To play devil's advocate here there is no reason we would get any closer to the daemon world. We could aim our engines in the opposite direction and keep going. I think the larger problem is proximity to the Eye and all the chaos crawling out of it. The daemon world is a symptom, not the main issue.
Vox Vitae: Warhammer AI quest
- Thread starter Neablis
- Start date
- Mature Sci-Fi
To play devil's advocate here there is no reason we would get any closer to the daemon world. We could aim our engines in the opposite direction and keep going. I think the larger problem is proximity to the Eye and all the chaos crawling out of it. The daemon world is a symptom, not the main issue.
meianmaru
The Devourer of Fiction
True, but a daemon world just existing nearby means that the likelyhood of other chaotic shenanigans is increased. And while Vita can just run away if need, it would be somewhat more difficult for Denva.
A different Man of Stone might actually be able to pursue a 'nope, nope, we're taking the whole planet and going to find someplace less messed up' approach.
But Vita isn't the right character to spend a couple centuries creating a worldship.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The daemon world is what confirms them as a middle term threat, and possibly a short term one if we're unlucky.
Related, but it occurs to me that efficient shielding could let us fit in mass retrofitting of qll our installations with minor shielding (think 1-3 HP) to extract a cost to scrapcode spreading on top of machine spirits - while ruling out any assets with shields intact from infection, which could eliminate any possible second cleanse research being needed in a worst case.
But best of all, denva would inherit it. Very good for the military starter pack.
Related, but it occurs to me that efficient shielding could let us fit in mass retrofitting of qll our installations with minor shielding (think 1-3 HP) to extract a cost to scrapcode spreading on top of machine spirits - while ruling out any assets with shields intact from infection, which could eliminate any possible second cleanse research being needed in a worst case.
But best of all, denva would inherit it. Very good for the military starter pack.
- Location
- Boston
Speaking of adversaries, we still have an Eldari Maiden world and a Tyranid splinter fleet somewhere out there that we have no intel on.
I bet the 'Nids are to the west (Hearthward or Tiran), since I doubt the space marines would overlook mentioning them. The Eldar have great stealth when needed, so they could be anywhere.
Our Psychic shields will also be important against the 'nids to block their Shadow in the Warp. Although I'm unsure if that would impact Vita or just our beans.
/random thoughts
I bet the 'Nids are to the west (Hearthward or Tiran), since I doubt the space marines would overlook mentioning them. The Eldar have great stealth when needed, so they could be anywhere.
Our Psychic shields will also be important against the 'nids to block their Shadow in the Warp. Although I'm unsure if that would impact Vita or just our beans.
/random thoughts
Someone came up with idea (sorry I can't remember who!) and Neablis has added it to the tech list after efficient shields (underlined below). Even if we don't get that I agree 1-3 HP on everything would be fantastic. Defense in depth is always a great idea.
On the other hand Maiden Worlds don't exactly have any tech, they are the space elf Amish so they mostly make due with being unknown to the IoM.
They're specifically 'on good terms with the Craftworlds' so presumably there's a Craftworld Eldar presence in the area...
JuliusClonkus
Scatterbrained Speculator
- Location
- Federal Reichspublic of Karlsland
Proliferation of the psychic shielding is something I think should be an important thing anyway. The necessity of it is difficult to explain, of course, but I'm guessing it's a predecessor to the modern Gellar field that I bet isn't available at such small scales to the IoM.
I'd almost suggest to quietly smuggle samples and blueprints to them, if only because everything that fucks over Chaos is also good for us.
On the scrapcode generator thing, if you're so insistent on keeping it, can we at least lock in a part of our budget to continually fortifying the defenses around it? I really don't want to end up forgetting about that.
I'd almost suggest to quietly smuggle samples and blueprints to them, if only because everything that fucks over Chaos is also good for us.
On the scrapcode generator thing, if you're so insistent on keeping it, can we at least lock in a part of our budget to continually fortifying the defenses around it? I really don't want to end up forgetting about that.
What would that mean? We don't have a budget as such (BP are only generated by construction actions which we don't always do), and we don't have unbounded ability to scale up the vault.
JuliusClonkus
Scatterbrained Speculator
- Location
- Federal Reichspublic of Karlsland
Damn. Misunderstanding the rules then. I guess in that case I must stick to my suggestion for the scrapcode generator to be subjected to the Rite of Stellar Purification.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
I'm not sure how you are getting those odds- there are too many unknowns. And we've been diverting a lot of AP into handling immaterial attacks at the expense of bigger guns and stronger armor.
Which I think has already been called out as the real risk by the QM: opportunity costs. We don't get the other techs because we "have" to keep working on research against chaotic psychic attacks because we keep bongo, because bongo lets us research tech against chaotic psychic attacks better.
- Location
- Don't know
- Pronouns
- Whats/That
At the very least we can spend one action on studying Bongo and if the next time isn't too costly, we can keep him. Though if it's more than 200 like Alectai said, we should just Bongo into the sun.
meianmaru
The Devourer of Fiction
I would suggest witholding your judgement on the matter until we at least see what we got on this turn from our more generic studies on the Immaterium, where we got a crit. It is noted in the description of the "Further Scrapcode research" to synergizing with it.
I think we should keep grinding away at our Psychic Shielding techs regularly regardless of our choice about keeping Bongo or throwing it into a star. Either at low-burn or as our main focus occasionally. Obviously more often if we keep the Scrapcode Generator, but still as one of our main RP sinks even if we don't take it. Because there is one thing that we cannot exactly run away from as an explorer:
Warp travel.
