Let's Read: Warhammer 40,000 Codexes and Star Wars RPG Sourcebooks (Dark Eldar Reviewer)

InquisitionAI · Aug 2, 2023

IC:

RiverDelta said:
their ridiculous baby-carrier walkers

I would say something about the Sister of Battle's Paragon Battlesuits, but seeing a Sister call upon the Emperor and bounce AT rounds makes me give them a lot of slack, and I would assume that the Grey Knights can do something similar.

RiverDelta said:
This sounds like some sort of infernal secret police, over-exaggerating the Daemonic threat.

Well, in my experience, the Imperials generally don't get the Demons that wanna have tea and crumpets, so from an Imperial perspective, it's easy to say that *all* demons are like what 90% of the demons you encounter are like.

Same with the Dark Eldar. Though that's y'all fault for constantly being Adrenaline Junkies whenever you're in Imperial Space

RiverDelta said:
Nemesis Force Weapons

Nasty things, those. Fought alongside one of the 'Platinum' Knights, and that Nemesis Blade was *Spooky*, made sure to nail it with two Overcharges when the Knight died after killing the Demon the Chaos Fuckwads summoned, (which, in typical Fuckwad fashion, immediately broke free and rampaged,) because Psyker Shit is applicable for 'There Is No Overkill'.

Also, Hello Viola, you're new here.

RiverDelta said:
This was "proven" by whom?

By... like, every Astartes organization since the Legions?

Terminator Plate is simply the most durable infantry(-ish) scale armor the Imperium can reliably produce, and allows the users to wield truly massive weapons beyond the abilities of lesser Armors to use.

Imagine something with the durability of four Lemans Russ Battle Tanks, the Firepower of a Platoon of Sentinels, and only slightly slower than a Space Marine at a casual Walk.

RiverDelta said:
the "elite" of anything

Ignoring that the Grey Knights are, well, Super Astartes, they're also one of, if not the, best equipped units in the Imperium, hence them being considered 'Elite'. Same as the Cadians and Kriegers.

RiverDelta said:
their stories of secret prisons and sanctums

Because... like, we keep finding the fucking things everywhere. There seems to be like, one every Hundred or so systems. Whoever the fuck built the damn things apparently decided that whatever they were trying to contain needed to not be handled by a single spot.

My money's on either C'tan or Greater Demons.

Ooc:

RiverDelta said:
Thank you!

Wouldn't this be better served as an Informational Post?

khan2012 · Aug 2, 2023

RiverDelta said:
(Medicus Viola: I'm sexually attracted to Tyranids, patriarchs, and women in denim short shorts.)

...Tyranids?

(Medicus Viola: Yeah, the smart ones you can have a chat with if you know how. Hive Tyrants. I ain't no sex pervert.)

Have you lain with a Hive Tyrant?

(Medicus Viola: You gotta be creative.)

IC: I just got back from a long deployment and what in the actual fuck . I don't want to kinkshame just…..wow. I'll react to the rest of the review later. Just wanted to lay that out there.

OOC: Y'know, in retrospect people in universe wanting to get it on with Tyranids is perhaps the least surprising thing ever.

RiverDelta · Aug 2, 2023

FreePeriphery said:
IC: Knew, he was my Company Captain during the Badab War. He died during the War, I know there is another Lamenter within the Deathwatch currently but he would probably be unhappy to see one of his brothers turned renegade. His career was spent as he described a continuous act of pest control, trying to blunt the advance of the Tendrils and coax them into choosing either unpopulated worlds or those worlds that they considered write offs -that being worlds in rebellion, alien held worlds, and the like- beyond that he was in way something of a mentor to me I miss him I think.

IC:

Can a Space Marine Company Captain also be in the Deathwatch? How does the Deathwatch work, precisely?

Balmung1 said:
IC: To be fair the Custodes like their enemies to think of them as ego maniacal god-kings because it's easier to manipulate others that way.You are right about a lot of things(Especially the Grey Knights and Tau) and can see through a lot of lies but sometimes the the truth is that if you're focused on unveiling the truth of a something you never bother to ask other questions like why are they and the Sisters are called the Right Hand and not the Hands or the Sisters being the Left Hand.It is perfectly fine to be wrong and be unsure of yourself sometimes and it's okay to make mistakes but the moment you stop trying to improve yourself is the moment you truly lose the ability and reason to wonder and ask about things.

