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Shroud (Grey Goo game Shroud SI / Warhammer 40k)

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No real lore to back it up but I have always felt the old ones changed the nature of the galaxy at some point whatever they did to change the nature of the warp allowed them to much more powerful psykers and slowly the chaos gods formed. The eldar had many gods that the old ones "made" for them. psykers were a natural evolution for mankind, just that someone ruined it for everyone else. To be a psykers 40k means you need intense training or you will be a toy for many horrible things and yes psykers didn't help with the fall of mankind basically In a short time ( couple centuries) everything that could go wrong did
 
The generally theme for 40k is that every race is bad. The orks want endless war. The eldar are assholes.... ya that's there race in a nutshell assholes of the highest possible order. The tryanides are zurg nuff said and the blue barriers are all mind controlled by a race we as of yet know very little about. But I will take a guess and they will be assholes too... spoilers. Remember the orks and eldar were made by the old ones and there pretty heavy hints the greater good assholes were as well. I find it funny so many people like them just cause they aren't as grimdark sorta evil as everyone else in 40k
 
The Old Ones didn't change the nature of the Warp; the War in Heaven did, part of the collateral damage from the War in Heaven was the weakening of the boundary between the Materium and the Immaterium, caused by the massive tidal wave of souls flowing into the Immaterium from the ludicrous casualties caused by the War. This weakening of the walls of reality was an unintentional side-effect and not something the Old Ones saw coming, which is why they were caught off guard when Daemons and Enslavers suddenly showed up and ate their faces.

The Eldar had such an extensive pantheon not because the Old Ones made the pantheon but because the Old Ones designed the Eldar to be maximally psychic; the Eldar were optimized so as to provide the most possible amount of power to Warp Entities so that they would then form a large and strong pantheon that could be 'weaponized' to use against the C'tan. That's why the Eldar were able to create an entire new Chaos God all by themselves just by partying extra hard for ten thousand years, when creating the first three required a galaxy-wide war that very nearly killed literally everything.
 
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The thing about 40k is there is no official wiki everything is deferred from statements and what characters "know" the different rule books contricdict each other making it fun to guess what is "known". I like archwarhammer personally. Ok so eldar choas gods have never made sense to me the runinus powers are pretty well defined they want more just more always more. It's why say a hive world noble preys to the lord of plreasure ( thoe they wont know it by that name) and is more easily able to work in politics 20 years pass and they are having elaborate feasts on human flesh and baby's and have no idea any of this is wrong because they chaos gods never have enough they always want more. Yet the eldar gods by comparison when they were active anyway allowed the eldar to come back from the bloody dead like it was no big deal there gods were made to order and obeyed them and preformed a set of functions this does not mesh with any lore about warp entity's.
 
morkail said:
Yet the eldar gods by comparison when they were active anyway allowed the eldar to come back from the bloody dead like it was no big deal there gods were made to order and obeyed them and preformed a set of functions this does not mesh with any lore about warp entity's.
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Sure it does, when you think about them as basically Warp based AIs. They weren't born, they were made.
 
uju32 said:
same thing probably happened to the researchers.
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Found proof that they simply died of old age.
Tell me, what is the most valuable thing in the universe?'

'Knowledge,' said Cawl and Friedisch simultaneously.

'Exactly,' said Sedyane. 'It was for knowledge's sake that I prolonged my life in so barbaric a way. Do you think I have no empathy for the sentient beings that died so that I could live? No. Similarly, it is for the sake of the same knowledge I had you brought here.' He cradled his drink in long, veinous fingers. 'I am one of the fortunate few who worked with the Emperor Himself. There are not many of us left now. Old age took many of us. The war many more. Soon there will be one less. I am dying.'

Cawl sipped his drink again. Friedisch peered at his suspiciously.

'I know you must have an interest in the biological work of the Emperor. You were a student of Diacomes, yes?'
Cawl nodded.

