Last Light of a Dark Age (Warhammer 29K/Disco Elysium)

[MrRageQuit]

[X] Egophage: Masters of electronic warfare, egophages adopt the trappings of pneumatic psychic powers for a cybernetic age. Manipulating light in order to attack enemies from ambush and range, Egophages are snipers, commandos, and assassins.
[X] Warweave. Pull your hair into a tight and intricate spiral weave which focuses the power of your null field to disrupt electronic attacks. +1 INFOWAR (so long as Warweave is active).
[X] Petriform Gas. It starts as a coughing, a wheezing, released from a Koinon artillery shell. Then the crystals embed themselves in lungs, in the bloodstream, in the muscles. Within hours, the growths emerge on your skin. Within days, the crystal is fusing and clustering, eating the victim alive. Within weeks, the infection reaches their soul. There is no cure.

How in the name of the God-Emperor did Koinon, Cybaris and the Free Carnosans pull this historic upset off? It should literally be impossible.

Click to shrink...

Well this occurs to me:

BIONIC MOTHERBOARD: So said he: "If you truly knew, you could only weep. We will have such sights to show you."

EVENT HORIZON [Godly - Success]: And in this Mr. Morow did not tell a lie.

You did not remember these whispers then, inside the copse, when you awake. But in the years to follow, as you see more fully the wonders still to come, it will return to you.

And you will think often of what your nail really meant, that Mr. Morow did not tell a lie.

Click to shrink...

Perhaps I'm wrong, but it sounds like Cybaris had some shit up their sleeves.

 

[brat4ik]

[X] Combat Plugs
[X] Feral Machines

 

[The Froggy Ninja]

How in the name of the God-Emperor did Koinon, Cybaris and the Free Carnosans pull this historic upset off? It should literally be impossible.

Click to shrink...

So two things of note are the Petriform Clusters, several of which seem to have replaced major settlements and the Dawning of the Red Sun. Wiping out several economic and cultural centers with bioweapons is bad enough, but also the two most psychic nations throwing their best sorcery at each other could be a vulnerability to the Hydra, even if the War Wizard blurb didn't mention cruel gods and wanting people to scream before allowing them to die, which is pretty chaosy.

 

[7th Hex]

[X] Irontamer: Knights on machine-back, irontamers tame and control powerful sentient machines as war-mounts. Synchronicity between rider and machine can unlock ancient abilities and systems. Irontamers are scouts, lancers, and cataphracts.
[X] Egophage: Masters of electronic warfare, egophages adopt the trappings of pneumatic psychic powers for a cybernetic age. Manipulating light in order to attack enemies from ambush and range, Egophages are snipers, commandos, and assassins.
[] Warweave. Pull your hair into a tight and intricate spiral weave which focuses the power of your null field to disrupt electronic attacks. +1 INFOWAR (so long as Warweave is active).
[X] Battlebraid. Grow your hair into a long prehensile braid operating as a fifth limb. A vibro-knife is woven into its tip, and grants additional killing power. +1 LIVING WEAPON (so long as Braid is active).
[X] Petriform Gas. It starts as a coughing, a wheezing, released from a Koinon artillery shell. Then the crystals embed themselves in lungs, in the bloodstream, in the muscles. Within hours, the growths emerge on your skin. Within days, the crystal is fusing and clustering, eating the victim alive. Within weeks, the infection reaches their soul. There is no cure.

I really want to ride a war machine, and it comes with extra Rhythms so what's not to like there?

Hair I'm much more agnostic about. This style just seemed neat, but I can also imagine a long bladed Battlebraid whipping around behind us as we charge on machine-back.

Petriform Gas certainly seems terrifying enough to scar us by itself, and also gives some of that "WW1 cavalry charge" action on top for extra trauma.

 

[Fission Battery]

So this all seems to imply that The Kora and Titanagalbat loses this war and loses it fucking hard. The Progeny loses 30-40% of it's prewar territory. The Titan vassal of High Kur are conquered outright. The Chrome Kings, Mozel and Emmonites either breaks away from the Saffron Court entirely or become even more autonomous. And the Carnosans that started this war got their own free-state.

