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A Different Breed (Warhammer 29K)

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The Ceremonial Cleansing in Isha's Grace: A Guide to Scorning the Filth Lord by Troupe Master Arana Rot-Cleanser

Greetings, children of Isha! As we seek to liberate our beloved Ever-Blooming Mother from the Bile-Bastard's domain, it is our sacred duty to honour her with the purity she embodies. But lo! The galaxy festers with the vile presence of Nurgle, the hideous harbinger of decay and disease. What better way to mock the Plague Father than by revelling in our impeccable hygiene, a testament to the life-giving power of Isha herself?

Let us embark on this hallowed ritual, one that will not only cleanse our bodies but also our spirits, sending a fragrant message to Nurgle that his foulness has no place among us!

Step 1: The Purification of the Air
Begin by filling your ritual space with the sweet scent of Isha's favoured blossoms. Moonflower, Rainbow Lilies, and Wakeful Mint should be scattered generously, their aromas a gentle reminder of life's beauty. As the scent fills the air, chant:

"Oh, Isha, Mother of Life, we breathe in your purity and exhale the filth of the plague. May Nurgle's stench be banished from our presence!"

Step 2: The Sacred Scrubbing
Now, prepare the Waters of Renewal—pure, crystal-clear, and untouched by corruption. Take a bar of cleansing soap, preferably one infused with the essence of Elysian flowers. Scrub every inch of your body with reverence, removing all traces of dirt and impurity.

As you scrub, recite the following:

"By the suds of Isha's bounty, I banish the filth! Begone, Nurgle's grime, for I am a child of cleanliness!"

Step 3: The Anointing with Oils
Once your body is purified, anoint yourself with the oils of healing. These oils, infused with the essence of sacred herbs, act as a barrier against Nurgle's foul touch. Gently massage the oil into your skin, whispering:

"Isha's grace protects me; Nurgle's touch shall not defile me. With each drop, I mock the Lord of Rot!"

Step 4: The Dressing in Purity
Adorn yourself in garments of the finest silk, representing the purity and elegance of Isha's blessings. These clothes, untouched by the rot of Nurgle's minions, will shield you from his corruption. As you dress, declare:

"Clad in Isha's favour, I stand untainted. Nurgle, your putrid touch shall never soil this silk!"

Step 5: The Final Blessing
Gather your fellow Eldar, each cleansed and anointed, and form a circle. Hold hands and close your eyes, feeling the collective purity that binds you. Together, offer a final prayer to Isha:

"Oh, Mother Isha, we are your devoted children. We reject the rot, the decay, and the foulness of Nurgle. In your name, we stand pure and unblemished, a beacon of life in a galaxy of decay!"

As the ritual concludes, take a moment to reflect on your impeccable hygiene, knowing that each step you take is a step away from Nurgle's grasp. May your cleanliness be a beacon of hope in the galaxy, and may your fragrant mockery of Nurgle echo through the Warp for eternity!
"Remember, dear Eldar, that maintaining your purity is not just a ritual—it is a lifestyle. As you go about your day, take pride in your cleanliness, and know that with each scrub, each drop of oil, you are spitting in the face of Nurgle himself. Stay pure, stay blessed, and may Isha's light guide your path away from the filth!" - Troupe Master Arana Rot-Cleanser
My tribute to you oh great one @Mechanis
 
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IronFist said:
Ehh, wouldn't be so hasty and ruling it out before even trying it.
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It's trying it, succeeding, and having something go horribly wrong later because a device can be more prone to catastrophic failure in the mid to long-term than a master Pyromancer is specifically what I'm worried about. This is the kind of magic you don't design something to facilitate the use of by a master on an inhabited world rather than an uninhabited one, let alone build some manner of machine to carry out in place of a master entirely.