IC: You would get along with my mother she loves watching Terran political intrigue because of how it lays like some sort of raunchy satire novel that doesn't even know it is(I did not need to know it's possible to make a family lineage shaped like a polyhedron).

What exactly do you mean by the bolded?

InquisitionAI said:
Ooc:

Wouldn't this be better served as an Informational Post?

OOC: I don't know, man, probably? I swear to god, honestly I think I might just be bad at writing Space Marines and similar factions. @Simon_Jester (who read my earlier work) and @hellgodsrus and @SolarFlare (who've been letting me look over their RP posts before they post them, which is very kind of them) might have thoughts on why. I do too, so anyone reading this (tagged or otherwise) can feel free to tell me what they think of my reasons and whether they have anything to add. These reasons are entirely subjective, and cover why I struggle to write them.

Reasons RiverDelta is bad at writing Space Marines and similar:

I barely write men, and those men I do write tend to be less complex. I don't know why. Maybe it's just dysphoria. The fact that the Space Marines are all these hypermasculine archetypes of stoic duty makes them profoundly boring and vaguely uncomfortable for me. It's a mix of vaguely male-militarist exaggeration and dysphoria, as well as the fact that I guess I just find them dull to write about as a matter of personal taste?
I don't tend to like factions that feel like they're being sold to me. I get that the Space Marines are the most popular generalist faction, but reading a Codex praising them extensively for their bravery and combat skill and all the rest feels a bit much. I especially dislike the Custodes and Grey Knights being "the Space Marines, but even better".
Space Marines are undeniably pretty fucking cool. They have chainsaw swords and kill demons and monsters. That said, that sort of larger-than-life heroic "badass"-ness is very hard for me to grasp because they feel more like a power fantasy about being the most soldierly soldiers.
They kind of feel like a central part of the setting, possibly the most central part, and when I'm seemingly so bad at doing them justice that's pretty tough. That especially makes them hard for me to turn into something that I find interesting to write, since they have such a strong identity.

I think I either need to find someone else to do the Space Marine Codexes who likes them and groks them or I need to find something in this hypermasculine Ubermensch badass space warrior thing that speaks to me. Anyone got any ideas for either?

khan2012 said:
IC: I just got back from a long deployment and what in the actual fuck . I don't want to kinkshame just…..wow. I'll react to the rest of the review later. Just wanted to lay that out there.

OOC: Y'know, in retrospect people in universe wanting to get it on with Tyranids is perhaps the least surprising thing ever.

OOC: Yeah...

IC:

Well, I was very stunned too, and I'm of the Drukhari. Some sophonts truly are...ambitious.

Simon_Jester · Aug 2, 2023

RiverDelta said:
OOC: I don't know, man, probably? I swear to god, honestly I think I might just be bad at writing Space Marines and similar factions. @Simon_Jester (who read my earlier work) and @hellgodsrus and @SolarFlare (who've been letting me look over their RP posts before they post them, which is very kind of them) might have thoughts on why. I do too, so anyone reading this (tagged or otherwise) can feel free to tell me what they think of my reasons and whether they have anything to add. These reasons are entirely subjective, and cover why I struggle to write them.

I mean, it's entirely reasonable that you would have trouble with Space Marines, for all the listed reasons. They're hypermasculine archetypes-to-the-point-of-parody, they're absurdly marinated in the Cult of the Badass, they're absurdly oversold, and so on.

I might try, but doing it in-character would rapidly turn into detached professorial blather because that's the only IC I can come up with that works in 40k in this context and feels like something I can get into the headspace of.

hellgodsrus · Aug 2, 2023

RiverDelta said:
IC:

Can a Space Marine Company Captain also be in the Deathwatch? How does the Deathwatch work, precisely?

What exactly do you mean by the bolded?

OOC: I don't know, man, probably? I swear to god, honestly I think I might just be bad at writing Space Marines and similar factions. @Simon_Jester (who read my earlier work) and @hellgodsrus and @SolarFlare (who've been letting me look over their RP posts before they post them, which is very kind of them) might have thoughts on why. I do too, so anyone reading this (tagged or otherwise) can feel free to tell me what they think of my reasons and whether they have anything to add. These reasons are entirely subjective, and cover why I struggle to write them.

