Strange Aeons: A 40k Xeno Governor Quest
- Thread starter Leon12431
- Start date
Robinton
Probably petting Schrödinger's cat
- Location
- Scientifically proving a miracle
[X] Support - you and Shogi will by extension support Thos' plan regarding the Necrons
[X] Shogi + Others - you will try to gather a set of worlds to work with you regarding trading with the Necrons
-[X] Try for a trio of worlds. A good balance between "small enough to be feasible" and "large enough none of us are alone."
I could be talked into other options, potentially. I don't see an unquestionable best option here, and every path requires sacrifice.
[X] Shogi + Others - you will try to gather a set of worlds to work with you regarding trading with the Necrons
-[X] Try for a trio of worlds. A good balance between "small enough to be feasible" and "large enough none of us are alone."
I could be talked into other options, potentially. I don't see an unquestionable best option here, and every path requires sacrifice.
Robinton
Probably petting Schrödinger's cat
- Location
- Scientifically proving a miracle
So, going by your earlier comments on the approximate Effective Learning of an LM: a Young LM (100) counts as a random Necron Civilian, an Elder LM (200) would count as a truly mediocre Cryptek, a Venerable LM (400) would count as an above-average to exceptional Cryptek, and The Witness (800) might actually impress the Necrons (very-good-Cryptek to very minor hero?).
The Froggy Ninja
The Blade Will Never Die
But without the techbase to back the raw Learning up.
Chroniqler
Naught but a simple wanderer
[X] Support - you and Shogi will by extension support Thos' plan regarding the Necrons
[X] Shogi + Others - you will try to gather a set of worlds to work with you regarding trading with the Necrons
-[X] Try for a trio of worlds. A good balance between "small enough to be feasible" and "large enough none of us are alone."
[X] Shogi + Others - you will try to gather a set of worlds to work with you regarding trading with the Necrons
-[X] Try for a trio of worlds. A good balance between "small enough to be feasible" and "large enough none of us are alone."
[X] Support - you and Shogi will by extension support Thos' plan regarding the Necrons
[X] Shogi + Others - you will try to gather a set of worlds to work with you regarding trading with the Necrons
-[X] Try for a trio of worlds. A good balance between "small enough to be feasible" and "large enough none of us are alone."
[X] Shogi + Others - you will try to gather a set of worlds to work with you regarding trading with the Necrons
-[X] Try for a trio of worlds. A good balance between "small enough to be feasible" and "large enough none of us are alone."
- Location
- USA
This is not exactly correct. I am still trying to figure out where the Necrons live so to speak with bonuses, so any numbers given are up for alteration in the future as I get a better feel for them. The same applies to the Aeldari to a lesser degree.
Baseline Necrontyr/Necrons have Bo7 to all mental related rolls, in addition to their sheer skills with regards to things. As such even a comparable skill would have the Necrons consider a Living Mausoleum as far worse than the comparable Cryptek/Necron. Its the difference between 1d100+x vs 7d100kh1+x where even if bonuses are the same there is a massive difference between them.
Furthermore there is an inherent stat gap between the Necrons and other species, that is especially prominent in mentality. When Atraxas contests directly against a human he gains a +30/60/90 to his personal roll to signify the gap between 0/0/0 and 3/3/3, depending on how many layers he is contesting the human. If the Human is contesting him directly they also take a -30/60/90 for the same reason to their roll. The same applies when for a Necron, only magnified due to having 11 in Mentality. The normal formula I use is (X-Y)*10 where X is the baseline stat of the person and Y is the stat that they are being compared to. Generally, assume that the higher is always X and the lower is always Y.
For Atraxas the formula when used for humans is set to: (3-0)*10 which returns a result of 30. A contest can be between one or more than one stat in which case the values are combined. If Atraxas and a Human are contesting each other on all three axis: Physicality, Mentality and Personality, the Human would suffer a -90 and Atraxas would gain a +90 due to the distance between them from baseline stats.
