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The Young Xian of the Celestial Realm: Space Cathay 4x Warhammer 40k Quest

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Canonised Omake: Technology and War
  • Informational
    • Technology And War​

    Harmony was all about every small piece working together in a greater whole. The Imperium often depicted the Tian'Chaoren, the dragons in particular, as obsessed with forcing all the pieces to fit together, the more subtle pieces of propaganda using a great deal of clockwork imagery. However, they were not Eidolons. While they would not tolerate truly egregious differences, such as attempting to force the issue of existing as a separate individual as the Tyranids did. Harmony as the Tian'Chaoren understood it was all about the little pieces working in concert to enact larger changes. Certainly, the exact size of those pieces varied a great deal, but to make use of the clock metaphor, just because the larger gears are more important does not mean the smaller gears are unimportant.

    No one would argue that losing an electron had no impact on an atom, despite the relative masses of the nucleus and electron. Similarly, losing a finger would not normally kill a human, but they certainly wouldn't dismiss it as unimportant that they had lost it unless something truly dire were afoot, such as a Hive Tyrant bearing down on them.

    War was as much about the average soldier keeping their nerve and continuing their struggle to wipe out the Orks charging their lines as the weaponized moons duking it out overhead. Thus the slow, iterative process of gaining new knowledge and implementing it across the nation fit very well with the Tian'Chaoren. Still, the focus was likely to be on three major facets, the Ogors, the Automata, and the nature of their Harmony.

    The Ogors were long allies of the dragons. A bit capricious as allies went, but that wasn't really their fault any more than the Orks' Eidolonic nature was theirs. Thankfully, the Ogors weren't as badly off in that regard, in part due to their unfinished development, and so they could be reasoned with. Perhaps this was the reason why the dragons so stubbornly held onto the hope they could reach out to the wayward cousins of the Ogors one day. It worked before, so it could work again, right?

    The two principle weaknesses of the Ogors were that they relied almost solely on their natural abilities and Ork-esque wildlife, and their relatively low intelligence. The former was certainly an impressive set of abilities, given Ogors literally never stopped growing in size and strength as long as there was ample food and the sheer variety of beasts at their disposal, but it left them vulnerable to a variety of anti-organic technologies, to say nothing of the Tyranids, who had a specialty in defeating organics if anyone did. The second factor was a byproduct of being unfinished, as opposed to the deliberately degenerated Orks. This contributed to many of the more unpleasant and self-destructive behaviors the common Ogre demonstrated. As the saying went, 'sufficiently enlightened self-interest is indistinguishable from benevolence' and for all that their simple lifestyles made Ogors simple to placate and heavily resistant to the allure of Chaos even beyond the benefits offered by their pantheon in that regard, they weren't particularly enlightened unless you considered knowing how to make a good steak enlightenment. This resulted in Ogor aim being rather similar to Urruk aim, only without the sheer volume to compensate, as the Orks outnumbered the Ogors just as they did with most factions, and the Ogors very much preferred to get in melee with their foes to better start digging in as soon as possible, while Gnoblars are cowards almost to an entity and very similar to Gretchin in most other respects, so manning the guns was done poorly, begrudgingly, or both where it was done at all.

    Here, the symbiosis of Tian'Chaoren and the Ogors could compensate for these issues. Both in the sense that Ogors excelled in the sort of knock-down fights the dragons and their students had some difficulty with from the word go, and because armoring the Ogors and teaching their Gnoblar servants the workings and maintenance of this armor and the automated guns set up for them on their ships dramatically improved their specialty in closing with their opponent and smashing their teeth in, though in the latter case it was because they were less dangerous to the Tian'Chaoren, meaning they could work together more closely.

    That is not to say the dragons were slacking in their own quest for knowledge. A good teacher never stops learning, so they always have something to teach. While the Ogors were hardy, they were not infinite in number, and there was no guarantee that boarders would show up in the right place to face their concentrations. As such, the Automata were upgraded to better serve as boarders, anti-boarders, and counter-boarders. While not truly disposable fodder, the common Automata lacked the higher functions to be called a person, and were thus, far more expendable than the common Ogre or Tian'Chaoren soldier. That is not an excuse to avoid making them suitable for their tasks, of course, and a few percent greater efficiency adds up across millions of bodies, which in turn adds up across the battlefield.

    The general boost to every spaceship in the fleet with the addition of anti-matter injectors was a good example of how a minor improvement everywhere could have a cascading effect. Minute quantities of anti-matter were relatively safe to make and store even with the relatively simple understanding of the reversed mirror image of matter the Tian'Chaoren possessed, and while a ship being able to defend against boarders with less damage and chaos was nice, not being caught and boarded was also nice. By the same token, boarding a ship was as much a matter of actually reaching it without getting shot down as anything else. An example of how success or failure in one area of war influenced and was influenced by others.

    Now we come to the technologies still theoretical, but whose prototypes may soon be complete.

    War Fireworks were, in concept, a simple evolution of their more conventional counterparts. Making use of Alchemobaric principles and the usual workings of their less dangerous brethren, as a War Firework ascends, it leaves a trail of powder that bursts into alchemical flame, allowing it to scramble sensors and foul aircraft. This allowed artillery to respond to strikecraft more easily, granted drop pods and landing craft in general an improvement to their flak, and was incredibly useful against organic enemies. The hard part was keeping it from also fouling allied sensors, but the power of Harmony was well-suited to working around that, and with some consultation of the alchemists most experienced in working out the IFF protocols for Automata and the like, it shouldn't be hard.

    Like it or not, the most effective means of fighting Wizards, Psykers, Psions, and their relevant monstrosities, is best done with other Wizards, Psykers, and Psions. With the inherent dangers in using any or all of these forces, there is a strong bias towards casters being elites, with their own elites being super-elites. As such, they represent both massive force concentration in the same vein as Astartes, and a considerable investment of time and resources, also much like Astartes. Therefore, improving their defenses was a high priority. The fact that Psychoreactive Armor could also take advantage of the way narrative bent around heroes and the faith of their followers to also improve their defenses was icing on the cake.

    The War Fireworks concept made the alchemists and esotericists of the Tian'Chaoren wonder if the effect on enemy sensors could be scaled up. Now obviously there were problems with trying to make something catch fire in space, but the mystical side of the effect could let sheer distance do much of the work if it could be propagated to fleet-relevant distances. A 1% loss in accuracy when dealing with thousands of kilometers of distance, or hundreds of missiles, could add up very quickly, and this was rather more than that. The Harmonic Scramblers promised to be of especial use in knife-fighting and boarding, particularly the teleportation-based boarding so beloved by Orks, though much like Eldar holofields, they worked on the principle of 'it doesn't matter how strong the enemy is if they can't hit you' and didn't actually improve the shielding or raw durability of the ship. Still, a fleetwide reduction in damage, regardless of the source, was always appreciated.

    While it's more common to humans of the Imperium and Sigmarum, dragons are not immune to the Rule of Cool the Orks make use of in their more deranged devices, such as the recent extreme example of a Mech Conversion. While something on the scale of the transforming planetoid-mech was far beyond them, it should be possible to do something on a smaller scale, allowing small vehicles to serve as walkers and aircraft, and vice versa. The benefits of being able to switch between the two as circumstances of terrain or battle demand outweigh the increased difficulty of the designs, such as having walkers shift to aircraft to cross canyons and then back to engage enemies on the ground or similar instance of improved mobility, though perhaps not as much as would have made this a serious proposal if Xian Xinyi had not taken a personal interest following the battle with Muchkill's WAAGH.

    At the end of the day, despite our technological advantages, Tian'Chaoren ship guns simply don't have the numbers or power of the Imperium of Man's. This is as much a doctrinal issue as anything else, but that simply means it can be rectified relatively easily. A Firepower Improvement would compound the efforts to cover the weakness to direct clashes with enemy forces, directed by the Xian, as well as preventing our long-range bombardment from falling behind, in relative terms.

    While the nature of the clash between the students of the dragons and their teachers and the Tau Empire's Greater Good is an emphasis on the importance of the individual, in this age of war, that comes with problems. Most major civilizations in this era have chaff they can feed into the grinder in ludicrous numbers, cheap and easily replaceable, but the Tian'Chaoren do not, and so they instantly cede military supremacy on this front to any force that bothers to have any at all. This will not stand. The Terracotta Armies are in all respects save cost, a degradation of the common Automata. That, however, is precisely the point. They are intended to be easy to make and repair without the direct attentions of an alchemist, at least once the skeletal frame is made, and that frame is intended to be easy to repair and reuse. The idea is not to suddenly manage a complete reversal, but to at least deny the enemy Cannon Fodder Supremacy, and literally anything could serve that purpose. Thus, their place to shine is the scrum of melee, and boarding in particular. They also promise to augment militias in Tian'Chaoren space, since being easy to make and partially automated in doing so is the entire point.

    Speaking of boarding, another potential improvement is the Hornet-Nest, which offers the ability to store and produce mechanical wasps equipped with laser stingers. Serving a purpose akin to the Imperium's lasgun-equipped servo-skulls, what they lack in easy direction they make up for in huge numbers more akin to the number of shells Orks might be expected to expel trying to bring them all down than any reasonable number of fliers, with other insectoid options for different opponents. They should excel in boarding, but will also offer aid on the ground by distracting enemy anti-air and harassing the infantry and cannon fodder.

    Sometimes, you just need better shields. The Chi-Wen Class Frigate was created specifically for this purpose. It lacks any offense, with point defenses being the only 'weapons' it mounts, and is all but a parasite craft. It's job is simple. It uses an amplifier to improve Harmonic Resonance and thereby bolster the shields of it's attached ship. This is generally regarded as a good trade, as while the ship is almost certainly doomed should it's counterpart go down, the boost to the other ship is sufficient to offset the casualties incurred when this happens, and then some. Besides, it's not as if the frigate isn't protected by it's partner for exactly this reason.

    Harmonic Broadcasters, born of the Shadow of the Warp and the fleshy pylons the Tyranids could amplify it with on sufficiently overrun worlds, with similar purposes. Amplifying allied forces, while weakening or at least interfering with enemy Psykers, Psions, and general non-Materium energy wielders. Daemons and Strangers were most directly affected, as they lacked much in the way of anchoring in the physical realm. That was the whole point of whispering to cultists and the Army of Starless Night, respectively. Their realspace manifestations could be more easily fought and permanently or semi-permanently defeated if they were at least partially cut off from their home plane, and leaving it in the first place could be made more difficult.

