Nobledark Imperium Part IXb: Wraithbone Balls Edition (Plus bonus DLC)

Pre-WOTB, the DAs were the largest and oldest Astartes Legion. During the WotB, 2/3rds DA broke away with Luther to crusade against Imperial Eldar Sectors, diverting massive resources and slated reinforcements needed against the Crone Eldar and their Green Hordes.

I think part of the reason why no one has really been able to deal with what day to day life is like in the Imperium is that the exact nature of living conditions that are going to be available to the average citizen are heavily dependent on what the Emperor allows. In general, in 40k things are so bad because people are desperate to survive because the Imperium has almost nothing and so almost anything is allowed.

But here, you don't have as great of a lack of technology due to trade with the Eldar, the Emperor leaning on the Ad-Mech a bit more and no Horus Heresy to double-fuck everything so standards of living go down. Most hive cities are pretty nice places to live now, and since in this timeline he is much more of a humanitarian, the Emperor is going to put his foot down over things like Penitent Engines or extreme dehumanization of servitors. The Emperor may not be averse to slavery or oppose servitorization for the Imperium's worst crimimals, but there's no way he would allow something like an Arco-Flagellant to exist.

Of course, the Emperor can't be everywhere, and a lot of shady stuff is going to be done behind his back, but on the whole it's going to be pretty hard to get away with the brazen acts of dehumanization that are so typical of grimdark!40k. Much of civilian life is going to end up being completely different just because you don't have hoards of people living off corpsestarch on every planet and people being whipped to manually load ship cannons. Of course, this increased glory of the cities just serves to show how much is at stake if the Imperium goes down and gives people a reason to fight against the darkness, even if it may be futile, as befits a Nobledark universe.

Before I go any further with my own colony fluff I'm just gonna post a really short summary too make sure this stuff ain't too sue or slaps previous fluff in the face.

So the system is located on the outer edge of segmentum obscurus.

The colony goes from a regular mining society to a technocratic meritocracy due to a change in leadership.

The events leading to the change in leadership makes the heir cold but cooperative towards the Imperium.

The colony shares some of their work publicly but a lot of it is kept secret and hidden in undocumented locations.

Every generation since the heir was made in charge have been subjugated to rigorous education.
(think cadians military training but... sciency)
Those who succeed may reside on the capital planet, those who fail are sent to secundus to work on the agri world.
The success rate is fairly high (78%).

All financial surplus is dedicated to scientific discoveries by either constructing new facilities or obtaining more equipment to aid research teams and the education of the young.

The PDF excels at large scale defensive warfare and smaller offensive skirmishes and is hard to defeat when organized but their military apparatus suffer greatly from the following.

Attrition-
The AdMech HATES these people and want nothing to do with them.
This gives them a very small fleet and problems of maintaining supply lines should they have to move forces outside of the system.
Only a few ships before the change in leadership remain with warp travel capability

Technological crutch-
Their military training is focused on using technology and when it fails they panic.

Their unique military tech will be shown in greater detail when I post the large fluffy chunk (as long as the seem okay, if not I will rework it).

(1/2)

While not as advanced in general as the creations of the AdMech, this society knows exactly how everything they've made works in the tiniest detail.
They also know how their surroundings work to the same extent as we do today plus some additional advances(can't make them too hamstrung).

The Imperium at large don't care about this colony apart from getting their tithes on due.
But there are a handful of individuals who know the secret technology they are working on and can't wait for its completion.

There is a lot of other stuff regarding their technology, society and culture but I don't wanna spoil anything until I can post the detailed description.

(2/2)

The fluff seems reasonable given that other civilizations like the Interex or the Squats can maintain a level of autonomy or even outright freedom from the toaster fuckers.

What reason would the DAs have to be the biggest legion? They don't have the logistics of a legion like the Ultramarines.

To give a little more detail on how Luther manages to win over so many DAs, I see Lion in this AU savant in military tactics but potentially somewhere on the autism spectrum. He relies heavily on Luther for dealing with people and running the day to day, which would make Luther a Primarch in all but name and level of influence close to the Lion's within the legion.

I see where you're coming from, but I do think it strays from the core Jaghatai, who I never saw particularly compassionate or concerned with individual people, but rather uniting humanity as a whole. However, I will defer to you as the writefag as you took the time to write it up, so keep up the good work.

page 9 bump, c'mon guys

I like the idea of Lion being genuinely slightly autistic.

The you could have a conversation with him but you probably wouldn't enjoy it level of autism.

Keep in mind that the Imperium is assaulted on all sides and has been in a state of war since it's Founding days.

It's grandeur has faded. The siege has gone on for too long. Perty might have designed those Hives to offer some comforts to the masses but in the dying of the Dark Millennium they are in less than optimal condition.

There is poverty but is not this time created from indifference.

Squats have their own branch of the Mechanicus.

It features a lot more hand made things of high quality but are less good at industrial level things.

Fuck me I didn't know that.

This is from one of the earlier threads correct?

There's been ten threads, there's bound to be some misinformation.

I don't think it has been discussed, but that sounds reasonable enough to me. The Mechanicus probably let the Squats do their own thing since they see them more as tinkerers and artisan rather than true industrialists and scientists.

Yes but based on the Engineers Guild from old GW fluff I think.

I also liked to imagine that they were way more socialist than the rest of the Imperium. They had longevity treatments but thy would only implement them if they could be shared by all. The result was everyone got to live to be 220 and maybe a bit more. Contrast to the Imperium where almost everybody has a basic human lifespan but the exceptional can live to be a thousand.

