[X] Plan Just Karandras
-[X] Concentrated and Decisive - A quick, concentrated advance. Will bring the entire force to bear against everything. Traps will be an issue and retreat near impossible.
-[X] Allow them to operate - Kesar may distrust Malcador at this time, but he has worked with these assassins before. They can be trusted.
-[X] Karandras - Nearly unnoticeable, costs nothing, near certainty of rescuing Solarus
Fuck It, we've got over 50% casualty reduction for this turn, we can do this.
Edit: In light of the confirmation that the Assassins will not try to kill Solarus I'm cool with letting them work. Dantioch is so far down their priorities he's probably going to be fine.
[X] Plan Just Karandras
-[X] Concentrated and Decisive - A quick, concentrated advance. Will bring the entire force to bear against everything. Traps will be an issue and retreat near impossible.
-[X] Write in: Let them operate, but have Karandras shadow them so that if they act against you, such as by trying to kill Solarus, he can eliminate them
-[X] Karandras - Nearly unnoticeable, costs nothing, near certainty of rescuing Solarus
Let's hope we don't need to kill these guys, because Sigma, Zeta, and Miss Nobody have aided the Wardens quite a bit. Be extremely unpopular otherwise.
[X] Plan Time To Win
-[X] Concentrated and Decisive - A quick, concentrated advance. Will bring the entire force to bear against everything. Traps will be an issue and retreat near impossible.
-[X] Allow them to operate - Kesar may distrust Malcador at this time, but he has worked with these assassins before. They can be trusted.
-[X] Eldrad - Noticeable to those familiar with Farseers only, costs multiple favors, massive bonuses to the battle
Karandras is a good choice for this operation. He costs nothing and will almost certainly manage to get Solarus back safely when he finds him. He can even inspire Kesar Dorlin to boost the Rune of Subtlety with how good he is with stealth. With that said, I strongly suggest that even with the extra cost that Eldrad Ulthran is absolutely worth it.
1) This battle is going to be harsh.
Scotty Revine, Techmarine of the Eternal Wardens, submitted a report after he managed to retreat on the severely damaged Cherished Son.
Recommendations: It is my official recommendation that the abominable intelligence is given as little time to prepare as possible. I would recommend a force of at least 75 thousand Wardens led by Primarch Dorlin, with a supplementing force of 20 billion guardsmen and Solar Auxilia. It is expected that this force would take heavy casualties.
The initial assault could never have managed to defeat Epsilon and only faced some naval and orbital elements before being heavily beaten back. It was a play-fight at worst and likely not a full indication of what this artificial intelligence can really do, as we haven't even seen any indication of temporal technology being used or other Warp-based stuff. It also didn't take into account Kesar's malus he still suffers, thankfully to a massively reduced extent, from his psychic awakening.
This was at least the second time it had faced a hostile Imperium force. It wouldn't be terribly surprising if it decided to low-ball itself to sucker-punch the third time.
My point being is that this report is an in-universe indication and could be heavily underestimating how dangerous Epsilon could be. Indeed, as clarified on the Discord server from DaemonHunter:
Daemon Hunter on the Discord server: said:
This is Scotty's recommendation
Although Oriacarius does agree with it But he does also say that this assumes the AI doesn't have trump cards
Or notable hidden capabilities"
And already there was some shit that was seen last time that devastated the fleet and forces we sent to Epsilon before. From drone swarms that cut ships apart to triple-shielded ships way more advanced than what we have to extremely powerful orbital defences. We haven't even really seen what's on the planet itself or what Epsilon could pull out if they were really desperate.
From naval combat to orbital combat to ground combat to Solarus's retrieval to the end of Epsilon. That's a lot of stuff that's gonna bleed or break the forces here. A lot that could go wrong against an AI that's fought in the Cybernetic Revolt and Age of Strife, survived thousands of years in the Maelstrom, and is definitely aware of the Imperium's capabilities enough to make it hurt us.
Eldrad can solve a lot of the problems we'd face or at least heavily reduce them. Any surprises, which there will be, will no longer be a surprise. Superweapons or trump cards will be able to be known and accounted for.
Epsilon may have encountered Eldar before as they said, but they have not encountered one that was this good. The man sets his own dice. He entered the Palace of Pleasure and performed a ritual to weaken Slaanesh. He survived fighting two Exalted in Nurgle's mansion after an Exterminatus weapon went off in there.
2) Wardens in space are sitting ducks (relatively).
