Hmm, we are fighting Tzeentchians next turn right? Then we should probably make some countermeasures. Maybe something like this?:
Harmonic Convergence:
Using Ehe expertise of the Tien'Cho Sorcerers, Wizards, Psykers, engineers etc. and some assistance from trusted allies, create a massive working, that gathers the threads of Fate and harmonizes them using the power of Yin and Yang. Through this, fate will be steered towards Harmony, where Harmony is defined as the will of Tien'Chao. This generally makes thing go well for those under it's banner (luckier troops, coincidences, etc.), and blocks enemy esoterics from gaining insight, with other hostile actions plagued by misfortune, resulting in events gradually shifting towards what the Tien'Chao wish. The size is limited by how many esoterics one is willing to commit to maintain the ritual, though they can be swapped out in shifts provided no sabotage. Esoteric, provides broad bonus to all friendly actions, especially divination. Provides broad malus to all enemy actions, especially divination. If a defined goal is in mind, increase effects. Synergizes well with Yin and Yang Projector proposals. Leads to widespread use in secured territories and fortress worlds, along with an increase in the average citizen's quality of life if they live in a territory with that is at minimum both Industrialized and Heavily Defended. Upon learning about it, all factions without access immediately scramble to find counters/make their own version
So, you know how Tzeentch constantly plays 15th dimensional chess with the entire galaxy to further its plans? Well, the idea for the Harmonic Convergence (can be ritual, machine, or both, depending on Spartakrod) was to essentially have a mini Tzeentch constantly watching over wherever this thing is, except, it doesnt plan against itself and operates on the goal of the Tien'Cho. Its limited by the amount of people who can maintain though, and a single fleethorde would probably need to dedicate around 40% of its esoterics to maintain a lesser, but still potent version of the static emplacements. Also, it would probably synergize well with other Harmonic Convergences. There cant be more than one active in a its range, but multiple adjacent ones would mean less variables to change, and more pronounced effects. Of course, this immediately breaks down when Harmony is lost, so this is essentially doubling down on the Tien'Chao's Harmony strat, and once our territories get these implemented, then not only does our citizen's quality of life increase, but everything increases. Researchers get lucky breakthroughs, more people awaken as stable esoterics, less accidents, and the entire area will work towards the goals of the Tien'Chao, so development will get accelerated. Not to mention that trying to invade us will be hell, like trying to invade Russia during winter, except the winter was actually constantly making small adjustments to get you killed. Of course, these wont make the impossible possible, and it can be disrupted with pretty terrifying consequences for those maintaining it, but sufficiently protected, this will help us utterly ruin everyone's day, particularly Tzeentchians who can't overcome it. So, is this plausible, even if as a megaproject?
This is a great idea, but I am pretty sure most of our are helping the lizardmen. I am hoping we leave behind a rear guard to ensure that the Tzeentch worshipers don't wreck our home while we are away.
This is a great idea, but I am pretty sure most of our are helping the lizardmen. I am hoping we leave behind a rear guard to ensure that the Tzeentch worshipers don't wreck our home while we are away.
Yeah, but thats the beauty of it. We just need to develop it properly, and once it gets adopted throught the Celestial realm, our places become basically untouchable to Divination focused foes without being overwhelmingly superior. After all, the requirements for this formation is for the territory to be both Industrialized and Heavily Defended, meaning that there will be a sizable force and lots of assets for Harmonic Convergence to take advantage of. My worry is that this is the kind of thing that has been tried before, and failed because of reasons, or that its possible, but its an Gigaproject that will require much more building up to do
Yeah, but thats the beauty of it. We just need to develop it properly, and once it gets adopted throught the Celestial realm, our places become basically untouchable to Divination focused foeas without being overwhelmingly superior. After all, the requirements for this formation is for the territory to be both Industrialized and Heavily Defended, meaning that there will be a sizable force and lots of assets for Harmonic Convergence to take advantage of. My worry is that this is the kind of thing that has been tried before, and failed because of reasons, or that its possible, but its an Gigaproject that will require much more building up to do
[X] Plan: Lizard-Pleasing Before the Storm Breaks
-[X] (Trade) Accept Tau
-[X] (Trade) Decline Politely Imperium
-[X] (Square 30) Upgrade Defenses to Excessive (eff. Ridiculous) [12 RP]
-[X] (Square 30) Build Mega-Mining Kiloproject [27 RP]
-[X] (Square 42) Upgrade Defenses to Excessive (eff. Ridiculous) [11 RP]
-[X] (Square 42) Build Mega-Mining Kiloproject [27 RP]
-[X] (Square 35) Upgrade Development to Heartlands [33 RP]
-[X] (Square 35) Upgrade Defenses to Excessive (eff. Ridiculous) [11 RP]
-[X] (Square 35) Build Mega-Mining Kiloproject [27 RP]
-[X] (Military) Upgrade Baise De Fleethorde to Mag 3 [30 RP]
-[X] (Military) Upgrade Heise De Fleethorde to Mag 3 [30 RP]
-[X] (Military) Upgrade Huise Jandui Fleethorde to Mag 3 [30 RP]
-[X] (Mercenary) Hire Urist Freekyndred at Mag 3 Fleethorde [45 RP]
--[X] Assign to Square 35
-[X] (Mercenary) Hire Maria's Magnificents at Mag 3 Fleethorde [45 RP]
--[X] Assign to Square 36
-[X] (Deployment) Call in all of Munch and Crunch Fleethordes to Square 36 - make sure the Fangs are deployed as well
--[X] Reserve 15 RP to repair damage during fighting
-[X] (Deployment) Send all Battle Planetoids, Baise De, Huise De, and Huise Jandui with the Dragon Twins and the Chens to Square 47
--[X] Reserve 15 RP to repair damage during fighting
-[X] (Research) Purchase 4 Research Slots (total of 9) [30 RP]
--[X] Harmonic Broadcasters (8 Slots)
--[X] Psychoreactive Armor (1 Slot)
-[X] (General) Consumer Goods Production [3 RP]
-[X] (Espionage) Rats, Foiled Again!
--[X] Target: Clan Scabstab
--[X] Nature: Hostile
--[X] Resources Committed: 15 RP
--[X] Objective: Conceal knowledge of plot
--[X] Process: Put out false information, leave breadcrumbs, in short convince them we're unaware - and better yet, leave promising 'opportunities' that are cleverly disguised traps.
So these are ever more complicated plans, aren't they? Well, as planned, we need to deal with Square 47 and the Joint Lizardmen Campaign. Between our Harmonic Broadcasters being researched and used, the de facto Ridiculous Defenses, our local Fleethorde, the pilling in Ogres, and Maria's Magnificents, I think we're fine to pull the Planetoids out and bring them along to our joint Chaos-Stranger hellhole. Besides, the realspace strengthening should help us further for defending as well, yeah? The Wangs will help counter Tzeentchian plans and be around to provide a nice surprise for the rats soon enough.
The Freekyndred are mega-wonderful for research, not to mention the cheapening of megastructures, and their potent defensive abilities means they should be able to keep the Undead invasion at bay long enough for us to bring our returning heroes in to reinforce.
Ultimately, this actually reinforces my Turn 4 plans - playing full defense and kicking off the megastructure bonanza.
Territory Points Owned: 4
Regions of Operation: Kelesh Supercluster, Bentusi Cluster, Vay-Gir Galaxy
Current Income:
100 employed Pops=200 RP
25 RP worth of Trade with the Imperium
30 RP worth of trade with the Phoenix Kingdom
15 RP worth of Trade with the Kushan-Kiithid Confederation
15 RP worth of trade with Local Exodites
20 RP worth of Trade with the Leagues of Votann
25 RP worth of trade with the Karaz Ankor
40 RP worth of trade with the Spheres of T'au'Va
170 trade RP
30 megaproject income
30 Megaproject income
30 Megaproject Income
30 Megaproject Income
20 Base income
20 Trait income
30 Celestial Support income (boons and mission reward)
Total Pops: 114 Pops, next turn growth: 11 natural. 14 unemployed.
Free Research Slots: 5
Xinyi once again found herself at a dining table in front of a T'au, a different one this time from the one she saw the last century. The other she surmised, had probably passed away given the incredibly short lives her people lead. Especially compared to the immortal dragons who lived until slain, only growing stronger with history's passage. The passage of a hundred years had made her mightier, grander, wiser. But in that time many generations of T'au would live and die, to the point that it could be hard to imagine how they ever got anything done. With this man, Por'O Vay'Gir Vior'va was Aun'O Vay'Gir Y'eldi'oya, one of the Supreme Ethereals of the conclave of the Vay-Gir galaxy. Brave-Winged she believed his name meant. The other; Farstone as far as she knew.
The Ethereal was, unlike the last one she had met, not barechested, instead clothing himself in regal robes while he looked with interest at the human-formed Dragon in front of him, and the current People's Commissioner of Foreign Affairs who accompanied her, a Qilin by the name of Zhang Zhi, with cool blue hair tied into a long, single tail behind her head, tassles of hair framing her face alongside somewhat curved backwards facing horns.
The Ethereal was bald, completely so; the water Caste ambassador kept his black hair in a topknot, though one certainly more understated than the Despoiler's infamous hairdo, and one supported with rather more hair on the rest of his head than the otherwise terminally bald Abaddon.
Her own food tastes had changed over the decades, helping herself now to a bowl of noodles and artificially grown beef with helpings of vegetables, twirling the thick strands around her chopsticks and slurping up the threads to enjoy the intense, brothy umami that had seeped into the wheat. Zhi for her part enjoyed a meal of Mantou, puffing her cheeks out slightly to chew on the filling within each bun; letting poultry, bean paste, and vegetable matter slide down her throat.
The T'au she noticed, didn't eat even artificial meat though. The Water caste helped himself to a dish of blue rice,, leafy vegetables, and soy-like beans with a side of fruit and vegetable yoghurt-like liquid; the Ethereal's soup was a meal of tubers, spices, and fortified bread for dipping into the dish. Food preferences could tell you much about a person, and Xinyi's read of Y'eldi'oya was of someone who preferred an austere appearance, while the other probably enjoyed sweet things, based on his preference in juice. Both she noted, seemed unfond of fizzy drinks, rather unlike her who was quite fond of her sparkling azureberryade and Zhi's love of ice cream on creme-of-gauleng soda floats.
"It pleases us that your people have chosen to see reason." Por'O Vay'Gir Vior'va said, a beatific smile on his face. She studied her counterpart's disposition, the changes in fashion over the course of generations. They had clearly refined the learning of her language, he spoke with a refined, courteous accent and didn't make the stumblings upon different tones that many who learned Tian'chaowen did. Clearly they were serious about this meeting.