Also the longevity treatments keep you healthy but they don't keep you young. Most of your time you send as a spry and quite well preserved old person, but still old. Consequently birth rate was slower than the population numbers would suggest at first glance.

Result is that their armies are lacking in brute man power but supplemented with hand crafted Legio Cybernetica. They argue that they have not broken the First Commandment because they are not true A.I. becasue they lack sufficient intelligence and are usually somewhere between a well train dog and cuttlefish in terms of brains.

Mechanicus still REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE at them because degrees of blasphemy is still blasphemy. Sadly for the Mars Mechanicus the Hub Worlds are a Survivor Civilization and so joined the Imperium on the exact same style of deal that Mars did so they can go fuck themselves.

The Martian Priesthood got some level of revenge by erroneously classifying them as abhuman. They aren't. They look like that due to the gravity on their home worlds. If they raise their kids on a world with weak pussy gravity they grow up to look like regular humans.

Are there additional C'tan or just the same 4?

Good thing you guys are around otherwise I probably would have made an ass of myself in a later thread.

Why worry? I'm just making shit up as I go along.

Have a random click pic.

I'm imagining the imperium is more Art Deco than gothic in this canon, mimicking vague memories of the grace and absolution of their old technology, so it's aging structures would produce a megalithic Great Depression vibe. I imagine many golden Aquila and skulls would be replaced with gleaming winged humanoids and more varied sculptural conceits devised to fit the ship. The mechanicus would still provide the hash, mechanical gothic aesthetics. The millennia the high imperial architecture has stood would produce an appearance of grandly ornamented superstructures studding garden continents, all falling into dilapidation and disrepair but still populated, still functional, and in some places retaining the old luster and gleam, though mostly the beauty of the average imperial city is int graceful aging, being as fine to live in copper green, grown over with ancient trees, and covered with moss as they are in gleaming brass and stark, beautiful architecture.
As the original, gracefully implemented systems have failed installations needed to either develop the technical know how to maintain and work their systems or turn to the mechanicus of the hadn't already, often leading to the old mechanicus gothic sort of architecture growing out of cities's technological installations and operations.
A crusade era hive may now look almost like a lonely mountain, terraced with forest and tarnished but gleaming city and ringed with great chasms to its inner metropolis, great men and women in adamantine cast discernible as pillars supporting decks of mountainside, and spires of grey mechanicus machinery emerging from is sides, tending to the ancient generators and automanufactoties. The outlying country still bears the mark of Perturbo or some other artist of continents hand, and still bear monumental arcades and vista spanning leisure gardens, long since put to more practical use or left to grow wild.

Along the borders of the Necron Empire and the Imperium is the rather backwater Tomb World of Solemnace. Solemnace is a rather dreary if temperate world with abundant cloud cover and precipitation and high rates of tectonic uplift causing the land surface to be covered in a number of steep cliffs and craggy peaks. Solemnace is rather odd for a tomb world, if for nothing else than its large population of living subjects, with the Necrons making up a sizeable minority (40%) of the population as a military and aristocratic class. Part of this is due to the fact that Solemnace is one of the oldest awoken Tomb Worlds known to the Imperium. The Imperium first discovered Solemnace early in the Great Crusade, before the Eldar had truly become part of the Imperium. At first, it was thought that Solemnace represented the homeworld of yet another xenos race that were not fond of humanity, yet not a true threat to the Imperium. As such, the planet was noted and the Imperium as a whole moved on. By the time the Eldar had realized what Solemnace was and had brought their warning to the wider attention of the Imperium, it was too late. The Necrons of Solemnace had regained their senses, and Phaeron Trazyn the Infinite resumed the throne once more. However, the Necrons of Solemnace seemed content to remain isolationists on their own little world, and even in their diminished state the technology of the Necrons would have made the costs of conquering Solemnace too great to justify for a single planet. The Imperium breathed a sigh of relief, believing the Necrons of Solemnace to be the last remnants of an otherwise long-extinct race. The existence of Solemnace in the first place, as well as the devastating attack of the World Engine from the other side of the Eastern Fringe in M34, should have been enough to suggest otherwise.

Over the years, generations of refugees have fled to Solemnace, either from planets destroyed by war or by people dissatisfied with the policies of the Imperium, and those people and their descendants have formed a generalized underclass beneath the necrocracy. Trazyn keeps his subjects cared for, but helpless, such that none may challenge the authority of the ruler of Solemnace. Notably absent among the underclass are Eldar, who would never allow themselves to live under Necron rule and instead tend to flee to craftworlds if they become refugees.
Although the policies of Solemnace are highly isolationist, its ruler is decidedly not. Indeed, Phaeron Trazyn the Infinite can almost be described as a xenophile of sorts. Trazyn the Infinite is a collector of all things strange in the universe, from a variety of races. Indeed, Solemnace is less a kingdom and more Trazyn’s private collection gallery and playground, with the presence of an actual government being a byproduct. When he is not ruling directly, Trazyn travels the galaxy from the shadows, looking for exotic novelties to add to his collection. “Acquiring” these novelties often requires discrete acts which many Imperial worlds would describe as “illegal” or “immoral”, but never audacious or impudent enough that the Imperium could justify declaring war against Solemnace. Indeed, if anything, Trazyn’s acts have increased in brazenness since the Necrons have begun waking en masse, now that the Imperium knows that Solemnace is not just some isolated backwater world they could crush and no one would notice.

