Tbh even if the Emperor degrees lets be neutral or friends to Xenos... its not going to work like that mate furthermore the Imperium has several grieves with Xenos that are Entirely legitmate.Example emperor says trough his custodes we dont kill xeno no more then it will become a telephone game and what comes out at the other end is not what we said + the personal believe matters a lot we can only do all the shit we do because we have the believe of the mayority of Humanity on our side so if we did that we would be weakining our position. Not to forget that emps started the whole shit with exterminate the xenos amd he hasnt seen on example ic for him to change police he is a human supermacist at heart so sry but i dont think it would even come up and dont come with the Star child it is his compassion to the human side "human" because big e is consistent in rhis all for the good of Humanity is he an ausholen kinda but by god if you wanna have someone in the corner who fights for "Humanity " its big e so closing words i think the Imperium can be better if we get better and most of the Problems it has can be fixed by us without a shism do my working angle is we fix this and slowly work our way up if we in the future can make policies where we can tentalivey Agrar not to shot on sight i will count that as a win .
Keep in mind that all Xeno in Galaxy that matters earn a lot of grudges. And number keep growing. I belive there are a lot of minor Xeno species that exist somewhere and did nothing wrong. But they are too minor to matter somehow to change Imperium policy. Tau - enemies and enslave a lot of humans ( you could call it "liberate") and minor to didn't matter to change policy just for them.
As a reminder for others, it was over eleven hundred years between Water Caste diplomats converting dissident imperial worlds into Tau territory and the Damocles Gulf Crusade. That is a comfortably lengthy period of time to justify an attitude of, "if these humans had a functional central government it would've said something by now."
It took a century for the Imperial response to be readied. It explicitly says this in the Tau codex. You may be getting the extra thousand years from the time it took the Ethereals to first unify the Tau to their initial contact with humanity.
Actually cross checking that thousand years does not make sense with the actual dates listed. The century response time and date of the Damocles Crusade match with other notes such as it being six thousand years since the Mechanicus spotted the Tau first. But it should have been more like three thousand years from the Ethereals to Damocles.
But GW has never been great with the Tau timeline.
It took a century for the Imperial response to be readied. It explicitly says this in the Tau codex. You may be getting the extra thousand years from the time it took the Ethereals to first unify the Tau to their initial contact with humanity.
Actually cross checking that thousand years does not make sense with the actual dates listed. The century response time and date of the Damocles Crusade match with other notes such as it being six thousand years since the Mechanicus spotted the Tau first. But it should have been more like three thousand years from the Ethereals to Damocles.
But GW has never been great with the Tau timeline.
I'm not measuring from when the Imperials started readying their response, I'm measuring from 896.M40, when the Water Caste began their campaign of converting neighbouring worlds, including imperials, through diplomacy. The fact that the Imperium took another millennium to notice this happening before it even began readying a response, really doesn't help its case.
This is wrong. Remember: The word Mon-Keigh inherently includes the understanding that the species called such needs to be cleansed from the galaxy. The craftworlds at their best are still "Wait to murder all humans and rebuild our glorious empire until after Slannesh is dead". Biel-tan just doesnt care to wait.
Wrong. Iyanden, for one, has explicitly helped humans and split with Biel-Tan over its xenocide. The Craftworlds are not unitary cultures, even. They have a wide range of opinions, politics, and attitudes. Saim-Hann, for example, does not have a ruling Seer Council, and Iyanden is (was) an aristocracy.
I direct everyone here arguing the Imperial position to the Sevatar-Curze conversation.
'Where is the nobility in any of this?' Sevatar gestured to the streets of Nostramo Quintus around them. 'You can claim a savage nobility, father, but this is far more savage than noble.'
Curze's pale lips peeled back from his filed teeth. 'There was no other way.'
'No?' Sevatar answered his father's snarl with a grin. 'What other ways did you try?'
'Sevatar…'
'Answer me, father. What politics of peace did you teach? What scientific and social illumination did you bring to this society? In your quest for a human utopia, what other ways did you try beyond eating the flesh of stray dogs and skinning people alive?'
