Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
TBF Newbie Eldar Farseers are probably like 100s years old at a minimum. Remember they were Warlocks before they became a Farseer.
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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
- Brazil, Minas gerais
Well so long we live enough, we will have so many psykers that even the average militia will look like a elite from the old imperium of man (I think). And with outliers such a beta/Alpha awakening... Well is like someone just drop a titan at you. one that is angry.
At some point I want to see a sane Alpha awakening to his power and just Murdering all the enemies units.
So with that I hope for better odds to people to grow old in Avernus ^^. Plus the amount of gear we can put on even the milita is crazy.
edit: grammar.
At some point I want to see a sane Alpha awakening to his power and just Murdering all the enemies units.
So with that I hope for better odds to people to grow old in Avernus ^^. Plus the amount of gear we can put on even the milita is crazy.
edit: grammar.
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- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
Pretty sure Omens is just for divining incoming random attacks on our worlds. Maybe we could broaden their purpose with Omakes about a made up character within the order?
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
Ridcully's successor will have rerolls but will be more.. limited.
- Location
- Australia
So, I've recently done some research on a canonical drug called Spook. Spook is a drug that grants and enhances psychic power. However, any details beyond that changes based on the source.
First, we'll look at how it is in Lexicanum.
Spook - Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum
The sources for Lexicanum spook come from 1995, 1996, and 2003, so this is old lore.
Spook is different in Dark Heresy: Second Edition (Core) in a number of different ways.
Page 26:
DH2 spook is grey-white in colour, rather than the lurid green of Lexicanum's spook.
Page 109:
Spook can be produced, not just gathered.
Finally, page 174:
Unlike Lexicanum spook, DH2 spook doesn't awaken power, it creates it, even if the effects are only temporary. Negative effects happen if the user is insufficiently strong of will, and is otherwise fine (except for punishing fuckups harder if the user was already a psyker (doesn't make fuckups more likely though)). Souls definitely do not get shunted into the Warp.
Additionally, DH2 has an adventure that involves spook, and DH2 does not take place in or near Necromunda, so spook is not exclusively sourced from Necromunda.
Dark Heresy: Second Edition was published in 2014. The fact that it was made so later than the previous Necromunda sources automatically makes it a better literary source and thus better canon. Because of that, and because the interpretation allows for non-Necromunda spook, I prefer the DH2 interpretation of spook. (Though as always the interpretation used in Embers is up to Durin.)
@Durin, can we use alkahestry and/or mycenid biochemistry to turn dead psykers into spook or something similar to spook?
First, we'll look at how it is in Lexicanum.
Spook - Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum
So a green powder that's liquefied to turn it into a magic potion. It doesn't grant psychic powers, it just awakens what latent powers the user has. It also either kills the soul-weak or makes its power boost inaccessible to the soul-weak.
The sources for Lexicanum spook come from 1995, 1996, and 2003, so this is old lore.
Spook is different in Dark Heresy: Second Edition (Core) in a number of different ways.
Page 26:
Page 109:
Finally, page 174:
Additionally, DH2 has an adventure that involves spook, and DH2 does not take place in or near Necromunda, so spook is not exclusively sourced from Necromunda.
Dark Heresy: Second Edition was published in 2014. The fact that it was made so later than the previous Necromunda sources automatically makes it a better literary source and thus better canon. Because of that, and because the interpretation allows for non-Necromunda spook, I prefer the DH2 interpretation of spook. (Though as always the interpretation used in Embers is up to Durin.)
@Durin, can we use alkahestry and/or mycenid biochemistry to turn dead psykers into spook or something similar to spook?
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Interview with a Monster
- Location
- madison
Interview with a Monster
One of the issues with researching the divine was the dearth of first-hand accounts. Gathering information directly from Gods was at foolhardy at the best of times. Even a non-hostile god's mere presence was dangerous, their sheer metaphysical mass distorting the warp around them, not to mention the risk of being close to such an irrational being of such power. It would only ever be anything but suicide if one had access to a third party that could ensure safety.
Seamus could only assume the Old Ones had been prone to foolhardy actions, given the sheer number of methods to safely interact with warp entities of varying power that existed within avernus warp shadow. Though given he was currently occupying one he supposed he had no room to cast stones. The room had formed itself into a concernedly accurate recreation of his office, but he could feel the constrained power thrumming through the construct.
The door opened, revealing pitch blackness. A tendril of shadow tentatively entered the room as if testing the waters, only to recoil once it encountered his aura. Seconds passed, the tendril seems to adjust, and vast claws emerged, gripping the door frame as his interviewee pushed its bulk into the room. With a wet pop the mass of shadows resolved itself into a mockery of a human woman.
"Shit."
