Dragon Kings in the 41st Millennia (Exalted/40K Empire)

Although the DKs don't know it yet but doing anything to slow down or halt the formation of the Great Rift is a very good thing to do.

Whilst a mature Realm would do better than most dealing with the consequences the sheer horror afterwards is just mind-boggling.

Plus reality is perilously close to just dissolving and everything falling into the Warp forever.
 
Cyberize and Roll Out

Oh, that's good.

but understand that you lack the use of wheel based technology. It kind of made me sad honestly.

I...wow, yeah. Somehow that completely eluded me. Maybe 'the wheel' is a mystery revealed to us by the Great Maker? Or perhaps 'roll out' is a production term...hmm.

There is also a debate between building light infiltration ships which can move espionage teams to counter the deadly cult building work of Team Chaos or the warships needed to fight the Despoiler in the sky.

We'd want Stalking Mantis ships for this, obviously, and Prepare for the Imperium, but what else would help with a shadow war here? Also, could we use the Automatorium to support research into assassin droids? I'm not expecting the full effect, but just another dice to help by serving as the facilities and personnel who're likely going to be building the darn things seems reasonable, right? Sorta like Boston Dynamics doing research. ...yeah, on second thought maybe that is asking for trouble. Still wanna do it tho

Also, how many Globes do our advisors think we should bring to the party? "One per Blackstone Fortress we want to save", but how ambitious are we regarding Talismans of Vaul?

Does the DC reduction for Tree Spires replace or stack with providing ships to do stuff? Similarly, does Treel give a bonus to tree spires (given that it's a tiny megaproject to enhance his planet) or not (because the successes required are too few/is already providing the bonus and that's why the numbers are as low as they are)?

Would a Jade Ramship with a Heavy Concussive Essence Power Ram be doing 2 or 3 levels of damage on a successful attack? Furthermore, would such a ship disproportionately benefit from Godspeed Motivators as an engine?

I want to say ships are more important but that may be me not understanding what the grace thing does. My 40k knowledge says ships are a required bit of the stick waving package and my exalted knowledge is limited to "wow that's cool but I don't understand how it works."

I'd be happy to help explain Exalted stuff if you had specific questions. And yeah, on some reflection the ships are at least more time-sensitive so that's where I'll be focusing...most of my efforts.

Plus reality is perilously close to just dissolving and everything falling into the Warp forever.

Invading Daemonworlds and closing the Maelstrom are on my list of intermediate-to-long-term goals. So is neutering the Dark Eldar as a faction by invading Commoragh, but that's more 'long term' than 'intermediate'. We'll need more Dragon Kings and a whole lot more jade obelisks (obol-isks?), but it's something we...could probably do? Provided some other faction like the 'nids or humies don't jump on us while our back is turned, so....
 
Also, how many Globes do our advisors think we should bring to the party? "One per Blackstone Fortress we want to save", but how ambitious are we regarding Talismans of Vaul?
All of them, that is how ambitious we are in this. We will completely foil the Despoiler's contingency plans to weaken the Imperium, and maybe secure one or two of the fortresses for the Eldar and ourselves.
 
All of them, that is how ambitious we are in this. We will completely foil the Despoiler's contingency plans to weaken the Imperium, and maybe secure one or two of the fortresses for the Eldar and ourselves.

I kinda get 'all of them' but we're restricted to 2/turn at best. As far as I know we're looking to get 1 for the fortress the Eldar intend to attack, and maybe a second for something. I'm wanting clarification on this point though.

Also, Buy Two Get One Free's cost was reduced from 21 sux to 19 sux with the introduction of Factory-Cathedrals. I'm grateful for the reduction, but it just seems a bit...surprising, given how other ships and equipment are costed. Would building skyremes in a shipyard be possible?

Some objectives I'd like to meet in the near future, most but not all linked to the Gothic War:
-Get Tree Spires up. I think we can do this in one turn but would require general AP to do so.
-Complete A Core for Everyone. I think we can do this in one turn but would require a Factory Cathedral (which is a bottleneck)
-Complete Standardization. I think we can do this in one turn but would require a Factory Cathedral.
-Complete the colonization of Tocha. I think we can complete this in one turn but would require the use of a pair of Atelier manses and the Treel templeship (and logistics use). Some degree of chance involved but 20/24 locked in doesn't look half bad.
-Establish local defenses for Tocha, to include a 3 ship squadron of Skyremes and a Night-Faring-Gem class station. (I'm prioritizing defenses in systems with importance to the Loom of Fate for what I hope are obvious reasons)
-Further our small craft advantages (namely establishing the Skyweavers Training Zone and looking at research for either Warbirds Mk. III or Rocs 2.0)
-Build temples to remaining gods.
-Build the CCI. Better done sooner than later, can be done in a single turn.
-Cap the manses in Ophelis, which I presume are a prerequisite for being able to build the (greater?) manse that allows for easier godforging, which is something I want to see
-Continuing Grace, because the sooner it's done the sooner we benefit.