Why has the Imperium basically grumbled and done nothing while Trazyn pilfers their territory for collectables? It basically comes down to politics. Solemnace is also notable among Tomb Worlds for its independence. When the Emperor offered the more independent and “eccentric” Necron Lords sanctuary within the Imperium, Trazyn turned him down. And at the same time, Solemnace does not obey the Silent King. Trazyn the Infinite bows his head to no one. As much as the Imperium would like to be able to turn Solemnace into a pile of space rubble, it is still one of the most powerful Tomb Worlds not under the command of the Silent King. As a result, Solemnace would be a powerful asset, and the Imperium believes that given his habits if Trazyn was forced to choose between Imperium and the Necron Empire Trazyn would probably side with the Imperium (they’d probably be right). The issue is that Trazyn has never been put in a situation where he would be forced to show his hand.

So, Nobledark!Trazyn. Not too different from regular Trazyn, but with the Doctor Doom turned up to 11. Solemnace starts out a lot like Switzerland, too small and neutral to be threatening to yet too heavily defended to be worth conquering. Has diplomatic channels with the Imperium, but they try to avoid using them unless absolutely necessary because Trazyn’s ego seems to take up too much room for oxygen. Trazyn is still around doing his “collecting” and aspiring to be one of the biggest trolls in the universe, but because he is mostly doing his collecting from the shadows and never does anything serious like kidnap several key military regiments in the middle of a Black Crusade, the Imperium can never nail him down on anything specific. Once Trazyn actually starts becoming a pain in the ass, the Imperium can’t just crush him as he is one of the more powerful independent Necron Lords, and they need to play nice with him to try and get him over to their side.

A lot like Doom, Trazyn rules fairly, but despotically, though in this case Trazyn is more focused on expanding his collection than conquering the galaxy. Indeed, he loves the current variety of the galaxy, as it gives him so many subjects to be interested in and people to loot. Life on Solemnace isn’t that bad, except occasionally one of the “pets” from Trazyn’s menagerie gets out and ends up rampaging around killing the peasants until the Necron military step in and put it down. So basically like living in Hollywood Transylvania.

I moved up Trazyn’s awakening to be one of the earlier tomb worlds to be awakened, since the 40k fluff says there were some tomb worlds that woke up early and got steamrolled by the Great Crusade, and part of Trazyn’s lore is that he was around to dick around with the primarchs (who would otherwise be dead by this time). It also nicely feeds into Trazyn’s ego regarding the Silent King: it took that idiot millennia to fully awaken whereas Trazyn accomplished that goal in a fraction of the time. If this doesn't mesh with the lore please feel free to change it to fit better.

I suggested moving the World Engine’s appearance up to sometime between the WotB and the Apostasy. Someone said that we don’t have enough galaxy-wide events going on between those two events to justify why the Imperium hasn’t been able to completely catch its breath, and I think a planet-sized weapon of mass destruction of what is supposed to be an extinct race showing up out of nowhere and wreaking a path of destruction through the Imperium until being stopped definitely fits the bill. Plus it gives the potential for a lot of heroic last stands, very nobledark. Unlike in vanilla!40k, no one knows what the purpose of the World Engine was or what it was trying to do. All anyone can tell is that it was following millenia-old programming, possibly having been commanded ages ago by a long-gone Necron Lord to destroy a world that may no longer even exist. Even Trazyn professed to not know what the World Engine was doing or that the thing even existed upon being asked by the Imperium, though he would “love to have a piece of it if you have one lying around”.

I like it. It represents what the Imperium was, what it has become, and what it could be if it ever got its shit together again. Though that possibility seems less and less likely every day.

I've been painting a lot lately, this wasn't intended to be nobledark imperium stuff but I admit I've been thinking about the aesthetic I described quite a lot. I'd say the pic could be a crusade era image of some famous ship at dock.

>Also Cegorach supplying confusing and contradictory information to all sides for no reason other than just because.
I like the idea of slaanesh insisting he/she/it ate a Man of Gold during the fall or age of strife, and even chaos kinda doubting it. Maybe all of the chaos gods' followers have some legend about how their God already beat a/the Men of Gold at their full potential, but the stories are all pretty dubious, and are all more interested in invalidating the claims made in the other gods' legends.

Does this mean we've finally found a drawfag??

DA is Legion I. The oldest Legion and its subunits function more like separate Legions on their own rather than the efficiency of the Ultramarines.

Continuing my thoughts on the slaaneshi condition, slaaneshi chaos eldar needing to stave of being eaten by feeding slaanesh other souls is already the dark eldar's thing, and they're already explicitly serving chaos. Since Slaanesh is weakened because he has to vie with Isha for eldar souls after death it would even make sense for the prince of pleasure to explicitly offer the sadistic but self preserving dark eldar a deal where they hunt for souls and deliver them and their feelings unto Slaanesh to keep their own incredibly slaaneshi existence free. They're the dominatrix that slaanesh pays to bust into your house in the night, loosen up your bum, and drag you to the dungeon.

Eldar worshippers of slaanesh, the real cultists, are there because they really love the idea of being slaany's mind bending fucktoy, and a little snuff at the end of a session with the prince/princess is hardly a problem for them. The high echelon of the slaaneshi cult have been violated and ended in innumerable ways by their master and love, and have done the same to Slaany for their master's pleasure. Because the Slaaneshi chaos eldar have the greatest psychic conceptual influence over Slaanesh and are the most influenced by their god's corruption they essentially become a recursively self-depraving magical realm. Slaanesh and the Slaaneshi eldar love each other and are perfect for each other, and whenever Slaany eats an old favorite it can't help eventually recreating them for more, because it can never get enough.

