I still think sorcery is with it because things that make our followers better as a whole are more effective than things that require our direct action. We've gotten around this with life by making things that can technically exist without warp intervention, but sun isn't a tech domain. If we need to spend actions making the warp nonsense happen then we become a production bottle neck.
Sorcery adds a risk, but it's also much more useful.
Adhoc vote count started by armentho on Jun 29, 2020 at 7:41 PM, finished with 365 posts and 95 votes.
[X]Plan: Peace, earth, and MAGIC
-[X] Elysium: The power of peace, sanctuary, and safety. Mastery of the Elysium Domain grant access to wards and bindings capable of enforcing peace upon limited areas While these cannot be used to protect combattants-such wards are proof even against indiscrimate attacks as long as the peaceful reside within them.
-[X] Expansion: Select two Associated Domains that you have previously passed up, the safe but boring choice.
--[X] Earth: The power of soil, stone, and everything in between. Mastery of Earth has great benefits in terraforming and drawing forth natural resources, it also augments your Weaving by allowing you to concentrate sufficient nutrients in one place to produce megaflora scale creatures.
--[X] Sorcery: An oldie but a goodie! Sorcery is a mechanism to delegate your own attention down to suitable mortal agents! It allows them to call forth your Daemons, invoke lesser echoes of your own Spheres, and generally is just a really flexible form of power! Of course, Sorcery isn't one hundred percent Reliable, and it doesn't really do anything to expand your abilities as a god in and of itself. Maybe take it now and see about whipping up some kind of neat witchy coven thingie? Or maybe it'd be best to leave it for later once you have more to offer with it. Decisions decision.
[X] Plan Earth, Sun, and Elysium
-[X] Earth: The power of soil, stone, and everything in between. Mastery of Earth has great benefits in terraforming and drawing forth natural resources, it also augments your Weaving by allowing you to concentrate sufficient nutrients in one place to produce megaflora scale creatures.
-[X] Expansion: Select two Associated Domains that you have previously passed up, the safe but boring choice.
--[X] Sun: The power of star, light, and purity. Mastery of the Sun Domain allows for manifestations of power tied to the stars. Provides excellent access to energy and plasma based phenomena.
--[X] Elysium: The power of peace, sanctuary, and safety. Mastery of the Elysium Domain grant access to wards and bindings capable of enforcing peace upon limited areas While these cannot be used to protect combattants-such wards are proof even against indiscrimate attacks as long as the peaceful reside within them.
[X] Plan Paradise
-[X] Elysium
-[X] Expansion: Select two Associated Domains that you have previously passed up, the safe but boring choice.
--[X] Earth
--[X] Weather
[X] Plan Rolling for that Samsara
-[X] Elysium: The power of peace, sanctuary, and safety. Mastery of the Elysium Domain grant access to wards and bindings capable of enforcing peace upon limited areas While these cannot be used to protect combattants-such wards are proof even against indiscrimate attacks as long as the peaceful reside within them.
-[X] Transcendence: There are deeper secrets, you merely need to reach for them. Roll 1d100, the result is compared to a table and a new formerly Restricted Domain is granted as an Associated Domain. It's basically a Gacha, some can be very good, some can be mediocre, and some are about on par with your standard choices, you just don't know what you'll get!
[X] Elysium: The power of peace, sanctuary, and safety. Mastery of the Elysium Domain grant access to wards and bindings capable of enforcing peace upon limited areas While these cannot be used to protect combattants-such wards are proof even against indiscrimate attacks as long as the peaceful reside within them.
[X] Power of Tomorrow.
-[X] Earth: The power of soil, stone, and everything in between. Mastery of Earth has great benefits in terraforming and drawing forth natural resources, it also augments your Weaving by allowing you to concentrate sufficient nutrients in one place to produce megaflora scale creatures.
-[X] Expansion: Select two Associated Domains that you have previously passed up, the safe but boring choice.
--[X] Sun
--[X] Weather
[X] Unending Protection.