'He was a colleague of mine, a long time ago.' Sedayne attempted a winning smile. He had cosmetically altered teeth, very straight, and horribly, unnaturally white. They looked bizarre in his chem-smoothed face, as if he were a plastek recreation of a man. 'He was gifted, if deluded like all your creed. That was before I worked on the creation of the Legiones Astartes. I was the director of the carapace project.'

False modesty wrapped his words, tight as apple skin.

'Do you know that the black carapace was an unusual part of the Astartes program?' Sedayne said. 'It is the final stage implant, and unlike some of the other organs, that can, if necessary, be grown internally from seed germs, the carapace must be grafted in substantial pieces. Once in place, it encourages the human body to adopt it as its own, and it spreads. It is an engineered, controlled cancer.' He smiled at his recollections. 'This is now a matter of fact, and the signature element of Terra's greatest warriors. No other gen-altered warriors have it. You will know a legionary by his carapace. It nearly was not so. It looked for a long time that we would not perfect it. Try as we might, we could not get the body to grow the carapace. It is far from the materials of the human body, being mostly a plastek compound with mineralised elements of rare sort. Nevertheless, it is crucial to the functioning of the Adeptus Astartes. Without it, their neural plugs are hard to implant, and without the plugs they cannot control their armour. As glorious a creation as the Legiones Astartes are, they are creatures of two parts, the biological, and the mechanical. Not so very different from the qualities your Cult finds so appealing, the union of man and machine, yes?'

'Indeed,' said Cawl.

Sedayne sat back, getting into his stride. He was a man who enjoyed regaling others with his achievements. 'Much of the black carapace work was undertaken by servants of Amar Astarte, a name which is already ill-favoured, when not so very long ago it was spoken with respect. She was one of the greatest genotects of this era, perhaps any era. Her work outshone that of the gene-witches of the Selenar. You know of them?'

'Of course!' said Cawl. 'We are not entirely ignorant.'

Sedayne was unoffended by Cawl's waspishness. Instead he seemed to approve. 'Good, good, you fight your corner. That is good,' he said, stroking the side of his glass with his forefinger. 'No one will remember her, in a few hundred years. The favour of the powerful means so much, and she no longer has it. I didn't rate her myself. The work I received was substandard. It didn't work, so I fixed it. I made the carapace possible. You could say that the success of the Emperor's own Legions was only possible because of what I did.' Sedayne sipped his wine with a triumphant expression. 'Now, imagine what you could do if you shared that knowledge.'
=========================================================================
Ezekiel Sedayne was dying.

There was a time when he stood tall among men, as much a physical as an intellectual giant, but those days were done. He was old. He was at the end. His seven-foot frame had shrunken in. His spine curled with calcium loss. His hands were knotted with arthritis. His skin was slack, flowing around brittle bones like draped cloth. His lustrous black hair had turned as fine and white as the silk of a spider's nest. It spread around his head on the pillow as if it, like his skin, had been laid there, and if he stood, if he had been capable of standing, he would have left it behind as a cloud of down.

Sedayne's life had lasted longer than any child of Terra had a right to expect, but all things are finite, and his existence was coming to a close.

Human beings are aware of their mortality, yet they deny it to the very last. Sedayne regarded his intelligence to be in excess of most others. He believed he was free of the delusions that ruled the mind to reason's detriment, yet now he succumbed. He could scarcely believe death was knocking at his door.
This cannot be happening to me, he thought. But it was.

Sedayne had come from nothing to become one of the greatest scientists of his age. Despite his failing body his mind was sharp. His insight clear. In numb amazement, he insisted he felt young in his soul. The ravages of age on his body gave the lie to that.

He appeared in many respects like a corpse. Lips drew back from yellow teeth made long by the recession of dark gums. No matter how fast his thoughts raced, his body barely moved. His chest trembled with the bird flutter of his heart. Every inhalation was a bellow's wheeze.
But he was not dead yet. The breaths kept coming, and when the door to his bedchamber creaked wide his eyelids flickered open and his eyes, which were strikingly moist in the dry valleys of his parchment skin, swivelled to fix themselves upon his visitor.

