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The Long Night Part One: Embers in the Dusk: A Planetary Governor Quest (43k) Complete Sequel Up
- Thread starter Durin
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- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
We don't make it one order, we split it up into cells that don't coodinate except under extraordinary circumstances and are encouraged to develop rivalries. The same way the Imperium handled Space Marines.
Doomed Wombat
Let's go Darling!
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- Dancing on wires!
Last Hunters have almost certainly got training to hide themselves from all, but the best diviners and telepaths they're psyker hunters after all, they'd be worthless if they didn't have those skills.
As for the Inquisition, only part of it needs to go rouge. A single rogue Inquisitor is a massive problem, a point Klovis was happy to make to Rotbart.
And yes, Sepet will die, but so does everybody else, and most everybody else don't have the ability to bring entire star systems to their knees on their lonesome.
As for how we do it in a few ways.
1. Confining them to Avernus and Avernus alone, give them next to no ability to leave the surface even when wars come.
2. Ensure that we have some method of tracking them on them at all times.
3. Bring the full force of the Trust on them, Last Hunters, psyker hunters, Inquisition, Order of Divination, who after 2000 years would be much larger, much more skilled. Skilled enough to likely find them by brute force if needed.
In addition, use Ridcully. Unless Lin's investigation means that he decides not too and nothing in the intervening 2000 years means he reconsiders, I very much doubt we won't help him transcend to godhood (which yes, is fine. Lin has no problems with it so long as he doesn't start getting worshipped.)
Finally planning for an eventuality 2000 years hence was something even the Imperium didn't do regularly, for down that path lies dangerous things.
- Location
- Australia
That goes against the Trust's philosophy of making everything work at maximal efficiency at the cost of millennia-long robustness.
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- Australia
Commissar of the Phase-Tigers regiment. The stealthiest person in the Trust.
HanEmpire
Delicious
Dalv Sepet, the Commissar of the Phase Tigers. He's probably the transcended Ciaphas Cain in disguise.
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
Commissar Dalv Septet of the Phse Tigers, he's up to Paragon level in intrigue and combat, to the point where we have no idea what his actual paragon traits are, but he's a huge threat.
Edit wait, let me check how the name is spelled, i think i have it wrong.
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Doomed Wombat
Let's go Darling!
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- Dancing on wires!
Not sure when that became our philosophy, its not wrong necessarily, but still.
Pretty sure the logic, is that "this worked for the Imperium due to size, it doesn't work for us we're tiny."
The Imperium's robustness while impressive, doesn't translate well to smaller scale polities where efficiency is better for keeping alive in the long run.
Without outside threats I'd argue the Trust is much more robust in many ways, there are ways of easily arbitrating between disagreements between worlds, who are bound so tightly together that to screw over another world would likely screw themselves over as well, and to an extent I'd say there's even a common culture developing due to the militia system, shared religion ect.
Basically, we've not sacrificed millennia long robustness, we lost it so we've recreated it in another fashion that works for our new circumstances.
Phase Tiger's commissar, paragon of intrigue and combat, highly mysterious in every respect, brought a lord inquisitor to hand wringing he's so good at keeping his secrets, dangerous enough to lock down an entire system on his own if he ever went rogue.
I still think he's Cain
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Don't think it would be much of an issue since like with the Psy-hunters they would be taken from the battle psykers who already had people hunting psykers which is why we made the psy-hunter order so that we had guys specifically trained to counter psykers. Imagine that it would be a small order anyway so it wouldn't be taking much.
Another important note is that there are more than likely plenty of psyker assasins around anyway. Especially considering that some of the Eldar that are worshipping chaos are able to use their psyker powers and would make incredible assasins. If anything having an order of psyker assasins seems like it would give us new ideas of how to counter other ones from enemy factions.
Uh not really, it was noted that they the trust are careful of making it so that we could have too many problems by having too much power in a few hands which caused a lot of problems in the old Imperium.
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- Australia
How is it that everyone we know is at their most dangerous only after they go rogue? Surely there must be some way to get them to their full potential while they're still loyal.
Doomed Wombat
Let's go Darling!
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- Dancing on wires!
In the case of Sepet I'm pretty sure this is due to his mysterious past and trying to deliberately hide how skilled he is only revealing his full skills to keep his comrades alive.
Everyone else...I can't think of anyone else who's holding back...Rotbart for example. If he fell I don't think he'd get much more dangerous.
