Nobledark 40k XIV: Remember, No Gothic edition

Mertilda? A corrupted form of Matilda. Just popped into my head, she seems like a Matilda.

I see no reason why not.

Also I can't find a description of the Poctroon so until someone tells me otherwise I'm imagining them looking like Kerbals.

Speaking of which, does anyone remember the issue where we were having trouble figuring out how Farsight has lived so long despite his sword being a Blade of Vaul here?

Well I looked at Lexicanum, and it turns out Vaul literally named his masterwork sword "Dawn Bringer", which is pretty damn close to "Dawn Blade". Add the fact that the Eldar were known to use weapons that messed with lifespan before the fall (Spear of Twilight being the best example), and it looks like there's a pretty good argument for the Dawn Blade being both a Blade of Vaul and capable of prolonging someone's life.

With that in mind it's all two possible that Aun'Va and Farsight are now locked in an endless slow battle of ideology that will have no victor till the stars fade and time freezes over.

Random Idea (warning, kind of rambling): The Sanguinor. What is he like here?
What if he is becoming an Imperial God (they can't worship the Emperor, but he said nothing about his kids...)?
I have an idea that revolves around Sanguinius basically rebelling gently against the genetic purity doctrines of his people (according to the draft notes, they were obsessed with it) and being very accepting of 1) the common person, and 2) xenos and mutants, along with his NOBLEDARK STRUGGLE against his flaws of bloodraeg, maybe he was called "The Gentle" and is worshiped as a figure of acceptance of others and overcoming your flaws. Also, last ditch defenses (making him popular amongst the Guard).
The Sanguinor is his godly manisfestation, coming to lend aid when The Line Must Be Held and there is no other choice.
Basically I want to give the IG two Saint Figures, Sanguinius and Ollianus, (who in my head Held The Line beside Sanguinius), forging a close relationship between the Blood Angels and the Guard.

I would leave it ambiguous.

Some say that it's Sangy reborn.

Some say it's Sany's ghost.

Some say that it's a manifestation of hope and defiance.

Some say it's a mortal descendant of Sangy that became a Perfect Space Marine.

Some say it's a title handed down from Blood Angel to Blood Angel.

Some say it's bullshit made up by the Commissairiant's propaganda department and later licensed to film makers for buckets of cash.

Some say it's the one Blood angel that was stationed of Prospero when shit went sideways.

Some say it's actually an Eldar Phoenix Lord.

Some say it's a robot.

Some say it's a wraithconstruct containing the soul of Apothecary Meros.

Nobody will ever know for sure. All that is known is that it appears in silence out of nowhere when shit is going bad and hits like a high precision supersonic wrecking ball.

I have no pictures of the Sanguinor.

So basically strike out "The Sanguinor is his [Sanguinius'] godly manifestation" and the rest is okay?

Basically yes.

It's a thing that appears and saves the day. It looks like a Blood Angel set to MAXIMUM BLING and that's about all anyone can know with total certainty.

Olly was an Imperial Navyman in this timeline who made sure there was a Battle of Terra as opposed to a Curbstomp of Terra by ramming the Beast's Rokk and keeping him from orbital dropping the planet.

We figured it would be a better way to distinguish the two rather than have a whole bunch of interchangeable sacrifices.

Sangyfag here, back after a bit of a hiatus from the thread. I actually started a brief story about the Sanguinor a while back before abandoning it.

The gist of it was that the Sanguinor is actually Azkaellon, who was the sole survivor of the First Company at the plaza of the Eternity Gate since he was rescued from the brink of death by the Alpha Legion. The rest of the Blood Angels thinks he died along with everyone else though they couldn't find a body, and wracked with survivors guilt he becomes the Sanguinor as penance. He camps out in a secluded corner of the Webway (which explains how he's able to live so long despite being a normal SM) and uses the Emperor's Tarot to find Blood Angels in need. Due to his immense skill and some luck he has prevailed every time and been denied the death he desperately seeks.

Not sure if that idea is any good, if there's interest I may get around to finishing it.

Sangy-worshipping Guardsman here ( is mine). That's actually a pretty cool idea. Fucking Noble as hell.
So who is the Guardsman who made fucking huge balls (some of the balls issued are so huge they had to be turned into tits) standard issue?

Olly did. He basically told everyone to plot a collision course for the Beast's Rokk and then abandon ship, while he remained at the bridge and went down with the ship. Don't remember if he was Void Born or not, I believe he wasn't.

Yeah, I was hoping that someone would bring that up.

Also, consider the following. Azkaellon might know who the Sanguinor really is, but no one else does. And considering the nature of 40k and just how many people look up to Sanguinius (seeing as along with Oscar and Isha he's one of the few people looked favorably upon by everyone in the Imperium), that means that a mysterious Sanguinius-like stranger showing up to save the day would really boost the Sanguinor's reputation. There may have once been a mortal Sanguinor, but the one suplexing Bloodthirsters on Khartas may be something else entirelly.

Alternatively, Azkaellon may not realize he's been getting the Eldrad-Merlin treatment from his actions by acting all mysterious and shit. Which would be rather ironic because he's literally trying to die in penance for his deeds and his own actions won't let him.

Lady Malys goals in launching these Black Crusades should be not to gain prizes and other glorious things that small-minded Abbadon would do. The wars are started to bring the Imperium to its knees with the sheer amount of anarchy or destruction wrought by the armies of Chaos. These crusades end not due to disintegration by the Fallen running back to the Eye of Terror or the Maelstrom with trophies in hand. The wars end with Lady Malys ordering the full withdraw of all Chaos forces back home. Each and every Black Crusade grows in strength and number as the targets for them become more and more ambitious.

The wars are where the Imperium always suffer more losses than Chaos then if the tide of the war changes against Chaos, Lady Malys already planned the inevitable fighting retreat or scorch-planet campaigns just to twist the knife in the Imperium's eyes. Even chasing after Chaos forces as they retreat should result in horrific losses for the Imperials even more so than the initial fighting. The scorch-planet campaigns would leave entire sub-sectors devoid of resources or infrastructure forcing the Imperium to rebuild in centuries long projects. To account for the Imperium being stronger, Chaos taint is left behind to ensure long-term instability along with sleeper cells or cults to bring ruin to the Imperium from within. The targets for the crusades are always almost irreplaceable things the Imperium hold such as STCs and Forge worlds while poisoning Argi-worlds then spreading separatist ideas.

Knowing a war of attrition could never be won against the Imperium, the Black Crusades are made to bleed the Imperium to death while minimizing losses for Chaos.