    AN: Is anyone else imagining Harmonic Broadcasters as essentially anti-Black Markers? Ie, they deflect treacherous whispers, violent impulses, and general insanity, natural or otherwise, and bring those under their influence closer together while preventing any forced conversions into monstrosities. I'll do the new revolutionary projects later.
     
  • Informational
    • Paths of Harmony​

    There are many possible roads to enlightenment, at least one for each person, which is part of the reason any sort of standardized education in guiding others along that path is so difficult to create. This applies on a societal level as well. While cultivation often required rare reagents and periods of meditation many of the younger races simply weren't suites for for one reason or another, it was not beyond the means of the dragons to provide a better starting position. In addition to philosophical benefits to pursuing the great heights of potential available, it often has benefits to the military and civilian walks of life.

    Take Biohacking, sometimes referred to as 'Tyranids done right' in a mildly derogatory manner. In essence, it's the gene-forging done to the Imperium's Custodes writ large. Necessarily, this will be a very resource-intensive and research-heavy path, as it's not quite as easy to mess up as esotericism, but it can be just as subtle about going wrong. For that reason, a great deal of cross-referencing of extant improvement regimens will be examined, from the Custodes, to cultivation, to breeding programs from the Imperium's Navigators desperately trying to stave off further degradation, to the biology of various Elder Beasts and the Dragons themselves. If one good thing can be said to have come out of the Tyranids, it's that they prove that there is still further to go in terms of biological mastery, as opposed to the intermix of biology and soul engineering the Old Ones carried out, though hopefully with a better end than the Krok and Trogs.

    The benefits will be immense, at least to organic entities. The health and life quality of the population will be improved immensely, and in warfare, the common soldier remains a numerous component of battle, even with Automata to fill out the numbers somewhat, not to mention vehicle pilots and ship crews. While no Mechanicus adept or AI, improvements to the crew of a ship would help it in circumstances beyond boarding, though like Astartes, redesigns of machines meant to take advantage of this improved performance would likely be necessary to benefit very much outside boarding actions. Ogors in particular should benefit immensely, with the sheer quantity of warbeasts they make use of. Additionally, this is one of the paths best-suited to immunizing warbeasts and other organics from Tyrannic infection vectors, and possibly even discerning a means of communicating with them.

    The second path uncovered is Enlightenment. This is a path that was being pursued by the Emperor and Empress of the Imperium. In short, become a psychically active race in the vein of the Eldar before the rise of Slaanesh. If Biohacking is about unlocking genetic potential, Enlightenment is about unlocking spiritual potential. This would apply to all entities with souls, including Heavenly Automata, and if the construction of an allied pantheon beyond the tenuous connection to the Lords of Order is of interest, this is the path for it. Well, that and obtaining wisdom from the Slann on the matter, as they learned at the feet of the Old Ones, who constructed the pantheon of the Eldar, which lasted for more than 60 million years after the War in Heaven without major incident.

    Making the entire race Psykers or Wizards would follow from this path as well, and a general improvement to resistance to psychic and psionic corruption and various mystical effects in general, as well as using them offensively. Take heart the lesson of the Horus Heresy. Ignorance of the Warp, intentionally cultivated or not, is not an adequate defense, and we should take care that those under the care of the dragons do not suffer because we cannot teach them what we know of it. Simply making it so that we can, in fact, teach them properly, seems an elegant solution.

    Third of the many paths is Tianren Cultivation. This is a case of backtracking, as this knowledge once belonged to us, but was lost in the Wars of Vengeance as part of the downward slide all creation has been undergoing since the War in Heaven. Tianren, of the Celestial peoples, from the Qilin to the Tian-He, have access to a specialized curriculum that allows them to resist corruption without having such engineered into them, and for even immature Tianren to compete with unaugmented Primarches in combat and administration of war and civilian government.

    If Enlightenment focuses on raising up the new, Tianren Cultivation focuses on reclaiming the old, allowing Tianren to rise with numbers and speed not seen since the Wars of Vengeance. The Realm of Ultramar is one of the more prominent examples of how this might be helpful, as currently Tianren numbers grow very slowly relative to the territories of the Tian'Choren. Each path offers means of mitigating the issues of governance across the great expanse of the Garden, though this one is inarguable best-suited to maintaining the current power structure. Then again, is it not the dream of all teachers to be surpassed by their students?

    The current focus of the paths if the fourth, the Iron Heart, specifically it's first step, the Steel Awakening. Combining the expertise of the Leagues of Votann in making the bodies of AI with the knowledge of making souls for them possessed by the Tian'Choren, the hope is to obtain greater understanding than the sum of it's parts. If one wishes to create a Machine-God in the vein of the Mechanicus' this would be the path to take. Improving everything from auto-correct to aim-assist, to damage control systems, and offering benefits in line with the interfacing of Mechanicus' tech-priests with Machine-Spirits to exhort their machines to greater heights of performance, improving all machines and vehicles. It also promises to dramatically improve the production of
    all Automata, including the Heavenly Automata.

    The fifth path is the Star's Wisdom, the knowledge the C'Tan would take for granted as beings that existed at the dawn of time before even the Old Ones, the earliest life in the Materium. This path is to physical laws of the Materium what Biohacking is to organic life, meaning virtually anything that exists in the Materium would benefit to some degree, with little distinction between the organic and inorganic unless a soul is present, and a soul without active psychic power, wizardry, or psionics would benefit, though that is not to say that an individual with one of those would not benefit. However, this path has little answer to esotericism until a significant distance along, beyond simple things like 'burn it until it stops moving, and keep burning it turns to dust' or the Orkish solution of simply increasing firepower until brute force overwhelms the problem.

    Admittedly, the general improvement to weapons, defenses, and power generation mean that this is less of a problem than one might think, but it would be unwise to expect anything similar to the Cadian pylons to become available any time soon. Which is not to say that no new technologies will be unlocked for general use by this. On the contrary, this is a path that is closely tied to Enlightenment in terms of a rising tide lifting all ships, and a number of general purpose technologies simply cannot be unlocked in any other way.

    Additionally, as it is the path the Necrons have taken, under the 'tutelage' of the C'Tan, it may offer some insight into their 'Clarketech' as the Imperium might refer to it, and perhaps even grant us a modicum of respect from them, as we did not rip these secrets out of technology we stole from them.

    The Alchemist's Creativity is the sixth path of enlightenment, taking a middle path between the Star's Wisdom and Tianren Cultivation. Alchemists have less strict requirements than 'be a Celestial People' but still necessitate psychics or sorcerers be involved in the process to actually work, which leaves it vulnerable to becoming a Mystery Cult in the vein of Mechanicus, with associated issues with Chaos, Undeath, and the Strangers. Corruption is a constant hazard in this line of work, much like Wizards and Psykers, and the significant chemical knowledge necessary to properly utilize the gifts of alchemy further curtails the number of eligible alchemists in a population. Which is a problem when alchemists bottleneck a number of important elements of the military and civilian life. The Automata, as the most prominent example, especially the most potent examples.

    This path proposes codifying alchemical knowledge in such a manner as to allow more people in all walks of life to become alchemists. In addition to the bolstering of material sciences, this would dramatically improve the number and quality of alchemical trinkets and units, including Automata. It will also reduce attrition of alchemists to dangerous procedures and corruption, further boosting their effective numbers.

    Last of the currently known paths, the Dreaming Mysteries proposes fighting fire with fire in facing the Strangers. That is, research the Psions their infrareality contamination of realspace give rise to. The Leng, or it's more pleasant moniker of Dreamtime, is deeply touched by the Dark Tapestry, much like the Warp is by Chaos. Much like Psykers, however, Psions are worth the trouble if you know what you're doing, and sometimes even if you don't, though the latter circumstance is very, very dangerous to them and everyone around them.

    While Wizards and Psykers work against the forces of the Abyss, Psions are better suited for combatting it. In addition, while Psionic power works on somewhat different rules than the Warp, there are similarities. The power of symbols and heroic narratives is recognized, for example, and this is a path that hybridizes Enlightenment and Tianren Cultivation in allowing some degree of Psionic potentials to unlock and bolstering important individuals in the army. It is also an enhancement of esoterics in general, and provides significant resistance to corruption by the forces in the Leng. This path is best-suited to closing the rifts opened by the Strangers, and perhaps even removing them as a threat in entirety. Diplomacy is unlikely to be in the cards like the Tyranids, as this is not a case of not being recognized as sapient, the Strangers have entirely different frames of reference for literally everything, but it's not impossible.

    AN: I suspect that, say, Enlightenment and Tianren Cultivation Part 1 would have significant synergy allowing for, say, raising human Tianren, as would Enlightenment and Iron Heart Part 1, allowing for psychic Automata, and the Star's Wisdom and Alchemist's Creativity would obviously have some pretty major synergy. Am I correct @Spartakrod
     
    Good Gods of Invention, you make me want to write an omake about a Celestial esoteric academic and some sort of new chi-tech tapping into the primordial rules of the cosmos!

    This might take a while
     
    Mithrill said:
    No. I had in mind either a star-reading divination engine or devices that tap into leylines and cosmic energy currents in order to continuously run a yet-undetermined ritual (loose idea: arcane reduction of wear-and-tear)
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Hm, so finding a means of using Astromancy-adjacent techniques? That could be good for Itzacan diplomacy.
     
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    001.M42-100.M42. Turn 2 results
  • Threadmarks
    • Gonna write the Turn 3 start separately. Some of the sequences are truncated because I need to write fewer 12k word posts.

