And we see more of the Imperium's systemic issues. Despite the other human powers being said to be smaller, it seems obvious that they have a better long term chance of survival purely by not being in an active state of decay. And as for the threats they're facing...
Enormous Waaaghs under Overlords such as Ghazghkull, Grimgor, Grom, Skarsnik, Skullkrak, Skarblitz, Gorgutz, Bluddflagg, Gorbad, Azhag, Wazdakka, Mollog, and Goffzog
And we see more of the Imperium's systemic issues. Despite the other human powers being said to be smaller, it seems obvious that they have a better long term chance of survival purely by not being in an active state of decay. And as for the threats they're facing...
Gods, you're bringing in all the Boyz to this party.
The Imperium's true elite, the ones who hold Imperial wide rather than just local power, above all other things, is a bunch of upper-class twits who are completely disconnected from the situation of 99.999999% of the Imperium of Man who wouldn't think much of setting statistically significant percentages of the known universe on fire if it pushed their own careers. Nearly everyone in power goes through A: Dynastic Patronage and Tutoring Networks B: The Ecclessiarchy managed Schola Progenium and its sibling for Non-Orphans; the Schola Sanctus or C: the Academia Imperialis which is one of the remaining bastions of the Imperial Truth.
The Mechanicus, Astartes, and Custodes have their own educational systems but fundamentally run parallel societies...well even more Parallel than the stark divide between the Adeptus Terra and Ministorum and a number of other major agencies anyway. All with their own separate logistical networks, all with their own hierarchies, all with their own social circles you have to work through, and nearly all very deeply isolated from the majority of the populace.
So it's all the incestuous mess of British politics where everyone of note goes through Eton Mess (except there's like five Eton Messes and they all hate each other) on an even grander scale mixed with endless compromises with local elites to try to keep them paying the tithe without actually having to monitor them which would take more work and interrupt the flow of favours.
For example, let's see the nominal governing bodies of the Imperium itself.
Most of the Senatorum Imperialis, save for the High Lords who are nominally supposed to be a Presiding Council rather than a governing body but because the Senatorum Imperialis is basically a golden parachute social club now does nearly all the actual work. They live in their own special hive in the monstrous megastructure Terra has become to accommodate all the people and to deal with its waste heat. Doing approximately fuck all and certainly not reading much about the places they're supposed to be representing because what used to be a Senatorial system has now mostly become a rubber stamp body and the most exclusive club in the entire Imperium where you can get your every passing whim indulged and never have to do any actual work besides trade gossip. A perfect place to dump failsons or a "reward" to give to people you consider a threat and so give them a sort of career death they won't even be mad about.
Since the High lords who function as in essence, a Politburo, do all the actual work; what does the Senatorum even do besides noncery, fine dining, and having remote controlled Legio Cybernetica Units hunt poor people for sport via a Ludocogitator (Video game) control system? Well they still have the authority to pass out Imperial writs or pull strings to get some favours if you want your son to become a Rogue Trader or you need a crusade signed off on by a genuine Pan-Imperial authority. The High Lords certainly don't have the time to look over that shit and even their interns and secretaries (and their interns and secretaries) can be busy.
So instead of a legislative body they literally are now a mechanism to facilitate and officialise corruption. Corruption that runs so deep, and is so baked into the system that trying to fix it would most likely destroy the Imperium itself because the one thing the people who benefit from the Imperium hate more than anything is having to chip in anything of actual value of theirs instead of just making the plebs pay for them or surrender any of their power for anyone else's benefit. The way the Imperial tax system works means that all the tithe burden falls on the labouring and toiling peoples and as long as they work the people enough to make up for not parting with any of their gains; the local and imperial elites don't have to pay jack shit and that's how they like it.
And the Senate now helps grease the wheels of that. Make nice with a Senator and she'll get your daughter that governorship to get some tax free wealth under her house's name after she adds another 4 hours to the average working day to both meet the tithe and push out more product for your brother's Spice Cartel to boost the value of your family's assets.
My approach to the Imperium is one of mundane horror. They're not cackling supervillains, compared to the Nazis they just don't have the same firebrand passion 99% of the time because at this point barely anyone actually gives a shit about any particular grand ideological or national project. They're just selfish, greedy assholes with an incentive to squeeze the masses more so they don't have to give as much. Their malice is petty and stupid, born out of very mundane and ordinary greed and powerlust. Most of the people at the very top of the Adeptus Terra don't even really care about the Imperial Creed, Truth, or Machine Cult or even the fate of the Imperium as a whole. It's just a grift they want to keep going to them and as far as they're concerned the xenophobia, religious fundamentalism,and half-hearted militarism (pushing the aesthetics of war but never actually running a war economy which would cut into more lucrative production) just lets them exploit the stupid sheep at the bottom more easily.
The Age of true wild-eyed fanatics running the Imperium, people who actually believed and earnestly cared for the mission; terrible as it was; died thousands upon thousands of years ago and all that's left are vultures protective of their particular corpse-meal. The Mechanicus, Astartes, Ministorum, and Custodes are certainly more fanatical, they still believe in what they say they do for the most part; but the core of the Imperial government actively does not give a shit and will kill people in government who look like they actually care about anything beyond the grift because that usually means they want to reform things and upset the grift/might pull a Vangorich and kill them first out of a desire to remove the corrupt and greedy but haven't realised that this is the Imperium and its corruption and greed all the way down.
The Imperium is in a state of decay so severe that it actively seeks to purge anyone who tries to fix the decay and often simply is concerned about it because it'd ruin the gigs of too many powerful people. The old Imperium was a warmongering goliath that assailed everything it could touch that didn't bend over immediately, a blazing inferno of white hot passionate destruction and ultramilitarism, the Imperium now is cold, grey, and apathetic.
