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

[Doomed Wombat]

his demesne would grow so large that he'd become the most powerful Callamite tech-priest outside the Archimandrites-General and the Fabricator General of Callamus.

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mmm I'm not sure this would be true, since there's a lot of very old and powerful fabricator generals running their own forge worlds etc. while he'd just be running a colony to say nothing of all the major archmagi.

+ You know, battered warp infested wasteland that Ophelia will be all over strikes me as not a great colony spot

But, eh to each their own he's certainly enough of a loonie, good on Lethe for sending him on a suicide mission.

 

[Andres]

mmm I'm not sure this would be true, since there's a lot of very old and powerful fabricator generals running their own forge worlds etc. while he'd just be running a colony to say nothing of all the major archmagi.

+ You know, battered warp infested wasteland that Ophelia will be all over strikes me as not a great colony spot

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The ideal situation is he runs a colony that's as large as a sector far away from any major Chaos or ork polities and receiving loads of support from Callamus to grow the colony and to reward him for getting lots of archaeotech. If things go well, the sheer size of his realm alone would make him one of the most powerful figures in the Forge-Empire.

As for Ophelia, they're largely going to be busy invading the Forge-Empire. Representatives of the Theocracy will eventually show up to compete for space in the post-Storm, but I already mentioned that heretics and aliens from outside would show up at some point. Callamus' advantage here is they're going in earlier than everyone else thanks to foresight and extensive preparation, so if they do well enough against the native forces and set up defences quickly enough, they can fight off later challengers.

Of course this is dependent on the region being a good place to colonise in the first place, which it may or may not be. It's spent a lot of time in a warp storm, sure, but so have a bunch of perfectly habitable places. Callamus has to check to find out.

EDIT: But yeah, while a colony is possible it's pretty unlikely, and Callamus knows that. It's why it's a tertiary objective.

 

[Ekzentric Lohner]

It occurs to me that, despite being the biggest winner among the big five, Tzeentch has philosophical grounds to be dissatisfied with the outcome of the Grand Ritual.

The ones who came out ahead were the two powers that merely sought to reinforce domains they already had - Khorne imposed "more war" on the materium and Tzeentch strengthened his own fateweaving. The two powers who sought to gain new domains - Nurgle attempting to tie Stars to himself and Tjapa trying to claim sovereignty over The Veil - actually came out of the ritual worse off than before. Slaneesh tried to reclaim a domain that it once (arguably) had, namely The Eldar, and while it didn't really lose anything beyond some military force and the things it sacrificed (just like everyone else), it didn't really gain anything beyond the general boost the ritual gave to all warp powers.

In short, while Tzeentch might have profited, ambition lost.

 

[invictus1829]

It occurs to me that, despite being the biggest winner among the big five, Tzeentch has philosophical grounds to be dissatisfied with the outcome of the Grand Ritual.

The ones who came out ahead were the two powers that merely sought to reinforce domains they already had - Khorne imposed "more war" on the materium and Tzeentch strengthened his own fateweaving. The two powers who sought to gain new domains - Nurgle attempting to tie Stars to himself and Tjapa trying to claim sovereignty over The Veil - actually came out of the ritual worse off than before. Slaneesh tried to reclaim a domain that it once (arguably) had, namely The Eldar, and while it didn't really lose anything beyond some military force and the things it sacrificed (just like everyone else), it didn't really gain anything beyond the general boost the ritual gave to all warp powers.

In short, while Tzeentch might have profited, ambition lost.

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I was just thinking about what would have happened if Nurgle managed to tie Stars to himself and I think we dodged a massive bullet.

The purifying properties of Stars and even Fire would have been turned into means of corruption. Additionally, things like Solis Obliatum probably would have stopped working or became memetic hazards.

All in all, it is scary to think about what a successful Nurgle ritual would have looked like.

 

[Doomed Wombat]

The ideal situation is he runs a colony that's as large as a sector far away from any major Chaos or ork polities and receiving loads of support from Callamus to grow the colony and to reward him for getting lots of archaeotech. If things go well, the sheer size of his realm alone would make him one of the most powerful figures in the Forge-Empire.