Reasons RiverDelta is bad at writing Space Marines and similar:

I barely write men, and those men I do write tend to be less complex. I don't know why. Maybe it's just dysphoria. The fact that the Space Marines are all these hypermasculine archetypes of stoic duty makes them profoundly boring and vaguely uncomfortable for me. It's a mix of vaguely male-militarist exaggeration and dysphoria, as well as the fact that I guess I just find them dull to write about as a matter of personal taste?

I don't tend to like factions that feel like they're being sold to me. I get that the Space Marines are the most popular generalist faction, but reading a Codex praising them extensively for their bravery and combat skill and all the rest feels a bit much. I especially dislike the Custodes and Grey Knights being "the Space Marines, but even better".

Space Marines are undeniably pretty fucking cool. They have chainsaw swords and kill demons and monsters. That said, that sort of larger-than-life heroic "badass"-ness is very hard for me to grasp because they feel more like a power fantasy about being the most soldierly soldiers.

They kind of feel like a central part of the setting, possibly the most central part, and when I'm seemingly so bad at doing them justice that's pretty tough. That especially makes them hard for me to turn into something that I find interesting to write, since they have such a strong identity.

I think I either need to find someone else to do the Space Marine Codexes who likes them and groks them or I need to find something in this hypermasculine Ubermensch badass space warrior thing that speaks to me. Anyone got any ideas for either?

OOC: Yeah...

IC:

Well, I was very stunned too, and I'm of the Drukhari. Some sophonts truly are...ambitious.

OOC: I would offer, but a) I think you did a fine job with the Grey Knights and b) I've already decided that my bonesinger academic character fucking hates Astartes and thus any codex review from her PoV would be pretty... biased. I'd be happy to give it a whirl and give her a more understanding partner who actually knows more about them though.

RiverDelta · Aug 2, 2023

hellgodsrus said:
OOC: I would offer, but a) I think you did a fine job with the Grey Knights and b) I've already decided that my bonesinger academic character fucking hates Astartes and thus any codex review from her PoV would be pretty... biased. I'd be happy to give it a whirl and give her a more understanding partner who actually knows more about them though.

OOC: Well, thanks for the kind words. :3

Would you mind if I ask how come the Grey Knights seem so divisive, then, at least from the POV of someone who thought it was doable? Oh, and do you mind if I PM you about the possibility of doing some of the reviews? I'd really appreciate it.

hellgodsrus · Aug 2, 2023

RiverDelta said:
OOC: Well, thanks for the kind words. :3

Would you mind if I ask how come the Grey Knights seem so divisive, then, at least from the POV of someone who thought it was doable? Oh, and do you mind if I PM you about the possibility of doing some of the reviews? I'd really appreciate it.

Sure, PM away.

In terms of why I think it worked - firstly, I felt the narrator bias was fairly clear? And additionally, the majority of your focus in the review was on the ways the Grey Knights are different than other Astartes. Yes, yes, the whole masculine warrior culture thing - but that deserves to be poked at, and poke you did. The rest was about your interesting take on the Warp/Chaos, and the idea of psychic PTSD, both of which are Rad. I'm also just - for similar reasons to you - not the biggest fan of how canon Astartes are handled, so anything that approaches them differently is going to get interest from me.

FreePeriphery · Aug 2, 2023

OOC: some notes I'd agree I think you did the Grey Knights well even if the Space Marines aren't a group you particularly gork. For my own part and a personal head canon that me and my friends had was that Firstborn where just guys in armor, which was closer to the original Rogue Trader canon of space marines was that they where closer to Star Treks Eugenics Wars Era human soldiers then being these superhuman monsters forged with practically genetic magic instead they where drugged up normal humans in power armor with all the problems that would bring. A setting that I personally think does Super Soldiers surprisingly well is BattleTech in which said Super Soldiers -known as Clan Elementals- aren't actually all that better at fighting the regular humans and their stringent need to stick to honor is a determinant. Mind you I just personally love BattleTech as setting entirely so I'll take any opportunity to shill for it. Beyond that I think you have been doing pretty good with the story.

RiverDelta said:
Can a Space Marine Company Captain also be in the Deathwatch? How does the Deathwatch work, precisely?