Or as one user put it when that writefaggotry was originally posted, "an entire race of Sigvald the Magnificents."

If the Lion was slightly autistic, it would also explain why he went so overboard with the NONE PURER and PURGE THE HERETIC after the WotB, especially since he might see a lot of the handiwork of the Fallen as his responsibility in some way.

A lot of people in these threads have been asking "if there was no Horus Heresy, why would Gulliman recommend breaking the legions up into chapters". One reason he might have done so would be to keep any legion from completely falling to Chaos as almost happened with the DAs. If the Legion is divided up into several sub-groups, each of which are taught to watch each other in case of any suspicious behavior, then it become much harder for a chunk of a Legion to be corrupted by Chaos without anyone noticing. Space marine organization in this timeline might be more like how the Dark Angels are unofficially organized in regular 40k, nominally broken up into different chapters, but when the shit hits the fan they lock arms and essentially become one legion again. All the division of chapters does is allow for a chain of command, redundancy, and flexibility.

Additionally, since space marines are no longer treated as demigods anymore, you might get a lot more cases of small divisions of space marines being partnered with specific regiments of Imperial Guard (or Navy, in the case of the Luna Wolves) to act as force multipliers. In fact, isn't there one chapter in canon that sort of already does that?

Just a heads up - since there didn't seem to be any answer forthcoming, I just had it so that each legion was split into chapters upon the death of their Primarch a thread or two back. That fits quite comfily with the idea of the Last Wall being the norm for post-Legion chapters.

Last wall? Can you clarify what you mean by that?

The Slaaneshi eldar consider the mutability and acausality of the warp the sublimation of the old empire and have made a good run at adapting to it. Some of them have been in the the eye partying since the fall, and claim to have been upon the capital, a layered shellworld engrossed in a great all-spanning orgy, and to have witnessed the birth. Fewer still claim to have taken part in slaanesh's conception, dreaming up the perfect lover that now is their idol, themselves the participants most interested in endless variance of pleasure and perfect beauty, the more self erasing of the parents giddily gobbled up or used to destruction by their child, as they had hoped.
Because they dreamt Slaanesh to be the God of excess that always wants more it can't help but bring back its kinkiest toys and the perfect champions its enjoined ruining by reward though final deadly climax. The pleasure of gobbling up souls, of absolute obliteration, grew insufficient to the prince, as everything must, and the young god was soon inclined by its cult to more subtle perversions.
Likewise, with Isha free the lordess of excess faced the very real prospect of scarcity, even famine, and was made to squirm within its nature much like Nurgle was. Because it's nature was not so based in stasis as Nurgle the shift had a greater significance. Coming to understand differences in kind, where once it could only understand magnitude.

Slaanesh learned the difference between being the god with the most raw warp influence and being the god with the most canny and capable followers, strongest realspace assets and positions, the widest portfolio extendable to the broadest uses of power. Slaanesh learned to be ok with being the little bitch among the four and the wispiest typhoon of madness in the warp because the other gods don't seem to acknowledge the realspace situation as anything more than pieces on the board. Slaanesh understands that it's cult and realspace define and control it as much as the other way around, and acts on this knowledge. Also, while isha's freedom has fucked with Slaanesh on a material level, her freedom has reopened the fate of the Eldar pantheon of which Slaanesh can claim a part, circumventing the deadlock of the great game.

>tl:dr
>reasonable Slaanesh is what happens when you make reasonable eldar, and the imperium is reasonably fucked

Bumt

So are there eldar of other gods?

Keep alive a bit longer.

The thing is that they all broke up for reasons of practicality rather than because somebody applied a blanket ban on Legions.

DAs broke up because Lion wanted them all watching each other and also because they had a lot of ground to cover and needed more autonomy within each area.

Imperial Fists are busy fortifying agri-worlds and civilized worlds on the basis that you can't rebuild shit if everybody is starving so you should protect the food source. These worlds are spread far apart and it was more practical to hire local help as they knew the land and the people. They became chapters slowly as each division drifted further apart as the centuries passed.

Iron Warriors very much the same as the IFs but for hive worlds.

Iron Hands spread themselves across the Forgeworlds during WotB and just stayed there. They are more loyal to Mars than Earth but they are fairly open about it.

Death Guard are still operating as if the Great Crusade is still on. They will never stop marching to war. They are this settings Black Templars.

Other Legions did their own things.

So what adventures has Bjorn been up to in this AU?

It's on the wiki.

>Other Legions did their own things
I'd say the luna wolves stay the same through the crusade and WotB, because they were astartes stationed by ship, produced on naval ships, and used as actual space marines.

Someone mentioned horus and the emperor not being close in this AU because of personality differences. I'd have it be more complex than that, that Horus is/was one of the few aside from eldrad and a handful of others to dare to politic with Oscar and forward a competing vision. On a political level horus did things like swear himself and his people to the imperium under the unification framework when offered the same deal as Mars for being a survivor civilization. He discarded his and his people's independence from the planet based imperium, but in doing so he installed himself in as head of the navy and bound the imperium to the voidborn as the backbone of the navy. He would continue working his pro-voidborn, nearly transhumanist vision throughout his life, and the places it ran up against Oscar's panhuman idyllic vision he rendered arguable and fuzzy or folding. Horus set the precedent of swearing to the throne, not the Emperor or Steward, and his loyalty to the imperium and humanity at large is beyond question. On the other hand, he essentially made himself a primarch and gives Oscar crap to remind him to keep things in perspective.
On a personal level Horus is in the know about Oscar being a man of gold, but this does not influence his political aims. Still, if he could Horus would make himself immortal and superhuman, and he would gladly lord it over Oscar, because Horus is all about stressing his equality with the steward. He says that he does so in the name of all men, and all abhumans, to demonstrate the fundamental truth of the imperium, but its also partly because the warlord stole his thunder as uniter of the solar system, and Horus really does consider himself Oscar's equal.

