Into that Vast and Unrelenting Darkness (40K Xeno Civilization Quest)

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[] The Captain allowed it: The intelligence they had given had proven useful, and what accounts it gave of life on this world didn't indicate the 'grotz' were treated with anything approaching dignity and empathy, and the Directorate DID have laws for allowing the rescue of refugees. Besides, technically speaking, it wasn't a violation of the prime directive: as shown by them crashing their whale into the Endeavor, the inhabitants of Monstro did in fact have space travel in addition to warp travel: the Directive never specified that it had to be technologically assisted space travel. A loophole that would land the captain in extreme hot water (and one that would likely be closed immediately), it would likely cause her to get a citation for improper conduct and some form of formal penalty for the action, but it would be accepted. Gain 1 Grot Refugee. Kyte lands in hotter water with Directorate.

can't bring myself to not let this dude come along but it uh def not a good idea to let a bunch of his friends come along either due to them being a whole new species, we don't know if they could eat our protiens how they will intergate ect feels like a accpetable comprise


[ ] Gravity: The anti-gravity systems of the Endeavor were one of the major things that kept your ships from tearing themselves apart when they moved. Damage wasn't horrible, but even at 4/5th capacity, it meant that when you launched there would be considerable damage from the stress of escaping Monstro's gravity well.

stop the ship tearing itself apart from when leaving

[ ] Communications: Right now, it wasn't just power that was at a premium: by bringing comms back on, the engineers would free up a massive amount of bandwidth, enough to hopefully allow the spirits of the ship to piggyback on the systems, letting you rouse them from their forced dormancy.

this will synergize with the below action in waking our spirits up which will massively improve current situation

[ ] Rouse the Machina: The Endeavor only had a few Machina in its crew: Navigation, Power, Security, and one in the main Mag-Tek Altar. Each of these technomantic spirits could prove the difference between life and death, with their arcane abilities being capable of empowering the ship to greatly improve performance.

syngerize with commucation to get the spirits up and going and get the really big ones up

[ ] Rouse the Drones: Meanwhile, the Drones were far, far more common: enough to effectively double the workforce, and right now, all hands on deck were needed. If they were brought back online, it would mean the repair of the ship would go immensely faster and the security team would be greatly reinforced.

double the repair speed so stuff get repaired better and quicker too and gets our secrtruiy safer too
 
[ ] The Captain suggested the Grot bring his friends

As much as this option appeals to me, Kyte hasn't had the greatest luck (promoted because Toxel retired, had to try and deal with Mt. Wonder in her first years on the chair, and now this). I think there could be serious odds that she could lose the captain's chair entirely, and I don't want that to happen. With that said, this is what I'm currently thinking:

[] Plan: Due Diligence
-[] The Captain allowed it
-[] Engines
-[] Communications
-[] Ward against the Whale-Song

"The Captain allowed it" feel a bit more likely for Kyte to get away with, the Engines will give us the thrust to take off, Communications will let us revive some of the ship spirits, and the Ward against the Whale-Song will hopefully prevent a repeat of the crash-landing on the way out. On a less pressing note, I think it might be worth prioritizing the Engineering Improvization Doctrine as soon as we can.
 
So, grots.

Grots are part of the Ork ecosystem, and thus shed orkish spores, which on certain accumulations creates orks.

They're also cunning vicious bastards that learn quick.

So, on one hand, bringing along just one gives us an opportunity to learn their biology without the spread of spores.

On the other hand, spreading spores gives us a chance at more teething and learning before we properly engage orks that are capable of making their own ships. The big waaghs. Having an ork infestation means we get more veterans of dealing with an ork infestation after all. And it takes a while of letting orks build up to get a waagh with machinery.
 
About the ork spores issue. It's best that we learn about it now, with one ship, with just a couple specimens, before we get invaded by orks and have to learn how to deal with the problem when there's thousands of orks on the planet causing issues. Edit, also with our tech I could see us figuring out either how to inhibit Orkoid growth to keep it to just grots, or figuring out how to use Living metal or something else in order to prevent the spread of ork spores.
 
