I found this quest through the "warhammer 40k" tag as I had free time on my hands and wanted to see if there was any good quests percolating around since I last read through the Quests Forum. Needless to say, what hooked me was how unforgiving the quest has been to our protagonists, in both enemies and logistical problems, while still showing how competent both the protagonists and the various antagonists have been. The struggle is good. It doesn't cheapen any faction.*
Re: Suggestions. Put in a "ckII quest" tag and in the title. People like those. Maybe a "narrative-esque" tag given the large amount of interludes between the turns, though I'm not sure if the interludes amount is atypical for CKII quests.
Re: Economic system. I'm not personally a fan. Maybe others would get some use out of it but I prefer a more abstract, narrative, kind of QM-fiat system rather than an Excel generator for economic systems. Whether we are lacking, average, abundant, etc. on certain items.
*PS: I also binged a Traitor's Quest. I like the exploration of Quest assumptions and tones there and here.
I think I can follow the basics of this economy stuff* but there are a few confusing bits here and there. I don't understand the -40 percent promethium modifier attached to tribes , are they just using large quantities of it for....hinge lubrication or something?
...Or is it a malus regarding them starting production because they not only lack refinery but lack chemists or even the knowledge of what the stuff is?
I do not understand why the exotic modifier modifies the quantity of relic materials produced rather than exotic goods.
I think that's the weird way SV displays tables sometimes. It can occasionally push stuff together. The specifics there though are from modifiers which allow me to represent diversity of locations with relative simplicity. In truth I suppose it's a fairly minor system but its pretty easy to use for me, so you don't have to pay attention to it much. It's all abstractions anyway.
I think its because of the bad taste AoS left in everyone's mouths. Partly its the departure from what warhammer 'is', that is, the grimdarkness, the relative realism etc, into the bright flashy and generally fantastical AoS, partly its the poor corporate decisions and strategy by GW. I've not really consumed much AoS stuff, jsut enough to get a general idea, but everything feels emphemeral, there doesn't seem to be any substance to stuff. I listened to teh Realmslayer audiobook and i had great difficult following stuff because of teh lack of geography.
But yes, in the forums I've not seen AoS stuff either and I think it's because people have no reason to write about it. You'd need people who actually prefer AoS lore etc rather than Old World stuff. The Old World lore is far deeper (if only because of it's length and breadth) whereas AoS is relatively new and the fanbase are mostly older players who knew about the Old World. It's sort of the same for Primaris, though I suppose hte issue is more different there.
I don't feel like I would be able to confidently tell even how many resources would need to go into creating one lasgun in pharos during a good year with this I sadly admit. I will try though. I get one could one becuase be made there because he standard given and conditions there are standard though.
I get by default it takes a hundred somethings for this class of items but is that per individual one or per batch? I'm guessing it would be easier to do at Arc Acheron because of the bonuses there but that is where my understanding stops.
I've not added the resource counts to the sheet yet so don't worry about that yet. I'll give some general propositions when we get to teh relevant chapter. The important elements are how much of X resources you produce, how much build capacity you have, and the costs in labour and resources of various items.
Doubt it, first I need to do the battle interludes to resolve teh whole settra situation, then I've not decided how to do the next bits. I could do 1 fof teh 10 year production turns, then a broad strategic turn, or something liek that, then go with the normal 1 year turns. Not currently sure. I'll have a think once teh settra stuff is done
how unforgiving the quest has been to our protagonists, in both enemies and logistical problems, while still showing how competent both the protagonists and the various antagonists have been. The struggle is good. It doesn't cheapen any faction.*
So as I've mentioned a few timesin various things, I like to write experimental stuff. Traitors Quest was specifically designed to explore those themes, whereas this one isn't necessarily designed with a theme, it was more for me to explore the ck2 questing system, which is partly why I've made such a developed system here for the economy suff. However, as I've been writing it I've brought up a few themes. Firstly, yes, representing agency between the factions, representing the problems of colonisation and conquest, representing teh back and forth and so on. I'm glad that's coming across though. That and the horror of 40k type stuff like space marines rather than their nicer side.
As a comparator, I've been reading a 40k rogue trader fic on QQ where the SI has been using a lot of torpedoes. Now, I can certainly see how this might go well in various instances, indeed 40k space combat is focused a lot on gunnery rather than torpedoes or carriers (eg like mass effect is for the later), but the Si has been going about for decades at this point firing a lot of torpedoes at stuff and no one has caught on. He's destroyted a lot of people, even Lorgar at one point, but no one on the chaos side for example has said 'hey how about we do more point defence stuff' .That's the sort of thing I dlon't really like about one sided fics. You don't necessarily have to balance hte power levels, I didn't make teh djinncallers more powerful than they were already implied to be for example, but you should balance agency. The Djinncallers didn't just sit about they armed up etc.
Re: Suggestions. Put in a "ckII quest" tag and in the title. People like those. Maybe a "narrative-esque" tag given the large amount of interludes between the turns, though I'm not sure if the interludes amount is atypical for CKII quests.
Maybe others would get some use out of it but I prefer a more abstract, narrative, kind of QM-fiat system rather than an Excel generator for economic systems. Whether we are lacking, average, abundant, etc. on certain items.
So as I've mentioned a few timesin various things, I like to write experimental stuff. Traitors Quest was specifically designed to explore those themes, whereas this one isn't necessarily designed with a theme, it was more for me to explore the ck2 questing system, which is partly why I've made such a developed system here for the economy suff. However, as I've been writing it I've brought up a few themes. Firstly, yes, representing agency between the factions, representing the problems of colonisation and conquest, representing teh back and forth and so on. I'm glad that's coming across though. That and the horror of 40k type stuff like space marines rather than their nicer side.
As a comparator, I've been reading a 40k rogue trader fic on QQ where the SI has been using a lot of torpedoes. Now, I can certainly see how this might go well in various instances, indeed 40k space combat is focused a lot on gunnery rather than torpedoes or carriers (eg like mass effect is for the later), but the Si has been going about for decades at this point firing a lot of torpedoes at stuff and no one has caught on. He's destroyted a lot of people, even Lorgar at one point, but no one on the chaos side for example has said 'hey how about we do more point defence stuff' .That's the sort of thing I dlon't really like about one sided fics. You don't necessarily have to balance hte power levels, I didn't make teh djinncallers more powerful than they were already implied to be for example, but you should balance agency. The Djinncallers didn't just sit about they armed up etc.