Guy who wrote , here. You absolutely hit the nail on the head with what I was trying to get at with Malys' Black Crusades.

I was trying to get the feeling of the Northern Crusades where Christian armies went around killing Pagans and spreading Christianity to permanently plant the religion in hostile territory. The withdrawal of Chaos is made to sound like the Germans retreating in the Battle of the Bulge, where the victors suffered horrific losses chasing after the outnumbered defeated Germans.

So, onto IG, are we still stuck with tissue paper and flashlights? Or can our lasguns actually do something in this verse?
I mean, it's a legit question: if the most basic armed forces of the Imperium have a good per-unit effectiveness, that means that less of the working capable populace are poured into a meatgrinder.

I still need to write up on what Flak armor is actually like but the Lasgun is written in detail in 2 threads ago.

>Where did the Flak Armor come from?

There was no such thing as a standardized armor used by the Imperial Army during the Great Crusade. The closes thing to such a concept came in the form of the Solar Pattern Void Armor used widely by the Solar Auxilia but that was a carapace-reinforced void suite rather than Flak Armor as we know it today. The first documented instances of what could be considered Flak Armor was when Cadian Shock Troops started equipping troopers on mass with light anti-shrapnel armor near the end of the Great Crusade. Cadian officers found out on the battlefield when Cadian Guardsmen attacked entrenched positions most of their losses sustained were from artillery or random bits of debris thrown into the air by artillery. The different regiments from Cadia phased out the traditional metal plate armor for Flak Armor, all future campaigns used Flak Armor once manufactorums switched production lines right before the War of the Beast.

(cont.)
The breastplate, shoulder pauldrons, knee plates, and greaves all used the same material and layering as each other. The helmet has considerable more armor and the fabric connecting the armor is much weaker or lacks any sort of plating. Most of the actual armor in Flak Armor uses an inner layer of shock absorbent gel with metal plating between the gal and outer ceramic layer. All three of these layers are connected and interwoven with carbon-fiber, metal-fabric, and nylon strings forcing the layers to stay together under most conditions. The ceramic plate was designed to deflect shrapnel or at least cause it to be stuck in the plate. The metal layer was placed to stop lasbolts or stubber rounds from fully penetrating through the armor in case if the shot passed the ceramic plate. The gal is there as either the last ditch effort to stop shrapnel from fully penetrating the armor or prevent internal bleeding from receiving a direct hit. Flak Armor fabric is made from different carbon-fiber, metal fabrics, and thick cloths to prevent shrapnel from cutting through or a blade from ripping it. Flak Armor helmet tend to have extra metal plating to ensure that not all shots to the head are fetal or random falling debris didn’t kill the Guardsman.

(cont.)
The first major combat test of Flak Armor was seen in the War of the Beast. On the frontlines Flak Armor proved to be basically ineffective in protecting against Ork weaponry. The Orks had used unusually large stubber rounds up to but not limited to 10 or 12mm that would slice right through Flak plating. What would be considered dangerous Ork rockets would often miss even with flam ammo, Flak armor was more than enough protection against most Ork rocketry short of city block leveling size. Crone Eldar and Dark Eldar weapons of both Saw and Splinter ammo had difficult times penetrating Flak plating unless there was concentrated fire where even the Flak plating can only protect against so much. When the Fallen first turned on Imperial Army elements, blosters were used for the first time against Flak Armor. The bolter rounds would often penetrate Flak plating to only cleanly exit out on the other side then explode, if the Guardsman was lucky they would still be alive. When a Guardsman was even luckier the bolter shell would be deflected off of Flak plating and explodes prematurely in mid-air, unless the explosion was in their face the shrapnel would be mostly harmless. The flexibility, simplicity, and cheapness to produce Flak Armor instead of Void suits led to many Imperial worlds adopting the Flak Armor, quotas and resources were limited in the total economic mobilization that happened in the War of the Beast made Flak Armor even more popular.

Oh, that's pretty nice. Although barrel "warping" implies the actual barrel structure failing: what's far more likely is the focusing mechanisms degrading from thermal stress. It might also mean that one of the most precious STCs discovered (according to the guardsmen who don't respond with "the cabinet of booze, porn, and smokes") is... A better lasgun barrel.
Based on that post, I would put the standard lasgun of their post as about a (based on a wiki trawl) 7.92x57mm Mauser round. Maybe a bit more powerful. I should grab a /k/ommando to figure out good numbers.
With any luck, a better barrel (or acceptance of a greater logistical train that pisses off the cogboys), could get a standard lasgun up to about the average "the fucker had armor and cover" sniper rifle in damage ability.

(cont.)
During the Apostasy, Imperial Guard regiments openly fought against one another and this saw the first use of Flak Armor against massed artillery. Regiments would launch massive formations to charge at entrenched Guardsmen who were well prepared for such an attack. The defenders would fire blinding volleys of artillery shells to delay the charge. Flak Armor proved a Guardsman could survive an artillery barrage short of a direct hit right next to their feet they would be fine, if the shockwave from the explosion didn’t destroy the body’s organs that is. Artillery barrages could now only slow down attacks from Guardsmen thanks to Flak Armor. Field modifications noted to be used by regiments during the Apostasy was extra cloth being to prevent shrapnel from easily slicing the joints. Thicker ceramic plates are used by veteran Guardsmen against Orks to at least survive glancing shots from Ork stubbers. Regiments constantly facing Crone or Dark Eldar is deployed with extra metal layered Flak Armor to prevent enemy fire from penetrating Flak plating.

We have been holled up in the upper decks of Polonia IV's single space elevator for the better part of a month. I, arch-militant Bertram Lilium-Pious, and the rest of the crew of the Zephyr of Ultima, had come to the system with the esteemed Rogue Trader Rigel Tabrion Galahath Morrot looking for our fortunes in the ruin left by what had been the 9th black crusade.
We had moored our ships atop the argi world's lone mast, itself battered and scarred from the recently passed era of war, and surveyed the silent plains and untended grox herds in the vast spaces between the few empty cities and blasted towns. There had been some small fortune found upon Polonia IV, forgotten in the vaults of the governor's palace or the museums of the small capital, and in small and few technological installations across the system. Of the survivors there was little to say, the few there were were so broken they were nearly feral. Perhaps in a century, with imperial aid, they could build a feudal world where once there was an advanced and efficient breadbasket to the local sub-sector. We based our salvage and recovery efforts from atop their remaining beanstalk and his eminence Rigel's hirelings made a good effort of restoring to good order everything not suitable to salvage from the depopulated world. Thus situated, it was a surprise indeed when our ships were struck by torpedo fire and our attackers vanished to elsewhere in the system.
Next on the surface we found the mounting signs of cults among the survivors, and what escort ships we could spare to investigate the system have since been gunned down. As our predicament has worsened we have fortified the space elevator and have been sheltering proven loyal survivors within, our hope being to repair the flagship and merchantman's engines and quit the system with our loot and the goodly people remaining.