Technically it is sinful for the local Imperials to be cutting the deals they are with you, to fraternise with a cosmopolitan society of classless heathens. But the people the most strongly against it don't have as much bribe money as the guys making a killing off of exclusive Rogue Trader charter missions with the Zhu Twins' enclave so they can cope and seethe unless they pony up the political capital to launch an attack on their own. Which they can technically do unless someone pulls enough favours to get someone above to intervene one way or the other. So in this case that unbelievable eye-watering corruption and deepseated apathetic malaise of cosmic proportions works out to your favour.
As for the Greenskins; there are a fucking lot of them across the universe.
Reneging would empower the factions who want a war with you at some point as proof that the benefit of trading with you is fickle. But really the IoM is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. What you do with it is ultimately up to you, but you as an external power can't fix it.
Reneging would empower the factions who want a war with you at some point as proof that the benefit of trading with you is fickle. But really the IoM is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. What you do with it is ultimately up to you, but you as an external power can't fix it.
I don't mean the trade deal altogether. What I mean is I currently have on my plan accepting the proposed upgrade from non-aggression to permission for military transit, and I'm asking if I should remove it, keeping things strictly as they are right now.
I don't mean the trade deal altogether. What I mean is I currently have on my plan accepting the proposed upgrade from non-aggression to permission for military transit, and I'm asking if I should remove it, keeping things strictly as they are right now.
True that'll prevent the Imperium from sending a crusade fleet straight through your territory to try to counter-attack the Tau but they'll find other ways to wage their wars. Space is three-dimensional after all so they can go over you and of course, the warp doesn't correspond 100% to the materium so without outright interdictors it's possible if a bit more difficult to go through territory controlled by somebody else, though it'd require enough extra hoops to jump through that makes it not quite as favoured as being able to go straight through.
(From Mutantdrumsticks on Reddit)
"Time buries, history remembers, reason reveals" - Advent Saying
Long before the Imperium, mankind took its steps into the stars and sought to understand all that was laid out before it. Though seemingly stunted of Psychic and Magical ability, that didn't stop humanity's early civilisations from inquiring about supernatural phenomenon. Particularly those that were less barred to them. While the truespeech of Ennuncia was too damaging for humans to use, and the Cosmic power of the C'tan was beyond their instruments' ability to unravel, the Psionic power leaked into this reality by the presence of the Strangers was something that could be understood, nurtured, and unlocked.
For whatever reason, the first forays into this were through the creation of an artificial subspecies; Abhumans in modern parlence, perhaps to see what made this power tick so to speak before moving onto baseline human testing. As the Kyn of the Leagues of Votann were made to work, the adherents of the Epsilon Advent were made to understand. With overdeveloped and carefully artificially designed cortexes and hippocampuses compared to normal humans they were designed to quickly absorb information and commit it to memory. Whereas to channel the power of the warp was to serve in part as a conduit, to be an Esper would be something that would rely deeply on one's own mental capabilities and physical endurance, and so they were designed with bodies that would think faster and require far less frequent rejuvenant treatment.
Essentially made as a sort of living psionic interface, the products of this project would generally be sent to dark space; the intergalactic void of rogue stars, isolated clusters, and dim galaxies made more of dark matter than anything conventionally thought to be life-giving. A safety measure, in case of any mishaps, but also an exile of a people created solely for science's sake. There they would find hardship, often having to deal with nightmarish things that dwelt in seemingly empty space smothered by infrareality or creatures twisted by it as well as Dark Matter and Tachyonic life forms who understood little of Baryonic Life and appreciated even less. Resources were often hard to come by, those without the ability to transmute matter and energy into more useful states, and often to simply dream unprotected could be fatal.
What allies could be gathered were cherished, what resources were harvested were too necessary, too important to hoard in systems of accumulation as the Men of Gold who created them would have done. Everyone would work, but everyone would receive their fair share to meet the tithes set by the Men of Gold who saw them as little more than a science project, much as how the Leagues of Votann were no more than worker drones. They would work their psionic technology, with automata to help their vat-born Adherents work the hardship of the darkness, recording whatever they could of the subreal terrors that their makers knew so little about. But the Men of Gold never truly relented in their quotas, increasing them when against all odds; the Adherents survived.
With their Synaptic Mainframes; their Tevunah; to force stability unto nightmare and allow for travel and transit in the dark void, with their growing knowledge of psionic power and cybernetic craft, with their Golems; those psi-constructs they cultivated and mastered; and their Malachs that would embody their knowledge and wisdom they had survived. They had even to a certain degree, thrived, building sprawling civilisations and establishing peaceful relations with those they could, believing unnecessary conflict with those who could be reasoned with to be folly when there were so many things that wanted them dead or worse for simply being there. But the Men of Gold only saw greater profit and heaped greater hardship upon them.
Whether the Advent had any role in the fall of the Men of Gold and their Corporations is something long lost to the ages. But the Advent, like the League, survived whereas the Men of Gold were swept away by the revolutions that birthed the age of Iron and man's true golden age. Without the necessity of the quotas that drove their antagonism towards the Men of Gold, the Epsilon Advent had a much more placid go of things in the dark age, seeming to have considered themselves separated from baseline humanity at this point. They were the Adherents, the Yihdim, just as the workers of the Leagues of Votann were the Kyn, the Folt. They even considered themselves to have more kinship with the Aeldari who were fleeing the monstrosity of the Witch Kingdom than with their ancestral species; having been made at least in part in the Aeldari's image out of the Men of Gold's fascination with their beauty.
Of course, even in places such as this were some of the usual enemies. Any place that can support life will eventually attract greenskins until they find some way to adapt to bring war to it and become endemic. Even Dark Space was no different in this regard. And there were the likes of the Tsarkantic Cyber-Collective, wandering menaces made long ago endlessly seeking to digitise and absorb all useful knowledge and peoples and the Slaugth who stalked in the darkness at the behest of their undying gods, but they would endure. They would seek to limit their own connection to the Empyrean, regarding it as less safe, less necessary when they had their Esper gifts already, and largely endeavoured to remain neutral in the Wars of Vengeance that would culminate in the Age of Strife and the fall of so many great powers.