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They are the most dangerous to us because they are actually working against us since it also comes with the problem in that we lost the person that would be most helpful in countering someone like them while losing said person.
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- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
Surt, though less so now.
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- Australia
The High Council is made up near-exclusively of planetary governors, who history has shown to be extremely prone to corruption, incompetence, indolence, and arrogance. We have no systems to keep their quality up that are better than what the Imperium had, except the planetary governors on the High Council are even more powerful and untouchable than before.
The Imperial Trust allowed Avernus to produce its own equivalent of Imperial Assassins. The only ones who have authority over them are Jane and Rotbart. Despite the exclusive power they give those two individuals, there's no oversight or restrictions on their use, creation, or existence. Avernus is just trusted not to do anything bad with them.
The Fabricator-General, Ecclesiarch, and Archmagos Explorator Veneratus are all based on Avernus, the most dangerous death world in the galaxy.
The reduction in power of the Ministorum reduces their ability to abuse their power, but it also makes it harder for the most moral and righteous organisation in the Trust to curb the abuses of power of other people or organisations. The power of planetary governors has increased since the Age of the Imperium so this can be pretty bad. Furthermore, the weakness of the Ecclesiarchy is what allowed Goge Vandire to gain control over it. Preventing such a thing from happening again was one of the duties of the Adepta Sororitas, but in the Trust, that job instead goes to, wait for it, planetary governors.
One way to prevent corruption in the Ecclesiarchy or planetary governors or whatever is the Inquisition. The problem with them is a catch 22 situation. They either don't have enough power to keep the Trust pure and functional, in which case the Trust becomes impure and dysfunctional, or they have enough power to keep the Trust pure and functional, in which case there is a lot more power concentrated in the Inquisition than is safe. The Imperium chose to keep the Inquisition relatively weak, but covered for it somewhat with other organisations such as the Adeptus Arbites, the Adeptus Ministorum, the Adeptus Mechanicus, and the Adepta Sororitas. In the Trust, all those organisations (the latter of whom has no real power any more) are firmly under the thumb of planetary governors.
When the rest of the galaxy burned during the Age of Strife, it was the Mechanicum of Mars that managed to keep alive the single greatest store of knowledge and technology of the Dark Age in the galaxy. In the Imperial Trust, more and more technology is being entrusted with people who simply don't care about the mystical mumbo jumbo of the tech priests, and so have significantly less issues with abusing technology, losing it, or distributing it to the unworthy. The more advanced tech is still kept by the Mechanicus, but the Mechanicus in turn is intentionally being made the obedient lap dogs of planetary governors, such as it is on Avernus. It would take only one corrupt planetary governor for there to be a better-than-comfortable chance of Chaos gaining a bunch of our tech.
The Emperor himself said to not to dabble with Abominable Intelligence and Lin hasn't said that he's rescinded that order, yet we still kept the STC for the Men of Stone. Furthermore, whether to keep the STC for the Men of Iron was a debate rather than an automatic "throw it into the sun", and the final decision was ultimately deferred to a planetary governor.
Our ways of preventing Space Marines from turning traitor (or promptly killing them if they do) are no better than the Imperium's. Despite that, we have (or will have) a small legion's worth of Space Marines within our borders.
One of the things that could potentially break the Imperial Trust is Ridcully falling to Chaos. One of the big things that can make him fall to Chaos is him looking at Chaos Gods and rolling bad. The only thing that's needed to make him look at Chaos Gods is a planetary governor telling him to do so.
All of the above is done out of convenience or because it's effective, not because it can stand the test of time.
EDIT:
That problem has only gotten worse in the Trust, with a lot of the power of the various Adepta being transferred or suborned to planetary governors.
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Valkur
The True Valkyria, Valkur!
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- Fólkvangr
I mean at the end of the day, people run things man. There is no way to make a full proof organization.
I have been trying to work on an omake where she sees Avernite behavng too nonchalantly when there arrogance is regarded by higher ups and tries to do something about it.
Give it a hundred years and we may be looking at serious corruption and self interest ruining the Trust.
I have been trying to work on an omake where she sees Avernite behavng too nonchalantly when there arrogance is regarded by higher ups and tries to do something about it.
Give it a hundred years and we may be looking at serious corruption and self interest ruining the Trust.
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Doomed Wombat
Let's go Darling!
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- Dancing on wires!
Right, I'm dropping off in a sec, but I'm going to do some commenting before I leave.