As for Ophelia, they're largely going to be busy invading the Forge-Empire. Representatives of the Theocracy will eventually show up to compete for space in the post-Storm, but I already mentioned that heretics and aliens from outside would show up at some point. Callamus' advantage here is they're going in earlier than everyone else thanks to foresight and extensive preparation, so if they do well enough against the native forces and set up defences quickly enough, they can fight off later challengers.

Of course this is dependent on the region being a good place to colonise in the first place, which it may or may not be. It's spent a lot of time in a warp storm, sure, but so have a bunch of perfectly habitable places. Callamus has to check to find out.

EDIT: But yeah, while a colony is possible it's pretty unlikely, and Callamus knows that. It's why it's a tertiary objective.

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1. Is it even close enough for that to be remotely viable?
2. Archeotech smarceo tech that shit's gonna be corrupted as hell.
3. Dude where's my time, you don't build up a sector sized polity in anything resembling a speedy manner especially when
4. Ophelia is absolutely going to have plenty of forces coming in to take the remains of the storm. They're vastly larger than callmaus, are significantly faster, have more than enough resources to send out either a colonisation fleet or a destruction fleet and have a religious imperative from their god either to hide the evidence or colonise it to turn into a giant temple. If the guy even gets there he's going to be a major late comer simply due to be slower.

In all honesty, the entire venture seems like something Akadia cooked up to kill off an unrepentant, overly ambitious nob head in a way that the conservatives couldn't bitch about given how unlikely it is they'll find anything the even lower chances that anything found won't make them become Tjapan and the enormously high chance of being slammed by Ophelian pope fleets.

it didn't really gain anything beyond the general boost the ritual gave to all warp powers.

In short, while Tzeentch might have profited, ambition lost.

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Well it did regain it, but so little that Isha bitch slaps the effect

Ah, but this is just as planned forgo a bit of ambition now secure all the ambition later!

JUST AS PLANNNED

 

[Andres]

1. Is it even close enough for that to be remotely viable?
2. Archeotech smarceo tech that shit's gonna be corrupted as hell.
3. Dude where's my time, you don't build up a sector sized polity in anything resembling a speedy manner especially when
4. Ophelia is absolutely going to have plenty of forces coming in to take the remains of the storm. They're vastly larger than callmaus, are significantly faster, have more than enough resources to send out either a colonisation fleet or a destruction fleet and have a religious imperative from their god either to hide the evidence or colonise it to turn into a giant temple. If the guy even gets there he's going to be a major late comer simply due to be slower.

In all honesty, the entire venture seems like something Akadia cooked up to kill off an unrepentant, overly ambitious nob head in a way that the conservatives couldn't bitch about given how unlikely it is they'll find anything the even lower chances that anything found won't make them become Tjapan and the enormously high chance of being slammed by Ophelian pope fleets.

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Not gonna get into a drag-out argument over this, so I'll just say I'll disagree and that you're wrong about a multitude of things. I will, however, go over one of your wrong-sayings because it gives me an excuse to educate on the nature and nuances of one of the galaxy's major polities.

the entire venture seems like something Akadia cooked up to kill off an unrepentant, overly ambitious nob head in a way that the conservatives couldn't bitch about

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Callamus' politics isn't the same as the Trust's. You don't have the Progressive-Conservative split where one side believes that science is heresy and you must burn the unbelievers. What you have instead are the Novus and the Old Guard. While analogous to the Progressives and Conservatives, respectively, they differ from their Trust counterparts in rather important ways.

In brief, the Novus believe in technological growth via innovation while the Old Guard believe in the weakness of flesh and technological growth via discovery. Already we see a difference, if a minor one. Their opinions on flesh is in contention with the Organicists faction, not the Novus, who are ideologically indifferent in this matter. The Conservatives-Progressives split had nothing to do with the strength or frailty of flesh.