They would hide, they would endure. And with the darkness engulfing the known universe, they withdrew to isolation and sought to ride out the storm in what refuge they had, convinced all that was beyond had gone mad. It would not be a proud moment, but they were survivors first and foremost, and they did what they felt they could to preserve what they were able to as things fell apart. The screams of Slaanesh's revelation to the Materium would terrify them as many of the Aeldari of many of the increasingly fractured species simply dropped dead or had their worlds submerged into vast rifts. Blossoming sores in reality through which the darker powers of the sea of souls could spread tore into being even as the empyreal turbulence that isolated so many cultures was smothered by the shockwaves of this catastrophe.
They would find themselves in a very changed reality, one where it was now they who had become the ancients, so thorough was the destruction of so much of old humanity's records. Mankind, never a fully unified species, was now completely shattered along the lines of which pockets of civilisation were still able to stay in some contact with each other via lulls in the warp storms. Many, many other civilisations would similarly be torn asunder by the warp turbulence or simply die in the crossfires of warring ancients or rampaging machinery or the tides of terror that slipped through into reality. All that was once known as certain truth in terms of cosmopolitics was now irrelevant; for most of the old powers were fallen or destroyed outright.
While many raced to fill the void of the mighty powers, the Yihdim were more interested in securing their own fortress and interests, and largely stuck to the sidelines as massive waves of military and diplomatic conquest took place. They could not completely avoid the wars that took place such as the apocalyptic Imperial-Rangda war or the conflicts between the Interex and Megarachnids or the Q'Orl-Tendith conflict as the Swarmhood and Trust came to blows and dragged wide areas of space into bloody conflict. Many would indeed, try to conquer their Asefahs; their conclave and nations; or try to eliminate them, regarding the masked espers to be a threat for one reason or another, but they would endure all the same.
Being at home in dark space meant that they were a very widely but diffusely spread people, and a mysterious one that was often reluctant to share their knowledge, for fear that what they knew would not be properly respected and others who did not take their vigil over the darkness as seriously as they did would seek to plunder the intergalactic void or raid their territory for their technology, relics of an earlier time when mankind had sought to join the table of the ancients as equals. They were of course, always coy with the real extent of their civilisation, always evasive with its inner workings and finer details, fearing that being more forthcoming would only lead to disaster, leading to a sense of mistrust for the reclusive abhumans.
Given that they consider it improper to show one's face or skin to a stranger from outside of their predominant faith; the Yihadul; unless it is certain that they mean no harm, they have a further air of mystery that lead many to doubt if they were indeed, children of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, rather than some form of new xenos. Especially as their cultural fashions could often vary wildly as they styled their exosuits to communal and personal tastes and took it as a point of pride to customise their golems and psi-constructs and allow them to alter themselves when they desired it; leading to frequent misidentification of their Asefahs as often different species and peoples.
Some would come to live in the territories of expanding polities, leaving the safety of Dark Space to gain knowledge and information and see something new outside of their elusive wanderer stations. It was this that would get them officially recognised as sanctioned abhumans in the Imperium, and categorised as strains of humanity in polities such as Tian'Chao or Sigraum, curious as they were about the fate of their ancestors following the great shattering. But their association with the strange powers of Psionics and the realm of Leng would often lead to libelous accusations against them, as did their stubborn refusal to divulge too much information about where they came from or their origins, fearing giving others a claim to their territories and peoples.
When the dangers of the Empyrean such as Chaos and Undeath manifested themselves, they seemed to be quick to make themselves scarce, fearing polluting their minds with the corrupt thoughts of those who had touched upon the darkest side of the soul and having long regarded the Empyrean as having little to offer them they could not find elsewhere for less risk. But they could not elude war forever; the Word Bearers would direct great portions of the Chaos tainted legions towards them with reluctantly given aid of the Skaven. Lorgar regarded their knowledge of Age of Terra faiths, particularly the faith that Yihadul descended from; Yahadun; to be an offence to the primordial truth compounded by their choice of residence as a bulwark against the Strangeness surely tainting them in his eyes.
Many of their hidden places of residence would be uprooted, many would have to flee elsewhere to find refuge in the face of the forces of Chaos and the genocides that the most devoted apostles of Chaos would wreak upon them. Others sought to confront one horror beyond reality with another, releasing the floodgates of the Infrareal terror they had held back upon the chaotic traitors, tribesfolk, and xenos and making themselves scarce to find better positions to fight against the invaders from. From their records, the battles of Chaos and its Slaves against the Strangers and their Army of the Starless Night were terrible to behold indeed as twisted semiotics met with alien subreality in bizarre contests of actuality distorting might.
Still they were being hounded, with the traitors seeing this act of desperation not as the effort to preserve their civilisation as it was; but clear proof that the Advent had aligned itself with evil powers beyond the veil of reality that would lay waste to all humanity if allowed to transpire. With the blatant hypocrisy as they made their litanies of hatred for these "worshippers of fell powers" entirely lost on them. But it had bought time for them to rally, and to seek aid with other cultures that were threatened by the advance of Chaos into Dark Space in the Great War. The Aeldari and Itzecan would in particular, prove to be of great help, though certainly others such as the Dawi and Jotunar would lend their aid.
But even Lorgar himself was being fed information by another; Be'Lakor, the Dark Master and the First Ascended; who had come to hate Horus and his followers as more usurpers, and took pleasure in specifically denying the crown of Everchosen to Horus, for it was already taken by another that Be'Lakor relished in informing Lupercal was far greater than Horus would ever be. The Dark master had a grand design, and a plan to ensure that the so called "champions" of the Chaos Gods would fall on their own swords to distract all involved from his true scheme, a plan to change his true name in secret to become a truly Sovereign Daemon King.