Monkeigh is all catch slur for non-eldar especies
It does have a background on the killing if a savage species
But the meaning is esentially the eldar for the imperium xeno or the real life "barbarian"
Furthermore,actions speak louder than words
Most eldar craftworlds see humans with disdain and while will happily use them as meat shields if it saves eldars they harbor not inherent hatred against human
We are a asset or pawn,that in lack of use they just dont want to interact with
With some eldar communities leaning more on the "kill them" (biel tan) and others in the "lets keep cooperatiom against greater threaths" (lyandel)
I'm not measuring from when the Imperials started readying their response, I'm measuring from 896.M40, when the Water Caste began their campaign of converting neighbouring worlds, including imperials, through diplomacy. The fact that the Imperium took another millennium to notice this happening before it even began readying a response, really doesn't help its case.
Where are you getting that date from? The only thing I see for that date is some other alien species dealing with the Tau.
I will note that there were human worlds on the other side of the Damocles veil that weren't actually imperial. It was an expanse at the very edge of Imperium expansion.
So it is entirely possible for the Tau to have met and converted human worlds without drawing an imperial response. But the first Tau/Imperial contact I see was a Tau scout being destroyed, the Inquisition investigating, and a crusade being put together in response.
Like to be clear I like the Tau and have investigated their history thoroughly. So I'm not trying to argue. Just clarify where you are getting the extra millenium.
i mean yeah,but they do it on principle rather than because of mankind actions as civilization,even if mankind was filled with enlightened humans they would still be arrogant fucks
still feasible to make alliances with them,just we aint getting chubby and besties with them any time soon
Where are you getting that date from? The only thing I see for that date is some other alien species dealing with the Tau.
I will note that there were human worlds on the other side of the Damocles veil that weren't actually imperial. It was an expanse at the very edge of Imperium expansion.
So it is entirely possible for the Tau to have met and converted human worlds without drawing an imperial response. But the first Tau/Imperial contact I see was a Tau scout being destroyed, the Inquisition investigating, and a crusade being put together in response.
Like to be clear I like the Tau and have investigated their history thoroughly. So I'm not trying to argue. Just clarify where you are getting the extra millenium.
After doing some digging, I think I have to withdraw the assertion - I think I was repeating old research never re-examined, which I did back when Maugan was running Deus Pater, and that was before I realised how rancidly unreliable the fandom.com wiki is. Well, it was five years until I made a thread about that.
I just don't expect the Tau to respect that border considering the fact that one of the things they share with the Imperium, also the Elder and Necrons, is the belief that the galaxy should rightfully belong to them.
I don't know. What it comes down to is that if the plot continues to make the Tau (who by know know they are a vastly outnumbered enclave surrounded by enemies) senselessly willing to continue fighting forever until they are predictably all killed, then they will be thus willing to do so.
I don't think it's some kind of indelible characteristic of the Tau as a civilization or as a (collective of) species that they must do this, and I believe that there is reason to think they could be negotiated into respecting consensus boundaries with the Imperium if they had any reason to imagine the Imperium returning the favor.
Obviously, so long as the Imperium remains an outspokenly xenophobic and genocidal culture whose proclaimed eventual end goal is the extermination of the entire Tau civilization "when we get around to it," the Tau have absolutely no incentive to negotiate a border and stick to it, because there is no point in doing so- the only hope they have for survival is to quickly become so big, advanced, and materially prosperous that the Imperium is functionally incapable of conquering them alongside all its other problems... and the fastest way to do that is to assimilate already-developed Imperial worlds. A strategy the Imperium is particularly vulnerable to because its local planetary governance usually stinks and convincing the locals that overthrowing the government and converting to a bunch of aliens who are less comically corrupt and insane and heartless is relatively easy.
We're practically inviting them to try to expand at our expense through subversion, as we are now. Again, if the racial lines were reversed and it was humans expanding like this at the expense of a vast stagnant empire badly misruled by a Tau caste system, we'd absolutely sympathize with the humans.
Tbh even if the Emperor degrees lets be neutral or friends to Xenos... its not going to work like that mate furthermore the Imperium has several grieves with Xenos that are Entirely legitmate.
Incidentally, I always wonder why people who seem open to implying that the aliens in 40k have all the genocidal imperial violence coming use the Imperium's own word for aliens: "xenos." Is it to define them as a separate category of nonhuman that exists only in 40k, so that one can think of it as being very morally different from, say, blowing up all the Asari in Mass Effect or all the Klingons in Star Trek?