Which brings a question to mind.

How in the name of the God-Emperor did Koinon, Cybaris and the Free Carnosans pull this historic upset off? It should literally be impossible.

Click to shrink...

So two things of note are the Petriform Clusters, several of which seem to have replaced major settlements and the Dawning of the Red Sun. Wiping out several economic and cultural centers with bioweapons is bad enough, but also the two most psychic nations throwing their best sorcery at each other could be a vulnerability to the Hydra, even if the War Wizard blurb didn't mention cruel gods and wanting people to scream before allowing them to die, which is pretty chaosy.

Click to shrink...

You're right. There's several cities that are gone. The only places with pentiform clusters is our alliance. Koinon, Cybaris, and Freeshard are all free of it. The only members of our coalition that are free are the Bronze-King's vassals turned breakaway states. Chrome Kings, Mozel Marchforts, and Emmonite Partition all got seemed to avoid losing any major cities or suffer pentiform clusters. Empyreal Aerie got destroyed completely too. It's no longer in orbit.

It looks like the Progeny seized border territory around Shardlight Monoliths and wiped out several Koinon cities. I see Tolemais and Pantokraton are gone. Seldon seems to have shifted north after Darvazan's been destroyed or it renamed the city after the original Seldon was destroyed.

Other than that, we got fucking rolled.

 

[Some_guy_161]

[X] Egophage: Masters of electronic warfare, egophages adopt the trappings of pneumatic psychic powers for a cybernetic age. Manipulating light in order to attack enemies from ambush and range, Egophages are snipers, commandos, and assassins.
[X] Combat Plugs. Grow your hair into woven braids ending in tied electronic jacks you can use to enhance your weaponry and machines. +1 RHYTHMS (so long as Combat Plugs are active).
[X] Petriform Gas. It starts as a coughing, a wheezing, released from a Koinon artillery shell. Then the crystals embed themselves in lungs, in the bloodstream, in the muscles. Within hours, the growths emerge on your skin. Within days, the crystal is fusing and clustering, eating the victim alive. Within weeks, the infection reaches their soul. There is no cure.

I see that even in the most divergent of 40k fan works, the theme and aesthetic of WW1-style warfare is indomitable.

 

[Broken25]

[X] Egophage: Masters of electronic warfare, egophages adopt the trappings of pneumatic psychic powers for a cybernetic age. Manipulating light in order to attack enemies from ambush and range, Egophages are snipers, commandos, and assassins.

 

[Aliya]

[X] Irontamer: Knights on machine-back, irontamers tame and control powerful sentient machines as war-mounts. Synchronicity between rider and machine can unlock ancient abilities and systems. Irontamers are scouts, lancers, and cataphracts.
Mostly care for the Pegasus.

 

[Teal]

Asoryan, and Kryptik. Kora said the mysteries of creation are encoded in the tongue, and that each language learned would untie a knotted secret of the lingual muscle.

INFOWAR: But why do the words of those last two dialects seem like they were never meant to be uttered by your tongue at all?

Click to shrink...

Absolutely killer that we speak the ancient languages from The War In Heaven during our morning prayers.

The Still Coast warns that Dreamspace is sending physical machine-shapes into their territory unlike any fought before. Both are ignored. After all, who cares for the opinions of machine-worshippers, and unrepentant hylics?

Click to shrink...

I suddenly have the strange desire to pump Infowar way the hell up. This must be the work of an enemy Stand, and can only be countered by raising Infowar.

[X] Egophage: Masters of electronic warfare, egophages adopt the trappings of pneumatic psychic powers for a cybernetic age. Manipulating light in order to attack enemies from ambush and range, Egophages are snipers, commandos, and assassins.
[X] Combat Plugs. Grow your hair into woven braids ending in tied electronic jacks you can use to enhance your weaponry and machines. +1 RHYTHMS (so long as Combat Plugs are active).

[X] Petriform Gas. It starts as a coughing, a wheezing, released from the warhead of a shell. Then the crystals embed themselves in lungs, in the bloodstream, in the muscles. Within hours, the growths emerge on your skin. Within days, the crystal is merging and clustering, eating the victim alive. Within weeks, the infection reaches their soul. There is no cure.