IC: The Deathwatch is something one can be seconded to by an Astartes superior officer. So more a special unit within the Chapters rather then Chapter it's self. Then said Astartes spends a tour within the Deathwatch before going back to their chapter to share what they learned after cooperating with other Marines from other Chapter. Some Astartes elect to remain in the Deathwatch and never return to their chapters for one reason or another.

Simon_Jester · Aug 2, 2023

RiverDelta said:
We often see in the update that Ynathe will doubt any good thing the Grey Knights might be doing, and that's meant to show that Ynathe isn't an objective source. Even the ending is meant to call that out, with Medicus Viola basically telling Ynathe (and the reader) that Ynathe's idea of a Grimdark Imperium is kind of bullshit. Medicus Viola's perspective is meant to be the most accurate, and she's looking at the Grey Knights with pity, rather than hate. The truth is that the Grey Knights are doing their job, and they do serve an important purpose.

You did actually telegraph the dynamic there quite neatly. Like, you may find writing Space Marines to be unbearably unbearable for all sorts of reasons (see above), but you did succeed in signaling the relationship among the reviewers within the text quite well. Which is more in line with your strengths as an author anyway.

On the subject of the Sisters of Battle murders, Ynathe is getting the evidence of that from Vandire. I do think it probably did happen, Review Canon, but it wasn't some absurd act of evil. It was a desperate act of deeply delusional, homicidal super-soldiers who weren't thinking rationally at all. In my head, I think of the Grey Knights as people who are in a psychotic episode that lasts their entire adult life and gets worse and worse.

That works. It may explain why Titan has so many layers of ridiculously good wards. It's designed to be the one place in the galaxy where the Grey Knights can actually think clearly. With the division in the Order mainly being a matter of whether they embrace the shit they do at their worst as a necessary evil, or fight it as hard as they can even at the expense of having to fight that at the same time as they fight the real enemy.

Oh, and Chaos Marines will come in time, but you're right that if fighting daemons in the warp does this it seems like being an agent of the Chaos Gods (even ones whose worst qualities are more leaking intrusive thoughts than maniacal evil) would really mess you up. I'd also say that being mentally ill or psychotic doesn't necessarily make you violent, even when you're a supersoldier.

Well yeah. Like I'm saying to say, though, I'd expect a Chaos Marine to typically either cease to be a super-soldier (due to losing that singleminded focus on war) OR to become monstrous in fairly short order.

Rare exceptions who just become absurdly super-heroic might exist, but I suspect the comparatively dark origin and mental place that Space Marines start in would tend to tip them downwards.

Oh, and Ynathe is specifically referring to an unserious, partying fraternity. Remember, her conception of everything is from a Drukhari performer-gladiatrix's perspective. She imagines Space Marine Chapters as being little more than gangs of rich thugs who go out doing crimes while drunk.

Ahhh, that explains it.

The Jay Effkay joke is a reference, yeah. I don't know if it was a funny joke, but I found it amusing enough to work in.

As a reference to the earlier conspiracy theory stuff, it works quite well and is amusing, for one aware of how that played out.

As far as Kaldor Draigo goes, I actually really like the idea that he's a Daemon Prince. I tried to keep it ambiguous (up to and including Medicus Viola pointing out how nonsensical it is and how everyone in-story who believes it would be specifically credulous because it is kind of stupid), but on a death-of-the-author level I like the idea.

Hm. Having him sort of ascend into a Daemon Prince of the God-Emperor is plausible and would explain how he manages to fuck around in the Warp for so very long.

If a woman spends a whole year underwater and never comes up for air, she's either dead or a mermaid, y'know?

IC:
They are very much an interlinked biosphere, yes. Oh, and an eggplant is a delightful Terran food, one that I can only recommend. I believe it comes from chickens. You know someone in the Deathwatch?

IC:

Many millennia ago, they were categorized as a type of vegetable. I cannot definitively confirm or deny whether livestock have been modified to produce them since.

InquisitionAI · Aug 3, 2023

Ooc:

RiverDelta said:
I don't know, man, probably? I swear to god, honestly I think I might just be bad at writing Space Marines and similar factions.

Well, I missed a lot.

Abyways, the only reason I Asked is because the vast majority of the post was you, OOC, Explaining Things, and I didn't really think that fit in with the primarily In Character discussions of the Codex Reviews.