"We are committed to neutrality in the conflict between the Imperium and the Spheres, our blood is too precious to spill in such an affair. But that does not mean that we are opposed to exchange. So long as it is done fairly, and forthrightly." Zhi said, her generally shyer and more demure nature hidden well when she was in the midst of work.
"A reluctance to shed blood unnecessarily speaks of great wisdom that aligns well with the way of T'au'va. Your great time amidst the living has clearly made you enlightened." Y'eldi'oya said with serene grace, a voice that had a noticeable reverb from that strange, slit nose on his face. "The Road to Harmony is long and often difficult, but through balance and communion alone does prosperity arise." Xinyi said, quoting one of her mother's sayings breathlessly.
"That quote is attributed to your spiritual matron, Qiao Yin, no?" Vior'va asked, a brow quirking from Xinyi in response.
"She is your mother is she not? I am lead to believe that it is quite rare for your speakers of Yin and Yang to be fully awake; investing power into this...Great Bastion of yours amng other things, no?" He added, clearly he wished to show that he was learned in her ways.
"She is. My brother and I hatched from the same clutch in their gaze." She replied gently.
"You must feel special to be born to them." Vior'va replied.
"It would be hard not to, but I would bring shame to my kin if I let it get to me. I am a guide, not a leader." Xinyi's voice was sagely, her eyes betraying an age at odds with her girlish, university student features.
"It seems a waste of your talents to merely offer advice, why not take a more direct hand?" Y'eldi'oya asked, genuinely curious.
"It should after all, be they who are best suited who lead the masses towards the greatest good for the largest whole." He added.
Xinyi's nose wriggled a bit while she refrained from making a face, a long exhale coming forth from her lips before she sipped at the broth of her soup from a spoon to excuse herself from talking.
"Because outside of emergency, it is best for the masses to govern themselves for none know them better than themselves. And even in emergencies, the contingencies should still have rooting in the people." Zhi interjected for her friend, crossing one leg and assuming a more officious pose to make clear her seriousness.
"And what if the people choose wrongly?" The Ethereal inquired.
"Then the mistakes will be confronted by we, the people. Nobody is immune to error." Zhi replied without rudeness.
"It is best to ensure that the decisions are made by the wisest, by those who have the broadest and deepest information, and the skills to make use of that information." Another retort.
"If the people are poorly informed then that is a failure to be corrected by guidance, not despotism. That is a lesson passed down to us since the World that Was." Xinyi said, the smallest of frowns upon her lips.
"Despotism is born of ignorance, that much we can agree on." Vior'va added as all involved shared a brief nod before Xinyi's hair stuck up on the back of her neck and she looked around, staring to the left where she sensed the empyrean building up.
"A teleportation attempt? Through the defences?" She murmured before all was briefly consumed in bright light and the thunderclap of displaced air.
A Slann had manifested, clad in concealing armour to hide and shield a body that floated upon a techno-arcane palanquin, fat fingers templed in contemplation while the Revered Guardians; elite formations among the Temple Guard who directly protected the Slann as opposed to the perimeter protection of the Temple Guard; stood at attention. Each Saurus warrior fully concealed in power armour that added to an already intimidating degree of height, arcane blast-halberd in one hand and a shield decorated in powerful symbols in the other, lower jaws on the articulated helms snapping to signal attention while the Slann's Skink attendants took the briefest moment to confirm that translocation had been successful.
Even to a dragon such as her, the Slann's mystic presence was titanic. An entire planet full of T'auand all their souls wouldn't have shone a millionth as brightly in the empyrean, a shine so bright that warp predators were scalded and blinded, not attracted by it. She was formidable too of course, but the Slann was wholly dedicated to the practice of mystic and mental might, with a brain carefully designed to understand and comprehend all that was mysterious.
Of course the Itzecan could have breached the teleportation barriers, it was next to impossible to keep the masters of teleportation out of a place they really wanted to get to. And of course, as the child of Yin and Yang...yes obviously the Slann was going to barge in on her business himself even as the T'au honour guards and fire warrior guardians and drones wheeled around; the Azure Dragon Guard moving in lockstep to present arms to the Slann and its protectors before Xinyi snapped her fingers and bade them lower it before the Saurus took the step they were clearly planning to.
When the Slann spoke, it was not so much with their mouth as their mind, not through something as simple as telepathy but by vibrating the air to produce pure sound in the ears and all around those he had deigned in need of hearing him speak.
"I am Lord Mhoizt, and our Sublime Communion has delegated my own person as the one to deliver the two of you a message. The offer we have made is soon to pass, for the moment we have foreseen approaches. It is in your best interests to prepare your forces, for we must strike into a heart of darkness." He intoned with mystic calm.
"You are remarkably calm in the presence of one of the Bentu'chalad" The Ethereal said, looking at Xinyi only reservedly shifting her posture as she turned towards the new intruder.
"Believe me when I say that there is no offence intended. We have simply sought to prepare a host worthy and capable of crushing the foe." She said before looking towards the T'au who offered a gesture of humility in return.
"Our cadres will stand with you against the darkness. In exchange for the boons promised." The Ethereal said with as much supplication as he could manage. It was generally speaking, very unwise to say anything even construable as disrespectful to the Slann in the presence of their Revered Guardians.
...
"It's a pleasure to meet you, mio capitano." Luigi said with a small bow, the young man's seemingly delicate form and freckled face almost at odds with the reputation he had. Chao-Xing would have scarcely been able to figure him for a killer, had she not personally verified his abilities to ensure a target was dead. His haircut was boyishly cut, with prominent bangs and strategic messiness to make one think him just the right amount of slovenly to be charmingly genuine rather than overly formal. But it was an act, her tiger eyes could see that he had no soul, not one of the warp anyway. He was after all, a machine, made of interlocking nanyte structures and carefully designed artificial tissue around a mechanical endoskeleton of carefully alloyed vibranium and nanomechanically treated adamantium.
But he did have a spirit of sorts, one of programs and software, invisible threads of data that could survive independently of his bodies. And she supposed that was in a sense; a soul, even if one born entirely of physical processes and rooted into the materium. But "mio capitano"...my captain?
"Captain is not one of my titles or ranks." She said, tilting her head slightly to the left.
"I call all my employers my Captain, Lady Wang." He said with a courteous "hats off" gesture out of respect.
"Tongzhi or Comrade is fine...I am not nobility." Chao-Xing replied, shaking her head.
He made a small laugh and a grin. "If you wish. My thanks for providing my fellows with employ on such short notice." He changed his tone as naturally as one blinked, flicking between two modes like a switch. From jokey to serious in a fingersnap, a slip up of how humans usually transitioned between emotional states that she figured he only allowed himself to do because she knew what he actually was.
His outfit was stylish, colourful even, white and blue and gold and purple in descending order of commonality, a neatly proportionate collar, boots whose plating was designed to be as seamless as possible, elegant magician's gloves. He almost looked more like a performer than a soldier as he adjusted his posture, hand resting on the hilt of an archaeotech arming sword.
"Well I'll be damned, if it isn't Garibaldi." Another voice said, a short, heavily bearded figure stepping into sight. Despite being several heads shorter than Luigi, it was clear he was the heavier of the two, carefully designed body giving some mind to the squat proportions of a Duardin. However the keen eye could see the differences, a Dawi's proportions were more...exaggerated, a bit shorter, a bit wider, bigger brow ride, and with somewhat more Eldarish ears; a trait they shared with the Greeskins, the Jotunar, and the more developed Ogres. Kin had more human proportions, albeit on the short and stocky end, and usually had some mark of the cloneskein.
In this case, it was the craggy patterns of osteoderms especially prominent in his forehead, suggested of the subdermal armour that was designed to serve as a better conduit for warp-barrier interface.
"Urist, you look like you've been sober for longer than you'd like!" Luigi welcomed with a cheery expression, letting the Grimnyr approach, his white beard flowing with his movements and the hood he wore clearly made of valuable inorganic threads, COG familiars remaining close by at all times. The league of urist's Grey and Maroon colouration wasn't exactly eye catching, but he made it look sharp on himself.
"Look, any day I don't get my bru is a day too much." The Kyn grumbled, stroking his beard as he looked up at the Baihu.
"Tell your wisemen that they have my thanks for their work with the Votann. And a debt owed is one that we will repay, on the ancestors' honour." He said approvingly, offering a hand to shake to Chao-Xing that was taken in turn.
"Jian Qi's forces are upon us, so you have my thanks for coming here on short notice. They have Mogui; Daemons; with them, and fallen space marines. But they have underestimated our numbers and defences. I want you to crush them as soon as can be managed." She said, starting on her own take on the briefing the military councils were already giving their mercenary commanders.
"The Dragon twins will be busy to the galactic east, clearing that place of Chaos and Strangeness. But..." She said, looking at the pair. "I think between the lot of us...we shouldn't have too much trouble." She said, smiling.
...
Warships blazed in the black void, tearing into each other with vicious fury and hate. But the fleets of Chaos found themselves outnumbered. Against enormously hardened defences, by swarms of mercenaries, and the formations of the Caihong Jandui fleet. The first craft to bear the Harmonic Broadcasters projected an eerie calm and rhythm into the empyrean, and the warp grew stiller, harder to manipulate, harder to defy the precepts of the Dao. Weaker Daemons or those with less solid connections to the Materium could not make their own discord stand out in the rhythmic drumbeat of harmony and thrashed as they began to unspool back to whence they came.
Powerful sorceries sought to break through, but each exertion was harder than the last as the broadcast arrays drew nearer and in larger numbers. Worse, many started to consider their own safety, their own glories. Pacts with daemons with which they could use to escape into the empyrean before it was too late, or simply blasting their way to freedom.
Tzeentch's schemers were people of ambition, of individual hunger for greatness and the means with which to enact the change they desired without the need of others. To fight and die to the very last was the ken of their dupes who would always be but stepping stones to their own paths to glory, and of course; for the Legionaries there was the simple matter of needing to of course; preserve the geneseed legacy of Argenta. Senselessly dying in ways that would leave no hope of recovering progenoid for their mother's family was no way to die after all.
It was not fear in the conventional sense. Astartes do not feel such things in the same way humans do. Fight or flight simply becomes fight, it is how they were designed. They can be scared yes, but that fright turns to defiance by the alterations done to their neurologist. To run away was something that had to be consciously chosen, and doing so with the desire to live to fight another day than to work some plan or scheme boiled their blood. But they nevertheless did not crave their own deaths.
However often enough, they would not be given a choice as the interdiction systems and the harmonisation of the warp made escape difficult, tractor systems harpoons dragging Astartes ships hoping to pull away back into the fray. And even a Tzeentchian is, when cornered, a vicious fighter.