The big difference between the Old Guard and the Conservatives is what they think of innovation. Conservatives believe that innovation is heresy. The Old Guard merely regard it as foolish and inefficient, similar to how the mainstream Mechanicus in 40k think that Explorators are foolish and dumb for spending so much on rumours of technological scraps, though they by no means see Explorators as heretical or their results invalid. (In this regard, the Old Guard are actually pretty deviant to classic Mechanicus, being a faction that loves Exploratoring.) A Conservative will look at innovation and cry "Heresy!" and smash new tech, while an Old Guard will look at innovation and say "Your experiments are eating so many resources can you please do something useful" but accept any new, proven tech that comes out. (Though they may not hold the new tech in as high regard as old tech.)

The difference between the Novus and the Progressives is subtler but just as present. In short, the Progressives believe in what we would call the scientific method while the Novus...don't. A Novus and a Progressive both invent a new, heavier capacitor for a specific lasgun pattern but find it somehow makes it lighter; the Progressive will try to figure out the base principles of how that works while the Novus will declare he's found a holy synergy between the two machine spirits and move on to the next experiment.

In short, Progressives vs Conservatives is an argument over whether or not it's heresy to break from the strictures and laws of the old Mechanicus. Novus vs Old Guard is about the practicality/idiocy of spending loads of resources on one specific method of getting new tech over another, never increasing the Forge-Empire's fundamental knowledge or understanding either way.

While I'm here, your assessment of Lethe's motives cannot be right. In the debate of whether Old Guard is more practical than Novus or vice-versa, Old Guard has basically won. Everyone at the Grand Conclave did innovation, so Novus received validation, but nowhere near as much as Old Guard, because there was way more tech that was acquired through STCs and archaeotech. The Fabricator-General of Callamus is absolutely not gonna go "Even with this planetload of empirical evidence that the Old Guard are correct, I'm going to think they're full of shit and try to get them killed." She's sending an Explorator fleet to the Storms of Judgement because it's what the Old Guard want and the Old Guard have proven themselves to be very wise.

 

[random_npc]

Explorator Fleet Trismenian​

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While a tech grab is very much viable, per word of durin most of the worlds are going to be tainted dead or demonic. There won't be much non tainted land to grab. Though if the Storm of judgment was in/near their territory, a heavy fleet going in looting and shooting would be a very good move because it would keep the demonworlds from acting as a launching point for a chaos empire to spring up.

Spoiler: Word of Durin

19. what are the the worlds exposed by the clearing warpstrom like? heavily tained chaos worlds? demon worlds? lifeless balls of tainted rock?
19. hevily tainted chaos worlds mostly, a couple of deamon worlds or heavily tianted lifeless ock

that being said, the forge empire is a major power, and both the empire of ashes and triumvirate are willing to cleanse worlds in return for favors. Maybe mention which one they are getting help from?

 

[Doomed Wombat]

Callamus' politics isn't the same as the Trust's. You don't have the Progressive-Conservative split where one side believes that science is heresy and you must burn the unbelievers. What you have instead are the Novus and the Old Guard. While analogous to the Progressives and Conservatives, respectively, they differ from their Trust counterparts in rather important ways.

In brief, the Novus believe in technological growth via innovation while the Old Guard believe in the weakness of flesh and technological growth via discovery. Already we see a difference, if a minor one. Their opinions on flesh is in contention with the Organicists faction, not the Novus, who are ideologically indifferent in this matter. The Conservatives-Progressives split had nothing to do with the strength or frailty of flesh.

The big difference between the Old Guard and the Conservatives is what they think of innovation. Conservatives believe that innovation is heresy. The Old Guard merely regard it as foolish and inefficient, similar to how the mainstream Mechanicus in 40k think that Explorators are foolish and dumb for spending so much on rumours of technological scraps, though they by no means see Explorators as heretical or their results invalid. (In this regard, the Old Guard are actually pretty deviant to classic Mechanicus, being a faction that loves Exploratoring.) A Conservative will look at innovation and cry "Heresy!" and smash the new tech, while an Old Guard will look at innovation and say "Your experiments are eating so many resources can you please do something useful" but accept any new, proven tech that comes out. (Though they may not hold the new tech in as high regard as old tech.)