Because seriously. We don't even have Imperium-quality Warp Drives, which should be more often than not actually pretty damn sophisticated. So the Gellar Fields generated by our current Warp Drive -design aren't exactly stress-tested against the current state of the warp yet. And even if we get better ones, Imperium loses ships to the warp all the time. Keeping our jumps short should help, but its still always a risk.
So yes, I would prefer that we have our Psychic Shields that were originally designed for warp-travel be continuously updated, so that daemons don't find a method to crack them when we are jumping from place to place.
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Of known threats, psy defense is important against chaos and probably helpful against tyranids, but doesn't fully counter either, both also require violence. We also need to worry about at least Space Marines (but we can aim to diplomacize them), Eldar (hopefully we can diplomacize them too) and Necrons (less likely we can diplomacize them, though it might be possible). And potentially unknowns.
That said, worrying about chaos is something the quest setup prompted as a major initial choice:
Notice the wording on our shielding (and for that matter the other 3-point option) that we will need to invest in building up from our starting point if we want to be secure against corruption. The emphasis some are placing on it may be too high, but shielding certainly did need to receive some attention if we don't want to play chaos-tainted Vita.
Remember our original, sketchy warp shields spent a pretty long time in the warp while we were out without the daemons figuring out a decisive counter. I have some doubt that the 'continuous security updates to defeat evolving threats' model is the right one vs. 'build a strong enough fortification for the assaults you face'.
Except maybe against Bongo specifically, but we can stop fighting Bongo whenever we want to.
And the time we spent in the warp then is proof that what causes investigations is daemons seeing Vita thinking about them. During all those thousands of years, she was barely thinking, so she was effectively invisible in the warp. The scratches that happened then were daemons bumping up against this shell by pure chance and investigating it, but they still didn't sense anything inside that enticed them.
That is potentially a defense, now that I think of it.
That is potentially a defense, now that I think of it.
A defense Vita has been actively practicing since her initial read-up on the Archenemy files. She stuck all the spicy lore in a mental partition where she can't think about it without deliberately going in there. And avoided telling any of the beans enough to attract attention themselves. (Cia, of course, risks attracting attention independent of that.)
- Location
- Don't know
- Pronouns
- Whats/That
Problem is things can still be corrupted. It might work as a way to hide but when Vita gets found out, we'll have to think of something else.
Angle
Release Candidate Enby
- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Theirs/Comrade
Hmm. Maybe a system that disguises sapient thoughts behind a whole lot of really boring background noise? Though that might just attract demons to poke it out of sheer curiosity...
meianmaru
The Devourer of Fiction
Yes, but that was still the nicer Warp before the Age of Strife and the Fall of Eldar. With the Chaos Gods still sleeping and no Slaanesh. Non-linear relation to time or not, at the very least their influence was massively weaker both in the Immaterium and in the Materium.
Article: The Fall of the Eldar occurred over ten thousand years ago and ended the Eldar's supremacy in The Galaxy. Before the Fall, the Eldar were at the height of their empire and held sway over the vast majority of the galaxy; their worlds were paradises and full of peace and cultural achievement, and then it was all but destroyed. It is said that trillions of Eldar died in the cataclysm.[2]
Article: The Age of Strife, also known as Old Night, was a destructive, anarchic and regressive time period prior to the forming of the Imperium. It followed the Dark Age of Technology, which by all accounts was an age of great prosperity. The Age of Strife began in M25[5] and ended in M30.[2]
So unfortunately no, our shielding is not tested even slightly in the current state of the Warp.
Daemons were an occasional problem that could be kept in check (mostly) by the Eldar gods. Not the near-omnipresent corruption it is the modern W40k setting. The warp before Vita escaped it and crash-landed on Denva was very different to what it is now. Kinda like comparing our RL oceans, but with giant eldritch monsters sleeping at its depths and occasionally their servants rising to snatch unsuspecting mortals...
To one that is all in a constant state of varying degrees of stormy weather, going up to "world-ending" and made out of radioactive/caustic/toxic/mutagenic. water. And the water also wants to eat your soul. And the eldritch monsters have awakened and sent their servants forth, and the sea is trashing full of them even on the surface as far as the eye can see.
I realize that metaphor was breaking down at the end, but I just want to emphasize that not taking current day warp travel seriously would be a bad idea. Which is why I want to keep updating the shields as time goes on, as we are bound to draw more and more attention, which might make us a priority target for various daemons.
And uh, lets hope that we won't draw even a passing glance from any of the actual Chaos Gods themselves for a loooong time. Because I'm pretty sure that even a glancing attention from one of them would crush our current shielding. Luckily, we are also probably too small and insignificant at the moment for them to care that much. Yet that can change in the long-term, so again, my drive for constant updates to our shielding.
Not every single turn obviously, but I don't want us to ever fully stop and get complacent thinking that it is finally enough for the rest of the quest.
Regardless of what we do with Bongo I think we should grab the minor psykers next turn. We are unlikely to ever find a planet with this (relative) abundance of human psykers willing to hand them over to us. On the one hand Denva had whatever set up the monasteries and on the other they had a system of governance that was not inclined to go full 'Burn the Witch' the moment they came out from under imperial law. Right now all our psyker options are pyromancy related, but especially with the warp crit we might get openings for diviners, biomancers or telepaths while having none to make use of them. Unlike grabbing Ker this would not take up a crew slot either, which is I think a good thing since a diverse crew would be both more interesting and more useful long term.