-[X] Elysium: The power of peace, sanctuary, and safety. Mastery of the Elysium Domain grant access to wards and bindings capable of enforcing peace upon limited areas While these cannot be used to protect combattants-such wards are proof even against indiscrimate attacks as long as the peaceful reside within them.
-[X] Expansion: Select two Associated Domains that you have previously passed up, the safe but boring choice.
--[X] Guardian
--[X] Sorcery
[X] Plan: Peace and MAGIC to PRAISE THE SUN, SO GROSSLY INCANDESCENT!
-[X] Elysium: The power of peace, sanctuary, and safety. Mastery of the Elysium Domain grant access to wards and bindings capable of enforcing peace upon limited areas While these cannot be used to protect combattants-such wards are proof even against indiscrimate attacks as long as the peaceful reside within them.
-[X] Expansion: Select two Associated Domains that you have previously passed up, the safe but boring choice.
--[X] Sun: The power of star, light, and purity. Mastery of the Sun Domain allows for manifestations of power tied to the stars. Provides excellent access to energy and plasma based phenomena.
--[X] Sorcery: An oldie but a goodie! Sorcery is a mechanism to delegate your own attention down to suitable mortal agents! It allows them to call forth your Daemons, invoke lesser echoes of your own Spheres, and generally is just a really flexible form of power! Of course, Sorcery isn't one hundred percent Reliable, and it doesn't really do anything to expand your abilities as a god in and of itself. Maybe take it now and see about whipping up some kind of neat witchy coven thingie? Or maybe it'd be best to leave it for later once you have more to offer with it. Decisions decision.
[X] Plan Turtle
-[X] Elysium: The power of peace, sanctuary, and safety. Mastery of the Elysium Domain grant access to wards and bindings capable of enforcing peace upon limited areas While these cannot be used to protect combattants-such wards are proof even against indiscrimate attacks as long as the peaceful reside within them.
-[X] Expansion
--[X] Guardian
--[X] Earth
[X] Plan Deep Connection and Earth
-[X] Earth: The power of soil, stone, and everything in between. Mastery of Earth has great benefits in terraforming and drawing forth natural resources, it also augments your Weaving by allowing you to concentrate sufficient nutrients in one place to produce megaflora scale creatures. -[X] Elevation: Elevates an Associated Domain to a Core Domain. That Domain is invoked for free on every action that it applies to. On the other hand, actions that it does not apply to will have the Maiden crowbar it in somehow, which can have hilarious and sometimes tragic consequences.
--[X] Connection
You know, it occurred to me that, mechanically, Sorcery is actually a net negative as a domain. Sure, it allows our Heroic Cultists to get past mortal limits on their own, but it also negates the Partial Success mechanic and introduces the Critfail mechanic. The former can be gotten around with Favor tokens, but we have no way of mitigating the latter.
It was mostly because the guy was one of the only non-female plant beings that ever ran across images of and I figured why not? Besides, the Life Weavers need somebody who can keep the newbies in line before they accidentally create an uncontrollable crossbreed of poison ivy and kudzu that likes to eat human flesh.
Oh the role perfectly fits the character. The creativity and imagination to come up with all sorts of new types of growths, but still being very grounded and serious as to not have peoples heads explode or eaten by poikudson ivyzu.
It totally is. It makes it easier to develop plasma tech and solar power, and probably a bunch of other light-related things. It might even help with gravity-related tech, what with suns being great big gravity wells and all. And then there's the possibility of making I-can't-believe-it's-not-Holy weapons.
Either way it'd probably be good for the common folk to not have to deal with crit fails and seeing sorcery fuckery when we're trying to break away from our heritage's horrible PR.
Either way it'd probably be good for the common folk to not have to deal with crit fails and seeing sorcery fuckery when we're trying to break away from our heritage's horrible PR.
"Sorcery fuckery" from the perspective of the average person is just warp fuckery one step removed from the source. I doubt that having followers using psychic powers will substantially impact our PR for anyone who can be convinced to accept an actual warp god and her mutant bio-mechs.
