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A Song Of Peace: Imperial Regent Quest [40k]

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Not a fan of all the Navigators going to Antegymax as they will join her Mechanicus rebellion with all their forces and wealth anyway but talking to Mona, Lucan and Yama could help in break down the Navigator issue into bite size pieces to solve.

Perhaps starting a civil war within the Navigators, pitting factions against each other, setting off existing fault lines so the whole thing is a internal matter like with the dying Inquisition.
Possible end result meant all the weaken factions break off one by one as they cut their losses, asking Pandora's help in escaping their internal matter.
 
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Yama is useless in this matter and Lucan, while he doesn't really hate Pandora anymore, would be an idiot if he didn't use this opportunity to screw with the Empire even more. I doubt he cares about the Navigators any more than any other high-ranking Imperial and he has no problem sending billions to their deaths.

Let's just leave this to the Mona, the Legendary Socialite will know best course and who need to die.
 
sun tzu said:
If the Imperium hadn't been so bigoted for the past eleven millennia, we wouldn't even be in this situation in the first place. It's too late to completely fix things (not without centuries we don't have), but we can mitigate the shit out of them. We've already gotten started, via our reforms of abhuman&mutant rights - but we need to do so much more, and pick up the pace. This is a deeply unpopular reform, to make it work (and work in the time we have), we need to spend Influence. We need to use Sanguinius as a popular spokesman for these reforms. Perhaps most importantly, we need the Ecclesiarchy to support this reform - which might be achievable by persuading the Ecclesiarch that the Imperium's bigotry against abhumans and mutants has caused and will keep causing many losses of opportunities to fuck up Chaos. (As a reminder, the Ecclesiarch is a bit of a single-issue voter who hates Chaos, and who views people falling to Chaos as a "skill issue".)
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While I agree with this and most of your other points at least on some level, we need to also take in the order of things. Spending too much Influence at this juncture too fast, trying to brute-force a shift in how the Imperium views the Mutants and the Abhumans through? It is almost certain to trigger a civil war. We need to build first a proper foundation, with subversion of the places that would resist these changes the most, those being the Adepta Sororitas and the Ecclesiarchy.

Luckily, those are some of the most vulnerable organizations to Pandora's influence beyond the Telepathica, and the Adepta Sororitas is prepped for subversion by Celestine. But it doesn't change the fact that currently they are extremely violently opposed to the changes we are trying to push through. And we cannot afford a civil war yet.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure if we can even get started with the matter on this turn, as it seems likely that nearly all of our time and effort that we can afford will go into Ynnead. But Turn 6 is a turn that I'm hoping that we can make subversion-heavy. Lots of talking to different parts of the Imperium's ruling elite. Though hopefuly part of the subversion effort might be in a form of crusading against the minions of Chaos as loudly as we can, as the Imperium loves that, and we need to snip the influence of the Chaos Gods regardless.

But we will have to see how much of the galaxy is on fire by then, and what we can actually afford to do when we reach that point.
 
Big question regarding the Navigators is that, since they make their wealth by being navigators, what are they going to do to make ends meet after the Wayfarers appear, since eventually all of the interstellar travel will be made with Wayfarers, since they're just so much better at it than Navigators.
 
Also, Mona, as a Sensei, shares our branding, and rep.

While the ideal potential ambassador to send and start chipping a splinter faction off the Navigators would be Russ (see: Wolfblade), Sanguinius is a workable stand-in.
The people in this area were better dressed. There were more Navigators, and more ostentatious signs of wealth. Hologramic tapestries of spun golden thread covered the walls; the perspective on the scenes changing as you walked past in a manner that fooled the eye completely. Here were pictures of treaties, and ships against starry backgrounds, and landscapes of a hundred alien worlds. In each landscape the banner of Belisarius fluttered. On each ship the sigil of its power was painted. A Navigator in House uniform played a prominent part in every negotiation.

Most startling of all was the picture of a Belisarian walking beside three haloed figures. One was winged like an angel, one had the long fangs of a Space Wolf, and one had a blazing aura. Ragnar gave it more than a passing glance. Unless he was completely mistaken, the picture showed one of the precursors of the current Celestarch walking beside the Emperor, Leman Russ and Sanguinius, primarch of the Blood Angels.
 