 

[OldShadow]

[X] Egophage: Masters of electronic warfare, egophages adopt the trappings of pneumatic psychic powers for a cybernetic age. Manipulating light in order to attack enemies from ambush and range, Egophages are snipers, commandos, and assassins.
[X] Warweave. Pull your hair into a tight and intricate spiral weave which focuses the power of your null field to disrupt electronic attacks. +1 INFOWAR (so long as Warweave is active).
[X] Petriform Gas. It starts as a coughing, a wheezing, released from the warhead of a shell. Then the crystals embed themselves in lungs, in the bloodstream, in the muscles. Within hours, the growths emerge on your skin. Within days, the crystal is merging and clustering, eating the victim alive. Within weeks, the infection reaches their soul. There is no cure.

A war started by the assasination of an heir by separatists triggering a chain of alliances...
WW1 is a canon event.

 

[Varano]

[X] Swordsmachine: Masters of blade arts, Swordsmachines are instruments of death. Using their speed and arm-blades to slice apart the enemy frontline, they are trench-butchers. Swordsmachines are shock infantry, duelists, and blademasters.

[X] Warweave. Pull your hair into a tight and intricate spiral weave which focuses the power of your null field to disrupt electronic attacks. +1 INFOWAR (so long as Warweave is active).

[X] Feral Machines. There are wonders of this planet that should not have survived the fall. Mad and corrupted, they hold a hatred for mankind and an appetite for organic flesh. And when the initial defenses fail, Koinon unveils its secret menagerie, and releases the worst nightmares of the dark age, things of chainsaw teeth and mimic-faces, on you.

 

[hostelcalifornia]

[X] Swordsmachine: Masters of blade arts, Swordsmachines are instruments of death. Using their speed and arm-blades to slice apart the enemy frontline, they are trench-butchers. Swordsmachines are shock infantry, duelists, and blademasters.

Get in their face and fuck em up.

[X] Combat Plugs. Grow your hair into woven braids ending in tied electronic jacks you can use to enhance your weaponry and machines. +1 RHYTHMS (so long as Combat Plugs are active).

Honestly mostly for the look.

[X] Petriform Gas. It starts as a coughing, a wheezing, released from a Koinon artillery shell. Then the crystals embed themselves in lungs, in the bloodstream, in the muscles. Within hours, the growths emerge on your skin. Within days, the crystal is fusing and clustering, eating the victim alive. Within weeks, the infection reaches their soul. There is no cure.

Can't slay gas with a sword, and death by disease is no martyrdom.

 

[Squidfam]

[X] Irontamer: Knights on machine-back, irontamers tame and control powerful sentient machines as war-mounts. Synchronicity between rider and machine can unlock ancient abilities and systems. Irontamers are scouts, lancers, and cataphracts.
We knightmaxxing. Straight up Rose Quartzing this bitch.
[X] Battlebraid. Grow your hair into a long prehensile braid operating as a fifth limb. A vibro-knife is woven into its tip, and grants additional killing power. +1 LIVING WEAPON (so long as Braid is active).
KNIFE HAIR KNIFE HAIR KNIFE HAIR
[X] War Wizards. The first time you see a pneumatic flick her wrist, and flay a self's rind off, you begin to learn that gods are real, and they are cruel. Koinon is a country ruled by pneumatics, and in their academies and alchemical workshops, they have made a science of cruelty. It is not enough that they kill you - they want you to scream, first.
What's the point of being a hylic if we're not deathly afraid of pneumatics?

 

[IronKnightofSilv]

[X] Swordsmachine: Masters of blade arts, Swordsmachines are instruments of death. Using their speed and arm-blades to slice apart the enemy frontline, they are trench-butchers. Swordsmachines are shock infantry, duelists, and blademasters.
[X] Warweave. Pull your hair into a tight and intricate spiral weave which focuses the power of your null field to disrupt electronic attacks. +1 INFOWAR (so long as Warweave is active).
[X] Petriform Gas. It starts as a coughing, a wheezing, released from the warhead of a shell. Then the crystals embed themselves in lungs, in the bloodstream, in the muscles. Within hours, the growths emerge on your skin. Within days, the crystal is merging and clustering, eating the victim alive. Within weeks, the infection reaches their soul. There is no cure.

