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

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weeblypanda said:
It was often said that the golden age of man coincided with the Eldars height but I think by that point the Eldar had become insular, isolationist, and insatiably kinky(fuck murdering Slannesh into existence) while humanity was an active leader in galactic affairs with the old human federation being you know at the height of its power.
And while I'm not saying chaos is at all good the gods themselves forget that they have positive domains and things. Khorne is honorable and also very straightforward. Tzeentch is straight fucking insane but he is the god of progress, and Nurgle is the god of life and stability (though he often takes it to cancer and endurance rather than healing) and actually genuinely love a lot of his followers
Just as the chaos gods affect the universe so too does the universe affect them and if it wasn't for Slannesh kicking them awake they wouldn't be making this crazy negative feedback loop of endless war
The argument one could make about the Emporer being a god of order is that in many mythologies Chaos specifically births Order or some form of stability like gods of concrete concepts like earth or sky
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That is a bit of a chaos-positive way of putting it. In the end Chaos is the manifestation of the old Aristotelian notion that evil is extremes, that it is too much of a good thing. So sure if you moderate Khorne you get martial honor, but that is not Khorne anymore it is some other saner war god. The actual Chaos Gods only use their so called good parts as a gateway drug for the gullible and the desperate. They do not have good parts only parts that are not immediately obvious as evil.
 
serialkilerwhale said:
Not every way. Even at their height their population and territory were a fraction of the Imperium's due to a lack of interest in expansion. The entire thing was small enough to, for the most part, fit inside the Eye of Terror, with most of the rest being minor colonies at best.
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Don't be so sure about that, they also had the webway. Which is an entire sub dimension full of connected relms. They may not have had a lot of worlds in realsapce, but we can't be sure that means they didn't have a lot of territory, they just had it all folded away in another dimension.
 
Swordomatic said:
And Pandora is quite a bit more powerful than she gives herself credit for. There are three stages of God in Song of Peace, largely cribbed from The Long Night; Minor God, Major God, and Great God. Pandora's solidly in the upper-middle Major God tier right now, though she herself doesn't feel that way because she (thinks she) doesn't have the accomplishments of a Goddess of her apparent 'power'.

Mind you, she's survived the on-again off-again attentions of the four Chaos Gods, is an acquaintance and peer of Cegorach, and has been secretly responsible for more than a few long-term plots of Tzeentch unravelling at the worst possible time, but otherwise her power projection has been severely hamstrung by a general lack of Deva and Greater Deva preventing her from actually reaching out. Just that her closest benchmark is the bloody God-Emperor of Mankind, so yeah.
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So something that I find a fun parallel with Pandora and the four Chaos Gods is Lily and the Exalts.

Swordomatic said:
Which turned out to be maybe two weeks, whereupon Lily became one of Pandora's Deva, and then eventually her Archdeva - which is like being an Exalted Greater Daemon, but is also a particularly valuable position because it also establishes her as Pandora's right hand, giving her a great deal of latitude as an agent of a God. That Pandora's too minor and insignificant to have normal Greater Daemons period - she only has Lily as her Greater Deva, all her other angels are Lesser Deva - is kind of beside the point.

Lily herself is notably weaker than most Exalted of her age and position, and generally struggles to actually kill any Exalted she runs into. She can, however, draw out the fight into being intolerably long ordeals, and she is the reason Pandora has the dubious honour of being the one God in existence whose Greater Daemon(s) primarily use guns and explosives.
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IE - Both while not optimized for outright fighting with their categorical peers (Gods || Exalted Greater Deva) due to sheer power differences are tricky fish to hold. Pandora as far as I can see is very good at using her Divination so as to not get pinned by that of others. And Lily seems to retain as an expy of Homura some sort of teleportation ability. Though given expy of Homura I'd not be surprised if it's full on timestop.

Which goes a long way to explain why in a case of "generally struggles to actually kill any Exalted" leads to "draw out the fight into being intolerably long ordeals" as opposed to "routinely routed". Just being difficult to hit goes a long way in not losing. It doesn't lead directly to winning but it sure helps not losing.

Which I think is something one can take as a general trend with Pandora. Even before she came back to the Material Plane her astral throne remained untoppled and hers. Which as our QM put it, was despite occasionally getting the attention of the Four. Survival is a victory by itself in some respects. So like the grand entrance with Cadia.

And every once in a while - fortune smiles.