An Astartes barge was seen to jump into the system scant days ago, aboard are an order of Dark Angels. Our calls for aid being readily answered is good fortune, and every appendage of the empire has been extended to dress the wound the 9th crusade dealt. We have been fighting a brushfire war across this little planet against a force that seems a remnant of the agri world's PDF, now ravening marauders with greatswords and artillery, coming down from bunkers in the northern reaches of the world. Had we taken greater care we might have discovered these forces of renegades sooner we might have made war upon them from above and slain them in their pits, now we fight them upon the plains and in towns, holding them back as we sift their infiltrators from the peasants at the base of the beanstalk afore we allow them up. In any case, the Angels Ascendant, as these knights style themselves, seem not quite the blessing they ought to be. Their ship looks good and proper through our telescopes, as beaten as one coming from the scouring of the old crone's wretches should be, but the seneschal can't find their ilk in her books of history, and over the vox their officer sounds somehow over eager to delve into the mountain strongholds of these daemon worshipers, showing a certain expectation becoming a man involved in a personal matter. My nerves are not helped by the whispers of apostate astartes commanding the army of barbarous warriors. We have repaired the Zephyr's engines, Lord Rigel will meet their captain in orbit to convene and plan the recapture of Polonia, and I go with him. I hope to get the measure of these Astartes before we take the field with them, and glean the history of their order where the good seneschal cannot.

The Angels Ascendant appear to be an old order, if the Terran made armor of their captain, Bercilak, is anything to go by. Why they ever made helmets like that is beyond me, the seneschal says it was in celebration of the human form, but its more eerie than anything else. Just as he was over the vox, he can't wait a moment to wet his sword, and is more than happy to leave the situation at the space elevator to us, with the addition of a few of his chaplains, while he goes raising hell in the northern fortresses our foes claim to have. Far be it from me to stand in front of a charge lead by the emperor's finest, but tales have long been of dark knights of the lion playing as pure ones, and no good would it be to loose a system and our lives to warp damned lutherian rabble. Bercilak seems a good sort, but hard hearted and single minded from years on the front. At our meeting in his war room he strode about in his armor, shaking fist and tossing his cropped hair like he was at the climax of some arch opera cycle. Our ships remain docked, Bercilak's soon to fly north to begin deployment, our own to support the continuing battles in more temperate climes. Our astropath has since heard from the nearest Imperial Navy station that a loyalist Dark Angel chapter has been traced to our vicinity returning from the front, and that an additional detachment of guard were to be routed to Polonia to address the chaos threat.

A regiment of the Armageddon 400th arrived in the system a week ago, their transport ship ready to assume our overwatch position in orbit while the Zephyr went to search for the unknown ship that originally attacked us. I have remained at our staging area on the space elevator to manage the mounting war. As stubber armed militias and imperial standard armor continue to roll south over Pollonia IV's lone supercontinent it is becoming clear that what had seemed a depopulated world held some significant force of fallen men, armed with imperial munitions and lead by officers of worth. Bercilak has made headway in the plateaus of the northern mountains, but he is always pressing ahead of supply chasing enemy forces from hamlet to hamlet, and he is loathe to leave the front, pursuing the elusive hideout of the commander of this nameless rebellion, whatever that may be. It has been judged that we face the corruption of Nurgle and Khorne together, and their daemons and champions we've found among our foe's number, but Polonia IV is firmly within our right imperial force's grasp. No crone wretch nor fallen astarte has been seen in the battles thus far, though the steel clad mutineers make good account of their strength despite the lack. I've seen their forces met on the once solemn fields of this bomb pitted pasture world, infantry fleeing the airmen of house Morrot, guns faced down by the tanks of the guard, in towns swinging cleaving blades upon their fellow polonians even as the men of the imperium fire upon them, and as men of the Angels Ascendant drove them from mountain keeps, even as they are daily shot down flying to rocket bomb the length of the beanstalk. The looming question in my mind is that of the offending ship, but expect it long fled, and have little doubt the Zephyr will confirm this. Last, as the season has changed orks have budded in the south, though firebombing has been successful in their mitigation.

And now for Bolter-Bitches
About M33, a supposed copy of the Black Manuscript surfaced during an investigation into a possible Chaos Cult. Logar being dead, he couldn’t answer in regards to that happening. Thanks to paperwork, the Ordo Malleus had to turn over the investigation to the Ordo Securitas, where a leak blew the entire thing wide open.
Prior to the entire incident, worshipers of the Steward were in a sticky legal situation: the Imperium allowed a limited freedom of religion, and the Imperial Cults skirted the edge of that; they broke the "Don't Worship Oscar" Law, but they acted as modified forms of already allowed religions, inserting him into important, but secondary, positions. Making the situation even sticker was something the Steward found truly hilarious: The Seat-Stealer Heresy and the Church of The Seat Warmer.
The Seat-Stealer Heresy was a joint Yechudian and Katholian religious movement which held that Oscar had usurped the position of the Returning Prophet by creating an imitation realm of heaven. Termed a Heresy by their parent religions, a brief religious war was fought until Oscar took notice by gleefully exclaiming "Finally! Someone who agrees with me!" before he explained that he was not a god or devil, but rather appreciated someone trying to humble him. Shortly thereafter, a counter-heresy arose which took the form of a philosophical movement focused on The Steward and his various sayings. For fun, they called themselves the Church of The Seat Warmer, saying that one day, maybe, a guy or gal that has, maybe, been prophesied, might ascend humanity to the Realm of Heaven. Maybe. But until then, Oscar does a good job of keeping their seat warm.
He found that one even more hilarious, especially when the leaders sent him a self-heating seat cushion and a fake villainous mustache.
(1/?)

The Church of The Saviour Emperor changed that situation. Not only did they have a copy of the Black Manuscript, they had distributed a modified form of it and spread to over a hundred worlds. They held that Oscar was every non-chaos prophet and god known to human religion, and that anybody who held the title of “Emperor” was an active insult to him. And somebody in the Ordo Securitas printed and released even more copies of what the Church called the Lectito Divinatus – which had the even more concerning effect of hurting daemons when recited from. The CSE spread even faster from the exposure, aided by what is officially Appendix B, or self titled as the Codex Sectae; which was an instruction manual for subverting your local religion into a semi-Katholian church focused on The Steward as the only being suitable for worship. Appendix A (Codex Exterminatus) was focused on subverting local governments into committing genocide, and Appendix C (Exhortation of The Faithful) focused on destroying “deviant sects”. Most Inquisitors noted that each appendix was about as big as the actual book they were appended to. Even Oscar took notice, and in official publications condemned the CSE – although some say that he focused too much on Appendices A and C, which might have pushed back Imperial-Xenos relationships by a few decades.
(2/?)