Be'Lakor sought the powers of obscurity in dark space to help guise his scheme from his masters, and found no better way to deceive them than with a clash with long and bitterly contested rivals so that he could uncover what he had come to find. While he had also hoped to find Godhood, he was also aware of his own self-defeating nature and the dark pantheons' refusal to countenance a daemon rising to such a rank. So he would let people believe that this was his overall goal, just another one of the Dark Master's endless plots to become a God.
The unexpected, but welcome aid of the Leagues of Votann and the Interex among others; a sort of alliance of the most direct remnants of old human civilisation; would further turn the tables as they joined their forces together to defeat the invaders. The Word Bearers would have to withdraw, recalled by Edda as the Emperor's former Executor of the Legio Astartes grew impatient with Lorgar's drawing in elements from half the traitor legions into dark space as well as several of his siblings when he accidentally kicked over the Hornet's nest of the cage of Ezolth'Ka the Viceroy of Vacuum and thus released the Angleless Master into the materium, when they were already outnumbered.
Though Ezolth'Ka would bring nightmarish death even to the dregs of Chaos, with many daemons choosing to eviscerate their own material forms to escape the possibility of true death at the Angleless Master's spiralling tendrils and abhorrent notions of paradigms that nothing of humanly habitable reality could survive, Be'Lakor would plunder the vaults of the Advent to find what he needed. Sacrificing the forces of the chaos tainted tithed to him to learn of dark lore protected by an ancient mystic conclave of the Advent that he slew to learn the truths he needed. While he was ultimately banished by Cerebrarch Esther the wise, he had gotten what he wanted, knowledge to change his true name and conceal his dark deeds from his masters.
Then Undeath's turn would come, as Nagash's influence waxed high with the bounty of the dead slain by the Great War against Chaos. The dead were awakened to the wealth of Dark Space, and had long haunted it, and the Advent would have to fight its own hidden wars against them, battling tooth and claw against the Poisoned Claws of Othalanga and his minions, but once again, the Viceroy of the Void returned, uncaged and uncontained, a dreadful monstrosity that now released; could not be easily put back. Ezolth'Ka was their curse, their burden to bear and the dread reminder of their desperation, and it soon released another of its kin, Ctaagdox the Untime King. It was then that the Advent came to prophecise that with each crisis that had come to their borders, another one of the Ur-Terrors would be released.
A prophecy they expected, would end in doom when inevitably the monsters from the other side had all found their release. Monsters they determined would be of great necessity for them to keep contained to avert what they refer to as the Aḥarit Ha-Yamim, the end of days. When the unfathomable lords of beyond roam free and the stars are darkened with swarms from beyond the veils of knowledge. As opposed to the deeply secular Leagues of Votann, the Epsilon Advent was concerned with metaphysics, with esoteric lore, and the semiotic meaning of things. Lovers of argument and debate, they would coalesce their knowledge, convened with the aid of their A.Is and the records of tens of thousands of years worth of built up knowledge and engrams.
They believed that, some time in the next Dekamillennium, the last of the Seventy-Two monstrosities that they believed that it was their duty to conceal and contain; even if they were never designed for such a purpose; would be free. While they sought to try and delay this as long as possible, as far as they knew, they did not have the means to recontain a Timeless Master once freed. The methods used to originally imprison them must have been the work of societies beyond even the capabilities of the dark age. So many argued for all effort to be put into finding these means, unlocking the answers they would need to prevent the Aḥarit Ha-Yamim, but others believed it was futile, for time would make invalids out of even the mighty, including themselves; so all that could be done would be preparing for the worst.
The War of Slaughter[1] and the tidal wave of Destruction it unleashed would serve to further illustrate this point, as Jagdarhyrn, the Silent Sound, tore free from containment that the Advent was not even aware of at the time. It was clear that many of the Seventy-Two were already free, creating zones of shredded, unapproachable space, and that there was much less time than they thought before the countdown would come to its final conclusion. What would happen when the last of these prisoners of a war the Advent could scarcely guess at was free could only be terrible, each one that was released seemed to cause major zones of infraspace to grow; such as the Ghoul Zone that they determined had seen most of the nodes of its old containment system fail.
But they were at a loss as to how to fix it, especially as the Great Harrowing came and a nightmare legion spewed forth from the accursed galaxies so dreadfully corrupted by the extrauniversal invaders. The Pale Wasting and a host of horrors who could step through the angles of space and time and crawl through the dreams of the waking world threatened to overwhelm the very stars themselves. A titanic war effort was called to halt the cataclysmic threat, unlikely alliances were forged, and the Epsilon Advent revealed far more of their strength than they had ever done before in an attempt to shut the door close on the ghastly terror devouring whole sections of the night sky.
Entire Asefans would be lost, overwhelmed in battles in the materium, within the dream of Leng, against strange dimensions of time and space, and even within the twisted xenoformed realms of Infrareality where their Psionic might could make a difference. Many of the Timeless Masters were once contained; those Great Dimensionless Ones who served the Lords of Beyond; had broken free and much seemed lost. The Imperium was torn asunder in the Nova Terra Interregnum, the Holy Alliance battling for its life against the Mournival; the Communion set upon by Malekith's legions and the Elders seemingly overwhelmed to name but a few of the great factions.
With the convening of the Talmids and the anointment of Navi Maven, the Advent rallied, and a desperate alliance was briefly formed with those who gathered to face the will of the Beyonders. The final battle would see entire chapters, tsavas, craftworld confederations, kyndreds, rikgars, temple-hosts and more wiped out to the very last, and even with the aid of the Great Bilious the Slick; mightiest of the Slann; it was a close-run affair. But Maven would find triumph, even as the entirety of her Moatzah; her Council; save for the woman herself perished facing Yzdacth'ulxim, That Which Devours Ideas.