Building off of the first point, naval combat-wise the Eternal Wardens are far from being grandmasters of space combat.
This isn't really a problem! They're specialists against Chaos first of all, and more focused on general combat on the ground after that, and space combat just hasn't really been that big of a thing to focus on massively. Which is fine for 99% of everything we face. It's just that this is the 1%.
In this case, it is a very bad issue. Epsilon has an extremely good naval presence and it's far more advanced than what we've got by a big margin, guided by an intelligence able to make the best use of it all. Eternal Wardens and especially Imperial Army forces will be shot down or boarded before we even make a meaningful dent in the enemy fleet.
Eldrad can prevent a lot of naval deaths for the Eternal Wardens to make sure they reach the ground, where they're best at.
3) Eldrad can also guarantee Solarus's retrieval, perhaps faster than Karandras can.
While Karandras is best for sneaking in and recovering Solarus, I realise there's just one problem for anybody's attempts at retrieving this captured Daemonsbane.
Where even is Solarus?
Epsilon would likely want to keep him hidden as he's a valuable hostage and test subject. Karandras could still likely find him, but that could take time. Especially if Solarus is kept in a mobile location or somewhere heavily fortified and defended. Could even lead to the Assassins getting in danger, or other assets sent to retrieve him.
Eldrad will know. He can very likely divine the location, we teleport either Durante or Kesar or such right there or nearest to there as possible, and know when to deal with it too. Problem solved. The worry that the Imperial Assassins could reach Solarus and kill him is nullified if they can't even reach him in time before Eldrad can get somebody teleported there too.
4) Eldrad is a master of temporal attacks.
For those who do not know or need a reminder, during the Maelstrom war Alpharius Omegon decided to blow up a Cyclonic Torpedo (world breaking missile) in Nurgle's mansion because between helping Kesar or long-term anti-Chaos God operations they decided the former. This cause Eldrad, who was trying to do the latter, to be blown up and then caught by Qaramar (Nurgle's best gimmick tank) and Ku'Gath (Nurgle's strongest daemon) in the Mansion of Nurgle (which decided to rot space-time itself to summon Qaramar) and had the hardest fight of his life.
The type of fight where time is so broken that you see your own corpse fly by against a strike that didn't happen because you saw it happen and dodged away from it, which meant that corpse never existed, and then dodge yourself suddenly appearing from the past as you duck into the future to dodge two Exalted daemons in a Chaos God's personal home.
Eldrad has become a master of temporal bullshit and Epsilon, a powerful researcher AI with thousands of years in the Maelstrom with a Be'lakor daemon. Temporal bullshit is to be expected and there's nobody else aside from a god or maybe an Exalted of Tzeentch that's better suited for dealing with this.
5) Safe Teleportation is broken with the second best diviner alive.
This needs no explanation. Just imagine an RTS where you can teleport your troops anywhere and know exactly when and where you should do this. Enough said.
6) Morale is key.
Kesar Dorlin currently has this omake reward active:
But that's for Eternal Wardens, not the Imperial Army. Those soldiers sent here will probably die in great numbers even if Kesar himself rolled really well and made great decisions throughout the war. Not to mention recovering all the Imperial Army soldiers held captive in great comfort by an AI with great infrastructure and more ethics than likely most Imperium leaders combined.
Lahrens was a clean victory and will become the second Sector Capital of the Maelstrom Crusade. Purgatorio, the first Sector Capital, was fully cleansed from being a Daemon World and will be even better as a logistical hub and research centre than it already was. Kesar wrote an anti-Chaos book that will leave around 50 billion Imperial colonists here to live every year.
This place is hell on earth, the Imperium itself is fracturing with rebellions and a soon to be detonated Imperial Truth, so morale is critical.
It's been a fucking amazing turn for the Eternal Wardens and Maelstrom Crusade as a whole for morale. Let's keep the train going with conductor Eldrad for a slam dunk.
7) The future.
Look at some of the various tech that Epsilon has, which is far beyond most examples you can normally find for comparable designs in the Imperium:
"Abominable Intelligence Epsilon-354 - An artificial intelligence with a rare known history, Epsilon-354 was initially in charge of a large warp experimentation site when Slaanesh was born. This broke it in as of yet unknown ways, causing it to exterminate all that get near its heavily fortified world of massed Knights, Titans, artillery, and mechanized vehicles."
...