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Orks are not worth the trouble of working with, at least not in canon. They are a defective weapon of the War in Heaven not a civilization, the defective part being the one where they are not subjugating the galaxy as Kork. Their culture, their technology and their drive to wage eternal war are all built in. No doubt with the right social incentives one could channel those to fight your enemies for a time, but as they grow bigger and bigger with the advancement of the Greenskin Ecosystem I really cannot think of a non terrible way to keep them from getting entirely out of control and killing us all.

I think we should refuses.
 
refuse, dear god just eat the discontent...the orks are NOT worth the problems they will spread. Not to mention orks tend to pop up anywhere you dont want them too...if they spread to our worlds were kind of fucked, as the more fighting happens, the more the orks grow.

which accelerates their development into a horrifying WWWWAAAAGGGGHHHH, which only head-capping even works on them. at least till they become BEAST orks...which case pray you can get them all before they continue the re-evolution back into Krork.
 
I mean hell if the discontent gets bad enough we can just fire the crew and hire new ones that listen to orders better. That would no doubt cost some time in dock, but compared to 'your planet now has a Greenskin problem' that is nothing.
 
We know nothing about ork spores in character, though, so it feels wrong to use that as justification.

Plus, feral orks are a relatively safe way to blood recruits.
 
Negation said:
Ork Spores.
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But potential of combat thralls, since orks indvidually, and sometime as a warband when forced by their warboss, are perfectly fine working as mercenaries for other species when they realize they can get valuables, food and fight out of it, to the point they sometime take tactics and habits of people they fight against/for, even if most of them finds latter rather unorky
 
dgr11897 said:
About the ork spores issue. It's best that we learn about it now, with one ship, with just a couple specimens, before we get invaded by orks and have to learn how to deal with the problem when there's thousands of orks on the planet causing issues. Edit, also with our tech I could see us figuring out either how to inhibit Orkoid growth to keep it to just grots, or figuring out how to use Living metal or something else in order to prevent the spread of ork spores.
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Kork were made by a race of godlike immortal psykers who ruled the galaxy for hundreds of millions of years to be the ultimate weapon of their final war. I do not think we with out 'barely has FTL' levels of tech can deal with that.
 
RandomDwarf said:
which accelerates their development into a horrifying WWWWAAAAGGGGHHHH, which only head-capping even works on them. at least till they become BEAST orks...which case pray you can get them all before they continue the re-evolution back into Krork.
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Yeah that's not really how orks work. The idea that they re-evolve back into Krork after snowballing enough is mostly fanon: canon what we see they just get bigger, greener, and bigger weapons. As for the Beast, even in canon the exact nature of the Beast and why they were so weird is extremely vague and it's entirely possible they weren't a naturally occuring orkish phenominon so much as them accidentally generating a once in a billion years freak of nature.

(Beyond that I don't really care for the War of the Beast novels or their depiction of Orks in general honestly, for mostly the same reasons as listed in Angron Quest by Maugan Ra: structurally it is not an ork story, it is a necron story in greenface: it's why I'm willing to treat the Beast as an extreme outlier instead of something Orks can just become.)
 
Shine said:
We know nothing about ork spores in character, though, so it feels wrong to use that as justification.

Plus, feral orks are a relatively safe way to blood recruits.
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The captain has a perfectly good reason as far as I can see: Prime Directive. If we have to deal with its negative impacts we might as well use it when we know we are about to have an angry green tribble situation.
 
As a side note I would like to propose a method for "taming" the orks, blood sports, and semi-formalized combat. My understanding is ultimately that Orks want big fights. They want to fight foes in brutal combat. We have drones, Orks don't mind fighting robots. So every few months or years we have a big fight with them in a location we set up before hand. The Orks get their big fights, we don't get raided by orks. Might work, might not. Whatever the case I feel like we could use drone bloodsports to help keep any orks we integrate satisfied.
Shine said:
We know nothing about ork spores in character, though, so it feels wrong to use that as justification.

