Ah, darn, I'm going back to Essence Dissecting Stare.
Echoes of Creation (30k/Exalted)
- Thread starter Yzarc
- Start date
- Crossover
Ah, darn, I'm going back to Essence Dissecting Stare.
so only the mind right? we have EGO-INFUSED PATTERN PRIMACY for the spirit manipulation resist, but that doesn't help with mental attacks?
- Location
- India
@Yzarc I think you misunderstood what I wanted to convey. What i mean say it possible to infuse Lorgar's genetic materials/blood with his consent upon population who willing to do so? Quest related example will be Anbulls while canon example will be how Sanguinary Priest drink Blood of their Primarch to forge a better connection to him/his mythos. May we can do it after Worldspirit is purified and Lorgar unify the whole planet to get maximum conceptual impact?
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It will not help with some mental attacks, of which I will note he has not used instead trusting in bribery which would cost him much more to deliver on (teaching us sorcery).
Yzarc
The Spark of Madness
You need gene-seed to stabilize TWs. Not specifically Lorgar's gene-seed.
As I said. You can still stunt buy it. Given you are facing the Shard, I am willing to allow it, just add it to the plan.
This is one of those things that you need to try and find out.
- Location
- India
Will such option provided by you or it will be write in option?
Welp... that is ominous. Put it back in. I'll see what I can do omake wise today or tomorrow.
Yzarc
The Spark of Madness
Not that ominous. Deathlords, even shards, are no joke.
The only advantage you have is that he has not been actually summoned and is projecting via the two undead daemons.
Kill them and his connection is cut. But while he is not here, he can still Social Fu you.
Hence why I am allowing it.
Sure, it is a valid write in but remind me of this later, if things calm down.
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It hungers
It Hungers
The midday sun was high in the sky, familiar ordinary, the cook-fires burned and steam wafted in savory streams from the cookpots, the children played, uncaring of the plans of chiefs and wizards. For them is was chores that were to be avoided, new games invented, new pranks to play. Life continued as it ever had for the tribe in spite of their long journey in spite of the battle far away. Indeed for many in the dribe it seems as if the battle has been won. What is the Shard of Winter to them? What is Winter? Almost you could laugh with them.
And yet...
The sand was cold underfoot, dead, some part of you whispered. How could sand be dead, it had never been alive? A part of you asked. Another chimed in with the nature of sedimentary stone. It had once been the shells of beasts at the bottom of an ancient ocean, compressed into rock, ground down into granules. So in a sense it was not dead.
Cold, empty dead.
That is not what you feel underfoot, that is not what you hear in the low, almost imperceptible hush between the voices of children, in the strange moments of stillness of the Ambull which knew no fear. It was dead this Essence in the way that people were alive yes and in the way that snails were, but also in the way that stars were alive, in the way that music and meaning were alive too. To all these things it was opposed, an echo that demanded silence.
Briefly you think of the insight that Lorgar had shared with you on the nature of Essence, that which you had recognized as true even as you could not in a thousand thousand years have come to it alone. This Death Essence was not of the Aethyr, Chaos incarnate, no more was it of matter alone rent of spirit. Somehow the chill in the sand, the silence in the air was opposed to both. It was, you admited grudgingly, a kind of balnace of its own, but... something escapes you.
You go eat, then turn remembering the New Ways, it would not do for the chief to be seem missing partaking in the New Ways. So you go to wash before the meal. Water for washing still seems as fantastical to you as streets paved with gold might seem to one of the men of the cities. For a moment you sit and watch the water going over your hands and down the drain.
Then it comes to you, not a flash of lighting, but the last pebble falling in place. You look upon its face in full. It is not a stable balance. Each element of the death Essence does not complement the other, it does not build upon it to blooming complexities. Rather it erodes, it consumes, first the living world, life, light warmth, then itself until nothing else is left. It hungers.
It must never be.
OOC: This feels a rather short, but it felt appropriate given what we are buying and why. Enjoy
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- Location
- India
I wonder where the Machine God exists on this spectrum.
(Looking suspiciously at how Autocthon shaped the Cult Mechanicum is...)
Being a ghost doesn't have to be that miserable, and it's arguably it's better than being eaten by daemons before or after your soul disintegrates into fragments.
Sure, he's totally a bastard. A lying bastard, at that, at least in his 1E incarnation. However, given how much of a crapsack setting Warhammer is, I think he can make a plausible case that's hard to refute with IC information that what he's offering is less bad than the status quo.
I'm now very tempted by this for Lorgar:
Article: Craft of the Primarch
System: All direct actions taken by Lorgar or his subordinates to directly maintain and directly defend against any attempt to cause or force them to betray, undermine, or abandon their Intimacies or from any attempt to corrupt their intimacies or anything else that would affect it negatively have their difficulty reduced by -Mythos or -3 which ever is higher. NOTE: They must be able to resist it for this to apply.