The two fleets were eclectic mixtures of different navies. The Tzeentchians had the faster, jagged and less armoured ships of the Marauder tribes, focused on bearing lances and waves of strike craft or hit and run strikes. The traitor Imperial navy ships had the distinctive armoured prows, defaced figureheads reshaped into glorifications of the Architect of fate, with heavy broadsides and rows of deadly batteries, whereas Chaos Space Marine craft; like their loyalist counterparts were made of sterner stuff, better quality armour, more powerful reactors, better engines, and mighty bombardment cannons and knife fighting range weapons to carve through their foes in the very thick of the fighting, psychically directed automaton craft remaining close by to offer them back up and disposable shields or weapons platforms.
Chaos Hulks and Chaotic voidbeasts also accompanied the Armada, crawling with madmen, beastmen, and worse streamed through the void. The Tzaangors were hardly predisposed towards complex artifice, and by the grace of Chaos could simply ride on the inside of their mutant or rift-born warpbeasts, serving as symbionts who would keep them clean and healthy while in turn being given transport in a means pleasing their preference for "natural" living. All of this alongside what Daemonships of Tzeentch they had brought with them; craft crawling with daemonic essence woven into metallic hulls and hulks, offering real space anchors for the hordes of empyreal fiends that crawled within, casting warpfire into the void, twisting and cackling shapes monstrous in aspect and often utterly surreal in appearance.
Against them were the stately, organised somewhat wet-navy like ships of the Celestial Navy. with prominent prows and menacing heavy dorsal turrets, moving in coordinated formations where craft attuned to Yin would support craft attuned to Yang to squeeze supernaturally greater levels of performance out of both. The brute ships of the ogors and their void beasts pushed ahead, slabs of metal and hordes of hungry animals eager to get into the thick of things while the massive, slow craft of the Kyn trailed behind. The Kyn regarded anything smaller than a cruiser as a waste to put living beings on, leaving such tasks entirely to the iron kin, and their hammerhead ships' wide frontal arcs provided deadly crossfire of overlapping weapons platforms.
Then were the stately, elegant ships of the Dogs of War. The Remans' Galley ships trended towards the small and medium size, made to be quick to turn and accelerate but potent on the ram with hardened prows and close ranged weapons as well as deadly crews of well-equipped and trained armsmen of many species while carriers ferrying deadly and graceful strike craft loomed farther back, sending the dashing pilots forwards into the thick of things and strike hard blows where simple boarding and torpedo work alone would not be enough. But then the Asuryani arrived; craftworld fleets slipping forth from the Webway to render aid to an ally under threat from the slaves of the dark gods, their forms disappearing into chaotic patterns as their holofields activated and their seers cast a pall unto the skeins of fate to deny Tzeentch's servants a good idea of what was even going on.
Unfortunately for Tzeentch's dupes; they were greatly outnumbered. Their brand of insanity would not give room for clemency, and far too many of those gathered here had no love for Chaos to give them any. Requests for surrender were ignored, the craft disabled and then bypassed to be destroyed later with all hands on board whenever sufficient exorcists weren't available. The space hulks were dealt with especially viciously, hammering them with conversion munitions, the scouring wind of Hysh, or distortion weapons until there was nothing left. Nothing so tainted by Jian Qi was worth the risk of allowing to remain intact as a Space Hulk dedicated to the Architect of Fate.
When it was clear that there would be no escape for many, the Arcanites of Tzeentch turned to brute survival under the universal language of violence. A tongue that anything could understand, a rhythm that anyone could appreciate. A conversation that anyone could reply to. It was not nice, it was not kind, and hardly everyone deserved it. Slaves aboard ships would find no salvation as their craft were shredded apart, or were simply shot or beaten to death by the boarding Automatons shielded by the suffocating harmony in the warp and teams of exorcists.
The new models of Automatons had been fully rolled out, faster, smarter, stronger. An emphasis on superior machinery over weapons had been pushed, and the cultists of Tzeentch would find themselves face to face with armoured machines bearing high-frequency superheated weapons to carve ragged chunks into them, deep wounds cauterising in a spray of ash and carbon dust as the red, blue, black, and white machines stormed inside. Other foes were met with electromagnetic burst guns, spraying out packets of ions followed by electrons to burst people and combat servitors like steaming balloons, autogun and shotgun rounds ringing against their shields and armour.
Servitors were always viewed with abhorrence by those cultures not influenced by the Imperium's...unique attitudes towards cost-cutting. To condemn even the worst of people; or worse, to grow an entire human being just to use them as wetware for things all too often less than fully concealed by their lobotomising cybernetics. All because it was somewhat cheaper and faster to do than just making a robot by hijacking the human nervous system as a means of controlling the interface. The Automata of Tian'Chao took little time in destroying these battle servitors where they met them, tearing out brains or power cores or shooting them through, sparing the living soldiers the unpleasantness of having to see them in person.
But the Chaos Armsmen were much sterner folk. Those who had proven valuable enough to the warbands to be given some real gear; carapace exosuits with stronger shields and the cursed mark of Tzeentch; often accompanying marauders with swollen muscles and going ahead of the real elites so that the Warriors and Astartes would know what they were getting into from those with more functional comm systems than the herds of startled Tzaangors pushed into walls of fire made even thicker by the addition of Kyn gatling bolters that sprayed the interiors of warships with viscerae whenever their Volkanite weapons didn't do the job first.
Ogors and Dogs of War pushed in as well, followed by elite teams of Aspect Warriors and psychic minders and wraith hosts who moved like angels amidst the scenes of hell, knowing where they were going even in the often twisted and deranged interiors of the Architect's craft or the bloody viscerae of Chaos beastships, with even the deceptively simple Dire Avengers cutting through enemy forces by the thousands, every single monomolecular shuriken slicing something important, outright decapitating and dismembering ordinary humans and gors and fraying at the shielding of the better equipped troops in frightfully little time before chopping them to pieces.
Those who got close were simply bisected in casual swings of their rune enchanted power swords for close quarters combat, the blades dispersing shielding and then biting into flak armour like paper, all while the incoming las and autogun fire thrown their way seemed like so much rain against a dragon. To say nothing of the Fire dragons whose fire spears switched from melta to flamer mode and were allowed to simply consign everything in their way to the fire and flame, laughing with Khaine's malevolent glee as heat enough to lay low even Chaos Warriors engulfed the interior of ships until their halls ran like candle wax.
It could have been a fight, but not when outnumbered this badly.
The Chaos Space Marines gave great account of themselves, fighting their way through to escape more often than not. A space marine squad could crush a thousand times its number in guardsmen without trying, even more when taking advantage of their superior range and mobility to weave in and out of combat to allow their regenerative and self-repair systems to keep them in fighting shape. Pinning them in place was a challenge at the best of times, even more so when Tzeentch's gifts granted them additional resilience in the form of arcane barriers and fate manipulation, but they had...greater plans for themselves than dying in a raid that had gone south thanks to unexpected circumstances.
Their lessers would be forced to fight with rites of mind control to remove from them the choice to not die or flee. The Beastmen and Mutants first, Cultists and Servitors second, the Marauders and Traitor Guardsmen third, the Warriors and the Legio Cybernetica last in order of what they were willing to sacrifice to save themselves. Drawing on their deaths to call forth the Changer of Ways' daemons from the empyrean at great strain, some of the sorcerers essentially beating their heads against the wall of harmony until they fell limp and unconscious, at least one circle babbling in Old Dragontongue as light poured from their eyes and they fell over dead when their cants were disrupted by Night Lotus legionaries just as another broadcaster ship entered their range.
But the children of the 81st legion were not amateurs.
Even at greatly increased difficulty and strain, they did manage to cause enough breaches into the warp to make good their escape and give a parting gift of daemonic incursions before disappearing with those acolytes of theirs that managed to escape. Callous they were yes, but replacing good cannon fodder could be a pain.
The Exalted Lord of Change at the centre of this scheme would rise in challenge to the foes coming at him, spellcraft turning machines into blooms of scintillating petals and flesh into writhing Chaos Spawn, great etherblade hacking through lesser combatants with snicker-snack sounds. By his designs, the Wang twins were busy dealing with the Daemon Prince Zagalathrax, while the accursed blanks were busied with the great daemon engine Orgadeddon and the Grimnyr and the Warlords of the Dread[1] would have to contend with a Chandelier of Witches; a Crystalline greater daemon that embodied a different aspect of Tzeentch than he; and their coterie. The Eldar would of course, be dealing with the Slaaneshi Daemons that sought to exploit the tears to the warp. All according to plan
By his design, he need only worry about the Soulless Robot, slender bodied and graceful, but surely no match for an Exalted amongst the Lords of Change, even if Luigi was all but invisible upon the Skeins of fate or his other methods of divination. He knew his archaeotech sword had negative current noctilith threaded through it, poison to his kind and bane of witches. But he was not some stupid Bloodthirster who would rush into melee for a duel, he would crush the ceiling upon it, bury it in Chaos Spawn, or conduct mystically generated but mundane electricity in plasmafying amounts through the metal. Let the youth-faced Android deflect his spells or negate them when aimed directly at him, he was ready.
What he didn't know was that a Grey Knight picket formation had used the chaos to slip in while Garibaldi got close. Cintarak was well known to the Grey Knights, a regular menace to the Imperium whose latest scheme their Prognostica had deemed would allow him to alter his narrative to find independence from Tzeentch as part of Tzeentch's endless war with itself to prevent final victory and thus annihilation. A Sovereign Daemon could truly grow in a sort of sense, and he would seek to carve out a far greater realm for himself from a ritual to birth a warp rift; something that could not be allowed.
The Grey Knights' stealthed ships made brief contact with the swarm of pagans and xenos to inform them of their intent, and dispatched a team of parley. Overall commander Moa Tong agreed, the Mantid xenos passing on the information in secret channels.
Garibaldi would draw close to the Daemon and its guard with his noble band, but the first thing he threw was not a grenade but a teleport homer. In an eyeblink, a Grey Knights strike force apparated into the room with the thunderclap of displaced air, including both infantry and vehicular support, and the Daemon with relic in hand would let out a squawk of surprise before a heavy Dreadknight's fist clocked him hard enough to send teeth he didn't even have flying out of his beak with flecks of fractal patterned blood. The fight would be ended swiftly, brutally, and the Daemon's flagship was cleansed in blazing light until it was simply inert metal.
The Grey Knights finished off the others with textbook precision and the aid of Luigi's odd band of fellow dark age relic things, having specified a need to avoid as much public attention as possible. Force Commander Alaria Jestelline would offer her thanks to the machine, without the usual malice towards the abominable intelligence or xenos that most of the Imperium had, having been indoctrinated to focus on the threat of Chaos above all others and to seek any possible advantage against it while remaining pure. Though she admitted to finding Luigi's mimickry of the human form...disturbing, to know that behind such a charming face was metal simulacra.