There are more satisfying ways to end the quest in a blaze of glory than playing around with machinery and true flame only to end up incinerating Vau-Vulkesh because we decided a true flame psyker engine was to awesome to not try and build. Let's be less of a mad warp scientist than chuckles the failed emperor of mankind.
Profilozof said:
Sounds like one of primary weapons during the war in Heaven, especially since Assuryan was both the god of fire and god king
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Yes, but it had blessing against incinerating the ship or craft world it was armed to in those days. There isn't any of that standing between total annihilation anymore.
 
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Randino Treviani said:
It's trying it, succeeding, and having something go horribly wrong later because a device can be more prone to catastrophic failure in the mid to long-term than a master Pyromancer is specifically what I'm worried about. This is the kind of magic you don't design something to facilitate the use of by a master on an inhabited world rather than an uninhabited one, let alone build some manner of machine to carry out in place of a master entirely.

There are more satisfying ways to end the quest in a blaze of glory than playing around with machinery and true flame only to end up incinerating Vau-Vulkesh because we decided a true flame psyker engine was to awesome to not try and build. Let's be less of a mad warp scientist than chuckles the failed emperor of mankind.

Yes, but it had blessing against incinerating the ship or craft world it was armed to in those days. There isn't any of that standing between total annihilation anymore.
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Shrug... We're going to have to agree to disagree.

This is imo, the peak of the psy-tech tree. Eldar were at this level of tech, but they got there on "easy mode" with the support of their gods. Making our way up that tech tree should be one of the long term goals.

It's not mad science. Just technology that is currently beyond us.

I know we're not going to be building a True Flame Cannon anytime soon, that's the top of the tech tree. But i think the concept of creating magitek based on psy powers is still sound.
Think of the mechanicus' attempt to create the Akashic reader.
 
SaltyWaffles said:
So what I'm taking away from all of this is that we can make a sweet, juicy, lucrative offer to Major Craftworlds to get them set up with at least one exotic production line if they lend us some BAP in exchange temporarily. And while Starlance weaponry is Very Nice, Fatesever weapons are bullshit hax.

Plus, the more we spread it around (and realistically, spreading a few of them to other Major Craftworlds would allow them to spread it further themselves) the less of a juicy target we become to Chaos, which is a major plus.
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I agree with all this, but the best bit is that it puts the ball squarely in their court.

We can make the offer, and if they think they can spare enough Bonesingers to spare to compensate us they can accept. If not, they can wait until later, pretty much forever.

And, addressing another suggestion brought up above, I think it's important not to extort them for relics in return for sharing our knowledge.

We want to set a precedent of the Diaspora Eldar sharing their knowledge. We don't want to be locked out of making Doomblades or Void Cannons because we can't afford the price the Craftworld that has them demands.

Much better to offer this at cost, or slightly above cost (to compensate for our reduction in production of exotics for that turn).

For example, if we offer to the Majors that we'll send 5 BAP of our Bonesingers and 1/2 a facilities worth of trained staff to demonstrate how to make a Starcrystal Farm and teach them how to use it, we could say that we'd need six BAP of their Bonesingers sent to make up for what we're losing.

That seems like a pretty fair offer to me.

Even if they currently can't afford to take us up on it, the mere fact that we're making such an offer sets a strong and positive precedent.

And given the size of our Exotics stockpile, we're probably profiting on the deal*, as at this point one extra BAP is probably worth more to us than a hundred starcrystals.

* note that is profiting does not mean the other Craftworld is losing. This is a positive sum deal where both sides win. For us, one extra BAP is worth more than a hundred star crystals, but for them the knowledge of how to make and staff more starcrystal farms is also worth more than the one BAP surcharge, so we both end up ahead.

Importantly; we both end up ahead while it seeming to observers that we only made them pay for this at cost, so we still get the PR benefits.
 
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IronFist said:
It's not mad science. Just technology that is currently beyond us.
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No. Making a form of attack we have no means of defense against into an excessively complex weapon any idiot can just fire, with potential for world destroying consequences, is madness, and thus this is mad science.

