Thanks for the excellent chapter @Neablis! I'll comment more in the morning (in my timezone) after I've slept on it and read other's thoughts, ideas, plans and opinions, but if you'll forgive me for being a bit nitpicky, I noticed a few discrepancies:

The remains on her face, giving the lie to the drama.

Is there meant to be a word like "grin" or "smile" between "The" and "remains" in this sentence?

But that's not how the Empire functions, nooo.

"That's gone now. The Empire, fifteen thousand years of warfare. That spirit is crushed. It's all duty and denial, not hope and wonder."

Secondly, is Vita referring to the Imperium as "the Empire" an in-character choice/flavour (reflecting her internal perception of the Imperium), or is the term unintentionally being used interchangeably?

I should stress that I don't mind either way. It's perfectly understandable why Vita might mentally (and verbally) assign a different moniker to the Imperium (which ultimately means the same thing anyway), especially when she has thus far been dealing with it as more of an abstract concept and entity in the background instead of directly in the here and now. I'm just curious about your intentions behind the wording.

"Denva Secundus is still a single planet, with a population of several billion.

Thirdly, I was wondering - has the population count of Denva Secundus changed significantly (increasing/declining/stagnating) since we initially awoke? Since it was initially approx. ~4 billion, and the population is still described as "several billion", I'm guessing it almost certainly couldn't have exceeded 10 billion people and is probably closer to 4, 5 or 6 billion than 7, 8 or 9 billion given the implied value of "several".

I was mostly wondering because it seems to me that they will almost certainly need much more dramatic population growth to colonise the wider Denva system, let alone surrounding (new/uninhabited/"virgin" or inhabited pre-Rift) systems, even if we assume many orders of magnitude greater ratios of automation to humanity than almost anywhere else in (or has been in) the Imperium.

Perhaps we can do some joint research collaboration on cloning? 🤔
 
B/c there's a difference between fighting against Chaos forces in realspace and going into the Warp without a Gellar Field. There's a reason that hearing that the Gellar Field failed is one of the most terrifying things a ship's crew can hear

Right and remind me what happened when Shadowsun met that goddess? No really remind me I'm kind of drawing a blank here and I need to go shopping right now.

Also has anybody else thought that maybe the Chapter is just here for the Psykers? As in they are looking for either a corruption in the monasteries because some divination or they want more Librarians so they went looking for some Psyker Initiates.
 
Oh they won't, they will just speed off and come back with an invasion fleet when we are gone to stomp Denva's democracy to death and steal all the tech.

Im gonna keep it straight
your ideas are kneejerk and panic driven most of the time
(KILL THEM,BURN,RUN)

we kill them and we will get a invasion anyways (albeit with a longer prep time) when the chaoter eventually explors the region their battlw brothers dissapeared

We try tricking them and we got a chance of not having to deal with imperial invasion by laying low
And we can still kill them if it doesn work

So the option boils to

>kill them (get invaded)
>trick them (with chance of not working in wich case we kill them anyways)
 
Im gonna keep it straight
your ideas are kneejerk and panic driven most of the time
(KILL THEM,BURN,RUN)

we kill them and we will get a invasion anyways (albeit with a longer prep time) when the chaoter eventually explors the region their battlw brothers dissapeared

We try tricking them and we got a chance of not having to deal with imperial invasion by laying low
And we can still kill them if it doesn work

So the option boils to

>kill them (get invaded)
>trick them (with chance of not working in wich case we kill them anyways)

Er... what? I'm not arguing to kill them I'm arguing for Ancient cover over Explorator which I do not think would stand up to scrutiny given the planet down there transmitting signals.
 
Saying we are a lost ship and -asking- about the God-Emperor might get us some interest in a good way. The Eclessiarchy does have missionary services and if we sound genuine about wanting to know, the Marines might calm down enough to at least talk about him.
 
Er... what? I'm not arguing to kill them I'm arguing for Ancient cover over Explorator which I do not think would stand up to scrutiny given the planet down there transmitting signals.

You are arguing in a "is over" panicky tone without actually giving ideas in how to trick them

You are defaulting into "they already know" stance that just lead to kill them as only viable option

If you arent trying to argue for killing them,for sure doesnt seem so
 
Since Vita is a nice AI, and the Emperor is not a nice person, and the people doing stuff in his name aren't much better.