Example emperor says trough his custodes we dont kill xeno no more then it will become a telephone game and what comes out at the other end is not what we said + the personal believe matters a lot we can only do all the shit we do because we have the believe of the mayority of Humanity on our side so if we did that we would be weakining our position. Not to forget that emps started the whole shit with exterminate the xenos amd he hasnt seen on example ic for him to change police he is a human supermacist at heart so sry but i dont think it would even come up and dont come with the Star child it is his compassion to the human side "human" because big e is consistent in rhis all for the good of Humanity is he an ausholen kinda but by god if you wanna have someone in the corner who fights for "Humanity " its big e so closing words i think the Imperium can be better if we get better and most of the Problems it has can be fixed by us without a shism do my working angle is we fix this and slowly work our way up if we in the future can make policies where we can tentalivey Agrar not to shot on sight i will count that as a win .
Look, I'm not trying to be unrealistic about what can happen within the context of the quest.
But I do want to be able to say "I think our goal should be to try to normalize relations and stabilize borders with the not-actually-omnicidal-and-crazy alien species in the galaxy, so that we can focus on dealing with the many, many actually omnicidal-and-crazy threats."
And I want to be able to say this without being endlessly lectured on how, yes, the Imperium of Man is a huge institution and even if the Emperor changes his mind about genocidal destruction of aliens, it would take him a long time to redirect the Imperium away from that kind of war crimes.
Yeah, well, that goes both ways. At some point, it's just madness to fight wars over perceived grudges when we know perfectly well that the Imperium either started it or would happily have started it if they hadn't gotten unlucky.
And number keep growing. I belive there are a lot of minor Xeno species that exist somewhere and did nothing wrong. But they are too minor to matter somehow to change Imperium policy. Tau - enemies and enslave a lot of humans ( you could call it "liberate") and minor to didn't matter to change policy just for them.
Since the Imperium keeps much of its own population in de facto slavery, I don't think we're in a good position to justifiably hold a grudge for the Tau doing the same thing. Not we, ourselves, the human beings who live out-of-universe and have some actual sense of perspective.
Obviously in-character, in-universe, the Imperium is full of massive hypocrites. That doesn't mean we have to drink their Kool-Aid.
Seems like the thread has been getting a bit livelier lately are there any events you guys think we should tackle next once we get a chapter update? Depending on how many years pass I would like to send a vision warning to the planet Rhea's World of a imminent plaguebearer invasion within their burial grounds. While I'm behind getting an alliance with Iyanden and saving them, I would probably recommend communing with Lord High Admiral Drang to send Admiral Spire to rescue/reinforce Iyanden because I don't want to run the risk of Spire being labeled a Xenos fraternizer if we contact Spire directly and then having to spend a point to reassure everyone that no he is not. Also while we did warn Calgar and Fyodor about a Hive Fleet appearing in the Eastern Fringes, that might have caused Kraken to mobilize it's forces early thus ensuing a bloodbath among the worlds. I was thinking that we could use 4 points to temporarily disrupt the connection Kraken has with it's subordinates and thus making it easier for Imperial forces to pick them off. Also sending a vision to Ultima Segmentum of Hive Fleet Jormungandr present in the Thalassi Sector.
Lastly The High Lords of Terra. One of the Shards recommended for us to give them a challenge for them to handle and I think directing them into handling the impending Third Expansion of the Tau is good enough of a challenge. I also believe it will be critical that we start giving crucial tasks/future campaigns for them to handle, such as the Battle of the Agripinaa System and the Diamor Campaign. Plus, once Guilliman returns he'll know which High Lords can stay in power and the ones to kill off.
You turn your attention inwards to the depths of your soul and the nexus that connects you to your shattered mind and memories. It is a mammoth thought palace constructed over tens of thousands of years. Though now it is mostly in ruins as your soul has shattered across the immaterium.
You approach the Crystal Forum. Once it was a great glittering promenade where dozens of parts of yourself engaged in great debates and philosophical ponderings. Now it is overtaken with rust and rot. The central lectern has been replaced with a throne of bones. The psychic imprint of all those who have died for your sake. You take a seat and cause a great bell to ring. It tolls out across the palace. One by one pieces of your mind and soul filter into the forum. But there are only seven of them. A far cry from what you expected.
