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The Long Night Part One: Embers in the Dusk: A Planetary Governor Quest (43k) Complete Sequel Up
- Thread starter Durin
- Start date
- Location
- Australia
She's 13 as of the end of last year, right?
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- Location
- not telling
Skewfiend
The Corruptor of All Things
- Location
- The Darkness Behind Your Eyes
What's the world coming to when a man can't stay in his house without a plague breaking in and infecting him?
You realise that to put a human's worth of saint blood into someone else, you have to take all that blood out of a saint?!
Can you honestly not see why exsanguinating the most important religious leader in our polity to do crazy experiments might be a thing to inspire hesitation?
- Location
- America
It's Avernus. It's completely normal.
Skewfiend
The Corruptor of All Things
- Location
- The Darkness Behind Your Eyes
Getting into his house is normal. Breaking in? That's new.
- Location
- Australia
Nah Plagues there come with psyker teliportation and latent biomancy,
- Location
- Alice Springs, Australia
1. Saint Lin doesn't want to donate blood for science
2. stubguns
3. You could put forward such a proposal but the general feeling is that all Avernite creatures are your responsibility
- Location
- Alice Springs, Australia
well kraken are near the top of the food chain
- Location
- Australia
Well we don't take all the blood out at once. Just a little bit every day until you have enough to fill a person. Then we just do the experiments in secret. I mean just because the Abomination exists doesn't mean we have to stop performing atrocities. We are trying to keep the heart and soul of the Imperium alive for the Emperor's return, after all.
That cheeky git-knocka! No wonder the Mechanicus is so hesitant to start doing the science if the Living Saint of the Omnissiah Himself won't participate in it!
Yeah but the only xenos intelligent enough and/or dangerous enough for the Ordo Xenos to do anything with are on Avernus. That's literally the only thing for them to do, other than annoy the Quartoks and call for their extermination.
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- Location
- Australia
"...well we knew they were nuts when they tried to wipe us out, just because some other aliens tried to do the same to them"
"are we sure this isn't just a sneaky attempt to kill us all off?'
"so thats why they didn't seem to care that we were sneaking in heavy artillery as garden tools, they do the exact same thing"
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- Location
- Alice Springs, Australia
They are starting to get used to it and both hate and admire it
their general view on the local humans is that Avernus must be some sort of planet sized insane asylum
- Location
- Alice Springs, Australia
someone please write and Omake about this
- Location
- Australia
Ok i'm trying to put something together as an Omake, but my lack of skill is showing, if anyone else wants to give it a go could you PM me so i can pass my ideas on?
I had some fairly good ideas but have trouble getting them into coherent sentences, either way i will keep on trying.
Edit: The current outline is of several scenes in a bar as a Quartok is explaining the 'new' insanity that the Imperials exposed him to.
Example: The Imperials examine some crates and discuss the merits of "long range rapid fire pest extermination" devices with the Quartok escorting the 'Gardening Tools'.
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- Location
- Australia
Ok, finished the omake. It's a bit different than what was requested but I still think it's worth submitting. @durin, could you give me a name for a male Quartok? That's just about the only thing I have left to include before I submit the omake.
EDIT: Do Quartoks sleep on beds or on mats or what?
EDIT: Do Quartoks sleep on beds or on mats or what?
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- Location
- Alice Springs, Australia
Ator
they sleep on mats
Only the Entrance to Hell
- Location
- Australia
Only the Entrance to Hell
++Thought for the Day: Only the insane have strength enough to prosper. Only those who prosper may truly judge what is sane.++
The day had been a fairly quite one for Ator. He was one of the engineers meant to do maintenance on the artillery pieces to keep them firing, a job that required a lot less people ever since they got the new human ones. (Stupid, zealous, and hate-filled they may be, but damned if they don't make reliable equipment.) The day had been seen one of the least amounts of combat in the years since he'd arrived on the thrice-forsaken hellworld so the guns needed even less maintenance than usual. With his shift done and nothing else to do, he decided to find a nice spot to sit and relax in the outdoor sun while it still lasted before heading inside with the rest of his clan.
After a few minutes of basking and enjoying the rare (though relative) tranquillity of the day, his rest was interrupted by one of the humans guarding the orbital guns. Apparently the human had plans to do the same and Ator had apparently sat right next to its "favourite spot" as if it was somehow different to other potential sitting spots, but humans were even like that. The human briefly introduced itself as "Digit" and took his seat. The two simply relaxed, neither one wanting to waste the precious time they had fighting each-other. After about half an hour of peacefully watching the planet finish its rotation and enter into night, Ator opened up a conversation with Digit, taking advice from the clan elders to try and "integrate" with their human "hosts" (though "jailors" was a more accurate term, Ator thought). The human proved amenable and soon they began recounting their stories in their militaries - Ator about his experiences on the Ork ship and Digit about its experiences on Avernus.