I see the appeal of iron tamers, but I want to go FAST, not be reliant on a beast, waterfowl dance, and be a dancing blender on the battlefield. Sword Machine will buff Motion Blur to 6, which will help us dodge even better. Motion blur is one of our highest stats and the ability to GTFO when we see the gas will be important. Alternatively, infowar will help us continue to break our conditioning, resist chaos "undivided," and learn about aliens.

 

[Skippy]

How in the name of the God-Emperor did Koinon, Cybaris and the Free Carnosans pull this historic upset off? It should literally be impossible.

Click to shrink...

Seems like there may be significant clues:

RELIQUARY: All of their souls are purified and anchored to the soil, never to escape.

<Why not?>

RELIQUARY: So their souls are never inhaled through the Lapsarian Lung, that monolithic edifice of respiration in the center of Koinon. All other dying souls of Illuminata are inhaled through it, and fertilize the scry-republic's fields as exhaled spores. These spores sprout as ghostly, psychically nutritious grass. Harvested, milled, and baked, then fed to Koinon's psyker elite. Lifelong consumption of such bread grants their strongest war-wizards, the scrytegons, the strength to defeat a Sophian biomech. Such is the sheer accreted power of their grass-fed soul.

<So they are…farming dead souls?>

LIVING WEAPON: Yes. Every year, Koinon's geist-grass fields are richer, more fertile. The exhalation of Illuminata's dead souls through the Lung enrichens their republic. The higher populations rise, the higher the number of the dead. The greater their soul-harvests. These groves are our strategy to starve them out. It is not enough. Not nearly enough.

Click to shrink...

BIONIC MOTHERBOARD: Before a scaffold just outside the Cube where night had fallen, the titans marched to honor the Lance to Touch the Sky, anointing its body and counting down in booming roars the numbers to mark the day's end, and the start of the new millennium. As the clock struck midnight, they raised their arms high in exaltation. The ignition at the lance's bottom erupted and propelled it upwards, to the firmament - not by any old, scavenged fuel or fuselage, not by salvage or by archaic constructs, but by a wholly novel, new design. An innovation, unhackable, unthinking - analog. Manufactured not with schema-fabricators reliant on the planet's birthright technologies or its unique template construct blueprints, but in assembly lines that could be built by any sap with the manpower and the plan.

LEGACY FLESH: And glowing crimson in the rocket's red glare, a projection five-kilometers tall and wide appeared on the Cube's outer wall screen. Mr. Tomasin Morow, Cybaris Company's founder and owner. His sunny, mustachioed, suited, balding, and grandfatherly visage dwarfed the assembled crowd and even the elite of the gnostic parade. Some fainted from vertigo, at the unfathomable vastness of his projected form. To those who remained standing, He promised in an enthused and warm tone: this was only the beginning. Only a furtive glimpse of the wonders still to come. Only a figment compared to the dream of tomorrow.

BIONIC MOTHERBOARD: So said he: "If you truly knew, you could only weep. We will have such sights to show you."

Click to shrink...

Titangalbat and the Chrome Kings (and to a lesser extent Kora), seem to operate in a paradigm of combat where the arm of decision is bespoke war robots which are reliant on a procurement chain (for lack of a better term) based on archaeotech templates and infrastructure. Or in the case of the Chrome Kings, literally going out onto the wide open wastes and lassoing yourself a mecha-steed as part of a warrior's initiation ritual or whatever. In fairness it also probably takes a lot of time and resources to train a War-Wizard, but that is still a fundamentally human process which scales better with total population, on top of the Lapsarian Lung. Setting up analog factories to build laser cannons worked by Carnosan nerve-staples is simply a matter of construction time and resources, and Cybaris appears to have taken a lead in this field.

If your opponent has unlocked the Mass Production Tech Tree first, and the effective combat strength of their War-Wizards scales with population and the number of dead, whilst all of your manoeuvre elements are difficult to replace, let alone rapidly increase in a short timescale... Then you may have some problems if you enter a war of attrition. Now of course, that does not matter if you simply crush them outright in a Desert Storm series of set-piece engagements where you destroy their field armies and wreck their cities, like what clearly happened to Carnosa.

