It happened not all at once.
Sometimes, it happened over there, in that Hive. A malfunction was likely the culprit.
Then it happened in that Hive, some sub-levels choking to death on fumes and toxins pumped into their habs and halls. Poor bastards had likely run afoul of someone re-routing industrial by-products through their sections because it was cheaper or quicker.
After that, the "incidents" continued. One after the other. When it happened to a temple of the Star Child, suspicions were raised from low-level concerns by those at the bottom to a concern by those in the middle of the rank ladder.
Investigations happened. Why did the ventilation systems pump toxic waste into the temple? Why hadn't they been destroyed or brought under local control?
Ahhhh shit, alright they're finally taking actions and going over EVERYTHING in Voxx Primus with a fine tooth comb to see what else they missed.... which means also revisiting to see if they really did wipe out that Psyker cabal they found, fuck. Right, they would give that another look there. But yah the way the Hives are built those made sense for accidents to happen but when it was directly funneled into a temple after those it would raise suspicions.
When the investigators started to vanish, and more locations belonging to the Star Child began to be hit, the upper leadership got involved.
And then a Hive went silent.
Not the Hive itself, of course. But all communications with those within that had sworn allegiance to the Star Child did.
Well, shit. counter plays and spy shit is in play with them either backing off or dying now.
And then the Wastes between the Hives turned from deadly to a death trap as lances began to rain unto all found in the open. Dust storms of apocalyptic proportions mixed with molten glass and sharp stones, rust, metal, and obsidian flung by them in response to the ortillery raining death and destruction unto the surface.
It took analysts less than a week to realize that the locations struck most often were those that held their camps and installations or were used as service points between journeys to supply their operations throughout the planet.
The bombardments continued for seven more, leaving nothing but an empty land of glass and molten rocks cooled off once more.
Nooo our PoV character from the wastes!
and damn so did they just glass the entire wastelands or just the areas where they suspected our forces? and shit man they is even worst now then it was before, trying to live or even just drive through there.
Nobody knew what had given them away or who had given them away, but they knew that someone was looking for them now. And they had delivered their first strike.
Plans would need to be made to combat them, plans that would likely involve the gratuitous use of violence by massed gangs and soldiers. Plans that would give them away if they fucked up even one part, for they had no singular combatants to send against the worst the Free Duchy had to offer and expect them to return without tipping them off as to the true nature of the Federation.
So that would be the Inquisition here and them doing their job in this and showing their experience. Yup, starting up with the conflict now. they have guard level equipment so it should be fine just a matter playing it right without overcommitting or showing too much of our hand.
OH WELL LOOK THAT THAT, damn Templars would have been useful right now. All it would have taken was one action over the past turns. Can we PLEASE do it this turn now?
[] Trigger The Voxx Revolution
I'm guessing that's not a mistake and will assume we have around 3-5 turns before its time. Lets... lets just focus on the fleet and preparptions now. Another taskforce of the Artillery ships so we can destroy the orbitals from a safe distance, start building up more stations and evac fleet and the like.
Okay. 1st; sorry for quoting all of that. 2nd; all of your questions can be answered by pointing out something very simple: you are assuming that you know the Duchy.
You are assuming that they are Incompetent. That they are stagnant. That they never had to change to overcome difficulties. That they are stupid. That they are a 100% copy of the Imperium we all love to hate.
They. Are. Not.
And all of the difficulties you have encountered come back to this: you have assumed that you know what the Duchy is and how it operates, and you are surprised every time you find out that, no, they are not the Imperium of Man, they are the Van Zandt Free Duchy claiming its legitimacy from being a loyal enclave of the IoM.
You assumed that you could plop down a revolution with a mandate to grow and wouldn't get pushback.
You never thought about gathering every scrap of information you can to tailor your subversion first, before you start waving flags.
Van Zandt had to contest with other Imperial Remnants, Orks, Drukhari Raiders, Soul-Eating Xenos that puppet their victims lifeless bodies, Chaos Cults, Chaos Xenos, Rebellions, and more while it expanded and grew. They had to adapt.
Where the Imperium can lose a hundred planets and barely blink while it settles two-hundred more at the same time, Van Zandt panicked when they lost 2 systems in 489.M42, and reformed its institutions. When they fucked up against the Orks in 675.M42, they reformed. When they fought against the Soul-Eater Xenos, they reformed. Again and again, when they couldn't murder their opposition through sheer weight, they murdered them through cunning and learned lessons.
Van Zandt is not the Imperium.
Please. For your own sake. Stop thinking they are the Imperium.
.... Well duh and this is something I had been saying before, we were treating these like the Memes of 40k and this would affect us negatively by assuming that. Ah okay, that we really should have done and gotten the first infiltrators or stealth ships to listen in on commications, get a lay of the land and sent some agents to infiltrate to middle management to get a feel for how things are. Not to maintain that positions or connections but just to understand the system and stuff.
Oh that was a lot of enemies there. Orks, Dark Eldar, Soul-eating xenos that is terrfiying, Chaos, and rebellions. Yah they have experience in a lot of things. Ah that is something we should have thought of as well. the Dutchy doesn't have even a 100 hundred worlds, so the lost of even a single world would be felt. Yup adapt and survive, While we didn't know any of that, and in hindsight we really should have tried to learn those things to get an idea of what would be beyond the Dutchy as they held back other enemies and to see how they changed to meet them.
Yes Please. I think now you said it QM the thread will stop treating this a Meme 40k now. Not sure on how its gonna be now but maybe lets try to scout out and gather general info and stuff about the factions we encounter. or ones we plan on fighting. Just a general history, recent conflicts, the results of those conflicts, how the worlds are and people live, etc.
Blind Our Foes.