For the Necrons their physicality is normal and follows the above, but the Mentality is different. They have 11 Mentality, which is outside the nominal scale of baseline stats. The system goes from 0 to 10, but the Necrontyr/Necrons and Old Ones were the exceptions that had 11 in Mentality and Personality respectively. Due to this exception the Necron formula for contesting with Mentality is instead of the above: Roundup ((11-0.X)*(10+(11-X))). As an example let us take a Primarch who has 6/6/6 as baseline stats in that formula, it would look like the following: Roundup ((11-0.6)*(10+(11-6)) -> Roundup ((10.4)*(10+5)) -> Roundup ((10.4)(15)) -> Roundup (156) -> 160. Thus a Primarch would have a penalty of 160 when trying to out thinking a Necron and conversely a Necron would have a +160 when trying to understand what a Primarch is saying/explaining.
Let us run through the above with an Exatari instead. Roundup ((11-0.3)*(10+(11-3))) -> Roundup ((10.7)*(18)) -> Roundup (192.6) -> 200 would be the result for this. As such a Cryptek learning from an Exatari on non Veil tech would have a conditional +200 beyond their innate research skills to learn from the Exatari.
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- Location
- Goose Land
Hmm.
Is there a benefit to trying to get more worlds into our Necron Benefit Group, beyond avoiding absolute political isolation?
We're about to hit some really stupid Resource Gain numbers from the sound of things, so trade isn't necessarily too much of a benefit for us beyond the diplomatic ties it brings, so concentrating the benefits on us seems preferable, if it ends up with higher quality benefits over all?
Is there a benefit to trying to get more worlds into our Necron Benefit Group, beyond avoiding absolute political isolation?
We're about to hit some really stupid Resource Gain numbers from the sound of things, so trade isn't necessarily too much of a benefit for us beyond the diplomatic ties it brings, so concentrating the benefits on us seems preferable, if it ends up with higher quality benefits over all?
- Location
- USA
Suspicion defraying is about the only major thing that it would get you. But Shogi has recently become the Hermit World so to speak with how inactive you have been with regards to conducting trade deals and whatnot, so that has narrative implications.
Robinton
Probably petting Schrödinger's cat
- Location
- Scientifically proving a miracle
Completely fair.
So they'd get (11-1.0)*(10+(11-10))=(10)*(11)=110 bonus vs a Mentality 10, huh? Wow. You've said before that Mentality 11 was special and basically impossible in the current era - I now see just what that means...
Ouch. Point, but ouch.
By my latest theoretical plan, Turns 12+13 should involve "recruit 4 more Diplo Assistants and give them great Augs" (along with "3E Research").
(Part of me wants to get Streamline the Code of Law first... but as far as I can tell, hiring Diplo Assistants helps with Streamline (via Suspicion reduction) more than the other way around (via +Actions).)
But, regardless, I think we're going to emerge from our cave of contemplation, enlightened and ready to help everyone, around Turn 12-14.
- Location
- USA
Cybernetics act as an improvement on top of the baseline. A race that has a base of 2 physically that gets +2 from cybernetics would have an effective 4 but that would not be equal to a race with a baseline of 4. Its why astartes can fight even the most cyborged enhanced humans with little trouble.
- Location
- Denton, Texas
Hey just wanted to say, this last post was really well done man. Your writing has really improved here and the flow of coding jargon was a whole bunch smoother and the descriptions were on point. Well done
The Froggy Ninja
The Blade Will Never Die
[X] Support - you and Shogi will by extension support Thos' plan regarding the Necrons
[X] Shogi - you will offer up Shogi as Thos desires for the world that will take the full brunt of the costs
All in baby!
[X] Shogi - you will offer up Shogi as Thos desires for the world that will take the full brunt of the costs
All in baby!
Robinton
Probably petting Schrödinger's cat
- Location
- Scientifically proving a miracle
Strange Allies
(A crossover between Strange Aeons and The Long Night. I originally wrote this for The Long Night as "what's the lowest-power WH40k crossover that would perfectly anti-Lorgar" and crossposted here.)