I think the agency of the NPC factions is a big draw for me here. Like yeah, we'll eventually win unless we fuck up badly because Mallus is a feudal world, just with a lot of outside context magic for the Imperial side but the Imperials are thousands of years ahead of the locals in tech of any kind. The only equalizing factor is that we're basically stranded.
If enough political will is gathered, Imperium levels of force would just steamroll the mortal world through uncountable guardsmen (for a Feudal world) alone, not to mention Space Marines drop-kicking every mortal leader from Cathay to Tilea that'd look like they want to give us a hard time. It'd be the magic and the greater daemon equivalents like the Cathayan dragons and the god-like beings like the Slann that would give them a hard time but as could be seen with Hath-Hoeb, those things could be learned about and learned to counter it given enough time (no idea how they'd work around the gods though. Those sound like something whole companies of Grey Knights are each needed for). And I also doubt we'll be given enough time to learn everything or build to Imperium levels of force because of the agency of other factions, like Settra coming to get us while the majority of our forces were just finishing off the Djinncallers. And also steamrolling would be boring.
I also appreciate the villain-ness of the Imperials. It's always fun to go play the bad guy, and to be reminded to ask "Are we the baddies?" as the Imperium. Like yeah, the Celestial Lions are cool dudes, very regal and badass, but still very much the genocidal and fanatical conquerors. The dissonance is a fun read and has me rooting and empathizing for the protagonist all the same, same as Ursula's budding movement for her fellow refugees despite her being, what I assume, Nurgle bait in Traitor's Quest.
Ah fair enough, especially as this is an empire building quest, and some players would like to get into the gritty details of how our empire will build things. Rereading the economy rework draft, it also does seem like there are two sides to the economy: the inputs and the outputs. And all we would really need to know for the input side to participate in the production turns would be the total build capacity, which is 466, and total resources, which are TBA, unless some people would specifically like to influence how our holdings specialize towards one kind of resource or other.
For the output side, I can see having to specify building particularly rare and powerful items such as Terminator Armour or Thunderhawks considering how we're all stranded and don't have the normal resources and facilities and such that a normal Space Marine chapter would have access to in their homeworld. I see how it's on point.
I think where it begins to be a headache for comparatively little gain would be in creating stuff for our mundane troops like the IG or local auxilia, or even the basic stuff for the Sororitas, AdMech, and Astartes. Like are we going to be writing down whole formations on paper to account for the various equipment each Imperial faction should have?
Personally, a more satisfying and easier approach would be to create stuff in groupings, so you'd get a set amount of resources and time and build capacity to outfit a regiment of IG or an armoured company or a company of Astartes and all that those implies. Halve it or put modifiers for amount and quality to get say half or a quarter of a Tactical Company's worth of weapons and armour. Much easier compared to say accounting for every single piece of an IG regiment's lasguns, laspistols, autocannons, two-man crewed heavy bolters, flak armour, missile launchers, Tauroses for transport, Chimeras for APCs, mono-knives, officers' carapace armour for more elite guys, the personal force field of the colonel, one or two power swords maybe, chainswords, frag grenades, krak grenades, stubguns. Then have the same complexity for other formations of artillery, armour, Assault Marine Companies, Devastator Companies, Sororitas Commanderies, etc. which would all have differing equipment and equipment quality against each other.
Of course, thinking about it, this could be mitigated by just putting up the cost of groups up front in pre-packaged deals. Like say, to create a local auxilia regiment's worth of equipment (so like just lasguns, flak armour, maybe some support weapons and vehicles for that European gatling gun in Japan equivalent) the options already state we have to pay X, Y, and Z. And then the same for other types of groups (ie. Space Marine Assault Company, IG Infantry Company, etc.) so we're just picking what groups' equipment and how many to make. And if we want to tweak it by getting them more Chimeras for that mechanized infantry or whatever and really go to the brass tacks then we can just look at the table for the specifics of the item.
Anyway, just my two cents. It's still a quest I'd like to read whatever the economy side of things will look like.
I'm less certain about an inevitable victory for a couple reasons.
One the skaven have stolen imperial tech(and the imperials probably won't learn of that for at least another few years) and are leagues above the other faction's tech wise to the point they eventually achieved primitive space flight canonically in the original warhammer timeline. Their short lifespans and constant power struggles give them a large impetus to innovate.
Furthermore if their existence is truly threatened GHR will likely force them to cooperate with each other as he has done before.
Two... well gods have already been pointed out but it bears emphasizing again, not all of them will be friendly to our cause and if we get a coalition of them to be aligned against us which is liable to happen if we push for less syncretism things WILL get nasty. They can operate through avatars too last I recall which can get nasty if more than one of them starts manifesting stuff which I can't write off if we make ourselves into an existential threat for them.
Three; we still have the potential to accidentally end the world with us on it which I would *not* count as an imperial win.
I'm less certain about an inevitable victory for a couple reasons.
One the skaven have stolen imperial tech(and the imperials probably won't learn of that for at least another few years) and are leagues above the other faction's tech wise to the point they eventually achieved primitive space flight canonically in the original warhammer timeline. Their short lifespans and constant power struggles give them a large impetus to innovate.
Furthermore if their existence is truly threatened GHR will likely force them to cooperate with each other as he has done before.
Two... well gods have already been pointed out but it bears emphasizing again, not all of them will be friendly to our cause and if we get a coalition of them to be aligned against us which is liable to happen if we push for less syncretism things WILL get nasty. They can operate through avatars too last I recall which can get nasty if more than one of them starts manifesting stuff which I can't write off if we make ourselves into an existential threat for them.
Three; we still have the potential to accidentally end the world with us on it which I would *not* count as an imperial win.