    MrRageQuit said:
    [X] Plan: Charting a Path Forward
    -[X] (Dilemma) Let them flee back to where they came from
    -[X] (Trade) Decline Tau
    -[X] (Trade) Accept Dawi Karaz Ankor
    -[X] (Trade) Accept League of Votann
    -[X] (Trade) Accept Imperium
    -[X] (Diplomatic) Phoenix Counter-Offer
    --[X] Target: Phoenix Kingdom/Asur
    --[X] Nature: Friendly
    --[X] Resources Committed: Xinyi
    --[X] Objective: Make a successful counter-offer to Phoenix Kingdom
    --[X] Process: Propose we split the Virgin Territories, the Celestial Realm gets Square 35, the Asur get Square 34. In exchange we are willing to accept reduced trade RP (or forgo it if necessary). Agree to alliance on the condition we only have to respond to attacks on Square 34 - point out we obviously are in no position to respond to attacks on Baradesh right now.
    -[X] (Square 30) Remove Greenskins [25 RP]
    -[X] (Square 30) Upgrade Development to Heartlands [55 RP]
    -[X] (Square 30) Upgrade Defenses to Heavy [8 RP]
    -[X] (Square 42) Upgrade Defenses to Heavy [7 RP]
    -[X] (Military) Construct Mag 2 High Quality Fleethorde [30 RP]
    -[X] (Military) Deploy Huise Jandui Fleethorde to Square 35 and Claim
    --[X] (Square 35) Upgrade Development to Industrialized [22 RP]
    --[X] (Square 35) Upgrade Defenses to Heavy [7 RP]
    -[X] (Research) Purchase 4 Research Slots (total of 8) [30 RP]
    --[X] Chi-wen Frigate (2 Slots)
    --[X] Harmonic Scramblers (1 Slot)
    --[X] Iron Heart Project Pt. 1 (5 Slots)
    -[X] (General) Consumer Good Production [2 RP]
    -[X] (Operation) Black and Red
    --[X] Target: Pirates in Vay-Dar System
    --[X] Nature: Hostile
    --[X] Resources Committed: Xinyi, Xiang, the Chens, elements of Blaise De
    --[X] Objective: Eliminate the Pirates
    --[] Process: Contact Craftworld/Phoenix Kingdom Eldar for assistance... prepare ambush for pirates at meeting. Spring trap when Dark Eldar arrive and they are busy fighting each other. Try to take leaders/flagships to extract for information, follow up and destroy hideouts.
    -[X] (Espionage) Creep Kills
    --[X] Target: Tyranid Genestealer Cults in Rogue Trader Houses
    --[X] Nature: Hostile
    --[X] Resources Committed: Wang Chao Xing
    --[X] Objective: Purge the Houses
    --[X] Process: Contact Rogue Trader House of York and Ordo Xenos for collaboration... purge?
    -[X] (Espionage) Forgiveness is Iffy
    --[X] Target: Suspected Dark Angel Successor Cells in Tian'Chao territory
    --[X] Nature: Neutral
    --[X] Resources Committed: 15 RP
    --[X] Objective: Identify Successor Cells, determine their intentions
    --[X] Process: ?
    -[X] (Espionage) No More Stahling
    --[X] Target: Cruoran Covens in Drae Nang
    --[X] Nature: Hostile
    --[X] Resources Committed: Wang Zi Rui
    --[X] Objective: Eliminate the Covens
    --[X] Process: ?

    Beginning to open up ourselves a corridor to the Core, and that way we can come to the aid of the Dawi if the situation demands it. The deal with the Imperium covers our 'west' flank, and we continue building economy and recruit/research, That way, we can move in on Square 47 with the Lizardmen next turn, with extra prep time to have force and improved tech on our side.
    Click to expand...
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    Greenskins retreat to unknown territory.

    Tau trade deal rejected, relations now trending strongly negative.

    Asur counter-proposal accepted. Trade deal accepted with Dawi, Leagues of Votann, and Imperium of man.

    Asur relations improve to alliance.

    Dawi, Leagues, and Imperium relations are trending towards improvement.

    +100 trade RP per turn.

    Square 30: Heartland.
    Square 30, 42, 35: Upgraded to Heavy Defences
    Square 35: Industrialised.

    New Fleethorde Produced (Caihong Jandui)

    Chi-Wen Frigate and Harmonic Scramblers finished
    Iron Heart Project pt 1, Completed with Votann assistance

    Black and Red successful; 15 RP gained for next turn

    Genestealer Cults purged; 20 RP gained for next turn

    Extra 10 RP income from celestial realm

    20 pops for next turn

    +6 pop growth per turn

    Forgiveness is Iffy: The Unforgiven are looking for traitor Dark Angels of some sort. Presumably, this is an old grudge because there is clearly a well-practised process. Several kidnappings and assassinations have been undertaken in Celestial territory, efforts to capture the Dark Angel Successors are unsuccessful, so instead it was decided to mostly just give them what they want so they'll fuck off.

    Cruoran Convens removed, salvage recovered.

    "The Shouren are broken, let them flee into the warp for now." Grand Strategos of the Fleet Liao Han said, the half-yaoguai human raising her hand at the strategic Jianyi to the murmuring of other commanders.

    "As they themselves boast, if they "leg it" they'll come again for another go. Under a new warlord and a new waaagh." Lin Quan said, the Marshal's armour decorated in camouflage patterns suited for rust sands of his latest deployment zones.

    "We will be ready then." Ninguang replied, calmly crossing her legs in her seat and steepling her fingers.

    "Consolidation is wise, we would do well to purge the orkoid ecology left behind by the enemy before we find warbands in our own midst." Yu Xiaoxu chimed in. The Fuzhu was in their natural form, presenting the somewhat odd sight of a stag like creature sitting regally in the command Jianyi chambers, garbed in fine raiments of war and speaking with a voice that did not require the movement of the Tianren's mouth, only telltale fluctuations in the orange glow of their radiant natural lights.

    "Are we just going to sit here and let them flee? We should tear them to shreds and make them fear us. Only then will the Shouren leave us alone." Zhang Xiao was a "Falcon Yaoguai", hot blooded, a fierce hunter of daemons who projected an air of ferocity either in humanoid or beast form, the war-mask he wore in his human form only recently cleaned of ork blood.

    "Your time fighting Chaos has made you blind to the nature of the Shouren. They are not creatures of stories and living poetry unlike the Guimei. They are a weapon without a master, a tool without a hand. You cannot make them fear their purpose, and scourging them harshy will only encourage others." Yu Xiaoxu corrected, glaring down at the younger Tianren.

    "Be mindful of your choler, young Xiao. When you fight for hate's sake, you open the door to Kong Nue and other ruinous powers. We fight for a specific purpose, nothing more, nothing less." They added, to the agreement of the gathered officers, for the most part; there were always dissenters in anything but the most uncontroversial of decisions, that was simply part of life in the Jianyi.

    ...

    ​

    The Imperium and the T'Au, burgeoning rivals for domination in this galaxy have agreed to hold discussions concerning a number of ongoing matters, the T'Au are expanding at a brisk clip, with the third sphere of expansion seeing four territories taken by the rising empire in the span of just fifty years with the forces of a relatively small colonisation task force, while the Imperium is one of the more established powers. Whereas the Imperium had refocused efforts meant to conquer the Maetar on more pressing matters and more valuable conquests, the T'Au have broken much of the remaining territories of the Dominate within the galaxy and are looking to conquer the entirety of their territory within this galaxy after having gone to war with the Maetar over the Dominate's invasion of protectorates of the Sphere in another galaxy.

    The Imperium is concerned that, while the Maetar were a particularly contemptible lot of very unpleasant xenos clone soldiers and war machines, that the T'Au's expansion would allow them to make a general push to conquer this particular galaxy. The T'Au for their part see the Imperium as a generally destabilising influence that has allowed the Vay-Gir galaxy to in general, go to complete shit over the past few thousand years.

    A mediator is sought for, and Xinyi finds herself soon accosted by both rogue traders of the house of the famed diplomatic house of York and Water Caste Ambassadors after returning to the Beinang station even as she entertains the Aeldari Prince Soban Makaan, finding herself virtually dragged from bed with the prince in tow to find a regal rogue trader with a Space Marine of the Viridian Stars chapter as a military attache and a senior water caste diplomat and their Kroot shaman advisor along with honour guards at the ready, with the Azure dragon guard of course all having weapons loaded.

    She looked beyond, and could see a mysterious-looking Kyn Grimnyr with a white and full beard and his retinue including a number of Ironkin, a stout and hardy scarlet-haired Dawi princess and her retainers, a white-scaled Skink Priest and his stoic guards, an elegant looking ambassador of the Phoenix Kingdom with resplendent clothes and elegant golden hair and a security detail that seemed suspiciously catered to Xinyi's taste in Aeldari men, and a green haired Exodite glade lord gathered with a Zoat and a Treant among others who had accompanied him.

    Eyes fixated on the fact that she had in fact, just crawled out of...discussions with the Craftworlders and one of their Princes and was...dressed for the occasion. The Rogue trader flushed, the Dawi stifled a laugh, the Glade Lord quirked a brow, the High Eldar ambassador gasped, the Skink licked its eyeballs and the T'Au whispered frantically to the Gue'Vesa accompanying her.

    "...Ah that's an interesting look." The Grimnyr nodded as he stroked his beard. She didn't quite mind her nakedness, but she did mind the fact that this would set a first impression.

    "It is one way to break the Vesperian[1] standoff I suppose." Praefect Scipia Galaxus said, her Viridian and Sapphire armour clearly of exemplary make, while the Galea attached to her helm seemed to blow in the air conditioning just for that extra awkwardness, rustling against itself conspicuously loudly.

    Conjuring her outfit of office, her distinctive azure scale armour, she bade Soban to get dressed first before sitting down with the discussing polities. With the Jianyi having already decided to hear out the talks, she had relatively little choice but to hear out the discussions.

    ...

    Lady Elizabeth of the House of York sat herself in the seat opposite to Xinyi, looking with a bit of scorn at the spicy perch soup that the dragon helped herself to while she was offered something more conventional for her tastes; buttered shellfish and bread with a salad.

    "I would have figured an ice dragon would be unfond of hot dishes."

    "I can only taste capsaicin when I want to, besides, I enjoy it!" She chirped, twirling some of the noodles in the soup around her utensils and slurping them up.

    "Why do people eat something meant to cause pain in any case?" Scipia asked, having had an almost comically large seat pulled up for her and an almost comically simple dish of pizza that seemed bizarrely out of place next to the fine dining lords and ladies who followed Elizabeth around. But it was a simple way to pack most of the nutrients she needed onto a calorie-dense bread base and the Viridian Stars were quite famous for their love of the pie.