It was a reasonably pleasant conversation for the first twenty-five minutes. Ator found himself rather engaged by Digit's stories of the first decades of the colony's founding, of the fierce struggle to survive and keep the natural dangers of the planet at bay. At the same time, Digit found Ator's own stories on board the Ork Hulk, though his experiences were more based around frantically keeping the Quartok's defences intact rather than any actual fighting. After the first twenty-five minutes, however, Ator began to realise something: the human's story made absolutely no sense whatsoever! The story of him and his people was an unavoidable event that needed to be coped with, but if what he learned about the Imperium was true - that it was a galaxy-spanning empire with nothing even close to an equal - why send humans to colonise Avernus!? It had no substantial mineral deposits, no great tracts of arable land, and the ruins where they scavenged their technology from hadn't even been discovered after the planet had been colonised. It just seemed like an overly complicated way to send people to die - something he genuinely would not put past the empire that had destroyed his people's worlds for such absolutely inane and idiotic reasons as they did. It just didn't make sense, something that Ator had increasingly repeated as he vented his frustrations to Digit, who just sat there waiting until he was finished.
"So you really want to know why Avernus was settled? Well, I can tell you now that it being a 'complicated way to send people to die' would've been a whole lot better than the truth." And then Digit explained, and then Ator wished he didn't.
The Quartok had known about the Horror in the Warp, or "Chaos" as it was called by the humans. It was an uncommon danger that the Quartok had faced, but it was a truly terrifying danger whenever it had been allowed to fester. Each of the Quartok tribes knew the dangers posed by the Horror in the Warp and it was dealt as quickly wherever it appeared. Before the Imperium, it was the Horror that most consistently saw the tribes uniting in order to defeat, if only temporarily. What Ator did NOT know was just how easy they had it compared to the Imperium. He learned of what it meant to be the favourite targets of the Horror, of how much of what was wrong with the Imperium was because of it, of the unspeakable atrocities the Imperium committed just to prevent the absolute nightmares that the Horror's were.
Finally, he learned of the existence of Daemon Worlds. Whole planets twisted and corrupted beyond the laws of reality and reason, the material embodiment of the immaterial hellscape that makes even the harshest day on Avernus seem like a pleasant day on one of their "Paradise Worlds". Ator had been wrong. Avernus was not some "thrice-damned hellword", it was merely the entry to one! A whole planet dedicated to the single purpose of making soldiers capable of fighting in the those accursed places. The human, the one sitting next to him and enjoying his time as Ator was, his purpose and the purpose of every other one of the humans he had met was to enter these Daemon Worlds, to fight in them, and to die in them. It was incomprehensible. Absolutely incomprehensible.
It had grown late. The sun could not be seen in the sky and it was time to turn in, for the both of them. Digit thanked Ator for the chat and hoped to repeat the experience, then simply walked back to its barracks. Ator was hoping that some alarm would sound and his mind would be cleared as he would be forced into battle, but there was no alarm. Nothing to take his mind off the revelations that the human had given him. Could the Quartok survive the horrors that awaited them in the galaxy? If they would need to become like the Imperium to survive, would it even be worth it? When he laid his head down on his mat and tried to sleep, he found that he could not.
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- Location
- Alice Springs, Australia
The Crazy is Coming from Inside the Hive
Did somebody call my name--
*shakes fist at sky* AAAAANDRES
~~~
The Crazy is Coming from Inside the Hive
~~~
Many years ago, before Wrok was hatched, several very regrettable things occurred between humanity and quartok, and diplomatic relations had somewhat soured. Planets invaded. Billions slaughtered. Homeworlds turned into eternal storms of fire and ash. The usual, as humans went.
That the People had, through a series of unfortunate accidents, became trapped on a ludicrously lethal planet inhabited by monstrous abominations against nature was yet more evidence that the promise of a beautiful and kind universe was a hilarious lie. That their only source of aid on this world of eternal torment was a conclave of humanity was, as they say, the spider on the cake, and forced them to reevaluate their commitment to anti-human sentiment in the face of a statistically insignificant likelihood of survival.
Otherwise, they were as cooperative as two completely alien spacefaring species trapped on a planet could be. The humans had built them a city, the quartok lived in the city, everyone pretended the other didn't exist, and nothing exploded. So long as the governor got his taxes, everything was fine.
The beauty of diplomacy in action.
Now Wrok didn't like humans, which wasn't an uncommon affliction among his people. He also didn't socialise, which was rather uncommon given the quartok tendency for thousand-strong clanholds. He didn't mind it for too long, but sometimes you just need to think, and Wrok thought a lot.
While this made him slightly pitied among his people, they knew an effective asset needed to be placed where they could do the most good. Which was why Wrok was in charge of Nurn-Malae Transit Gate Three, where he could fill checklists and approve cargo shipments and bask in philosophical solitude to his cardiopulmonary content.