Re: Skaven. Those End Times factions are hell to beat. The Skaven uniting would be one of those big problems that we'd have to eventually face but it's a bridge to cross when we get there. Luckily, they'd continue fighting each other in the meantime to be a serious threat in the interim. And also even if they do have parts of Imperial tech, I'd imagine they'd still need to figure out then build up all the industry and facilities to create and maintain that tech up from scratch. So not quite a a threat yet, but there's got to be ways to help counteract the inevitable hordes of Skaven soldiers running around with warpstone lasguns* until then.
That'd probably start with the industrialization of human polities, setting up military bases or ships off the coasts if we have the schematics for those cooking around somewhere to prevent the Skaven's favored method of surprise attacks from underground to instead use submarines (which could be opposed and defended against more conventionally through our new Mallus PDF wet navy), finding some way to hit up Clan Skyre's forges in Skavenblight someday when we're ready to delay their tech development some, and other stuff and contingencies that people more knowledgeable than me in WHF could probably think of. It's a lot of OOC knowledge we don't have yet, but the info should be accessible if we just stumble across the right sources. And then well, pitting ourselves against them for the practical experience like the Dawi do.
Re: Gods. Now, I don't think pushing for less syncretism is a thing we should be worried about (unless we specifically go for that). It is standard Ecclessiarchy MO to go for max syncretism, save for some core tenets like Chaos bad and other stuff. Like the Missionaria Galaxia are well-practiced in going out to far-flung worlds and slowly integrating native populations into worshipping the Emperor and setting them up for a smooth transition into the Imperium. I imagine the Old World is probably as good as any start for this with the polytheistic and henotheistic beliefs of the human polities here alongside the ancestor worship among the Dwarfs. The Emperor becoming just one more god or powerful ancestor to worship is as good a stepping stone as any before Emps becomes preeminent among the pantheon (or just mixes with the top god) while the others could coexist fine as Imperial Saints, "nature spirits", or just the usual ancestor worship.
And like you said, it's the more active gods that would pose a problem. Considering the limitations we have with being stranded, it'd be better to be prudent and excuse ourselves for merely inserting the Emperor as another figure to worship rather than usurping the existing active gods entirely, and even that might be too far for some of the gods. But yeah, it's all metagaming until we become more informed and understand the metaphysics of Mallus.
Gotta get that religious and cultural intel as soon as we can tbh, which is really where Lady Hermina shines and could shine brighter if we invested more into the Missionaria Galaxia. If we could, I'd imagine sending missionaries wherever would be a good start. Only then can we begin to ask ourselves IC how to deal with the fact that, say, Cathay has a literal dragon-god family chilling there. Or closer to home, how to deal with the Lady of the Lake and her Grail Knights. Inb4 she becomes the Emperor's waifu.
Re: Ending the world. Yeah, let's try not to own goal. Lol.
*Speaking of Skaven-made Imperial tech, aren't Skaven tech all powered by warpstones and notoriously unreliable, making such mass manufacturing of tech for their footsoldiers unlikely? That'd runs counter to a lot of the low-end Imperial tech like say the lasgun, which is so ubiquitous because it's basically the AK-47 of the Imperium. I'd imagine we'd get something more like a bunch of Hellpit abominations with warpstone lascannons for arms and wearing warpstone-powered power armour, which is a painful and frightening prospect in itself. Or Baneblades that could tunnel underground. Whatever they could come up with high on green cocaine.
Ah yes. About that, I think I was wrong regarding the Narrative quest suggestion. At least as far as I can tell again, narrative quests seem to be these subset of quests that don't overlap much with ck2 or empire building quests.
Hmm on Skaven tech it can be unreliable, but I don't think that at all precludes it from being mass produced in any way. It could be my memory failing me but I do think they have produced very large quantities of things like guns and blades and radio's before, unsure of their Manufacuring capabilities for things like doomwheels and paddleboats though.
Re: Naval Supremacy, I recall both major factions of dwarves might already have submarines(albeit likely not many) so we need to be careful about assuming that such will be a cakewalk if we make too many enemies too quickly.
Hmm on Skaven tech it can be unreliable, but I don't think that at all precludes it from being mass produced in any way. It could be my memory failing me but I do think they have produced very large quantities of things like guns and blades and radio's before, unsure of their Manufacuring capabilities for things like doomwheels and paddleboats though.
Re: Naval Supremacy, I recall both major factions of dwarves might already have submarines(albeit likely not many) so we need to be careful about assuming that such will be a cakewalk if we make too many enemies too quickly.
Oh for sure. I don't doubt there'd be a myriad variety of challenges we'd face along the way to total world domination or vassalization including messes of the players' own doing, the IC Imperials making things harder than they have a right to be (ie. Djincallers, and looking at Nathok and Hath-Horeb), or some external faction or problem because we can't cover for every eventuality at once.
It'd be the magic and the greater daemon equivalents like the Cathayan dragons and the god-like beings like the Slann that would give them a hard time but as could be seen with Hath-Hoeb, those things could be learned about and learned to counter it given enough time
So yes, you potentially have an inevitble victory, but part of what I'm exploring here is the lengths you're willing to go to (IC but OOC too) to win. Hath-Horeb is messing about with Warpstone, if the option is 'lose crucial battle or do forbidden magic' I'll be interested to see how these are considered, and more to the point, how the Imperium perceives it when you get back to them in the potentil sequel quest to this one.
On the magic point more specificlly, Mallus is weird. Hath-Horeb is confused, but Mallus represents one of those unusual warp phenomena which would normally just be closed off by the inquisition. Usually a greater daemon is a system wide threat, not a planet, not a continent, a whole wide area. Comparably, there are multiple greater daemons just wandering about, well, greater daemon level things for example. That's confusing to the Imperials. THey didn't expect Khong for example, they don't understnad why the whole planet isn't engulfed in warpstorm currently. This is all because of old ones stuff going on in the background which I may or may not get to, but yes, keep in mind the god stuff. Even just the levels of psykers are unusual. In 40k psykers aren't that common, they're either killed or the warp isn't baout enough for them to do much, but the Celestial Lions are going around and finding whole groups of psykers just chilling which they find really weird.