Also the information about where Pandora stands power wise as Goddess of Sacrifice does put a few more details to the dynamics. It does seem to be that Lily kinda operates as a Greater Deva frocked to an Archdeva for purposes of that increased latitude while Pandora does not truly have the power to fully "fund" such an individual by most measures. Hence Lily being weaker in a fight than one would expect with her position. Which fits with how while Pandora does have some power behind her, it feels like she manages to cause more trouble than should be possible for the Four despite that.

Which given everything is this quest is a bit of an understatement.
 
meianmaru said:
This was pretty damn impactful. And I always like to see the followers of the Chaos being presented as more than pure evil madmen and -women. Neheb comes across as someone who could be a tragic recurring villain, whose plots Pandora has to try to notice and unravel before they go off, all while trying to actually corner him. Because this likely wouldn't happen with Neheb coming anywhere near her, as that would likely result in his instant detection and loss. Maybe even accepting Panda's compassionate ways if she keeps her optimism and success-rate up. Maybe.

Anyway, nice job with that omake! Would love to see more from you!
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Thank you! I might try to write a non-Chaos rebel next, since canon likes to pretend that you can't fight the Imperium unless you work for the Ruinous Powers.

Neheb could absolutely be a tragic recurring villain, though spending too much time around Pandora would be dangerous. He's a slave of Tzeentch, but there's definitely some Nurgle in his acceptance of the broken universe. Believing that Pandora might actually win could change his thinking very fast.

Fayhem said:
I get the impression that being the Eagle has given him ample time to reflect on what happened and who he was then. I don't think we'd be rolling back the clock to GC Sanguinius, nor would Pandora be likely to go for that in the first place if that's what would happen somehow. And as long as I'm replying to you, I loved that omake!
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Thank you!

I am absolutely for reunifying a New Sanguinius that shares the Eagle's changed perspective, though the Eagle seems more than a little reluctant to resume a leadership role.
 
Swordomatic said:
And Pandora is quite a bit more powerful than she gives herself credit for. There are three stages of God in Song of Peace, largely cribbed from The Long Night; Minor God, Major God, and Great God. Pandora's solidly in the upper-middle Major God tier right now, though she herself doesn't feel that way because she (thinks she) doesn't have the accomplishments of a Goddess of her apparent 'power'.
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So, in embers, Great gods are so difficult to kill even other Great gods can't do it, are you keeping that here? or could a Great god who managed to beat another slay them?
 
dptullos said:
canon likes to pretend that you can't fight the Imperium unless you work for the Ruinous Powers.
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The main issue there is that Chaos itself tends to be the ones making sure if you fight then Imperium, siding with them is only a matter of time. Although IIRC, the Astral Corsairs didn't fully fall to Chaos until after they lost the Badab war.

#HuronWasRight

#KarthagoDelendaEst
 
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serialkilerwhale said:
The main issue there is that Chaos itself tends to be the ones making sure if you fight then Imperium, siding with them is only a matter of time. Although IIRC, the Astral Corsairs didn't fully fall to Chaos until after they lost the Badab war.

#HuronWasRight

#KarthagoDelendaEst
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I think that's fair, but that's less a matter of "rebels must be Chaos worshippers!" and more a matter of "Chaos gods immediately try to infiltrate any rebellion".
 
dptullos said:
I think that's fair, but that's less a matter of "rebels must be Chaos worshippers!" and more a matter of "Chaos gods immediately try to infiltrate any rebellion".
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True, and non-chaos worshipping rebels do exist, even in canon (Severan Dominate, Badab Autonomous Zone, every single pants-driven insurrection, and I think Ciaphas Cain is dealing with a random rebellion on an unimportant world literally half the times we see him, if you count the short stories.).

It's just that they usually end up with several members of their leadership named Alpharius.
 
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Akasha said:
I don't like the idea of the Emperor being Chaos because I feel like that bends the rules to make Chaos seem right. Chaos is ultimately chaotic. It's in the name. A Chaos God of Order, Disbelief or whatever bullshit pro-Chaos writers tried to come up with doesn't make sense. Chaos is Anathema to Order, and vice versa. They literally call him such, and even Malal, who was all about the self-destructive nature of Chaos, was not given such lofty titles. You can't be both.