While Lorgar worked to bring forth a truer expression of the Primordial Sea - a power that could recreate Chaos, destroy the galaxy, or both - the forces of The Sane prepared an expedition to stop him. They called upon a force of Heroes and Krork, a force that could have - in any lesser era - erased entire empires from the galaxy. And they accepted, from the beginning, that many of the heroes and ¾ of the Krork would not be coming back.
For they went to attack one of the most dangerous worlds in the galaxy. The Daemonworld of Sicarius, deep in the Eye of Terror, had started out as one of the most dangerous places in the galaxy before it had been heavily fortified and Consecrated to the Primordial Sea. Now? It was a place that would immediately damn any but the most well-defended and wary that set foot upon its soil, and could rip the souls out of unprepared mortals with a merest glance. It was a place so terrible, that even the Old Ones' masterpieces of the Krork were nonetheless falling with depressing regularity - barely holding on long enough to be the expendable footsoldiers that they'd signed up to be.
Three Primarchs. Dozens of Space Marines - upgraded through millennia of further research, and newly empowered by the recently-discovered Primal Warp. Hundreds of masters of thousands of esoteric disciplines. The two greatest Sane Seers in the galaxy. And it might be enough. Maybe.
In a private conversation to Cegorach, Eldrad confidently stated, "It will be enough," before wincing and admitting, "Or it will have to be. Unless you have anyone else to call for help?"
Ceg, dressed in a never-before-seen silvery costume - still clearly clown-gear, but definitely having a very metallic appearance… and too many legs… pondered for a moment before squeezing a horn that appeared out of nowhere. "I DO have… one more guy I could call on. He's pretty reclusive - he's been trying to build up again after having to detonate his star-system and evacuate all his people when the Imperium fell and the Tyrant rose. But he'd do the trick here, I think. Indeed… he might be perfect for this particular mission. That said, I'd expect him to bring his own Dreadnought."
Eldrad, for perhaps the first time since the Birth of Ynnead, was genuinely puzzled. "…Who exactly are you talking about?"
"Exactly! Bet you twenty he impresses!" Cegorach said while disappearing off into the distance.
Eldrad frowned after him. "Either he's bluffing, or there's someone Divination-resistant to a truly unprecedented degree… which would be an amazing asset to deploy against any Tzeentch operation." After a moment of contemplation, he decided, "I'll act as though he's bluffing. If he's actually telling the truth, better to give no sign whatsoever to enemy Diviners."
A brief time thereafter, the Heroes and Krork gathered aboard the Krork Attack Moon Godkiller - legendary for having killed both Gork and Mork. The addition of one extra Dreadnought - even one with what the Krork identified as a pair of starkiller weapons, and a minimum of thirty planetkillers - would not normally have raised much comment. However, the War Field found no purchase whatsoever on the ship, and Divinations confidently asserted it did not exist, so Eldrad immediately pegged it as "Ah, good, there's the extra backup Cegorach said might be showing up."
When the sizable ship (named The Modest Effort) docked with the Attack Moon, Eldrad got a chance to meet its mysterious owner: A rather large metallic spider. Like a tarantula, but with an extra pair of legs and no mandibles. It(?) had legs reaching roughly 25 feet off the ground, supporting its body at a height of around 20 feet, making it… not actually that large, but quite a bit bigger than most humans or elves - and not small even by Krork standards. Its(?) metallic silvery skin had bright veins of plasma crackling under the surface. All in all, one of the most alien beings around - possibly akin to the Silver Tide, Eldrad wondered?
"Greetings, Heroes of the Sane, and my fellows I suppose. I am Atraxas, System Governor of Shogi II."
"Governor? Under what authority?" someone asked, apparently curious.
"I was ordered to take the post of System Governor of the original Shogi System under the proper legal authority of the Imperium of Man, and was never formally relieved of my duties by a properly-authenticated representative of that polity."
"…But the Imperium dissolved millennia ago…"
"Yet my Duty remains, until a properly-authenticated individual relieves me of it. Though I do have to admit, governing has been quite a bit less stressful since I was able to officially announce the fact that I was not actually a human."