Prone and swearing as Zahhak tried to push itself up. It seemed his aura was doing something to its mind. Seamus suppressed his misplaced instinctive desire to help, It was too good a manipulator to be given the benefit of compassion, not until its nature had been ascertained.
"Are you alright?"
It choked on a lie before it could answer. "No, just, give me a minute please." Ridcully had commented on how human Zahhak had looked, but it seemed to be having trouble. Its form running like tar before resolidifying. It took it long minutes, but it eventually found a form that it could maintain in his presence, human-like but obviously inhuman. That had certain implications. But was it a woman grasping at lost humanity, or something inhuman imitating it?
"I'm surprised my aura is affecting you so strongly."
The creature pulled itself up onto the couch before replying "That's part of why I agreed to be studied, it shouldn't. I should be at least resistant to it, not more vulnerable than a particularly weak willed child. It's not the first time i've been surprised like this."
It was an interesting puzzle, by all indications Zahhak was immensely resistant to outside influences. Yet it actually showed a marked vulnerability to his own. It could be its resilience was more focused against Chaotic effects that anyone had realized, but it could be a more worrying vulnerability. Zahhak falling to Chaos would be... concerning, as it had always had far greater ease accessing realspace than a being of its power should. Marrying that to Chaotic taint would put a dangerous weapon in the hands of the Great Enemy.
"Would you mind explaining exactly how you're being affected?"
"I typically have a great deal more conscious control over my mental state and emotional responses than most creatures. It seems making adjustments like that is close enough to lying that I seem to be unable to do so."
"And how does that make you feel?"
"Not great. I am pleasantly surprised that I have an actual mind rather than an emulation of one, but I'm fairly reliant on being able to make adjustments for long term stability."
That was interesting. Warp entities tended to have a certain simplicity to them, one idea all the way down. The self-loathing that answer hinted at, and the fact that Zahhak wasn't inherently stable implied either conflicting concepts or something stranger. Given the ever-growing list of oddities around it, he suspected the latter more than the former.
Seamus hmmed thoughtfully, as his guest started to squirm in discomfort. It must find not being able to hide behind a mask disconcerting. "Well, I think I'm going to need an overview of what you are to really put that in context. Would you be willing to tell me what you are?"
It sighed in resignation. "Gothic doesn't really have a single word for it. It is when someone knowingly and willingly chooses to do Evil."
That made no sense. Evil was too cerebral a concept for anything but religious gods, and Zahhak was clearly not formed from worship, its structure was all wrong. "So, would you say that for something to be evil it would have to be a choice?"
"Yes."
There it was. The certainty beyond sanity of a god asserting its domain. The choice had to be the key. Very few neverborn formed around concepts relating directly to free will. The mess of a creature before him may well be an example of why. "I have to say, your not really what I'd expect from a god of Evil."
"That's the trick," it said with a smile. "I'm the god of choosing to do evil, that means I need to be able to choose not to."
That was...plausible. It would be strange for a god to want to use that sort of free will, but it was possible. But it still felt like there was something off with that explanation. "So, how do you feel about guilt?"
"In what context?"
"When you do choose to do evil, do you feel guilty?"
It winced, not at painful memory, but for running afoul of his aura. "Yes." Had it tried to emulate something? How much of its personality was a lie?
"What did you just try and do?" He needed to get a handle on its baseline, what parts of its mind were manually controlled.
It hesitated, seeming to ripple. A stress reaction? "Do you really need to know?" It sounded scared? Ashamed? Its mimicry was starting to break down, and that was making it harder to read.
"It would help."
Zahrak sighed. "I tried to simulate recalling a painful memory, I don't...'' it trailed off, struggling for the words. "I don't process things normally, trying to do it by hand has become a habit."
Seamus's brow furrowed. Zahhak obviously felt guilt. What had it tried to... oh. "It doesn't fade for you does it?"
"It's only fair. They don't get any less dead over time, why should I get to feel better about it?" Its voice was thick with bitterness and old hate.
"Do you think you should?"
"No." There was that certainty again. "I've already weighed my actions and reasons, I won't lie to myself about what I've done."
"You're confusing processing guilt with absolving yourself of it."
"Is there a difference?" it snapped.
"Yes. The point of guilt is not punishment. It serves to draw attention to our shortcomings, the way pain draws attention to injuries."
"And yet, almost every time I've seen someone whose remorse had lost its sting, they would be fairly sure they had done nothing wrong."
"Make no mistake, it should always hurt at least a little, a reminder of past failures. But once you understand what you did and why, it is right and proper for the pain to fade. A reminder does not need the same intensity as a lesson."
it snorted in derision. "Perhaps, but processing guilt is a skill like any other, the more you do it the better at it you get. Past a certain point and it stops being either a lesson or reminder, just another emotional bump in your day."