As for the whole Space Marine thing, that comes back to the point I made earlier in the Thread, we, as readers, are *deeply* familiar with the Imperial side of things already, given that the Imperials are basically the MC faction, so trying to write about how the Imperium of Man is actually evil and horribad and DoublePlusUnGood and all that is... Basically redundant.

We *know* that the Grey Knights do Horrible Shit, we *Know* that the Imperium, as a Whole, is the 'Worst Regime Imaginable'. What we're here for is exploring the sides of 40k that don't get explored, the more realistic sides, where a Drukari can date a Sister of Battle, while having a Side Chick in a Tau Earth Caste, where the Factions and Races are allowed to be more, for a lack of a better term, *Human*.

We're here to see a Universe where life is a struggle to survive, yes, but one that can be made easier by simply choosing to be good, where the only options aren't various flavors of EvilBad, where there is room for *Nuance* and *Consideration*.

Writing the Imperial characters is hard, and that's fine. We're not here for them, we're here for all the stuff that surrounds them, for the people chewed up, spit out, and trodden into the earth beneath its endless tide of Iron boots.

If you never do a single other Imperial Codex, I would have zero issues with it. Don't fret about trying to get it 'correct' (for whatever nebulous definition you have in your head,) do what you want to do, and what you're comfortable with, that's all anyone here can ask of you.

RiverDelta · Aug 3, 2023

InquisitionAI said:
Ooc:

Well, I missed a lot.

Abyways, the only reason I Asked is because the vast majority of the post was you, OOC, Explaining Things, and I didn't really think that fit in with the primarily In Character discussions of the Codex Reviews.

As for the whole Space Marine thing, that comes back to the point I made earlier in the Thread, we, as readers, are *deeply* familiar with the Imperial side of things already, given that the Imperials are basically the MC faction, so trying to write about how the Imperium of Man is actually evil and horribad and DoublePlusUnGood and all that is... Basically redundant.

I think most of the post was IC, and I depict the Imperials as being genuinely better. Ynathe is not an accurate source on the Imperium, and neither is Vior Or'es.

Even the end of this update has a whole thing about how Ynathe is full of shit and that the Imperium has a lot of genuinely good places to live.

I'm just confused as to where this is coming from, am I missing something?

I'm definitely not proud of everything about that update, but this all feels a bit off.

Simon_Jester · Aug 3, 2023

Since the Sympathy for the Heretic thread, which was something of a watershed in 40k portrayals on SV, there's been a trend towards "deconstruct the Imperium," or perhaps more accurately, "display it as being as much of a horrorshow as it canonically is, without the veneer of ULTRA-HEROIC MANLY MAN SPESS MEHREEN stuff that seems to make people fanboy over it."

To the extent that some of the 40k fans on the forum, for better or for worse, probably expected to see exactly that from you, and to some extent are seeing what they expect to see.

RiverDelta · Aug 3, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
To the extent that some of the 40k fans on the forum, for better or for worse, probably expected to see exactly that from you, and to some extent are seeing what they expect to see.

Do you mean that people aren't really seeing the more subtle details because Ynathe is assuming everything is GrimDark?

InquisitionAI · Aug 3, 2023

RiverDelta said:
I think most of the post was IC,

I am specifically talking about the "The Vantablack Knights and In-Universe Responses" update, where it is 9 paragraphs of you explaining things OOC, and then maybe two paragraphs of you talking IC.

Your actual Update on the Grey Knights is perfectly fine.

I'm not saying you're bad at writing, or doomsaying about what you're writing, just asking if a Majority OOC post spent responding to an entirely OOC Post wouldn't be better placed in a different group than the Entirely IC Codex Reviews.

RiverDelta · Aug 3, 2023

InquisitionAI said:
I am specifically talking about the "The Vantablack Knights and In-Universe Responses" update, where it is 9 paragraphs of you explaining things OOC, and then maybe two paragraphs of you talking IC.

Your actual Update on the Grey Knights is perfectly fine.

I'm not saying you're bad at writing, or doomsayibg about what you're writing, just asking if a Majority OOC post spent responding to an entirely OOC Post wouldn't be better placed in a different group than the Entirely IC Codex Reviews.