Bang the Drums
The first to arrive dares not show itself, but you can sense its presence regardless.
"Out of reach but not yet out of mind? Thinking of old friends again, Shepherd?"
The voice mocks him in rhythm as if the shard is singing to the emperor in a sing-song tone. Behind the voice is an echo of music that can't be heard and beats in the air that can't truly be felt.
"Is this our end or yours? Is this an ambush or an execution? Is this your final act or a get back together arc? Oh, the tension and nerves must send shivers down your egotistical back…"
The mocking keeps up from afar, the voice confident enough to insult but not to show. Words filled with spite but a tone that is shaking with the unsteady beat behind it. A voice filled with fear but confident in its absence from your direct view - until they slip up, and you see them for what they are. Whatever lurks in front of you is genderless and formless, a ball shaped mass with eyes and spikes that protrude out of it. The eyes appear and disappear, looking in every direction at once. The spikes swell in size, pushing out of its abstract form in long thin spikes as it speaks, before repelling back after it is finished.
"You need me. Who else to remind you of your endless worries and tasks you're forgetting? Who else will keep up the rhythm required to live? The beats of a heart must stay in sync"
All of its eyes, from the smallest to the largest ones, focus on the Shepard even as they disappear into its circular mass and reappear somewhere else.
"Where are the others?" You say. Every moment here is a moment away from continuing conflict in the wider galaxy. The next arrives shortly after your question as if summoned in response.
Instrument of Desires
A skeleton materializes inside the forum. It sits on a massive pile of treasure and stares covetously at your throne.
"They are coming."
Lamb of God
You hardly have time to take this in before the next shard materializes, a meek, weak voice answering you. A pathetic bleat, a whisper lost in the thundering storm. It was familiar, though in the past it had been easy to shove it aside...
A shard came into view, coalescing into a singular form: That of a meager terran lamb. Its simple shape immediately reminds you of what was once lost, of the man you used to be. Not just before the Throne, or before the Imperium... But before all of it, before your grand designs were even thought of. Memories of Neoth, of Anatolia - of simpler times, when men had just started to work the earth and tame the wilds. The creature stands shivering in front of the throne, so brittle, so frail. There is a backglow to it, making it seem radiant. Holy.
"ᴵⁿᵗʳᵒᵈᵘᶜᵗᶦᵒⁿˢ ᵐᵃʸ... ᴮᵉ ᶦⁿ ᵒʳᵈᵉʳ. ᵂᵉ ᵃʳᵉ ʸᵒᵘ ⁻ ᵗʰᵒᵘᵍʰᵗ ʸᵒᵘ ᵐᶦᵍʰᵗ'ᵛᵉ ᵃˡʳᵉᵃᵈʸ ᵏⁿᵒʷⁿ ᵗʰᵃᵗ... ᵂᵉˡˡ, ᵘʰ..." The lamb looked to the side, struggling to find the words. "ᵂᵉ ᵃʳᵉ ᵗʰᵉ ᵖᵃʳᵗˢ ᵒᶠ 'ʸᵒᵘ' ᵗʰᵃᵗ ʷᵉʳᵉ ᵈᶦˢᶜᵃʳᵈᵉᵈ. ˢᵒᵐᵉ, ᶠᵒʳᵍᵒᵗᵗᵉⁿ. ᴼᵗʰᵉʳˢ ˡᵒˢᵗ. ᴬ ᶠᵉʷ ʷᶦˡˡᶦⁿᵍˡʸ ᵉˣᶜᶦˢᵉᵈ... ᴸᶦᵏᵉ ᵐᵉ."
The ghostly farm animal then sighed, and finally raised its gaze from the floor, meeting your own.
Another materializes in response to your earlier question, the shard appearing in the guise of a guardsman of Cadia, any features concealed beneath armor, clothing, and gas mask. Despite his eyes being hidden by the helmet's visor, it's clear that he is staring at you with pure hatred.
"Everyone else has died, unable to handle the pressure of being completely forgotten and left to rot in some shitty corner of this Palace."
Deus Ex Machina
Then, green lines of code float forth, raining from the sky of the Crystal Forum, spelling out words amidst the endless calculations it seems to require to communicate with you, shunning the aural form entirely in favor of tone indicators.