A thought; should we have access to human worlds (ideally low tech human worlds unconnected with the Imperium) we could send Dragon Kings in as missionaries, and support Little Beam in recruiting Half-Castes that I am assuming will come across as roughly as powerful as Living Saints (not that the two are identical, but 'glowing golden humans who have incredible powers' covers a surprising amount of ground). In addition to being able to uplift them and get a planet to Praise the Sun, we could (sort of) get access to Solar Charms again! Technically Half-Castes have to learn their charms from a Solar, but I'm assuming that between Little Beam, Nysela, and the Aurichim their martial abilities are fairly adequately covered, and for the other 80% of charms...well, we have memory crystals, right? Having a human who speaks with Authority vouching for us with one hand and using the other to smite orks and daemons should be an interesting diplomatic wrinkle for the Imperium. We have a list of human habitations nearby, we can make this happen. Maybe. Probably.
 
I kinda get 'all of them' but we're restricted to 2/turn at best. As far as I know we're looking to get 1 for the fortress the Eldar intend to attack, and maybe a second for something. I'm wanting clarification on this point though.
There are only six blackstone fortresses we if we start next turn with 2/turn we can produce enough for all of the fortresses before the 12th BC should be half over (or three quarters over).
 
But are we going to be able to equip all half dozen fortresses? I doubt it.
Really, the only hard parts I can see are getting the Imperials to let us equip them on the Blackstone fortresses they control and the acquisition of the few Abaddon takes. The number of globes we get done are our limit on how many fortresses we can secure, I would rather we have more than we are able to secure then have the opportunity to acquire all of them and not have the globes needed to secure them. Besides any extra we have left over can be used on our ships or given to the Imperium so that they can better understand what we have to offer as allies.
 
Also, how many Globes do our advisors think we should bring to the party? "One per Blackstone Fortress we want to save", but how ambitious are we regarding Talismans of Vaul?

As mentioned six fortress exist. You know Abaddon will TRY to take them all but he only truly needs one. He also TRULY NEEDS one. While you could in theory prevent the loss of the other 5 you KNOW he will do Whatever he needs to get one and you do not have divination and anti-divination pockets deep enough to out spend him to prevent his minimal success, at best you can force him down to that minimal success.

because the successes required are too few

Mostly this one.

Would a Jade Ramship with a Heavy Concussive Essence Power Ram be doing 2 or 3 levels of damage on a successful attack?

One from ramming, one from Jade, one per power, one per two extra successes do to Heavy, ship can go up to 6 without being harmed I think.
Momentum to Ram needed is one less, success also drains two momentum from opponent and the ram and board maneuver is more effective.

Furthermore, would such a ship disproportionately benefit from Godspeed Motivators as an engine?

no nigh-luminal, luminal or supraluminal ramming and if the circumstances arrive to give it a chance of happening the ship doing it dies

Also, Buy Two Get One Free's cost was reduced from 21 sux to 19 sux with the introduction of Factory-Cathedrals. I'm grateful for the reduction, but it just seems a bit...surprising, given how other ships and equipment are costed. Would building skyremes in a shipyard be possible?

Not really: Watsonian answer, they all have the ability to land as well as travel in sky and space and be effective militarily in all environments. Its complicated, ton for ton a skyship is just more magical than a vessel, its just a vessel has magnitudes more tons to work with. Doylist reason, I, as a Questmaster do not want to encourage swarms of small units any more than they already are. I from a management perspective prefer small fleets of more impressive units. There is only so much I will discourage this when its realistic, but that is why the discount is not more and their is no shipyard for skyships.

When things get settled and I can KNOW FOR SURE what you lot will do with Skyships I may alter that ruling, but at this point I do not want you to negotiate a discounted rate for skyships and work out a clever scheme to late for me to change my mind.
 
One from ramming, one from Jade, one per power, one per two extra successes do to Heavy, ship can go up to 6 without being harmed I think.
Momentum to Ram needed is one less, success also drains two momentum from opponent and the ram and board maneuver is more effective.

