Will people quit it with the Warhammer morality debates? Do it in another thread because fighting for your hill in a quest forum just kills the enthusiasm here.
 
All right like other people have said I'm done with the morality debate it's stupid that it was a debate in the first place but fine
 
Can winged daemons fly in vacuum @Swordomatic ? I assume yes, but...
Well, when daemons manifest, it's more that they exist as concepts rather than as actual physical beings, right? That's why they get more hurt from things that have more meaningful symbolism. So I would imagine that a winged daemon is able to fly because it's an aspect of the ideal of flying, not so much because it's physically able to fly.

But I'm just spitballing, don't take me too seriously
 
Well, when daemons manifest, it's more that they exist as concepts rather than as actual physical beings, right? That's why they get more hurt from things that have more meaningful symbolism. So I would imagine that a winged daemon is able to fly because it's an aspect of the ideal of flying, not so much because it's physically able to fly.

But I'm just spitballing, don't take me too seriously
No worries, I'm aware of the concept. But like many things it's based on the writer, I've seen writing where they can't in vacuum, hence why I'm asking.
 
Can winged daemons fly in vacuum @Swordomatic ? I assume yes, but...

Though the further into the vacuum and away from the orbital stations they go, the more firepower the fleet and aerospace fighters can direct at them without risk of harming the docks. So I'd imagine that they'd keep close to the docks or ships that they board anyways, unless there's a ramming maneuver done.
 
Will people quit it with the Warhammer morality debates? Do it in another thread because fighting for your hill in a quest forum just kills the enthusiasm here.
It seems to me that it is necessary to remind people that this is a fictional universe, a solid part of which was created by a small English company, including for the sale of figurines.
- Well, literally, take for example the question " Why are there no female Astartes?". When the production of models began, the female versions were not taken and they were removed from the press.
- Why do Tau still exist? Either because they are a young faction that has not realized where they are, or because Tau has good sales in the United States and a number of other countries.
- Why isn't Warhammer a utopia? Because it literally contradicts the concept of selling figurines across a dark universe.
- Why is nothing known about the two Primarchs? Because the 30k Primarch system was created to be able to create your own unique Legion with your own unique Fanon Primarch and face the second unique Primarch on the battlefield. After all, it sells action figures well.

Warhammer is a dark universe because it was invented as a concept. The talk of "The Emperor should have done otherwise" is quite strange, because in fact, the entire history of Warhammer in the basic basics is created only to sell GW goods.
 
I stopped reading the posts about the morality debate when I noticed it falling into the same old patterns I've seen before. Maybe there was something new, insightful and most importantly relevant there, but I don't have the patience to wade through the mostly same old arguments again and again.

So instead I'm going to start proposing those solutions to the state of Imperium (sorry if I missed someone already doing this).

At the moment, we have the beginnings of a pretty major way of influencing the Ecclesiarchy. While quite many of the highest ranking members of it have probably the same kind of outlook on Pandora that their representative among the High Lords has, Pandora has started building herself quite the legend among the civilians, common priests and soldiers, as well as many more. That kind of popular support, which is also backed from the very highest authority in the Imperium even above the High Lords themselves and this new Lord Regent means that the Ecclesiarchy has to move extremely carefully. Baselessly accusing Pandora would probably end up with either political consequences, or at worst their head on the chopping block.

Of course, this will almost certainly not stop them from trying anyway to at the very least soft-limit the extent the authority that Pandora will have on their own organization as well as the common citizens and soldiers. But it still should leave us with quite a lot of room to move. And with how we seem to have the support from the Adeptus Sororitas, focusing on them like we have already been planning to get Pandora her own Order would mean that she can start spreading her own influence, ideals and practices among the rest of the Sororitas and quite possibly priests, and through them the Imperium as whole. Of course, we need political support this, which we must gather it from the The Senatorum Imperialis.

On the High Lords Temporal we have: The Cardinal of the Holy Synod of Terra, and The Abbess of the Adeptus Sororitas. On the Lords Descendent: The Chirurgeon-General of the Order Hospitaller. If we can get the backing of these tree, we will probably have a fair chance to oppose The Ecclesiarch in their own matters when combined with Pandora's own standing. Because I suspect that quite many of the other High Lords will abstain on these matters, and regardless we will be probably using a lot of soft methods of influencing things, rather than brute forcing things through a vote. Though those will still probably happen.