IronFist said:
But i think the concept of creating magitek based on psy powers is still sound.
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It's absolutely sound, and has a lot of potential for good. But anything with potential for good has potential for harm. If you take a good idea too far it can fuck you over in major ways.

Plastics was a okay Idea taken too far much to quickly, and it's killing our planet somewhat at this point. Magitek is a decent Idea, but it shouldn't be taken to extremes. Does Vaul's Talismans not demonstrate that something taken to far can come back to haunt us later?
 
Talking of Vaul's Talismans, according to at least one source they have sapient spirits

If so, recovering them may be particular valuable, as the older ones* may remember some useful information.

* not all Talismans of Vaul seem to date back to the Wars in Heaven; the Eldar seem to still have been making more of them until at least around a hundred thousand years ago, presumably in preparation for round 2 with the Necrons.
 
Alratan said:
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Can't agree. One extra BAP a turn for access to exotics tech is worthless, especially when we would need to spend 50 total to give each of them a foundry of both exotics. There about to spend the next few centuries raiding crone worlds for relics they'd need a forge of vaul to get working in the first place. Between the five of them, the larger half of which already like us a lot and all of which owe us already for our one in eight billion success with the curses, they can sweaten the pot with a few relics.

A single additional exotics factory during creation two was 1 point. For Biel-Tan and Iyanden in particular this is a way of reclaiming a small part of the empire they now know they can never actually rebuild, when Beil-tan was planning to steal it all from us. Together I say the 5 major craft worlds can trade 6 to 8 points worth of Character creation relics and 40 or 50 BAP for 10 exotics factories. It's an actually fair trade that isn't completely underestimating the long term value of these techs we don't yet have full access to the capabilities of.
 
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Randino Treviani said:
No. Making a form of attack we have no means of defense against into an excessively complex weapon any idiot can just fire, with potential for world destroying consequences, is madness, and thus this is mad science.


It's absolutely sound, and has a lot of potential for good. But anything with potential for good has potential for harm. If you take a good idea too far it can fuck you over in major ways.

Plastics was a okay Idea taken too far much to quickly, and it's killing our planet somewhat at this point. Magitek is a decent Idea, but it shouldn't be taken to extremes. Does Vaul's Talismans not demonstrate that something taken to far can come back to haunt us later?
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Our main goal involves attacking a god on it's home ground. Maybe even two of them.

World breaking weapons are exactly the thing we need.

Fallen into the wrong hands, any weapon on that scale could be dangerous. Our craftworld getting hit by a starship scale Singularity generator would also take a chunk out of it.
Why is this in particular something which we shouldn't touch? Do you also object to trying to recreate Voidcannons?
 
The Exotics tech is also far less valuable than people think it is.

We aren't talking about the voidcannons that can true kill demons.
Just (somewhat) more effective weapons but that also come with a pretty big price tag, that makes it a no-go for pretty much all craftworlds for actual use in a large army (yes that includes us).

It's very nice weapons tech, but the production costs and limitations are so stupidly high and the craftworlds that might be able to produce some in very limited numbers likely already have access to better weaponry for their hero units.

It runs into big logistics problems where 1 very good gun is nice, but 10+ ok guns are much better when you are limited by production like the Eldar are (and will be for quite a long time).
 
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Skjadir said:
The Exotics tech is also far less valuable than people think it is.

We aren't talking about the voidcannons that can true kill demons.
Just (somewhat) more effective weapons but that also come with a pretty big price tag, that makes it a no-go for pretty much all craftworlds for actual use in a large army (yes that includes us).

It's very nice weapons tech, but the production costs and limitations are so stupidly high and the craftworlds that might be able to produce some in very limited numbers likely already have access to better weaponry for their hero units.

It runs into big logistics problems where 1 very good gun is nice, but 10+ ok guns are much better when you are limited by production like the Eldar are (and will be for quite a long time).
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I think you are underselling what a constant stream of production would yield given the time scale we're working with.