    Xinyi smirked a bit at the brief bewilderment Elizabeth showed at Scipia's choice of commoner's food, baffled that someone as esteemed as a Praefect of a Space Marine chapter would lower themselves to a grab bag of toppings laid upon a bed of of cheese and tomato paste. But if Scipia cared about Elizabeth's judgement, she showed no sign.

    "It is an acquired taste, but it adds excitement." Xinyi said cooly, her brother poking around at his own bamboo shoot soup slow cooked hours in advance of the meeting.

    Dabbing her face with a cloth and sipping at a conspicuously non-alcoholic goblet of...well it's not wine if it's not alcoholic so it's really just bubbly grape juice...Elizabeth straightened herself to look more serious.

    "War is inevitable between the Spheres of T'Au'Va ad the Imperium of Man within this supercluster, a side will have to be chosen sooner rather than later. I understand that you are not yet overall commander of all Celestial forces within even the cluster, but you are known for your diplomatic approach so I thought it best to warn you ahead of time." She said, placing her goblet down.

    "That much is obvious. Demilitarised zones as you'd say in Gothic...Aren't." Xiang added.

    "The Zeist campaign has the upstarts running scared, they're launching their retaliation hurriedly and blindly in what they think is a moment of Imperial Weakness. They will find that this is a grave miscalculation on their part, and that the Crusade we have being readied will be more than adequate response." She was posturing, trying to scare the twin dragons as much as any possible T'Au spies in the room.

    "You wish a guarantee that we will not interfere then?" Xinyi asked.

    "Precisely. Despite our long history of conflicts, we are peer powers, your Realm and my Imperium. There is respect amongst equals, the T'Au do not understand the balance of power and their revisionist ambitions will destabilise whole swathes of the universe." Elizabeth nodded.

    "In exchange, my house and its allies are prepared to offer you lucrative trade and my influence upon the local governments to encourage them to accept your claim to the demilitarised zone. Furthermore, we will take the insurgents amidst your territories off your hands."

    "I thought the Martyr's grave was the keystone of the Imperium." Xinyi said with veiled amusement.

    "Better to bring them home to spend their lives in Their Imperium than to die in foreign stars." She said matter of factly.

    "Diplomatic agents are often the bedrock of spy rings, I am willing to help your house with a certain matter in exchange for you keeping whatever skulduggery you have planned to a dull roar." Xinyi's chipper, girlish demeanour took on a more mischievous aspect now as she studied the other's reaction.

    She definitely seemed to narrow her eyes, the blonde's cool gaze trying to betray no emotion nor shock. She was good at her job, but her two centuries hardly stacked up to Xinyi's few milennia of existence. Not borne through cheating through the warp as the traitor space marines did, but the long road through time, to watch history, real history, unfold day by day with living eyes. While her lived years were like a drop of water compared to the ocean of her parents and eldest siblings' billions of years, she rarely hesitated to remind imperials speaking to her to not talk to her like some fresh-faced university student.

    Of course, the benefits of experience taper off after the ten thousand hours needed for mastery. And experience without real wisdom can mislead more than it guides. But she did know her humans pretty well, and this one was a bit startled by the admission that she knew of a little trouble within the gilded palaces.

    "The houses of Eastex, Lancastershire, and Cornwall are riven with the cultists of the Taotie, or Tyranids as you call them. And as long as they continue to operate, more will be infected and Aosaier will consume everything it touches as the Cults ensure that the Tyranids emerge from within and without." She said, though she suspected that Elizabeth was perfectly aware of this.

    "If you can have enough warriors dispatched to wipe out the infestation...there are arrangements I can make." The Rogue trader admitted, getting an appreciative nod out of the dragonness.

    ....

    Xinyi had the stamina to go from one negotiation to the next without skipping a beat, taking over for the diplomat dispatched in her place like a carefully practiced dance. The T'Au though would have to be given the...less than ideal news that they would have to have their offer rejected as the Jianyi had weighed the costs and benefits and had decided that the Imperium's deal was ultimately more favourable in the long run.

    Por'O Fi'rios Alo was certainly upset, with the T'Au's expression growing several shades more dire upon being told that her bargain would ultimately be rejected.

    "I do not understand why you would refuse our generous offer if you are as wise as you would claim." She said, Xinyi looking out the balcony into the streets of the city that was once a polluted, messily designed imperial hive and had now been transformed into a deliberately planned arcology.

    The decades that had passed hardly seemed like much time at all to her to be honest, and the speed at which everything changed never failed to impress her. Certainly ruminating on it was a welcome distraction from her current duties.

    "Because of the concerned parties, it is you who has made it clear that one is either with or against you. The Imperium is content with ongoing neutrality for now, but you ask for alignment and participation in a coming war that benefits us little." She replied, swishing around her goblet a bit more.

    "The Imperium is a grave mutual threat. Their creed is one of pride in backwardness and closed-minded xenophobia. The greatest portion of the Gue'la toil under hereditary lords and arcane lines of fealty and obligation. Furthermore theirs is a dying nation. You know as well as I that they are besieged on all sides and will only seek to tighten their grasp." She pleaded, seeming tiny next to Xinyi's somewhat larger than life frame as she crept into her field of vision.

    "Do you not have compassion for the people of the Imperium who suffer under its ignorant, ignonimous rule? Surely you can see that on this, the Greater Good and the Way of Harmony are aligned." She added, clearly trying to supplicate herself in as respectful a manner as possible without coming off as servile.

    But Xinyi had spoken to the T'Au many times across her life. She had watched them rise from a small power to a great one in their own great crusade. Seemingly guided by the hand of destiny to rise to a seat of great importance at the table in hardly any time at all. But they were conquerors. Though fond of divide and rule over exterminate and colonise, they were still conquerors. just of a sleeker, more modernistic sort than the antiquarian Imperium.

    And that hardly got into how much comparisons of the T'Au collective distributive system and the Tian'Chaoren Jianyi Communalist economy annoyed her. Or how offput she was by the whole enthusiasm for caste society and pigeonholing species into specialties even if the gaps in capabilities weren't really large enough to justify it.

    It wasn't all bad, it was generally more possible to work out something long term with them, even with their short life spans. She didn't have to keep track of feudal family spats that extended across multiple generations or start ingratiating herself to the children of rogue traders in the hopes of continuing her working relationship. And the Tau seemed genuinely enthusiastic for some longer form cooperation.

    "Do not ever think of me as heartless, Por'O Fi'rios Alo. I have no wish to make an enemy of you. But I am merely a voice for the desires of the Jianyi selected by the people. They know that your Fourth Sphere Expansion and the Imperium's retaliatory crusade will put you and your allies and client states on a collision course with the Imperium. Perhaps you will even take one of their Domains." She said, looking down at the Tau woman more seriously now as she sipped at her drink.

    "But do not mistake being able to wound the Imperium for being able to kill it. I have lost many friends in the fires of total war with the Imperium, people I called my comrades and had watched grow into fine people. Far too many of them thought that their deaths would be another fatal blow against the edifice of Terra. Yet it still endures." She explained coldly, much of the prior warmth in her voice fading away.

    "We can discuss other deals and pacts in the future, but for the time being, leave us out of the storm you seek to ride." She Finished.

    ...

    [x]: Purge the greenskins

    Shang Wei[3] Temulun lost count of how many mushrooms she had to burn, the Pyro-Automata engulfing yet another pillar of fungus in a sheet of flame borne of ignited promethium sprayed out of the nozzle. While alchemobaric weapons were generally preferred for dealing with foes in cover, they were not a perfect replacement for flamethrowers, especially not when guided by the knowledge of flame that Dragons had and their mastery of alchemy.

    "Black Promethium" so named for its dark purple colour when ignited was still special issue, not widely produced for a number of problems with transporting the stuff in long space flights that meant it was generally made on-site at the war-factories.

    It however, burned obscenely hot. Conventional promethium's flames were already hot enough to rapidly boil Iron and leave nothing of a person behind but the dark smear of their shadow in an eyeblink, a painless death for most beings that allowed Vulkan to consider its usage merciful compared to radiation or phosphex weapons. Black Promethium was made to burn much hotter than that.

    The surface of most stars would not be as intense in their heat and a forest fire would not have been so hungry for fuel as the Black Promethium flamers she ordered the Automatons to use as they swept from one section of the grid to the next to look for anything that survived the initial alchemobaric rocket bombardment.

    Pyronic tanks and walkers pushed ahead, letting the infantry machines follow up; first with short-ranged alchemobaric multi-rocket bombardment before the flamers followed suit.

    Wizards of Aqshy and Pyromantic Psykers were kept at hand, augmenting and blessing the raging blazes that were sweeping from one end of the valley to the next.

    It felt like barbarism, to simply burn everything here, but the Shouren ecosystem was incredibly tenacious. A single spore unaccounted for would rebirth the entire ecology, and it was easier to re-terraform patches of land than to subject a world to exterminatus and start from scratch.

    Still, she felt little pleasure in having to mark down every cleansed sector of the grid.

    "Lost in thought, Shang Wei Tongzhi?" One of the lower Wei under her asked, Ailoth Nara, from a very different part of the realm than herself despite also being human.

    "This is just exhausting work is all, my apologies for worrying you, Tongzhi." She responded, shaking her head beneath her helmet while it's visor's reticules looked around for signs of any movement.

    There it was, Orks, Grots, and Trogs trying to guise themselves to avoid notice, moving from still fungal forested sectors towards her, with cleavers and shields in hand and some even more ramshackle than normal guns.

    Feral Shouren.

    She eyed one of the bigger ones amidst their ranks, a brutish trog big 'un who berated the others in the warband in "Low-Gorkamorkathrak". Generally most "civilised" greenskins rapidly picked up on the languages of other cultures specifically to learn how to berate and insult them in a way that could be understood.

    Feral Shouren? Not so much, especially as many had never met non-greenskins besides non-sapient fauna and flora.

    That being said she understood that given that he was whacking the others on the head, he was the boss. As far as she could tell, out of the three primary subspecies of the Shuoren, it was size relative to their average that determined leadership. If a Grot was relatively bigger compared to the average grot than a Trog was to his own kind, the Grot would be the boss. Simple as.

    This of course meant he was a pretty darn big trog for this now shattered Waaagh.

    "Target marked, make sure to eliminate them as soon as possible." She reported through the military electronic video assistant network.

    She would level her electromagnetic rifle in readiness, zooming in to target the Ork with the biggest gun, a crank powered gatling weapon.