And while getting this hypothetical Order to immediately be the ideal messengers of the values that Pandora approves migth be hard, we could focus on clamping down on the worst practices or at least pushing down the zeal which they are pursued (burning people for the sin of being a mutant for example) and elavating the behavior that already exist that Pandora wants (defending the weak, healing the sick among the poor). And then as fast as we can feasibly afford, start introducing some greater changes bit by bit. That way, we might get actually get started on making the Imperium or its successor(s) something worth fighting, and not just more powerful at oppressing some people and genociding the rest.
 
Now that the new round of Morality debate is over again(please let it die people), I'll say this with the Ecclesiarchy I seem them as our current short term opponents given we've caused them a lot of doctrinal debates about there Emperor. In my eyes the best way to make them our allies is to work with the Sisters of Battle and whatnot gain the allegiance of there militant arms then work on the rest. Doing so should neuter them of there most potent weapon against and give us time to either replace the current head of the church with someone that supports us or just allow us to work up support in the church as a whole and let them then replace the current head with someone that would support us.

I see the Administratum as our long term opponent due to the fact that a lot of people in said Administration benefits off the corruption that we plan to prune.
 
What were the Guard and Navy Lord's attitudes? If we're going to completely restructure the Imperium it may benefit us to follow the number one rule of all rulers; "Keep the military happy."
 
[X][LEVIATHAN] The Forge World of Antioch

[X][POSTURE] Call upon your Deva and direct them to the most important battlefields.
 
We have no organization-level alliances or enemies, I assume, unless we set the bar as "actually decent governance and non-ignorant views", in which case it's currently all enemies from top to bottom, with rare comparative exceptions like our new mechanicus friend.

We just gotta get allies in every org and remove the enemies or morons from every org, I think.
 
[X][LEVIATHAN] The Forge World of Antioch
[X][POSTURE] Call upon your Deva and direct them to the most important battlefields.
 
[X][LEVIATHAN] The Forge World of Antioch

[X][POSTURE] Call upon your Deva and direct them to the most important battlefields.
 
So, I had some ideas for where Pandora should focus her efforts after we get back to Terra. It's arguably a bit premature since this campaign isn't actually even in the end stages yet, but the current vote is already a landslide and we can't meaningfully plan our next campaign turn until we get the next tactical/tarot update on where things stand after the coming update. So now's as good a time as any to start floating some ideas for our next Council/grand strategic moves to see how the thread feels about them.

I have three primary priorities that I believe Pandora should pursue next Council turn, each of which is meant to work synergistically with the others. I'm going to list them roughly in order of priority. Sorry about the length - as per usual, this ballooned from what was in my mind once I started writing it. I'll try to put a tl;dr at the end for those who don't have the stomach to read the whole thing.

1) Time for a new Ecclesiarch. Forcing out the worst eggs among the High Lords is explicitly noted as one of the two main ways Pandora boosts the amount of Influence she has long-term. The Ecclesiarch should be our priority target for this. There are a number of reasons why.

One, he seems to see Pandora as an opponent/enemy. That's a pretty straightforward reason why replacing him would boost our Influence and reform efforts.

Two, the Ecclesiarchy is the second-most politically powerful organization in the Imperium, after the Administratum. Notably, it's also typically one of the very most dogmatic and conservative factions. To make it even worse, the upper leadership is appallingly prone to personal corruption, dangerous zealotry, or both at once. If we can spend our Influence to get a sympathetic reformer in there instead it would be a huge coup for the nascent Pandora Bloc on the Council, significantly more so than doing the same with any or almost any other faction would be.

