alongside the Lamenters Chapter Fleet, Ashan Families Fleets, and Macabre Vengeance Fleet, will stand ready to receive the Orks in battle.
Task Fleet Alpha will skirmish with the edges of the Ork Fleet and attack at their discretion at Targets Of Opportunity.
The Independent Operations Task Force will provide intel and try to locate Big Mek Warboss Shokktoof (should he not simply be on the largest ship) so that the Choirs of the Federation can snipe him via the Sun, or other applicable, Melody.
The Independent Operations Task Force will provide intel and try to locate Big Mek Warboss Shokktoof (should he not simply be on the largest ship) so that the Choirs of the Federation can snipe him via the Sun Melody.
Sector Battle Group Spinx, Centaur, Werewolf, Minotaur, Leviathan, and Basilisk, alongside the Lamenters Chapter Fleet, Ashan Families Fleets, and Macabre Vengeance Fleet, will stand ready to receive the Orks in battle.
If the Big Boss is on the biggest ship (the Hulk), how many Choirs worth of Sun II do the Choirs estimate it'd take to seriously fuck up and/or destroy the Hulk?
If the Big Boss is on the biggest ship (the Hulk), how many Choirs worth of Sun II do the Choirs estimate it'd take to seriously fuck up and/or destroy the Hulk?
I guess the follow-on question is if it needs to be present for it to do anything. Or if the Admiral believes "Faith is our weapon" is metaphorical or literal.
I'm not inclined to do too much? Aside from wonder if the 30+ Lupus's managed to lay much of a minefield before the battle.
One day we will get the Paths melody and I'll find out how much damage "Sun struggle sun paths struggle" can do by dumping a ton of sun into an enemy. (Or maybe Sun path struggle? Path Sun Struggle? Meaning to Path Suns plasma into the enemy))