He would shrug, and respond that she was as divergent from humanity as he was; a creature of many implants, a psyker, and something cultivated from a childhood that was intentionally severed from her by mindwipe into something else entirely. Her chapter may be mysterious, but he was very old and had travelled very far, sometimes even in the retinue of inquisitors; their general story was somewhat known to him, and he pitied them for being moulded into a specific purpose from so early an age.
The Grey Knight of course, reminded the machine that the chapter was aware of his secret, and leaking it to the inquisition or the Mechanicus at large would make working within the Imperium very...difficult. To which Luigi's parting shot was that he knew a man with a face like hers once on Sondar Tertius, her homeworld...Lecititiocally, laughing as the Grey Knight palmed her face and placed her helmet back on to teleport out.
Due to massive force disparity, this fight was considered trivial and was ended without need for player intervention
...
The territories were all fortified to a universal standard, star fortresses and all manner of weapons to engage a foe at every stage of threatening a territory were readied and assembled. Even after landing they would find fortresses, castles, walled areas, turrets, and trenches aplenty to ensure that they wouldn't be getting anywhere anytime soon. Arcologies were reinforced, able to be militarised at a moment's notice once the fighting reached them, with their food supplies tended to by indoor farms and nutrient synthesizers. The Tian'Chaoren were not Duardin or the Kin, but they built their fortifications to last and endure against just about anything thrown their way.
After all, they were the builders of the great bastion, that massive monument to military defensive prowess that was the envy of countless nations for combining faster than light interdiction and redirection with enormous series of largely self-sustaining fortified provinces and territories. All with the power of Shen Yang himself channelled through it as a manifestation of his Immortal will and power. The Imperium had the Astronomicon and the Animaportus; their tremendous beacon in the empyrean and the artificial afterlife they maintained to prevent darker powers from taking the souls of their dead. The Realm had the Great Bastion and the Grand Compass, the former to shield Tian'Chao from threats abroad and the latter to bend mystical might to its whim.
To make these defences, far lesser in scope and intensity, was easy for them. Enough so that a number of piratical raids from Chaos Marauders, Freebooters, Undead Raiders, Cruoran Reavers, Druchii Corsairs, or the Drukhari largely were repulsed cleanly and quickly. Of course, the hyper-advanced malevolent Eldar and Cruorans were difficult to stop completely, and as they had no interest in outright conquest would make themselves scarce before proper retaliation could arrive. But it made getting away with too much more trouble than it was generally worth. Sometimes isolated settlements would go dark, but these were pinpricks on the scale of intergalactic society, write offs repopulated, refortified, and rebuilt to prevent future incidents.
After their lengthy presence here, this space was now teeming with life and people living their lives. Jianyi congregated, discussed, and broke apart regularly as they planned the details of society and production. It would not always be perfect, and expatriates from other societies could have their ups and downs. The personnel from rogue traders who did business with the People's Celestial Realm did not always appreciate the fact that the Imperial Creed, Truth, and Cult Mechanicum were all considered regulated religions by Realm law; subject to monitoring and restriction of activity. Very often, this would produce the problems that they expected of these faiths (or philosophy in the case of the Truth) as resentment from being singled out turned to retaliation. Which of course, justified in the eyes of the Jianyi, further restrictions.
The religious life of the territories was though, rather markedly diverse. The Xian did not seek worship as gods, but rather emulation and study as examples and teachers. Even the great Shen Yang and Qiao Yin were not to be worshipped, merely honoured. That was not to say they did not have gods of their own, but the philosophy of the Way of Harmony by and large came first to the point that embracing the gods and ancestors of Shenjiao was not mandatory and many people never really did more than make an offering for good luck if even that. But beyond that, one could find Aeldari worshippers of the Cadai from those who resided within these territories on business from the Asur, Dawi practitioners of Ancestor worship, Sigraumisch Malleans, followers of the Kami of Asahikyo, the Vedics of Vudra, Kroot shamans, Ogor elementalists and more.
It was after all, deemed a waste of time and resources to try and force a single universal set of gods upon all people. Gods are things of a culture, a way o life, and a conceptualisation of being and the world. Not all people are the same, so it is only right that they have many gods. So long as these gods do not ask that harm be done and discord be sowed; there is no issue. Planets such as Tylanius even still had cathedrals to the God-Monarchs of the Imperium and to the Machine God, albeit ones that were never too far away from the Crimson Guard's watchful eye. Their preaching was of course, to be regulated, and the passage of time and distance from the Imperium proper had curbed some of the excesses. Time and the application of brief but sharp terror to repress those deemed an issue.
Within the realm there was not business per se. Money was not traded, nor was currency dealt save for use-scrip for outside merchants to show that they had provided something of sufficient value to be exchanged for what the scrip could acquire. People did trade and exchange, but the rationing all societies did was based along the lines of communal information gathering and planning rather than currency, a more pure form of rationing system for goods or services that retained some manner of scarcity or were primarily to be directed to the needs of the armed forces and the state level collectives. Sometimes there would be shortages that would force the usage of the scrip system for more basic goods, but as a general rule most of the simpler needs and wants of life were widely available.
Of course, those who wanted opulence without labour would be out of luck. Everyone was to work in some capacity, even if only intellectual; there would be no room for those who wished to accumulate or indulge themselves without limit. It would not be a demand for every hand in a factory at all times, but a general expectation of usefulness to the community, and a terrible shame upon those who are believed to be taking advantage of the grace of society unfairly. Ostracisation and re-education were soon to follow for those deemed to be wanting in their fair share of the burden of society, everyone was provided for, but everyone must provide.
Whereas the Greater Good expected everyone to commit solely to what they were deemed best suited for by the judgement of those wiser than themselves, the Way of Harmony expected people to commit to what they felt most comfortable with, somewhat like the Eldar paths. But at the same token there were duties that few wanted to do, most done by machines, but many put through re-education would be found working them to learn a lesson. Usually low intensity work and rarely things of necessity, but never an outright sinecure; rather they would do things such as providing assistance to teachers who were regarded with the greatest of respect or helping to proctor examinations.
And it must be emphasised that Tian'Chao is a society that greatly respects teachers. Even more so than scholars, teachers are regarded as performing the greatest of duties; passing on knowledge to the masses was a virtually holy task, and the transmission of information and knowledge between generations was the highest responsibility. The Xian had after all, nobly decided to simply be part of society, to teach and partake; even though they in their graciousness could easily rule if they so desired with their immortal lifespans, and that commitment should be honoured with a similar respect for the position of the teacher.
It is the teachers who have allowed, even after multiple shatterings and refoundings of the Celestial Realm; to maintain a continuity of culture since before the war in heaven, even if much of the early information has faded into myth and legend due to the distance the greatest of the Xian; those who had seen the world that was and the immortal realms; had grown to have from society. Shen Yang and Qiao Yin of course, but also Miao Ying the Storm Dragon, Zhao Ming the Iron Dragon, Yin Yin the Water Dragon, Li Dao the fire Dragon, Shen Zoo the light Dragon, Yuan Bo the Jade Dragon, Wang Enlai the Shadow Dragon, and Mao Liuyue the spirit dragon to name the ten great dragons who have invested themselves conceptually into the project of Tian'Chao and aspects of it, rooting its people in concepts and ideals to help shield them from the attentions of the darkness in the universe and ensuring that their souls would be guided safely into the underworld to be prepared for reincarnation.
But this came at the price of them no longer being quite so active in the material world, no longer taking to the field in the materium to do battle as they once did where Shen Yang was recorded as having battled with hungry star gods, no more are the days spoken of in the great classics where the likes Miao Ying and the Monkey King were attested to as having battled blasphemous and angleless things from beyond, and perhaps never again will the stars see the era where the Divine Xian laid low "beasts of elemental destruction".
And many further treasures are now the stuff of history. The language that the Imperium calls Ennuncia was indeed, a great treasure of the Tianren and their cousins in the earliest days of creation; a cosmic language that they regarded as the most precious knowledge to be taught to the worthy at the end of a long journey of cultivation and enlightenment. A language of enough power that improper utterance by someone not ready to bear it can tear their body apart or worse. A power that is reduced to often scattered fragments and lost lore, where the knowledge to construct even a basic paragraph to address a specific person rather than in the general sense is precious even to the Tianren.
Much has been lost, and remains to be recovered. Much is the work that is to be done, and it is the task of the newer generations of teachers to rebuild what has slipped into history, and to one day exceed it. They cannot rely on the divine teachers anymore, and prior generations of students must now be the teachers. While it would be momentous for them to step in and intervene, it is rare for them to awaken at all from their contemplation in their capitals, leaving the affairs of mortals to be dealt with by far lesser Xian and the people at large while they seek to steer the ship of fate and the powers that be.
Zhu Xiang and Xinyi's clutch was thus celebrated; for the hatching of new divine dragon children born directly of Qiao Yin and Shen Yang themselves is a rare occasion indeed, requiring them to take their attentions away from their great works to give rise to children who do not necessarily inherit even a portion of the incalculable might of Yin and Yang; instead having to earn it as their elder siblings have. Their tutelage was something taken with great care and caution, planned out centuries in advance to ensure that they would be put on the right path. To be selected to be under their study is a tremendous honour, for it is in a way; a representation of the future of the People's Celestial Realm and its place in the cosmos.
Even now, the twins try their best to commune with their divine elder siblings and parents when they can; even if in the form of scattered messages not of the waking world. Hoping to learn of hidden paths on the journey towards enlightenment as the horizon grows darker and dimmer with the passing of time. An age of prophetic fulfillment and history in the making is upon the stars, and wars perhaps more terrible than even the wars of vengeance loom heavy over the skeins of fate like the executioner's sword.
...
10d10 +4 per dice (+3 from ample resources, +1 from good plan), Success on 7
The Jianyi had some questions about whether to recruit the Carnage Legion or the Freekyn of the League of Urist first, but had ultimately come to the decision that the expertise of the Votanni was necessary for their future projects. However, as that debate settled, more concerning matters would reach their desks. The Commission of Security had found evidence of a Skaven plot to provoke war between the Celestial Realm, Imperium, and Tau to pave the way for a future invasion. While the Skaven agents had been dealt with, the councils were concerned with the information of a future Skaven invasion directed at unknown targets.
The fact that Clan Eshin's agents had already reached these territories was a matter of concern for the councillors, and even with the purging of the spy rings, if these rings could be formed once they would doubtlessly be formed again as the ratmen cultivated informants elsewhere amidst those who felt they had something to gain from selling out to the eyes and ears of the Vermintide. But while the question of how to close the avenues with which the Skaven wove their webs of intrigue would remain open for the planners and sociologists to decide, the security and military planners had an idea of their own for the Skaven themselves.