Hide Those Who Must Be Hidden
Let Nothingness Reign
I... Let Nothingness Reign sounds ominous but I want to know as well. Also someone keep these combos in a note or something in case we can do it when we have an action to spare.
I think Blind Our Foes and Hide Those Who Must be Hidden are good ones to choose now.
Something with Silence at the start.
Got it, I still don't understand how some songs or combos turn out the way they do but I guess I'll try slinging together some songs and just see what they come out too.
Yeah, pretty much that. Worded that badly, huh?
ehhhh sort of but I think differing views and perceived outcomes. As mentioned by some they think the templars aren't capable of that and thinking of the sisters of battles screaming from the top of their lungs blowing up everything and a single one dying with the gear was enough to blow the infiltration wide open or that because they are just one or two they can't affect things by much. They aren't viewing this as tomb raider or Dark Tide where its the small group or one person that Could stop the leak of info by tracking down the rat or able capable of killing the tracker and planting false evidence on them.
I just wanted them to augment the forces that and act as symbols to rally to, I didn't know they were capable of that either but its obvious now we need them.
Ah, the usual Post-Something-Not-Ideal-Happening threadwide freakout.
Yup, pretty much. goes off the rails or things changed due to third party its panicking. Its not great and it is annoying but its not anything earth shattering. Just adapt and focus on what you can change.
One. Before you plopped down the revolution. "Hey, Chamleons! Get into the Duchy and record everything you can, then let our Information Specialists figure out what their deal is."
I argued with myself if I should give it to you for free, but literally nobody even entertained the notion that the Duchy is anything but something you can push over or is a perfect copy of the Imperium.
It also didn't help that you decided to subvert the Underhives instead of anything else. The people on there know jack and shit about shit and jack about the wider Duchy, so you couldn't get information about them that way. Which meant that you got the info of "They are using Psy-Tech" the same second they fired one example of that at you.
Yahhhhh, we should have. Some things move fast and not sure what to include since you don't know if you can do it, are overthinking things or the like. I will admit that was a mistake and given the time and focus on things, I did assume it was 'close enough' to the imperium and changes were expected but not to what degree. We got a hint from it with how the Magos was very inhuman body and such.
...I mean...to be fair, the school of preachers is focused on training Missionaries, not Spies. And we've never specified growing a genuine intelligence apparatus was something we wanted the Vox Prime mission to do, so the people there focused on what we did tell them to do: focus on growing the numbers of the Faithful, and making things better for people living under our aegis in the Underhive.
We did focus on them being missionaries, ones that were armed, trained to convert and the like. This was their job, just to go in, convert, and prepare for the day we bring the planet into the light of the StarChild. All of the things we trained them in was to convert and build up in the hives. they're used to gang level and hab-block level style of covert and info gathering, not so much in other areas unless we supported them.
Also I am going to admit I was a complete dumbass and thought for the longest time the Propaganda For The Foreign Masses was a single action to convert neighboring worlds to us, not to to make an office that would do that for us. I stopped paying attention on the description of it since I glossed over it enough times. and yah I didn't know that would be our Spy Agency or the closet thing we would have until we made one. Cerberus is just for Internal matters and we never made one for External. We were worried about Cerberus getting too powerful or having no checks at all. So I think we all forgot about that and assumed we had one in Cerberus or we made one already.
Arming an enslaved population is a good strategy when you are readying to invade soon-ish. Less so when you are trying to overthrow the whole system in a century or three.
Ohhh, was this because we had several actions focused arming up and preparing when the thread was content to invade in a few centuries? thus shooting ourselves in the foot because of it?
That is the bane of daily updates. I have only so much time in a day, and I am not spending all of it on this one Quest. I can only write so much, and I am relying on people poking at stuff/me to get the full picture if they feel they aren't getting it.
Yah, Hence when in most of my posts I do ask or ping the QM to ask about things and how they affect things. Like when we asked about Automation and how there was more behind the first node of that tech tech and how after the logistical infantry armor and weapons there is another two projects that would double our SAG's across all planets, because I asked. Or when asked about how to get Dreadnaughts or Librarians for the Space Marines. In this case it was just an oversight and I think some people not wanting to bother the QM over what they saw as very small or niche questions or assumed it was folded under the actions we already took.
They are! OC - DONUT STEAL
QM said so, everyone steal donuts! as much as you can!
Hide And Divulge Their Sight
Hide And Divulge Their Sight From Our Home
Oh that's good and how one addition can switch the effect into targeted one.
1) They have not done anything worth noting. They are happy existing and vibing in their own, weird, little corner of the galaxy.
2) They are a whole mess of corporations pushing against Unions fighting against mafias stabbing governments bitching at corporations and so on. Basically a society of AnComs and AnCaps without any An and a whole lot of GUN.
3) They have better neural implants...that are used for slave labor. Yay. 🎉
Fair enough and makes sense with how they do things, not a good life at the bottom but not imploding or going into a civil war. Would those Neural Implants have any other uses for existing research or projects?
7) Not a lot, but a few about ore extraction and psy-tech could be valuable. The latter seems to be mostly focused on navigation.
Oh, well shit, that might be worth it. Do we have anything they are interested in for a trade?
10) Consolidating under one authority, gearing up for a war agains the Hegemony.
Ahhh shit, we forgot about it. We had a laughed, someone wrote an omake and that was it, so they are consolidating under one authority and might be done with the endless civil wars and are going to invade the Hegemony that would result in one or the one controling the subsector.
Well, I didn't catch it until you just told me that. I legit thought it was covert-missionaries/subversion specialists instead of spies.
Neither did I. Legit I thought based on what Laruent made was just missionaries that can cover all the bases we need to convert people in the hives. So I thought it was perfect for the Voxx Primus inflatration since it did that and the Templars woudl be warrior priests or the like and solve that.