    How such a thing even worked baffled her. She wasn't an expert, but it didn't look like the bullets properly fed into any receiver.

    "Well, I'll let the engineers worry about that." She muttered beneath her breath as her rifle began to charge, a muffled whine filling her audio-suite in her helmet to give her some auditory feedback while its internals stripped down a packet of atoms.

    She squeezed the mechanism and a red-orange stream of ions leapt from her weapon like a long Javelin, the kick absorbed by the gun itself and her armour before the underslung barrel cycled out the bodiless electrons and spat out a lance of blue-green.

    The Ork, busy taking in the apparent dispute between the Big 'Un and his subordinate, had his head vapourised and his torso stoved in with an explosive spray of boiled viscerae, other greenskins quickly following suit while the Trog snarled and roared out defiantly, wounds already healing with unnatural speed.

    "Scarlet platoon, deliver your incendiary grenades. Azure platoon, provide covering fire. Emerald platoon, don't let them get through. And Amethyst Platoon, form a mobile reserve, respond as you see fit." She ordered through the links, under-officers confirming their commandments in a hurry as they wheeled around; armed transports chattering away while the heavy multi-barelled weapons of Azure squad were set up and allowed to go hogwild, stitching through the terrain with brilliant colours.

    This was to be fair, far less nerve-wracking than the earlier engagements in older campaigns. When this place was still crawling with the Waaagh Proper. When the ground itself would tremble with the boot of barbarians and the air would be split with howling warcries.

    This was a hunt, just one where the stakes were how long it would take to call this valley safe.

    Her E-mag repeater rifle's six barrels went off in an eerie noise much like a music synthesizer on the fritz, walking the pulses down the line of charging orks and trogs while the shorter houren opened fire with Type-31 Lasguns to strike down the grots trying to find sneakier positions to launch their attacks, hooting and whooping as the simian xenos tended to do when stealth was no longer needed.

    The Cranefolk and the insectoid Sonob[4] of Emerald Platoon took to the skies with thruster assistance, picking off the greenskins alongside jetpack-equipped troops who herded them towards the blaze lancers of scarlet platoon. Taking position and firing off coordinated volleys, their shoulder-mounted grenade launchers clicked audibly and she could feel only a small bit of satisfaction inside of her heart as she gave the order to fire.

    Fire swept through the enemies ranks, scouring, cleansing, and purifying. What an odd duality of fire, she thought, to at once be the great destroyer but also one of the greatest tools of all. To clear the way for tomorrow through destruction.

    The Automata would finish the work, torching the Greenskin nob with controlled jets after the Alchemobaric launches ruptured and torched his body, leaving nothing behind save utterly carbonised ash.

    With a sigh, she let her MEVAN unit check off another grid on her objective counter.

    ...

    Haoyu flicked through the pages of his book, feeling the paper beneath the haptic feedback systems of his gauntlets. He was an avid scholar, and every ounce of information the Eldar had offered him was hungrily devoured as his eyes scanned through every page. While he was aware that generally the Eldar preferred psycho-crystalline storage, there was just something pleasant about something he could touch.

    "I hope you are not overly disappointed by having to reduce the scope of your initial ambitions." Haoyu asked the High Eldar Prophet before him, a woman of splendid garb and regal ghost armour decorated in runes of fate.

    Her hair was a shade of gold that he associated more with the actual metal than non-magically touched humans, her eyes a deep purple whose irises seemed to dance with a ghostfire behind them. Compared to the Craftworlders, the High Eldar's garb was more metallic, more solid, forged with more ithilmar and mithril than wraithbone. It gave a more noble, regal sort of appearance to her, more like a warrior than a witch.

    "We will merely have to ask for you to provide greater support elsewhere. Particularly now that you may guide your people's fleets across the cluster." She said, not bowing, but retaining a respectful look into the Fenghuan's human form while the wings near his ears twitched a bit and his spectacles lowered by his will.

    "But why come to this part of this benighted galaxy, Aellita? There are surely other places in the cluster that would be of interest to the Phoenix King and Everqueen." He asked, the woman's arms giving a pronounced shrug as they emerged from beneath her robes.

    "Territory one need not war over is a precious commodity. Particularly when we face such a dearth of good options for our hereafter. She who thirsts, he upon the black throne, the New Pale Queen..." She said, listing one terrible fate for an Aeldari soul after another.

    "Furthermore, there are conjunctions in the skeins of fate that show that this place holds relics that are precious to our kind. Relics we would entrust very few to extract on our behalf." Vrailius seemed to emerge from the shadows, making Haoyu almost stumble over and fall with a pronounced "waaah!" as the Grand Farseer gave a small bow to his Asur counterpart.

    Without his ghost helm, Vrailius seemed to have more the face of a boy than an ancient soothsayer and magician. Eyes a midnight shade of blue, hair as dark as space itself, kept in a sort of "spunky" cut, pale skin devoid of face paint markings common to his craftworld.

    Haoyu looked between the two Eldar and felt the sort of panicked realisation shapeshifters often do when they realise people of differing genders appeal to them in the right ways, gulping briefly and doing his best to not look nervous.

    "Vrailius, you must stop making such a great effort to catch people by surprise." Aellita said, a small tittering laugh coming from her as she brushed a hand across his face to move some stray locks away from his eyes.

    "Yeah that's, good advice." Haoyu harrumphed, clearing his throat hurriedly.

    "Are we sure we are going to catch everyone involved?" Admiral Zhang Yunru asked, the Qilin's horns glowing somewhat with impatience amidst her blue hair in her humanoid form.

    "Patience, we need to wait for all of them to arrive first." Aellita cautioned, the stealthed craft currently kept within the webway as the augurs waited for the moment to arrive.

    The ancient patterns of craft used by the Black legion mixed with the more modern Space Marine vessels of the Red Corsairs and the spike covered technobarbarian fast-craft of the Marauder fleets while the alien, abattoir like brute-ships of the Xenos Raider chief approached.

    Not simply blowing everyone up and being done with it was a struggle to be sure, but not all the pieces were yet in play. Whatever negotiations they were undertaking certainly must have been of great importance, if it required all four of them to be physically present together.

    An inviting target then, for the Dark Eldar whose pirate fleets slipped from the webway through a route avoided by the hunter fleet on the advice of the Harlequins.

    All at once, the Chaos fleets found themselves beset by sensor ghosts moving past them at breakneck speeds, several struck with the contained essences of hungry black holes that spat forth brilliant accretion jets into the void as the craft they bulldozed through collapsed into thin streams of matter spiralling down to oblivion.

    The Drukhari fleets then levelled devastating banks of disintegrator weapons and screaming blackshard cannons that rapidly ate away at void fields while the very darkness of space seemed to guise the position of the raider ships.

    Even the battle barges of the Red Corsairs struggled to get to grips with a foe that seemed to regard the laws of inertia as polite suggestions and had so thoroughly caused havoc in the midst of their armada, before they had even revealed the unpleasant surprise of a particularly unstable artificial magnetar that translated out of the webway like a teleporting bomb.

    Conventionally magnetic or not, fields of this intensity would tear atoms apart and shred the functions needed for life to function by simply being there, and its fields were fluctuating to the point of an imminent explosive demise, splintering apart in sprays of shotgun like compact matter shrapnel that tore through countless more craft, killing the Red Corsair lord outright as the dying corpse-starlet exploded right in front of his dreadnought.

    At the rate this was going, it was doubtless that the Dark Eldar would win, Eldar of all strains are known now as they were then; as masters of void combat, with individual Aeldari ships putting paid to entire flotillas of imperial craft of similar or greater bulk, deceptively durable with their combination of advanced shielding and "smarter not harder" armouring if not quite as relentlessly impenetrable as Dawi, Itzecan, or Necron craft, and able to move with grace more akin to far smaller craft in other navies.

    And the Drukhari in particular had become very practised at ensuring that no salvation could come for their victims nor could any other rival predators compete with them for their prizes. However, unlike the conquering Druchii, the Drukhari were interested in profit and plunder first and foremost, and they would not take the sight of Asur, Asrai, Asuryani, Tian'Chaonese, and Ogor ships emerging from the webway with pluck and aplomb very well.

    The plague ships accompanying Mortivar's Black Fleet were targeted first, Nurgle's blessings making them the most obvious targets to start firing on first to eliminate their contagions. Nova batteries would hammer away until conversion beamers could chime in, turning disease and rust-riddled superstructure into white-hot explosive energy while atomic suppressors lashed out to try and immobilise an enemy fleet beset by the Eldritch Storm and cracking orbs of ball lightning called upon by Asur mages of Azyr where the Asrai instead beseeched Hysh to lend its brilliant glow.

    They were caught by surprise against a foe that outnumbered them and had already moved to close off the avenues of escape; it would not be a terribly long void battle once the most dangerous elements of the enemy fleets were captured or destroyed after the Sorcerer craft were struck from the void. The following raids on their hideouts would be merciless, and those they had judged as beyond the pale were quickly put to death, Automated Executioners impaling them upon plasma blades and then cutting them in half to ensure a quick, self-disposing death as the corpses burned away from the heat of their weapons.

    For all they were renown for their hopes and mercies, the Tianren and their students had very little of either for those who had actually gained a mark of Chaos to achieve redemption, nothing save an exorcism could save such people, and few were deemed worth the effort or the likelihood of dying from having the corruption in their souls excised if it had already taken too much. And as for the handfuls of Chaos Space Marines and Chaos Warriors they were able to capture, usually only with the intervention of their own super-warriors; the rot was nearly universally far too deep and entirely by choice to bother with anything but disposal after having their minds peeled open with Hysh rather than waste time with games of interrogation.

    Though some thought this brutal, as far as the Jianyi were concerned, there was no point in making excuses for the terror deployed against Chaos. The Dark Gods would oppose the Way of Harmony to the bitter end because it was in their interest to and because it was what they were. So the Celestial Realm would fight back. Little more, little less.

    ...

    "You seem almost underequipped." Chao Xing murmured to the nearly two-meter-tall commissar who was attached to the Ordo Xenos inquisitor who had given her sanction to the operation. He was, for an imperial human, a handsome man, even if she could tell his was a youth bought by Rejuvenation treatment to keep him in the sort of shape that was needed.