Mulemba Bukika, a migrant from a distant district, lead the proposal for the plan to feed the ratmen false information through assets that had so far been deliberately left unpurged. Getting a proper double agent amidst the children of the Horned Rat was nigh on impossible, Skaven bearing the mark of the Horned Rat despised non-Skaven far too much to do such a thing. But taking advantage of their egotism and eagerness to find any way to advance in rank and station was more than possible. They would of course, be paranoid and try to double check the information if they valued their heads, but many of the lazier Skaven would be more than happy to lie to their superiors to avoid having to do more work that would distract them from their own projects.
Mulemba's falsehood would be directed in such a way as to convince the Skaven that they had successfully convinced the Tian'Chaoren to refocus its military assets away from its own territories to prepare for conflict with the invasions of the Chaos Space Marines and the Undead as well as prepare for the descent of Hive Armada Baphomet and Invasion Subroutine Cortana. These were all technically speaking, true. The falsehoods were painting a picture of relations with the Tau being worse than they actually were, and feeding the Skaven information about the rejection of the expansion of trade with the Imperium to give the impression of a freeze in relations with the local Prefecture government.
The master stroke though, would be in taking note of which Skaven had taken the bait and using some of the Genestealers captured for study by the Commission of Research to release them in Skaven settlements. With little concern for the health of their slaves and clanrats, the genestealer curse could spread like wildfire as the Skaven milled about through the underway and their hidden rat-worlds. Sooner or later, the Hive Armadas would take notice, and the Skaven themselves would be beset by coordinated uprisings and upheaval. While some would question inflicting the Taotie on anyone; even the Skaven; most of the Jianyi simply sagely nodded at the thought of the Skaven and Hive Fleets tearing into each other.
So long as the Genestealers did not set up roots in the Celestial Realm, whatever would happen as a result of this was definitively and decisively deemed to be "not our problem" in the words of Commissioner Prime Tang Ling.
Furthermore, information would be further fed to the Skaven to inform them of "weaknesses" in the defences. Some were legitimate, but unimportant, to add enough truth to get the Skaven to believe it. Others were very much lies, such as the idea that the Ring World Hypatus was anything less than a fortress worthy of the multitudes of enormous shipyards that hung in its orbit or were connected via space elevator to the surface. After the removal of the remaining techpriests from the mortal coil by means of automaton execution when they refused to accommodate to the new administration, evacuate to the imperium, or come to any negotiation deemed acceptable by the diplomats (any negotiation that would not give the Realm full control over the ring system), the forge had taken some years to repurpose for Tian'Chaoren purposes, but by now was a major point of industrial and fleet strength and even more fortified than Tylanius.
Coincidental homonyms in Queekish were used to further confusion, some systems that were primarily meant to be interdiction garrisons to force invaders to stop at them rather than continue on to more important places, several deathworlds that were generally used as a means to safely test weapons of war in the most dangerous environs possible, including the world of Mordus which was so dangerous that no organic peoples were allowed to set foot on it and its management was given over entirely to intelligent machines and now Ironkin prospectors as well. Another that was labelled simply a crystal mining site, but only in the sense that the Tian'Chaoren harvested cast off crystals from the enormous silicoid void fauna who had formed enormous rings around the star and were serving as a biolithic stellar lifter to grow their mass but stayed well away from trying to actually dig into anything there.
Perhaps the most fiendish trap was the seemingly valuable and just begging for attack research station around the Black Hole Torrentus, whose defences were mostly meant to monitor the...thing that weaved in and out of the event horizon of the dead star. Labelled perhaps innocuously as "Anomalous Vay-Gir Entity 217", the...thing was tentatively identified as a Xenodimensional type entity; a category that included the Cythor Fiends and other beings of nonstandard but still material Spacetime. A thing evidently able to enter and exit a black hole's event horizon without inconvenience, and with enough firepower and hunger to tear through entire system assault fleets none the worse for wear; followed around by many lesser anomalous entities. Let the Skaven impale themselves on its fractal claws and the wrath of a black hole.
Moradash Territory
The Iron Warriors were stubborn, prideful, and utterly convinced of their superiority. The Fourtieth Legion and the spawn of Perturabo always sought to prove themselves against the worst warzones imaginable, and now this place had been a warzone for centuries. It was a meatgrinder and a churning furnace of men and materiel. It was in essence, home for the likes of the Iron Warriors, the sort of battlefield where they felt at the closest thing their transhuman neurology would let them be to peace. The Cythor Fiends had once been here, but had seemingly fled, the merely higher dimensional beings making themselves scarce in the face of the extra-real invaders of what they had perhaps, intended to contain.
Now it was a place of poisoned stars and impossible worlds distorted by alien laws of physics that often seemed self-contradicting; perhaps a product of not being fully possible to conceptualise due to their alienness obscuring nuance that would have made them more...comprehensible. Nevertheless, the Iron Warriors and their auxiliaries pressed on with the offensive because backing out from it was simply unacceptable. Whatever was being defended here in this benighted, awful, haunted place was surely worthy of taking from the beyonders for the children of Perturabo.
The Iron Warriors applied their siege tactics in space as well as on the surface, towing star forts into position behind ships that dragged the far larger constructs through the warp to enter orbits around targets, building new battlestations in protracted grinding warfare with the aid of mobile construction ships and forge-craft, amassing walls of cannon platforms fed by intensive automated mining efforts and establishing shield screen networks to battle against the quivering horrors that beset them, trying to grind forward even as combat groups entire would be swallowed by the nightmare before them.
Reality quivered and unfolded, blooming into eye-straining sights of colours that should have been invisible and shapes that defied geometry, the psionic scream of distant monstrosities growing louder as they slithered into formation. Battlecraft of predatory aspect that were neither mechanical nor organic, nor even inanimate things such as rock or crystal slid through with odd forms of propulsion that seemed to pull more than they pushed. These were the craft of the army of the starless night were at least, generally comparable to conventional matter if not exactly made of it. These were the craft of the Xel-Cthogora; some would call them Biomechanical, others would call them Techno-organic; defying easy categorisation between robot and organism, far too intertwined to be called cyborgs. "Fleshmetal", as was often applied to daemon engines or obliterators was also not a suitable point of comparison. That implied a comparison to conventional tissue that hardly applied.
Volleys of cannon, torpedo, and lance fire would pour through the void according to the rigorous mathematic of the Warsmiths and their cogitators, managed and micromanaged with the seasoned skill one could expect out of the space marines while the Marauder tribe craft purchased either as warships or as the craft of mercenary warbands released their swarms of attackers. Returning their attentions were spline blasts of intensified dark energy. Void fields flashed with painful colours to absorb the impacts, casting them into the warp as space distorted and distended, many shots passing through the globules of dark energy dissipating as the distance they had to traverse extended to impossibility.
Dark Lasers that violently removed rather than added energy stabbed through the void in black lances, light blueshifting into pitch black as they approached the beams and the shielding of the Iron Warriors humming louder in their generators in protest. But the Dark lasers were weakening the shielding, empowering the own bizarre barriers of the Xel-Cthogora's Quasi-Organic warcraft as they were hammered by rhythmic weapons fire from their counterparts. Shunt-shells, so named for the fact that they imparted all of their motion on impact before exploding to "shunt" impacted targets in an attempt to teleport pieces of them away if they were not durable enough; impossibly spiralled through directions imperceptible in four dimensional space-time.
Skaven Warp-Lightning rattled to life, firing in volleys while cannons spat forth irradiated green projectiles, deadly viridian beams following suit to strike home at the enemy craft that had approached too close. Bizarre ships assembled in a way clearly designed for lack of cost first over all other concerns powered through the void, thrusters burning with warpstone fuelled energy to push into their preferred ranges. Which for most Skaven, was a good distance away except for the slave fodder, ghoulish void beasts and cyborgs, and daemonships they deemed sacrificable. When they died, it tended to be explosively, components failing in spectacular fashion and cores erupting into plumes of evil flame.
Meeting them were the Idol ships of the Alghollthus were at once slimy and viscous yet rocky and statue-like, sigils dancing across their flexing but rigid forms, but their retaliation was swift and deadly. Thin inchoate beams that bade those struck to disintegrate whenever the dissoluting force overcame the strength of their targets, whorls of tidal force stretching and distorting matter caught in its vise like grip, and sphers of intelligent liquid that slowed as they approached the void fields and then drifted to disperse into globs, worming their way into armour while exercising saw like force as they flowed around, extending tendrils to probe inside. Some were shattered, pummeled by unending volleys of fire, but creatures of shifting dimensions were ushered forth into the fray, grappling with void monstrosities and daemon-haunted hulks.
The sinister ships of the Dark mechanicus were next, hanging well back to allow their cyclic barrages to go as unanswered as possible. The powers of daemons bound into weapons and hideous fleshmetal constructs spasmed and vomited out chaotic pulses of energy to impose the corrosion of the warp upon the infrareality of the foe. Vortex munitions, generally deemed insane in large scale fleet battles when more standard singularity weapons were available to the mechanicus; were being dumped into the void, pulling many craft into spaghettified doom into the warp while rounds filled with machines crammed with daemons that would undo their own bindings on impact released the hordes of hell into the eldritch armada.
But the Brain Eaters were as of yet unimpressed, Ythalnzid fleets' quasi-living, vaguely cephalopod like craft releasing translucent emerald dissolved beams that reduced the chaotic void beasts of the forces of chaos to glowing slop while psionic pulse cannons released meteor shower like barrages of ghost white and pale blue esper furor. Pyrokinetic beams like threads of stars bloomed outwards on impact, engulfing many craft at a time as they burned even solid metal struck by the orange-yellow incendiary hate and spite. Mutagenic uninova beams turned the crews of what they punctured into horrible beasts, slaved to the will of the inscrutable Ythalnzids while telekinetically thrown and guided arrow like objects erupted in plumes of eldritch might to rip open armour and scramble bodies into paste. Others were simply crushed by telekinetic might, or had their minds overwritten by their evil thoughts to turn on their fellows.
The Dawi Zharr ships though were virtually impervious, absorbing blow after blow against heavily layered armour and multiple types of shielding designed to allow their recharge rates to complement each other. Fire and metal exploded into the void, cascades of plasma and long range melta weapons tearing through the emptiness while warp-stuff infused shells guided themselves with malice into the foe, detonating with malignant intent. Sheets of flame that propagated regardless of the material laws of arson spat from bull-headed figureheads, lashing out at monstrous blasphemies and the unflesh of approaching foes while Marauder and Traitor Imperial Navy ships sought to provide them with defensive screens at the command of the Iron Warriors; at least one of their great super-dreadnoughts disappearing into the jaws of some monstrous Xothian beast.