'The Altrix Herminia,' he wheezed. His top lip stuck to his teeth for want of saliva, spoiling his smile. He was drying up from the inside out, like a spice pod left out to desiccate in the sun. Soon every drop of life would be wrung out of him, and there would only be an arid husk left. Then there would not even be that.

The Altrix came forwards with a rustle of layered, soft, plastek clothing. Upon her breast pocket she wore a caduceus in red and white that contrasted with the pale green of her dress. The uniform was formal and tightly laced, a symbol binding her to her duty, but though her garments were restrictive she moved with easy grace that suggested athletic, if not dangerous, power.

'My lord director,' she said, dipping her head respectfully. The sharp curve of her fringe swung neatly over her eyes.

'Your arrival pleases me.' Sedayne's head moved feebly to the side so he could follow her approach. The appetites of a younger man tormented him. 'Age does not agree with me,' he said. He was tiring, his breath rasping harder. He was a machine close to shutdown. He looked to the Altrix's face, then at the fat syringe she carried in her hand.

'The time… is close…' Each word was an individual effort. Each syllable required him to assign it a painful breath. Such care and attention his words received now, when once they were spent so carelessly.
 
DestinyPlayer said:
Sure it does, when you think about them as basically Warp based AIs. They weren't born, they were made.
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They were also made back when the Empyrean was stable, before it went to shit and became a self-perpetuating nightmare.

Leafy503 said:
Found proof that they simply died of old age.
Tell me, what is the most valuable thing in the universe?'

'Knowledge,' said Cawl and Friedisch simultaneously.

'Exactly,' said Sedyane. 'It was for knowledge's sake that I prolonged my life in so barbaric a way. Do you think I have no empathy for the sentient beings that died so that I could live? No. Similarly, it is for the sake of the same knowledge I had you brought here.' He cradled his drink in long, veinous fingers. 'I am one of the fortunate few who worked with the Emperor Himself. There are not many of us left now. Old age took many of us. The war many more. Soon there will be one less. I am dying.'

Cawl sipped his drink again. Friedisch peered at his suspiciously.

'I know you must have an interest in the biological work of the Emperor. You were a student of Diacomes, yes?'
Cawl nodded.

'He was a colleague of mine, a long time ago.' Sedayne attempted a winning smile. He had cosmetically altered teeth, very straight, and horribly, unnaturally white. They looked bizarre in his chem-smoothed face, as if he were a plastek recreation of a man. 'He was gifted, if deluded like all your creed. That was before I worked on the creation of the Legiones Astartes. I was the director of the carapace project.'

False modesty wrapped his words, tight as apple skin.

'Do you know that the black carapace was an unusual part of the Astartes program?' Sedayne said. 'It is the final stage implant, and unlike some of the other organs, that can, if necessary, be grown internally from seed germs, the carapace must be grafted in substantial pieces. Once in place, it encourages the human body to adopt it as its own, and it spreads. It is an engineered, controlled cancer.' He smiled at his recollections. 'This is now a matter of fact, and the signature element of Terra's greatest warriors. No other gen-altered warriors have it. You will know a legionary by his carapace. It nearly was not so. It looked for a long time that we would not perfect it. Try as we might, we could not get the body to grow the carapace. It is far from the materials of the human body, being mostly a plastek compound with mineralised elements of rare sort. Nevertheless, it is crucial to the functioning of the Adeptus Astartes. Without it, their neural plugs are hard to implant, and without the plugs they cannot control their armour. As glorious a creation as the Legiones Astartes are, they are creatures of two parts, the biological, and the mechanical. Not so very different from the qualities your Cult finds so appealing, the union of man and machine, yes?'

'Indeed,' said Cawl.

Sedayne sat back, getting into his stride. He was a man who enjoyed regaling others with his achievements. 'Much of the black carapace work was undertaken by servants of Amar Astarte, a name which is already ill-favoured, when not so very long ago it was spoken with respect. She was one of the greatest genotects of this era, perhaps any era. Her work outshone that of the gene-witches of the Selenar. You know of them?'