Given the fact that the Horus Heresy is over 1000 years from now in that timespan just a single Starcrystal Farm (200/5 year turn) or Psy-Scope Forge (30/5 year turn) will have produced 40k Starcrystals or 6k Psy-Scopes.

That's enough to arm a lot of warhosts or fleets with gear that is borderline if not outright heroic unit tier stuff and that assumes whoever we teach this capability doesn't bother to expand on that production once they learn how to make it.

Just giving most of the Major Craftworlds this capability could have a big impact on their long term capabilities since while they may have relic gear that is superior for their heros none of that stuff is replaceable while this stuff would be.
 
IronFist said:
Why is this in particular something which we shouldn't touch? Do you also object to trying to recreate Voidcannons?
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I haven't been warned to pick a planet I'm not particularly attached to to make an much simpler array to accomplish the same thing nominally supervised by master Pyromancer. If a simpler model with expert assistance can go wrong and kill a planet, how wrong can an excessively complex weapon meant to achieve the same effect go?

Other things have high capacity for destruction, sure. We still have methods to block them. Something with potential to accidentally unleashes a planet killer wildfire we can't really block is a few levels above anything we have.

Also, I've never even proposed adding a naval grade Singularity projector to a vessel. Not something I want in our ships.
Skjadir said:
We aren't talking about the voidcannons that can true kill demons.
Just (somewhat) more effective weapons but that also come with a pretty big price tag, that makes it a no-go for pretty much all craftworlds for actual use in a large army (yes that includes us).
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Not accurate.
Mechanis said:
[ ] Extra Starcrystal Farm (-1 point each, max 2)
Starcrystal is a critical component of Starlance technology, the psychoactive energy-channeling crystals grown into shape by specialist bonesingers given the title 'Crystal Singer'. By default, you will have four facilities dedicated to growing these crystals, but may optionally add several more—this would provide greater resilience to disasters, higher output of the critical component for Starlances, and a greater number of Crystal Singers which would make further expansion easier. And whilst only Starlances (and their variations) utilize Starcrystal for now, who knows what other uses you might find for its energy-channeling abilities?

[ ] Extra Fateforge (-1 point each, max 2)
The advanced temporospacial manipulation systems at the core of Fatecaster technology require highly controlled environments and specialized tools and training to produce. Fatesingers are trained in the esoteric techniques needed to operate a Fateforge, and produce this critical technology. While the current form is a heavily optimized union, suited for the specific application of Fatecasters alone, it may be possible to derive additional time or space manipulating technologies from them in time, and possibly even develop similar devices for other weapons with enough understanding. You will have four of these facilities by default.
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We've yet to tap the full potential of these technologies. They were worth 1 creation point each for just having their tech, an additional point per extra foundry with a limit of two. Spreading them to 5 worlds is easily worth a trade of relics that likely need work to get them functional anyway.

Armies have elite troops. A single factory provides enough star crystals for 100 calivers powerful enough to serve as an EP cheap and highly powerful heavy weapon alternative for a warhost or two.
 
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LOLROFL said:
I think you are underselling what a constant stream of production would yield given the time scale we're working with.

Given the fact that the Horus Heresy is over 1000 years from now in that timespan just a single Starcrystal Farm (200/5 year turn) or Psy-Scope Forge (30/5 year turn) will have produced 40k Starcrystals or 6k Psy-Scopes.

That's enough to arm a lot of warhosts or fleets with gear that is borderline if not outright heroic unit tier stuff and that assumes whoever we teach this capability doesn't bother to expand on that production once they learn how to make it.

Just giving most of the Major Craftworlds this capability could have a big impact on their long term capabilities since while they may have relic gear that is superior for their heros none of that stuff is replaceable while this stuff would be.
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And the Forge of Vaul can produce 1000 Starcrystals, 300 Fatebender Psy-Scopes or 500 Starcrystals & 150 Psy-Scopes as needed.
 
LOLROFL said:
I think you are underselling what a constant stream of production would yield given the time scale we're working with.