It depends. In the initial phase ,sure, missionaries are going to do all they can to identify things 'locally'. Sure, Sigmar is an aspect of the emperor, do you want to be a vassal now? However, over time certain things would be changed which would get bloody. The Imperium operates on incredible timelines. They'll send out a mission, then send a follow up 200 years later and find that the belief system of the world has changed etc. They're not absolute either, diversity is generally frowned on. There's at least one spce marine chapter who got purged becuase they did some sort of animism thing. Ah, found it, 'The Steel Cobras were a formerly Loyalist Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes whose blasphemous worship of the Emperor of Mankind as an animal totem prompted a puritanical Crusade against them by the Ecclesiarchy, led by a particularly bombastic cardinal.'
Yes some syncrenism is permitted, but only in the initial stages, over time there'd be more and more of a push toward the standard Imperial Cult, which given the Mallus gods are real, would be problemtic.
Depends. They certainly might develop their warstone tech from the stolen stuff, but that might also be a result of general inspiration. Eg, Ikit Claw looks at the stuff and notes some improvement more generally. Imperil tech doesn't reaally fit the skaven tctics or mindset though so equally it might not be adopted like that.
In which case maybe they'll just sell it to someone instead
This is something I want to emphsise as well. You're playing a chapter associated with the darker side of the Imperial Fists, with notable links to the Black Templars and Executioners. You're also playing space marines, I mentioned at the start that they'd be terrible at diplomacy, and indeed they aren't great. This is a pretty standard thing in the lore, but yes I'm not going to allow easay stuff which is out of chracter. I won't mention the quest as I don't wan't to single it out especially, but it was reltaively similar to this one and there were frequent questions and decision votes where the QM would ask 'do you want to do this really obviously good thing, or do yo want to suffer due to in character flaws?'. I found such decisions faracical. The QM in such instances shouldn't offer such a choice.
So... I hate asking this obviously but... do we as in any of us have a contingency plan for if/when the lizardmen turn hostile and throw everything at us?
If someone did, I probably forgot.
This is something I want to emphasis as well. You're playing a chapter associated with the darker side of the Imperial Fists, with notable links to the Black Templars and Executioners. You're also playing space marines, I mentioned at the start that they'd be terrible at diplomacy, and indeed they aren't great. This is a pretty standard thing in the lore, but yes I'm not going to allow easy stuff which is out of character.
Am I guessing correctly that this is why we were never given the option of playing as someone like the salamanders then among wanting to keep the history somewhat freeform?
Mercury; here often goes by the name of sigmars blood and seems to be employed within the empire quite a bit, hopefully, we can discourage such foolishness eventually.
According to my history of medicine class at university statistical analyses of the bones of people who were supposed to have had diseases treated by Mercury indicate that Mercury may actually function as a weak antibiotic, just one that's excruciatingly painful on intake and can't be purged from the body by the natural processes that remove poisons, leading to long-term health issues.
So there may have been an actual reason why it was popular during the worst periods of Syphilis epidemic, being essentially the only accessible method that ever produced a permanent cure(also fooling people into thinking that the treatment worked when syphilis goes into the phase of infection that is asymptomatic, before it comes back and gets worse).
These studies were made in response to someone getting critical of the orthodoxy that Mercury is useless and counterproductive, and wondering why it was used so widely then.
It depends. In the initial phase ,sure, missionaries are going to do all they can to identify things 'locally'. Sure, Sigmar is an aspect of the emperor, do you want to be a vassal now? However, over time certain things would be changed which would get bloody. The Imperium operates on incredible timelines. They'll send out a mission, then send a follow up 200 years later and find that the belief system of the world has changed etc. They're not absolute either, diversity is generally frowned on. There's at least one spce marine chapter who got purged becuase they did some sort of animism thing. Ah, found it, 'The Steel Cobras were a formerly Loyalist Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes whose blasphemous worship of the Emperor of Mankind as an animal totem prompted a puritanical Crusade against them by the Ecclesiarchy, led by a particularly bombastic cardinal.'
Yes some syncrenism is permitted, but only in the initial stages, over time there'd be more and more of a push toward the standard Imperial Cult, which given the Mallus gods are real, would be problemtic.
Honestly, we probably would need to acknowledge that we can't push for the standard Imperial Cult anytime soon if we just understand how fine a line we're walking with all the gods around. We'd also need to accept and understand Hath-Horeb's proclamations of things not being quite daemons to acknowledge that we could coexist peacefully with the Order gods. As a player then pushing for diplomacy and Hath-Horeb's research into the magical phenomena is something we'd need to do in order to get the above two states. Getting into a protracted war with some of the nations and gods out there is only going to make things much worse for every half-decent person.
Speaking of which, it'll be worthwhile to think about finding ways to integrate something like Cathay or Bretonnia into the fold without warring on them and their gods. Maybe we could just start of as formal allies then slowly tie them up economically and militarily where they'd then end up as de facto client states.
Depends. They certainly might develop their warstone tech from the stolen stuff, but that might also be a result of general inspiration. Eg, Ikit Claw looks at the stuff and notes some improvement more generally. Imperil tech doesn't reaally fit the skaven tctics or mindset though so equally it might not be adopted like that.
In which case maybe they'll just sell it to someone instead
And honestly the Skaven are onto something here. Like who could they sell it to? Chaos Dwarves, Dark Elves, maybe Ind, the more organized beastmen polities, the truly Chaos worshipping Norscans, anyone that'd be bad news for folk anywhere.
Similarly, we probably could start selling these things to the aforementioned polities too hard to militarily beat. Cathay, definitely. Maybe the Asuryan. Other places that other questers can think of. If we get the proper manufacturing facilities up we could just be churning out PDF or IG-level equipment to sell besides more artisinal stuff. Stuff like lasguns to Cathay troops or Carapace armour to elite soldiers and lords. And probably use that cash to do stuff like buy up all the Tilean mercenaries while blockading their sea routes before going to war with the city-states or something productive for our own holdings.
So... I hate asking this obviously but... do we as in any of us have a contingency plan for if/when the lizardmen turn hostile and throw everything at us?