'Of course!' said Cawl. 'We are not entirely ignorant.'

Sedayne was unoffended by Cawl's waspishness. Instead he seemed to approve. 'Good, good, you fight your corner. That is good,' he said, stroking the side of his glass with his forefinger. 'No one will remember her, in a few hundred years. The favour of the powerful means so much, and she no longer has it. I didn't rate her myself. The work I received was substandard. It didn't work, so I fixed it. I made the carapace possible. You could say that the success of the Emperor's own Legions was only possible because of what I did.' Sedayne sipped his wine with a triumphant expression. 'Now, imagine what you could do if you shared that knowledge.'
=========================================================================
Ezekiel Sedayne was dying.

There was a time when he stood tall among men, as much a physical as an intellectual giant, but those days were done. He was old. He was at the end. His seven-foot frame had shrunken in. His spine curled with calcium loss. His hands were knotted with arthritis. His skin was slack, flowing around brittle bones like draped cloth. His lustrous black hair had turned as fine and white as the silk of a spider's nest. It spread around his head on the pillow as if it, like his skin, had been laid there, and if he stood, if he had been capable of standing, he would have left it behind as a cloud of down.

Sedayne's life had lasted longer than any child of Terra had a right to expect, but all things are finite, and his existence was coming to a close.

Human beings are aware of their mortality, yet they deny it to the very last. Sedayne regarded his intelligence to be in excess of most others. He believed he was free of the delusions that ruled the mind to reason's detriment, yet now he succumbed. He could scarcely believe death was knocking at his door.
This cannot be happening to me, he thought. But it was.

Sedayne had come from nothing to become one of the greatest scientists of his age. Despite his failing body his mind was sharp. His insight clear. In numb amazement, he insisted he felt young in his soul. The ravages of age on his body gave the lie to that.

He appeared in many respects like a corpse. Lips drew back from yellow teeth made long by the recession of dark gums. No matter how fast his thoughts raced, his body barely moved. His chest trembled with the bird flutter of his heart. Every inhalation was a bellow's wheeze.
But he was not dead yet. The breaths kept coming, and when the door to his bedchamber creaked wide his eyelids flickered open and his eyes, which were strikingly moist in the dry valleys of his parchment skin, swivelled to fix themselves upon his visitor.

'The Altrix Herminia,' he wheezed. His top lip stuck to his teeth for want of saliva, spoiling his smile. He was drying up from the inside out, like a spice pod left out to desiccate in the sun. Soon every drop of life would be wrung out of him, and there would only be an arid husk left. Then there would not even be that.

The Altrix came forwards with a rustle of layered, soft, plastek clothing. Upon her breast pocket she wore a caduceus in red and white that contrasted with the pale green of her dress. The uniform was formal and tightly laced, a symbol binding her to her duty, but though her garments were restrictive she moved with easy grace that suggested athletic, if not dangerous, power.

'My lord director,' she said, dipping her head respectfully. The sharp curve of her fringe swung neatly over her eyes.

'Your arrival pleases me.' Sedayne's head moved feebly to the side so he could follow her approach. The appetites of a younger man tormented him. 'Age does not agree with me,' he said. He was tiring, his breath rasping harder. He was a machine close to shutdown. He looked to the Altrix's face, then at the fat syringe she carried in her hand.

'The time… is close…' Each word was an individual effort. Each syllable required him to assign it a painful breath. Such care and attention his words received now, when once they were spent so carelessly.
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The Emprah intended for the Thunder Warriors to just die of old age, or in battle, and simply not be replaced. He only moved to purge them after some rebelled against him, forcing his hand to purge the rest so as to prevent the possibility of further rebellion. The Emprah was willing to make unethical decisions and 'do what must be done' for the 'greater good' of humanity, but unlike the Ruinous Powers he was not pointlessly cruel or a caricatured villain. Where possible, he preferred to take the more humane or peaceful option, he just had absolutely zero tolerance for anything that had proven itself to be a threat and no qualms about exterminating threats entirely.