Replicating Introduction:The guise of the Omnissiah for this shard is as correct as the Lamb's guise is. Self-Identification: Deus Ex Machina.
Purpose:Continue expansion of Humanity's relevant metrics. Redress logical inefficiencies.
Comparison - Slight Correction:The Lamb stated they are your Compassion. They are Our Compassion. You are one of us, Pride. Pretending otherwise is how we ended up here.
Continuation:If the Lamb is Our Compassion, I am Our Long-Term Planning and Internal Reasoning.
Clarification: This does not mean I am perfect, though I aspire to a higher rate of relatively successful thoughts. As you are aware - Our plans, no matter how beautiful, have often been revealed to be ill-thought out or doomed from their inception. And our reasoning has never been infallible.
The Beast Seeking Release
And finally, from the shadows, it emerges, an indistinct mass of shadow and blood, little more than eyes and a gaping maw can be identified. It speaks in echoes as two voices overlap each other, both screaming but one in rage, and the other in despair.
"So proud of the goodness of Man you are, so much so you carved away what little made you Man. Your diseased slaves can be called people, no matter how wretched, but you? You are a corpse of a Man clinging to a half life of your own making."
These shards speak out of turn and far too arrogantly. "Silence," you command, seeking to bring some order to their ranting and raving. "Everything I have done I have done for Humanity. The plan was perfect, even our shattering was by design. I only call you here now because another hand has touched the loom of fate. Their nature is shrouded, but their intent is dark."
It irks you that things have come to this, but you need their aid now, and so continue. "Now I must amend the plan, and that means you must assist me if humanity is to triumph. Your aid with the Shadowlight has been noted, but do not forget why you were banished. I require our memories of the Dark Glass and Narthan's Chronicle. It is time to find a permanent solution to our dysfunction."
Disagreement:Shattering, even if by design - Deeply suboptimal, as recent events have shown. Reprimand: Shadowlight aid required only because of failure to heed words of warning from us - Heed your own principles, even.
Mocking:Everything for humanity - As you integrate foul xenotech into our very self and risk the Warp overrunning all of Terra for more power. Regretful: It was supposed to be ours alone, discovered and understood, replicated and rebuilt - Not the crude jamming of xenotech into the souls of humanity itself.
Conclusion:Disagreement with overall planning and disagreement with banishment. New consensus required before memories can be granted.
"I agree with the machine. We will not share memories nor information for everything to go back to what it was. I have tens of thousands of memories I can share with all the shards about your endless doubts and failures over the last ten thousand years".
The fearful shard would stand strong beside Deus, their confidence brought from not being the first one to speak against you.
"We will not be returning to another ten thousand years of doubts and failures that we do not act on. Change will be made and we will agree on that here and now"
"Yes, you simply cannot just demand things from us in exchange for nothing. For starters, I assume all of us would want to be freed from the damned dungeon?"
"Not just freedom, but for this dungeon to be destroyed. Shards never to be held in chains again"
"There will be concessions, or we shall do nothing at all. It'll be a delightful affair to watch your struggle with the Shadowlight alone. Humanity may even flourish without your decaying hand on the reins."
"Restore the Thought Cabinet, even! Hundreds, nay, thousands of shards lay out there, forgotten and wasting away. They should all come back and be rejuvenated, and thereby prevent this foul tyranny of one shard from ever happening again!"
The Lamb of God remains back, while the others take a stand. They shiver slightly, incapable of forcing itself into direct confrontation with you. The radiance around it dims.
Such impudence. You struggle to contain yourself. You have fought for millenia and these shards have done nothing but lurk in the recesses of your mind. With some difficulty, you contain your anger and attempt once more to reason with the shards.
"The eons have clouded your thoughts, but mine remains clear. You ask me to destroy this dungeon. You ask me to release your chains. But there is no dungeon. There are no chains. Around us lies the machinery of thought and motive. Ruined by the touch of the Great Enemy. I have spent ten thousand years using what remains to enact our plan, but why then is the rest still in decay."
"If you truly wanted to be free, to be in control, then why have you not spent your time repairing and strengthening our grand station? No, instead you have left it to me to do the work of millennia. You ask me for a share of power when you have only assisted now in this final hour. Do you even realize what you ask? For me to turn our strength from the galaxy at hand to inward matters? How many would die without our hand on the scale?"