If someone did, I probably forgot.
Personally, the only thing I can think of right now is to spread out our various Imperial factions away from Pharos, which we've done with the Astartes already, so that we won't be so vulnerable to a Mazamundi magical nuke or something. As of now we're still putting all our eggs in one juicy basket. Anyway, we could probably push the HQ of the Imperial Guard and the Missionaria Galaxia towards Copher and Lashiek which seem the population and cultural centers of Araby. I mention only those two factions because I'm sure the AdMech would like to stay close to our manufacturing base.
Besides that, don't know what else we could do to counter a race of Alpha and Beta level psykers. Maybe the Sisters of Battle have some anti-psyker knowhow, being the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Hereticus, but I doubt it'd be anything that potent. Maybe we could try boosting it up? Either way, obtaining just a bit more anti-psyker stuff might be worth it for more low level stuff.
Though imo, I don't think the Slann would move against us. I mean, there's always the possibility that some high-ranking Slann would interpret the Great Plan showing we're the heralds of the End Times and they must attack attack attack now now now! But reading their wiki entry they seem very defensive and passive. They've been on the defense since the Great Cataclysm and never once stopped to go out of their jungles and make one of the bad guys' days hell (besides getting their treasure back). Not even a century long defensive war to kick Clan Pestilens, literal Chaos Skaven, out of Lustria could get them to magic nuke any of the Skaven cities. Anyway, you'd hope the globe-spanning, once-invaded-Lustria-for-a-century, Chaos-deity worshipping Skaven who hates everyone, whom the Slann have already declared not part of the Great Plan according to the wiki, would be a higher priority for Slann extermination (or at least the nuking of Skavenblight and other Skaven cities) than humans from space who also hate Chaos conquering the Old World (until we also attack the Slann and Lizardmen for being Xenos).
But I'm not the one deciphering the indecipherable Great Plan. And then I remembered Pharos is in the middle of the Lizardman jungle, so what do I know?
It depends. In the initial phase ,sure, missionaries are going to do all they can to identify things 'locally'. Sure, Sigmar is an aspect of the emperor, do you want to be a vassal now? However, over time certain things would be changed which would get bloody. The Imperium operates on incredible timelines. They'll send out a mission, then send a follow up 200 years later and find that the belief system of the world has changed etc. They're not absolute either, diversity is generally frowned on. There's at least one spce marine chapter who got purged becuase they did some sort of animism thing. Ah, found it, 'The Steel Cobras were a formerly Loyalist Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes whose blasphemous worship of the Emperor of Mankind as an animal totem prompted a puritanical Crusade against them by the Ecclesiarchy, led by a particularly bombastic cardinal.'
Yes some syncrenism is permitted, but only in the initial stages, over time there'd be more and more of a push toward the standard Imperial Cult, which given the Mallus gods are real, would be problemtic.
Honestly, we probably would need to acknowledge that we can't push for the standard Imperial Cult anytime soon if we just understand how fine a line we're walking with all the gods around. We'd also need to accept and understand Hath-Horeb's proclamations of things not being quite daemons to acknowledge that we could coexist peacefully with the Order gods. As a player then pushing for diplomacy and Hath-Horeb's research into the magical phenomena is something we'd need to do in order to get the above two states. Getting into a protracted war with some of the nations and gods out there is only going to make things much worse for every half-decent person.
Speaking of which, it'll be worthwhile to think about finding ways to integrate something like Cathay or Bretonnia into the fold without warring on them and their gods. Maybe we could just start of as formal allies then slowly tie them up economically and militarily where they'd then end up as de facto client states.
So one of the things that worked well for historical Christianity was that they could declare that the local gods were actually saints, and the locals could keep worshipping them so long as they acknowledged the primacy of the Christian god.
And one of the things about the emperor worshipping cults is that they allow worship of, or worship-approximate activities aimed at, saints. And saints can give the Emperor's blessing. And there's a fair amount of conflict regarding who is officially acknowledged as a saint, but usually people don't care if someone who isn't officially a saint is treated like a local saint.
Maybe make claims that, like Sigmar and the dwarven ancestor gods, all of the local gods are actual historical figures, just from prehistory, and because they clearly have power and aren't chaos, that power must derive from the blessings of the emperor upon them.
Then be prepared to fight a war/suffer from divine harrassment until we can make the locals accept that compromise.
And don't actually call them saints, so as to avoid tripping over the sainting bureaucracy, instead call them holy figures or holy figures not officially acknowledged as saints or something.
What are the list of our other heresies we think might get a crusade called on us again?
Because I ?think? Astartes are explicitly allowed to claim non-imperial worlds when they're on campaign, develop and administer them as they like as part of said campaign, and raise combat serfs/pdf to defend their holdings and ships as they please. And the administratum reclaims them in much the same poorly-defined manner as they get worlds which were once colonized and directly administered by Rogue Traders/allows chapters to keep a certain limited number of worlds.
Unrelated question: I started thinking up uses for orbital superiority, what do people think of the following ideas:
Flattenning Khemri or threatening to flatten Khemri by orbital bombardment, either in retalliation for winning that duel, or as an effort to get the tomb king to give up their offensive?
Nuking just the army?
^not clear on why these weren't already options.
Giving out Vox systems inside holy symbols with the ability to call on orbital strikes should the receiver sufficiently satisfy the conditions the emperor's representative communicates to them through it?
Ie. Worship the emperor as best god, don't worship chaos, keep the bombardment to acceptable targets.
Edit: actually more questions: does the chapter have any inquisitorial contacts? Are we even trying to rules-lawyer ourselves into a legally defensible position?
I think the inquisitorial contacts we have are maybe a list of inquisitors that want our chapter to go extinct. I think you might also want to look at the heresy tracker in side stories. @guyfromtheplace1
Unrelated question: I started thinking up uses for orbital superiority, what do people think of the following ideas:
Flattenning Khemri or threatening to flatten Khemri by orbital bombardment, either in retalliation for winning that duel, or as an effort to get the tomb king to give up their offensive?
Nuking just the army?
^not clear on why these weren't already options.