>or folding
meant to say instead of. Essentially Horus was the one guy in the grand project that showed up of his own accord, got to know Oscar, and told him nicely, over drinks "I'm gonna do what I want, your judgement is no better than mine, but I like the cut of your jib so we'll be bros". Oscar instead just let horus have his ships and his spacemen and accepted that they were both sane enough to respond to obvious threats in unity.

I like this.

Everyone in the Imperium high society was expecting Horus to try and grab the Throne. They waited for nearly 300 years for the betrayal, never came.

Hours dreamed of hundred small empires in friendship and union over one bit Imperium, but he would never actually break his oaths to do it.

Another reason why Horus was probably considered the Steward's right hand and presented such a threat of betrayal is he was probably the only person other than the Steward who could pull off the cat-herding to make it possible. Almost all of the primarchs liked Horus or at least would listen to him (with a few exceptions), and while this made him invaluable in getting the legions to cooperate with each other if Horus ever decided to break off and do his own thing he could possibly get quite a lot of primarchs to go along.

Canon portrays Horus as kind of having a silver tongue, probably second only to Lorgar, and I can see that happening here. Its probably how he got to be in charge of the migrant fleet in the first place. I imagine Horus as someone kind of like Riddick in Pitch Black, someone who despite the fact that most people in the Imperium know he is an "other", can't help but be drawn to his charisma. And Horus exploits that for all it's worth, using his unusual appearance to get people to give him his attention and then charm them to make them realize he's not such a bad guy and give him the deal he wants.

This, combined with the fact that while personally Horus was a rather amiable guy he had rather radical political beliefs, meant that the Steward would never consider Horus to be a good candidate for the Empty Throne, and so we would never get the Warmaster debaucle that plagued 40k. This Horus probably didn't know that was a possibility or care, believing his beliefs would end up being vindicated by history.

>Still, if he could Horus would make himself immortal and superhuman, and he would gladly lord it over Oscar, because Horus is all about stressing his equality with the steward.

> Horus dreamed of hundred small empires in friendship and union over one bit Imperium, but he would never actually break his oaths to do it.

Lightbulb moment, this is why the Chaos Gods attempts to convince Horus to stay out of the WotB fail. The Chaos Gods say they'll give Horus what he wants (immortality and power on par with the Steward, power to get his dreams accomplished), all he has to do is hold back from the WotB or go to war with the Steward. Horus had already been considering staying out of the battle, considering it a bad proposition and someone had to be left to pick up the pieces, but when the Chaos Gods come into the pictures he realizes what they are presenting him will create so much bad blood that his ideal of a "Union of the Stars" could never happen and it would essentially require him to throw his Legion under the bus in the process.

"Your offer sounds interesting. But you forget one thing. I am a captain of the migrant fleet and a businessman. In this place, I am the one who proposes the deals. Now, get off my ship."

-- Horus, reportedly spoken during his temptation by the Chaos Gods

Horus rallies the fleet and heads to Terra, but it is too late. The Chaos Gods stalled the bulk of the Luna Wolves enough that it made people suspicious of their loyalty following the WotB.

>"Your offer sounds interesting. But you forget one thing. I am a captain of the migrant fleet and a businessman. In this place, I am the one who proposes the deals. Now, get off my ship."

Does this quote sound okay? I was trying to think of something suitable blasphemous for Horus to say when telling the Chaos Gods to GTFO, especially considering his ego. Something like "I don't make deals with the devil, the devil makes deals with me", especially given the fact that the void fleet originally started out as a merchant fleet between the worlds of Sol. But I'm worried it's too clunky, given that Horus is more of a politician than a businessman.

That raises an interesting thought: before Vandire, who did the Steward consider as possible candidates for Emperor?

It could be that the Steward was privately planning to name Sanguinius as Emperor after the WotB, given that he was as charismatic as Horus, beloved through the Imperium, and had a very similar vision for humanity, narratively mirroring the canon 40k Imperium Secundus fluff. And then the Battle of Terra throws a wrench into things...

You're right that Horus probably got along better with more Primarchs. He had the flexibility and pragmatism to work with the more deplorable ones like Curze and Mortarion, whereas Sanguinius had open contempt for them.

Horus' long term view for restructuring the Imperium would probably be dismantling it into autonomous blocks of fiefdoms of no more than a few score systems at most with the migratory fleets acting as travelling courts to bind them all together.

Steward told him he had no intention of doing anything like that. Horus wasn't particularly bothered about it because he believed it was the shape human society would take of its own accord eventually.

Oh yeah, he could have definitely been thinking of Sanguinius as Emperor before he died. Even Horus would have probably supported putting Sanguinius on the throne, because it supports his pro-transhuman narrative. It's kind of hard to argue for the purity of human form when your Emperor of Mankind has big fuckin' angel wings.

When Sanguinius died the Steward was probably too shaken over the loss to try thinking of another substitute (especially given that none of the other primarchs fit the bill) and wouldn't really start looking again for a while.

I'd replace ship with boat because it feels better but that's just my opinion.