This was bedlam, terror repeated across countless stars in anything from small skirmishes of small picket fleets to colossal swirling maelstroms of violence involving a cacophony of differing armies. Reality bled as alien madness clashed with empyreal hysteria, twisted space and time entangling with knots of broken stories and poisoned emotions. And on the surface, things were even worse. Armies tore at each other for crucial strategic objectives or tactical gains, the ground split between tortured factory-scape with carefully weakened barriers between the materium and empyrean to tease forth daemonic essence to build more daemons. At the other side was the undoing of reality as we knew it, horrid surreal laws imposing themselves on a tortured universe, where dream and reality no longer held distinction and the constellations in the sky were woven into broken patterns.
Screaming hordes of Daemons released from the empyrean in shackles to force them to obey the precise instructions of warpsmiths would lope across the plains, hacking away at the abhorrent servants of outer gods before themselves being brought down and dispersed by alien power that looked into the faces of the daemons with soulless eyes. A bloodthirster could be seen dragged down as it wrestled furiously with a trio of the black young, roping tendrils tugging at the bloody muscles of the Axe swinging daemon while goat like bleats rang out. Elsewhere a conclave of vaguely squid headed, tentacle mawed Ythalnzids organising their minions were laid low by a Daemon Princess of Slaanesh who glided in upon mirrored wings and cast forth a trident of excessive violence that hungrily hunted for more victims.
The Iron Warriors, Dawi Zharr, Traitor Guard, and Skaven would maintain endless barrages of pure artillery power under the shadow of building and mountain tall war engines, Obliterator Virus infected Knights unfurling a smorgasbord of guns or melee implements as their semi-organic forms twitched and spasmed. Tanks formations to obscure horizons lumbered ahead, pounding away until their ammo stores ran dry and awaiting resupply from the field bases established by gangs of machine and organic slaves even when faced with rains of thermal implosion spheres that leeched all heat into a central point of unimaginable temperature or rains of noxious viral gas that turned every victim into another burst of chemical that made victims swell until the vomit orange gas tore its way free seconds later.
Cultists, promised deliverance centuries ago from the depredations of xenos, were thrown into the slaughter alongside Skaven, AI, and Greenskin slaves, many deemed to be of such little value and their lives so soon to end that they would be locked in transports with warpstone obelisks to mutate them into hideous chaos spawn. Men, women, children all to be unloaded from their repurposed cargo-freighters in a stumbling tide of mindless, twisted meat to absorb attacks for the more professionally equipped and trained Janissary slave soldiers, often alongside those who were turned into the abhorrent Chaos Spawn or battle servitors long ago.
Not that the Janissaries, nevermind the Beastmen were held in particularly higher regard. Many of the Janissaries had their thoughts overwritten by bizarre structures or alien mentats, turning on their friends without a second thought; others still caught by hideous gas or unnatural colours, many draining into shambling colourless glass or exploding into viral chemicals or mutating into swollen; twisted monsters loyal to new masters, biomechanical beasts that threw themselves at even tanks. But it would be all according to a grim calculus for "the flesh", trying to find where the enemy's defences were through their veil of broken infrareality and make enough weakness in the enemy's lines for the children of Perturabo to hammer the identified weaknesses.
Their deaths would amplify the sorceries of the magicians and psykers under Guh'Dei Meit's command, opening forth the power of the warp in ways that could be measured, calculated, and predicted with the regulation of machines that they used as catalysts. Not perfectly so, for the warp hated being limited in such ways, but enough to enact spells with relative precision, bombing fortifications, infusing legions, calling upon reinforcements, or even using the dead as resources and meat; congealing mounds of corpses into new obliterators or using their dead flesh to restore fallen battle brothers and sisters to life, twitching their siblings of the legion back into motion or converting the former thralls into demi-obliterator zombie like gun-thralls. And of course, many simply found their way into the gullets of hungry Skaven and Beastmen or Greenskin slaves and mercenaries.
Death often came invisibly, stealthed assets emerging from where they were least welcomed or expected. Sometimes it happened at the hands of imperceptible forces, sometimes it happened visibly as thundering war machines and colossal beasts wrestled with each other in vicious battle. This was what it meant for two horrible forces to be at war, where the dead were fuel and the living scarcely better. Where people's minds were clay in the hands of vile fiends who used and expended them like little more than currency, investing them in one venture or the other in the hopes of profitable success. A grinder, a great, bloody, industrial grinder of slaughter and massacre. Year after year after year.
And it may have continued like this, until a winner was decided, until the outside world staring into this evil decided it would not tolerate it to go on until a winner was decided; a winner who would invariably grow stronger from their conquest and the chance to at last reap the bumper crop of death. From the warp came the ships of the Tian'Chaoren, emerging from the empyrean with good luck charm statuaries and warnings in accordance to the principles of Feng Shui, heavy dorsal turrets and pagoda like flanges giving them a distinctive profile as their admirals picked out their enemies across battlefronts stretching through multiple kiloparsecs.
From the webway would flash Aeldari and Itzecan warships, the Asur having dispatched their mighty Navy to the aid of the cause, bearing the banners of the Children of the New Cadai in proud form and fashion while the Eldar made ready for war, their craft heavier, stouter than their Asuryani counterparts; designed to defend a Kingdom or expand its borders. Heavier, stronger prows, armour not just of wraithbone but Ithilmar and other materials shielded by strong shields and runes of fate to ensure that errant blows would not strike them. And of course, the infamous tachyon ballistae which could skewer every ship in a line until their energy finally expended itself.
Then the Itzecan emerged, with reptilian void beasts swimming through the void next to enormous, stoic temple craft that were inlaid with singular power and purpose. Astromantic power danced around them, projecting stability into the Warp and Reality with the contemplation of the Slann and the chants of the priests. Legions of saurian warriors stood at attention, each convinced and assured of their inviolable purpose to rid these stars of those who were not welcome in them so that this place would at last know peace and be ready for the coming of the Great Devourer and the Metallic Eradicator. Purity and order made themselves manifest, enforcing law upon chaos and sanity unto madness as they glowed sun bright in the Empyrean.
The next to come were the T'Au, here in the hopes of currying favour with the Itzecan whom they desperately sought to understand the technological artifice of. And of course, being on the bad side of the Slann was bad for one's health in general. The air caste's warfleets had transited from their warp-skip and alcubierre drives to the engaged systems, gathered in force with auxiliary and fire caste cadres at the ready in the face of a battlefield unlike any other. Perhaps they were out of their league, perhaps the Kroot; who had gained from the Ogors the ability to safely consume even Chaotic, Strange, or Tyrannic flesh were out of their depth. Perhaps the Leagues of Votann craft they had brought with them were going to have to carry much of their war effort. But a deal was a deal, and the T'au would honour it.
Xiang sighed as he looked upon the mess unfolding before his skeinsight; knowing that ahead was going to be a brutal, bloody test.
This was a place in the throes of apocalyptic warfare against itself, and the annihilation march to cleanse it of its taint would be nothing less than a localised taste of Armageddon. And it would be necessary, for one of the Great Ones; a lesser kin to the Dimensionless Masters; would make itself known with a terrifying psionic cry that briefly gave even Daemon Ships pause. A low, dreadful rumble, felt as much as it was heard; audible even in the depths of space, without regard for the speed of sound or air tightness. Like the calls of a herd of elephants slowly building into a moan, a dreadful, ugly, low, earthquaking moan.
Situation
The Forces of Chaos under the Iron Warriors are gathered in a large organised armada to lay siege to the strangers. The Chaotic force is mostly Iron Warriors (Traitor Imperial) with detachments from other forces of Chaos to shore up their OOB weaknesses. The forces of Chaos are building their primary fleet strength around multiple Black Sun type megaships and Dark War-Forgeworlds.
The Strangers are dug in for a defence, with a Great One on the way. The Strangers, due to the bizarreness of their current territory do not have a known predominant army composition, as such they will simply be listed as a Stranger force with known detachments. By numbers they seem to be majority Xel-Cthogora; a Bio-Mechanical/Techno-organic...clade known for its bizarre transmutatio weapons that transform impacted targets or distort values such as time and space, as well as a Great One on the way for a god battle.
The first phase will consist of:
T'au, Asur, Itzecan, & Celestials vs Iron Warriors, Dark Mechanicus vs the Army of the Starless Night. As the battle goes on longer, more detachments will be able to join the battle, changing up army detachments and OOB compositions.
Reinforcement are on their way.
The longer the fight goes on, the more likely one or more of the following factions will intervene: Imperium of Man (Inquisitorial strike force; Ordo malleus and Advena, friendly. Astartes first, then Peregrinas and Stormtroopers, finally mechanicus), Greenskins (Hostile), Tyranids (Hostile), Numerians (Hostile).
A Great One is somewhere in the TP, and as a Great One is something that is considered a power in and of itself in a force of the battle to come more than it is a character. It can be directly engaged by planetcraft and fleethordes when it makes itself known.
The T'au and Asur will likely focus on penetrating the Enemy's depth and cutting off lines of communication and supply to render enemy troops less combat effective before pushing for precision strikes on strategic objectives to achieve precision victories through decapitation annihilation, the Lizardmen will likely go for a more classic deep battle offensive with their considerable reserves being prepared for the operation, to attack across the entire enemy line to find which parts buckle and then destroy their operational depth in detail to take from them the means to fight at all.
The Iron Warriors are considered to be extensively dug in, with ridiculous defences set up in true Perturaban fashion, while the Strangers have significant reality corruption quotient that makes their terrain in the TP also well defended, particularly as your knowledge of Psionics is somewhat lacking; being behind that of the T'au septs here. Both armies will be continually reinforced until the battle is won by the elimination of their strategic points of reinforcement that is deep within their operational depth.
The Iron Warriors will likely engage ins stubborn attritional warfare with the aid of massive amounts of firepower and walls of lesser combatants and auxiliaries/mercenaries they use as fodder or distractions, followed by precise raids by the Space Marines into targets of opportunity that present themselves as well as outright decapitation or penetration strikes when they sense weakness. Duels are very likely. Based on prior history with the Fortieth Legion, they are unlikely to consider their mercenaries; even fellow Astartes; nevermind "lesser" humans or Perturabo forbid; xenos; very valuable and will likely be happy to expend them to protect their own assets. And knowing the Iron Warriors, they are likely going to be relying heavily on their planetcraft as well as sinking resources into the construction of some manner of device to break the centuries long siege of the Strangers' territory; finding and then destroying this superweapon should cripple their plans.
Furthermore, while the Iron Warriors present themselves as a unitary legion, pettiness, bitterness, spite, and powerlust make the legion constantly at its own throat, the Grand Warsmith's death will likely prompt a fracture in the Iron Warriors' battle strategems as her lieutenants fight over whether to carry out her plan to the finish, flee before things can go any more wrong, or rethink their doctrine. While the Iron Warriors are great at attrition of the standard troops, their leaders are less replaceable because for all they boast of their mathematical precision in their approach to war and how they stand above and merely use Chaos; they are still Chaos Space Marines at the end of the day, and the insidious touch of the Primordial Annihilator rots at their cohesion all the same.