Then the situation blew up even more as the Ordo Securitas discovered what Appendix C called “Deviant Sects”: The Confederation of Light. While both were based on the Lectico Divinatus (although the COL added worship of Isha, and was far kinder about the entire seat-warmer thing, calling Oscar “Emperor of Humanity’s Heart), the COL replaced appendices A and C, and modified B. Their Codex Sectae called for less subversion and more “do this shit in private”. Appendix A became the Codex Benevolum, focusing on welcoming others to the cult (and how to adapt the Faith to their religion), and Appendix C was the only part the Steward agreed with: The Remembrance of Sacrifice, which mandated remembering all who laid down their lives in defense of the Imperium, and extolled the virtue “of ensuring the flames of hope lit by their deaths never die”.
Both faiths moved further underground, although the COL did gain a boost in recruitment when Oscar quietly allowed the public release of just the Remembrance of Sacrifice. Both faiths began to engage in near-constant religious warfare, leading to the eventual creation of the Inquisition’s Ordo Hereticus in charge of dealing with religious crimes (which often made them butt heads with the Ordo Malleus). Both receded from public attention until just after the Great Civil War when a quiet Ordo Hereticus investigation revealed that Inquisitor Thor was a COL member, and that Vandire had lead a variant CSE sect that held him as the Emperor’s Prophet. When asked by Oscar about the entire religious aspect of the incident, he merely shrugged and replied “I meant it when I said that you’re the best person for the job”.
(3/4)

Additional scrutiny was focused on the COL leadership when investigations revealed just where Vandire’s “Brides of The Emperor” all-female bodyguard force had gone: right into the pocket of Inquisitor Thor and the head of the Custodes and out to… Somewhere. Further investigations (demanded by the Emperor because he occasionally felt something weird that the Eternal Empress identified as “prayers”) lead nowhere until the arrival of the Hive Fleets in mid M37, where multiple frontier worlds were saved by the intervention of white-haired women in power armour, wielding bolters and flamers, hymnals to the Emperor and Empress flowing from their lips. Alongside them were administrators, builders, healers, all the disciplines needed for disaster relief. The Adepta Sororitas had arrived to fulfill Thor’s Mission: To emulate the Emperor and live in service to the Imperium.

Up next (after some point), we figure out how the fuck the Imperium reacts to these bombshell blondes.

Oh god so much reading to do. So much glorious reading.

The Lectito Divinatus in this timeline is Lorgar's book on how to reunify and reconcile the Katholian and the Kartharanite sects of Katholianism into a single religion. It's considered his magnum opus (though not his most widely known work, for obvious reasons), but it's pretty dry if you aren't into that kind of stuff.

Also, I know we have a whole bunch of nobledark SoB stuff from previous threads. The SoB have been one of the most argued over parts of the setting because no Ecclesiarchy, but I don't think they were originally a cult devoted to Emperor worship.

This.

SoB are servants devoted to the Imperium rather then the Emperor and predate Vandire. They are the women who would have been good Space Marine candidates but for one chromosome.

In the last thread there was a brief description of their augmentations.

They are the strong right arm of internal affairs.

The sisterhoods are also not a religious institution, it's just coincidence that they have mostly very religious members.

I think it was mentioned though that the SoB as an institution did not get started until after the Age of Apostasy. Emperor basically realized after AoA that the Imperium needed more oversight to prevent this kind of shit from happening again, decided to kill two birds with one stone and created SoBs.

Was pointed out in a previous thread that Steward/Emperor would flip out at any openly religious institution in the Imperium.

That said, we still don't have an actual origin for the SoBs (as in, how Big E put two and two together). It could be that Thor was using augmented women warriors as part of his retinue, and that either gave Big E the idea or Thor pitched it to him.

Alternately Alicia Dominica could have pointed the idea out to the Emperor, and the Emperor in his typical fashion said "Okay, it looks like you've got a good idea there. So get to work."

Been trying to salvage as much as I can from the old archive threads and put it on the 1d4chan page so it doesn't get lost.

Biggest thing that comes to mind that has not been uploaded is Sangyfag's "Under the Celaes Tree", which I wasn't sure whether or not to add because they said the title was tentative.

Also does anyone know how to put images on 1d4chan? Was going to upload that image for Dorn and try to do something similar for Lion so they don't get lost.

It could have been that the old Legions and Chapters were all maintaining their own collections of mildly augmented fighting women to bolster their Space Marine forces.

The regular fighting plebs take the easy assaults and garrison duties, sisters take the mid range shit slightly too hard for the plebs to deal with and the Space Marines are free to jump into the worst infernos.

Sebastian Thor and Alicia Dominica reorganized the sisters of the Space Marine orders on their side into an inter-chapter rapid response and military police organization to ensure that no Vandire supporters have slipped into the ranks.

When the newly crowned Emperor Oscar was bullied onto the Throne he realized that he would need an institution to prevent this shit going down again. So he made the sisters a permanent Imperial Institution and told Dominica and Thor to go conscript the sisters of the other Legions and Chapters into it and set it up as they saw fit seeing as how they were so damn clever.

That's some seriously good shit.

Having just skimmed the Assmaster fluff again, the Securitas was formed at the end of Apostasy.

Origin of the SoBs would probably be, if we're keeping the whole Brides of the Emperor thing:
>Vandire finally gets assassins on his side
>Still wary of the SMs since he knows the surviving Primarchs are probably more loyal to Steward than him "just like everyone else REEEEEEEEEEEEE"
>Brides of the Emperor are formed, a huge bodyguard corps drawn from across the Imperium - one of the biggest selling points that it's a new order superior to the aged and stuffy relics of the Steward (cough cough SMs)
>This happens and Vandire augments some for actual bodyguarding but the majority are, like canon, >implied to be glorified courtesans.
>Thor and Steward take down Vandire, Ordo Securitas is established as Imperial Internal Affairs
>Sororitas/SoBs make up the militant arm of the Securitas
>>the formal explanation is that the Securitas, being technically above pretty much every arm of the Imperium, was given a decree passive, and the SoBs came into being as a loophole like they did in Vanilla 40k
>>unofficially, Dominica voiced to the Steward/Thor that the Brides as a whole sought penance for having aided and abetted Vandire, and aggressively dedicated themselves to the Ordo that was supposed to stop this shit arising again

I'll try and put the images up later tonight, time permitting.