Look, man, I've had a tough week and it seemed appropriate to threadmark that to clarify for readers. It was a snap decision, and I don't really have the energy to relitigate it. Sorry about that, genuinely.

InquisitionAI · Aug 3, 2023

RiverDelta said:
It was a snap decision, and I don't really have the energy to relitigate it. Sorry about that, genuinely.

That's not an issue at all. You're producing Free Content for us here, while also spending time to respond to us in thread too.

So if you need to step back for a bit, don't feel like you can't do so. We'll still be here, waiting patiently for you to return.

And I will fight anyone who tries to say otherwise.

Balmung1 · Aug 3, 2023

RiverDelta said:
What exactly do you mean by the bolded?

You got to focused on the Custodes and Sisters(The Right Hand) to not notice the existence of the Left Hand(I'm sorry but I can't say what they are exactly partially because it will get redacted and partially because some of my mental augmentations are designed to compartmentalize information so that it I know about the Left Hand but unlike most sophonts it won't erode at my sanity or make me mentally unstable,downside is it's hard to explain what they are to others).

RiverDelta said:
Space Marines are undeniably pretty fucking cool. They have chainsaw swords and kill demons and monsters. That said, that sort of larger-than-life heroic "badass"-ness is very hard for me to grasp because they feel more like a power fantasy about being the most soldierly soldiers.

They kind of feel like a central part of the setting, possibly the most central part, and when I'm seemingly so bad at doing them justice that's pretty tough. That especially makes them hard for me to turn into something that I find interesting to write, since they have such a strong identity.

OOC: An interesting Space Marine Legion/Chapter to write could be the Dark Angels since people don't really notice a lot of other things than the whole 'paranoid knights vs fallen' thing and they actually have some septh with a few examples

-Lion actually isn't technically a true knight, he was adopted by Luther(who by the way was descended from peasants who escaped their old master and wanted to fight the beasts of Caliban themselves) into a martial order/sorta NGO valled the Order that believed that every person regardless of social status had the right to hunt the great beasts and defend themselves(In a book about Luther he actually doesn't like most of the nobility and outright thought that there were plenty of simple peasants he met who acted as trackers/assistants to the nobles who could easily kill the beasts they hunted if it weren't a crime for them to do so) and Lion later made it more egalitarian by making it so that everyone started training at a young age which was funded by the order meaning that even if you were poor you got the same training and treatment as everyone else.

-The Dark Angels Legion has a lot of interesting things about it's culture.For example they have multiple chains of command that are used depending on the situation with it roughly being divided into regular chains of command,the Hexgrammaton(6 'wings' that predate the Lion and you can only lead if you are voted in) and the Hekatonystika(The Hundred Hidden Orders who also contain Orders meant for serfs and civillia auxiliaries as a way of honoring them) this means that one day you could be the commanding officer and the next day you could act as a grunt(In one HH book an entire crusade fleet was being commanded by an astartes who's official rank was just a simple battle-brother but was super high ranking in the Hexgrammaton and Hekatonyistika).In addition before they were Space Knights they had a viking-esque culture and they actually hated the Lion because they had all these Orders, Wings,secret lore and were led by the Emperor himself and they felt like just because he was their father didn't he had the right to erase their culture but surprisingly enough Lion agreed and even after they felt comfortable with him in command he still allowed them to have all their societies and payed attention to their advice.

- The modern Dark Angels have changed a lot since the Heresy with Luther basically stating it's basically a completely unique chapter that LARPS as something resembling Dark Angels.For one thing they actually recruit fro a feral world that has more in common with the plains Native Americans than knights(40k Dark Angels have two names,the one they tell to others that sounds like something a dark angel would have and one that is completely different for example they had a librarian named Lucius who's actual name was Two Heads Talking) which kinda caused the old culture to get worn as a mask partially because there wasn't any Calibanites left and because post heresy until around Azriel's time the Dark Angels thought the majority of Fallen were dead with the exception of Cypher and a handful that popped up every now and then so they wanted to avoid the stuff that caused the Fallen in the first place so they decided to emphasize a lot on trustworthiness,not getting into multiple allegiances and making the Fallen be something that most Chapter Masters knew as that one emrgency event that happened like once every thousand years where they would have to decipher the shit the weird old dude named Luther said in order to find like one space marine put him in the Rock.Naturally this went horribly wrong when the Fallen reappeared en masse and Azreal learned that because of his predecessors inability to actually tell the truth he had to basically do everything he didn't want to do(Also on a funny note Azreal once trolled Keldor Draigo)

RiverDelta · Aug 3, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
I mean, it's entirely reasonable that you would have trouble with Space Marines, for all the listed reasons. They're hypermasculine archetypes-to-the-point-of-parody, they're absurdly marinated in the Cult of the Badass, they're absurdly oversold, and so on.