The Strangers' tactical disposition remains a largely unknown factor, but based on the commentaries of prior strategists, they will likely target things that can threaten their hold on reality first, and move to support the Great One when it arrives at the batltefront. They will also be likely to use mind controlled thralls from elsewhere to reinforce them, or unleash some manner of assimilative infection such as the Pale Wasting at some point. They are likely to engage in aggressive counterattacks when pushed. Given that the Ythalnzids and Alghollthus are present, mind control is a very real and certain danger; use robotic or augmented troops against them to avoid feeding these Psionic abominations more slaves. The Ythalnzids, based on prior experience, are also fond of building mass mind control devices, it is likely they have some manner of Psionic Beacon under construction to try to dominate the Territory Point by simply removing the ability to resist them from the table.
The Gathered
People's Celestial Realm of Tian'Chao
Magnitude 3 Tian'Chao'Ren Fleethorde (Heise De, Extremis, High Quality)
Magnitude 3 Tian'Chao'Ren Fleethorde (Baise De, Extremis, High Quality)
Magnitude 3 Tian'Chao'Ren Fleethorde (Huise Jandui, Extremis, High Quality)
2 Batches of Category 0 Planetcraft
1 Batch of Category 1 Planetcraft
Magnitude 4 Asur Total Force (Maximus, High Quality, Dragon detachment)
Two batches of category 0 Planetcraft
Characters & Legions Present
Archmage-Prophet Aellita the Cunning (Asur Archmage and Prophet)
Prince Verdar the Beautiful (Asur Warrior Prince)
Lioness Matron Themonrae the Brave (Asur White Lion Guard Champion)
Gelaedhel the Shadow (Asur Shadow Warrior Commander)
Vortihaxus the Resplendant (Occidental Star Dragon Lord)
Golarathar the Everwinter (Occidental Frost Dragon Lord)
Scholars of the White Towers (Asur Archmage conclave)
Proudhearts of Caldoria (Asur & Occidental Dragon Elites)
War-Lance of Tysentia (Asur Titan Elites)
Quetzitzanl Tlahtanoyan
Magnitude 4 total Itzecan Force (Maximus, High Quality)
One Batch of Category 2 Planetcraft
Two Batches of Category 1 Planetcraft
Four Batches of Category 0 Planetcraft
Characters & Legions Present
Lord Nazkakundhua (Slann Mage-Lord of the Third Rate)
Zoqak the Indomitable (Saurus Old Starblood)
Moi-Ixor the Juggernaut (Saurus Revered Eternity Warden)
Taky-Oktol the Unseen (Chameleon Skink Sneak Blade)
Xenalek'hua the Zealous (Red-Crested Skink Mage-Priest of Sotek)
Brikbraykah the Clever (Kroxigor Forge-Scale)
The Eternal Protectors (Starblood Perpetual Guard formation)
The Kings of Monsters (Immortal giant planet and space monsters)
Conclave of the Imaginative Magi (Slann and Lizardmen mage-priest conclave)
Spheres of T'au'va
Magnitude 4 T'au fleethorde (Primus, High Quality)
One Batch of Category 1 Battle Planetoids
Two Batches of Category 0 Battle Planetoids
Characters & Legions Present
Shas'O T'au Kais (Legendary Tau Shas'O, Inexplicable single-handed vanquisher of the Exalted Lord of Change Sarthorael the Everwatcher, Hero of the Kronus Galaxy Campaign)
Fio'El Vay'Gir Obawa (Tau Earth Caste Combat Engineer and Inventor)
Aikrox (Legendary Kroot Shaman)
Kalax (Legendary Kroot Shaper)
Urkax (Legendary Kroot Blank)
Olix (Legendary Kroot Witch)
Aun'El Vay'Gir Vior'Es (Legendary Tau Battlefield Ethereal)
Kor'O Vay'Gir Vior'ur (Legendary Tau Admiral)
The Silent Clutch (Kroot Blank formation trained to counter space magic shenanigans)
The Witch-Army (A collection of Kroot Shamans and Witches who are skilled in combatting empyreal foes)
The Mindful Guard (T'au Psion cadres who help to protect the Ethereals and gather telepathic intelligence and shield the dreams of the T'au from Leng)
Kais' Own Cadre (T'au super-hardcore Veteran Cadre, experienced in fighting with space marines)
Forces of Chaos
Known forces present
Magnitude 6 total Chaotic Fleethordes (Iron Warriors, Doom Harbinger, Dark Mechanicus, Skaven, Dawi Zharr, Marauder, and Daemonic Detachments present. Tier Primus, Extra large, Continual Reinforcement)
Two Batches of Category 2 Planetcraft
Four Batches of Category 1 Planetcraft
Eight Batches of Category 0 Planetcraft
Known Characters & Legions of Legend Present
Grand Warsmith Guh'Dei'Meit (Iron Warriors Grand Warsmith)
Moritat Prime Imgoering Takilya (Iron Warriors Moritat Prime)
Host Champion Boer Tadef (Iron Warriors Host Champion)
Warpsmith Tchiez Fon'Du (Iron Warriors Greater Warpsmith)
Arch-Magos Viyels Will (Dark Mechanicus Arch-Magos Dominus)
Nega-Volt Pontiff Giygavohld (Dark Mechanicus Nega-Volt Pontiff)
Black Princeps Dominus Chiksdig Hughrodotz (Dark mechanicus Princeps Dominus)
Psi-Magos Rik Zanchas (Dark Mechanicus Psionic Magos Dominus and researcher)
Vitruza Dreamsteel (Slaaneshi Exalted Greater Daemonhost Engine)
Ferromagnus the Verduniak (Exalted Daemon Lord of the Soulforge, a lesser adjutant to Vashtorr the Arkifane)
Ghorimungus the Harvester (Exalted Greater Soulgrinder)
Dethlok the Insufferable (Exalted Greater Daemon Prince)
Aethelflaed (Doom Harbingers[2] Grand Sorceress)
Wardric the Cruel (Doom Harbinger Master of Possession)
Nothgyth the Slayer (Doom Harbinger Master of Execution)
Baerwald the Blasphemer (Doom Harbinger Grand Apostle)
4444th Siege Throng (Iron Warriors Space Marine Veterans)
The Unloved Orphans (Doom Harbinger Space Marine Veterans)
The Mad-Mechanics (Particularly deranged circle of Magos Domini even by the standards of the Dark mechanicus who worship Anacharis Scoria and Vashtorr)
Cohort Annihilus (Dark mechanicus Titan Cohort of the Legio Carnomortis)
Strangers
Unknown total Magnitude force. (Known forces: Ythalnzids, Xel-Cthagora, Alghollthus)
Unknown great one on approach.
Actions
[]: Write in battleplans
You have five high magic actions.
[1] Daemons call Ogors "the Dread" because they are able to somehow make their quasi-real manifestations edible and trophyable due to their sheer stubborn refusal to accept the idea of anything inedible existing and the blessings of the elemental pantheon. While this is not true death generally, it is immensely painful to the Daemon as the Ogor narrative stitches itself into the Daemon's to allow for them to be eaten and can make it much harder to manifest in a time or place near where they were eaten or near the Ogor who ate them, who also gains some of their strength as Ogors do when they eat things. The Greenskins are the abhorrence because Daemons detest fighting eidolons with closed semiotic loops that simply cannot have interest in Chaos' gifts. The Ogors are the Dread because being dinner for them is terror inducing. The Kyn are called Dim-Hearts because their souls are tiny and dull, hard to perceive and touch.
[2] The Harbingers of Doom (colours are black, dark dull green, and purple), once known as the Eddic Kin (colours field grey and prussian blue) and before that the Kingmakers (colours silver and emerald), are the 60th legion and the children of the Primarch Edda. Known for their formidable skill in cultivating talent and getting even the most ragged formations into shape, Edda was nominated the Executor of the Legionnes Astartes for her work in keeping the Space Marines on task, over the Primarch of the Mentors Calfuray who preferred a softer hand as a rule. Nevertheless Edda was well liked and a constant companion of Horus, and her Legion achieved many honours. But ultimately lost her way when Mordra delivered her Legion from seeming inevitable catastrophe in the face of the Alghollthus with the powers of Chaos, the experience rattling her into believing that only through Chaos could the Great Crusade be realised.
Joining Horus at Molech, she would offer herself to the dark gods to try to realise her full depth of power as a primarch to better challenge her parents, opening herself to the Chaos Gods after finding herself stymied and frustrated by the Dawi suddenly reinforcing the Blades of Steel legion lead by her loyal brother Ekundayo. Fully surrendering herself to the Chaos Gods after nearly having the Chaos knocked out of her by the Celestant Prime, she would push towards Domain Solaria and wage the Virgo Offensive to begin the Siege of Via Lactea and Terra itself even as the Chaotic traitor legions started fracturing at the seams. The solely monogod dedicated legions and forces increasingly broke away to glory their deities and little else, the Word Bearers and Knights Glorious had both been dismissed for attempting to replace Horus and Edda, the Iron Warriors and Grim Maulers dropped out of the war effort in disgust for how rampantly Chaos was allowed to overtake all strategy and doctrine, the Alpha Legion had turned against them for reasons known only to itself, and many legions were already scattered on other fronts or by the loyalists descending on the traitor positions
According to legend, the Vengeful Spirit lowered its teleportation protection to goad the Emperor and Empress into a duel; but the raw powers of Chaos scattered the arriving loyalists throughout the ship and addled their minds with the fury of the dark gods allowed to seep through their chosen avatars. Sanguinius and Sanjivni would be reportedly slain and in the ensuing battle, the Emperor and Empress could not bring themselves to strike down their children themselves until at last, they proved themselves beyond redemption after having already mortally wounded their parents and were smote from existence, the supernova of psychic energy devastating the two arch-traitor legions from the sympathetic backlash and bringing countless daemons who couldn't get away from the blast to true death, forcing a scattered retreat by an utterly shattered chaos army which had faced defeat on all other fronts of the Great War against Chaos.
Whereas the Scions of Horus would, under Abaddon, Asmodea, Apollyona, and Astaroth; come to spurn their genefather as the Black Legion, the Eddic Kin, feeling that they had failed their mother, instead sank into vengeful grief, seeking to drag the stars down with their orphaned selves. In an ironic contrast to their time in the leadership of the forces of Chaos where Horus was growing increasingly more nihilistic and by the end wanted little more than the "freedom" of all true things from the chains of reality, Edda instead believed that in the formless nothing they would unleash there would be true triumph for humanity once Chaos had run its course. But now the renamed Harbingers of Doom would tear apart creation itself to have their mother back, the Black Legion destroyed all of Fabius Bile's work to see if Horus could be restored in any capacity and have made it clear that they are interested in conquest; not destruction.