Eh don't bother with my story at the moment, I kind of hate it and want to rewrite most of the dialogue.

Good stuff, though I think the effectiveness against bolt rounds might be overstated, I mean even if it punches through you're looking at a .75 caliber exit wound, and isn't it supposed to explode with the force of a full sized grenade?

Ah, so if I want to keep at least the religious fluff I need a new name for their holy book.
And I need to read the previous threads real close. I just tried to come up with something.
What I found was that the Securitas was formed after the Beheading. But conflicting fluff is nothing new.

I'll try to rework the entire thing.

Wrote up the Xenos classification thing that everyone seemed to like last thread into a more formal text entry.

pastebin.com/8b8Jjfec

If this sounds okay with everyone we can put it on 1d4chan.

Unfortunately that's the problem we're running into. A lot of good ideas but right now they're in an "unspoken rule" format since there is no finalized Codex entry for them. Which wasn't a problem at first, but XIV threads in is starting to become an issue. And no one wants to have to read XIV + II threads to get on the same level.

IIRC, the Ordo Securitas was founded after the beheading (the Sicarius from Vanilla), but at that time it's purpose was only to watch the Assassins and the organization had little to no militant power. Then after the Age of Apostasy the Emperor said "you know what, y'all have lost your 'not being watched over privileges'" and expanded the Securitas to be a more overarching organization to keep an eye on everyone, and then made the Sisters of Battle their militant arm to give them teeth.

I like it.
I would add a fourth that is never used, at least commonly: Xenos Obscuras. The races where we know only a few things, usually used to refer to dead races that are of really no threat (unless Indiana Jones fucks up again).

Nope, the Ordo Formerly Known As Sicarius was formed after the AoA in both Nobledark and Vanilla. In fairness, the Assassin fluff is awkwardly written since it doesn't really delineate between the Beheading and the AoA (which are the two major crises/plot points for the Assassins, no less)

Meanwhile, I was treating the Securitas as the "loose cannon investigators" that needed looser control than what they got in the Arbites.

But is the rest of my stuff okay? I'm personally fond of the Church of The Seat Warmer. Even in the far future, jokesters still pull their stuff.

Have the Black Manuscript be a fake. The actual Black Manuscript is a lost tome.

I mean the bolter shell would over penetrate Flak plating and rip through the Guardsman body to leave a clean exit wound on the other side. The shell would still probably destroy the internal organs and anything else in its path when it passes through the body but it wouldn't explode within the target. If the shell exploded prematurely before penetration, the target might get KO from the shockwave than actually get killed from shrapnel. At least in this AU the Flak Armor is made to be the apex of light anti-shrapnel armor, so that means unless a grenade exploded in their face the worst damage a Guardsman might face is some minor cuts. Artillery indirectly hitting Guardsmen might allow them to not get wounded but would still turn their organs into jelly from the shockwave. The biggest threat to Flak Armor is the lethal shockwaves from explosions and landmines. Flak Armor does jackshit in protecting a Guardsman from getting their legs blown off.

I mean, I think it was put somewhere (or at least fanon) that flak armour is pretty damn good by modern standards, certainly on par with the likes of ESAPI - it's just the fact that 40k powerlevels are so absurd that it's wet cardboard by comparison

Good point. If the Steward found out there was a copy of the Black Manuscript floating around he would have flipped his lid. And given that there were only about a dozen people who would have had access to it, and Lorgar himself declared it heretical, Oscar would have a very short list of people to question as to how it got out. Especially since the most credible rumors have Magnus being the one to save a copy for historical posterity. I would not want to be Magnus in that scenario.

And it's not like it would have been too hard for someone to independently come up with the idea that the Steward was a deity. People were apparently doing that enough beforehand that the Steward had to tell them to stop. The issue with the Black Manuscript is that it was Lorgar, one of the Steward's primarchs, who was saying this, which would have seemed to carry some measure of authority (not to mention piss the Prometheans, Eldar, etc. off).

I can see the Steward taking the Church of the Seat Warmer thing as a good joke. He always seemed one for self-deprecating humor, as long as it didn't undermine his authority.

Also it's not ork-proof. But then few things in the universe are.

So long as they see him as a prophet or a saint or a paragon or some shit Oscar tolerates.

The moment they see him as a deity he flips his lid.

Veneration he can live with, worship he can't.

Added

Alright, but I think I'll keep their holy book as being very uncomfortably close to the Black Manuscript. Someone getting their hands on Logars draft notes, maybe?

That's why most Imperial Cults are in a sticky situation. And sometimes they slip up and reveal that all the other stuff was just a smoke screen for worshiping Oscar.

Quick question about the Templar Movement. It was mentioned waaaay back in like thread 3 that the Templars in this timeline were the result of a reformation movement started by Typhon the Pilgrim to make a slightly more family-friendly version of the Death Guard as opposed to the “meat grinder” approach of Mortarion. It was also suggested that all of the chapters with “Templar” in their name are either descendants of the Black Templars or successor chapters of other legions that follow their ideals. However, even though the Templars there were listed as an offshoot of the Death Guard, it is mentioned elsewhere the Death Guard are still doing the exact same thing as the Templars, that is constantly marching to war as a near-legion.

In this case, does it make more sense that in this AU, the Death Guard simply renamed themselves the Black Templars after Mortarion’s death? Or is there some kind of ideological split between the Death Guard and Black Templars? Or are the Death Guard (and maybe Dusk Raiders) just the one bunch of Templars that don’t have “Templar” in their name?

Ironically, the Templars being “ALL CRUSADE, ALL THE TIME” and “NO PSYKERS ALLOWED” does sound more like something Mortarion would do if you didn’t know they were actually Imperial Fists in vanilla.

That would be a very good reason for Oscar to be much more concerned about this book than normal. It's one thing to see yet another author screw up and suggest that Oscar is a god and have to gently be told no. It's another when what you thought was a long-buried skeleton from your past seems to be clawing its way back to the present. The holy book was clearly not the Black Manuscript, but it was close enough to make everyone worried.