"It's human to turn from pain, even pain that is useful." Zahhak flinched. "That is what leads people to kill their sense of remorse. It's not that they simply get too good at processing it, it's that they refuse to learn, and cannot stand the pain. If you don't let it fade, you make it more likely you will start trying to kill your sense of guilt, not less."
It hesitated, its form rippling again. Seamus suspected he was on the edge of a blindspot, some axiom written into its existence as true. Not directly, it was able to consider it might be wrong, but close.
"I can't."
"Can't what?"
"I can't let it fade, I don't know how."
Definitely not human then. A better imitation than most, but a mockery nevertheless. He was starting to get a feel for it. Its emotions were artificial, mental constructs made to shore up its mind. Which raised the question of why.
"If you can't do it properly, why do you chose to try and ape guilt then?"
"Are you talking about guilt in particular or the mindset in general?"
"Both."
It let out a sigh. "My creation went wrong in a lot of weird ways. I spent a long time forced into a copy of a human mentality, which means I have enough of a grasp of the mindset that I can cobble together a mostly stable knock off. The only other mindset I can be in is..." it trailed off. It seemed its trepidation about this was guinane.
"What you were supposed to be?"
She, it, Seamus reminded himself, nodded. "A monster" it repiled, its voice small and almost scared. "One that tempts and extores people to sin, only to throws the transgressions in their face until they break,,and devours any who refuse to accept what they have done."
It was, he realized, terrified of being a monster, of being the thing it was created to be. It had spun an entire personality out of memories and observations, turning its own domain's ability to choose on itself, shaping its own mind like clay. it was not entirely unlike trying to rebuild a starship while you were flying it. Terrified of slipping into bad habits, it had removed its ability to process remorse, turning guilt into a pointless exercise of self flagellation. There was more to this than madness, it was stable enough to survive for millennia, there had to be a way it was holding itself together.
"So if you can't process your remorse, how do you keep going?"
It let out a tired sigh. "You mean aside from the fear of death?"
He simply looked at her expectantly, waiting for her attempts at evasion to fail.
"Well the first is admittedly cold comfort, but I know I'm a net benefit to the galaxy. For all that I've done, I've saved more than I've killed."
"And that helps?"
It nodded. "If nothing else, knowing that there is a utilitarian argument to keep waking up can be comforting."
It was wrong he realized, or at least not understanding the full extent of it. He suspected a purely logical argument against suicide was key, something to cling to if it needed to turn its emotions off. The implied level of artificiality in her persona was concerning, but that wouldn't be enough for when it did have its emotions on.
"What else?"
"There are people I love, who would suffer if I died."
"Is that why you recruit the Blackened?"
It opened its mouth to deny it, and choked on a lie. "I... I didn't.. I don't..." Even as its form rippled and flowed, her horror was plain to see. "I didn't know."
"Come again?"
"I didn't... I-I thought it was just survival, just keeping specialists on hand not, not about..." it trailed off, unable to find the words.
"About making sure you'd always have hostages against your own self destructive impulses." It had needed a family, so it had wheedled and tempted others out of their humanity, so it would have people to cling to.
It simply nodded.
"How much does it really matter? Either way you were choosing to strip them of their humanity for your own survival."
"It Matters."
Domain born certainty. Of course, whatever else she was, she was choice. And choice needed to be informed. She'd betrayed her own core ethos.
It took a deep breath, its form barely holding together as doubt and horror played across her soul. "How could I not know that?"
The answer was simple, what do you break something indestructible against? "You must have chosen to look away." Itself. The paradox of Zahhak laid bare, to be bound to her domain was to defy it, to defy her domain was to embrace it. A paradox that for all she had used it, Zahhak herself had not fully grasped.
it seemed to collapse in on itself, its form visably distorting. "I thought I was stronger than this."
"You're only a god, Zahhak. What did you think would happen when you turned your morality into a torture rack? Of course you'd start trying to escape the pain."
"I can fix this." Seamus wondered which of them she was trying to convince. "Now that I know where I went wrong, I can do better."
"No. You can't. You're not human Zahhak, and you will never be human. Trying will just mean another few thousand years of pointless self flagellation"
She flinched, her entire form rippling violently, and Seamus continued.
"But that doesn't mean you can't be a person."
She froze, and the look of hope on her face was shockingly human.
"I can help you be something else, something other than a monster or a tormented mockery."
"Why?"
"Because for all that you're an insult to humanity, you are trying. You've spent thousands of years twisting your nature into a pretzel because you hate the idea of being just another horror. It's not my nature to leave a lost soul stumbling in the dark."
She was hesitating. The offer was genuine, but generous offers where rare enough to warrant suspicion, something he suspected Zahhak was often on the other side of. "There are some parts of the human mindset I've gotten rather attached to."
He had a fairly strong suspicion as to what they where. "I am not so arrogant to assert that mankind has a monopoly on love, familiar or otherwise."