The difference between the Novus and the Progressives is subtler but just as present. In short, the Progressives believe in what we would call the scientific method while the Novus...don't. A Novus and a Progressive both invent a new, heavier capacitor for a specific lasgun pattern but find it somehow makes it lighter; the Progressive will try to figure out the base principles of how that works while the Novus will declare he's found a holy synergy between the two machine spirits and move on to the next experiment.

In short, Progressives vs Conservatives is an argument over whether or not it's heresy to break from the strictures and laws of the old Mechanicus. Novus vs Old Guard is about the practicality/idiocy of spending loads of resources on one specific method of getting new tech over another, never increasing the Forge-Empire's fundamental knowledge or understanding either way.

While I'm here, your assessment of Lethe's motives cannot be right. In the debate of whether Old Guard is more practical than Novus or vice-versa, Old Guard has basically won. Everyone at the Grand Conclave did innovation, so Novus received validation, but nowhere near as much as Old Guard, because there was way more tech that was acquired through STCs and archaeotech. The Fabricator-General of Callamus is absolutely not gonna go "Even with this planetload of empirical evidence that the Old Guard are correct, I'm going to think they're full of shit and try to get them killed." She's sending an Explorator fleet to the Storms of Judgement because it's what the Old Guard want and the Old Guard have proven themselves to be very wise.

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Dude you are trying to explain the internal politics of a polity I fleshed out as well as the motivations of a character I wrote up?

Here's where you are wrong.

1. The Old Guard would have taken massive shit, after all this technology officially came from the eldar and a large part of it is out right xeno tech, in their eyes it would not be a validation of their position their explorations have turned up little and when eventually they got their stuff its tainted by alien hands.
2. The Old Guard have been losing power for centuries, because as you seem to keep forgetting there is no archeotech left. Non nada Durin has been repeating this for ages, there's is almost nothing left and scouring the galaxy is pretty pointless when you can only access about 2% of it. Your so called planet load of empirical evidence is working against over 1000 years of wasted resources, dead fleets, exploded magi and very little to show for it.

Not that you're wrong mind, you are quite correct about the mentalities to a large extent not entirely the Novus are about increasing the knowledge and understanding of the polity that's the fucking of the Novus, but you are flagrantly misunderstanding what's going on behind the scenes.

And even then you didn't get the point I was making, Akadia isn't trying to kill off the guy for being old guard she'd try to kill him off for being a wasteful prick, instead of helping a polity that could have benefitted Callamus in the long run and you know asked or traded for their tech you know the very principal that Callamus was founded on, instead he secured some bits of random chaos corrupted archeotech, made Callamus seem unreliable to the minor polities and through his actions ensured billions if not trillions of people died.

None of these are things that would indear him to Lethe, instead, it would make her view him as a dangerous, monominded brute who displays the worst characteristics of the Mechanicus. Callamus has left behind.

Regardless of his political affiliation, he's a liability who does not bring in nearly enough benefits for his existence.

In short she would absolutely send him off on a suicide mission to a daemon infested hell pit and wrap it up as an honour.

Edit, anyway yeah this really isn't an argument I want to get into let alone when I'm about to sleep.

If you want to continue it I'll see you in a few hours otherwise, night night.

 

[Andres]

I will again conclude that you're wrong about a great deal of things, but there's one thing you said I can very quickly undo with a quote.

the Novus are about increasing the knowledge and understanding of the polity that's the fucking of the Novus

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This is wrong. The following is from a conversation with Durin:

the scientific method is a trust thing, not a callamus thing

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One thing that I've been trying to do with my Callamus omakes is to make it so it's not as squeaky clean and black and white as the Trust. In the Trust, tech priests are either evil, destructive proponents of a dark past or admirable scientists innovating and increasing understanding, selflessly and wisely excluding themselves from temporal politics in their search for knowledge and enlightenment. (Or else the Moderates, who are fated to become one or the other eventually.) In Callamus, things are a hell of a lot more complicated. You've got a crapload of worlds and a resulting far greater range of varying beliefs, tech priests with strong opinions on subjects and their peers, politics that often have little or nothing to do with good and evil but are nonetheless important (Corpuscarii vs Fulgurite for example), and people who have personal ambitions and desires beyond a humble existence studying and aiding humanity.