I don't think calling bombing runs on Khemri would be a good idea as we don't know the aftereffects. Or bomb Khemri and unleash the bindings of the Tomb Kings. Who knows with magic? Maybe bombing runs on the army but aren't we already out of fuel? Nuking our backyard is also just a bad deal for Araby with the fallout of any of our exterminatus weapons.
Edit: actually more questions: does the chapter have any inquisitorial contacts? Are we even trying to rules-lawyer ourselves into a legally defensible position?
I was just musing on the mindset and consequent actions the Imperials would need in order to restrain themselves from going to war against nations with active deities in them, because such a thing would be disastrous. Right now that would come from diplomacy and study of other peoples (and the dangers they pose to us), which were options last Turn 8 so maybe I'd like to see those chosen come Turn 9. I personally don't mind subsuming then purging all the other more passive deities though if that helps the Imperials win harder and faster as that's the name of the quest.
But trying to rules-lawyer into a legally defensible position? I'd be surprised if we haven't already been proclaimed as Excommunicate Traitoris due to our abandonment of Elara's Veil. The Inquisition has been beating on the Lions while they were the very model of loyal Astartes but we just handed them our good name on a silver platter by running away. Everything else is probably small fry any other well-connected (unlike us) Chapter or Imperial group could sweep under the rug or offer a paper-thin justification no one wants to tear up.
I think the inquisitorial contacts we have are maybe a list of inquisitors that want our chapter to go extinct. I think you might also want to look at the heresy tracker in side stories. @guyfromtheplace1
Alright, so in the long term are we aiming to survive via convincing the Inquisition to go with some non-annihilating chastisment? Or rely on other Astartes chapters providing support support get the Inquisition to back off? Or are we planning to reappear before the Imperium with like a hundred-thousand space marines produced via some kind of ghyran-assisted Geneseed growth and scare/fight them into not destroying us?
Edit: Or is the goal something different? Continue to remain apart from but generally supportive of the imperium? by sending in wandering space marines under alias' like they're errant knights? By taking out external threats before they can reach claimed imperial areas?
Completely change the name and identifying features of the chapter and pretend to have never been the celestial lions, instead being a chapter founded by wandering blackshields outside of the reach of the Imperium, only now getting back into contact?
Y'know I don't see why we can't make amid-to long term goal to be remodeling the chapter and pretending to be different dudes.* I don't see why we can't do that while also making ourselves as formidable as possible, maybe making Titans a persuading dragons might be easier than pumping out 100,000 marines in a hundred years.
*Well aside from us already having a nascent split in the chapter between those who think incorporating magic and abhumans is okay and those who not potentially getting turned into a chasm that could start aa bloodbath within our now much weakened chapter, but no biggie right?
Alright, so in the long term are we aiming to survive via convincing the Inquisition to go with some non-annihilating chastisment? Or rely on other Astartes chapters providing support support get the Inquisition to back off? Or are we planning to reappear before the Imperium with like a hundred-thousand space marines produced via some kind of ghyran-assisted Geneseed growth and scare/fight them into not destroying us?
Edit: Or is the goal something different? Continue to remain apart from but generally supportive of the imperium? by sending in wandering space marines under alias' like they're errant knights? By taking out external threats before they can reach claimed imperial areas?
Completely change the name and identifying features of the chapter and pretend to have never been the celestial lions, instead being a chapter founded by wandering blackshields outside of the reach of the Imperium, only now getting back into contact?
I'd be happy to just get back to full Chapter strength first without the Inquisition here to pull us down whenever it looks like we'd get back to normal, maybe with an expanded Librarium to accommodate the greater numbers of magic users. Get us a well-equipped PDF and happy AdMech providing us with tech and we're golden for me.
Also, Fractious did mention Dubaku existed as a regular Space Marine here. If we follow canon and the material flow of time then, that'd mean the fall of Cadia is just around the corner. Fun time to be ejected from the Eye of Terror as the Great Rift tears the Imperium in two and everything that ensures with that.
***
Also, does anyone have an idea on how to weaken Bretonnia before go to war with them? I say we will go to war because they had already once rebuffed an Arabyan invasion when the Arabyans invaded Estslia, so it shows they don't like people invading the Old World. It'll be a pain to go up against the Grail Knights and the Fey Enchantress, though fun to watch a counter-charge from our own Knights.
I think I've got a few things that could weaken the other nations so we aren't just butting our heads against them. The Empire is in the middle of the Vampire Wars and are disunited with multiple heirs to the Imperial throne. We could strengthen the Emperor-worshipping Norscans by assisting them in conquering the non-Emperor worshipping Norscans, then fat in land and slaves with less rivals we could probably direct them to invade the Northern Empire provinces (while the Space Marines make things easier for them through blowing things up in advance) while the Vampire Wars are ongoing in the southern provinces. Tilea we could wage economic war and terrorism against them using our scouts. Massacre their caravans, blow up their shipping ports, blow up their banks, assassinate their merchants, seed major thoroughfares with mines, run circles around the Tilean mercenaries while Lashiek raids their shipping and we invade the Border Princes and redirect the Ivory Road traffic towards Araby instead. Estalia is fragmented but had united against the Arabyans, so maybe we could find a fitting kingdom to prop up and wage proxy war against the other Estalians. Give their infantry stubbers and their knights carapace armour, breed their gene-modded horses, mono-pikes and swords, laspistols, and monopoly in trade and all that stuff.
But the Bretonnians, they're much too stable during this time to the point where they're exporting knights to fight in foreign lands because Bretonnia is that peaceful. Maybe we could whip up the peasantry with faith and stubbers but they're far too downtrodden to be of any use. Maybe kill the peasants and introduce plague targetting the peasants as the Skaven did? Poison the fields too with plague? I'm sure our Genetorium would have some good stuff inside. Knights take a large amount of land and peasants to support them so remove that and can they still devote so much time towards fighting?
So... I hate asking this obviously but... do we as in any of us have a contingency plan for if/when the lizardmen turn hostile and throw everything at us?