Also +2 to momentum rolls because of magical materials IIRC, right? Sounds like this'd be a terror to light and medium ships.

Not really: Watsonian answer, they all have the ability to land as well as travel in sky and space and be effective militarily in all environments. Its complicated, ton for ton a skyship is just more magical than a vessel, its just a vessel has magnitudes more tons to work with. Doylist reason, I, as a Questmaster do not want to encourage swarms of small units any more than they already are. I from a management perspective prefer small fleets of more impressive units. There is only so much I will discourage this when its realistic, but that is why the discount is not more and their is no shipyard for skyships.

My intent is to have each planet settled in the Tokat sector (or at least the five presumed Maiden's sites) defended by a trio of Skyremes. Is that going to be a problem?

I agree with the idea of our primary fleet being small but mighty, that was my intent to begin with. I'm just worried about being too top-heavy with our ships; an Ark Mechanicus is powerful, but an Ark Mechanicus without its escorts is vulnerable, you know?

To that end my (rough) plan for our naval forces looked something like this:
-subsector patrol & defense, sloop through chariots to snoop around unsettled or allied/neutral systems, Dragon King systems to have smallcraft swarms, defense satellites and in-system monitors like the Skyremes to ward off casual raids, additional forces called in as required
-sector level patrol and defense done as Templeship squadrons (and specialist ships as required/available), this is often what is tapped for larger deployments
-Expeditionary fleets are the Arks Draconis (Arks Draconii?) with attendant ships (Conquest Platforms and Directional Titans) sent to unquestionably dominate a given area, making use of one Ark's Gate ability (theorized but alluded to a few times this thread) to bring in units from the home systems to support their numbers as needed. Given our inclination to meddle, I imagine we'll keep these fairly concentrated and coordinating with the Eldar on various hotspots.

On the note of ships being discussed, how large would a garden ship need to be to be effective? Are we talking 'temple ship sized' or 'conquest platform plus'?
 
-subsector patrol & defense, sloop through chariots to snoop around unsettled or allied/neutral systems, Dragon King systems to have smallcraft swarms, defense satellites and in-system monitors like the Skyremes to ward off casual raids, additional forces called in as required

I eventually want to standardized these as some form of Space Defense force level. I just don't think we are there yet.

On the note of ships being discussed, how large would a garden ship need to be to be effective? Are we talking 'temple ship sized' or 'conquest platform plus'?

You could make something on a templeship but if you want the full power of an industrial Plantation you need 5 slots of normal vessel components or 1 station slot. You might be able to squeeze it down if you improve your spatial manipulating technology so the garden is bigger on the inside, but you need the sheer space to produce that much vegetation at this point. Or A quetzacoatl templeship dedicated to corn production or a comparable gimmick. A Maizeship? Even that would just be counting the temple as one of the five needed slots so a Maize based Templeship would be a FTL drive, temple, garden x4, and one slot for shields or something.
 
Just updating that I will probably not lock down the vote until the weekend and currently plan Gellar has 4 votes to plan Space Boats three votes so still anyones race.

While there are lots of minor differences the core one is that plan Gellar concentrates on building the Treel Templeship first while the Space Boat plan focuses on the Mosok Infiltraton ship

If we go two days without comment I may announce a lockdown timer early but otherwise assume its locked on the end of Friday.

by the way @Slamu, I may just be having a brain stall but what does " -[x] Temple ship research 3 AP " refer to?
 
Supporting research into making a Solar temple ship, basically adding 3 Anklok AP to the Pterok action of designing the ship class.
 
A thought; could we create Furnace Rhinos? I'm thinking something like 'suitable for places Anklok find pleasing and with at least trace Jade deposits (outside jade may be deposited to artificially make an environment suitable, but that's an ongoing expense as the Furnace Rhinos require semi-regular consumption of the material to remain healthy), they migrate along ley lines in a fashion that inspired the Order-Conferring Trade Pattern (and can augment its effects on the Wyld to a small degree), these beasts are useful mounts for garrison troops expecting to do battle with creatures of the Wyld, for artisans who require their body parts for crafting, and for foolhardy Anklok who just want to 'wrassle' one of the mighty creatures.'
 
A thought; could we create Furnace Rhinos? I'm thinking something like 'suitable for places Anklok find pleasing and with at least trace Jade deposits (outside jade may be deposited to artificially make an environment suitable, but that's an ongoing expense as the Furnace Rhinos require semi-regular consumption of the material to remain healthy), they migrate along ley lines in a fashion that inspired the Order-Conferring Trade Pattern (and can augment its effects on the Wyld to a small degree), these beasts are useful mounts for garrison troops expecting to do battle with creatures of the Wyld, for artisans who require their body parts for crafting, and for foolhardy Anklok who just want to 'wrassle' one of the mighty creatures.'