Here's how this thinking shows up in my omakes:
Lethe uses a throne powered by the disembodied brains of hundreds of people who've essentially sacrificed themselves solely to make her better at her job of managing the well-being and safety of trillions of people.
Vissic declared her peers fools and dove into research of Chaos-adjacent material in the exact same manner as the archetypal over-ambitious idiot who gets themselves corrupted, only her background instilled in her just enough knowledge and caution to succeed and learn how stupid and lucky she was.
Trismenian is if Rotbart lost a ton of political power after doing the Tragic Hero Greater Good things he's famous for and wanted to get it back.
Mordini is a kiss-ass snitch who values praise, honour, obedience, and solidarity in the face of adversity.
Florentina is a greedy twit who thinks it's ok to strengthen your nation when it's facing imminent devastation if you're not actually hurting anyone while doing so.
Secutos is a politician.

This is why I don't appreciate making Old Guard-Novus the same 'good smart guy vs evil dumb guy' contest that the Conservatives-Progressives thing was.

 

[Andres]

While a tech grab is very much viable, per word of durin most of the worlds are going to be tainted dead or demonic. There won't be much non tainted land to grab. Though if the Storm of judgment was in/near their territory, a heavy fleet going in looting and shooting would be a very good move because it would keep the demonworlds from acting as a launching point for a chaos empire to spring up.

Spoiler: Word of Durin

19. what are the the worlds exposed by the clearing warpstrom like? heavily tained chaos worlds? demon worlds? lifeless balls of tainted rock?
19. hevily tainted chaos worlds mostly, a couple of deamon worlds or heavily tianted lifeless ock

that being said, the forge empire is a major power, and both the empire of ashes and triumvirate are willing to cleanse worlds in return for favors. Maybe mention which one they are getting help from?

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They'd probably get help from the eldar since they have a working relationship with them, but not really worth writing down. They probably won't end up calling in that help given they may not be able to manage what few viable worlds they already have. I guess it can be assumed that eldar help is certain stage of 'found a colony'.

 

[Doomed Wombat]

I will again conclude that you're wrong about a great deal of things, but there's one thing you said I can very quickly undo with a quote.

This is wrong. The following is from a conversation with Durin:



One thing that I've been trying to do with my Callamus omakes is to make it so it's not as squeaky clean and black and white as the Trust. In the Trust, tech priests are either evil, destructive proponents of a dark past or admirable scientists innovating and increasing understanding, selflessly and wisely excluding themselves from temporal politics in their search for knowledge and enlightenment. (Or else the Moderates, who are fated to become one or the other eventually.) In Callamus, things are a hell of a lot more complicated. You've got a crapload of worlds and a resulting far greater range of varying beliefs, tech priests with strong opinions on subjects and their peers, politics that often have little or nothing to do with good and evil but are nonetheless important (Corpuscarii vs Fulgurite for example), and people who have personal ambitions and desires beyond a humble existence studying and aiding humanity.

Here's how this thinking shows up in my omakes:
Lethe uses a throne powered by the disembodied brains of hundreds of people who've essentially sacrificed themselves solely to make her better at her job of managing the well-being and safety of trillions of people.
Vissic declared her peers fools and dove into research of Chaos-adjacent material in the exact same manner as the archetypal over-ambitious idiot who gets themselves corrupted, only her background instilled in her just enough knowledge and caution to succeed and learn how stupid and lucky she was.
Trismenian is if Rotbart lost a ton of political power after doing the Tragic Hero Greater Good things he's famous for and wanted to get it back.
Mordini is a kiss-ass snitch who values praise, honour, obedience, and solidarity in the face of adversity.
Florentina is a greedy twit who thinks it's ok to strengthen your nation when it's facing imminent devastation if you're not actually hurting anyone while doing so.
Secutos is a politician.