What was that common refrain that has been repeated for the last few threads or so? Oh, right.
>More Bugs

The Swarmlord was first sighted in 745.M41, during the Third Tyrannic War. At that time the Hive Fleet was referred to as Hive Fleet Jormundgandr, though it has since been recognized in retrospect that this force was merely the immediate herald of the main Hive Fleet itself. Although the Imperium had not been prepared for the appearance of Hive Fleets Behemoth, Kraken, and Leviathan, this time they had a strategy in mind. The idea was to direct and funnel the movements of the tyranid hive fleet, hoping to break the brunt of the swarm against the most fortified world in its path. Unfortunately, the nearest world that fit that description was Macragge, capital of Ultramar and homeworld of the Ultramarines. Eldar aspect warriors and bonesingers, Earth Caste engineers, and the Ultramarines themselves did everything in their power to turn Ultramar into a veritable fortress, hoping to turn the tyranid’s own strategy of attrition against them. After Hive Fleets Kraken, Behemoth, and Leviathan, the Imperium believed they knew everything the tyranids could throw at them.

Then the Swarmlord showed up.

Within hours of its arrival the tyranids went from a disorganized horde of extragalactic locusts to organized soldiers of nearly human cunning. Worse yet, despite this increase in intelligence, they seemed to lack any of the survival instinct typical of a being of that level of sentience, acting more like the appendages of a single being than separate organisms.

Marneus Calgar thought he could take the Ultramarines First Company, decapitate the head of the beast, and the tyranids would go back to being disorganized, if fearsome, beasts. Right up until the point where the Swarmlord hacked off all four of his limbs and beat the Ultramarines' Chapter Master into a coma. The only reason that Marneus Calgar even managed to survive his encounter is due to the heroic sacrifice of Aloysius and the remainder of the First Company and Second Company Captain Cato Sicarius managing to drag the Chapter Master's prone body away from the huge tyranid. The Swarmlord was eventually killed, but only by being shot. Several times. With a Baneblade. To this day, Marneus Calgar remains in a medically induced coma, and the Ultramarines fear for his health. In Calgar's absence the Ultramarines have been led by Tribune Titus, who was unanimously elected to lead the chapter by the captains of the nine remaining companies until such time as Calgar can return to duty.

Since the Battle of Macragge, the Swarmlord has been sighted a precious few times around the galaxy, and each time the Imperium has learned precious new information about this dangerous foe. Although the Imperium first believed the Swarmlord to be nothing more than an overgrown Hive Tyrant, in truth the Swarmlord is something much worse. Much like how Macha is the mortal avatar of Isha and the Nightbringer and Void Dragon have become avatars of themselves, the Swarmlord is essentially a physical avatar of the tyranid Hive Mind.

The Swarmlord only ever appears when the tyranids encounter a significant barrier to their expansion, necessitating the direct attention of the Hive Mind itself to circumvent the problem. Creating a Swarmlord is not without its risks, as it requires a not-insignificant amount of synaptic resources that could be devoted to other tyranid lifeforms, and if the Swarmlord is killed the psychic backlash can actually harm the Hive Mind itself. Nevertheless, the costs of a Swarmlord are more than outweighed by its benefits, as the presence of the Swarmlord exponentially increases the efficiency and tactical adaptability of any tyranid lifeforms on any battlefield it sets foot on. Despite representing a significant cost, the tyranid Hive Mind is large and fractious enough This was at first only theorized by the Ordo Xenos, but later confirmed by three simultaneous sightings of the Swarmlord on three totally independent battlefields later in M41.

As of late M41, the main tyranid hive fleet has arrived and is besieging the eastern rim of the galaxy on multiple fronts. It is said that the visage of the Swarmlord has been spotted on the front lines.

>from old thread
With the Templars and the whole of Mortarian and his Legion and associates not admitting that the Great Crusade is over and continuing to push on

It could be that all the chapters with Templar in the name are in fact part of the same organization, all descended from the Legionaries of the Death Guard that wouldn't stop even after Mortarian died at the conclusion of the Macharian Crusade. Which presumably happened quite a bit earlier in this iteration

The Templars were a reformation movement started by Calas "The Pilgrim" Typhon of Barbarus with the breakaway sect known as The Black Templars. His dream was to eventually have all Astartes following his example. It's kind of the other side of the coin to Guilliman's reforms suggested in the Codex Astartes or Vulkan's in The Tome of Fire.

They form the core of the Templar movement. Estimated numbers of them alone by 999M41 is at ~6,000. Their peak was reputedly 12,000

Other Chapters and Legions have joined the movement over the span of Imperial history, not all of them associated with the Death Guard or the Dusk Raiders. Basically if the Chapter's name ends in Templar it's part of the movement. When counted alongside the Black Templars the movements numbers are estimated to be in the tens of thousands of astartes alone.

Thats a shit load of space marines and rivals some of the smaller Legions of the Great Crusade. If they could actually get together and go after a single objective they would be a force to be reckoned with. Sadly that will never happen as they are spread across the length and breadth of the Imperium.

The Sororitas Templars and Fraternis Templars are the collective names of the Imperial Army Regiments incorporated into the Templar movement.

One of the oddities of the movement is the strict belief that psykers have no place on the battle field despite first High Marshal Typhon being a psyker. By Typhon's own admission he would not have recruited himself into the Astartes.

Tried to up the power of the Swarmlord to give the tyranids more of an edge given their position in the universe (i.e., still pants-shittingly terrifying despite higher competence). Here, when you look into the eyes of the Swarmlord, it is the hatred of the Hive Mind that looks back.

Calgar actually gave as good as he got, he disarmed the Swarmlord of its boneswords and thought he had the advantage. He just didn’t expect the Swarmlord to try to beat him to death.

I know we have the hive fleets arriving in M36 but I couldn't really get things to work without the hive fleets being a bit staggered before 999.M41. It seems a bit wonky for the Ultramarines to have their Chapter Master in a coma for four millennia and not just say "screw it, we need to elect a new Chapter Master" as well as the tyranids showing some of their trump cards millennia before the hive fleet reaches the galaxy.

It also gives a bit more character to the modern Ultramarines. This way, the Ultramarines aren't just the rather bland Romanesque chapter. Here, they're also the chapter that is currently undergoing a bit of a leadership crisis, given their Chapter Master is out of commission and the tyranids are at their doorstep.

This should fit in well with what we have since the Imperium’s retaliation on Dorhai for the failed assassination on Jubblowski got derailed by the battle of Ultramar, which would mean it would have to happen in the last ~400 years or so.

Titus and Sicarius are both placeholders. We can change them around as need be. I picked Sicarius because he sounds like the only guy who could get close enough to save Calgar from being turned into hamburger by the Swarmlord and live to tell the tale. Titus because he’s seen as level-headed, and because TTS aside, Sicarius seems like he wouldn’t like to be Chapter Master in the first place because it would mean he doesn’t get to stab things as much anymore.