They would be creatable using the biothaumaturgy project rules. Basically we figure out what the third edition sorcerous working to make them would be and I convert that to a project you can do with your genesis labs which are good enough to enable basically any bio engineering based sorcerous working at terrestrial level easy and maybe low end celestial level. And there is some room for improvement on this limit. if you get a deity involved or custom design alchemicals to work in the genesis labs.

Once their are designed their would be further projects to propagate them and design units that rely on them or however they will be used.
 
Experimental Income and Cost Spoilers for eventual adding into turn budgets. Any comments, refinements or additions are welcome at this stage.

Planetary: Anklok/Mosok/Pterok/Raptok/General

Tokat: 7/7/7/7/28
Ophelis: 3/3/3/3/6

Total: 10/10/10/10/34

-Resource Extraction Limit: 0/19 (maximum possible bonus from easy to acquire raw materials (anything that requires effort to acquire and effort to render into usable form), including trade of same.

-Labor Exploitation Limit: 0/19 (maximum possible bonus from skilled slave labor, trade, or equivalent in finished high quality goods or services)

Resource Exploitation Sites
Jach'Uchil: temporary only
Underworld: Temporary only

Trade Routes
Kaukauna: none
Ulthwe: none
RT Lockhart: none

Time Limited Exploitation
Dying slaves: none for 0 turns
Bountiful but limited mines: none for 0 turns
Medical: [1] 1 upkeep for Nursery

Industrial: [9] 7 upkeep for Atelier; 2 upkeep for Factory Cathedral

RES: [0] 0 Resources Exploitation

Fleet: [2] 1 upkeep for three Skyreme; 1 upkeep for Ramship
-Logistics: [0] 0 upkeep for 0/0 support

Transportation: [2] 2 upkeep for gates

Military: [0] 0 upkeep for 0 special units.

Trade: [0] 0 trade routes

Total Costs: 14

Strategic Material Demand/Supply

1/1 x Celestial Mead: mostly consumed by deities via offerings

1/1 x Karmic Honey: Mostly used in either artifice, or to secure divine blessings (usually for artifice)

8/19 x Jade: Jade supply is not strained

1/1 x Moonsilver: Moonsilver is in extremely high demand for artifice, only producible via crucible.

3/5 x Elektrum: Magical Amber has a minor surplus to standard demands but limited

8/9 x Orichalcum: Wishmetal is able to meet current requirements although all spare finds use in religious icons or rituals.

8/15 x Adamant: Supply of adamant is sufficient but expansion of the Celestial City will consume much spare production.

0/0 x Soulsteel: no steady supply of soulsteel

0/0 x Starmetal: No steady supply of starmetal, extremely limited production via divine assistance and intense sources rituals.

0/0 x Adamantium: No steady supply of Adamantium

0/0 x Promethium: No current supply or demand for Promethium
 
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Working Title of the Thetis class is

"Abundant Feast Obscures Raging Lioness Before Mount Pelion"

Possible

"Immortal Guardian of Divinity"
"Subjugation through Divine Betrayal"
"Mother of the Lord of Myrmidons"

Thoughts?
 
Essence Drive II mini-turn
Huh, so it will effect what you can choose to apply during the Ship design mini-turn so you got some choices.

One! Due to some bad rolls and how the re-rolls may be applied I am giving you the choice. Default is Thetis class ship is built and Wondrous Globe is one away from completion but if we switched a reroll die we can make the Thetis be two away from completion and the Wondrous Globe can complete. Either one would be one good non-related or a short relevant Omake away from completion so keep that in mind.
[ ] Default, ship is ready, globe is almost ready
[ ] Change reroll, Ship is almost ready, Globe is ready to build.

Two!

Essence Drive as implied will be a choice. Since you plan on designing a ship in a miniturn you should make the choice so here is the relevant action from Essence Drive II.

Through a combination of refining the techniques available to our Savants and Sorcerous Engineers to produce essence thrusting effects and the essence accumulators that aide in powering them with new techniques learned through in depth study of Ork drive systems we have improved our drive systems for the Glory of the Unconquered Sun.

How exactly did we choose to improve our drives.