Main Battle: The battle entered its most intense stage when medium and short-range weaponry on both sides opened fire. This exchange resulted in the Cherished Son losing its void shields, along with being swarmed by an estimated 3000 fighter craft. Notable damage to the void shields across heavy vessels began to accumulate over the course of the battle before several began to take heavy damage and withdrew. Enemy losses during this time were minimal, due to three overlapping shield variants (void, ion, and electromagnetic).
...
Electronic Warfare: The abominable intelligence displays a mastery of electronic warfare to the point where I believe warp emanations are less damaging to electronics than what this enemy is capable of. Any scanning system proved vulnerable to subversion, with the enemy making copious use of computer worms, daemons, trojans, brute force attacks, and other esoteric viruses. Future invasions of this world should begin with all intranets physically powered off. Active and passive guidance systems should be assumed to be running at minimal capacity.
Swarming Fighters: While at first glance the enemy fighters appear to operate independently after battle analysis shows that these fighters are capable of advanced coordination. With an estimated formation size of 100, the fighters were able to coordinate extremely precise and complex maneuvers and attack runs, making them notably more dangerous than our counterparts. It is recommended that future fleets bring an outsized complement of anti-strike craft escorts.
Two-Stage Naval Weapons: The abominable intelligence's munitions are notably more advanced than our own. Utilizing an extremely synchronized system of analog calculators, their shells are capable of piercing armor approximately 20% better than our own.
Enemy Boarding Drones: Utilizing a combination of various boarding drones, there were a total of 70 different variants used in attacks upon our vessels. One of the more dangerous variants were rodent-sized drones armed with plasma cutters that cut apart naval vessels. The only known counter to this is pitched battle upon the surface of our naval vessels.
Surface-to-orbit Defense Systems: While surface-to-orbit batteries did not play a large role in this engagement, this was due to the intentional decision to avoid them. Nonetheless, scans were made, unveiling a total of ~5000 estimated systems capable of providing fire support in low and medium orbit around the planet. Ranging from simple missile silos to complex ECM any attempt to seize orbit will by necessity have to deal with these facilities in some manner.
Even one of these many designs would be something Mars would kill for. Better armoured vehicles? Enhanced Knights and Titans? Brilliant artillery? Three different overlapping shields at once? Energy generators, drones, naval weapons, orbital defences, complex Warp-tech, complex Warp-based time tech, loads of data, infrastructure, engineering etc. etc.? Individually, some of these would be a gold mine as an STC find. All of this? It's tech so beautifully rich that it could legitimately change the course of the future.
The best way to get any of these designs is to win fast, win hard and win by a lot. Eldrad can help with that by a significant degree. How much are these designs worth, even if we only gain a fraction of them or lose all offensive designs and just capture a world with DAoT AI constructed infrastructure on it? I'd say it's multiple favours worth, if you catch my drift.
Also, if enough Eternal Wardens survive (such as with that massive causality reduction thing mentioned before), we could even possibly have more than 100k Eternal Wardens available for next turn. Wow! That'd help out with a lot of things.
If Eldrad comes over, that's going to take up a fair few of his actions this turn, but that one is one he won't be putting off. So no.
You can get both Eldrad and Karandras, but it's notably more expensive. As it is, Eldrad is going to charge you 4-5 favors. And adding Karandras on top of that increases it to 6-7 favors.
The Eldar are conducting major operations across the galaxy at the moment. Mostly in regards to their new vassals states and other things in the Imperium. Eldrad was going to be providing support to a lot of them.
Not sure we really want to indebt ourselves to the Eldar too much here. What kinds of favors would the Eldar ask of us if we go with asking Eldrad for help Daemon?
Not sure we really want to indebt ourselves to the Eldar too much here. What kinds of favors would the Eldar ask of us if we go with asking Eldrad for help Daemon?
It varies considerably, but expect it to be along the lines of Warden heroes having to assist with an Eldar operations to providing information packets on a variety of topics to demoting various officials.
It varies considerably, but expect it to be along the lines of Warden heroes having to assist with an Eldar operations to providing information packets on a variety of topics to demoting various officials.
I assume that for asking Warden heroes to assist Eldar operations, that typically said operations would be Chaos related due to that being almost always the best use of a Warden hero?
I assume that for asking Warden heroes to assist Eldar operations, that typically said operations would be Chaos related due to that being almost always the best use of a Warden hero?
It's really hard to say honestly. While they would definitely prefer that, they may also have tasks that require the influence of a Primarch. Or something else that just needs Astartes