Or at least he could, if he were alone.
As with every day, save the Day of Gold, Wrok awoke at sun's first light. He made his prayers, did his part to maintain the clan's estate, and ate his first meal, before preparing for a day at work. And when he went to the railway gate, his coworker was already there, flicking through the manifest.
"Quiet day, today," said the human cheerily. His booth was on the opposite rail embankment, with fifteen thousand zha between them, and his voice did not struggle to cross it at all. "Any idea why?"
"No," said Wrok.
"Shame." The human stretched. "You'd tell me, wouldn't you?"
"Don't count on it."
This occurred every day, without fail. The human was Detective Arbiter Siveran Rol, and he was here to help. Wrok remembered their first meeting, clear as glass.
"Detective Arbiter Siveran Rol," he had said at their first meeting. "I am always here to help."
"No," said Wrok.
~~~
The gnaw worm roared, gauss shards ricocheting off its carapace. The roboturrets, finest quartok warscience, were firing at full rotation. Wrok manned his booth's power cannon, 60zh shells punching red-hot holes into the beast's flesh.
It had been eighteen minutes since Wrok's day started, and he was already sick of it.
"Woooo!" cried the human, rolling under the sinuous mass and firing impaler rounds into its softer membranes. "Better than caf, huh?"
Wrok hated this planet.
~~~
The grenades were the size of Siveran's head, and every time he bounced it off the floor with a bwong, Wrok's eye twitched.
The merchant, a pale blue quartok twenty years Wrok's junior, sweated.
"So," said the human, "there is a problem with the paperwork."
"Oh," said the merchant. A stormy expression settled at the prospect of dealing with corruption. "Is there."
"Mhm," replied Siveran, heedless. "For the cargo category you've put down 'hunting and recreation', presumably to take advantage of our subsidies for all transit of munitions and materiel. The problem is that this doesn't meet the standard for anti-fauna, on account of its poor yield." He spun the grenade on his finger, and Wrok scraped a well-worn barricade between them. "I'm sorry, but at best, you'd have to tag it under 'landscaping'. Maybe 'mining and construction'."
The merchant stared, all four of his eyes glaring. "I see."
"Good! Glad we could get that sorted." He put the grenade back in its box. "Next time, if you want to take advantage of our substantive financial support, might I recommend more explosives? A vessel of this size could stand to hold eight kilograms more explosives." He winked. "If you stick in a void-charge, you get fifteen percent off."
"I will be sure to do that," said the merchant, only slightly baffled, but mostly pissed.
~~~
"Hm?" Siveran flicked the knife through the air. Forged for quartok hands, it was as long as his arm, the monomolecular edge gleaming blue in the light. "Let's see, 'youth recreation and simulation'. I'm sure you know that training equipment must be rendered non-lethal to qualify." He dropped it, where it sank up to the hilt into the shellsteel floor. "Yep. Don't see why not. Everything's peachy keen."
The foreman roared in outrage at this grievous racial slur.
~~~
Siveran peeked over Wrok's shoulder. "You've put the chainswords under 'combat'."
Wrok growled. "What else could they possible be?"
Siveran frowned. "Well, I think you'll find that all chainswords and chain-related paraphernalia fall under 'gardening'."
"That is absurd."
~~~
"You know," said Siveran, "it's days like this that make me wish I'd taken that job in Lindon."
At the foot of the corpse-mountain, Wrok carefully beheaded any surviving beasts, dodging their acid blood. He stepped back as one pretender lashed out, its inner jaws shooting out to bite through his skull, and shot it until it was in pieces.
"I mean, you're great company and all, but it's really too quiet down here. And there's no sunlight! You know it's not healthy to spend so much time underground? The genetors recommend two hours of exercise every day outdoors. It's good for our bones."
Wrok looked up at the human sitting on the pile of horrible aliens. "The outside."
"Yep."
"The outside with the behemoth-lizards and aerotoxins and vast, chasm-mouthed wyrms. That outside."
"The very same."
Wrok shook his head, pouring the solvent over the corpses to neutralise the corrosive fluids. "Have you humans ever considered leaving this planet?"
Siveran frowned, puzzled. "I don't understand the question."
"Never mind."
~~~
AN: I think you can guess the pun.
I'm not sure if that would be the case or not, given the worship of the Abomination and it would be hard for them to convert to Nurgle because of the corruption they've already got.
Regardless, the strategy against the Hive World would actually be to Exterminatus Yavanna, their agri-world, and starve the Hive World's population. Plagues can be dealt with using quarantine, but lack of food? Nope. They don't have our STCs for food and hydroponics that would keep them fed, so they'd certainly have trouble with that. So, as you said we'd use the plagues on their other worlds if we wanted to go that route.