Plus, feral orks are a relatively safe way to blood recruits.
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krahe said:
But potential of combat thralls, since orks indvidually, and sometime as a warband when forced by their warboss, are perfectly fine working as mercenaries for other species when they realize they can get valuables, food and fight out of it, to the point they sometime take tactics and habits of people they fight against/for, even if most of them finds latter rather unorky
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These are also reasons I want to take Grots. Also, we would doubtless be using some basic procedures to counter pathogens that might be harmful to tekket or our environment, which would catch the ork spores, plus I imagine we'd give them at least something of a biological study when they come aboard, which would also catch it. So "Ork spore infestation" is not a huge issue. Also it's going to be a single small group's worth of spores, that'll maybe cause a minor infestation, but only if we really drop the ball on it and also sleep on dealing with it.
 
DragonParadox said:
I mean hell if the discontent gets bad enough we can just fire the crew and hire new ones that listen to orders better. That would no doubt cost some time in dock, but compared to 'your planet now has a Greenskin problem' that is nothing.
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well, after this crash plus the normal damage for warp travel, I would want dock time no matter what.

for the grabbing of the grot, at most I would want to just get the one(and with orc repruduction, Pretty sure this would lead to us getting alot more, If we dont detect it, and if we do If we want it). I dont want our captain to get in major trouble. (even If im expecting the grot to try and betray us at some point)
 
[ ] Weapons [Nuclear Weapons]: A missile was ultimately just a shuttle with a payload. And a payload was just a clumsily designed reactor. By flash-converting the ships nuclear arensal into more thrust and more power, the ship would have to sacrifice her strongest weapons to do this, but escape would be far more likely.

This feels very on theme, what with the nuclear-kits-for-kits thing.
 
Like, actually, allow me to state this definitively because it annoys me to no end in my 40K stories when people posit this:

The Krork are extinct. They are not coming back. Orks who snowball enough do not become Krork, they just become more orky orks. Whatever future the Orks have, however they evolve or devolve or diverge from their baseline, they will never become Krork again. They can become something new, they could become better or worse, but they will never become what they were aeons ago: the potential for that was lost the moment the first proto-ork said 'Mork Gork'.

Beyond that I would also suggest people abandon a lot of their headcanons here when it comes to orks period: I am not Red Flag, I am not using the ideas postulated for his work, his quest has specific themes and ideas it's trying to explore and convey about monsters vs people that inform how he depicts orks that would not suit this quest nor its intended thematics. (And to be clear, this isn't a dig: Red Flag's quest is great, but like it really gets tiring to see their worldbuilding that's specifically tailored to their quest and the ideas contained therin get repeated as canon every time I write a 40K work).
 
I think the Kork question is rather moot anyway, any spores we get to not have to become the Beasts (a pan-galactic threat) to cripple our single planet civilization. A regular ork waagh will do.
 
Something else I'd like to say/argue. Tekket have had their people worked to death at the hands of the destroyers, enslaved and put in work camps. I feel like, at least so far, an overall theme of the tekket has been "Being better than the monsters that shaped us". Are we really going to sit there and ignore it when there's an entire people enslaved and worked to death? Or will we take who we can, for now, because anything is better than nothing at all.

Also I feel like this is supposed to be less about the ork side of the problem, since IC we don't even know about any of that, and more about the prime directive, and how we treat it on the first occasion it really gets stressed. In this situation, do we put our empathy first, or do we put the law before what our individual people think is right.
 
The Bird said:
Yeah that's not really how orks work. The idea that they re-evolve back into Krork after snowballing enough is mostly fanon: canon what we see they just get bigger, greener, and bigger weapons. As for the Beast, even in canon the exact nature of the Beast and why they were so weird is extremely vague and it's entirely possible they weren't a naturally occuring orkish phenominon so much as them accidentally generating a once in a billion years freak of nature.