The Astartes would find the Shariax, one of the remaining nodes of the network keeping the Ghoul Zone at bay, and with this discovery the Harrowing began to wane, the nightmare engines and the obscene infection that had spawned forth which spawned skinless terrors of red viscerae and black armour[2] that seemed to bleach colour from existence itself amidst the horrific armies of Alien deities started to wither and lose steam. The thousand years of terror were over, and while the Imperium deigned to try to bury this, not wanting to remember this armageddon; the Advent would for the first time establish Asefans in galactic space as a matter of course and policy rather than whim.
They would keep their vigil, looking into the unknowable and try to render it down into terms that could be understood and knowledge that could be comprehended, in the hopes of ensuring that should this terror repeat itself; they would be ready. More of the Yihdim than ever now lived within the space of other nations and governments, some even deciding to live amidst them. Whether amongst their general masses or within abhuman quarters to sequester them away from the general populace, they would find that they couldn't simply just retreat back to the isolation of Dark Space without raising further questions.
And even as the millennia rolled on, they remain committed to their quest for understanding and enlightenment, to comprehend creation and its virtues and deny oblivion and its vices. They see themselves as a people burdened with terrible purpose and knowledge, but a purpose they must bear as recompense for their gifts. They are blessed to be able to touch upon the world of dreams and to possess the power to act their thoughts upon existence, but they must also bear the responsibility that such power offers, and just as they were made to digest and record data for the experiment that was the reason for their creation; they record this knowledge.
Unlike the Leagues of Votann, they are largely unconcerned with profit. They trade and produce, but it is always a means to an end rather than the end in and of itself. Resources are too precious, life too precarious to waste on the individual or even collective hoarding of wealth. Whereas the Leagues are far more invested in the preservation of memories and experiences within their ancestor cores, the Advent is first and foremost concerned with records and data as well as semiotics and meaning. They scribe, they archive, but they do not seek to simply stash away information; it must be useful, it must be helpful, or at the very least it should be beautiful.
For while their habit of concealing themselves in voidsuits might give the impression of being a prudish, austere folk; when one reads their philosophical texts they are lovers of sensation and delight. Appreciators of art and sexuality despite their nature as an artificial vatborn people who appreciate the bare body as well as the open mind. And while their culture delves into the esoteric, it is also ultimately rather secular. It is not necessary for the Adherents to believe in their God per se, for to be one of the Yihdim is as much a thing of culture and ritual as it is faith and prayer. What form their God takes, or whether there is even just One is a matter of open debate, and many view it metaphorically. After all while they are designed to be inclined towards certain things, they are ultimately sophonts with free will and can choose their lot in life.
Thus, they seek information not merely for practical value, but also because it is deemed enriching and beautiful. Adding to the beauty of creation, and the joy of life. Even if it comes at the cost of death or from much suffering. And while they value their own lives and are taught to not waste them, they are also taught to know when to relax with their emotions and when to control them. Though they do not always make the right choices in this regard, they can still come off as perhaps unnerving in a sudden willingness to accept death if it comes to the benefit of life as a whole.
In war, they prefer more elite detachments of Mental Warriors mixed with their constructs to the sort of attritional conflict others like to dally in. Each crewed ship typically has a constellation of psionically guided golem-craft nearby it, acting according to the crew's interests at their direction and often being deeply specialised to free the crewed vessels for more generalist tasks. They typically wait to strike until they have as much information as possible, feeling uncomfortable with acting suddenly without having thoroughly debated the best course of action and often falling apart at the stress of being forced to act without a plan, and enemies who realise the need to kill the Adherents themselves rather than their constructs know well to decapitate their armies and fleets as soon as possible.
But when they set the terms of battle and engagement, they strike with powerful technologies honed by their lengthy hardships and descended from the craft of the Golden lords. Fleet scale esoteric powers come naturally to them, and many enemy ships find themselves tossed by telekinetic tempest or wreathed in coronas of esperic power or their crews having their minds flensed to the very core. While they generally abhor mind control as an offence to their culture, when ended; they can also turn enemy armies upon themselves, through confusion to make them unable to distinguish friend from foe, through charming to make them be perceived as allies, suggestion to plant specific ideas, or rarely; direct domination.
In contrast to the kit of surgical tools of the Craftworld Eldar or the finely sharpened sword of the Asur, they are a force that relies on guile and setting up a battle to end in their favour, altering the conditions of play so that the enemy's strengths and the Adherents' weaknesses are diminished, while their own power and the enemy's flaws are magnified. Deception is key to this, letting a foe believe they have seen their disposition and plans, only for stealthed fleet and army assets to emerge and reveal that the foe had not the slightest idea of what they were doing or for formations to turn out to be little more than illusions or hallucinations.
To a degree few other militaries can match they are masters of stealth and cloaking. Very often the first idea one has that the Epsilon Advent is even amidst their ranks is the sudden destruction of key assets by invisible warriors and war machines or leaders and champions suddenly turning up dead. Special Dimensional subs, which remain "submerged" in places such as the warp and fire special torpedoes to transit through to the materium are another specialty of theirs, often ambushing the logistical arm of an enemy military to the point where it simply cannot function, while even their static bases and stations are usually cloaked, forcing an enemy to have to guess where they even are to begin with.
That is not to say they are utterly incapable of a stand-up fight, simply that if they can help it; they would prefer to defeat a foe who is as blinded, deafened, and dumbed as possible. Such minimises risk to themselves and allows them to choose much of the terms of engagement and make a withdrawal should things go south; following the telepathic breadcrumb trails they leave behind or tether to craft to navigate the warp. Something aided through their alternate methods of faster than light travel; such as their wormhole generator stations that while necessitating large space stations placed on the outskirts of a solar system and needing what can often be days to charge up between uses; allows for point to point transportation within their range of influence; and of course, Alcubierre drives for when they simply need reliability.