And given the stakes and the state of the reality he was working with, it's kind of hard to fault him for that. Fault him in other areas sure, but in 40k zero tolerance for threats is just common sense.
 
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Neruz said:
And given the stakes and the state of the reality he was working with, it's kind of hard to fault him for that. Fault him in other areas sure, but in 40k zero tolerance for threats is just common sense.
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It's also something Guilliman finds out much, much later.
'It is done,' said the primarch. 'Espandor is free of Mortarion's witchcraft. Its cleansing may begin.'

Guilliman put up and sheathed the sword. The fires went out, plunging the cathedral back into darkness, but a certain sanctity remained. By the Emperor's own blade, Guilliman had driven back the baleful influence of Chaos. He could not deny the effect. He could not have defeated an enemy like that without the weapon.

Godlike, he thought.

Mathieu sank to his knees. 'Praise be!' he whispered. Tears ran down his face.

'You are still alive?' said Guilliman with mild surprise.

'The Emperor protects. The Emperor protects!' Mathieu said, partway into a religious fugue. 'As you fought and others died, I was unharmed! Praise be, praise be! The Emperor has touched this place.'

Guilliman shrugged. Combat over, he was weary. The emptiness inside him seemed deeper for his encounter with the daemon. His hearts laboured, and his scar itched. 'He remains potent, even now.'

'I can feel His love for humanity,' said Mathieu. 'I can feel it all around me!' He hesitated in his rapture. 'Tell me, oh lord regent, truthfully – does the Emperor love us, my lord? Do not say I am wrong!'

The Emperor loves no one man, thought Guilliman. He cannot afford affection – that is the honest practical for the impossible task that faces the Master of Mankind. He did not love His sons, He does not love men, but He does love mankind. I find it hard to forgive Him. Did His solution have to be built on lies? Lies upon lies?

Mathieu's question pushed Guilliman deeper into melancholy. More than anything, he yearned to speak with his foster father Konor one more time. He had been a noble soul, one who could be trusted. A true father.

Had you not died before the Emperor arrived in Ultramar, would I have abandoned you as quickly as my brothers abandoned their adoptive families? he asked himself.

He knew the answer to that, and it shamed him. No one is immune to the effects of such power, he told himself, but that did not make the truth any more palatable.

He understood. He knew what his father wanted to achieve, and why. Facing things like Qaramar brought it home to him time and again. Knowing what opposed mankind made him see the utility of lies. Could Guilliman honestly say he loved all the men who called himself his sons? He barely knew them, especially now – Cawl's blasphemous hordes in particular. They, too, were a means to an end. He and his 'father' had that in common. The mantle of rulership was weighty, and moulded the man that bore it.

I never wanted to be a tyrant, thought the primarch. Perhaps my father did not wish to be so either. History has roles for us that cannot be denied. We are but pieces on the board of eternity.

'My lord,' said Mathieu into the primarch's silence. 'Please tell me, does the Emperor love us?'

We are so much more like you than you ever intended, thought Guilliman. You gave too much of yourself to us. Without realising, in your arrogance, you made yourself a father in truth. We are your sons, in every way. Did you see that?

'My lord?' said Mathieu

'The Emperor loves us all,' lied Roboute Guilliman.
 
Leafy503 said:
It's also something Guilliman finds out much, much later.
'It is done,' said the primarch. 'Espandor is free of Mortarion's witchcraft. Its cleansing may begin.'

Guilliman put up and sheathed the sword. The fires went out, plunging the cathedral back into darkness, but a certain sanctity remained. By the Emperor's own blade, Guilliman had driven back the baleful influence of Chaos. He could not deny the effect. He could not have defeated an enemy like that without the weapon.

Godlike, he thought.

Mathieu sank to his knees. 'Praise be!' he whispered. Tears ran down his face.

'You are still alive?' said Guilliman with mild surprise.

'The Emperor protects. The Emperor protects!' Mathieu said, partway into a religious fugue. 'As you fought and others died, I was unharmed! Praise be, praise be! The Emperor has touched this place.'