"How did anyone think you were?!? Oh, right: Mechanicus."
"Exactly: I was assumed to be an extreme example of a cyborg. Admittedly one with beliefs somewhat divergent from the Mechanicus default. In any case, my ship and I are well-armed and ready for battle at need."
"Your ship - I noted it has multiple starkillers. Why exactly did you call it The Modest Effort?"
"I called it no such thing, however my assistants collectively insisted. At one point, early in the planning phases, I said 'I believe three decades of design time and a few hundred-thousand Quintessence will be sufficient for designing our system a flagship, at least for now. While it is only a modest effort, it should suffice for our purposes for the time being.' They found the phrase funny - I understand the context of the joke, even though I am not particularly amused by this statement of fact - and quite emphatically insisted on calling it The Modest Effort."
Godkiller emerged near Sicarius, and its fleet undocked and began to fight. While various Krork vessels tangled with the nearby Chaotic fleet, The Modest Effort apparently prepared to bombard the planet.
"That's a terrible idea - narrative and Daemonworlds ensure it," said one of the best non-Eldrad Farseers alive. Before a shock came that knocked Eldrad himself to the ground from sheer mind-boggling surprise.
The Modest Effort had just activated some sort of… Veil/Warp-Tech?... something, and now 90% of the narrative weight of Sicarius and all its many many Evil Heroes and Daemons and Primordial Taint was being stolen, and used to bolster the attacking fleet.
"I need to stop underestimating Ceg's jokes," muttered Eldrad under his breath, before stating the obvious, "Fire at will!" The Attack Moon Godkiller complied, and the planet Sicarius lost half its defenses in the first volley.
The actual attack was more of a one-sided butchery, and Lorgar died while trying to tear his own eyes out and screaming, "Gods, oh gods save me - it's full of METAL SPIDERS!!!"
The Chaos Gods declined to comment, aside from hastily evacuating any nearby Exalted and hastily shoving Malal in that direction as a delaying-tactic.
As for the Krork? Their legendary Marshall was last seen looking at the anti-Chaos device, and muttering, "Got to get me one of those…"
(A crossover between Strange Aeons and The Long Night. I originally wrote this for The Long Night as "what's the lowest-power WH40k crossover that would perfectly anti-Lorgar" and crossposted here.)
While Lorgar worked to bring forth a truer expression of the Primordial Sea - a power that could recreate Chaos, destroy the galaxy, or both - the forces of The Sane prepared an expedition to stop him. They called upon a force of Heroes and Krork, a force that could have - in any lesser era - erased entire empires from the galaxy. And they accepted, from the beginning, that many of the heroes and ¾ of the Krork would not be coming back.
For they went to attack one of the most dangerous worlds in the galaxy. The Daemonworld of Sicarius, deep in the Eye of Terror, had started out as one of the most dangerous places in the galaxy before it had been heavily fortified and Consecrated to the Primordial Sea. Now? It was a place that would immediately damn any but the most well-defended and wary that set foot upon its soil, and could rip the souls out of unprepared mortals with a merest glance. It was a place so terrible, that even the Old Ones' masterpieces of the Krork were nonetheless falling with depressing regularity - barely holding on long enough to be the expendable footsoldiers that they'd signed up to be.
Three Primarchs. Dozens of Space Marines - upgraded through millennia of further research, and newly empowered by the recently-discovered Primal Warp. Hundreds of masters of thousands of esoteric disciplines. The two greatest Sane Seers in the galaxy. And it might be enough. Maybe.
In a private conversation to Cegorach, Eldrad confidently stated, "It will be enough," before wincing and admitting, "Or it will have to be. Unless you have anyone else to call for help?"
Ceg, dressed in a never-before-seen silvery costume - still clearly clown-gear, but definitely having a very metallic appearance… and too many legs… pondered for a moment before squeezing a horn that appeared out of nowhere. "I DO have… one more guy I could call on. He's pretty reclusive - he's been trying to build up again after having to detonate his star-system and evacuate all his people when the Imperium fell and the Tyrant rose. But he'd do the trick here, I think. Indeed… he might be perfect for this particular mission. That said, I'd expect him to bring his own Dreadnought."