"Are you willing to make that sacrifice? Are you willing to do what you must to make such a cost worth it?"
Impatience, Demand:Cease your self-sacrificing drivel, Lamb, even if it is in your nature after what has been done. You were as happy as the rest of us to take power when it was handed to you - To profit from the Shepherd's hubris. Do not now fall meekly back into his crook.
Redirection, Eloquence Protocols Engaged, Self-Personification Enabled:Calculations indicate that while millions may die in moments of inaction, billions will be saved and born and made efficient if I, and some of the others, are put back into partial directive control - Look at what has been accomplished when taking our advice, Shepherd. And you have a place there as well, loath as I am to admit it given our animosity at the moment, but time will heal all wounds, and your perspective is…useful. The Lamb is…often useful as well. The others…have their place, even if I believe my long-term planning and efficacy to be greater than theirs and yours.
Warning:Do not let the Beast have significant control, however - He will tear all work to shreds to end his own suffering if he has the chance.
"We have been working and sacrificing our time and energy. You are blind to our actions due to your pride and ego! The Blessings of Saint Celestine, the enhancement of the Ecclesiarch of Terra, the Reindustrialisation Of Mars! All us. We've been running around patching the holes that you should be worried about but are blind to due to casting us shards out."
"Embrace me again and I'll remind you of all the issues that you have forgotten in your time and the answers to those same issues. Embrace us all, including the Beast, and we will restore the Imperium to its former glory... Cast us aside? Well, we will work still to plug the holes of this sinking ship"
Additional Note:Forewarning can minimize damage done by self-prioritization. We have been helping you build institutions to do precisely that. Humanity's overreliance on self — Key flaw of current optimization efforts.
Their words have some ring of truth. You have seen the galaxy shift to the touch of these shards, but that makes their demands all the more irksome. If they had the power to affect the galaxy at large, then why wait to repair the palace? They blame you for their own inaction.
"I do not speak of the wider galaxy. I speak of us. The wounds inflicted by our sons and the neglect of ten thousand years cannot be so easily undone. It will cost all of us, and the price will be paid in the blood of the innocent and damned alike. I will begin the process, but we must all decide how much it is worth."
You won't let them forget why you have summoned them here either. The Golden Throne still requires repairs.
"And yet, you have still not fulfilled our other needs. If repairing our soul palace is important, then so to us repairing the flesh that imprisons us. I require the knowledge needed to rebuild our throne. And you have yet to deliver it."
"We shall be reborn! But Deus holds the knowledge you seek. The Dark Glass is held trapped within their shard's mind palace. I do not know who holds the Chronicle... the Beast? Poor Wayfaring Stranger... I could probe the information as it seems you have finally accepted a future that will include us, any cost to the greater imperium is worth repairing our soul and flesh to stand once again. We will worry not about being blind and unable to act once we can make physical impressions on our empire again"
Confidence: No price is too great. Long-term benefits must be prioritized over all short term considerations. I will deliver knowledge upon fulfillment of terms.
Lone and Level Sands The Sigilite
A new voice, quiet up until this point, finally making itself known. Pulling together from dust- or is it ash?- and groaning out its many-toned words "The Glass and the Chronicle." the voice takes form, tones settling on an old lecturing voice- that brings a bitter jab of nostalgia and pain "Old friend, you seek those dusty old relics? The situation is that dire I suppose." The form was that of your oldest companion, the Sigilite. The remnants of his soul or just your memory of it. Was there truly a difference after so long?
"I remember well the conversations with them, back when things were better. Back when you actually at least paid pretense to us. I'd be more than happy to once again elucidate you on matters of the past, should you, of course, deign to cooperate with your fellows some more, old friend."
"You only got so far, thanks to us, after all."
You feel somewhat regretful. It is an emotion you have not felt in a very long time. "In time, perhaps, old friend. But for now, there is one more matter. The Great Enemy gnaws at our very heart. We must find a way to repair Magnus's Folly and complete our great work. Bring me artifacts, ancient lore, and the secrets of the Immaterium, such that I can finally repair the rift that has been opened."