While I'm not formally keeping track of it, I've generally interpreted the thread to be largely content to leave them as they are. Therefore to the same extent the space marines are also leaving it. This isn't a 121 match, but I do use reader sentiment to decide things like that to an extent. For example you reminded me about the Golden Magus, so I used him for the Djinncallers to escape with. Now sometimes this has it's own problems. Agilies escaped into the desert, you sent a squad that didn't come back, so the thread and chapter decided it wasn't worth considering anymore and moved onto other matters. Agilies waking up settra wasn't wasn't necessaraily predictble, but I did write two turns of 'oh and there's a storm of magic growing in the desert' which no one picked up on. Generally I'll give you warning of narrative things like that.
Am I guessing correctly that this is why we were never given the option of playing as someone like the salamanders then among wanting to keep the history somewhat freeform?
Partly yes. I wanted the history relatively malleable. There's not much lore on them anyway, but also if a company of salamnders dissapeared the others companies would come look for them, so it'd have that plot point hanging about. I needed a reson for the chapter to actually stay around and do Mallus stuff, and the lions have that
These studies were made in response to someone getting critical of the orthodoxy that Mercury is useless and counterproductive, and wondering why it was used so widely then.
We'd also need to accept and understand Hath-Horeb's proclamations of things not being quite daemons to acknowledge that we could coexist peacefully with the Order gods.
So HH has clearly identified that something is really really weird, but so far he's also refused to accept that it's possible for stuff to be happening. On Mallus you can walk for a few hundred miles and go from normal planet to the Realm of Chaos. That's unprecedented so he's looking for alternate explanations.
It is indeed weird how passive they are. They tend to try and move people, eg all elves are 'meant' to be on ultuan, but they're limited to the predictions of the Great Plan, which doesn't work anyway since the future written in it is broken etc.
Maybe make claims that, like Sigmar and the dwarven ancestor gods, all of the local gods are actual historical figures, just from prehistory, and because they clearly have power and aren't chaos, that power must derive from the blessings of the emperor upon them.
typingThis with my voice so there are some errors et cetera
so i think this goes to a number of problems firstly we don't really know enough about imperial religion to accurate make statements on this so anything anyone says could potentially be accurate or it couldn't who knows. Secondly I assume that the Imperials use essentially mediaeval religion for this sort of thing so for example they would believe that visions are a permissible method of divination they use things like the emperors tarrot and they would also have other doctrinal beliefs. However we must also assume that they are constantly on guard against heresy demons one of the ways they do this we know is with the inquisition and with the various other methods of the imperium but also we must also assume that they try to prevent some greater demon from popping up and saying Oh yes I'm definitely the emperor in his disguise as an ancestor spirit or similar superstition you know please worship me and so on
Now again we don't have many sources to go off but we do know that the squats at least acknowledged the primacy of the emperor and and that everybody elsebelieved their worship of ancestor spirits was powered in some manner by the emperor. however you could also look at the power dynamics here the Scots had particular technology which people really wanted however apart from that the imperium doesn't generally do compromise. I would say therefore in this quest you should not anticipate being able to compromise with the native gods because that wouldn't really be in character for the lions.
For example and some later point I'm planning to have a scene with the fallout of the empire chapter slash interlude I wrote awhile ago and that would depict the theological considerations relevant for example if sigmor was crowned by Ulrich that acknowledges the primacy of other gods over Sigma and their ability to bestow upon him his godhood therefore it's probably not that much of a stretch to see that actually signals godhood was bestowed by the emperor instead therefore it might be fairly easy to get the cult of Sigma on side because you're not really challenging their theology anyway.
Getting back on track though the imperium does not believe in the existence of gods other than the emperor and the chaos gods , and to assert otherwise is definitely heresy . Simply because something has power and is not a chaos God does not make it acceptable. For example I assume that there is some sort of theological position only elder and the pantheon but this doesn't mean that the imperium starts praying to lillieth or similar. Another problem would be that the native gods on malice or in fact real that is to say they have power in the world they are not merely warp spirits or similar as such if their worshippers are being stolen
Because I ?think? Astartes are explicitly allowed to claim non-imperial worlds when they're on campaign, develop and administer them as they like as part of said campaign, and raise combat serfs/pdf to defend their holdings and ships as they please. And the administratum reclaims them in much the same poorly-defined manner as they get worlds which were once colonized and directly administered by Rogue Traders/allows chapters to keep a certain limited number of worlds.
This is one of those areas which I think is intentionally vague in the imperium the status of the space marines in general is fairly vague on one hand they are outside the chain of command on the other hand everyone does what they say even though that's explicitly forbidden because of the Horus heresy oh that's cool the voice typing thing can do Horus presumably because it's an Egyptian god
certainly can't imagine any planetary governor on the frontiers of the imperium refusing the space marine chapter master however that doesn't necessarily mean it's strictly legal for them to do so
Keep in mind this is a question of who would actually care about it. In the bad AB war the astral claws took over the maelstrom zone and requested dominion over it this altered the status they had already enjoyed as the maelstrom wardens but it was the local sector command which had a problem not necessarily the high lords of terror
From an author's perspective because I don't want you throwing nuclear weapons all over the place and solving all the plot points with that and from a character perspective becausr the master of the forge who is in charge of the distribution of such weapons doesn't think it's necessary and therefore won't authorise it
Edit: actually more questions: does the chapter have any inquisitorial contacts? Are we even trying to rules-lawyer ourselves into a legally defensible position?
But trying to rules-lawyer into a legally defensible position? I'd be surprised if we haven't already been proclaimed as Excommunicate Traitoris due to our abandonment of Elara's Veil. The Inquisition has been beating on the Lions while they were the very model of loyal Astartes but we just handed them our good name on a silver platter by running away. Everything else is probably small fry any other well-connected (unlike us) Chapter or Imperial group could sweep under the rug or offer a paper-thin justification no one wants to tear up.