You read further about the Imperium and feel sicker and sicker. It sounds like a religious fascistic state that prides itself on pride and purity. A state that uses unspecified "Xenos" and... mutants as the scaepgoats to justify their iron-fisted rule.

Well that's pretty messed up. Aliens are just people! And genetic disorders need treatment, not pogroms!
Anger bubbles through your system as you read further about the imperial government. The religion, the Imperial Creed. The administratum, and their enforcement arm of the Arbites. It all seems like a cruel joke played upon the universe. But if all of this information is to believed, it is no joke. It's a fascist militaristic state that spans the entire galaxy and draws ruinous 'tithes' from all of its worlds to keep itself stable and keep wars going against all of the foes of the empire.

Like, just this turn we defied the Emperor's orders by being nice to a Xenos, giving up human technology and equipment for zero benefit on our side. That's enough offense for several genocides.
 
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You are arguing in a "is over" panicky tone without actually giving ideas in how to trick them

You are defaulting into "they already know" stance that just lead to kill them as only viable option

If you arent trying to argue for killing them,for sure doesnt seem so
IF

The marines do get word to the Imperium, then, in all likelihood, it will be over. Because that's just a part of the setting. There's a reason secessionist and/or recidivist human realms rarely last long.

No iffs, no butts. If the Imperium at large wants this world gone, it will be.
 
[] Anexa: Master of Many Talents
Doubles specialty capacity & bonuses (so will be able to have 4 specialties, and each give +10 to the dice roll and potentially unlock new technologies when she uses them)
[] Anexa: Jack of All knowledge
Anexa now contributes +level/3 (round up) to the research roll in addition to additional RP

These two traits are the most similar, so let's compare them. For the first, Anexa gives a really big +10 to research in her two specialties, and she can potentially acquire up to two more. For research she's specialized in, that means going from a 10% chance of Poor Success to a 5% chance, and from a 35% chance of a crit to a 40% chance. (Our baseline without Anexa is 15% and 30%.) For everything else, this doesn't do anything unless Anexa crits and gains a new specialty. Which isn't too unlikely, but this trait heavily encourages us to focus Anexa on the specialties she already has, so it's possible, if unlikely, that she only picks up one additional specialty or even doesn't get any by the time she hits level 20.

For the second, for all research Anexa gives an additional +4 currently at level 11, a +5 at level 14, a +6 at level 17, and a +7 at level 20. (And more later on, but that's after the level 20 bonus.) If this stacks with the +5 to her two specialties, then she'll be immediately giving a +9 in her specialties in addition to +4 everywhere else, which will eventually grow to a +11 and larger. She won't be able to acquire any more specialties, but will have an increasingly large bonus to every research. And even if it doesn't stack, it's still overall a huge boost to everything. (If the bonus doesn't stack somehow, would mean she'd have a flat +6 to everything at level 17? Or would it work some other way?)

A lot of this comes down to where we expect to put our future research. If we want to heavily focus of Machine Spirit and/or The Warp research, the former is better. But if we expect to focus on other things, or we expect to keep researching in many categories, the latter is often going to be better. Overall, I think I favor Jack of All knowledge. Anything Anexa helps research will be both significantly more likely to crit and less likely to have a Poor Success. (This also means she's more likely to level up overall.) And eventually, at level 29, it'd be equivalent to having the Master of Many Talents and being specialized in everything, rather than just four categories.

[] Anexa: High Throughput Researcher
Anexa contributes +10xlevel RP to research actions.

Crits reduce the cost of follow-up research. This? This just gives us more research, period. At her current level 11, Anexa goes from +55 RP to +110 RP, and at level 20 this would boost her from +100 RP to +200 RP. We often only do one research action per turn. This trait would mean we immediately have +55% more RP to use in research, up to 150% the amount of RP we can use each turn on one research action.

Where the first two traits only give discounts when they crit, this is like consistently getting a 55 RP discount to a research project, wherever we want, each and every turn. Scaling up to a 100 RP discount. And while it doesn't give a die bonus, it does mean we roll more research dice overall. And the more dice you roll, the more likely you are to crit. But where this trait falls behind is that it doesn't reduce the chance to roll a Poor Success. And those can sometimes increase the cost of follow-up research by hundreds of RP. Overall, I think Jack of All knowledge would be better than this trait.

[] Anexa: Industrial Planner
Anexa's secondary action becomes one that improves construction actions, contributing +5xlevel% BP to a construction action.