First, yes most planatary govenors in the Imperium were shit, but that was because the system allowed and even encouraged it for most worlds except the ones that were important.
Ours doesn't do that, governors are encouraged to be the best they can be, through a variety of means. Just look at Zaren, who in many ways should be typical of an old Trust governor.
Second I think you are over stating the lack of oversight we have, for the Last Hunters. First, its Avernus, if we go chaos we have a permanent sword of Damocles hanging over our head. Second there is oversight, the Inquisition and the Trust both have observers, hell the Trust has an entire advisory board that can lock down certain actions if they feel they have too.
And yeah we are trusted not to do anything bad with them, and its a good trust, out of all the Governors we're probably the least likely to do something with them outside their mandate and they know that.
Yes they are, thankfully both seem to be spending increasing amounts of time on the moons and are still separate to Avernus *insert the usual spiel about how no we don't actually control Scott, it looks like we do for game play purposes, in universe we at best advise. Its the same reason we were the deciding voice on things like the Blood Dragons trade.
And on two fronts that's a bit of a non issue. For a start due to the milita system if a priest really felt it needed to remove a govenor they likely still could, though that's incredibly unlikely as it would require none of the other govenor's giving a shit, the Inquisition dropping the idiot ball and the Psykers not noticing an important event like this so close to home. In short basically impossible. And if a Vandire esque figure were to form the govenors would squash them flat before you can say "WAKA."
Who again are not the Govenor's of the majority of the Imperium. Do I really have to elucidate on how the system worked? Basically, most worlds like the middle of know where Hive world 2141241 and Agri world 915u23952, who cares who's in charge so long as they're competent?
Important worlds though. Recruiting worlds need good governor's like Alafric to ensure that the soldiers produced are worth something, fortress worlds need good general Governor like Creed ect. In essence if a world was important you could be damn sure the governor was effective, other wise the imperium just didn't give a shit.
The tech priests sure as shit had few issues about distributing their technology they just hoarded the best bits and ensured that wars were lost because nobody, but them could use it. And if you're so worried about chaos getting our stuff then you'd be against tech trading with Callamus, or Ultramar or Vulkan all of whom are much more vulnerable to chaos infiltration due to sheer size if nothing else. I'd also like to ask how our prospective tech trader is going to hand over this technology? He can't project it through the warp and unless the Inquisition goes tits up a spy isn't going to have time to get in and get out with it, and forget smuggling a sorcerer in.
No the final decision was differed to the Fabricator General, as I recall Durin said he did a hidden roll to both to determine whether Britton threw them into the sun. Our roll offered a bonus to keep the MoS STC, and a malus to the MoI, but it was his decision.
As for Lin
@Durin
1. Have we asked him if the Proclamation on AI has been rescinded?
Lets hear it straight from the hoses mouth.
And yeah Ridcully falling would be bad, no shit.
No offence (meaningless I know), but this seems like a lot of panic over bugger all. All your problems apply to the Imperium, just replace planetary governor with High Lord of Terra. If even one of them was corrupted or incompetent it was disastrous for the rest of the Imperium same for the Trust. Difference for the Trust is that unlike with the high lords problems emerging will likely take a lot longer and are small enough in scale that we can fix them.
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- Australia
Didn't Scott say she wanted to make the Mechanicus into something that was just like the other Adepta, who are all pretty subservient to planetary governors?
My point wasn't that Ridcully falling would be bad, but that it's easy for a planetary governor to put him into a position where he can fall.
- Location
- Berkeley
Frankly, the issue here is that some of the goals are mutually contradictory. Power cannot be effectively wielded at this scale without concentrating it, and concentrated power by its very nature can be abused. We can and do work to ensure there are contingencies and countermeasures in place to limit the issues caused by dilution of power as well as concentration of power (such as providing mechanisms to temporarily further concentrate power in an emergency and setting up agencies to keep an eye on those who control the most power), but at no point can it ever be a total non-issue.
One thing to remember, though, is that while we're certainly descended from the Imperium, we're not the Imperium. Assuming identical strengths and weaknesses is dangerous. I mean, in some ways you've said it yourself—look at our planetary governors, and compare them to the normal ones in the Imperium. While we may have political disagreements and the like, as a whole they are far superior to the standard fare even before the Fall.