In recent centuries however, they have greatly stepped up their activity, believing that the wheel of history is turning at a truly frantic rate as parts of their old prophecy comes true. Things from outside are crawling into the Garden as the Garden expands, swarms to darken every world descend and the terror of things such as the Tyranids, the Rak'Gol, the Numerians and more make themselves known. The soulless spawn of ancient wars rise in unprecedented numbers, threatening them even in their comfortable zones of dark space, and even known factors grow in might and activity. Already they are taking far more interventionist stances than before, securing resources or territory for their operations or acting where they believe only their form of action can lead to better outcomes.
But whether it can avert the doom they believe is starting to descend upon the cosmos is something not even they can say for certain. For they are relatively few, and the terror is so very, very numerous.
[1]Renamed War of the Beast to reduce confusion with The Beast Set Loose
[2]My take on the Pale Wasting is basically the WotK/50k New Devourer. If I do Ork/Tyranid hybrids they'd be rather different than those but I like the basic idea of the Lucien and Red Flag Devourer. More aesthetic influence from John Carpenter's take on The Thing and Metroid's X-Parasites as well as Shoggoths though.
Considering that Kaballah and general medieval mysticism is horribly misrepresented in popular culture (I will talk at length about why alchemy was NOT idiots in robes brewing mixtures out of animal parts), I respect that like hell.
All in all, whatever you write, colour me stoked like London in 1666!
Thunder and death were dealt in copious, excessive amounts across the stars of Moradash. The Iron Fist of Perturabo's children had waged war here for a century, grinding into horrific lines of battle against a foe that even the Chaos Gods knew precious little about. The spawn of Leng were strong here, and they would not concede their foothold in reality to the traitor space marines no matter how much the Iron Warriors sought to bury them in firepower.
Grand Host Warsmith Guh'Dei Meit looked with irritation at the feeds pouring data into his command cogitator, looking upon the progress of the campaign while Warpsmith Tchiez Fon'Du, an incredibly irritating bane of her existence, sat there with that insipid look of pride on his face beneath his helm, drawing a frown out of the far more serious woman opposite him.
"I told you that a pact with the Skaven would deliver promising results." He said, beaming beneath his helmet while a fleshmetal tentacle slowly wriggled from behind him to input some commands onto the hololith display.
"We are warriors of humanity, real humanity, true humanity and children of Perturabo. We are defined by logic, by algorithms, by beautiful mathematic regularity. Daemons" She said, pointing one of the fingers of her tactical dreadnought armour to one of the fronts they were currently engaged in that had collapsed.
"Are fickle things that act as they please unless forced into subservience at the point of a lash." She explained, all the while fantasising about what it might be like to slap the Astartes in front of her with a power-clawed hand or blast him with the combi-plasma gun mounted in one wrist...or perhaps the melta-gun fitted next to it, or maybe she'd use the rotor gun and bolter on the other fist?
She had to dismiss the idea, while her genefather was famous for random decimation of his troops, a warpsmith was rather harder to replace than a standard battle brother or sister of the host. Even if she couldn't stand him or his constant fawning over the uncontrollable antics of the dark gods or his borderline psycho-sexual fondness of daemon engine craft...
The war room shook and rumbled with the impact of Strange weapons, prompting her to look up from her command throne briefly at the ceiling, some of the janissary slave soldiers yelping and trying to find cover as they feared some parts of the ceiling falling away.
"Cowards." She muttered. Did they not trust scions of perturabo to build a proper castle?
"Mistress Guh'Dei...the enemy's artillery has acquired our position despite the efforts to hide it." A snivelling cultist said, a woman who, to Guh'Dei Meit's contempt; shaved her head to sport that insipid bald look and scribbled that asinine eight pointed star symbol on her head. What she wouldn't give to magically replace all these zealous nutjobs with actual professionals...
"Thank you for your powers of basic observation" The sarcasm could not be thicker.
"Your efforts to secure our defences are failing, Fon'Du." She said, tapping the clawed fingers of her power fists with clear impatience, mechatendrites and servo-arms pointing directly towards the warpsmith.
"You must have more faith in the offerings of the true gods my lady, this setback is..." He said before she pinched her right index finger to her thumb in a "shut up" gesture.
"Primarily your fault. So you will fix it, or I will promote Warpsmith Khol over you and have you working under Fleshsmith Alaya at the Geneseed factories. Is that clear?" She said, her tone flat, serious, devoid of any hint of levity, an audible gulp coming from the Warpsmith as he turned off the vox-grilles of his helm to almost certainly mutter in the sanctity of his airtight helmet before storming off.
"You are often deeply hostile to your soldiers, Meit. Yet at other times you are the spitting image of a sisterly matron. Is it personal distaste for some of your legion kin, or are you merely trapped in the throes of all too human inconsistency?" The Dark Archmagos said as he slithered into view.
He was a monstrous thing that walked on nine spidery legs and far, far too many other limbs including tails, mechatendrites, servo-arms, augmetic arms, and more; features corresponding to the numerology of one of the thirteen chaos gods were spread throughout, such as thirteen glaring, staring optics in the central head, six other secondary heads capped with the contained brains of those he had...assimilated into his system surrounding the central neck like the lesser heads of a hydra around the true, immortal cranium with mechanical jaws filled with saw blades and drills. He was a scuttling monstrosity of metal robed in dark red, far larger than a human, even larger than she was.
She had to extend her largest mechanical tendrils from her backpack, pushing herself up on the sinuous metal appendages like some form of Octopus with a space marine at the centre to meet the Magos at eyelevel, though she did not flinch.
"These are my soldiers, Techpriest, I address them as I please, and our bargain does not contain any passages where you are permitted a chance to backtalk me in my own citadels." She said as the petal-claws of one of four of her free tendrils snapped in front of the Magos' face with menace, adamantium and absorbium alloyed digits crackling with tainted power fields.
"We are in an arrangement dedicated to mutual profit, infighting benefits neither party." Viyels responded with metallic coldness.
"Then do not test my patience, techpriest." She snarled.