This is why I don't appreciate making Old Guard-Novus the same 'good smart guy vs evil dumb guy' contest that the Conservatives-Progressives thing was.

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And you will note in my response I never once mentioned the scientific method. After all it is not a prerequisite for the advancement of knowledge, its a very useful one, but if it were then I question what humanity was doing scientifically until Bacon and Descartes came along and started the ideas behind it. Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler (why did I only use astronomers?) and so on did not require it to do their work nor in fact did anyone else.

They used a method likely very similar to the Novus, one based in part on their faith, the other on a literally ancient canon of texts that they hoped to add to.

Efficiency wise its not the best. Trusting in Galen for advice on human anatomy, a man who never dissected a human or at least never admitted it, as the one true source of human anatomical knowledge isn't a great idea, as people like Vesalius pointed out. Then created their own improved understanding, this time with proper dissections.

The point of this historical anecdote is that you can advance knowledge within strongly held beliefs and not use the scientific method, lord knows that's how humanities done it for about 95% of our own history and that is what I based the Novus on.

Well specifically I based them on church natural historians like Conrad Gessner. People who are priests figuring out one half of the two books to prove the other one right.

And I applaud your efforts.

I will note that despite your dismissal of the trust being black and white, for the most part, its entirely grey. I'm guessing at least 50%ish of the trust are still quite conservative its just they got divorced from the old imperial nightmare that was the Conservatives and so on.

Anyway I think this time you've overplayed your hand with this latest guy.

Trismenian is not comparable to Rotbart and I'm not saying that to justify what Rotbart did IMO there isn't one. He sacrificed a polity for meagre if not non existent returns in Callamus's current context. His greater good isn't a greater good in this instance. It reads more like the desperation move of someone who wants to get any kind of win to keep their career afloat no matter the cost to anyone else. Similarly his being sent to colonise a warp blasted, chaos corrupted, daemon infested hell hole, probably thousands of light-years away reads exactly like Lethe bumping off someone who has become a problem. After all she is rather utilitarian in that regard, brain throne and all.

Edit...well never mind any ideas for the next one?

 

[agumentic]

I will note that despite your dismissal of the trust being black and white, for the most part, its entirely grey.

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Is a there a single Conservative position or opinion we agreed with or wanted to keep, besides the blindingly obvious stuff like "don't stuff tech full of daemons"? Hard to say that the conflict wasn't black and white, without that.

 

[Doomed Wombat]

Is a there a single Conservative position or opinion we agreed with or wanted to keep, besides the blindingly obvious stuff like "don't stuff tech full of daemons"? Hard to say that the conflict wasn't black and white, without that.

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Given that this is 40K and the number of people who would willingly do that is staggering that's already off to a pretty good start

Though my personal fear remains zombie plague.

I personally hold quite strongly to their ideas about comprehension, you should understand all you can about things before moving on.

Read the warning labels people etc.

 

[Andres]

He sacrificed a polity for meagre if not non existent returns in Callamus's current context.

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He did not have the forces to save Threll. If he fought alongside the protectorate, the only difference is that his fleet would've died alongside it. In burning the planets Chaos acquired, he hurt Chaos more in the long term than he could've hurt it in a doomed last stand. Callamus is a polity where looking like you sacrificed a polity to acquire tech gets you put on trial for crimes against humanity, and that same polity found Trismenian innocent of that crime. And he was still made a pariah for merely being adjacent to the idea, so it wasn't a trial biased in his favour. He did as much damage as he could with what little he had and recovered as much tech as he was able to in the process.

The difference between him and Rotbart is that Rotbart will cry himself to sleep over what he's done while Trismenian seethes over how it's bullshit that some of his peers shun him for his actions.