Guilliman shrugged. Combat over, he was weary. The emptiness inside him seemed deeper for his encounter with the daemon. His hearts laboured, and his scar itched. 'He remains potent, even now.'

'I can feel His love for humanity,' said Mathieu. 'I can feel it all around me!' He hesitated in his rapture. 'Tell me, oh lord regent, truthfully – does the Emperor love us, my lord? Do not say I am wrong!'

The Emperor loves no one man, thought Guilliman. He cannot afford affection – that is the honest practical for the impossible task that faces the Master of Mankind. He did not love His sons, He does not love men, but He does love mankind. I find it hard to forgive Him. Did His solution have to be built on lies? Lies upon lies?

Mathieu's question pushed Guilliman deeper into melancholy. More than anything, he yearned to speak with his foster father Konor one more time. He had been a noble soul, one who could be trusted. A true father.

Had you not died before the Emperor arrived in Ultramar, would I have abandoned you as quickly as my brothers abandoned their adoptive families? he asked himself.

He knew the answer to that, and it shamed him. No one is immune to the effects of such power, he told himself, but that did not make the truth any more palatable.

He understood. He knew what his father wanted to achieve, and why. Facing things like Qaramar brought it home to him time and again. Knowing what opposed mankind made him see the utility of lies. Could Guilliman honestly say he loved all the men who called himself his sons? He barely knew them, especially now – Cawl's blasphemous hordes in particular. They, too, were a means to an end. He and his 'father' had that in common. The mantle of rulership was weighty, and moulded the man that bore it.

I never wanted to be a tyrant, thought the primarch. Perhaps my father did not wish to be so either. History has roles for us that cannot be denied. We are but pieces on the board of eternity.

'My lord,' said Mathieu into the primarch's silence. 'Please tell me, does the Emperor love us?'

We are so much more like you than you ever intended, thought Guilliman. You gave too much of yourself to us. Without realising, in your arrogance, you made yourself a father in truth. We are your sons, in every way. Did you see that?

'My lord?' said Mathieu

'The Emperor loves us all,' lied Roboute Guilliman.
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Poor Rowboat, he just wants reality to not be fucked up beyond all hope and reason, is that really too much to ask?
(Yes.)
 
I wonder if the Compact can reverse engineer and reproduce Divining Blades if they get a hold of them. They are swords which can and did impose True Death on daemons. Composed of Nightmare Steel the ancient blades can seek out and attack the true essence of the daemon hit by the blade.

In tabletop terms any unsaved wound forces a psyker or daemon target to roll Perils of the Warp, as well as having the property Instant Death (kills no matter how many wounds the target has left).

The description of the blade from Horus Heresy - Malevolence:

Weapons of ancient provenance, forged from the unimaginably rare Nightmare Steel, the Divining Blades are relics far beyond mortal ken to comprehend. It is said of such weapons that they are keen enough to cut unreality and reality both when swung; that their subtle edges, which lie beyond both of those dimensions, can never be blunted; and that they have an oscillating frequency in synchronicity with the turning of the universe itself. Charged with untold ethereal power, a Divining Blade can locate and sever the true essence of a Daemon within the Warp if it passes into proximity with its edge, and thus these artefacts inspire a primal terror in Daemons which behold them.

So obviously its from the 30k era. While the Compact has the Shroud and symbiotes to murder daemons with, I don't think they'd pass up anything that can help them murder more daemons.
 
Stelarwand030 said:
No everything is the OLD ONES fault. And the NECROTYRS. IF the Old Ones had killed the Necrotyrs instead of banishing them to their home world then the 40K universe would be much different.
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Hell, it's mostly straight up the Old Ones fault. They could have easily fixed the problems with the Necrons bodies but didn't.

We all know how they took that.
 