Icipall said:
Big question regarding the Navigators is that, since they make their wealth by being navigators, what are they going to do to make ends meet after the Wayfarers appear, since eventually all of the interstellar travel will be made with Wayfarers, since they're just so much better at it than Navigators.
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Presumably, in similar ways that non-Navigators make money. Start investing in trade routes, infrastructure, banking, etc. Them losing their primary method of income would definitely hurt, but if they can survive the loss of their "irreplaceable" status, then they should still be able to survive after a bit of adjustment.
 
Icipall said:
Big question regarding the Navigators is that, since they make their wealth by being navigators, what are they going to do to make ends meet after the Wayfarers appear, since eventually all of the interstellar travel will be made with Wayfarers, since they're just so much better at it than Navigators.
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Alas, virtually all of them will probably be dead from the resulting civil war.
 
Profilozof said:
I vehemently disagree; from Antegymax's perspective, Wayfarers are a more logical and reliable cog than Navigators, so she not only will agree without issue but will probably need to come to Pandora to negotiate Wayfarers for something.
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Counterpoint: Antegymax is petty as fuck, and has clarified, to Pandora's face, that she will fight tooth and nail against Pandora's attempts to challenge the AdMech's ability to tell the Imperium to go fuck itself.
I find it hard to believe she will not view "make all the AdMech's FTL travel dependent on people loyal to Pandora" as something she wants to avoid... and making sure every ship has both a Wayfarer for efficiency and a Navigator for redundancy allows her the best of both worlds: The AdMech gets the benefit of Wayfarers, and can still tell Pandora to go fuck herself if Antegymax really wants to.

Icipall said:
Big question regarding the Navigators is that, since they make their wealth by being navigators, what are they going to do to make ends meet after the Wayfarers appear, since eventually all of the interstellar travel will be made with Wayfarers, since they're just so much better at it than Navigators.
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How many people who are born into billions end up destitute?
Not a lot. Once you're that rich, you can screw up many, many times and still remain well-off for generations to come.
The typical situation for a Navigator is "billionaire who can earn another hundred million space bucks by doing a somewhat dangerous for a few months, because there isn't much competition for this job". Bring in Wayfarers, and that situation becomes instead "billionaire who needs to live off their fortune, possibly invest it into lucrative businesses".
Realistically speaking, the only way the Navigators end up poor and destitute is if their fortune is seized through violence.
 
The Navigators are overly-specialized, however. They're pretty much not allowed do do anything except Be Navigator, because their very existence is utterly illegal under Imperial standards. They're not just abhumans, but warp-connected abhumans. You can theoretically get away with one or the other under the Lex Imperialis, but never both. (It's probably not a coincidence that this very dilemma happens to apply to the primarchs as well - the Emperor had plans, I think.)

I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out they were already under an order of extermination, just one that has been postponed for thousands of years. It seems unlikely that they'd be allowed or able to live off investments - the fearmongering propaganda writes itself, and their fortunes just become a nice giant resource for every other group to take if it's not backed up by real firepower.

And they know this, so they're just going to shoot first. General tolerance of abhumans and psykers (yes, they're not actually psykers, but everyone thinks they are) is the minimum prerequisite for the death spiral to not kick off. The former might be eventually achieved through our current efforts, but the latter has four fingers pressing on the scale. Five, if we count the Emperor. We'll have to see how effective the psyker reformations are at keeping warp influences out.
 
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The Fab-Gen might dislike Pandora, but there's a fair good chance that the AdMech as whole has got a longer running beef with the Navis considering the navigators have spent millennia destroying recovered technologies that allow for Warp travel without them as well as actively sabotaging research efforts in that field. Thousands of years of resentment combined with the heresy of eliminating sacred technology might well put them higher up on the shit list than Pandora, more so if she's not going to repeat those practices.
 
With the plan of trying to subvert at least a few Navigators with the help of Mona, is there any chance of getting some enterprising Magos to go against Antegymax?

I know she stands on the basis of independent power, which a lot of Admech probably agree with, but there are also probably a lot of Mechanicus out there that chafe under some antiquated laws like the prohibition of new technology.

If we can't find one doesn't the Emperor grant talented Agents for Favors? The idea would be to get an Emperor granted Magos and giving them an important position.