The Goddess steeled herself, and nodded. "Thank you."
It would, Seamus mused, be an interesting project.
@Durin, another omake. Zahhak finally got therapy!
- Location
- Germany
[X] Select Martinus Argall
[X] Select Isaac Gros
- Location
- Alice Springs, Australia
yes you couldSo, I've recently done some research on a canonical drug called Spook. Spook is a drug that grants and enhances psychic power. However, any details beyond that changes based on the source.
First, we'll look at how it is in Lexicanum.
Spook - Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum
So a green powder that's liquefied to turn it into a magic potion. It doesn't grant psychic powers, it just awakens what latent powers the user has. It also either kills the soul-weak or makes its power boost inaccessible to the soul-weak.
The sources for Lexicanum spook come from 1995, 1996, and 2003, so this is old lore.
Spook is different in Dark Heresy: Second Edition (Core) in a number of different ways.
Page 26:
DH2 spook is grey-white in colour, rather than the lurid green of Lexicanum's spook.
Page 109:
Spook can be produced, not just gathered.
Finally, page 174:
Unlike Lexicanum spook, DH2 spook doesn't awaken power, it creates it, even if the effects are only temporary. Negative effects happen if the user is insufficiently strong of will, and is otherwise fine (except for punishing fuckups harder if the user was already a psyker (doesn't make fuckups more likely though)). Souls definitely do not get shunted into the Warp.
Additionally, DH2 has an adventure that involves spook, and DH2 does not take place in or near Necromunda, so spook is not exclusively sourced from Necromunda.
Dark Heresy: Second Edition was published in 2014. The fact that it was made so later than the previous Necromunda sources automatically makes it a better literary source and thus better canon. Because of that, and because the interpretation allows for non-Necromunda spook, I prefer the DH2 interpretation of spook. (Though as always the interpretation used in Embers is up to Durin.)
@Durin, can we use alkahestry and/or mycenid biochemistry to turn dead psykers into spook or something similar to spook?
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
Can doesn't mean should, and looking up it's effects it looks firmly a case of should not.
- Location
- Australia
Dark Heresy spook is fine enough. It gives insanity but only if you're weak of will, and while it makes miscasts worse in magnitude it doesn't make them more likely. It'd be good for some of our high willpower people to take it in emergency situations.
EDIT: And this is all assuming our product is only as good as canon spook. It could very well end up being a superior product.
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- Location
- madison
just spook without the addiction would be useful. it sounds like it turns humans into minor psykers for a few hour, and gives psykers a notable boost. It sounds like it might be worth looking into.
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
Becoming an untrained Minor Psyker sounds like one of those things you don't want to do in an emergency situation.
Particularly given we already have tons of psykers everywhere to do the job.
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- Location
- Alice Springs, Australia
No. However using addictive power boosters that lower control is not necessarily a good idea
- Location
- madison
you can always use more psykers. but it boosts psykers. again, we would not be using spook, we'd be making something better. I suspect that alkestery could make spook+ without much issue. that said, telpaica actions are action hell III hell harder and longer. so good idea or not, its got a lot in front of it.
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- Location
- Australia
Well, that's assuming it needs alkahestry. If we can make our product with mycenid biochemistry alone, it should be something we can use our Biologis actions on instead.
- Location
- Brazil, Minas gerais
Well if can be stored for a emergency it probably could be used as last stand for the psyker or when a mission/situation is critical enough. Considering warhammer. This drug will find its place in the armory and in the war.
- Location
- Alice Springs, Australia
you would be trying to invent a new psychic super drug that has all the benefits of spook and none of the downsides. Nothing will go wrong. Its not like you are trying to get around a fundamental Law or anything.
Creating a spook equivalent is possible, creating a version with all the benefits and none of the costs is not. If you did it just means you do not know the costs
EDIT: Its nice being able to say things like this as you now have In Character knowledge about them
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- Location
- Australia
All the benefits and less downsides, because we're not a random Imperial hive world producing this stuff, we've got a right proper Archmagos Biologis and/or Heroic Primaris Psykers with Dark Age technology and/or (relatively) high level Warp knowledge. It'd make sense for us to produce something that's at least a little better than spook.
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- Location
- Alice Springs, Australia
A little better yes but fundamental downsides like the minus to control are here to stay. You could make it but it would be another situational bonus rather then anything major.
- Location
- Australia
Yup, a little better with situational use is the idea. I think the most we're hoping out of an upgrade is the removal of the addiction, which I don't believe is a fundamental part of the design. Insanity risk and control issues will stay for sure though.
By that logic no one should attempt self-improvement since that too is part of Slaanesh' domain. It is impossible to fully avoid the Dark Gods' domains. The best you can do is apply moderation.