Moreover, Chaos exists in large part because of Belief, and the only way the Emperor - any fragment of him - would ever become a Chaos God is if Belief had immense influence over him, managing to do in ten millenia what countless species failed to do over billions of years. This, again, makes no sense for a Chaos God of Order and/or Disbelief. A Chaos God is chaotic and malleable (or at least should be), but a God of Order is firmly defined and hard to influence, especially if Disbelief is literally a domain of his. How do you influence a god with a defined narrative through belief, when the core of said narrative is disbelief?
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The normal interpretation of how to solve this paradox is that it's not strictly speaking the Emperor that becomes the Fifth Chaos God. Basically it takes the stance that there's two 'aspects' if you will to the Emperor. The Emperor the Man and leader of the Imperium, who absolutely wouldn't fall to Chaos... And then there's the God-Emperor. Which has the Emperor the Man as part of him, but isn't just them. Hell, they're actually fairly divergent thanks to the fact their entire existence on what people believe the Emperor did, rather than what he actually was, why he did what he did and especially what his actual thoughts were behind the path he took.

And the God-Emperor that becomes a Chaos God doesn't become a Chaos God of Order, though it looks similar. What he actually becomes is the Chaos God of things like Tyranny, Xenophobia and all those aspects of the Imperium that make it the horror show it is. That's not to say that the Emperor the Man can't be consumed by the Chaos God of Tyranny. It all depends on how prepared to escape the birth of that chaos god the fragment that's left is.
 
Icipall said:
So, where do the other gods we know of (Chaos Gods, Chegorach, Isha, GEoM, Gork and Mork) stand on this powerscale? Also, is Malal/Malice canon to this quest?
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Cegorach and Isha are both on the high end of Major, while the remainder are all Great Gods.
random_npc said:
So, in embers, Great gods are so difficult to kill even other Great gods can't do it, are you keeping that here? or could a Great god who managed to beat another slay them?
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Pretty much. It's the reason why the Eldar Pantheon and the Emperor couldn't kill three sleeping Great Gods back then, and why things are so turbofucked today. Chaos might not be unstoppable in the way that the Inquisition believes it, but it is immortal.
 
Swordomatic said:
Cegorach and Isha are both on the high end of Major, while the remainder are all Great Gods.

Pretty much. It's the reason why the Eldar Pantheon and the Emperor couldn't kill three sleeping Great Gods back then, and why things are so turbofucked today. Chaos might not be unstoppable in the way that the Inquisition believes it, but it is immortal.
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Is there any way to knock a Great God down to merely Major?
 
Swordomatic said:
You'd have to dethrone them from their Astral Thrones. Which includes things like War and Fate, things that the Eldar Pantheon had plenty of challengers for.

If the Eldar Pantheon couldn't do that, you probably can't.
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I thought you said the only way to "dethrone" a god from their throne was to destroy them - am I misremembering? Not that it matters, the question appears to be academic either way in this case...
 
The best we can probably do is, via alliance with the Eldar and Necrons at various points, significantly weaken the hold the Chaos Gods have into the materium and limit the power Chaos gains by:

1. Ensuring Ynnead is born safely instead of the halfassed way (thereby keep the Imperium from getting fucked up by its birth). Which will weaken Slaanesh and potentially be a path towards rebirth of more Eldar gods to help contest the thrones and reduce the power the Chaos Gods get.

2. Get Necrons to seal/dispel the various Warp storms and daemon worlds which allows the Chaos Gods easier access to the materium. While the Necrons are not at their height, the only faction with a chance to do the above are the Necrons.
 
Pyro Hawk said:
The normal interpretation of how to solve this paradox is that it's not strictly speaking the Emperor that becomes the Fifth Chaos God. Basically it takes the stance that there's two 'aspects' if you will to the Emperor. The Emperor the Man and leader of the Imperium, who absolutely wouldn't fall to Chaos... And then there's the God-Emperor. Which has the Emperor the Man as part of him, but isn't just them. Hell, they're actually fairly divergent thanks to the fact their entire existence on what people believe the Emperor did, rather than what he actually was, why he did what he did and especially what his actual thoughts were behind the path he took.

And the God-Emperor that becomes a Chaos God doesn't become a Chaos God of Order, though it looks similar. What he actually becomes is the Chaos God of things like Tyranny, Xenophobia and all those aspects of the Imperium that make it the horror show it is. That's not to say that the Emperor the Man can't be consumed by the Chaos God of Tyranny. It all depends on how prepared to escape the birth of that chaos god the fragment that's left is.
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Also, something to keep in mind is that Chaos lies to everyone and everything on a fundamental level.

But that also means it lies to itself. It must lie to itself that it is actually without form or order. It never was. It intrinsically possesses order. Else the very thing that the Chaos Gods represent? They become meaningless. Khorne requires there to be something able to fight. Nurgle requires there to be something ordered to become disordered. Slannesh and Tzeentch literally require intelligent life able to enjoy emotion or plot, and intelligent life is amongest the single most heavily ordered things to exist. A Chaos that causes total chaos stops existing as it becomes a formless mass of warp energy.

