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The Long Night Part One: Embers in the Dusk: A Planetary Governor Quest (43k) Complete Sequel Up

Investigate the Sea?

  • Yes

    Votes: 593 80.4%

  • No

    Votes: 145 19.6%
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    738
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It's nice to know that next turn we're going to have tons of Genator research results (AKA Omakes), have Rotbart just suddenly stumble on them or someth.
 
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Threnody Dragons
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    • Threnody Dragons​


    The most powerful species of dragon encountered by modern Avernus humans thus far are the Threnody Dragons. These rare creatures are gigantic, with young adults easily standing taller than Dominus-class Knights, and are capable of breathing fire and flying, as is normal for dragons. They are extremely resistant to direct psychic alteration, making powers such as Spontaneous Combustion and Enfeeble supremely sub-optimal against them. Their greatest strengths by far, however, are their great psychic power and their intelligence. Threnody Dragons are sapient and, like many of the other xenos races of Avernus, have their own signature way of using psychic power. In their case, it is through the incantations of Words of Power.

    ***
    The idea of words of power has been with humanity since its primitive age - special words that have great inherent importance, supposedly capable of supernatural effects. Their existence has long been confirmed to be a fact, with the Imperium knowing of them and making use of them on occasion, such as with the Thunderclap power of the Space Wolves' Rune Priests. The words known to the Threnody Dragons are more powerful and in great quantity - there are so many in fact that corrupted versions of the Words form the basis of their language. Of course, just as the many normal words in existence are split between different languages, so too are words of power. The words in the Threnody Dragons' lexicon are greatly different than the ones known to the Imperium and, just like different languages, operate under different rules.

    Each individual Word requires a minimum level of raw power and familiarity with the spell for it to be spoken with effect, and the greater the power of the Word's effects, the more difficult it is to speak. Lacking power, familiarity, or both when speaking a Word results in nothing. It requires successful incantations of a Word to gain the instinctual familiarity to speak it, which one may realise is something that would prevent the learning of a Word at all. Dragons get around this by splitting up a Word into its component "Letters"*, each one its own word, and incanting them in sequence. Doing this decreases the familiarity requirement to zero, meaning a Dragon merely needs to reach the sufficient level of power to incant the Word and then incant the Word's Letters in sequence. This builds familiarity with the Word, and as the Dragon gains familiarity, they're able to drop more and more Letters (starting from the beginning and moving in sequence) until they reach the last Letter of the Word, which is always the Word itself. The more Letters a Word has, the more powerful it is.
    *"Letters" don't operate as normal letters in a normal word. They're symbolic in nature and have nothing to do with a Word's phonetic pronunciation. A Word can have fifty Letters but only three letters in phonetic pronunciation.

    Words of Power are very much a power-oriented way of using psychic powers, with little requirements for control and no real flexibility. More complex effects are achieved by incanting the right Word or Words. This simplicity, while easy to learn, does come with a price, however, even beyond requiring the user to have large amounts of raw psychic might: backlash. Each and every Word is guaranteed to cause physical damage to their speaker when they're successfully incanted, with the damage dealt by a Word tied to the Word's level of power. Threnody Dragons can handle it because of their inherent resistant to psychic alteration and because they are dragons. Weaker creatures without their resistance will find it much more difficult to withstand the backlash of using a Word, if they can at all.

    ***
    While a Threnody Dragon's alteration resistance is immensely useful, it comes with a very significant downside: beneficial effects are also resisted without discrimination. Only the mightiest Dragons are able to heal themselves of wounds, disease, and poison, and even then only minor ones. (They face similar difficulty when it comes to buffing themselves.) It also prevents their great natural power from extending their lifespan by more than a few decades - a paltry sum compared to the seven hundred and fifty rough years that their biology gives them. There are, however, rumours of older Dragons who have found ways around these limitations.

    The most powerful living Threnody Dragons known to exist are three ancients between the ages of 950 and 1000 years old - a testament to their incredible psychic strength. A Threnody Dragon's power never wanes, so even though age has weathered their bodies to the point where they can barely move, they're still responsible for the relatively low number of Threnody Dragon deaths in the last Daemonic Incursion. They've been a great blessing to their race, but they are very much anomalies - each one born prodigiously strong even by the standards of Threnody Dragons and, while they were still young, pushed far beyond their natural limits over the course of a war that left the majority of their race dead and saw the appearance of a Warp Dragon. More than that, they are dying; they numbered four but a few decades ago. The remaining three have little time left. It remains to be seen how their race will fare without them, especially now that the Wanderer's race has begun making inroads into the lands of the dragons.
     
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    • @Durin

    1. Could we get options to use the Knowledge Implantation Chairs to increase Rotbart's Learning?
    a. Or go to Avernus University, something like that.
     
    Would it be possible to have the Administratum oversee the construction of psyker cities like they do Mechanicus cities? It would save on quite a few Telepathica actions if so.
     
    Andres110 said:
    Would it be possible to have the Administratum oversee the construction of psyker cities like they do Mechanicus cities? It would save on quite a few Telepathica actions if so.
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    Presumably they do except for the parts which are needed to make it safe for psykers to live there. That requires the Psykers to invest large amounts of time.

    Unlike the admech there's a reason the administratum probably can't do it.
     
    cl20 said:
    @Durin is it possible to use Administration Assistance to build a new Luna Forge-Hive?
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    Yes they can do that. But ever time we build a Luna forge it slows down aquiring a huge forge hive and acquiring a Grand cathedral that can give us 10 of millions of AM.

    Edit I was wrong apparently about administrative assistance
     
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    @Durin The new forge hives that we build:

    1 Which size would the new hives be?
    2 Would we need to build the forges with a separate action, or the would have at least some level of forge already built?
    3 What is Scott opinion on the matter, would she rather have more forge cities built, or focus on expanding the ones we already have before building more forge cities?
     
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    Fanhunter696 said:
    @Durin The new forge hives that we build:

    1 Which size would the new hives be?
    2 Would we need to build the forges with a separate action, or the would have at least some level of forge already built?
    3 What is Scott opinion on the matter, would she rather have more forge cities built, or focus on expanding the ones we already have?
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    1. small
    2. you would start with forges and need to build Cathedral Forges with separate action
    3. I am not player
     
    training actions seem to stop being a thing around the 30 to 40 range. spend time actions really seem more for fluff effects where we maintain bounds rather than crunch effects since they have like a 1 in 100 chance of providing a concrete buff.
     
    godofsmallthings said:
    Maybe Rotbart could popularize the sport of taming/fighting a Thundabeast in a pit.

    We could telecast it to other planets in return for thrones. Governor Mikkaelson would surely pay good money to see Rotbart in a pit with a Thundabeast. :p
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    Freddie's combat is a little high to threaten with monsters, even Avernite ones. Some of the bigger beasties might be able to kill him, but they'll be able to escape pretty much any arena we build.
     
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