And read it twice. 'All direct actions...to...directly defend against'.
If the Shard of Winter starts talking to convince us to give up and we attack him to shut him up, this should trigger for Lorgar and Dharok. Depending on the interpretation this might also help with a wider range of other things, as the tribe are Lorgar's subordinates, and by trying to corrupt the Worldsoul this is arguably an attempt to undermine their intimacy to it. The Shard has certainly tried to persuade our tribe to abandon our Intimacy to the Worldsoul by leaving and letting him turn it into an undead, so everything we do on this expedition arguably counts.
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Honestly don't see much point in thunder warriors over space marines. They are better in raw strength which power armor makes largely irreverent. The space marines versatility and more importantly mass reproducibility, is what makes them so good, does not matter the problem the space marines can handle it. In terms of pure specialized ultra combat units just make more Custodes.
Some thoughts on the interlude. First, looking at timings:
The last update:
The interlude:
The canon 'retirement' of the Thunder Warriors
Here we can see the atemporal nature of the Warp. Lorgar's Mythos is echoing back in time to before he even emerged from his pod on Colchis.
Notably, we're talking about the Thunder Warriors forty years after the Emperor had them disappear in canon. This happened as by this date their instability was already manifesting and proving a problem. Now, what could have changed that? Presumably, something in Lorgar's geneseed gave the Emperor reason to think that the Thunder Warriors might be salvageable, so rather than having most of them killed off he instead put them on ice for a few decades while research proceeded.
That's a big change. Him not having betrayed his first genecrafted troops so blatantly sets, or rather, doesn't set an important precedent.
If he does decide to keep a substantial number of ex-Thunder Warriors around, particularly if he keeps them as a force independent of the Space Marine Legions, answering to their own 'Primarchs' and then him like the Custodes do, that's another big change. Particularly if they're kept as internal security forces as the update hints at, cracking down on rebellions on already conquered worlds while the space marines serve as expeditionary forces conquering new ones. Could lead to some interesting fractures later on.
Something else I expect everyone picked up on:
By context, this is on top of TDC. When I first read this I wasn't paying enough attention, so I misread it as psychic changes, and assumed this meant they were manifesting True Faith and psyker abilities given that Lorgar has also developed those.
However, it says 'physical changes'. Lorgar hasn't yet manifested any physical mutations, so I wonder what's happening. It could be that Dharok's Extra Speed is manifesting as he may also serve as a template given he shares (and expands on?) Lorgar's Mythos. It could be that this is a reflection of the possibility that we will take more physical mutations in future. I doubt we'll ever take Wings (unless we can take them as retractable Diablo angel style light projections, perhaps by pairing them with the Hidden Power merit), but I could see Dharok taking Increased Size and him and Lorgar taking the various mental and social boosts. Increased Size would certainly be something the Emperor's genwrights would notice.
I think the suggestion is, at least in part, that they could recycle the existing Thunder Warriors to make something superior to either baseline Thunder Warriors or Space Marines. If you have a unit of geneseed it may be more valuable to use it to stabilise a trained Thunder Warrior with decades of experience rather than uplift a child into a green space marine. Particular as the Space Marine-Thunder Warrior may be physically superior to a baseline Space Marine as well as much more experienced.
From then, it depends on how much the facilities and resources for augmenting Thunder Warriors overlap with those for making Space Marines or Custodes. If it's not complete then it might make sense to keep making some Thunder Warriors and using some geneseed to stabilise them. That's a partially a technical question, as well as a question of how much of a bunch of barely leashed psychopaths the Thunder Warriors are.
The last update:
The interlude:
The canon 'retirement' of the Thunder Warriors
Article: Kingdom of Urartu in 669.M30
Here we can see the atemporal nature of the Warp. Lorgar's Mythos is echoing back in time to before he even emerged from his pod on Colchis.
Notably, we're talking about the Thunder Warriors forty years after the Emperor had them disappear in canon. This happened as by this date their instability was already manifesting and proving a problem. Now, what could have changed that? Presumably, something in Lorgar's geneseed gave the Emperor reason to think that the Thunder Warriors might be salvageable, so rather than having most of them killed off he instead put them on ice for a few decades while research proceeded.
That's a big change. Him not having betrayed his first genecrafted troops so blatantly sets, or rather, doesn't set an important precedent.
If he does decide to keep a substantial number of ex-Thunder Warriors around, particularly if he keeps them as a force independent of the Space Marine Legions, answering to their own 'Primarchs' and then him like the Custodes do, that's another big change. Particularly if they're kept as internal security forces as the update hints at, cracking down on rebellions on already conquered worlds while the space marines serve as expeditionary forces conquering new ones. Could lead to some interesting fractures later on.