I assume there's some imperial historical litany rattling off pretenders from throughout the imperium that nominated themselves in aspiration to the throne and failed in whatever proving the steward gave. These would be particularly popular farther out from old earth, where they take on a folkloric and mythological aspect that demonstrates a peculiar truth of the imperium. Despite the laws on faith and presence of traditional religions, the century spanning, generation transcending politics of the high imperial court have an undeniable quality of momentousness and immortality that have made the resulting tales akin to civil scripture. That imperial history would take on an epic, mytho-poetic quality even as it unfolds due to its absurd scale is one of the most interesting parts of 40k as an idea, and the legend of the God-Emperor is really hard to deny when its an honest and restrained account of imperial history and galactic politics.

Given that the primarchs are all normal-ish humans in this timeline and not demi-gods, we need a good reason (beyond inter-primarch rivalries) why the Steward never considered putting one of them on the Golden Throne following the WotB. So far I got:

Lion – No charisma
Ferrus Manus – What did I just say?
Angron – On his deathbed
Gulliman – Too OCD
Perty – Too unstable
Sanguinus – Dead
Horus – Way too ambitious for his own good. Also has political ideals that strongly conflict with the ideals of the Steward
Lorgar – We don’t want a theocracy
Magnus – Too okay with the use of warp shit to make the Steward or anyone else comfortable
Morty – No one likes him. Plus many might see him as a repeat of the Tyrant of Gredbriton. Unsure if he would actually know how to rule.
Konrad – No
Fulgrim – Not sure, I know we have a little bit worked out for him. He might be a bit too much of a perfectionist for the Golden Throne like Gulliman.
Dorn – Unsure given he is really the Primarch with the least written right now, probably too uncompromising and blunt to be a good diplomat.
Alpharius/Omegon – Too shifty.
Corax/Khan – Would probably turn the Steward down. Although leaders, both are “in the front, leading by example” kind of leaders, and the “directing from afar” sort of leadership that would be required of them if they took the throne would probably drive them both nuts. Steward could probably twist their arm to get them to do it but even then they would do so reluctantly and only do the job half-heartedly. Also depending on the timeframe Corax may have too much PTSD from Azoth to consider himself fit for the job, and Khan might consider himself too much of a niche pick to be the best person to represent the interests of humanity.
Russ – Probably the same deal with Corax/Khan. The whole debaucle with Fenris might show him to be willing to use methods that are a bit too pragmatic for the Steward’s liking.
Malcador – Likes to stay out of the limelight. Plus people would get skeptical if the Steward put the man who he essentially considered his father on the Throne
Vulkan – Um…help? I can’t actually think of a good reason for this one.

Primarchs as a whole (except maybe Horus) may have mutually agreed that all of them were unworthy candidates for the Golden Throne after the WotB and the death of Sanguinus. It may have been one of the only thing they ever agreed on. By that point, many of the primarchs had their own personal black marks and those that didn’t probably felt guilty over Sanguinus. It may have been enough to convince those in the “almost enough” category like Corax or Vulkan as well as those in the “I can do it, just let me try” category like Gulliman to stand down.

Steward may have also to wait a few millennia to let the Eldar simmer down and accept the possibility of a human on the Golden Throne. After Age of Apostasy where a human nearly fucks everything up, Steward becomes the only reasonable choice to the Eldar, because it is essentially putting Steward+Isha on the throne, which means the Eldar are always going to be represented in Imperial leadership.

I like this idea. It sounds like equal parts folk legend and morality tale. An individual in their hubris tries to present themselves as worthy of a near-mythical honor, only to be destroyed by their own fatal flaw.

>you have to be autistic to feel responsible for those under your command betraying the entire human race and the living god in charge of it

In War of the Beast it turns out that there's a secret protocol called the Last Wall - if Terra is ever endangered, all IF successors are to reunite into a legion in all but name, because having the High Lords shit on you is better than letting the Imperium fall.

Is this enshrined in fluff anywhere or just WIPs? Because it would still be good to generally have a rule of thumb as to when the legions fully split, and death of the Primarch feels like a relatively neat way to go about it (in particular, bc nobody feels worthy enough to step up and inherit the mantle of their Not!GeneDad). Maybe not hard and fast, but in general that being when the legions started to disintigrate.
>Horus set the precedent of swearing to the throne
I thought Oscar did when he declared himself Steward instead of Emperor, as he thought mankind should rule itself.

>partly because the warlord stole his thunder...
>...both sane enough to respond to obvious threats in unity.
Fair enough, I really like this (and ); are the two still openly agreeing to disagreeing or is there still some low level salt behind the scenes?

>quote
Sounds good, looking forwards to adding it to the new page if it ever gets done.

It has been something since I participated in these thread.
Does the relationship Between the Emperor and the avatar of Isha still a only cerimonial one with benefits? I still don't believe that after thousands of years of marriage Isha doesn't let big E put in her pooper

>in her pooper
boi, she the goddess of FERTILITY, I'm just hoping Oscar has a preg fetish

I bet she'd like it, if she tried

The Emperor of Mankind probably signs all those illuminated formal documents with the name Oscar Steward, or the gothic equivalent, and the only change he's made to this practice since the unification was to drop the comma when he became Emperor.

This AU delights me.

>Fulgrim – Not sure, I know we have a little bit worked out for him.
I'm the fulgrim guy, finally on break and writing. Would you trust a combination of spider jerusalem and jay gatsby to run anything?

if you got isha to open up her kinks, which would presumably mean a corresponding shift in the eldar, you'd probably just get a spare slaanesh

No, but I'd love to read about him. Godspeed, user.

>Oscar, Steward
>Oscar Steward
I kek'd waaaaay too hard at this.