So. +50% BP is a lot. But we have scaling industry. Anywhere we have the time to establish ourselves, we can get to massive levels of BP quickly. And more importantly, Anexa wouldn't be able to level up when doing this action. I can't see us doing this action more than very rarely.
 
alright just got home so now i'm on my computer time to do some math and heavy exposition

so we have some probable blood angels descendants or we could be fucking unlucky and they're dark angels instead which would suck beyond all belief anyway we just gotta roll with being a pre-DAoT explorer that got stuck in the warp for 100 years and is now kinda freaked about what we've heard about humanity, especially tech-priests and how they make things so inefficiently that an explorer crew can out build them and if they ask how we survived the warp for so long just explain experimental anti warp tech which has been getting hammered also the techpriest in charge tried to use killsats against a civilian population that's the sorta thing that gets accidents caused.

enough about the spacies let's talk about goals for this turn so denva has suddenly been spotted by a big fish which isn't great even if the Marines don't get the administratum involved shit is still fucked they're in no way prepared to face off against anything the imperium might throw at them the only thing saving them is the imperium left and there's emperor worship and no chaos so there's a good chance that promising initiate recruitment with a high amount of pskers as candidates due to no blackships might be enough to stay any intervention.

on the research end, we want Improved combat Machine spirits and Personal-sized Psychic shielding so why these? In case things go wrong our troops will get better chances in combat and an example of the tech we used to stay sane in the warp oh what's that we could build more of these for the space marines wouldn't that be a nice benefit?


-[] Aerithon installations: Keep them
You always need more void manufacturing capability. You'll also gain the ability to use the logistics base to build 50x void manufactories for half-price.
no point in not keeping them we can just drop a defense platform there to destroy them if we need to leg it

[] Cia: Yes
She will begin training her psyker powers in simulated combat against bots and target dummies. This means that she will specialize towards personal combat, more of a champion role. But she'll be less able to use large-scale psytech and won't lean into commanding as much.
everything I wanted from her we need a champion more than a commander.

[] Anexa: Jack of All knowledge
Anexa now contributes +level/3 (round up) to the research roll in addition to additional RP
so this is pretty much improving success artificial crits are still crits sure it'll max out at +10 but's still a tenth of a D100
 
Oh they won't, they will just speed off and come back with an invasion fleet when we are gone to stomp Denva's democracy to death and steal all the tech.
And where they will find this invasion fleet?
It's abandoned part of the galaxy in the process of being "Nom Nom Nom" they probably seeking someone to help them survive and don't give fuck about invading anyone.
We may say whatever and then ask them "And what are you going to do about it?", they can either live with it or die trying to enforce some imperial absurdity.
Either way they are low level random encounter consisting of technologically primitive religious fanatics.
 
IF

The marines do get word to the Imperium, then, in all likelihood, it will be over. Because that's just a part of the setting. There's a reason secessionist and/or recidivist human realms rarely last long.

No iffs, no butts. If the Imperium at large wants this world gone, it will be.

Well you are assuming the Imperium still... exists. For all we know it fell at some point in the last hundred years. We are actually somewhat beyond the canon timeline at this point and the IoM wasn't doing so hot at that point even with Smurf-man back awake.
 
IF

The marines do get word to the Imperium, then, in all likelihood, it will be over. Because that's just a part of the setting. There's a reason secessionist and/or recidivist human realms rarely last long.

No iffs, no butts. If the Imperium at large wants this world gone, it will be.
This is post Great Rift. The Imperium, as it exists, has suffered significant losses and lack ability to move it's own forces without the astronomicon. We're in an area that was remote before the Imperium abandonned it, and right now it's been considered lost for centuries.

Like, yeah, the Imperium can still deploy a fleet big enough to kill us, I don't doubt that. But they can't afford to deploy a fleet to every threat they're facing.
We just need to make sure we stay on the bottom of the TODO list.
 
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Well you are assuming the Imperium still... exists. For all we know it fell at some point in the last hundred years. We are actually somewhat beyond the canon timeline at this point and the IoM wasn't doing so hot at that point even with Smurf-man back awake.
This is post Great Rift. The Imperium, as it exists, has suffered significant losses and lack ability to move it's own forces without the astronomicon. We're in an area that was remote before the Imperium abandonned it, and right now it's been considered lost for centuries.