Something else I expect everyone picked up on:
By context, this is on top of TDC. When I first read this I wasn't paying enough attention, so I misread it as psychic changes, and assumed this meant they were manifesting True Faith and psyker abilities given that Lorgar has also developed those.
However, it says 'physical changes'. Lorgar hasn't yet manifested any physical mutations, so I wonder what's happening. It could be that Dharok's Extra Speed is manifesting as he may also serve as a template given he shares (and expands on?) Lorgar's Mythos. It could be that this is a reflection of the possibility that we will take more physical mutations in future. I doubt we'll ever take Wings (unless we can take them as retractable Diablo angel style light projections, perhaps by pairing them with the Hidden Power merit), but I could see Dharok taking Increased Size and him and Lorgar taking the various mental and social boosts. Increased Size would certainly be something the Emperor's genwrights would notice.
I think the suggestion is, at least in part, that they could recycle the existing Thunder Warriors to make something superior to either baseline Thunder Warriors or Space Marines. If you have a unit of geneseed it may be more valuable to use it to stabilise a trained Thunder Warrior with decades of experience rather than uplift a child into a green space marine. Particular as the Space Marine-Thunder Warrior may be physically superior to a baseline Space Marine as well as much more experienced.
From then, it depends on how much the facilities and resources for augmenting Thunder Warriors overlap with those for making Space Marines or Custodes. If it's not complete then it might make sense to keep making some Thunder Warriors and using some geneseed to stabilise them. That's a partially a technical question, as well as a question of how much of a bunch of barely leashed psychopaths the Thunder Warriors are.
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The point is you do not get a reputation for murdering your own soldiers when they are no longer convenient, a thing which tends to lead to rebellion.
Sure, which is why I am not arguing for 'better than the status quo', I am arguing for the greatest good for the greatest number. He would have to prove that letting him have the planet is not just better, it is best, that there are no batter options than him for the people of this planet. That is he would have to argue to an infernal that he is a better ruler than us.
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Thunder warriors are not nearly immortal like space marines, if anything they have below average lifespan for normal humans, with progressive insanity.
Your choices are send them into battle after battle until they all die off, kill them yourself, or risk them breaking and costing you an entire army, and even worse fleets.
The thing is, my reading is it doesn't have to be the best, it just has to be better than the alternative we can offer as competition. If he rules the Shadowplanet of Colchis, restores much of the DAoT infrastructure from the echoes echoes it left behind, and launches his own Great Crusade to save the souls of the galaxy's population from disintegrating and being eaten by daemons when they die, he should be able to make a strong case that this would be a greater good for the universe than what we want to do with the planet, as we don't have a known way to preserve planetary populations worth of souls after death. He does, as all those who die in a Shadowland rise as ghosts, IIRC. He doesn't need to tell the truth. He can lie, as long as it's a lie we don't know enough to call him on and is plausible given what we do know.
Do you have any thoughts on switching Lorgar's Mythos power to Craft of the Primarch? My reading is that it doesn't just reduce the DC of social or internal mental attempts to resist having your intimacies targets, but should probably also apply to combat or craft if they're actions taken to oppose someone who is trying to undermine Lorgar or his subordinates' Intimacies.
Or going out of control in combat in an orgy of violence to the degree they get massacre happy and (more importantly to the Emperor) disregard their commanders' orders.
The Emperor was a massive dick to them, but arguably that was inherent after he made them, at which point he was already planning to purge them, and by that point it was the least bad choice for him.
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What universe? We have not seen the universe. We would have to take his work on all sorts of things, the nature and value of of DAoT tech the fact that ghosts do not have a lifespan of their own after which they fade anyway. They do but that is almost immaterial, he cannot make an argument based on the universe or the galaxy in good time, he wants us off the planet long before we could establish if the people of Colshis agree with his judgement on where their souls should go if given all the information. Much less would he be able to argue that the people on all those other planets would agree to be conquered so that they might be saved from Chaos. By anchoring the charm not on objective reality but on the perceptions of humans on this planet for whom necromancy is scary we would not have to argue objective reality with him where he can weasel and lie, but on what that greatest number would think of him and his ghost ideas
Honestly I'd rather give Lorgar Mind of Steel and call it a day. Then everyone will be anchored Lorgar in his intimacies, none of which can be attacked and at least one of which is opposed to the Shard (his dislike of slavery), Dharok in his urge... that is clearly Evil and Fan in his rock solid belief that most people on the planet much less in the galaxy do not want to be ghosts presently and cannot be persuaded in good time that being ghosts is best for them.
*absolute silence*
That is the sound of all the damns many Space Marines gave about the 'risk'. The Emperor had a track record of killing his supersoldiers when he was done with them. Towards the end of the Crusade he clearly did not need as many Space Marines if any. If he did not want to be in that position he should not have made them with that flaw to begin with
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The Thunder Warriors where always a hack job, rushed into service to unify Terra, against the techno/chaos champions that ruled Terra. That was always known to everybody, even the Thunder Warriors. Emperor needed them so he could get the GC rolling before the Orks Warbosse's grow strong enough to rule uncontested forever.