Communication and warp travel issues put a cap on the maximum efficient size for an uncorrupted human polity here, but that does have a silver lining. It means that it's substantially harder for any group within the polity to avoid the attention of the watchdog agencies—and all but impossible for individuals or groups that have gained any real power. I think one of the real issues that plagued the Imperium was at no point did they really have a chance to clean house and shore up the foundations. It was assembled in a hurry to combat the rise of the Orks, and a new crisis always popped up whenever anyone tried to really fix the systemic issues. The ultimate solution of dividing up power was akin to assembling a leanto where each piece is prevented from falling over because the other pieces are trying to fall into it.
While we were certainly limited by the power structure of the Imperium in constructing the government of the Trust, it was built by actual engineers (in-universe) who had access to good material and the time to do it right. Saying that simply by lacking some of the ad-hoc supports made to keep a shanty from falling over it is fundamentally unstable is a fallacy.
One thing to remember, though, is that while we're certainly descended from the Imperium, we're not the Imperium. Assuming identical strengths and weaknesses is dangerous. I mean, in some ways you've said it yourself—look at our planetary governors, and compare them to the normal ones in the Imperium. While we may have political disagreements and the like, as a whole they are far superior to the standard fare even before the Fall.
Communication and warp travel issues put a cap on the maximum efficient size for an uncorrupted human polity here, but that does have a silver lining. It means that it's substantially harder for any group within the polity to avoid the attention of the watchdog agencies—and all but impossible for individuals or groups that have gained any real power. I think one of the real issues that plagued the Imperium was at no point did they really have a chance to clean house and shore up the foundations. It was assembled in a hurry to combat the rise of the Orks, and a new crisis always popped up whenever anyone tried to really fix the systemic issues. The ultimate solution of dividing up power was akin to assembling a leanto where each piece is prevented from falling over because the other pieces are trying to fall into it.
While we were certainly limited by the power structure of the Imperium in constructing the government of the Trust, it was built by actual engineers (in-universe) who had access to good material and the time to do it right. Saying that simply by lacking some of the ad-hoc supports made to keep a shanty from falling over it is fundamentally unstable is a fallacy.
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Should be noted that not only would all the human Avernites get taken out if they fell making having them less of an issue but the Inquisition itself is another contingency and have in their ranks assasin drop outs who while not as skilled still likely outnumber the ones that actually passed along with psykers and they are the group in charge of rooting out corruption.
1) We don't control the Fabricator of Mars and the other planets do have their own mechanicus branches.
2) The Eccleisiarch isn't actually based on Avernus since all the other planets have their own branches. It's just the planet the last Saint lives on.
The Mechanicus were also one of the main problems in the old Imperium. They not only held a monopoly on technology but they were actually pretty selfish in a lot of ways including holding the best tech for themselves when it came to forgeworlds to the point that they wouldn't even trade tech to other forgeworlds except for Mars. A lot of their customs also prevented them from being nowhere near as effective as they could have been. The best example I've seen is an Admech mechanicus quest on SB(Deus Ex mechanicus) where the players dropped the worst traits that the Mechanicus had and became one of the most succesful forgeworlds in only a few centuries with the High Lords of Terra themselves pointing to them as examples of how the AdMech is not being as effective as they could be.
In regards to the AI STC issue it should be pointed out that that was a complicated issue due to not only being AI involved but the possible destruction of STC which is practically heresy for the Admech making the whole situation complex. Hence why a governor was asked for their oppinion.
Should be noted that they would still be massively outnumbered by the rest of the Trust including the ones that have superhuman soldiers of their own backed up by advanced tech. As shown by the last invasion by Chaos Space Marines on Avernus they are pretty good at killing Space Marines.
Note that we only very rarely have Ridcully look at those kinds of things and it was only to get more information that would be helpful to us. We also make sure to have him use the Black Crystal set which is harmful to chaos.
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- Berkeley
I don't think there is directly, just a question as to if they're worth the cost/effort of setting up—especially as we already have the Last Hunters.
Valkur
The True Valkyria, Valkur!
- Location
- Fólkvangr
This.
I mean maybe make a Kill Squad with Pyker Hunters attatched to the Last Hunters? But they'd probabally need similar training and if the Last Hunters rate of success is so low I can only imagine that our pool of psykers would just not be able to do it. The strain can/will break the mind of even the strongest of the Last Hunters.
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- United states
Actually brought this up with the idea of maybe psykers specializing in assasination being teamed up with Last Hunters. IIRC the original Imperium assasins had several types with different specialties including those that were blanks that were meant to be used against psykers and daemons that would work together in teams from time to time.