Thinking something like Fortification-Master of the Helheim Corridor, so they can benefit from Gaia's Edge and work closely with our already allied Nihilus, Tau domain, and eventually Ultramar when Guilliman wakes.

Another location if we don't want to put all of our eggs in one basket is along the Interregnum edge. This would allow the Agent request large amounts of supplies without seeming suspicious, in addition to benefitting from Votann technological trade (I'm shilling for Votann shinies all day baby!). That would gives us allies on both sides of Terra, since we have been, rightfully, focusing a lot on Nihilus already.

The slam dunk would be to ask the Omnissiah to repeal older Admech laws or just help us elect the Agent full stop as Fabricator-General of Mars as a favor for Guilliman revive.

How possible is any of that?
 
Alpaca27 said:
The slam dunk would be to ask the Omnissiah to repeal older Admech laws or just help us elect the Agent full stop as Fabricator-General of Mars as a favor for Guilliman revive.

How possible is any of that?
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Antegymax is ready to start a civil war if we threaten AdMech's power even slightly more than we already have. Appealing to the emperor's authority to overturn the treaty of Olympus Mons and replace her isn't going to make her give up, it's going to make her start the civil war immediately. And while she's the most visible agent opposing us she's merely a symptom of the problem - her faction controls AdMech in general and are likely to respond more or less the same way that she would even if we start things off by assassinating her. If we want an AdMech we can actually reason with we need to spend a great deal of time and effort arranging for an internal coup within the mechanicus to put a faction that isn't ready to wage war on the imperium if slighted in control
 
Is Sergeant Talbor (the guy who saved us when we were waking up in the trenches on Cadia) still alive?
 
Let's think through some possible emperor favors asking him to do things that are politically useful to us

[] Formally abdicate the throne and proclaim us empress
  • Practically speaking this doesn't make a big difference. We are already the head of state, we already have the ability to abolish the senate and rule directly if we want, we haven't done so because we don't want to start a civil war with any of the high lords and we lack the ability to actually administer the empire without their help. At best this would give our policies some additional legitimacy and give us the ability to do things like renegotiate the treat of Olympus Mons without going through dad
  • The emperor does not care about the materium and is probably willing to do this but would take some convincing. His other kids have established a track record of not sticking around and he wouldn't want to declare us empress unless he's certain we're in it for the long term
  • This would make Lucan hate us even more
[] Proclaim us a child of the omnissiah
  • This gives us additional legitimacy within the AdMech but Antegymax's faction is already set against us hard enough that it won't make them compromise. This is most useful if we're looking to get another AdMech faction to follow us so we can start an AdMech civil war or set up an internal coup. Unfortunately it's also an admission of weakness - we couldn't get AdMech to listen to us so we had to run to daddy and is probably not great for our overall standing
  • The emperor has no feelings about this whatsoever
[] Renegotiate the treat of Olympus Mons
  • There are two versions of this, one where we renegotiate it ourselves and get him to sign, and another where we ask him to go do it for us because we can't get AdMech to listen to us. If we bring him a pre-negotiated treaty I expect he'll sign it after grumbling. If we ask him to go negotiate for us he may refuse outright or may go resolve the situation by murdering every member of the mechanicus that refuses to listen to him - either way not a good outcome
[] Proclaim that we are a separate divine entity who should be worshipped alongside him
  • This changes the cult of sacrifice from heresy to legitimate, greatly increases our mass of worshippers as a goddess (maybe we'd get another deva?), causes mass political chaos, increases our legitimacy with some factions, and causes others to start a civil war against us
  • I suspect the emperor would refuse to do this outright
 
Cubbyhb1 said:
Is Sergeant Talbor (the guy who saved us when we were waking up in the trenches on Cadia) still alive?
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He's retired and enjoying life on a Veteran's Colony somewhere in Segmentum Solar. To this day he still gets free drinks for being the guy who pulled the Lord Commander out of the line of fire (even though Pandora really doesn't need that kind of protection).
DarkVeracity said:
Let's think through some possible emperor favors asking him to do things that are politically useful to us