Eh. Net negative, mechanically. Alectai almost universally places the Narrative before the Mechanics, so there's probably something there to it. But my concern is that it doesn't really benefit us as much as it could. Especially narratively, when it turned out that Peter mistook us for a typical Chaos Cult, when we were something New, simply because we acted and appeared like a Nurglite Chaos Cult due to not grokking the optics. So now, Sorcery may or may not be incredibly useful, but at this stage, it looks really Chaos-y. And I want to avoid that in addition to all the other reasons I stated.
From now until the formal start of Chapter 2, I'll be taking submissions for your Lesser Daemon variety. I have a default in mind but others might come up with something even more interesting.
The following criteria must be followed.
A) The daemon must be superficially humanoid, but not necessary a human (Bipedal with a recognizable face).
B) The Daemon must embody at least three of your Domains--you may include the one you're definitely picking up as this.
While amusingly small, the size and disposition of these winged humanoid daemons belies their power. Each of them represents a sliver of the Verdant Maiden's love of cultivating the land and the things that live on it.
From even seemingly barren land, given time the Pixies are capable of drawing out life of every form, size, and function.
They serve as the tiny daemonic worker bee in the Green Legions, and are equally seen working alone on smaller projects or in great flights on massive ones (usually coordinated by some other daemon or witch using the Connection domain)
Pixies are cheerful and excitable, and tend to solve every problem by making an appropriate organism to do the work.
While they have no problem making weapons or war-critters, they will not fight directly on their own initiative, choosing instead to flee to somewhere they can weave more organisms unmolested.
(Think Tinkerbell, with green skin. Maybe a bit bigger, but at most coming up to the knee.)
You know, it occurred to me that, mechanically, Sorcery is actually a net negative as a domain. Sure, it allows our Heroic Cultists to get past mortal limits on their own, but it also negates the Partial Success mechanic and introduces the Critfail mechanic. The former can be gotten around with Favor tokens, but we have no way of mitigating the latter.
It totally is. It makes it easier to develop plasma tech and solar power, and probably a bunch of other light-related things. It might even help with gravity-related tech, what with suns being great big gravity wells and all. And then there's the possibility of making I-can't-believe-it's-not-Holy weapons.
Where is that stated? It gives magical power over the sun and related concepts, not the ability to make mundane tech. If we had any sort of technology concepts that'd be one thing, but the only reason we can do bio tech is that we can design things that run on regular biology as part of control over life.
Mainlining star juice doesn't tell us anything about how to do stuff with it without warp powers, and if we don't have sorcery then we're the only one who can use those in our faction. A warp heavy bio fusion reactor would require us to make it instead of a team of sorcerers or life weavers.
Sun works to advance quite a few things, but most importantly it should drastically improve our ability to utilize and deploy the Lotus Star Reactors in a manner only comparable to Artifice, which is currently available on the Gacha. While it has almost certainly increased due to our increase in scale, it is still not as effective as it would be without this domain - and we want to deploy these everywhere we can. They're gorgeous, they're powerful, and they're multi-use, providing enhancements to Kinetic, Infiltration, and - most importantly - Charity actions.
-Kinetic: Upgrades to our Vanguard, Belladonnas, Leviathan Landship, and more, providing the mass deployment of a power plant that can allow for improved Sunfire Projectors, meaning that our Vanguard are no longer limited in ammunition and our Belladonnas have improved firepower with the repurposing of the skirts. Enables powerful artillery weapons, likely as good as if not better than standard 40k artillery - something we're almost certainly going to want, as a lot of counters to our tactics involve 'drop artillery on it's head' or 'airstrike'. Should also enable the development of more 'standard' bio-tanks, gunships, and scout vehicles, by providing access to that superior power plant.
-Infiltration: Superior explosives, when necessary. Rather distasteful otherwise.
-Charity: Power Plants. For everything from theater shields to clinics, from farms (non-stop growth!) to orbital stations.
-Cult: Adopting Sun into our Domains should enable our Weavers to more easily create duplicates of the Lotus Star Reactor, drastically increasing it's ability to be deployed.
Beyond Plasma based technologies, Sun also provides access to energy-based phenomena, which should enable such tools as biological refractor fields and may scale into superior void shielding, but I wouldn't count on that. Void Shields are wierd.