Exactly. My question was should we leave the Templars as a break away, do the Death Guard just change their name to Black Templars since they are using the same methods, or has the Death Guard been influenced by its daughter chapter, since they appear to be using the same tactics.

Keeping it the way it is would be best, methinks - although I'm biased against Sicarius purely because of how he turns into a massive shit in the 50k Nightmare of Things to Come although TTS is a perfectly valid reason, too

Venerable Dreadnought Calgar and Chapter Master Titus? Sign me up.

One overall plot hole for the setting that's been mentioned is what Emps is up to during these crises. You would think if there's an extreme threat to the Imperium in the form of a hive fleet, he would take a break from administrative work to help kill bugs with his godlike power.

It would seem that the soldiers following The Pilgrim were a break away faction that split off due to ideological differences.

The original Death Guard may have later adopted some of Typhon's ideas once Mortarion died and couldn't keep objecting out of stubbornness.

Also I think we can ditch the inclusion of the Fraternis and Sororitas from the ranks of the Templar movement now.

The thing is, his godlike power isn't exactly that godlike. He's not powered by shaman suicides, and although a stronk psyker, I think it was said in an earlier thread that the Isha raid was basically the upper bound of his Warp power. Oscar's strength is keikakus, mostly - he was probably directing the overall funelling of Jormundgandr towards Ultramar, while also putting down Chaos cult bushfires and a few minor WAAAAAGHs as well.

Could be tricky.

It was mentioned in a previous thread that the Emperor's personal power level amounts to a Grey Knight Brotherhood (~150 Knights) would pose him a serious mortal danger.

So if he jumps onto the front lines and gets Zerg Rushed by enough high performance hyper-bugs it could theoretically kill him.

If Emperor dies no more Astropaths, to say nothing of a succession crisis.

And, and here is the OH GOD NO! possibility, the 'Nids will have access to Man of Gold DNA.

MoG Tyrannids. Let that sink in for a moment.

All in all it's considered prudent for the Emperor to not do that.

Both of these. The Beast weakened by landfall, battle, and a massive fucking sword in his chest was still more than a match for Oscar - the Swarmlord'd make fairly short work of him. Not only is it more prudent to keep him safe behind the front lines, he's also more useful there, too.

Pretty sure Oscar could solo the Swarmlord.

It's Swarmlord's twelve billion friends.

The Beast was the pinnacle of what was possible for an Ork to be in that era and then further buffed by Chaos into something hilariously OP. Had The Beast been daisy fresh and in prime fighting shape The Steward and Eldrad would more than likely be dead.

I don't know about that, canon Beast is the same tier as canon primarchs since Vulkan is unable to beat him, and since in our WotB the Beast is supercharged by Chaos this means he'd probably be around Chaos Horus levels of power. So Emps is still probably more than a match for the Swarmlord, who can go down to normal SMs, though I do agree with the others in that Oscar has been nerfed in comparison to canon Big E.

Someone add the pantheon to the wiki

I think the Templar Fraternis and Sororitas are just supposed to be the names for the unaugmented followers of the Templar. Much like the Raven Guard, the Templars appear to like to use normal men and women to supplement Astartes in their actions. Maybe use a different name in case the confusion with the SoBs is too much of an issue.

Keep in mind too, Big E has been getting more powerful ever since he started sitting on the Golden Throne. All the belief in the Imperium as an institution that had been previously thrown around in different directions due to some people swearing allegiance to him and other swearing allegiance to the Golden Throne is now going directly to him now that Oscar has essentially reconciled the two by being the head the Imperium itself.

Although Oscar is nowhere near the power level of the vanilla M41 Emperor with 10,000 years of worship and sacrifices, it could be that he's reaching a level close to if not past what vanilla Emperor was capable of during the Great Crusade.

Think Hercules from Greek mythology. Depending on where you stood (and the myth itself), Hercules was either the greatest of mortals capable of taking on some god-like beings (Gigantomachy) or a very weak god. However, unlike Hercules, who was one then the other, Oscar is both of these at the same time. The Men of Gold were the closest thing DaoT humanity ever made to warp gods, after all.

(cont.)

See this () brings up something else I had debated whether to point out. I had debated whether to divide the "notable persons" section into "Gods and God-like Beings" and "Mortals". The problem is that one could easily make an argument for Oscar falling into either category. In terms of the "mortal to warp entity" spectrum, things seem to look kind of like this:

Completely Mortal - Normal human/Eldar
More mortal than god - Eldrad (basically mortal with extra juice)
Right in the middle - Oscar
More god than mortal - Nightbringer and Void Dragon (have a physical form and are more "here" than in the Immaterium)
Completely warp entity - Chaos Gods, Cegorach

>Venerable Dreadnought Calgar and Chapter Master Titus? Sign me up.

It's a little more complicated than that. The Ultramarines would love to put Calgar in a dreadnought, but since the problem with Calgar is partly in his brain you go from having a space marine in a coma to having a dreadnought in a coma. The Ultramarines would love to put him in a dreadnought, but they don't know if he'll wake up. But of course he will because Rule of Drama. Also because rematch between Calgar and the Swarmlord.

The other issue is that Titus is technically not the official Chapter Master. He's just the elected representative acting in the name of Calgar while Calgar is incapacitated. This means he's getting a bit of flack from other chapters for not being a "real" Chapter Master and from the other captains going "fuck you, you're just a captain like me, you're not my real Chapter Master". Much like the regular Romans, the Ultramarines have a succession crisis brewing.

SO I had an idea that revolves around slightly modifying the fluff for the Tau FTL drive.
according to 1d4chan, the new fluff for their drive doesn't touch the warp at all, acting more like star trek's warp drive. Nothing else backs that up though, but I'll go with the 1d4chan fluff because it offers up a lot more possibilities.
>Late M38, Tech-priest manages to grab the knowledge needed for the Tau grav-drive. Research begins.
>Another Tech-priest discovers the grav-drive matches up with the fragments of 6 ancient research journals she discovered in her youth. Research goes even faster
>Research really drives home the point that the Warp does not always match real-space
>Setbacks occur when an ill-fated test team discover that just having the drive at standby in the Warp will attract daemons to the point of making Gellar failure a certainty.
> Early M39, the new and improved Grav Drive is unveiled. The standard form takes a minimum of 500 cubic meters for the drive, dedicated powerplant, and capacitors; scaling up as 30% of ship volume, and 1/4 as fast as Warp Drive. Only issue, it can run for only 7 days before needing a recharge
I might as well look at the numbers though, which are truly insane and really don't match with the other fluff.
According to a few sources, the Imperium can manage between 100,000C and 300,000C or "Fuck you I've gone Plaid", depending on how weasel wordy GW gets. This really does not match with of the general impressions that I get, which can have it take a few years to go from one end to the other. So new numbers time!
The Astronomicon, in canon, can be seen from about 70,000LY away. This gives us some distance for perspective. I assume that we're keeping the same distance, as we've downtraded the amount of psykers needed to run the damn thing (If we could get a primitive Pharos network up and running...).
(continued next post)

I wouldn't big up Oscar too much, we don't want him to become too much like Vanilla.