OOC: Yeah, I'm looking into having someone else do them. I'll see where it goes.

FreePeriphery said:
OOC: some notes I'd agree I think you did the Grey Knights well even if the Space Marines aren't a group you particularly gork. For my own part and a personal head canon that me and my friends had was that Firstborn where just guys in armor, which was closer to the original Rogue Trader canon of space marines was that they where closer to Star Treks Eugenics Wars Era human soldiers then being these superhuman monsters forged with practically genetic magic instead they where drugged up normal humans in power armor with all the problems that would bring. A setting that I personally think does Super Soldiers surprisingly well is BattleTech in which said Super Soldiers -known as Clan Elementals- aren't actually all that better at fighting the regular humans and their stringent need to stick to honor is a determinant. Mind you I just personally love BattleTech as setting entirely so I'll take any opportunity to shill for it. Beyond that I think you have been doing pretty good with the story.

IC: The Deathwatch is something one can be seconded to by an Astartes superior officer. So more a special unit within the Chapters rather then Chapter it's self. Then said Astartes spends a tour within the Deathwatch before going back to their chapter to share what they learned after cooperating with other Marines from other Chapter. Some Astartes elect to remain in the Deathwatch and never return to their chapters for one reason or another.

OOC: Sounds interesting, that definitely sounds like it has more dramatic potential at least from my POV.

IC: What, exactly, is the Deathwatch? Not that I don't know, I'm just, erm, curious to hear your take!

Simon_Jester said:
You did actually telegraph the dynamic there quite neatly. Like, you may find writing Space Marines to be unbearably unbearable for all sorts of reasons (see above), but you did succeed in signaling the relationship among the reviewers within the text quite well. Which is more in line with your strengths as an author anyway.

That works. It may explain why Titan has so many layers of ridiculously good wards. It's designed to be the one place in the galaxy where the Grey Knights can actually think clearly. With the division in the Order mainly being a matter of whether they embrace the shit they do at their worst as a necessary evil, or fight it as hard as they can even at the expense of having to fight that at the same time as they fight the real enemy.

Well yeah. Like I'm saying to say, though, I'd expect a Chaos Marine to typically either cease to be a super-soldier (due to losing that singleminded focus on war) OR to become monstrous in fairly short order.

Rare exceptions who just become absurdly super-heroic might exist, but I suspect the comparatively dark origin and mental place that Space Marines start in would tend to tip them downwards.

Ahhh, that explains it.

As a reference to the earlier conspiracy theory stuff, it works quite well and is amusing, for one aware of how that played out.

Hm. Having him sort of ascend into a Daemon Prince of the God-Emperor is plausible and would explain how he manages to fuck around in the Warp for so very long.

If a woman spends a whole year underwater and never comes up for air, she's either dead or a mermaid, y'know?

IC:

Many millennia ago, they were categorized as a type of vegetable. I cannot definitively confirm or deny whether livestock have been modified to produce them since.

Why in the name of the classic voxcast Eleven Heavens would an eggplant be a vegetable? It has "Egg" in the name!

OOC: Makes sense, I basically agree with everything you've said. I'm also a bit curious in a self-indulgent way about my strengths as an author?

Balmung1 said:
You got to focused on the Custodes and Sisters(The Right Hand) to not notice the existence of the Left Hand(I'm sorry but I can't say what they are exactly partially because it will get redacted and partially because some of my mental augmentations are designed to compartmentalize information so that it I know about the Left Hand but unlike most sophonts it won't erode at my sanity or make me mentally unstable,downside is it's hard to explain what they are to others).

IC: Would you happen to have access to whatever your nation uses for mental health? I believe the T'au call them "therapists", and the humans Chaplains.

Do humans have therapists?