Given the fact that the Horus Heresy is over 1000 years from now in that timespan just a single Starcrystal Farm (200/5 year turn) or Psy-Scope Forge (30/5 year turn) will have produced 40k Starcrystals or 6k Psy-Scopes.

That's enough to arm a lot of warhosts or fleets with gear that is borderline if not outright heroic unit tier stuff and that assumes whoever we teach this capability doesn't bother to expand on that production once they learn how to make it.

Just giving most of the Major Craftworlds this capability could have a big impact on their long term capabilities since while they may have relic gear that is superior for their heros none of that stuff is replaceable while this stuff would be.
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40k starcystals and 6k psyscopes is ignorable on the scales we are talking about.

That is a most enough for a (very) small fleet worth of ships.
I think you are might not get just how large the army recruitment gets on a sensible scale for even our own craftworld, ignoring the major craftworlds.

We're talking about close to a million or more people per turn recruited when talking about having an army worth the name for our size.

That also ignores having to replace a lot of stuff when fighting gets intense.

Exotic weapons are having a very big sustainability problem.

Randino Treviani said:
Not accurate.
We've yet to tap the full potential of these technologies. They were worth 1 creation point each for just having their tech, an additional point per extra foundry with a limit of two. Spreading them to 5 worlds is easily worth a trade of relics that likely need work to get them functional anyway.

Armies have elite troops. A single factory provides enough star crystals for 100 calivers powerful enough to serve as an EP cheap and highly powerful heavy weapon alternative for a warhost..
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Yes it is.
The exotic weapons we do have, do have some nice (and somewhat potent) effects but that it, but it's not a high prio like the ability to true kill demons would be.

We already have some other options that pretty much do the same but that we can actually mass produce.

Pretty much the only concern that any of the craftworlds have in regard to wargear at the moment is actually working on gear they can enter into mass production so they can arm actual armies with it.
Instead of weaponry that you are lucky to produce 100 of over 5 years.

Overall large scale logistics for both recruitment and replacement in war are not kind at all to for deployment of exotics.
 
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Randino Treviani said:
I haven't been warned to pick a planet I'm not particularly attached to to make an much simpler array to accomplish the same thing nominally supervised by master Pyromancer. If a simpler model with expert assistance can go wrong and kill a planet, how wrong can an excessively complex weapon meant to achieve the same effect go?

Other things have high capacity for destruction, sure. We still have methods to block them. Something with potential to accidentally unleashes a planet killer wildfire we can't really block is a few levels above anything we have.

Also, I've never even proposed adding a naval grade Singularity projector to a vessel. Not something I want in our ships.
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If we climb up the tech tree for psy-tech, why wouldn't we seek a counter to it as well? Understanding True fire to the point where we can build a weapon to replicate it comes hand in hand with understanding how to counter it.
And describing it as a planet killing wildfire makes me think of Cyclonic Torpedoes... Which are relatively common weapons.

Also, remember phosphex?

I just picked the singularity projector at rsndom as one of our destructive AoE weapons, not based on anything you said.
 
LorebearerMystic said:
And the Forge of Vaul can produce 1000 Starcrystals, 300 Fatebender Psy-Scopes or 500 Starcrystals & 150 Psy-Scopes as needed.
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I'm pretty sure, over the long term and at the scales we're going to be working at, the +1d3 to a BAP action is going to be by far the most valuable use of the Forge.

If you want to see lots of exotics in our forces, don't complain about the costs of exotics production and how "giving it away" costs too much of our BAP - because if that's true, the same is true about using exotics at scale, 'cause that's the price for expanding our exotics production too.
 
Randino Treviani said:
Can't agree. One extra BAP a turn for access to exotics tech is worthless, especially when we would need to spend 50 total to give each of them a foundry of both exotics. There about to spend the next few centuries raiding crone worlds for relics they'd need a forge of vaul to get working in the first place. Between the five of them, the larger half of which already like us a lot and all of which owe us already for our one in eight billion success with the curses, they can sweaten the pot with a few relics.