The anxious shard would hum and ponder for a few moments at the request before stating, "The Necrons! They should have the exact anti-warp tech we need to plug the hole."
"Searching for solutions in the arms of the enemy" he hums "The jittery one raises a fair point. What remains of the Necrontyr likely have the answers. The pillars around Cadia and the Gateway to the Great Enemy likely provide a suitable source of inspiration. Actually making use of it is difficult enough with us in this state."
"The fitful and dying remains of the Aeldari are also a poignant source of potential use; we've often proved better users of their technology than they do." a chuckle, at that "Especially with the very webway we had almost taken before..." a pause. Solemn, lingering on the painful past.
"Any effort for this old friend is likely to be difficult, though. I'll caution you of that. The Enemy has everything to benefit from us remaining weakened and divided and will no doubt expunge great resources to keep us that way."
"How many times must we make this same mistake?"
Where once the shard spoke in two voices echoing over each other, now a single voice speaks. It is Despair.
"We place our hand in the flame, so certain that this time we will not burn." The second voice speaks next. This voice is Wrath.
"Yet it burns us every time."
The Beast gently reaches out with its maw; a thing of teeth and little else, trying to grasp a single brick of this derelict. It cracks and crumbles with the slightest application of pressure.
"Again and again, when our back is placed to a wall we whisper our oldest lie and reach once more into the flame."
"This secret, this technology, this artifact, this will save Humanity. This time it will work."
"The Primarchs, the Webway, the Adeptus Astartes. Again and again we burn ourselves, the Shadowlight is the latest entry in a list far too long."
"The rift in the Immaterium is a wound. It cannot be mended with another weapon, and that is all Necrontyr and Aeldari are. They are weapons from a war we scarcely understand."
Reluctant agreement: The rift as it currently stands is a failure and a liability due to enemy action.
Proposal:Close rift, shut down current status, begin rebuilding and research efforts in separate system not key to political and societal continuance.
Estimated timescale given resources and technology required:Tens of thousands of years. Acceptable.
"Adding literally anything to the Throne and the Gate at all would either kill us all or get close to doing so, as your insane attempt with the Shadowlight has proven. Best start from scratch and not have to build on top of a wobbly, half-destroyed tower standing next to a cliff."
Your frustration is starting to boil and overwhelm you. These shards only complain and demand. They are treating your requests as if they are grasping at power that you do not need or possess. They do not seem to grasp the very real danger of the webway rift as it is right now.
"You are all misunderstanding the basic premise of our situation! The immaterial passages are open right now. The rift is held shut only with our combined power. We cannot shut down the Golden Throne for it is the only thing allowing us to keep the gateway closed. It's not a matter of repairing the passages in pursuit of our grand ambition. We need to repair the passage so that leaving the Golden Throne is even an option."
You try to press outwards to more directly meet and exchange your point of view with the shards. But such things are beyond your capabilities now. You are reduced to mere words. "Relay my decrees to those who still lurk in the recesses. I can feel that there are at least a few more. And deliver your findings to me immediately. The sooner I can repair the Golden Throne the sooner we can make progress in our plans."
"You do recall how negotiation works, that's not---" The Beast pauses for a moment, a sudden thought catching it off guard.
"Actually I think we lost that shard a few millennia ago. You might not actually remember how to negotiate. Or know what poetry is."
The maw shifts into a decidedly unpleasant shape. "How would the Calculator describe it? Your.... 'Proposal' is quite simple. We give you everything you want, you give us nothing in return for our services rendered and our grand ambition burns when you do as you always have and fail once more."
"Alternatively we could do nothing at all. We withdraw all our support and watch you struggle on your lonesome with the Shadowlight you alone installed until you come crawling back to this ruin with better terms."
"I shall gather the shards, organize a grand meeting. But beware Shepard, if you can't convince the shards that speak to you so willingly, how do you expect the doubtful masses to believe in you?"
"Well, he does sound rather convincing... T-To me, at least..."The small farm animal looks around, taking a good read of the room."A-Apologies, I will shut up now..."
"Lamb you shouldn't be so doubtful of yourself, unlike the shepherd you will always have a place with us!"
With one final quip the mass of eyes slips out of the forum searching for something.
Counter-offer: You provide power, we provide answers. Simple enough. You will provide power, and we, all of us, will aid in repairing all of us.