    "I'd prefer a weapon I know how to use to one that feels off in my hand is all." He said, patting the Chainsword he kept sheathed to the side, eyeing one of the Jokaero the blonde woman kept near her warily before looking at the Baihu with even greater unease even as she offered a tiny waive to a Felinid aide of the inquisitor, a twin-tailed young lady who seemed a bit overeager and hyperactive; bouncing on her boots repeatedly.

    "Momo, relax." The inquisitor said, placing a hand on top of the head of the black-haired felinid who almost seemed to vibrate with energy. Save for retractable finger claws, some internal musculature differences, the second pair of ears, a tail, and whiskers; like most Felinids she looked mostly human, but then her kind was created to appeal to certain fashion trends long lost to history rather than any specific practical purpose. Why that included meowing was beyond even Chao Xing who herself could be mistaken for one of their kind in this form, save for her aura of celestial majesty.

    "But missus I wanna touch her ears." She whined like a child denied candy, a laugh coming from Chao Xing while her guards; Night Lotuses, Tianren, Tian blooded, heavenly autosoldiers, xiuxinzhe, ogor maneaters, and more; seemed to do their best to maintain the most stoic possible formation as the shuttle moved in towards its quarry.

    Opposite them were Astartes of the Deathwatch, Peregrinas of the Order of Shadowed Vigilance, Scions of the Xeno-Scourge, the Inquisitor's own Warband, and Mechanicus Myrmidions, Robots, Servitors, and Skitarii of the Ordis Xenologis.

    To say the air was tense and awkward was an understatement, as many simply refused to take their eyes off their counterparts for any reason. In particular, many of the Tian'Chaoren kept a very wide berth from the Commissar's poorly washed meltagun-slinging and pornography devouring aide.

    For her part, Chao Xing knew it was because the man was one of the void-souls; a Pariah. It made her hairs bristle and shielded those in the man's palpable odor from the dreadful majesty of her presence even when she deigned to exert it.

    Lady Elizabeth and her own retinue only made the gaggle of personalities inside the docking craft even odder. Kroot mercenaries, some Kin sellguns, comically illegal Barghesi, Nouvelle Bretonnian Questing Knights, and Eldar outcasts mingled with other strange hangers on, including more elite warriors of the Imperium such as Peregrinas and Astartes, former Militarum troopers, a few Zoats, and a contingent of Interex Machine men.

    "Feels more like a bloody menagerie than a serious op." One of the Scions muttered beneath his helmet.

    "We'll be dividing into teams, do not allow yourselves to get any further separated than that for any reason. Assume anyone who manages to fight their way back after being cut off is infected unless proven otherwise. Kill everything on board." Chao Xing said simply as she scraped her lightning claws against each other. Simple, direct, efficient.

    "Wise words for a xenos." The Deathwatch Force Commander; Consul Khonsu; in charge responded curtly, the right pauldron of her Cataphractii Pattern Tactical Dreadnought Armour bearing the tendrilled white circle on red of the Thousand Scions. Someone who very pointedly stayed as far away from "Jurgen" as possible.

    "Remind me of why we're choosing to board a Mega-freighter again." One of the Rogue Trader's retainers asked.

    "Ships this large are difficult to scour from without. They are designed to survive. Furthermore, its manifests will tell us where to find cells of the cult." Khonsu's words were stern but fair, not patronising but clearly not wanting to hear this question again.

    "Right so space hulk delving but it's one big ass ship rather than a million of them welded together."

    The docking had finished, and clamps within the berth of the colossal mega-freighter connected to the cruiser.

    The Strike cruiser's own secret boarding tube would extend outwards, the room shifting as it telescoped and fired off magnameltas to carve into a hallway, lights flashing green once everyone was in position.

    The doors slid open, hissing and rolling apart as monstrous roars could be heard from the other side. The scratching, hissing, clicking and chittering of the shadow in the warp was intense, the brood mind already sensing a threat, pushing against the Deathwatch Psykers pulling at the warp to coax forth cascades of empyreal might, trying to choke it down and squash it into compliance or death through the sheer static of its unlimited traffic.

    She extended her claws, and stepped forward. This would be a long and bloody journey.

    But not an unsuccessful one.

    ...

    The Unforgiven were masters at hiding away when they did not want to be found, and their assassinations in the dead of night were frequent and hard to follow. However, significant resources were poured into trying to uncover their operations.

    Hunting them, countering them, was like trying to uncover a shadow, it would shift angles when approached, obscure itself in any darkness, and disappear with the wrong movements.

    But they were not perfect. It was clear that, when cross-referencing the archives, that they were likely hunting from those of their geneseed that had turned against the Imperium. Why this needed to be so secret when very few chapters could boast of having never lost an Astartes to the enemy was as of yet, beyond the Crimson Guard, but it gave a clue as to what they would be looking for.

    They were a paranoid lot who lowered their guard slowly and trusted never, but it was best to give them what they wanted rather than have the Ravenwing tear through the back alleys trying to find whatever it was they wanted.

    Whatever it was, it was important enough that they would ask to be allowed to deploy the Ironwing and Firewing, but the Dreadwing was right out; given that planets that saw the Imperium's exterminators deployed usually never saw much of anything afterwards.

    Getting the Dark Angels successors to agree to this took a lot of doing and only the evidence gathered by years of careful investigation was enough to convince the leader of this task force, one Grandmaster Mortimer Ezrael, to cooperate rather than start a war between the children of the Lion and the students of the Dragons. Which, given that the Unforgiven are unusually tight knit for Astartes legion successors, would likely entail having to deal with a constant stream of Space Marines leading up to, in the worst case scenario, Azrael himself appearing with with the Armada of the Rock at the helm of a combined force of many, many chapters if they were not able to win with just a few chapters committing in strength. Hardly ideal.

    Terminators bearing the colours of the Ironwing and Deathwing on Tian'Chaoren worlds were an odd sight, but once they had what they wanted, they would return to their craft via teleporters as soon as they came, bringing space marines locked in stasis before disappearing once they reached their mandeville points without explaining very much of anything.

    Fucking Dark Angels.
    ...
    "Look dawri, when you look for the Azulal, you gotta start with the krutin' weird mansions." The ranger started as he stroked his beard, musing to himself while an Ironkin veiðimaður simply beeped and booped in response.

    "Ah ye Kyndred think about this sorta thing too mercenary like. It's always how much profit you can get or 'ow much ye can learn, never about gettin' the job done." She said dismissively as she approached a large manor, Zi Rui drawing two blades from their sheathes and twirling them into place.

    "I swear why does every rich man's mansion gotta give me the creeps." Molly Jensen was a former member of the Astra Militarum turned a member of the local militia. Whereas many took the chance to be brought to Imperial territory with a hero's welcome when the rogue trader's ships came, she stayed. She had family here, and it wasn't right to leave grandkids behind without a grandma.

    "It's cuz yer weak in the knees umgi, gotta fortify 'em 'fore they give out." He said, laughing as he tapped the legs of the human who shuffled away, looking at the Night Lotus troops seeming to be drawn into existence as their stealth systems were deactivated to speak to the Baihu.

    "They are here, and waiting." The first one said, as the buried defenders started to rumble into motion, metallic hands bursting through the earth and pulling bodies free.

    The fact that their necrodermis tried much harder to emulate living flesh if anything, made them even more uncomfortable to look at than the true necrons, these basic Revemeks seeming like a stripped down necron warrior frame covered in cancerous growths in low quality imitation of living flesh, flowing and flopping, unevenly covering the more solid necrodermis bone beneath as they moved with ravenous intent.

    Cruoran warriors, much more like their Necron counterparts, strode out with gauss flayers and tesla blasters glowing ominously as they heeded the call of the Lord of this place, witchfire glowing with menace.

    "Throne and Keep..." Jensen hissed as she unslung her Meltagun.

    "Ah now this is the sort of trouble I expect out of following a Tigerman around, ye never take the easy tasks do ye?" Ermendrude the Ranger said as her grav-boltcaster thrummed to life, the Ironkin letting a plasma blade extrude from its right fist.

    "After our prior raids, I think they should have a good idea of what to expect...so try not to disappoint them." He said with confidence, charging in with a quick step, thrust, and a draw cut through one of the Revemeks, the Night Lotuses charging in from behind.

    It would be swift, deadly, efficient, but successful.

    ...



    [1]Capital world of the second founding chapter; the Vigilants of Tecatan; descended from the Avenging Crusaders[2]. Why multi-sided standoffs are associated with Vesperia is lost to history.
    [2]Spanish themed original loyalist legion, specialising in dealing with swarm tactics, primarch is Barbara Campeador who was put in stasis after suffering a seemingly mortal Black Ore Mortis Blade wound from an Avatar of Nagash in the aftermath of the Apostasy. Colours are White and Red. Primarch Homeworld of Lusantaria. Current Chapter is considered generally codex compliant and absolutely fucking hates the undead.
    [3] CaptaIn equivalent
    [4] A Dragonfly like xenos species that is noticeably larger than humans on average. Contrasted to the Vespids, they are considerably beefier and more insectoid (though if you actually count their limbs they have sixteen. Two legs, four big arms, six small arms near the chest, and four wings) but also rather less numerous and more focused on close quarters combat;
     
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    • I want more details on the new pale queen! I would assume it's some sort of darkness god, but I need more info on it, because my interest is peaked.

    Also, cool. It's caphias Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!
     
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    For the record, I already have the gist of Turn 3 planned out.

    The high points are:
    • Making sure our territories are all up to Heartlands/Excessive Defenses.
    • The aforementioned research plan.
    • Upgrading 3 of our fleethordes to Mag 3, before sending all three, plus the Ogors and a good many characters, to Square 47 to complete the joint mission with the Lizardmen. The newer Mag 2 will hold position in Drae Nang, so it can respond to any territory that comes under threat.
    • Purchasing 3 more Mega-Mining Projects, so we have 1 in each territory and have increased moolah.
    • Remaining funds will be split among valid diplomacy/espionage missions, and a pool for repairs during this tactical combat.
    My vision for turn 4 is that having built everything up, we can take the time to rest, and use our big 500+ RP pot (I calculated it out already) to start working on Mega-Projects: a Colonization to make sure we don't need to worry about unemployment for a long time, and Research to fuel our Science Victory.