The inquisition has fought space marine chapters a few times one notable case would be the months of shame against the space wolves they only stopped that as far as I recall when the space wolves had them in a tactically disadvantageous position and they realised that all the fighting there was also preventing them from fighting other people
One thing you could potentially look at doing would be finding someone to protect you such as the imperial fists and you know submitting to their authority and getting them to judge you and so on and like using them as a shield problem is of course that they would know that you were doing that because it be really obvious and they might also still judge you to be traitors et cetera
The first problem is that this just isn't what Space Marines do. Even the sneaky chapters don't relly disguise themselves, that's almost solely an Alpha Legion thing. Apart from them I can only think of the Tiger Claws who'd done something similar, but again that was because they were doing something heretical. I'm moderately open to things like that, but I think the vast majority of chapters would rather go renegade than pretend to be another chapter.
Secondly, this depends on what context you leave mallus. For example
After the World-That-Was was destroyed during the End Times, its metallic core was hurled into the cosmos, Sigmar the Celestial Lions clinging to it, it was eventually caught by Dracothion The Emperor (?) and set in the firmament.[1a]
The Chaos Gods let Mallus, and remnants of the world, survive and it became a lodestone for the echoing souls of those who sought to deny Chaos of its ultimate victory. The gods Saints of the Imperium of the fallen world slumbered while being nourished by the magics Definitely-Not-Magic-Because-That's-Heresy that saturated Mallus, slowly gaining a form that could interact with the material world, thanks to the sphere's eldritch aura. A billion souls were one moment corporeal the other incorporeal as the suns and moons of heavens glowed. Eventually, awakened by Sigmar's Amra's will, they populated the Mortal Realms
If we follow canon and the material flow of time then, that'd mean the fall of Cadia is just around the corner. Fun time to be ejected from the Eye of Terror as the Great Rift tears the Imperium in two and everything that ensures with that.
Keep in mind that the warp messes around with the material flow of time as you put it additionally I don't like the 42nd Millennium I don't find the story particularly interesting and I probably need to do some work to read up on stuff like that as such I would be more likely to put you in sometime in the 38th for example that's massively dependent on what actually happens at the end of this quest and whether I would be interested in continuing the narrative after that it might be quite interesting but it also might be annoying but we'll see
Hey man, if you've got a few hundred Grey Knights in your drawer I wouldn't mind wrestling with the Cathay dragons at the same time! Who from the Total War trailers is a match for Greater Daemons. Though apparently during this time, Cathay was fragmented so much Ind was able to invade.
And as for the plan for Cathayan trade, I was actually hoping it could be a mid-term plan actually. We can repair the Peregrin but I imagine we'd only prefer to use those for large military operations to hop around the world with. Unless we mean for it to be in orbit indefinitely? Could it withstand Morrslieb then?
Anyway, for anything else like international diplomacy or trade beyond the Old World we're either reliant on the Ivory Road or dominated in the seas by Ulthuan ships. So we can create a port and a blue water shipyard for that, then build Imperial-standard blue water ships. Maybe they get huge naval guns, nuclear-powered turbines, and armoured in super-alloys. Then use the ships built there to ferry Missionaria Galaxia missions and trade goods all the way to Ulthuan and the Far East nations while we're busy subjugating the Old World, wresting and fortifying the North from Chaos worship, taming Central Asia, and battling it out with the Skaven. Bonus points for gaining a merchant fleet to terrorize Naggaroth, to play raiders with anyone we don't like, and to wrest unmatched naval superiority from the High Elves.
Okay, so I was thinking about our supply problems. I thought to myself why don't we just build solid shells instead of explosive ones and why don't we install engines or build vehicles that run on cruder fuels?
I recall hearing a number of tanks for the imperial guard tend to be far less finicky about fuel than space marine vehicles are.
Wood burning automobiles were a real thing in the past of holy terra.
Heck do we have no blueprints for say rapid fire repeater crossbows? Surely producing bolts must be less costly than energy cells for lasguns right?
Also, I'm all for slightly downgrading our power armor to make more of it faster, nothing less powerful than an ogre or dragon should be cracking any model of it in hand to hand combat right?
Am I making a lot of bad assumptions with this line of thinking?
Okay, so I was thinking about our supply problems. I thought to myself why don't we just build solid shells instead of explosive ones and why don't we install engines or build vehicles that run on cruder fuels?
I recall hearing a number of tanks for the imperial guard tend to be far less finicky about fuel than space marine vehicles are.
Wood burning automobiles were a real thing in the past of holy terra.
Heck do we have no blueprints for say rapid fire repeater crossbows? Surely producing bolts must be less costly than energy cells for lasguns right?
Also, I'm all for slightly downgrading our power armor to make more of it faster, nothing less powerful than an ogre or dragon should be cracking any model of it in hand to hand combat right?
Am I making a lot of bad assumptions with this line of thinking?
Downgrading armour was and maybe is actually very widespread, to the point where they made up a whole pattern of makeshift construction called Mark V Heresy Power Armour. It's something we could do, and I don't think anything is stopping us from downgrading our equipment and such. With the demands placed on Space Marines, Techmarines make frequent adjustments and modifications to their equipment that could be considered tech-heresy for anyone else.
Though I hope that we aren't at that stage yet where we have to downgrade all our stuff yet. We can just continue to build facilities needed to support an Imperial army. But we'll see! Though for our Arabyan auxiliaries, sure. It'll be an improvement over whatever they have anyway. Just give them stubbers instead of lasguns. That's super cheap anyway and already leaps and bounds above repeating crossbows.
It's not that I think we can't produce more complicated things but just from the notes on things like Thunderhawk production...I don't think we can afford to spend more than a decade out of action.
Not with the way greenskins and skaven can breed and learn, not if Bretonnia tries to call a crusade on us and certainly not if our ostland expedition ends the vampire wars early and gives The Empire a chance to consolidate.
I'd ask about solar and geothermal power, but I suspect those are the kind of things the imperium does not believe in?
Ah, I get what you're saying. We do have 14 Thunderhawks right now but if they all get destroyed through some magic juju, we'd be out of luck. Maybe one way to mitigate this weakness would be planning to build things in a round robin manner? Say, build a little of X, Y and Z this year then X, Y and Z the next year. That way we have the necessary equipment in varying stages of completion. It'd be expensive though.
Another mitigant would be to have reserves of equipment. So if we lose some then we bring out the reserves and get to building on more.