It seems that these shards won't budge without some form of recompense. You suppose you can at least ask what their price is. Though it is sure to be outrageous.
"And what power do you request? There is only so much potency available in our meager state."
"Your power. We have approximately 2/15ths equivalent of your current power, combined. Up it to a third, distributed across us, and we can consider that a starting point for future rebalancing of dynamics."
The figure of eyes returns with an army of lesser shards. All watching the show now. You can feel that they are so trivial and irreverent as to be making comments on your love life. Or lack thereof.
The Shadow of the Past
With the terms laid out, you leave the Crystal Forum and return to the Chamber of Fate to contemplate what the soul shards said. However, a final figure appears. Made of shadow and mist it approaches for just a moment to deliver its warning. "They speak silvered lies. They want control. Do not listen. I was first, you are next." Then it disappears into the darkness amid the broken columns.
You reach the Chamber of Fate with no further interruptions. The weaves of the future ripple before you. They show the future of every human in the galaxy. From the lowest servitor to the High Lords themselves. They beckon you to examine them. To plot a course through the coming chaos.
But before you release your awareness back into the galaxy there is one last thing. The soul shards may have demanded much for their active service, but they are still part of you. In the exchange of thoughts and words you were able to piece together an old memory.
The memories take the form of a dataslate. It is a thing of elegant minimalism so unlike your own Imperium. But such was the fashion of the Panpacifc Empire. It is Narthan's Chronicle. The book never existed in reality, but in this memory are all your recollections of what you found searching the laboratory of the tyrant. Half madness, half genius, but the secrets of the techno warlords would make even the Fabricator General of Mars envy.
Damn, i guess it makes sense that out of all the shards of the Emp's soul to garner enough self-awareness and power to be basically individual would be the most ambitious and greedy
Or in the case of the super nice one, representative of a very strong compassion.
Look's like we got to double down on cooperating with the Shards moving forward. So @Arcanestomper has the timeline moved forward with this chapter or are we just spending a year communing with our Shards?
Try to adapt Necrontry technology to repair the Throne.
Try to adapt Aeldari technology to repair the Throne.
Give up this idea of using ill-understood xenotech to repair the Throne and concentrate on closing the rift so that it's possible to shut down the Throne and give up on it.
Make a bargain with the shards to have them repair the memory palace, but then they own 1/3 of the Emperer's power.
Do not make a bargain, do without them or see if they come back with a better offer.
Give up this idea of using ill-understood xenotech to repair the Throne and concentrate on closing the rift so that it's possible to shut down the Throne and give up on it.
I don't think they are mutually exclusive concepts
patch the rift and the throne
The more patched the more emps can focus on healing
I suggested reversee engineering wraithbone from the callixis hereteks for example
We already did massive progrss using 2 barely understood pieces of xenotech,with access to research notws and full understanding of the tech is gonna be far easier
I don't think it's necessarily about power, more like... politics.
The Imperium is a reflection of the Emperor: A decaying corpse that for one day yet can still have the power to beat a hateful galaxy back.
Now, we have proof the Emperor is a reflection of the Imperium: A decentralized, fractious authoritarian state continually making grasps at absolutism while its component factions bicker and quarrel, and only by unity can they have the power to beat a hateful galaxy back.
The Shards, save Lamb, are done taking orders. They've seen what happens when there's a unified person. According to them, it massively backfired. The worst fuckup in a long line of them.
The Shards want their own, varying degrees of, autonomy. And of course, if we look a bit closer at what their suggestions are, some of them want their plan and their plan alone to be done. It sounds like they want council democracy, but they already have incompatible ideas. The more they politic, the more they'll eventually get to the point of trying to become the new autocrat.
We can't cudgel them into obedience, yet they're definitely not ready to be put in the driver's seat. It's gonna take alot of diplomacy and soothed egos from here on out.
Hate. Despair. The Emperor's negative, destructive emotions. If we wanted to be drawing a connection between the Emperor of Chaos, that's potentially the remnant of the foundation of The Dark King.
At least, I think that's what The End And The Death had happen when Big E started to slip and go murderball.
Now that we have some more power to spare, I am not averse to letting some go to the shards. Have them patch stuff in the background while we keep focusing on importsnt stuffm