Three, the fact that we've been performing "miracles" left and right on this campaign, deploying dozens of """Living Saints"""*, and generally wowing the hell out of the Sororitas in particular, works very much to our favor in terms of pushing for Ecclesiarchical reform/replacing the current incumbent. The Sororitas are probably the most venerated people in the Imperium - they don't overtly hold the reins of the wealth and influence in the Ecclesiarchy, but they hold a huge amount of its moral authority. And everything the Ecclesiarchy has - the wealth, the influence, all of it - ultimately stems from its claim to possess the highest moral authority in the Imperium. If a huge amount of that moral authority is swinging towards us already, that gives us a lot of leverage on pushing for change in the Ecclesiarchy in particular.

Four, this is by far the best chance we'll have to get to get Pandora's existing worshippers legitimated as acceptable under the Imperial Cult. So that the Imperium we're ruling will finally stop burning our own goddamn followers as "heretics." That's a HUGE deal in its own right, IMO.

2) Truce/alliance with the Eldar. This is a good time for this for a few reasons.

One, the Eldar - well, y'know, the non-Drukhari Eldar - are perhaps the most likely to be both willing and able to help the Imperium. They're capable and have abilities and assets that Imperial forces typically lack, and they're the most likely to see that they need us as much as we need them.

Two, historically one of the biggest problems with forming alliances with the Eldar from an Imperial perspective is the huge edge in Divination the Eldar have on the Imperium. It makes it very hard to know whether you're getting a fair deal and a real alliance with them, or if they're just manipulating you because they can see the future and you can't. The fact that the Imperium knows this does a lot to taint any dialogue that's opened with them right from the start. But with Pandora around, that gap in Divinatory ability is gone whenever she's involved personally, and shrinking steadily in general with her tutelage of the Imperium's psykers (speaking of, that's one of the reasons it would be a good idea to invest time into training up the hundreds of thousands of psykers with the Expedition on our way back).

Three, the OTHER biggest problem historically with the Imperium opening a dialogue with the Eldar - or any non-humans at all - has been the Imperium's reflexive dogmatic hatred of all "Xenos," which for most of the Imperium stems directly from the Ecclesiarchy's teachings. Remember when I said these priorities were meant to synergistically work together? Effecting Ecclesiarchical reform in Priority One would make this option a lot easier/more viable to pull off. It'll also do the same for any other friendly actions we want to take towards non-humans, which is one of the big reasons why Ecclesiarchical reform comes above this in the priority order.

Four, the Eldar also represent one of the biggest opportunities for Pandora's Warpy expertise and powerset to directly fuck over the Ruinous Powers. In canon, the Ynnari are trying to wake up/resurrect Ynnead, but they're struggling because they either need to get one more Cronesword that happens to be under lock and key in Slaanesh's own palace in the Warp, or figure out an alternative way to get the power and/or ritual components they need. Pandora is probably the most likely out of anybody in 40k to be able to either come up with a way to furnish the juice, or use her Warp-stealth powers to pull an eldritch heist and yoink the Cronesword. And bringing back another Eldar god would be one huge kick in the face for She Who Thirsts - this is probably the best direct blow to the Ruinous Powers we could potentially be able to deliver in the near- to medium- to potentially long-term foreseeable future. It would also hugely indebt the Eldar to us if we were instrumental in it happening, which would be an amazing way to solidify the alliance.

3) See if we can wake up Guilliman. This one would presumably be a personal action, since IIRC that's what it was offered as last time? It's fair to ask "what do we need Guilliman for, when we've already got a Lord Commander?" And there are a few reasons.

One, the Imperium doesn't need another Lord Commander, but Panda could use a Warmaster. The Imperium is still in an ongoing state of extreme military crisis, and besides the obvious inherent good of saving lives and protecting Imperial worlds, the less personal attention we need to give to that then the more effort we can direct towards reforming the Imperium itself. It will be hard to make the headway we'll want to make if we need to be out leading Expeditions all the time, and spending our Influence on unfucking the Imperium's military response. There's basically no one we could plausibly get to take over coordinating the war effort as a whole who would be better than Guilliman.