The old ones fucked up the universe. They made the eldar But they didn't make the orks till the necron started feeding all the souls to the machine Star gods. so it's not like the old ones meant for everything to go to hell. The eldar on the other hand have been assholes always and forever so in 40k everything is the eldars fault just like in worm everything is a simugh plot
 
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40k is just a bunch of fuck up with long lasting consequences that was made by a lack of foresight. that keep piling on top of each other.
 
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4.1
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    • 4.1

    +++

    "We have experienced significant temporal dilation." MUM reports, not too long after we arrive.

    "Yeah?" Lucy asks, scrolling through reports sent back by the Stone Ship attendant fleet.

    "I have analyzed all visible stars within range. Cross-referencing with pre-existing star maps shows a significant drift. We were inside of the Warp Storm for approximately five thousand years."

    Lucy paused. "What."

    "As far as I can tell, the current year is approximately in the late stages of the thirtieth millennium, somewhere between the sixth and ninth century."

    Mmm. That was... certainly something.

    "We lost five thousand years?" Lucy asked, before sighing and shaking her head. "No- doesn't matter. The Empyrean does as the Empyrean does. We're out, and that's that."

    Fucking Warp.

    "Got any good news for me?" She asked.

    "Empyreal sensor arrays indicate that the galaxy has calmed down significantly since the beginning of the Strife." MUM offers. "The number and severity of Warp Storms have depleted significantly compared to what records indicate. However, the core of Aeldari Empire territories appears to have been consumed by a particularly large Warp Storm, spanning over twenty thousand light years."

    She blinked. "Huh." She leaned back. "So much for their vaunted superiority, I guess."

    "A shame." Singleton said, his voice making it perfectly clear that he didn't think it was a shame at all.

    "What about Earth?" Lucy asked.

    Over there, judging by that bright ass light shining through the Warp.

    "The Sol system is located three thousand and two light years away." MUM reports. "It is free of Warp Storms. Additionally, a Warp Beacon of considerable power has been activated. No further information is available."

    "Somebody is there." She smiled. "How quickly could we get there, if we just went straight to it?"

    "Boundary Drives would require approximately twenty five years of continuous travel in order to reach Sol. Grav-Tether FTL would require fourteen years. Wormhole travel, circumstances permitting, could require anywhere up to a week."

    Probably a lot less than a week. Barring Warp Storms or other similar reality-rending contrivances, there wasn't much that could stop me. Powerful gravitational disturbances could slow me, but not much else.

    I was fairly certain it wasn't a good idea, though. Just going straight to Terra, more or less directly into Big E. Not right now.

    So I poke Lucy's mind, to get her attention. An idea floats across, and she nods.

    She flicks her hands, bring the star map up again. "MUM, cross reference all stars with previous records. Can you identify former and likely colonies?"

    MUM's avatar pulsed.

    A moment later, several stars were highlighted, in four different colours. Blue, green, yellow, and red.

    "Matches to former colonies are marked in blue." MUM stated. "Likely candidates for colonies are marked in green. Yellow indicates resource-rich systems that lack suitable worlds for terraformation, but are potential harvesting zones. Red highlights mark stars that were confirmed to have been swallowed by a Warp Storm at one point, or are marked as containment zones for uncooperative alien species. Given that the Federation no longer appears to exist as a polity, containment has likely been broken."

    There was a startling large amount of reds. Blues, too. Greens were the rarest, even yellows vastly more common.

    Mostly because Humanity hadn't spared any zone to expand into. Most of that which could have been green was instead blue.

    Lucy blew out a breath, looking at them all. "Alright."

    She went quiet, for a bit, looking at them all. Then, she sighed. "Call a council. It's time to discuss stage four."

    +++

    When you get down to it, we did not have a particularly large amount of people available to us. Oh, sure, ten billion people sounds like a lot, but split across forty six main ships and their attendant fleets, it really wasn't.

    Not when you compared it to a galaxy of two hundred and fifty billion stars.

    Project Moth was ambitious, like that. Sure, Humanity hadn't spread through the entire galaxy, and sure, even with advanced terraforming technologies, not every star held a viable colony, and sure, most colonies probably don't exist anymore thanks to the Men of Iron, Warp Incursions, Alien Assault, or the like, but...