    And, of course, prep for our next major strategic targets, the two Warp Rifts adjacent to our territories.
     
    If we are going to be attacking warp rifts, we are going to need a way to seal them. Only those tainted by chaos or death can hold territory in a warp rift.
     
    evtrax said:
    If we are going to be attacking warp rifts, we are going to need a way to seal them. Only those tainted by chaos or death can hold territory in a warp rift.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Harmonic Broadcasters should help there, considering what they do, and the plan was to grab those next research phase.

    Also @Spartakrod

    I have another couple tech ideas. We have a defense focus, even if that hasn't been shown much for obvious reasons.

    Elder Beast Turrets. The students of the dragons have taken to venerate them and their Celestial fellows in a manner not dissimilar to various gods, though with less religious awe and more the sort of awe one might associate an ancient monument of secular origin. Thus, it is not uncommon for Tian'Choren technology to take on elements of their appearance and nature. While most nations regard this as the sort of egotistical displays virtually all nations partake of, it would be more accurate to say that the dragons see little reason to stop it so long as it doesn't overly compromise the effectiveness of the technology. The Elder Beast Turrets are a particularly strong example.

    The North Turret is the defensive turret, the type deployed when heavy counter-fire or strafing from strikecraft is anticipated. As such, it's armaments are nothing special, nor it's rate of fire, but when it comes to powering through attacks to keep firing? No turret in Tian'Choren hands does better, and even the Dawi have been known to nod approvingly at well-made examples.

    The South Turret is the generalist of the group, deployed where the enemy either doesn't have any set force(Chaos Undivided, most Strangers, particularly hardened Tyranid forces) allied forces can count on to act in certain ways, or to supplement it's fellows if there is concern about the situation changing rapidly. So they often accompany the others to act in a manner similar to a mobile reserve in infantry. They are some of the more common of the Turrets, but having perhaps 30% rather than the average 20% isn't that massive a leap.

    The East Turret, meanwhile, focuses on clipping the wings of enemy strikecraft so that allied strikecraft can fly freely in the sky. Anti-air specialists, in other words. It can also serve as a crowd control, scything through masses of infantry with specialized munitions, should it be necessary. This is the turret well-suited to flame munitions, cryo munitions, and electrical munitions, giving it a number of options for dealing with any type of organic or inorganic flier or infantry.

    The West Turret specializes in sheer unrelenting rate of fire, but is also the most accurate. If you want to level a city, block by block, this is the turret you would use for it. If you want to level only half the building being targeted, this is also the turret you use for the task. As such, it has a reputation for best representing the mercy of the Tian'Choren, and what happens if that mercy is rebuffed.

    The Center Turret is, in short, the most powerful of the lot. Rather than focus on a specific enemy type, it was instead designed for raw power. This Turret is intended to punch through the armor of superheavy tanks or fortifications, or target enemy leaders and/or their command. Therefore, it is the least common unless one expects to face the ludicrous technological might of the Necrons, or the ridiculous fortifications of the Dawi or Itzecan.

    Another thing that makes these Turrets unusual is that they are capable of being moved with relative ease, allowing them to advance alongside the lines of combat, or provide mobile hardpoints. The North Turret is slowest, due to it's heavy armor, while the West is the fastest, to better adjust it's aim. They function in a middle ground between tanks and artillery, being more powerful than the former but more mobile(and less fragile) than the latter. They lack the sheer range of the latter, being largely incapable of firing over the horizon, but have a much greater range than the former.

    Boosts Armor and Artillery performance while increasing resistance to loss of those advantages. Significant boost to groundside Fortifications.

    Mobile Walls. At the end of the day, fortifications are generally thought to be static, and even in this era, this is largely true. However, the defensive expertise of the Tian'Choren does not begin and end with conventional fortifications. The exact mechanisms of locomotion vary, but they generally use tank treads to move at something akin to a walking pace for infantry, due to the massive amount of material being moved, usually coming with basic armaments and mechanisms to avoid simply being overrun. In a pinch, a team of Ogors might work in concert to move one into place, but this is generally a byproduct of the enemy trying to immobilize the fortification as the obvious tactic to disable them, though having them brace it in the face of anti-fortification vehicles and occasionally(usually the Imperium's) an actual battering ram.

    In addition to the obvious use of simply plugging holes in pre-existing walls, they can be used to block roads and paths, and being made of materials resistant to tank and artillery fire, can more or less ignore infantry-scale attacks. This dramatically improves battlefield control. Bottlenecking, for example, is a viable strategy, closing off all other paths to force the enemy to run into the 'least prepared' zone of Tian'Choren lines. In an open field, they can be used as cover from higher-end weaponry.

    Bolsters maneuver advantages and increases resistance to their loss, allows Tian'Choren forces to deploy with Light Defenses even in hostile battlefields, and improves Fortifications.
     
    Applied Feng Shui! Cool!

    Also, working on my own stuff to introduce in omake:

    Constellation-Keyed Rituals.
    Imagine Zodiac. A collection of constellations with great significance to divination and symbology. Naturally, constellations change across the worlds, but what if there was a similar phenomenon on a much grander scale? What if there was a series of constellations that are remarkably similar in their shapes, symbologies and associated portents on a galactic scale? Naturally, they must hold even greater astrological power, their ascendance and descendance perhaps commanding the flow of magic itself. Were there a practice, a mechanism, perhaps a machine, to connect with those cosmic streams, responding to the rhythm of Winds that those constellations dictate, allowing for harmony between above and below to tie our magical workings to this power, the benefits in increased potency and safety of our rituals would greatly outweigh the expenses for enchanted devices, magically attuned materials and complex arcane calculations necessary to make it happen.
    Thoughts? Opinions? I have a more poetic and story-heavy version in the works, intend to make it part of the story about an apprentice Astromancer presenting his discovery to local Xian and Jianyi
     
    (the first of what will hopefully be many omakes from me. Maybe one or two will even be canonized. At the very least I hope these omakes are entertaining and inspiring).

    Omake: Three Legions divided by undeath

    All of the space marine legions are ultimately divided. When the arch traitor Horus Lupercal announced his treachery and lead half of the legions and primarchs into rebellion beside him, foremost amongst them Edda, Mordra and Lorgar; not all of the forces who served the Warmaster truly believed in his cause. Despite efforts to purge the loyalists before the Horus Heresy truly began, some managed to escape and warn the Imperium.

    After the Emperor was interred in the Golden Throne and the Empress merged with the Silver Keep, the primarch Roboute Guilliman became the Lord Commander of the Imperium. Recognizing the folly of allowing so much power to be concentrated in so few people, which allowed for the truly massive corruption of Imperial forces, Guilliman began to institute reforms so as to separate the powers wielded by the Imperium so that no one traitor, or even a small group of traitors, could ever do the same level of damage as the traitorous Warmaster had.

    One of the most controversial reforms enacted by the Ultramarines Primarch was the splitting of the legions into chapters and instituting the Codex Astartes as a standard for all Space Marines. This was derided by many of his brothers and sisters but was considered the last straw by Atraya Mender.

    Atraya Mender, always a cruel woman, saw Guilliman as too soft to rule the Imperium. Much like Horus and Edda she believed in the superiority of the Astartes and there right to rule, in direct contrast to Guilliman and the Diad who had always intended for any Astarte rule to be a temporary measure. Atraya gathered other loyal primarchs who held beliefs in the idea of an Astarte Stratocracy rather than humans governing themselves.

    The sole reason Atraya and those like her did not join the rebellion of the Dark Diad of Horus and Edda was ultimately out of the belief that the Warmaster and Executor did not deserve to rule either. These so called loyalists were soon joined by those traitor legions who broke away from Chaos, either never having fallen to it or being dissatisfied with the leadership of the chaotic traitors. And soon the Atrayan Apostasy began.

    The Atrayan Apostasy was in many ways a dark mirror of the Horus Heresy, beginning with a fight upon Holy Terra and in the Sol System, and ending the fight by breaking into the strongholds of the Accursed and driving them into the Mot-Daut warp storm, stronghold of undeath much as the Eye of Terror is the stronghold of Chaos. Another similarity between the two civil wars that defined the Imperium as it would come to be is the presence of all legions upon both sides of the conflict. Many of the legions whose Primarchs had died joined the Accursed legions out of a vain hope of the return of there gene-sires. Even those legions like the Word Bearers and Dark Angels who make the (false) claim that none of their number turned from the path there legions took had some presence among the Accursed legions, albeit most often in the form of undead slaves.

    Of the legions, three stand out for there division during the Atrayan Apostasy. These are the Night Lords, the Blood Angels, and the Iron Hands.

    The Night Lords

    To call the Night Lords an army of thieves and whores is an understatement on par with saying a Warpstorm is dangerous, or the garden of the old ones is big. It is technically true, but it is such a simplification that only a very small child or an Ogryn would say it outside of a snarky remark. The Night Lords, one and all, are sociopathic murderers and the worst that humanity has to offer. Alone amongst the Astarte Legions during the Great Crusade, they could be seen as turning traitor before the devastating attacks on Istvaan 5 and Prospero.

    The initial recruits of the eighth legion came from the children born in the vast subterranean prisons of Terra, having never known light or kindness. They became a weapon of terror, a deterrent to all who would defy the Imperium. This did not change when there Primarch Konrad Curze was found. If anything, it became even worse.

    The eighth primarch landed upon the world of Nostramo, a planet cast in perpetual night by the pollution wrought by mining in the dark age of technology overpowering the dying star the loathsome planet orbited. In addition, Nostramo had the supreme misfortune to be located on the very edge of the Ghoul Galaxies, the stronghold of the Lovecraftian Strangers. All of this led to a planet where vicious criminals ruled and depravity was the only norm.

    While Konrad Curze did come to rule Nostramo, he did so by becoming the Night Haunter, a horrible thing that all criminals feared. When Konrad left to wage the Great Crusade, the surviving criminals quickly took over Nostramo and began to send the most sociopathic and monstrous of children to be elevated into Night Lords.

    The eighth legion quickly became worse than before, if such a thing was even possible. The Night Lords were barely tolerated for there service in reconquering the billions of galaxies that were once under humanities rule. When the Diad left to begin work on the Imperial Webway and the Silver Keep, Chaos started to set its corruption in the primarchs. Konrad Curze, from his very beginning on Nostramo, had been haunted by visions of the worst possible futures. It took very little to begin his descent into unbridled madness.