But that means probably the key hinge point of the early war is whether or not the Cordial can inflict an early knockout on the Compact or not. From what we see of the maps, it seems like they didn't, or at least not enough of one.

 

[No7sHere]

[X] Swordsmachine: Masters of blade arts, Swordsmachines are instruments of death. Using their speed and arm-blades to slice apart the enemy frontline, they are trench-butchers. Swordsmachines are shock infantry, duelists, and blademasters.
[X] Warweave. Pull your hair into a tight and intricate spiral weave which focuses the power of your null field to disrupt electronic attacks. +1 INFOWAR (so long as Warweave is active).
[X] War Wizards. The first time you see a pneumatic flick her wrist, and flay a self's rind off, you begin to learn that gods are real, and they are cruel. Koinon is a country ruled by pneumatics, and in their academies and alchemical workshops, they have made a science of cruelty. It is not enough that they kill you - they want you to scream, first.

 

[Skippy]

[X] Swordsmachine: Masters of blade arts, Swordsmachines are instruments of death. Using their speed and arm-blades to slice apart the enemy frontline, they are trench-butchers. Swordsmachines are shock infantry, duelists, and blademasters.
[X] Battlebraid. Grow your hair into a long prehensile braid operating as a fifth limb. A vibro-knife is woven into its tip, and grants additional killing power. +1 LIVING WEAPON (so long as Braid is active).


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn1UpCKrepo

We have STUDIED THE BLADE

[X] Petriform Gas. It starts as a coughing, a wheezing, released from a Koinon artillery shell. Then the crystals embed themselves in lungs, in the bloodstream, in the muscles. Within hours, the growths emerge on your skin. Within days, the crystal is fusing and clustering, eating the victim alive. Within weeks, the infection reaches their soul. There is no cure.

This honestly seems the most genuinely terrifying and also does not come with the stinger of us sometimes experiencing PTSD when we meet robots or pneumatics, which seems like it might be inconvenient.

(I am sure our PTSD from Petriform gas is totally not something that @Cetashwayo will hold over us like a Sword of Damocles, lmao.)

 

[MordredRaal]

[X] Swordsmachine: Masters of blade arts, Swordsmachines are instruments of death. Using their speed and arm-blades to slice apart the enemy frontline, they are trench-butchers. Swordsmachines are shock infantry, duelists, and blademasters.
[X] Warweave. Pull your hair into a tight and intricate spiral weave which focuses the power of your null field to disrupt electronic attacks. +1 INFOWAR (so long as Warweave is active).
[X] Petriform Gas. It starts as a coughing, a wheezing, released from the warhead of a shell. Then the crystals embed themselves in lungs, in the bloodstream, in the muscles. Within hours, the growths emerge on your skin. Within days, the crystal is merging and clustering, eating the victim alive. Within weeks, the infection reaches their soul. There is no cure.

 

[Some_guy_161]

It sucks that Cognition is so low now. I would've thought the Egophage choice would increase it, especially since the attribute directly refers to E-War skill. Also, now that we have two people's one-time phone numbers, whose gonna be the third? You've usually written three option choices so I'm expecting it a little.

 

[Cetashwayo]

It sucks that Cognition is so low now. I would've thought the Egophage choice would increase it, especially since the attribute directly refers to E-War skill. Also, now that we have two people's one-time phone numbers, whose gonna be the third? You've usually written three option choices so I'm expecting it a little.

Click to shrink...

In this case you are drawing on different sources for your electronic war capabilities.

I felt given Cogitation is 1 that boosting it to just 3 would be unsatisfying compared to other options. Picking Egophage will definitely open up options to boost Cogitation later.

 

[DocMatoi]

[] Petriform Gas.

Click to shrink...

ah. so thats what happened to dermaton.

 

[Wellhello]

[X] Swordsmachine
[X] Battlebraid.

Zoom Zoom of death. Also can you be a Warhammer protagonist, if you can't slice the opposition to pieces?
Yes, but ...