    That was still a lot.

    Let's be pessimistic.

    The Federation had laid claim to something like sixty percent of the galaxy. Let's go down to forty, just to narrow it down to space that was unconditionally theirs, no 'if's, 'and's, 'or's, or 'but's about it. Let's say that, of all that vast space, only about two percent of it has long term colonies that don't need constant maintenance to stay active. We'll simplify, and state that it's just one, per potential site. Let's further say that, between the Men of Iron, the Warp Storms, and Alien invasions, only zero point one percent of those survived.

    Where does that leave us?

    With about three million surviving colonies.

    And that's the pessimistic estimate. In reality, the space claimed was bigger, the number of stars that held colonies that didn't need maintenance was closer to fourteen percent, and the number of colonies per star averaged at two point six.

    The number of survivors was harder to guess. But again, let's keep that pessimistic one in a thousand guess.

    The number of survivors has just jumped to fifty four million and six hundred thousand colonies.

    It would take far, far, far too much time to go check up on all that with only a single fleet. Checking ten stars every day would take nearly eight hundred years.

    And that's just checking the stars to see if we can find anything. If we did find things? Then even more time would have to be spent dealing with whatever it was. It could take anywhere from days to years depending on the issue.

    And the worse part of it?

    We still have it better than literally almost everyone in the galaxy when it comes to travel time. My wormholes were amazing for that. Reliable, effectively instantaneous, interstellar transportation whose only limit was energy availability?

    Nobody had that. The Webway and Necron Pharos Devices were reliable and very quick, but both were limited to entrances and exits, not free-range like me. Warp Drives were free-range with limits mostly on safety of entrance and exit points, but it was the Warp and it obviously wasn't stable. Inertialess Drives and Narvhals were stable, but neither were instantaneous.

    What did all of this mean?

    Well, a few things. First, that we had an advantage that should be exploited as ruthlessly as possible. Second, that one big fleet was not an efficient usage of our manpower. And third, since we had now taken a look around, found no immediate problems, had a full stock of energy and matter, and had our options in front of us, that it was time to get moving.

    Thus, Stage Four.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Hmmm... Golden Throne's active. Likely means that Emps just got throned. Also means that the Imperium is a complete mess right now and might not be paying attention.
     
    Well, the Horus Heresy hasn't started yet (wiki says it starts in the early 31st millennium, and right now it's the late 30th millennium), but I don't know whether that's a good or bad thing for the Federation.
     
    Thunderfire said:
    Well, the Horus Heresy hasn't started yet (wiki says it starts in the early 31st millennium, and right now it's the late 30th millennium)
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    Around the time of the Great Crusade it seems, give or take a couple years.
    The Great Crusade (~798.M30 — 005.M31) was a brief age of rebuilding and reunification following the complete regression of mankind during the Age of Strife. It was a time when the Emperor still lived in the conventional sense and led his race in person. It followed the Emperor's conquest of Terra in the Unification Wars and lasted roughly from the conquest of Earth's moon to the Battle of Isstvan III and the beginning of the Horus Heresy.
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    Drich said:
    "As far as I can tell, the current year is approximately in the late stages of the thirtieth millennium, somewhere between the sixth and ninth century."
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    O boi, ladies and gents, welcome to Warhammer 30K.

    It's the 31st millennium, and things are just starting to look up, right before it all goes straight to shit.

    Because in the grim darkness of the slightly less far future, hope only exists to make the inevitable suffering all the greater.
     
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    Neruz said:
    O boi, ladies and gents, welcome to Warhammer 30K.

    It's the 31st millennium, and things are just starting to look up, right before it all goes straight to shit.

    Because in the grim darkness of the slightly less far future, hope only exists to make the inevitable suffering all the greater.
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    Personally I'm just waiting for Big E to run into them and go "Wat?", cause actually friendly and helpful xenos aren't really a thing in that universe... There's also the fact that they eat Warp entities to consider.
     
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