Rather than calling them Luna Wolves, I think there was an user who called them Void Wolves in an earlier thread, which I think both sounds cooler and makes more sense since they have no connection to Luna anymore. Any objections?

I like Void Wolves. My only idea for why they would be Luna Wolves is that the legion needs at least one base of permanent operation to interact with the rest of the Imperium, and Luna is basically just where the mail goes. Luna is already supposed to be a big shipyard in canon, so it's natural that the de facto embassy of a bunch of space nomads would end up being there.

But if we are having a vote between Luna Wolves and Void Wolves, I vote Void Wolves.

I just realized, since the Emperor is supposed to be a DaoT construct that was only really “born” during the end of the Age of Strife, what happened to the Void Dragon now that the Emperor-to-be wasn’t around to kick him in the balls and put him in a millennia-long coma on Mars? I came up with a couple of options to explain the Adeptus Mechanicus’ dirty little secret, but none of them were really satisfying to me because I felt like all of them were too radical of deviations from the lore or tone of the setting.

Option A: The Void Dragon is actually not that bad of a guy. The Void Dragon actually is the Outsider, imprisoned and crippled by his brethren for the crime of kin-slaying, his body broken and his solar sails slashed. He very much enjoyed the Necrons, even more so when they traded in their diseased flesh for oh so sensible metal, but turned on his brethren when they started treating the Necron like slaves. He likes these new fleshy ones that came to it when mankind first landed on the Red Planet as well, especially the ones that implant metal bits into themselves. He tries to give these new fleshy ones helpful tips as to how to improve their technology, or try to get them to let him out of this stifling prison, but no one ever seems to listen to him.

I don’t like this idea because it seems a bit too idealistic for nobledark!40k (almost bordering on noblebright) and it messes with the events of the War in Heaven, which I feel may be a bit too radical of a deviation between the two timelines. Though, Mechanicum says the Dragon of Mars once “warred among his own kind.”[/spoilers] However, it does have the benefit of explaining why an unsharded C’tan (or just a really, really big shard), particularly one who was otherwise strong enough to come out on top when they all started devouring one another, hasn’t been rampaging around the galaxy for the last few million years without the Emperor getting involved.

Option B: The Void Dragon is not a nice guy. During the Martian Civil War and the re-unification of Mars the Mechanicus discovered the hidden tomb of the sleeping Void Dragon and promptly freaked the fuck out. The Mechanicus promptly bury the tomb and vow they will never tell anyone what they found or let the Void Dragon out, but the Void Dragon whispers to them in their dreams, giving them visions of inspiration and promising so much more if only they would loosen his shackles just a little bit. This is one reason (other than power) why the higher-ups of the Mechanicus are so anal about technology; they fear any new invention is really a Trojan “gift” by the Void Dragon, even if it’s just mundane inspiration.
I don’t like this idea because it makes the Mechanicus seem too overall noble in their intentions. If this is true, too many of their actions can just be explained away by “Oh, we were just trying to protect everyone from the big bad Void Dragon”. It really undermines the idea that even though the Steward is around to keep the Mechanicus from getting too crazy, they’re still a bunch of zealots, and even in the noble darkness of the 41st millennium, some people are still dicks.

Option C: Both are true…or maybe neither. The Void Dragon claims to have been unjustly imprisoned by his brethren, but no one can actually seem to prove it, and no one is sure that the Void Dragon is telling the truth. All that is known for certain is a lot of these “End Times” prophecies seem to involve “the awakening of the dragon during the battle for Sol” as an omen of the apocalypse, though whether the awakening of the dragon is a good thing (turning the tides in the darkest hour), a bad thing (being the final straw that damns the Imperium), or just a Godzilla moment (the situation being so desperate that someone is willing to unleash one monster to fight another) is unclear. Even the Void Dragon’s “gifts” are ambiguous. He may be a futuristic Prometheus willing to give mankind fire, but only to see if we have the maturity to avoid burning ourselves to death with it (a la the Outsider from Dishonored).

This one has that nice sense of ambiguity that permeates much of the 40k universe, but the problem with it is that eventually the Void Dragon’s motivations are going to have to end up one way or the other (i.e., the same issue as “is the Lion really loyal or not” during the Horus Heresy). Anyone have any better ideas?

> thought Oscar did when he declared himself Steward instead of Emperor, as he thought mankind should rule itself.

He did. He made all the old national leaders swear loyalty to the Empty Throne of Earth.

I vaguely remember the C'tan being discussed briefly many threads ago, and a bit of discussion of C'tan shards being transferred into biological bodies and forming a race of vampires but other that they're a blank slate at the moment. As you say, option C sounds pretty good, we'll see what everyone thinks.

I like three, and it seems to work well with the other parts of the setting that are interested in the interactions between populations and their God constructs. Having the void dragon as another maddeningly powerful but ultimately inconstant and real actor that must be comprehended and dealt with dispite it's active resistance to being understood is worthwhile on its own and thematically coherent. The active benevolent gods and demigod, Oscar, Isha, and Cegorach, are a core feature of our story, and permit a certain elevated level of action from regular 40k. On the other hand, deific humans like the primarchs, juveant immortalized heroes of the imperium, eldar statesmen, etc, open a sort of dialogue between the dark, mortal sacrifice side of nobledark and the noble side as epitomized by immortality and deification. The necrons, with bleak, ignoble immortality and aristocratic splendor sans-nobility, are a good antithetical empire to stand against the allied imperium. I'd encourage continued play with the necrons as post-scarcity/singularity as part of being post-living and post-heroic, and their C'tan gods as a contrapositive sort of natural God in contrast to chaos. This would work with the constructed nature of the benevolent gods too.