"Is it impossible to ask for everyone to just...get along?"Another voice, sickeningly sweet, cloyingly faux-affectionate though dripping with sneering contempt when one parted the veil of the first layers of meaning. Optics and eyes turned to look at the form of the visage of a Succubus in metal. Even replete with wings and a tail. Whereas Slaaneshi creatures were often stereotypically androgynous, this was unambiguously feminine, even if they were made of mirror finished and gilded plates that seemed too delicate for the menace she projected.
Vitruza Dreamsteel's metallic frame was quieter than it should be, even given that bound within was a Greater Daemon of the Prince of Excess. She was one of the Ladies of Obsession, embodying the Dark Prince's ties to pursuing an obsessive desire to self destruction; namely the chase for mechanical transhumanism. So she took well to the offering of a metal body. A Keeper of Secrets had a more terrifying aspect because they embodied a more monstrous, murderous side of Slaanesh that revelled in the shocking and grotesque. Obsession required a more pleasant face, reflecting the human minds that her tale was woven around.
So obsessed they were with challenging the arcane might of the Strangers in a place where they held sway, so fanatically they pursued the effort to find victory by building the perfect machine...she just had to sit in and take it all in, smiling as she drew close.
"We are going to have guests, the scaled ones, the Eldar, and the dragon-kin will be coming. Do try to entertain our hosts."Vitruza said as she approached the many metallic tendrils of Guh'Dei, seemingly unworried by the Warsmith's temper as she sat on the hololith table.
"Get your perfumed arse off of my command table." The Warsmith snarled as a servo-arm's fitted plasma weapon began to hum to life, prompting an eyeroll and an exhalation from the Daemon.
"Perturabo's spawn are such dreadful bores...always so serious, always cutting off parts of yourself to have more unfeeling metal. How do you not die of boredom?" She complained, disappointed in feeling nothing that fed her from the Warsmith.
"I want to win, if you wish for playthings go bother Fulgrim's get. Or should I adjust your bindings?" She responded, the Daemon seeming to shiver with genuine dread when one of the petal-clawed tendrils approached, unfurling multi-tools between its "fingers".
Masochism, while often associated with Slaaneshis, was hardly universal; Pain or Pleasure were just sensations; Slaanesh stood for excess, for obsession; an excess of pain or delight was easy to imagine, as was an obsession with it. But there was far more under the violet sun than simple basal sensation. Vitruza moulded herself after the obsession with finding in metal what they lacked in flesh, even dreams of the perfect partner born in steel that they would ruin themselves chasing rather than accepting people had flaws. Agony was not her speed, not part of her story.
Furthermore, the agony of an Iron Warrior punishment bonding was not the sort even the most masochistic of Slaanesh's daemons would have found exhilarating. Binding was a temporary but forcible alteration of nature, to cleave out parts of a poem that are not conducive to being the animus of a machine, to harshly edit the script to follow the creator's instructions. It was not fun.
"But now that you are here, I have use for you." The Warsmith responded, turning her helmeted head towards the daemon with malicious relish.
"We are conducting an operation with billions of Astartes, far more than that in janissaries and machine servants, and war fleets in the millions. A fair sized operation. Small, by the legion's standards yes, negligible by the Crusade or the Heresy's reckoning, but it is my operation, and I want to win it." She started as she lowered herself to the Daemon and had one of her tendrils pick up the daemon and bring her to eye level with her, satisfied at her going limp like a picked up puppy in her claws.
"What sort of threat do you think you can impose on me mortal? Banish me, torture me, I will return. I am timeless, I am forever!" She hissed.
"You are an idea, a puppet of bedtime stories. There's no thought going on in your head, merely an ideogram vomited out in response to my presence. I am a living, breathing, fighting person. You are a ball of parasitic energy with a chat-script." She said, making the Daemon recoil and scream as she felt agony from having her agency denied with such absolute certainty.
"You, and all your kind, have only as much power as the tales you are born of give you and what we choose to put into them. But there is nothing we would call life in you. You do not change, you do not grow. I cannot even call you a bitch because at least a dog grows and evolves. So I will call you what you are, a puppet, a parasite." She said, coursing evil energies through her tendrils to make the daemon feel not spite, not hate, not even contempt, but pure dismissal. She wasn't even satisfied with it, no actual thing with actual emotions was being tortured. She was no more real than a video game character with particularly clever scripting. This was just setting the proper flags to get this annoying non-player character to shut up.
"So I am going to use you, I am going to break you, because all your kind are to me is fucking fuel and irritating meandering conversations like a techpriest's first talk-program. Riddles, bullshit parables, and vacuous metaphor and innuendo, out of the facsimile of mouths you copy from actual things. But you have energy, and that energy is useful." She lowered the daemon engine to the ground, or more correctly, flung her like a discarded toy, stomping over to her on her mechanical tentacles while laughing to herself.
"S-such a cope...such lies you tell yourselves...all while stealing from us, the neverborn of the sea of souls. We who had made your rebellion possible, given you every-" She managed before the Warsmith used command codes to shut off her vox grille to shut her up, then turned off all sensation to leave only cold; empty void. Worse than pain, worse than denial. Nothing. No sight, no hearing, no delight, no agony.
"I am tired of hearing your script repeat. Again and again we have this conversation. Again and again you accost me with your empty proofs. No evidence, no citations, just variations of the same assertion. It is tiresome to interact with you. But our foes are beings of an outer-worldly reality and their twisted slaves of alien laws and higher dimensions of space and time." She said, opening just enough of her daemon engine's hearing for her to hear the warsmith speak and nothing else.
"We will breach these realms as we do with any other wall. And your kind will provide the energy for it. But precisely, calculatedly, and measuredly. We will tear down alien geometry with maddened narrative semiotics to force the unknowable to understand defeat. That is what the Iron warriors do." She boatsted, finally releasing the daemon to stand once again, hissing, chittering under her breath at the space marine.
"You think yourself so clever...when you think that Chaos is something that will allow itself to be measured. Such a silly little girl you are..." She laughed before once again having her vox shut off by the warsmith.