Chaos likes to say it wants to destroy the universe to itself...but this is a lie. It doesnt want to. Because victory means death for the gods. Ironically, Chaos needs Order to survive. This is why a Chaos God of Order is perfectly possible. It is pointing out the intrinstic lie at the heart of the Gods that even they do not wish to have pointed out: They rather continue the great game forever than win it. As for his own lie? Order's lie is simple: He seeks total order...but such a thing would bring existence to a total freeze. Nothing ever happens, nothing ever changes. Everything is perfectly still: Forever. He will never become more powerful. And he will die. And deep down, he wants to ever onward become more powerful. So he will never truly want total order.
 
Chaos never really claimed to be called 'chaos', that is more a name others give them to express what they do. If you look at what the Dark Gods prefer to be called you get things like 'the Pantheon, the Primordial Annihilator' etc... the enemy of the Four is not Order, unless you mean the kind the necrons bring where they are hedged out of the material world altogether. The enemy of chaos is moderation. It is taking the things the dark gods twist and doing them without falling into a well of madness and ever more extreme sacrifices as you seek out purity of feeling and expression in that domain.

So you cannot really have a Chaos God of Order because Order is not an emotion for a god to take to an extreme. Things that promote order and conformity sure, Tyranny, Faith, Blind Devotion, but not Order.
 
Right so I know that it's a touchy subject considering it's what happened in current 40 K but... what are the odds she can bring papa Smurf back?

if any of theLoyal sons can break the status quo with her help it is him. He's the best bureaucrat the universe has ever seen and help streamline and finish what he was trying to fix ages ago. With her helphe can actually do what he wants to do. She can help walk him through the whole divinity thing and handle it better then his current self.

The only thing keeping him down is the posion in him. If she can undemon a demon Primarch? She can bitch slap that posion out of him with and then slap him awake without breaking stride.

that would probably cause chaos to shit it's pants.

Bonus if we stop by the rock and get the Lion to snap out of his Sulk and do his god damn job.
 
Cjdavis103 said:
Right so I know that it's a touchy subject considering it's what happened in current 40 K but... what are the odds she can bring papa Smurf back?

if any of theLoyal sons can break the status quo with her help it is him. He's the best bureaucrat the universe has ever seen and help streamline and finish what he was trying to fix ages ago. With her helphe can actually do what he wants to do. She can help walk him through the whole divinity thing and handle it better then his current self.

The only thing keeping him down is the posion in him. If she can undemon a demon Primarch? She can bitch slap that posion out of him with and then slap him awake without breaking stride.

that would probably cause chaos to shit it's pants.

Bonus if we stop by the rock and get the Lion to snap out of his Sulk and do his god damn job.
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Biomancer Pandora could have literally slapped Guilliman and healed him.

Diviner Pandora can't do that. It'll probably involved a quest chain requiring Cogerach's help and might or might not involve trying to progress Ynnead's birth.

Also, even after bringing him back, we'll probably have to convince Guilliman that things can change. IMO he was basically suicidal and threw himself into battle until something brought him down because he didn't want to deal with the intractable shitshow the Imperium is.
 
aceraptor said:
Biomancer Pandora could have literally slapped Guilliman and healed him.

Diviner Pandora can't do that. It'll probably involved a quest chain requiring Cogerach's help and might or might not involve trying to progress Ynnead's birth.

Also, even after bringing him back, we'll probably have to convince Guilliman that things can change. IMO he was basically suicidal and threw himself into battle until something brought him down because he didn't want to deal with the intractable shitshow the Imperium is.
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I imagine " look I slapped one of your brothers back to sanity after he was turned into a demon for 10,000 years." Is fairly good way to bring him around
 
Icipall said:
Swordo has said that we can bring him back, we're just going to require help since we're not a biomancer.
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We should consider checking if not-Dad can help. He was capable of healing Primarchs (he's done it to Corax), is Anathema to Chaos, is lucid enough to hold a relatively long conversation, and would easily see the benefit to humanity of "fixing" Guilliman even if he doesn't actually care for him. We might not like the Man on the Throne, but that doesn't mean we should discount him. He's the strongest God we know and likely the easiest one to convince. And canonically, he can create semi-immortal Saints and such, suggesting he's likely got the power and ability to perform miracles.

Even if he can't snap his fingerbones and heal him, Emps might have some insights given he is a genius at science and warpcraft, as well as being the creator of the Primarchs.
 
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