Like, yeah, the Imperium can still deploy a fleet big enough to kill us, I don't doubt that. But they can't afford to deploy a fleet to every threat they're facing.
We just need to make sure we stay on the bottom of the TODO list.
The technological bounty of this world would be enough to justify an Adeptus Mechanicus force moving in to grab it. I do agree that word -not- reaching the Imperium in any meaningful way is still possible. Quite so, in fact.

But shrugging off the threat this represents would be foolish.
 
If we go with either of the stories, Mechanicus finding a DAoT ship and restoring it, or the one much closer to the truth of Vita being an Ancient human from the DAoT? We should think what kind of bribes they might be interested in enough to potentially tolerate our and Denva's existence separate from the Imperium, but also what kind of technology we want to give them access to.

Reverse-engineering in the Imperium, fortunately, is a slow process even with the source being a reasonably verifiable non-Chaos-corrupted and/or non-AI-based human technology. And the Mechanicus often doesn't succeed in figuring out how to make more of the stuff, or even tries it at all. Hell, even STC fragments get studied for years (decades?) usually before being put into production. But it still does happen sometimes.

And I'm for keeping what we give to them as a finished product. No giving them blueprints. Even the psychic shield are something I don't want out in the wild, at least before we iterate on them enough. I want to prevent this, so that if the technology finds itself in the wrong hands (hi Chaos), it will be outdated enough that they cannot discern that much useful information about weaknesses from it.
IF

The marines do get word to the Imperium, then, in all likelihood, it will be over. Because that's just a part of the setting. There's a reason secessionist and/or recidivist human realms rarely last long.

No iffs, no butts. If the Imperium at large wants this world gone, it will be.
We do have one advantage here. The place was abandoned. It means that the Imperium could be still stretched enough that it doesn't think it can reasonably claim and hold this place in the forseeable future. Things like Vita being an AI would definitely change that calculation if we let it slip (thankfully, no one outside of the crew knows). And even her being an Ancient? Mechanicus would be after us like bloodhounds, if they can afford it even with grievous losses elsewhere. For the promise of the technology we hold.

But even the Mechanicus can't stretch its limits endlessly, no matter how tempting the prize. So the question is: what kind of situation we are dealing here? Did they manage to quell the unrest nearby already? Did they not? What is the reason of this visit? And so on.
Well, we're opposed to chaotic corruption, and when it comes to the others, they don't know that and don't need to. ;)
The problem is how easily they can find it out from the civilian radio/other broadcasts, and how near the planet they need to be to know. Because they won't exactly like humans tolerating xenos.
 
Oh and another thing no talking about the warp Abacus no matter fucking what the navigators would demand our death on the spot and with the current situation no one has the ability to say no.
 
Hmm, not sure the best way to go about the space marines. Though this means we IC now know there are still some seriously dangerous threats in the sector in some amount (for all the navigators and mechanicus left stuff, there was no guarantees they'd ever return).

So that plus how Denva unified, I'm leaning towards giving them the stations to run as a boost, and giving them what we know as far as technology/science (with maybe a special conversation with W or someone about Chaos and the threat in it to be safe). And as part of that I think figuring out the implants to let people command robots would be big, and maybe power armor to keep any people on the battlefield safe. Give them the ability to protect themselves, and to grow. Add in figuring out how to build a void abacus and gifting them that knowledge and I think we'd be in really good shape to be able to move on when we want.


As for Cia, I think champion makes a little more sense for now, but I'm not set on it.

Anexa I really like the specialty boost one - possibly having four fields she can add new research topics in would be amazing
 
If we go with either of the stories, Mechanicus finding a DAoT ship and restoring it, or the one much closer to the truth of Vita being an Ancient human from the DAoT? We should think what kind of bribes they might be interested in enough to potentially tolerate our and Denva's existence separate from the Imperium, but also what kind of technology we want to give them access to.

Civilian Implants maybe? It would be really prestigious for the tech-marines who have some ad mech culture in them, but would not make them all that much more deadly in fight
 
Well you are assuming the Imperium still... exists. For all we know it fell at some point in the last hundred years. We are actually somewhat beyond the canon timeline at this point and the IoM wasn't doing so hot at that point even with Smurf-man back awake.

You're assuming that is how dates and time work in 40k. Don't. There are still places in current Canon where it is still 999 M41.
 
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