[] Formally abdicate the throne and proclaim us empress
  • Practically speaking this doesn't make a big difference. We are already the head of state, we already have the ability to abolish the senate and rule directly if we want, we haven't done so because we don't want to start a civil war with any of the high lords and we lack the ability to actually administer the empire without their help. At best this would give our policies some additional legitimacy and give us the ability to do things like renegotiate the treat of Olympus Mons without going through dad
  • The emperor does not care about the materium and is probably willing to do this but would take some convincing. His other kids have established a track record of not sticking around and he wouldn't want to declare us empress unless he's certain we're in it for the long term
  • This would make Lucan hate us even more
[] Proclaim us a child of the omnissiah
  • This gives us additional legitimacy within the AdMech but Antegymax's faction is already set against us hard enough that it won't make them compromise. This is most useful if we're looking to get another AdMech faction to follow us so we can start an AdMech civil war or set up an internal coup. Unfortunately it's also an admission of weakness - we couldn't get AdMech to listen to us so we had to run to daddy and is probably not great for our overall standing
  • The emperor has no feelings about this whatsoever
[] Renegotiate the treat of Olympus Mons
  • There are two versions of this, one where we renegotiate it ourselves and get him to sign, and another where we ask him to go do it for us because we can't get AdMech to listen to us. If we bring him a pre-negotiated treaty I expect he'll sign it after grumbling. If we ask him to go negotiate for us he may refuse outright or may go resolve the situation by murdering every member of the mechanicus that refuses to listen to him - either way not a good outcome
[] Proclaim that we are a separate divine entity who should be worshipped alongside him
  • This changes the cult of sacrifice from heresy to legitimate, greatly increases our mass of worshippers as a goddess (maybe we'd get another deva?), causes mass political chaos, increases our legitimacy with some factions, and causes others to start a civil war against us
  • I suspect the emperor would refuse to do this outright
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I won't weigh in on all of these too much, but do know that the last one will cause a civil war via Ecclesiarchy and the general population. Right now the basis of their loyalty is due to the fact that you're the Child of the Emperor - i.e., Pink Jesus. If you're recognised as a separate divinity, you will be treated as a separate divinity. That is to say, shot on sight.
 
Now there's an alternative path. If civil war is inevitable and keeping things spinning until we can implement all reforms fails, it might give better odds of a relatively good outcome if many plates stop spinning at once.

The Mechanicus declaring they're done with the Imperium, the Navigators deciding it's time, having Big E declare our divinity, Lucan's splinter going louder, and I'm sure there's a few more wedge issues I'm forgetting about. If all of them went off at the same time, and if none actually split our own support base, that many-sided civil war might result in more infighting between them and thus be more easily and quickly resolved in our favor.

Definitely not something to aim for though. There are several load-bearing ifs in the scenario that I'm not sure actually hold.
 
The Emperor, Pandora Cadmus, and Lucan Atham (involuntary): A hypostatic union of one God in three Persons.

Eh...send it to the scribes for workshoping.
 
Given that Tau tech is legally human tech due to Mona's perceived influence, and the popular treaty signed by Pandora and the Tau, could we get the Tau to supply *us* in the civil war?

Lucas is also a resource we can tap. Either as an outright ally, or some well timed saber rattling. He should be down for an Imperial Civil War.

We could tap Bucephalus as an agent. Machine spirits would give us some Ad Mech legitimacy.

I remember one of the 5 Emperor favor agents was *extremely* popular in one particular segnentum. Faith and Astro politics make for comfy bedfellows, potentially.

If we hunt down Lorgar, that would probably be an Emps favor, and potentially get us Corvus.

Lets spend some AP to recruit Alpharius and Omegon.

Appoint Mona as Regent, and let us spend some actual AP on god stuff and divinations.
 
Bucephalus likely won't bend even the slightest inch for us. I get the impression machine spirits are very committed to an operator who they approve of.

While not the worst plan, I'd prefer a deva machine spirit to interface with the Mechanicus.
 
Swordomatic said:
He's retired and enjoying life on a Veteran's Colony somewhere in Segmentum Solar. To this day he still gets free drinks for being the guy who pulled the Lord Commander out of the line of fire (even though Pandora really doesn't need that kind of protection).

I won't weigh in on all of these too much, but do know that the last one will cause a civil war via Ecclesiarchy and the general population. Right now the basis of their loyalty is due to the fact that you're the Child of the Emperor - i.e., Pink Jesus. If you're recognised as a separate divinity, you will be treated as a separate divinity. That is to say, shot on sight.
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Good to hear he got a nice retirement. That's rare for a Guardsman.