In conjunction with Weaving, Earth provides a way to concentrate sufficient nutrients to produce Megaflora. In conjunction with Sun, I expect this ability to increase further, as we will be capable of providing 'solar energy' directly, in either day or night, enabling photosynthesis at all hours. This combination should drastically expand our ability to produce spacecraft when we get around to it.
It should also speed up terraforming even more than Earth + Weaving already does. The only way to make it better would be to incorporate Weather and Sorcery, allowing us to potentially 'build tall' by terraforming every planet in a star system, including the moons of any gas giants.
Elysium provides access to wards and bindings that can enforce 'peace' upon limited areas. I'm quite certain that the strength of these effects can be increased in conjunction with Sun, by hooking them up to generators that should make it more difficult to break them through opposing psychic effects and Null fields. Whether these generators are physical in the form of appropriately scaled Lotus Star Reactors, or metaphysical in the form of solar imagery and warp bullshit doesn't really matter; could probably go either way.
----
Looking to the future:
Weather: Solar. Storms. A tool to completely enclose a system from easy assault, in mimicry of Necron superweapons. Even more advanced terraforming.
Sorcery: General upgrade across the board, with the possibility of stuff going catastrophically wrong. With weather, ridiculous effects - 'Interstellar FTL Flamethrower' comes to mind.
Guardian: SUNBROS. JOLLY COOPERATION. (Praise the Sun!)
Gacha:
Artifice: Whoooo boy. It was Artifice that enabled our Star Lotus Reactors more than anything else, by providing the conceptual framework for it. This is one of the big winners in the Gacha, boosting all of our bio-tech to a substantial degree.
Other: ???
Sorcery is a mechanism to delegate your own attention down to suitable mortal agents! It allows them to call forth your Daemons, invoke lesser echoes of your own Spheres, and generally is just a really flexible form of power!
It means that people can 'enchant' things with our concepts even if we need to spend our favor elsewhere. Until now we've been working in a fairly concentrated manner but as the cult grows, were probably going to end up with more actions that need to be taken then we have heroes and favor tokens for. For example a project could benefit from a Heart-link but we don't have a token to spend for Connection. So the Life Weaver grab the sorcerers and voila; the Transponder Snail/Babblefish communication network.
Gacha:
Artifice: Whoooo boy. It was Artifice that enabled our Star Lotus Reactors more than anything else, by providing the conceptual framework for it. This is one of the big winners in the Gacha, boosting all of our bio-tech to a substantial degree.
Other: ???
I don't find the scope arguments compelling. Any domain plus a high scope is going to be powerful. High scope sorcery would let our followers channel warp energy without us, enchant things, run huge rituals, and otherwise pull insane wizard nonsense that plebs without a warp god backstopping their powers can't even try to do. Whatever domain it's used for the point effectively boils down to "if we were a powerful god we'd be a powerful god".
Does that apply universally, or just for actions where they use magic to break past their limits? It'd make perfect sense for them to deliberately not use it in cases where we really can't afford an explosion.
Does that apply universally, or just for actions where they use magic to break past their limits? It'd make perfect sense for them to deliberately not use it in cases where we really can't afford an explosion.
Not a Daemon but an idea for a common creature/familiar our cult might use.
Weed-Puppies/Thorn-Hounds
Description: The cult of the Verdant Maiden is known to manipulate life to serve varying purposes. One of the most common bio-forms found is that of the Thorn Hound. They are generally similar in shape and size to various breeds of terran dogs and wolves, albeit often significantly denser. They are most commonly formed from various types of plant life, using moss, leaves and occasionally thorns to imitate a more traditional fur coat. However various varieties have been known to incorporate flesh and bone with the theoretical potential to incorporate a 'living metal' ala the Necron constructs. While they most often remain quadrupedal when at rest or waiting ambush they may begin to unravel their bodies and either begin to resemble a
Many of the cult's Weaver's are known to create and sustain a Thorn-Hound as a pseudo familiar and servant. A relatively simple design they are a common choice for a first foray into crafting Bio-Forms for members of the Weaver Sects.