[X] Petriform Gas.

No matter what, this will be debilitating. Terror at the sight of psykers in a psyker culture, fear of machines on a planet where there is no pure organic life, or of a creeping sickness on a world where everybody dies of nano-cancer.

"It's good we found her early," Lovergirl says after. She's smoking incense with you and leaning against a grove tree. "The more memory the palingen eats the worse the long-term effects and the less likely the block will hold. I've seen monks try to wipe everything from cradle to grave and it always ends with them face-down in some hotel, memory dead, minds bricked. Awful way to go."

There's a second's interruption in the memory. An echo of something.

[???]: +I only wanted to help.+

Click to shrink...

Ominous, so I guess [???] is either a comparable memory implant, or some kind of infovore that has infected us.

"I thought if I could be friends with a rotting knife-ear, then maybe we all might be able to unite one day. We could bridge the distance, and reach out to stars, not afraid or greedy, but excited for discovery, like the way the old explorers were, before the fall. And if I joined Skywatch, I could prove it myself. A Kora-self captain with a crew from the whole world."

Click to shrink...

Melancholy is good people, also it is interesting to think that the fall of the Aeldari "just" happened. There must be a lot of restless shades out there still and I guess Melancholy was lucky that hers was so agreeable.

In the aftermath, the Bronze-King accuses Mr. Morow of hosting agents of Red Paradise and organizing attacks from his soil. Mr. Morow denies the allegation, and refuses an ultimatum of the Bronze-King to allow every free Carnosan in Cube Indigo to be interrogated by the King's court egophages.
...

Koinon warns the Bronze-King to stand down, revealing a defensive pact with Cybaris
...

Kora's Progeny activates a secret alliance with the Bronze-King and declares war three days later

Click to shrink...

Oh god, not again.

 

[Theonetruelordke]

[X] Swordsmachine: Masters of blade arts, Swordsmachines are instruments of death. Using their speed and arm-blades to slice apart the enemy frontline, they are trench-butchers. Swordsmachines are shock infantry, duelists, and blademasters.
[X] Warweave. Pull your hair into a tight and intricate spiral weave which focuses the power of your null field to disrupt electronic attacks. +1 INFOWAR (so long as Warweave is active).
[X] Petriform Gas. It starts as a coughing, a wheezing, released from the warhead of a shell. Then the crystals embed themselves in lungs, in the bloodstream, in the muscles. Within hours, the growths emerge on your skin. Within days, the crystal is merging and clustering, eating the victim alive. Within weeks, the infection reaches their soul. There is no cure.

 

[ClawClawBite]

[X] Swordsmachine: Masters of blade arts, Swordsmachines are instruments of death. Using their speed and arm-blades to slice apart the enemy frontline, they are trench-butchers. Swordsmachines are shock infantry, duelists, and blademasters.
[X] Warweave. Pull your hair into a tight and intricate spiral weave which focuses the power of your null field to disrupt electronic attacks. +1 INFOWAR (so long as Warweave is active).
[X] Petriform Gas. It starts as a coughing, a wheezing, released from the warhead of a shell. Then the crystals embed themselves in lungs, in the bloodstream, in the muscles. Within hours, the growths emerge on your skin. Within days, the crystal is merging and clustering, eating the victim alive. Within weeks, the infection reaches their soul. There is no cure.

 

[Cetashwayo]

A war started by the assasination of an heir by separatists triggering a chain of alliances...
WW1 is a canon event.

Click to shrink...

I see that even in the most divergent of 40k fan works, the theme and aesthetic of WW1-style warfare is indomitable.

Click to shrink...

It's an interesting thing. I think that 40K is just fascinated with mass warfare, and it's easiest to combine that with grimdark when you merge it with the worst examples of mechanized, grimy war - so most authors tend to reach for the WW2 Eastern Front (hence some of the Soviet influence in the Imperial Guard) or WW1 (most obviously, the Death Korps of Krieg). "War is hell" is also easier to do in this context.

I have some additional and different inspirations since my own familial memory of WW1, the Serbian one, is not totally congruent with the particular image of the Western Front.