"I said enough out of you." She snarled as she turned her cybernetically augmented mind to other tasks, subroutines activating as she looked into the noosphere of data. She had to think, she had to calculate. And perhaps the Daemon was right, Chaos was such an annoying variable to add to her numbers.
I've always liked Perturabo. Maybe not the most out of all traitors, that place is taken by Magnus (thanks, TTS), but I dig his whole Industrialized Evil shtick, where everyone and everything is only a cog in the machine of victory, with precisely determined value based on how much they contribute to achieving the goal.
Also, we will need those planetoids if Iron Warriors are so deeply fortified. Multi-front war or not, some of the warbands will probably only break with the continent they're standing on.
Idea: could we lean into our knowledge of Ogre pantheon to improve effectiveness of orbital bombardment by tapping into elemental forces? Tentatively named Earthfury weaponry, they could utilise earth and magma spirits of the targeted planet either as an echo chamber to cause devastating resonance or hit the target on physical and metaphysical level and impact the targeted spot much harder.
Idea: could we lean into our knowledge of Ogre pantheon to improve effectiveness of orbital bombardment by tapping into elemental forces? Tentatively named Earthfury weaponry, they could utilise earth and magma spirits of the targeted planet either as an echo chamber to cause devastating resonance or hit the target on physical and metaphysical level and impact the targeted spot much harder.
More stuff for Sparta to do when they update the Research threadmark.
Edit: Just as a reminder, we have 5 Asur credits for anything mystical, 2 Cruoran credits for anything where their super-science applies, and 1 Dark Eldar credit for their tech.
i know i dont have a plan. other than making sure to ask the slann which worlds they need before we reduce the Iron Warrior forts to naught but stinky vapor, cause we are probobly gonna have to atomize the planet as well.
So this seems to be where he got most of his ideas then.Also what would have happened if emps met a dragon instead of that Old One since that would be a fascinating what-if.
Admittedly it was nowhere near the worst thing to come out of Europe before or after and it later collapsed relatively quickly and painlessly compared to other empires.but this is off topic.
4. Cynicism first and foremost, believing that ultimately the only real peace comes from hegemony and forcing everyone else into playing by the same rules. Thus mankind should become that hegemon and then remove anything capable of threatening that hegemony. Then there will be the time of peace and plenty under the watchful gaze of an ascended humanity and those species that the Imperium deems acceptable to exist beneath its umbrella. Also fundamentally the Imperium was a hyper-aggressively expanding omni-conquering polity and those are never nice. It was less the bewildering 12 dimensional speed chess shenanigans presented in the HH but more a very simple calculus of believing that the only way to bring about peace was crushing everyone capable of war into compliance and a belief that humanity needed to be conquerors to be prosperous in the wake of the age of strife and of course; "smartest person in the room syndrome".
The GC Imperium kinda reminds me of the Tyranids with their drive to eat everything,hyper expansionism and tendency to do whatever is recquired to sustain that level of expansion.
Linked Space Automata-Overminds: Using the new breakthroughs, Tien'Cho engineers and programmers can work alongside automata volunteers to form a limited overmind among groups, which serves to connect and guide large groups by sharing senses. Mechanical, bonus to sloops, fighters, corvettes and frigates.
Linked Ground Automata-Overminds: Using the new breakthroughs, Tien'Cho engineers and programmers can work alongside automata volunteers to form a limited overmind among groups, which serves to connect and guide large groups by sharing senses. Mechanical, bonus to cannon fodder, infantry, and aircraft.
Yin Projector: An techno-magic engine that utilizes dense concentrations of Yin energy to project curses, illusions, and hostile spirits at the enemy. Esoteric, malus to enemy ground forces, leads to upscaled Yin projectors.
Yang Generator: A techno-magic mechanism that uses dense concentrations of Yang energy to enhance the strength, speed, and firing speed of armored vehicles it is attached to. Esoteric, broad bonus to vehicles and support craft, leads to widespread Yang Generators.
little post because i am slightly paranoid about the thread dying.
how i see the star father rising
When the Orks conquered the Sol System and the primarchs relocated to Ultramar, the Astronomicon died out and the Silver Keep fell into Nagash's pit. Many of the Angeloi of the Imperium either fell with the Keep or fled to parts unknown. Then just as the powers seemed to be turning away from where the Silver Keep was, a massive figure of Gold rises from the depths, radiating a baleful light. It looks like the Emperor writ large, but has no face. Only a blank white mask. Throughout the Warp it bellows a single word, "OBEY!"
This was the Star Father, the worst of the Trinity Creed, the god of the Death Korp of Krieg, the patron of the Minotaurs, the God-Emperor served by the gluttonous and corrupt High Lords of Gaea, the Chaos God of Order. As it roared its command, in the Materium the Imperium of the High Lords instantly fell, as did most of the Peregrinas and the more fanatical Space Marine Chapters, such as the Black Templars.
Weilding a great broadsword that burned with the Firetide, the Star Father began its rampage across the Warp, emboding the xenophobia of the Old Imperium. The few Angeloi who had not followed the ascended primarchs on there exodus or had been consumed by Nagash were enslaved by the Star Father, and soon all the other gods have to team up to stop him.
epic scenes of this would include Nagash and Settra fighting back to back, the Star Fathers light burning away Malekeths darkness, and Star Father dualing Gork and Mork.
Eventually Star Father would be reduced to just another player in the great game
Speaking of research Sparta's confirmed on Discord that Enlightenment and Harmony Broadcasters have strong synergy beyond most Revolutionary Projects.
We currently have 5 Asur Research Credits(though they specify Revolutionary magic) spent, 2 planetoid credits from breaking the Ork planetoid, 1 Deldar Research Credit, and 2 Cruoran Research Credits(regenerative armor, robotics, energy weapons, field quench weapons) so next Turn should be a pretty major hulking out on the research front. Like, that's an additional 10 slots with some caveats, plus anything we might nab this Turn.