[X] Ramship Drive: Drives can go into a high power mode at just the right moment, heavily optimized to aide ramming actions. Double 9s when ramming or positioning to ram. Chariot, Pennant. Tech up adds more classes. Automatic selection.

Orky: You must make one choice from the Orky section.
[ ] Corsair Drive: By channeling aspects of Predator, Prey and essence of the Hunt, a Corsair drive is better in the long haul chases and escaping (or preventing escapes). Double 9s in pursuits, pursuer or pursued, sloop, Chariot, pennant. Tech up adds more classes.
[ ] Pagoda Drive: Drives are heavily optimized for efficiency in power and all saved space is used to install more essence accumulators. -1 power requirement in chariots and up. Improvements mean more discounts in larger ships.
[ ] Theion Drive: Drive is not stealthy but instead so blatant in declaring its presence observers learn nothing but that the Vessel in fact does indeed exist. Any Levels ups may allow ships with drive to cover ships without and for fleets to hide their numbers.
[ ] Surety Drive: Shroomborn design principles are applied... sparingly, to increase the simplicity of drive designs and reduce costs. Vessels cost -3 AP to build, tech up allows greater discounts for larger ships.
[ ] Burst Drive: Thorough study of the "Big Red Button" allows us to design a basic equivalent. Although it will be quite power hungry and somewhat unreliable. +2 power requirement, double 9 to positioning rolls. Can only be used every 1d6 turns. Tech up reduces die until you can use it reliably every other turn.

Non-Orky: You may apply this choice to the Ork or Non-Orky sections.
[ ] Night Drive: Emissions are dampened and ships are better able to hide their energy signatures. Double 9 for relevant rolls and you can attempt penalized rolls to ambush without having environmental effects. Pennant and smaller. Tech up increases size and eventually reduces penalties to ambush rolls. Tech ups may involve non Drive technologies.
[ ] Swift Drive: By increasing the size of our ships essence thrusters we can increase their stable sublight speeds and endurance over long haul operations. +1 speed, requires half a slot of extra space. Any. Expensive tech ups improve speed bonus but cost more power.
[ ] Claw Drive: By doubling the number of Essence Thrusters and channeling more power we can make ships more able to maneuver in combat, but at the cost of valuable hullspace. +1 to ship maneuver, consumes 1 extra slot and +1 power. Any. Expensive tech ups improve bonus but cost more power.
[ ] Minnikin Drive: Forgoing improvements all effort is spent on shrinking the size of components and how closely we can force components to slot together. Drive systems are shrunken as much as possible, + half a slot of space, chariot and up. Tech ups allow bigger ships to find more volume.
[ ] Robust Drive: Drive is made of robust materials and needs less maintenance. -1 logistics. Any. Tech up allows bigger ships to increase the discount.
[ ] Stable Drive: Carefully balances recoil and stabilizing a vessel as a gun platform. Grants double 9 to Direct Fire weaponry attacks, but not positioning rolls. Templeship or bigger. Tech up allows the drive to apply to smaller vessels.

Note: Ramship is auto chosen, 1 choice for Orky, 1 choice for non-orky. Non-orky choice can apply to an orky choice. Selecting the same choice starts progress to the most likely tech up from that specific drive. Both selecting Ramship will complete Ramship 2. All drives but the Surety add 6 AP to the cost of a design. Pagoda Drive was the default before I got creative and it will win in a tie. Combining drive types in a design is the province of higher levels of drive. IE choose a tier three function or combine two tier two functions... when you get to tier three drives. You only get to apply one to a design at this point.

*You can request your own choice just keep the existing choices in mind when coming up with ideas.
 
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For the Essence drive upgrade I don't know which to choose but there are some good looking choices. However for the Ship vs Globe choice, it is no real choice we need those Globes sooner to work on them (seeing as we currently have a limit on production).

[X] Change reroll, Ship is almost ready, Globe is ready to build.

//Edit: Alright I did not realize we would pick one from both types of choices, I apparently overlooked that.
[X] Surety Drive
[X] Robust Drive
 
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[X] Change reroll, Ship is almost ready, Globe is ready to build

[X] Surety Drive
[X] Robust Drive
 
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[X] Change reroll, Ship is almost ready, Globe is ready to build

[X] Surety Drive
[X] Robust Drive
 
[X] Change reroll, Ship is almost ready, Globe is ready to build

[X] Theion Drive
[X] Surety Drive
Flamboyant stealth is awesome. @StarJaunter, did the Sutra Batteries get done and do they have any additional benefit on Solar Templeships?
 
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