(Beyond that I don't really care for the War of the Beast novels or their depiction of Orks in general honestly, for mostly the same reasons as listed in Angron Quest by Maugan Ra: structurally it is not an ork story, it is a necron story in greenface: it's why I'm willing to treat the Beast as an extreme outlier instead of something Orks can just become.)
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Honestly, I think Orks can re-evolve back into Krork if they snowball enough. The thing is, it can't just be snowballing. Because if 'just add more Ork' solves the issue, then the more 'energy efficient' solution will be to just add more Ork. Thus no Krork or even the oddity that is the Beast.

As for the Beast? That's probably the 'standard' result of the conditions to recreate the Krork these days. Particularly because it's near-certain that the Ork are either an incomplete or faulty deactivation state of the Krork or something went seriously wrong with them after the Old Ones were taken off the board which mean that one of the other survivors of the War in Heaven broken them. Whether that be the Eldar because the Krork were going on a rampage conquering the galaxy, the Necrons because everyone else had gone into hiding and the Krork were the last thing standing in the way of their conquest of the galaxy so they crushed them only to promptly betray the C'tan and trigger the situation which ended up with them entering the Great Sleep, or something else?

Basically irrelevant. It means more or less the same thing in the end. Which is that in order to recreate the Krork you need to fulfil at least the three conditions of: a large enough Waaagh! to generate the psychic energy to power the recreation process, a restraint which prevents the Waagh! from successfully winning fights for a long enough period of time the Orks start adapting (the Imperium pacifying the galaxy to the extent Orks were basically 'only something the most unsettled frontiers need to worry about' in the Post-Heresy time period counts for the Beast) and most crucially of all, some twist to things which mean 'intelligent and more capable Orks' is not an effective solution.

Or in other words, Krorks will only get recreated when a problem arises that a massive group of warring Orks can not ever overcome, no matter how developed the Orks become because they're still the undisciplined maniacs that are the Orks at 'heart'. The Beast is what happens when a mockery of discipline and order is all that's needed because they get most of the way to Krorks with things like diplomacy (accept subjugation or we crush you and do it anyway), more ordered combatants and widespread distribution of the high ends of the Ork tech tree. The Beast is near certainly going to be enough to solve the problem.

Of course, if something happens which slams that 'twist' into the Orks' Waaagh! field then you can get Krorks much easier than this. However, the only entities that are both powerful enough and capable of doing this in the modern WH40k Galaxy are likely the Tyranids if they really fucked up doing something psychic (hilariously unlikely considering how perfect the conditions for the right twist would have to be), the Emperor who absolutely has to know enough to avoid causing said twist at all costs even if it means collapsing whatever he is doing into a different fail-state and starting anew, the Eldar as a whole who ignore the Clown telling them to stop for most versions of the Krork that have been thought up (just as unlikely as it'd probably have to be the Ynnari doing this) and the Chaos Gods. Maybe the Necrons as well, but I figure they probably fall under the same heading as the Emperor of 'Hell no, and we know how to stop it happening by accident' except even more so.

As for the Chaos Gods causing it? I figure that whilst they are the most likely to accidentally cause it... They probably also are the ones that are completely incapable of creating a 'true' revival of the Krork because just the nature of the energy-that-is-theirself means whilst it could give the needed 'twist', said twist is always going to be both incomplete for a full revival and 'corrupted/unbalanced' in such a way as to prevent the 'revived' Krork from being able to auto-correct their 'War' field into the 'true' format. It is Chaos we are talking about here.

Edit: Whoops, just saw you Word of God'd the topic as I was typing this up. Though I think your Word of God works pretty well with what I said above? It's just you are a bit more extreme in your interpretation that no matter what, the Krork can't be restored to what they were. Maybe something new created from the Orks that is like the Krork, but not the Krork of Old.

Which fair enough, a perfect restoration is only possible if the 'anti-corruption protocols' the Krork had can be kicked back into gear which is what that 'twist' I talked about could be. Whereas you have basically said that those anti-corruption protocols got completely overwritten and there's no remaining complete copies of what the original protocols were to overwrite the corrupted 'programming' with.
 
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