Eldrad, for perhaps the first time since the Birth of Ynnead, was genuinely puzzled. "…Who exactly are you talking about?"
"Exactly! Bet you twenty he impresses!" Cegorach said while disappearing off into the distance.
Eldrad frowned after him. "Either he's bluffing, or there's someone Divination-resistant to a truly unprecedented degree… which would be an amazing asset to deploy against any Tzeentch operation." After a moment of contemplation, he decided, "I'll act as though he's bluffing. If he's actually telling the truth, better to give no sign whatsoever to enemy Diviners."
A brief time thereafter, the Heroes and Krork gathered aboard the Krork Attack Moon Godkiller - legendary for having killed both Gork and Mork. The addition of one extra Dreadnought - even one with what the Krork identified as a pair of starkiller weapons, and a minimum of thirty planetkillers - would not normally have raised much comment. However, the War Field found no purchase whatsoever on the ship, and Divinations confidently asserted it did not exist, so Eldrad immediately pegged it as "Ah, good, there's the extra backup Cegorach said might be showing up."
When the sizable ship (named The Modest Effort) docked with the Attack Moon, Eldrad got a chance to meet its mysterious owner: A rather large metallic spider. Like a tarantula, but with an extra pair of legs and no mandibles. It(?) had legs reaching roughly 25 feet off the ground, supporting its body at a height of around 20 feet, making it… not actually that large, but quite a bit bigger than most humans or elves - and not small even by Krork standards. Its(?) metallic silvery skin had bright veins of plasma crackling under the surface. All in all, one of the most alien beings around - possibly akin to the Silver Tide, Eldrad wondered?
"Greetings, Heroes of the Sane, and my fellows I suppose. I am Atraxas, System Governor of Shogi II."
"Governor? Under what authority?" someone asked, apparently curious.
"I was ordered to take the post of System Governor of the original Shogi System under the proper legal authority of the Imperium of Man, and was never formally relieved of my duties by a properly-authenticated representative of that polity."
"…But the Imperium dissolved millennia ago…"
"Yet my Duty remains, until a properly-authenticated individual relieves me of it. Though I do have to admit, governing has been quite a bit less stressful since I was able to officially announce the fact that I was not actually a human."
"How did anyone think you were?!? Oh, right: Mechanicus."
"Exactly: I was assumed to be an extreme example of a cyborg. Admittedly one with beliefs somewhat divergent from the Mechanicus default. In any case, my ship and I are well-armed and ready for battle at need."
"Your ship - I noted it has multiple starkillers. Why exactly did you call it The Modest Effort?"
"I called it no such thing, however my assistants collectively insisted. At one point, early in the planning phases, I said 'I believe three decades of design time and a few hundred-thousand Quintessence will be sufficient for designing our system a flagship, at least for now. While it is only a modest effort, it should suffice for our purposes for the time being.' They found the phrase funny - I understand the context of the joke, even though I am not particularly amused by this statement of fact - and quite emphatically insisted on calling it The Modest Effort."
Godkiller emerged near Sicarius, and its fleet undocked and began to fight. While various Krork vessels tangled with the nearby Chaotic fleet, The Modest Effort apparently prepared to bombard the planet.
"That's a terrible idea - narrative and Daemonworlds ensure it," said one of the best non-Eldrad Farseers alive. Before a shock came that knocked Eldrad himself to the ground from sheer mind-boggling surprise.
The Modest Effort had just activated some sort of… Veil/Warp-Tech?... something, and now 90% of the narrative weight of Sicarius and all its many many Evil Heroes and Daemons and Primordial Taint was being stolen, and used to bolster the attacking fleet.
"I need to stop underestimating Ceg's jokes," muttered Eldrad under his breath, before stating the obvious, "Fire at will!" The Attack Moon Godkiller complied, and the planet Sicarius lost half its defenses in the first volley.