I could make some snarky comments about how bad he seemingly is at hurrying, what with the century it took him to get off the planet or how no one seems to remember the necrons who won the War in Heaven in the first place, but that is not the point. The point was that those cut corners came back to haunt him because a bunch of marines were not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when it was potentially their head on the chopping block next. It does not matter if they were being fair to the poor wee Alpha plus warlord, what matters is that the reaction was predictable, but he did not account for it.
I'm clearly misunderstanding something here. I thought you were anchoring the charm to the concept of 'The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number'. That doesn't seem to be connected to what the people of Colchis think or agree with, or what anyone save Fan subjectively thinks at all. The Shard of Winter can tell a very convincing story about the nature of the wider universe and about what would be the greatest good for the greatest number of them. That's the issue with this particularly phrasing, as the goal isn't, 'What the people of Colchis would want?' GIven many of the people of Colchis are Chaos worshippers, that's a dangerous option in itself as well.
I can see the attraction of Mind of Steel. My thought about Craft of the Primarch is that in the right circumstances, which this may be, it can be used as a buff, as it doesn't limit itself to rolling to defend against social influence. It applies to any direct action taken to stop someone undermining or corrupting your intimacies or trying to make you abandon them
That should include, for example, killing them to make them shut up, capturing their minions so they can't get in our way when we try to kill them, and perhaps even things like taking actions them transforming the subject of the Intimacy in a way that would cause us to abandon the Intimacy.
I' not sure the Thunder Warriors did necessarily know what they were getting into.
I'm even more cynical about him. I think he did know account for their reaction, and that he left all the time bombs in the Legions deliberately. He was just arrogant enough to think he could arrange events so those bombs would go off one by one on his schedule, so he could get the space marine legions to kill each other off when he had no more use for them, and then have his personal forces clean up the few survivors. The Chaos Gods just detonated them all prematurely, all at once, and so empowered the leader of a coalition of rebels enough to harm the Imperium much more than he expected and to get into position to mortally wound him, none of which he expected.
Those fears where baseless and irrational. Thunder Warriors as mentioned prior did not have extended life span nor where they made using something a important as the Primarch Geneseed.
Space Marines where intended from the outset to be enteral champions, that would safe guard the IOM forever. Their is simply no reason to grant them Immortality otherwise.
Space Marines where intended from the outset to be enteral champions, that would safe guard the IOM forever. Their is simply no reason to grant them Immortality otherwise.
Unless longevity was an inherent part of the package that came with the Primarch's geneseed.
Also, space marines aren't immortal. They can die of old age, and seem to after a few hundred years of activity,* depending on the source (although they can mostly pause that by activating the sus-an membrane and hibernating). Blood Angels are noted to live longer, but they're literally vampires, so...
This is also why Hrud weapons that accelerate aging can kill them.
*Baseline of three hundred according to 2E, IIRC, extendable by various means including being interred in a Dreadnaught. The Heresy era space marines in the novels about that period were under the impression they were immortal, but that was probably just bullshit.
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It is the Greatest Good for the Greatest Number, not the Greatest Good inflicted upon the Greatest Number. The Chaos worshipers (and that term is used very lightly when it comes to the slaves who are the actual majority) are deceived about the nature of reality and their gods which is inherently bad as it prevents them from from seeking out a genuine better path for themselves. The way this is formulated would allow Chaos to present itself as an alternative as it would allow the Shard to, but one is too insane the other too prideful
I am using OOC information to construct a moral foundation that cannot be dissembled with a villain monologue but by the Shard of Winters subjecting itself to the judgement of people it seems so far beneath itself that it would never accept.
As you said we can always change this later, but for now this is no win for him.
That is nice to have, but it is just a -2, I'd rather rather focus on the foundation that is social defenses with how ominous some of the warnings have been.
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The thing about the Shard, is that if we're using the 1E Mask of Winter as his primogenitor, he's based on a master manipulator who was able to seduce and deceive an elder Sidereal. We need something that no matter what or how convincing a claim he makes we can arbitrarily reject.
That's why I want something that is based around aesthetics. You can argue the utilitarian calculus of whether using necromancy makes the universe a better place for its inhabitants. It's much harder to argue with the claim that necrotic essence is inherently ugly and the universe would be better without any of it, as it's not something that's subject to rational argument.
-3, as it's 'difficulty reduced by -Mythos or -3 which ever is higher.', but I do see your point...
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Thing is you can argue someone out of Aesthetics, it's harder but it can be done. But as a matter of simple logistics if we make the argument too laborious to make (since he would have to make it to the population of every single planet he takes and then prove that he has done so to Fan) the Shard is out of luck.