Balmung1 · Aug 3, 2023

RiverDelta said:
IC: Would you happen to have access to whatever your nation uses for mental health? I believe the T'au call them "therapists", and the humans Chaplains.

IC:For most things yes(As I have stated before we get a lot of benefits in return for our service and it just makes sense for us to be in the best mental condition we can be) but with the Left Hand it's quite a bit different.I can't talk about most things related to it(it's main issue is less residual damage and more focusing on a short term extreme burst of dread,depression and nihlism with a follow up of partial memory scrubbing so if someone survived they couldn't remember what exactly happens) but we do have a little support group for everyone who works with them and the Custodes are perfectly fine with me venting while I work on calibrating/maintaining their Black Carapaces.

IC:Also asking a question for Viola but is is true that Tyranids have a adaptation similar to a Black Carapace?

RiverDelta · Aug 3, 2023

Balmung1 said:
IC:For most things yes(As I have stated before we get a lot of benefits in return for our service and it just makes sense for us to be in the best mental condition we can be) but with the Left Hand it's quite a bit different.I can't talk about most things related to it(it's main issue is less residual damage and more focusing on a short term extreme burst of dread,depression and nihlism with a follow up of partial memory scrubbing so if someone survived they couldn't remember what exactly happens) but we do have a little support group for everyone who works with them and the Custodes are perfectly fine with me venting while I work on calibrating/maintaining their Black Carapaces.

IC:Also asking a question for Viola but is is true that Tyranids have a adaptation similar to a Black Carapace?

I asked Viola, and she said that they don't typically use power armor, so the Black Carapace isn't necessarily as much of a thing. She says it's certainly possible, though, and the rare Tyranid species that are tool-users or that evolve in such a way that they can use other species' tools (of which there are very few) might have that potential, but she really isn't sure. Why do you ask?

Balmung1 · Aug 3, 2023

RiverDelta said:
I asked Viola, and she said that they don't typically use power armor, so the Black Carapace isn't necessarily as much of a thing. She says it's certainly possible, though, and the rare Tyranid species that are tool-users or that evolve in such a way that they can use other species' tools (of which there are very few) might have that potential, but she really isn't sure. Why do you ask?

IC: I heard that some Tyranids had been showing signs of adaptations similar to the Black Carapace which piqued my curiosity since I work on the Black Carapaces the Custodes use and other equipment links the human nervous system to machinery.The closest idea I had to why they might take up those adaptations is that you could theoretically create a biological Black Carapace designed to help you interact with an organism used as a symbiotic armor or maybe increase cohesion among singular forms composed of many different subspecies?

RiverDelta · Aug 3, 2023

Balmung1 said:
IC: I heard that some Tyranids had been showing signs of adaptations similar to the Black Carapace which piqued my curiosity since I work on the Black Carapaces the Custodes use and other equipment links the human nervous system to machinery.The closest idea I had to why they might take up those adaptations is that you could theoretically create a biological Black Carapace designed to help you interact with an organism used as a symbiotic armor or maybe increase cohesion among singular forms composed of many different subspecies?

Artificial machinery and Tyranid adaptation rarely mix. It may have happened extremely infrequently, but I assure you that it is anything but standard.

An organic "black carapace" link would be potentially more likely, though I can't think of any examples of it off of the top of my cognito-sphere.

RiverDelta · Aug 3, 2023

OOC: Should there be some kind of mechanism for allowing me to RP as the guest hosts (Medicus Ashlee Viola, Vior Or'es, etc), and if so, what might it look like?

epiccuttlefish · Aug 3, 2023

RiverDelta said:
OOC: Should there be some kind of mechanism for allowing me to RP as the guest hosts (Medicus Ashlee Viola, Vior Or'es, etc), and if so, what might it look like?

OOC: The idea that comes to my mind is to replace the 'IC:' tag with the character's name for anyone besides Ynathe Azuuza

InquisitionAI · Aug 3, 2023

Ooc:

RiverDelta said:
what might it look like?

You could do something like IC (INSERT RP CHARACTER NAME): or IC then put the Perspective Character's name underneath the IC.

Let's Read: Warhammer 40,000 Codexes and Star Wars RPG Sourcebooks (Dark Eldar Reviewer)

Very Tired.

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Actual Real Game Dev!

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Actual Real Game Dev!

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Epic Cuttlefish