With that context in mind, Lethe had more than one reason to pick Trismenian. Sending him to the Storm would be favoured by those who hated him, because they'd see it as her sending him to his death. Those who really liked him saw how she gave him a prestigious explorator fleet to explore the only known archaeotech hotspot in the galaxy, giving him a chance to regain his honour. Those who were indifferent saw the Fabricator-General picking the guy who had the best skill set and personality for this very important job. And, of course, the most logical reason - the only reason worth considering in many tech priests' optics - is that he did in fact have the best skill set and personality for the job.

 

[Doomed Wombat]

He did not have the forces to save Threll. If he fought alongside the protectorate, the only difference is that his fleet would've died alongside it. In burning the planets Chaos acquired, he hurt Chaos more in the long term than he could've hurt it in a doomed last stand. Callamus is a polity where looking like you sacrificed a polity to acquire tech gets you put on trial for crimes against humanity, and that same polity found Trismenian innocent of that crime. And he was still made a pariah for merely being adjacent to the idea, so it wasn't a trial biased in his favour. He did as much damage as he could with what little he had and recovered as much tech as he was able to in the process.

The difference between him and Rotbart is that Rotbart will cry himself to sleep over what he's done while Trismenian seethes over how it's bullshit that some of his peers shun him for his actions.

With that context in mind, Lethe had more than one reason to pick Trismenian. Sending him to the Storm would be favoured by those who hated him, because they'd see it as her sending him to his death. Those who really liked him saw how she gave him a prestigious explorator fleet to explore the only known archaeotech hotspot in the galaxy, giving him a chance to regain his honour. Those who were indifferent saw the Fabricator-General picking the guy who had the best skill set and personality for this very important job. And, of course, the most logical reason - the only reason worth considering in many tech priests' optics - is that he did in fact have the best skill set and personality for the job.

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On a meta you have not communicated this. All you said is that he did not help and is infamous for not doing so. What does this tell the reader? That he had the ability to choose to help and the capacity to aid them. Instead, he decided to act like a scavenger and did nothing in the long run. This can be inferred, but generally speaking readers don't want to have to do that, much to my own personal annoyance.

On a more personal level I'd say there's plenty he could have done rather than scavenging chaos corrupted industrial equipment Callamus likely has better versions of already. They're the big polity with the fewest started after all.

I'd also say you found him innocent. I do not think this is appropriate based merely on what was lost vs what was gained.

But, its still not reasonable in any context and anyone with a brain would be able to see that. Durin already confirmed that the storm would be no where near Callamus and Explorator fleets do not go far from the polity! Of all people we shouldn't need reminders about how dangerous it is to go far from occupied space considering the damage we took when we tried it and we're in the space boonies not next door to two galatic super powers.

Sending him thousands of light years away and literally outside of the bounds of the Segmentum (basically look at the maps) Storm of Judgement - Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum *through hostile space without a truly staggering battlefleet is a far too blatant attempt to bump him off I've decided with a bit more sleep.

I won't bother to unpack hot spot of archeotech, beyond pointing out the entire warp storm was turned into a fortress. Assuming anything was there in the first place on the literal edge of the galaxy that wasn't just imperial tech, assuming it somehow survived in tact uncorrupted within the warp storm, it would have certainly been discovered by the infinity of angels scouring every atoms for threats.

*Assuming Callamus and Ophelia somewhat close Ophelia VII - Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum Callamus is about as far away from the Storm of Judgement as it is possible to go while being considered in the same Segmentum.

 

[agumentic]

Sending him thousands of light years away and literally outside of the bounds of the Segmentum (basically look at the maps)

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According to the map used in the quest - the one in the Regional Map threadmark - Storms of Judgement are actually in the middle of Segmentum Tempestus. Pretty close to Ophelia, though, which has its own problems.

 

[Doomed Wombat]

According to the map used in the quest - the one in the Regional Map threadmark - Storms of Judgement are actually in the middle of Segmentum Tempestus. Pretty close to Ophelia, though, which has its own problems.