Also, the moment someone brought up abdication, my mind went to that one TTS scene where Big E is buttering up Fyodor before Magnus dunks him into the Warp. You know; where he proclaims himself a full God and Fyodor as the new Emperor. Of course, I don't see that happening here, but it's entertaining to think about.

Of course, if he had done this right off the bat a few thousand years earlier, Sigmar style, it might've even worked. But he's too entrenched in the Imperium's psyche now. The throne and ultimate authority are one and the same in him.

MSH said:
Bucephalus likely won't bend even the slightest inch for us. I get the impression machine spirits are very committed to an operator who they approve of.

While not the worst plan, I'd prefer a deva machine spirit to interface with the Mechanicus.
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She should really go find the Spirit of Eternity before some Chaos Lord finds it and diddles its AI core.
 
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Dynamesmouse said:
Given that Tau tech is legally human tech due to Mona's perceived influence, and the popular treaty signed by Pandora and the Tau, could we get the Tau to supply *us* in the civil war?
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They probably could supply us, but there's 2 problems. First, they have their own enemies to fight. But mostly they're a minor power, and even without the first point they couldn't give us anything near what we need to win a civil war. The Tau Empire is also very far of most of the Imperium.

Dynamesmouse said:
Appoint Mona as Regent, and let us spend some actual AP on god stuff and divinations.
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Given that having Pandora as Regent is the very premise of this quest, I doubt either Swordo or the thread would accept.

Dynamesmouse said:
Lets spend some AP to recruit Alpharius and Omegon.
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We don't even know if either of these is loyal, let alone have the slightest idea of where they are. We don't have enough AP to waste an unknown number of them for or uncertain result.

Dynamesmouse said:
Lucas is also a resource we can tap. Either as an outright ally, or some well timed saber rattling. He should be down for an Imperial Civil War.
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If the civil war starts now, we will loose it. We should do everything in our power to prevent it at least until a couple turns after the Psychic Awakening. That way will have the time to train most of the newly awakened and empowered psychers.

Dynamesmouse said:
If we hunt down Lorgar, that would probably be an Emps favor, and potentially get us Corvus.
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Do we know for certain that killing a traitor Primarch would have us a Favor?
 
DarkVeracity said:
Antegymax is ready to start a civil war if we threaten AdMech's power even slightly more than we already have. Appealing to the emperor's authority to overturn the treaty of Olympus Mons and replace her isn't going to make her give up, it's going to make her start the civil war immediately. And while she's the most visible agent opposing us she's merely a symptom of the problem - her faction controls AdMech in general and are likely to respond more or less the same way that she would even if we start things off by assassinating her. If we want an AdMech we can actually reason with we need to spend a great deal of time and effort arranging for an internal coup within the mechanicus to put a faction that isn't ready to wage war on the imperium if slighted in control
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Okay so the last part of the plan wouldn't go down so well, but what about the rest?

If it's inevitable for civil war, and we need to start gathering a pro-Pandora faction within the Mechanicus anyway, then a Mechanicus Agent granted by the Emperor would be a good way to start that right?

How noticeable are the Emperor's Agents? Do they appear in a flash of light or do they poof in silently? Because if we can just sneak him into a place far from Mars (Helheim Corridor, Interregnum border) and have him start gaining popularity within Admech faction, then it wouldn't antagonize Antegymax too early.
 
How desperate would things need to be before approaching Lorgar for help spreading the Cult of Sacrifice or undermining the likely rebel Cardinals powerbase seemed like a good idea?
 
Alpaca27 said:
Okay so the last part of the plan wouldn't go down so well, but what about the rest?

If it's inevitable for civil war, and we need to start gathering a pro-Pandora faction within the Mechanicus anyway, then a Mechanicus Agent granted by the Emperor would be a good way to start that right?
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The problem is that this suggestion aren't a start of anyything. Even according to the post you're answering, the moment she sees Pandora trying to steal control of Mechanius or weaken it, she will immediately declare war because she knows that if she gives Pandora time, she will lose.

Our moves against them must be hidden and subtle, and there is nothing more obvious than an envoy with Big E's approval when he normally doesn't do thing like it, and we would be the first suspect as the one who can talk to him and are his regent (besides, I'm sure we are his favorite daughter at this moment).
 
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