A single additional exotics factory during creation two was 1 point. For Biel-Tan and Iyanden in particular this is a way of reclaiming a small part of the empire they now know they can never actually rebuild, when Beil-tan was planning to steal it all from us. Together I say the 5 major craft worlds can trade 6 to 8 points worth of Character creation relics and 40 or 50 BAP for 10 exotics factories. It's an actually fair trade that isn't completely underestimating the long term value of these techs we don't yet have full access to the capabilities of.
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I think this is thinking on the wrong scale

What we want to do is spread knowledge of how to make exotics as widely as possible, for two reasons:

1) to minimise the chance of the knowledge being lost or the incentive for Chaos to target those who have the knowledge

2) to maximise the total strength of the Eldar Diaspora in anticipation of facing major challenges such as rescuing Isha.

The Majors may be able to afford paying us in relics, but if we set the precedent that this is something that should be used to extort the highest price it makes it much more likely that they and others with exotics will do the same, significantly slowing their spread across the Diaspora. That is self-defeating. In overall terms it doesn't really matter who has a relic. It does matter how many people have the ability to make exotics. Trading relics is a zero sum game, sharing knowledge is positive sum. We should be trying to be positive sum.

Think of the analogy with the Tizard Mission in WWII where the British just gave away the greatest secrets of their military research to the US for nothing. They did this because they correctly realised that what mattered was defeating the Nazis, and that sharing the knowledge as freely as possible with a larger power better able to deploy it at scale was the best way to do that. We should do the same. This isn't generosity or altruism, it's simple pragmatism.

What it cost us during character creation doesn't matter. That's a sunk cost now. What matters is how we best use it to accomplish our goals.

In terms of more selfish benefits, I also think the political advantages from making this offer are also likely to outweigh a few relics, in a few ways:

1) If anyone else has any exotics, this may inspire/shame them to share them on the same or similar terms. It's harder for them to justify to themselves and to others keeping a monopoly on them or demanding a high price for the knowledge after we've done this. Our disproportionately large industry and the fact that we're starting building an army from scratch means this is more valuable for us than it is for other people.

2) Iyanden has already set a strong precedent in a related area. They didn't have to teach everyone how to use Soulstones and share the ones they had fairly. They could have asked people to pay, or preferentially given soul stones to people who signed up to their cause and only shared the leftovers when their new coalition had enough for their current population and reasonable growth. Us doing the same with Exotics continues that precedent by paying it forwards, and we can say that by doing this we're partially repaying out debt to Iyanden.

3) Making this offer at cost should further cement our political reputation as being non-self interested and dedicated to the overall good of the Eldar. That's really helpful in lots of ways, but particularly for an otherwise radical faction who may do controversial things.

4) Even if we're selling at cost, if we offer this one faculty/turn we can still use choosing which order to do this in as leverage to get extra concession, if there are multiple people interested.

5) As we're currently relatively weak; setting a precedent that Craftworlds go out of their way to commit their strengths to help the overall good of the Diaspora Eldar is a good thing.

6) Also as we're currently weak, giving other Craftworlds a strong incentive to help defend us while they're waiting their turn to be taught could be very useful. Not charging above cost means there are much more likely to be more people waiting their turn and so with incentive to defend us.

Basically, the way I see it, is that making this offer is basically free. If people accept it we can exchange a small amount of exotics production for a small amount of BAP; which is useful.

In return we look good and make our future allies and co-belligerents stronger, which is a good thing.
 
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Professor Vesca said:
Maybe we make star crystals work by reserving them for big guns and heavy weapons?
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Big guns and heavy weapons cost immense amounts of exotics. Cutting our use of the stuff everywhere else entirely won't actually get us very many more big and heavy weapons.

What we actually do is use them very judiciously in the places where very small numbers of them can make a big difference in capabilities; I recall quite a bit of discussion about putting a single carbine/rifle/pistol per squad as an anti-vehicular weapon.
 
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