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And still several thousand light years from Callamus according to Durin.

 

[Andres]

According to the map used in the quest - the one in the Regional Map threadmark - Storms of Judgement are actually in the middle of Segmentum Tempestus. Pretty close to Ophelia, though, which has its own problems.

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Doesn't matter either way. We got enough advance warning about the Grand Ritual that everyone could join in. Not just the eldar and the kr/orks, but also the guys with the pathetically slow FTL like the Imperial remnants and the necrons with their inertialess drives. Simply put, it's been established in canon that slow FTL factions were capable of reaching the Storm of Judgement, and Callamus wouldn't be exempt from this.

 

[Doomed Wombat]

Doesn't matter either way. We got enough advance warning about the Grand Ritual that everyone could join in. Not just the eldar and the kr/orks, but also the guys with the pathetically slow FTL like the Imperial remnants and the necrons with their inertialess drives. (At one point, Graia as well before that got de-canonised for reasons unrelated to warp travel speeds.) Simply put, it's been established in canon that slow FTL factions were capable of reaching the Storm of Judgement, and Callamus wouldn't be exempt from this.

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...

Andres that was only possible for a mere 2 months due to the combination of fate and doom that allowed imperial forces from across the entire galaxy, and multiple separate eras to turn up which in turn only was happening because of the warp pull of the grand ritual.

The Grand Ritual is over, the pulls are gone, as is the storm and where it was is still several thousand light years away.

Edit

Here's Durin's confirmation if you need it

The Doomed WombatToday at 1:29 PM
1. Just to clarify, the reason that imperial remnants were able to reach the Storms of Judgement from across the galaxy and indeed space and time was due to the pull of the ritual in the warp as well as the combination of doom and fighting the abomination? Now that it is over, getting to it takes the same amount of time it would take any human to move a few thousand light years;

NEW
DurinToday at 1:30 PM
1. basicaly


Its in Discord.

 

[agumentic]

And still several thousand light years from Callamus according to Durin.

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"Several" is still a pretty wide range. I expect two thousand light years to be within range of a determined Explorator fleet, but not, say, five.

 

[Doomed Wombat]

"Several" is still a pretty wide range. I expect two thousand light years to be within range of a determined Explorator fleet, but not, say, five.

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I can only judge from our experience, but seeing how much damage ours took going 1000 from the trust with Ridcully's support I'm relatively doubtful.

Callamus can certainly send a much bigger fleet than we could, but they also need those ships much much more on account of fighting a war on 4 fronts.

It'd also be going through far more dangerous space than ours was, since we are or at least were in the boonies.

 

[random_npc]

According to the map used in the quest - the one in the Regional Map threadmark - Storms of Judgement are actually in the middle of Segmentum Tempestus. Pretty close to Ophelia, though, which has its own problems.

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There are going to be some demon worlds where the storm was, so Ophelia is effectively adjacent, albeit not in a reliable way. That said, scouring the aro for acrotech may be viable, as would shelling the shit out of as many worlds as possible. No need to let Ophelia get a new sector with preexisting industry after all.

 

[Red Bovine]

So how much damage did the Orks suffer during the ritual? IIRC it was quite a bit due to the Orks low rolls early on but that's not that good an indicator, especially since these re Orks we are talking about here.

 

[MonkeyTypewriter]

So how much damage did the Orks suffer during the ritual? IIRC it was quite a bit due to the Orks low rolls early on but that's not that good an indicator, especially since these re Orks we are talking about here.

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Keep in mind that the Orks have more warp power than all of chaos combined. Everything the Bird did was to delay and deflect.

 

[Doomed Wombat]

So how much damage did the Orks suffer during the ritual? IIRC it was quite a bit due to the Orks low rolls early on but that's not that good an indicator, especially since these re Orks we are talking about here.

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Apparently they burnt less on this than they do a level 4 waaargh.

So a lot by any reasonable standard, but completely unreasonable by any other.