Two
, at least by the standards of the Imperium Guilliman is very reform-minded himself. In canon, when he woke up he came back to Terra and communed with the Emperor much as Pandora did in-quest, and much like Pandora he found that while the Emperor was concerned for the survival of the Imperium as a whole he didn't give a shit for the wellbeing of individual human beings at all. The conclusion Guilliman drew from this boiled down to "even if he really is a God, he doesn't deserve worship if that's his perspective." That's huge. You'd probably be hard-pressed to find even one other person of power in the Imperium who thinks the same way. That will paradoxically make it both harder and easier to get Guilliman to follow us - he won't have the automatic religious reverence or conferred loyalty stemming from our personal relation to the Emperor that others do, but he'll be more likely than almost everyone to be persuaded by our ideals. Guilliman strove for good governance in his original life, too - even now, the Realm of Ultramar is noted as one of the best places to live in the Imperium. That's a very relative standard, but it's still significant. He's also near-certain to be more likely than most to share our interest in reining in the excesses and dogmatism of the Ecclesiarchy. All in all, Guilliman would make a very useful and effective ally for Pandora.

In particular, it should be noted that Guilliman is specifically famous as a tremendously gifted administrator. The Ecclesiarchy is the second-most powerful faction in the Imperium, but the most powerful is the Administratum. It's also one of the ones that might be hardest for Pandora to reform. Not necessarily because the leadership would be more resistant than others, but because the biggest problem with the Administratum is its sluggish and impenetrably Byzantine bureaucracy. And while Pandora has many wonderful and admirable qualities, being a genius of bureaucracy is not one of them. Guilliman is, though. Setting him to the task of unfucking the Administratum's structure in between his Warmastering duties could honestly be our best shot at achieving real reform in the Administratum.

Three, people have expressed interest in doing a 27th Founding of Space Marines sooner rather than later. The big reason why so damn many Chapters are descended from the Ultramarines is that Guilliman turned his aforementioned administrative genius towards the task of raising more Space Marines, with the result that there were an absolute shitload more Ultramarines than any other Legion. Other Legions had a recruiting world. Guilliman organized an effective and streamlined system to draw from five hundred recruiting worlds. If we want to raise more Space Marines, having Guilliman involved could do a lot to make that a bumper crop. He's also notably excellent at leading Space Marines in particular, so there'd be synergy with having him as Warmaster from that too.

Four, as aforementioned all of these are meant to work together. In canon the Eldar had a huge role to play in waking up Guilliman successfully, which is why Priority Two comes above this even though this would probably make a bigger impact if it succeeds - since we didn't spec into Biomancy we might not be able to manage it on our own. Having Guilliman well-disposed towards the Eldar because they directly helped in bringing him back could do a lot to boost getting the Imperium to actually effectively work together with the Eldar, too.

Tl;dr - in order, we should focus on trying to get a reformer in as Ecclesiarch (to boost Panda's Influence, loosen the ties of the Imperium's reflexive dogmatism, and get Panda's own cult legitimated), get an alliance going with the Eldar (to improve our military situation, set a precedent for large-scale longer-term productive cooperation with non-humans, and to potentially directly wreck Slaanesh's shit big time by helping get Ynnead up and going), and wake up Guilliman (to get a Warmaster, to get an effective reformer for the Administratum's problems that Panda's not well-suited to address, and to improve the performance and size of the 27th Founding when we do that).
 
I see the Administratum as our long term opponent due to the fact that a lot of people in said Administration benefits off the corruption that we plan to prune.
Time to wake Guilliman and throw him at the problem. Lets see those pencil pushers deal with Primarch number crunching.
What were the Guard and Navy Lord's attitudes? If we're going to completely restructure the Imperium it may benefit us to follow the number one rule of all rulers; "Keep the military happy."
We don't really know, aside from that the Lord Commander Militant keeps hanging from the lapels of the Lord Commander Solar, and that The Lord High Admiral of the Imperium is fair, reasonable and logical, so that does bode well for us.
 
Time to wake Guilliman and throw him at the problem. Lets see those pencil pushers deal with Primarch number crunching.
I for one am definitely down for Pandora going to revive Guilliman since he would be a tremendous ally to have but I also want to head to Fenris as well and make sure Magnus the red doesn't screw over the wolves. But again we can make the final decision when we finish this campaign and head back to terra.

But yeah on top of my list I want Guilliman up and whatnot to help and ideally without an Eldar breaking into Ultramar to do so.
 
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