So my idea is to make full use of our new broadcasters and weaken the powers of both sides. Maybe send the T'Au to handle the more mundane aspects of the iron warriors. The lizardmen and dragons going to handle the strangers. Perhaps create a grand ritual like with the orks to weaken them.
Harmonic Tuning: The broadcasters usually project a widespread song. This however is not always optimal. So with some effort it is possible to fine tune the effects of the device. The purpose being to target specific forms of corruption over others. Like focusing on the Strangers powers while not affecting that of Chaos. Good when only engaging a singular such foe.
Repair Systems: The metal used by the Cruorans and Necrons is highly potent. Being able to self-repair seemingly endlessly given energy and so long as it is not overwhelmed completely. Perhaps we can use this for our own ships and automatons. Though this will likely be an inferior replica it will still be useful.
Magnitude 5 total Chaotic Force (Iron Warriors, Doom Harbinger, Dark Mechanicus, Skaven, Dawi Zharr, Marauder, and Daemonic Detachments present. Tier Primus, Extra large, Continual Reinforcement)
One Batch of Category 2 Planetcraft
Two Batches of Category 1 Planetcraft
Four Batches of Category 0 Planetcraft
Planets such as Tylanius even still had cathedrals to the God-Monarchs of the Imperium and to the Machine God, albeit ones that were never too far away from the Crimson Guard's watchful eye. Their preaching was of course, to be regulated, and the passage of time and distance from the Imperium proper had curbed some of the excesses. Time and the application of brief but sharp terror to repress those deemed an issue.
I'm very interested in seeing how the Imperial Cult has developed on these worlds. Like its hard to imagine it without the typical "kill all mutants, witches, and heretics" drivel.
By the way I'm wondering has any Space Marine ever defected to Cathay?
I'm very interested in seeing how the Imperial Cult has developed on these worlds. Like its hard to imagine it without the typical "kill all mutants, witches, and heretics" drivel.
By the way I'm wondering has any Space Marine ever defected to Cathay?
The T'au literally tried to put mind controlling brain worms (Nagi) in one Raven Guard to get him to embrace the greater good and his indoctrination caused the Nagi to die outright from the strain.
Already renegade Astartes would be possible, especially if they've stopped indoctrinating recruits for pro-Imperial loyalty, but born and bred loyalists generally only reject the Imperium outright due to external forces modifying them like how Chaos Corruption causes some actual physiological changes.
And even then Space Marines are pretty good at telling said corruption to fuck off. Astartes are only human by birth, the degree of modification they undergo has them skirt the boundary between Eidolon and Sophont to a degree somewhat lesser than the Skaven or Lizardmen but definitely more than conventional psychological indoctrination can manage.
Of course, they aren't Custodes who don't have free will straight up and can only ever go against the Emperor by basically having their bodies physically puppeteered and forced to do it which requires so much strain that their eyes bleed from it and the very second the magic pressure stops they immediately resume their usual absolute loyalty. And this was by design.
The T'au literally tried to put mind controlling brain worms (Nagi) in one Raven Guard to get him to embrace the greater good and his indoctrination caused the Nagi to die outright from the strain
There's definitely some degree of compulsion with the Ethereal caste but it's not mind control, it's more a potent suggestion. It comes off as a great idea to the listener which is amplified by genuine charisma and wisdom due to the Ethereals basically all going through leadership school until adulthood; especially T'au ones. They didn't evolve naturally though. And the effect needs argumentation, simply saying it will not be so. They need to make rousing speeches and detailed arguments to have the proper effect. And other species aren't immune by any means, as long as a species has free will and its brain works on the sort of principles carbon-based neurology does it's somewhat affectable by an Ethereal's suggestions, though beings with esoteric power (besides T'au) are very resistant to it to more or less immunity for "charged" species like the Aeldari or Dragons. Of course you have to be open to a conversation to start with, if you're already murderously hostile they aren't going to convince you of very much.
As for whether it's evil and horrible? I mean sure it's creepy but the main effect is reinforcing what the T'au already believe in rather than imposing something foreign upon them. And most factions do rather worse than the T'au, while even the likes of Tian'Chao can't be one without sin to cast the stone. The Celestial Realm is never exactly shy about the usage of intense and very directed terror and often terrifying amounts of revolutionary or political violence to achieve political aims. Both are morally superior to the Imperium which is basically an almost completely decayed feudal corpse where people are raised to be full of hate and lack of value for life so that they'll be happier to bleed and die for a ruling class that by and large, in reality doesn't really care about 99% of Imperial ideology and hasn't cared in thousands of years because they're in it for the grift, producing the most dysfunctional, meanspirited, stupid, inefficient, and corrupt system forged by humans not to be spawned of some metaphysical evil that wasn't some shortlived fever dream that withered and died after a relatively brief time of life.
The Spheres of T'au'va are inarguably more top down than the Celestial Realm though.
They need to make rousing speeches and detailed arguments to have the proper effect. And other species aren't immune by any means, as long as a species has free will and its brain works on the sort of principles carbon-based neurology does it's somewhat affectable by an Ethereal's suggestions, though beings with esoteric power (besides T'au) are very resistant to it to more or less immunity for "charged" species like the Aeldari or Dragons.
Something made Farsight unable to be affected, something that wasn't unique to him, and then they started finding ways to screen it out and made counter-propaganda against the Ethereal Caste's diktaat. It's worth noting that simple exposure to warp gribblies is not enough to induce doubt in the Ethereals, otherwise Shas'O Kais and Shadowsun would have both done a Farsight already. You don't need to exactly replicate O'Shovah's path to get the effect he did, but it's not something that happens as easy as a button press. The Farsight Enclaves naturally have the deepest understanding of the effect, but even they aren't sure on all the answers.
Something made Farsight unable to be affected, something that wasn't unique to him, and then they started finding ways to screen it out and made counter-propaganda against the Ethereal Caste's diktaat. It's worth noting that simple exposure to warp gribblies is not enough to induce doubt in the Ethereals, otherwise Shas'O Kais and Shadowsun would have both done a Farsight already. You don't need to exactly replicate O'Shovah's path to get the effect he did, but it's not something that happens as easy as a button press. The Farsight Enclaves naturally have the deepest understanding of the effect, but even they aren't sure on all the answers.
If there were absolutely nothing else to do sure, but the spheres of T'Au'Va; like most other young polities such as the Draxian Hegemony, the Dracolith Church, the Ulumeathic League, or the Noisome Reek are as of yet not considered a serious strategic threat. The Jianyi of the Celestial Realm generally for the most part, consider the T'Au yet to prove that they are going to be more than just one of many ephemeral civilisations that start expanding beyond their home galaxy and go into the universe as conquerors or uniters; because the pages of history are littered with a massive number of those societies who were promptly and unceremoniously buried by history.
Of course, the spheres of T'Au'Va are one of the fastest expanding societies since the Imperium's original great crusade even though their FTL is generally speaking, subpar. Though it's had to slow down because they're running into the issue of having even worse FTL comms outside of mass effect style negative mass tunnel or alcubierre bubble (reaching into non-warp go fast dimensions, making wormholes, or simply "lol lmao"ing at physics remains beyond the T'au like it is for a lot of civilisations) information beams or courier ships. While Astropaths aren't without flaw, they require very little infrastructure to send messages very far away with instant responses. This allows the Imperium to remain vaguely coherent despite its colossal size since Astropaths are all basically plugged into a near instant response psychic internet that can ping messages to choirs or amplifiers as needed to reach farther away and share basically whatever the Astropath thinks of, even computer data (interpreted through cybernetics or technomancy).
The IoM's ability to mass produce extremely reliable Astropaths by bringing a sanctionable telepath into the presence of anything the soul-binding process can work though; like another Astropath or a warp-drive or the Astronomicon's booster nodes; is one of its greatest strategic strengths even if the Astropaths have been basically psychologically bullied into subservience to people who are actually deeply dependent on them. The fact that Astropaths are conditioned into accepting a life of basically being living internet modems with some bonus features while Navigators are one of the most powerful factions in the Imperium despite being far more inhuman by the IoM's standards because the Navigators have written record of their imperially mandated special status is meant to be one of those painful ironies.
Matter that creates anti-gravity because it causes spacetime to elevate rather than depress as positive (i.e normal) mass does. Can be used for a lot of hypothetical get-arounds the lightspeed barrier.
Under most models of physics, gravity comes from mass pushing downwards on spacetime, causing things to fall towards the centre of gravity if they lack the momentum to avoid this. Negative Mass would have the opposite effect, pulling spacetime upwards instead, which would make you fall away from the centre of mass instead. Of course the issue is that large objects hold themselves together by gravity while negative mass would push itself away and can only be bound together by other fundamental forces.
That's a thing in this setting too? Is it like how it is in marvel?
Also, the monkey King is here too, why am I not surprised? And what's his deal actually?
Hmm, given that a great one is on the way, which is essentially the Cthulhu to the angleless masters yog sothoth, i feel we should find a way to cut that thing off at the pass. Even though I want to learn more about the galaxies of darkness, I don't think we can fight a lovecraftian God, at least this early in the ge and while dealing with its minions, the chaos forces, and the possibility of greenskins, tyranids and Numerians.
And the fact that the tau know more about something than us, it feels like a blow below the belt.
Also, when our Ogor friends get here, let's have Raug duel the Iron Warriors leader, so as to break there unity and to give Raug that meal he and the Maw want. While also doing the same thing we did with the duel between khaine and that ork warboss whose name escapes me at this time.
Important to remember, the Asur/Tau are doing surgical strikes and penetration, the Lizardmen are preparing a deep battle. All of these things rely on openings. So I suggest we work on creating those for our allies.
The Strangers' tactical disposition remains a largely unknown factor, but based on the commentaries of prior strategists, they will likely target things that can threaten their hold on reality first, and move to support the Great One when it arrives at the battlefront.
Like this. Strategic offensive, tactical defensive. Use our Harmonic Broadcasters, and possibly some High Magic actions to create those threats, and draw them out of their positions to force them to come to us on our terms. Gaps will be created that the others can exploit.
Similarly, draw some of the Chaos leaders into duels and deal with them, let Chaos fracture. Maybe use High Magic to take out some of the planetcraft?
Hmmm I support the idea of trying to threaten the Stranger's and bring them into battle on our terms. While for the Chaos forces i do have a idea to consider, this force relies heavily on producing enough ammunition and weapons, maybe a use of High Magic to break some of their Main production sites or supply lines to weaken their own advances and give way for our own attacks.