    Driven by these visions the Night Haunter attacked the Praetorian Rogal Dorn, and then fled with his legion in tow. Then upon seeing how Nostramo had reverted to the state it was when he had landed upon it all those years ago, Konrad Curze destroyed it. This destruction of his homeworld caused the imperial government to declare Konrad and his legion renegade. Why the Night Lords were declared renegades instead of traitors is uncertain. Maybe the Diad hoped to redeem there son, or maybe the fact that it was unthinkable for Space Marines to turn traitor played a role in the decree.

    Then the Horus Heresy occurred, and the Night Lords threw there lot in with the traitors. Even amongst this host of monsters and traitors the Night Lords were kept at arm's length, much like the forces of Malal. Those traitors who worshiped the Ruinous Powers, such as the Marauder Tribes, most of the Chaotic Xenos, and the Word Bearers, believed that the Night Lords were tainted by the powers of Darkness, Death or even the Strangers. Those who fought for other reasons, such as most of the traitor imperials, knew that the Night Lords had but two restrains on their cruelty, those being there lip service to justice and the will of the Diad. Now that those were gone, the Night Lords could unleash there boundless evil.

    It was unsurprising that the Night Lords fragmented early in the Heresy, and when the Scouring began, Konrad Curze met his end. In his fortress of horrors upon the planet Tsagualsa (a world nigh identical to Nostramo in location and composition) Konrad Curze was killed by the Imperial Assassin M'Shen. He had long known that this would be his fate, often using it as a justification for his cruelty. What happened after the primarchs death is unclear, at least as of the time of this files creation, but two very likely probabilities exist.

    The first is that immediately after the death blow by M'Shen, Konrad Curze rose as the Mortarch of Terror, slew M'Shen and then cowed as many Night Lord warbands as possible before joining the undeath tainted legions. The second is that, against all odds, there existed some Night Lords who were still loyal to there gene father. These Night Lords collected the body of the dead Night Haunter and joined the Accursed legions, where there dark necromancy caused Konrad Curze to rise to his position as the Mortarch of Terror.

    What is certain is that Konrad Curze became the first of the Primarchs to achieve the status of Mortarch, and with his arrival on the field of battle the forces of Death followed. No longer could there be any reasonable claim of this second civil war being solely between imperials. Konrad Curze, or rather the Night Haunter Reborn, led grand legions of Nighthaunts into battle. Soon the forces of the treasonous imperials were aided by grand hordes of the undead and by Xenos tainted by death. Even forces of those powers of Death unaligned with Nagash began to interfere in the Atrayan Apostasy, if only so they could gain some Astartes servants of their own.

    As for the Night Lords legion, not all of them serve under there primarch. Many are the Night Lords who serve the Chaos Gods still, either as the undivided pantheon or individual gods. Some warbands serve the powers of Darkness, either in Sinya-Naggarond or the dark cities of the Druhkari. Some serve the powers of Death that defy the will of Nagash, either having never served the Undying King or having bretrayed him. And some Night Lords even serve the Strangers, their own fear causing methods meshing perfectly with the horrorfleets of the Unfathomable Ones.

    But most of the Night Lords are merely renegades, roving bands of criminals that serve no one but themselves. They are the ultimate proof that humanity does not require the corruption of Chaos, Death, Darkness or Destruction to be utter monsters. They can do that themselves, and do it well.

    The Blood Angels

    The children of Sanguinius are many things, and a few of those things are rather shameful. For the legion that was fought over by Khorne and Slannesh have many similarities to the dread threat known as vampirism. There canines are fangs, they sleep in life support coffins, have a massive fixation of blood, like to drink blood, have a tendency to frenzy, and many other things. Of course, the fate of any imperial who would dare point this out is to be deemed a heretic and thus killed.

    Of course, this simalarities proved devastating during the Atrayan Apostasy. The Mortarchs who had once been vampires sent there servants in the form of the Wahmpuryi, warp entities similar in nature to the Enslavers and Psychneuein that are essentially the warp equivalent of vampires, to begin corrupting the Blood Angels. In the serfs and civilian populations defended by the ninth legion, vampirism spread like wildfire. This combined with the newly discovered curse of the Black Rage, which cast the unfortunate Astartes into the last memories of there dead primarch, and the whispers of the Wahmpuryi to break the resolve of the Blood Angels. Many of the Ninth Legion fell to the taint of undeath, calling themselves the Revenants in memory of legion before the coming of the Angel of Baal.

    However, for every Blood Angel who became a Revenant, there was at least one who held true to the Imperial ideals. They did this by embracing the growing Trinity Creed, becoming angels of its faith, and fighting against there fallen brothers and sisters. And so for the Blood Angels, the Atrayan Apostasy was a civil war in miniature.

    Like the other legions, the Revenants eventually fled to the warp storms controlled by death. There they rule dark worlds as a Midnight Aristocracy, ruling hosts of vampiric monsters as the greatest of them all. Often they grow wings, but instead of the angelic wings of there gene father, they have leathery bat like wings. Cruel bands of the Revenants often lead hordes of there vampiric servants out of the warp storms on blood raids, where they attack all worlds they can find to gain new sources of vitae. None are spared, as both Human and Xenos are drained to feed the hunger of the Revenants.

    The Iron Hands

    Ferrus Manus, primarch of the tenth legion known as the Iron Hands, has the dubious honor of being the first Primarch to die. Well, actually that is not entirely true.

    During the Great Crusades, in the nightmarish conflict known only as the Rangdan Xenocides, a full eight legions were annihilated by the Rangdan. Like with all of the lost legions, whatever occurred was so nightmareish that most of those who knew of these legions willingly had there minds wiped, erasing all memory of those eight legions and of the events of the Xenocides. Those who could not or would not be mind wiped for whatever reason swore oaths to never speak of them again. Not even the traitor primarchs, who have broken every other oath, will dare speak of the lost legions or the Xenocides. So terrible was the three wars that not even the Dark Gods or Nagash will speak of them. Malekith will not speak of them even to torture another, and the Greenskin gods will only refer to it as, "The only skraps we're glad we weren't in." Take that as you will.

    But back to the topic at hand, Ferrus Manus met his end on the sands of Istvaan 5. During the Drop Site Massacre, Ferrus was beheaded by the Primarch he was closest to, Fulgrim of the Emperor's Children. While his Skull became the prized possession of Horus Lupercal, his body was lost in the chaos of the battle. It is known that the daemon called the Sapphire King was born from the death of Ferrus Manus, but its existence would not come to light until the 41st millennium.

    For most of the Heresy it was believed that Ferrus had somehow survived. Even when the Imperial Truth reigned supreme the primarchs were revered as immortal demigods. The impression was certainly helped by the fact that Vulkan and Deirdre were in fact Perpetuals. But Ferrus Manus, and most of his brothers and sisters, were ultimately mortal and could die. Or come back from the dead.

    On the Iron Hands homeworld of Medusa, at the height of the Atrayan Apostasy, in the wake of the devastating attack on Fenris by a manifestation of the Lunaghast, an unknown Astartes entered the sanctuary of the Great Clan Council which ruled the Iron Hands in the absence of there Primarch. The unknown warrior was instantly recognizable from the living metal that adorned his hands. It was Ferrus Manus returned, but the cheers were turned into gasps of horror as there primarch removed his helmet.

    For Ferrus Manus was without his head. He announced that he had been reborn as the Mortarch of Technology, and it was his will that the Iron Hands follow him and Atraya Mender to conquer the weak Imperium. Civil War followed as the Iron Hands split between two factions, those who followed the undead Ferrus Manus and those who stated loyal to the Throne, the Cog, and the Keep.

    Those who stayed loyal generally had one of two motivations. The first motivation was the recognition of the fact that this being which claimed to be Ferrus Manus was in fact an undead abomination, which was conclusively proven when the legion of the damned made their first appearance in the Materium at the battle of Medusa, led by the soul of the real Ferrus Manus who has become the greatest of the ghostly Astartes. The dual between the body and soul of the tenth primarch would go down in legend.

    The second motivation is much more surprising. It is well known that Ferrus Manus espoused a belief of survival of the fittest and that the flesh was weak. While in the years before his death he would come to reconsider these beliefs, he would not have time to implement these changes into his legion before his untimely demise. While these beliefs might be seen as a reason to join Atraya, it was in fact used as a reason to defy her and the accursed legions. They had proven themselves unfit to rule by allowing the taint of Chaos and Death to contaminate them.

    The Mortarch of Technology and his followers were driven from Medusa, and would join the Fallen Legions. In the wake of the Apostasy they would dominate the necrotic forge worlds and aid the Dark Omens. Unlike most of the Primarch Mortarchs who exist as variants of Liches or other types of undead that are nigh impossible to permanently destroy, the body of Ferrus Manus is generally believed to be some form of Dullahan by the inquisitors of the Ordo Thanatos. If this is true, than all that is needed to destroy the abomination would be to destroy the skull of Ferrus Manus.

    This is of course easier said than done. In the wake of Horus Lupercal's death, the skull of Ferrus Manus was lost in the chaos of the traitor's flight from Holy Terra. While those who know of the being suspect that it is in the possession of the Necron Trayzn the Infinite, this is not a certain thing. Even if the skull is in the possession of Trayzn, it no doubt occupies an exhibit of the Solemnace Galleries. It would be impossible to steal, and even if Trazyn were willing to trade the irreplaceable skull, it is doubtful that any who would want the skull, be they Imperial or otherwise, would be able to pay the price set by the Necron Lord.
     
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    Interesting quest and I do like all the details and everything. Though @Spartakrod I do have a few questions

    1. What/who created the emperor considering that he managed to create the imperium and is essentially a god in the materium.

    2. What exactly is his nature of being the Anathema and how does this relate to everything else? To me it seems like the emperor/imperium is as if someone tried to create the Way of Harmony using only a bare understanding of it and ripping out anything unrelated to fucking up chaos which after getting kicked in the balls repeatedly became the 40k imperium.

    3. How depressed are the custodes over mankind's decline and how powerful are they compared to our factions forces.

    3. What caused the emperor's xenophobia? Having to fight the void dragon early on in his existence, something wrong in his creation, having a bad experience with aliens or something else?
     
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