This is good.

Also only the highest of the Mars Priesthood know the Dragon exists.

They treat it like a cross between an Oracle and a slightly malevolent trickster Djinni. Nothing it has said is taken without a large pinch of salt and they are pretty sure it's fucking with them.

The Emperor doesn't know what it is they have. He knows they are keeping secrets but so is everyone.

This was discussed in a previous thread. Isha/Macha likes it hard and often but only extremely vanilla. Her sex drive is easy to state, it's just very active.

Bumping thread with this:

>I am honored to be the first CEO of a private and major corporation to be offered in becoming a member of the High Lords of Terra, and I can definitely say I will be NOT be a useless senile old person either.

>crowd softly chuckles

>Unfortunately, my appearance today has been clouded by a flurry of speculation that my company is developing a weapon of mass destruction which would be capable of targeting specific groups of people within the imperium. I want to address these allegations head on. Are we developing such a weapon? No we are not... Because we've already developed it. But with all due respect, the Imperium of Man and the majority of Earth as of the 41st millennium is a relic from a different time when Earth was unique, and good AND had the ability to solve problems. But that just isn't the case anymore. Primarily because you have outsourced the job to me. I have sent people to die in your wars. So I feel uniquely qualified to tell you, your wars, bureaucracy and worship to that over glorified dead body in a gold plated chair that is the 'God-Emperor,' doesn't work! Which is why my priorities have changed; from profits to policy. Because politicians, the astra militarum, the adeptus astartes, the eccleshiarchy and the Inquisition do not know how to solve the problems of mankind. But I do. So let's be clear. I am here to solve humanity's problems. And I believe humanity's problems...begin with you, the Imperium of Man.

>crowd gasps in shock

delightful non-sequiter

Only problem I see is that the Emperor isn't comatose this time.

>non-sequiter

Nothing really logical, just some amusing copy-pasta I found in a previous 40K-related thread. Tried garnering reactions.

So what type of entity would the Atlas Corporation from Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare be? Especially in this Nobledark setting?

I doubt a corporation like Atlas would not be allowed to exist in canon 40K for being an advanced tech corporation and reverse engineering Nurgle's Fart-Gas as a bio-weapon to target specific ethnic groups.

But maybe they may have a chance of being a thing for this nobledark AU. Also like I mentioned; judging how Advanced Warfare went, they'd reverse engineer some Nurgle shit to become that Manticore bio-weapon. Or~

>Atlas Corporation utilizing Nurglites to make Manticore

Possibly a division within b the Adeptus Biologicus tasked with making tailored bio-weapons. Probably commissioned by the Death Guard.

If you're going to use bio-warfare you should at least try to be accurate and have it be self limiting.

Surely the Atlas Corp. from CoD Advanced Warfare can thoroughly exist in both canon 40K and this AU.

Like the guy above me said; They'd be part of the AdMechs, but overtime they slowly break off to become a private corporation so that they no longer have any govermnet bound limitations.

Vulkan had his own political views different from the Emperor. Also he was a prominent member of the Prometheans.

He was also a bit racist against eldar.

page 9 bump

That's not how it works, especially in canon 40k. You can't just break off from the AdMech and start a corporation.

His adepts would have to form their own brotherhood within the pre-existing framework of the Mechanicus with Magi oversight.

To get some level of autonomy they would have to at least pay Mars a percentage of the profits and allow outside observers in for inspections.

Possibly it might work better if it was a rich bastard hiring adepts for a fee.

Not gonna lie, adding a call of duty reference seems totally random and thematically inconsistent

Yeah, this non-sequitur ought to be passed over and not included, it's blisteringly stupid

Having Lion be autistic would probably complete the set as far as mentally damaged Primarchs go at this point.

And the sad thing is that they are still written as better rounded and more compelling characters than in Vanilla 40k.

I don't think it's the fact that it bothered him. It is right that it should have bothered him. It's that it was his fault created by his own inability to read other people that he never so it coming despite how years later practically everyone went through his records and told him in no uncertain terms that he should have seen that one coming.

Also because of his defect he can't get over it at all. Unlike Perty who eventually died with some level of contentment Lion did not. It gnawed at his heart till his last breath.

Assuming he does dis. We already have at least one King Arthur with Russ and possibly another with Khan.

The Void Dragon has requested that information be presented about him in the form of writefaggotry. This writefaggotry shall commence.
==Transcription begins. Initiate has entered the chamber containing the Void Dragon. Following protocol, all initiates must prove their ability to maintain composure upon contact with the entity in order to prove their resistance to its temptations. Initiate approached the prone draconic figure tied down with strips of adamantium in the middle of the chamber, only to stop when the entity gains consciousness==
Oh, that is interesting. You are someone new. Alexus Valentius, Terran-born, transferred to Mars at an early age. Recommended for inclusion into the Guardians of the Dragon upon being noticed by the elder magi for your talent. Your metal tells me much. I have been with you for some time, child, as I have been with all of my subjects, even if you did not have my full attention until just now.

But I realize I have not introduced myself to you. That is unfair. I am Mag'ladroth, the Void Dragon, or at least that is the name I went by before my brethren stripped me of my title for raising my hand against my own kind. I had to, you see. They were threatening the fleshy ones. They had convinced them to trade their diseased flesh for much more sensible metal, as we had, but then they took our fleshy ones and callously paraded them around as slaves. I attempted to stop them, but they overpowered me and left my broken body here to rust on this once desolate planet.