The actual attack was more of a one-sided butchery, and Lorgar died while trying to tear his own eyes out and screaming, "Gods, oh gods save me - it's full of METAL SPIDERS!!!"
The Chaos Gods declined to comment, aside from hastily evacuating any nearby Exalted and hastily shoving Malal in that direction as a delaying-tactic.
As for the Krork? Their legendary Marshall was last seen looking at the anti-Chaos device, and muttering, "Got to get me one of those…"
In this timeline, I'm assuming Atraxas got to Matryoshka 9 before having to destroy the whole Shogi System to flee the Birth of the Empyreal Tyrant.
Lorgar is, effectively, trying to channel NEX. I'm assuming Atraxas has used the intervening millennia to advance his tricks a little, and critted on the NEX Sprite battle in a way that lets him permanently do damage to NEX forces.
Lorgar also has super-persuasion powers, and a couple of other crazy abilities, but those are almost useless when you have no Narrative Weight.
For the record, the flagship The Modest Effort has tech that's slightly below average for the highest-tech Imperial Remnant (the player's polity in The Long Night), if you ignore the superweapons and Quintessence. This is mostly due to scaling - Long Night gives no "sharp tech ceiling" at TL12-or-equivalent, so the players have happily been advancing slowly but surely past the limits of the DAoT.
On an unrelated note, Atraxas is hoping to get a sector of Matryoshka Systems, each with their own absurdly-intelligent AI, each with an anti-Divination anti-Magic Exatari metal spider sitting on the AI core to keep it from easily being corrupted. UNDER SOMEONE ELSE'S COMMAND! One system is enough for him, thank you very much.
Finally, in this Crossover Omake's timeline, rumor has it that Atraxas sold a set of ten thousand Primordial Arrays to the Krork in exchange for a future favor - to be redeemed after the galaxy is saved, most likely.
As a note to the author: Any chance that this can increase the probability of Atraxas discovering Revenant?
Lorgar is, effectively, trying to channel NEX. I'm assuming Atraxas has used the intervening millennia to advance his tricks a little, and critted on the NEX Sprite battle in a way that lets him permanently do damage to NEX forces.
Lorgar also has super-persuasion powers, and a couple of other crazy abilities, but those are almost useless when you have no Narrative Weight.
For the record, the flagship The Modest Effort has tech that's slightly below average for the highest-tech Imperial Remnant (the player's polity in The Long Night), if you ignore the superweapons and Quintessence. This is mostly due to scaling - Long Night gives no "sharp tech ceiling" at TL12-or-equivalent, so the players have happily been advancing slowly but surely past the limits of the DAoT.
On an unrelated note, Atraxas is hoping to get a sector of Matryoshka Systems, each with their own absurdly-intelligent AI, each with an anti-Divination anti-Magic Exatari metal spider sitting on the AI core to keep it from easily being corrupted. UNDER SOMEONE ELSE'S COMMAND! One system is enough for him, thank you very much.
Finally, in this Crossover Omake's timeline, rumor has it that Atraxas sold a set of ten thousand Primordial Arrays to the Krork in exchange for a future favor - to be redeemed after the galaxy is saved, most likely.
As a note to the author: Any chance that this can increase the probability of Atraxas discovering Revenant?
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Robinton
Probably petting Schrödinger's cat
- Location
- Scientifically proving a miracle
That and Leon has been working on a mini-quest on Discord, which can be summarized (without too many spoilers) as "a Muggleborn-equivalent Alchemist, in a world where they're treated even worse than canon HP Muggleborn, becomes the first Alchemist to graduate (which requires always delivering clearly the best project/paper/etc and not making a single spelling mistake among other things), spends a bit leveling up and seeing the world, finds out there is a full rabbit hole of officially-known things being wrong including some where even the teachers genuinely believed what they were teaching, meets some living legends, and starts trying to fix the world."
@Leon12431 , what would the Exatari think of Alex Mercer? I'm just wondering