In Combat they serve as a form of a fast cavalry. Most often serving as scouts via mental connection but are known to be deployed against infantry and skirmisher units. The larger and more developed specimens most often serve alongside a Weaver-Sorcerer and act as a bodyguard. These models are known to weight in at nearly a ton and take large amounts of small arms fire before suffering significant damage, especially if given time to regenerate from any wounds.
In terms of armaments the standard variants can be thought of as hardier and more dangerous hounds. With massively strong jaws and claws capable of shredding standard carapace armor but ineffective against Astartes or vehicle armor. Though not standard it is not uncommon that their bite or blood contains either acid or poison. On account of this (among many biological warfare capabilities) that troops deployed against them have full body coverings.
Amongst the ones that are found with Weaver-Sorcerers trend towards having more novel armaments. So far thorn flechettes, localized spore deployment, crushing vines, and a variety of other novel weaponry has been observed.
Addendum: If you are to handle a Thorn-Hound alive or dead it is highly recommended that you follow the curve of the thorns as one would when handling a hedgehog or similar life-forms. Besides being painful the thorns are one of the areas most likely to secrete or be covered in venom.
Its otherworldly trueform is usually glamored to be that of a kindly old man or woman, eerily similar to what its host might like look at such an advanced age - or as a youthful version of them, should they already be wizened.
Inspiration Socrates claimed to have a daimonion (literally, a "divine something") that frequently warned him—in the form of a "voice"—against mistakes but never told him what to do. Plus an opportunity for a bunch of Uncle Irohs running around helping people seems really heartwarming. "Who are you, and what do you want!?" redemption, restitution, reconciliation. Choosing the better path. The better "angel" of our nature. They bring justice peace and forgiveness, rather than the lash, the rod, or the cage. (unlike the rest of 40k which is a torture fest)
Description:
Not all of the Daemons of the Violet Maiden are strange nature spirits, detached from human life, or warrior beings born to battle. The Veritas is one such creature. It serves as the advocate of the criminal, the wounded, and those who are lost. Summoned by those who wish to unwind the web of harm they wrought, to find peace from a traumatic experience, or one who seeks to define their own destiny. That being said the Veritas will not stand idle should evil manifest itself in its presence, doubly so if such maleficence is warp spawned.
The Veritas has three aspects, that of the Redeemer, the Healer, and the Guide. To perform their tasks the Daemon finds solid foundation to the material world with a series of glowing tattoos upon the body of its charge - ones not easily hidden. Do not assume to know if the bearer of such a mark is one who dealt harm, or one who was harmed. When a Veritas accepts a task, it will endeavor to see it done, no matter how arduous.
They do not judge mortals for their crimes, their pain, or their confusion, that task is for another being, human or otherwise. They are invoked by a call for healing, nothing more, nothing less.
Do not mistake their compassion for weakness. Nor their desire to aid unlimited. There are those who they would deem unredeemable. For such wicked souls the Veritas will do what it must to insure no further harm is done. For the multitude whose transgressions fall below that terrifying threshold, they will find the road to redemption long, often forestalled by the thorns and briars of their own making. All those who willingly begin their journey find such a commitment one that is not so easy cast aside at their convenience. This path is not clemency, or a pardon. Should one summon a Veritas to seek a cheap price for their transgressions they will find their new path illuminating.
"Long is the way, and hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light."
For those who are harmed, in body, mind, or soul, the the Veritas can be called upon to grant them succor, if just for an hour, or the rest of a life.
"I will be with you, for as long as you have need of me."
Lastly, for those who are simply lost, the Veritas can help them find where they need to be, even if their charge keeps losing their way.
"It is time for you to look inward and begin asking yourself the big questions: Who are you, and what do you want?"
You would be hard pressed to find a better avocate, healer, or guide - should you seek it.
As a strange quirk, Veritas have an inordinate fondness for tea, so be prepared to drink a lot of it!
A/N: The Ordo Malleus would probably lose their minds at the concept of the brand/tattoo. This is in lue of working on omake, since the update basically upended all of what I thought would happen, kudos to that.