I would have him put in the "mostly mortal" camp although still more directly powerful than Eldrad.

Right in the Middle would be Macha who is half as real as she is unreal. It's just that her aspects are all bout healing and not so much conflict so it's not immediately obvious what she is.

Also I'm adding the pics to the 1d4chan page. Horus one didn't turn out as neat as I would have wanted but is close enough.

The Tau's gravdrive is just them skimming into the Warp, similar to mankind's early expansion before they created the navigator gene. It's the nids' bending of space to travel at effective FTL which is analagous to Trek's Warp Drive

(Cont) So say I want a 2 year journey between the two most distant points - big enough to keep forces from dashing around the galaxy, and keep it a big place; small enough to credibly maintain some semblance of control (it also makes Sector Governors a pretty big deal). So our best warp speed is now 70,000C. A bit over 191C per day. All numbers are realspace BTW, I'm treating the Warp as more time dilation than anything (12 days realspace, approx. 1 day warpspace)
Which also doesn't match up with GW's early numbers stating that a 100LY jump took 3-21 days realspace, and that a 5000LY jump took 5-36 months. Not that GW doesn't disagree with itself later. But afaic, my numbers sound more reasonable.
Keep in mind, this is best speed. Proper currents, no incidents, plenty of supplies, and no warp fuckery. Actual travel time varies between best speed x1 and x5 (so a end to end sprint could take 2-10 years depending on conditions).
So my Tau Drive goes 47.95LY (rounded up) per day, or about 335.61LY per maximum trip (7 days). No warp fuckery happens, making this a very consitent method of travel.
A few possible advantages
>Cheap. All costs considered, the Imperium can build choose to build either 1 warp ship, or 5 tau drive ships of equal size.
>Simple (compared to warp drive and all it's attendant needs). Most worlds of the Imperium can build these on their own.
If we take those advantages, we get a pretty different picture of space travel for the average citizen: a lot more common. Warp travel is needed to keep the Imperium together, but with Tau Drive... We get a Chain and Cluster system. Basically, most worlds are joined together by chains of warp currents, marking the major arteries of fast trade at Hub Systems. Hub Systems then have a Cluster of other systems joined together by a 15 day round trip by Tau Drive. Most of the time, it's a bit redundant as the warp still offers faster travel between those systems. (Cont)

So more like "classical" (what the modern person thinks of) Hercules rather than later Greco-Roman Hercules then. Mostly mortal but with enough power to flatten just about any daemon dumb enough to take him on (which makes sense given that we have Sangy winning against greater daemons and Oscar is more powerful than him), though he's not strong enough to take on one, let alone all four, of the Ruinous Powers by himself. Only people in his weight class include things like Lady Malys, Swarmlord, Be'lakor, and the like.

We have to be careful about giving the Imperium too much here. If the Tau/AdMech are able to create an FTL device that completely cuts out the need for the Warp, it's basically the equivalent of a successful human Webway in vanilla.

Also, should we give the Necrons back their FTL? It makes sense given we're boosting the threat levels of the other major powers, but at the same time it means that the Imperium could get their hands on it when the eccentric minor lords defect.

Maybe Necron FTL was designed with mechanical lifeforms (and biological lifeforms in tesseracts) in mind, and doesn't work well on biological lifeforms unless you don't mind the passengers being turned into a smear by the end of the journey. In theory, you could retrofit a Necron FTL engine to work on flesh-bags, but it would take centuries that the Imperium doesn't have, and they can't find any Crypteks who would help.

But the advantages do show themselves when the warp currents work against you or when the warp doesn't match up with realspace.
For example, there is a chain of three systems that are a only a few days apart in the warp. The middle one is nowhere near the other two in realspace. Another example is two systems that are 6 months apart by warp travel, but right next door (only a few hours) by tau drive. The increased tactical flexibility (and increased internal trade) helps the Imperium.
As stated before, the only true issue is that having a Tau Drive at standby in the Warp will kill you in a matter of hours. Not only does it weaken the gellar field, it can lock you out of realspace. Putting both on a ship is asking for trouble beyond just the prohibitive space requirements to mix both.

I'm looking at fluffing it as a combination of just skimming the warp, and gravitational manipulation of local space-time. Just one or the other is pretty slow. Combining the two makes them faster.

In all honesty I would have the Necrons be the only ones with the capability of true FTL. But even then I would limit it to their biggest ships. Their smaller ships, if they haven't got a big ship to latch on to, have to use the webway.

Tau Grav-Drives skim the shallow end of the warp.

'Nids use the psychic nature of the Bioships to rip a hole in reality and the Shadow in the Warp effect to act as a gellar field.

I'm trying to figure out what I can throw at it to make it less useful - slow speed is the beginning, and it's useful for tying local clusters together, but big travel takes the warp.
So what can I do to make this very definitely a second-tier (strategically speaking) drive? Fuel requirements? Maintenance overhauls? Longer recharge? I kind of want to keep the idea of a cheap and easy limited space drive that allows for a secondary civilian trade network.

A scale of Real --> Unreal, not necessarily how powerful although their is often a correlation.

>100% Mortal
Basic plebs of all shapes and sizes, the teeming bustling quadrillions of Imperial Citizens, 99+% of orks, 99+% of Dark Eldar and most of the followers of Chaos.

>Mortal with a hint of the unreal
Sanguinor, Phoenix Lords, Aun'Va, Farsight, Legion of the Damned, Ahriman, Cypher (possibly)

>Mostly mortal but with a dollop of godliness
Oscar (high end of this scale), Eldrad (low end of it), Deceiver fragments, Vect, Brain Boyz, Mandrakes

>50/50
Macha, Nightbringer, Void Dragon, Ghazghkull, Erebus, Lady Malys

>Mostly god but with a foot in the real
Cegorach (high end), Deamon-princes

>Gods
Khorne, Slaanesh, Nurgle, Tzneetch, Malal (surprising to many), Gork, Mork, Cegorach (Just to piss Tzneetch and Slaanesh off)

Slow. Slooooooow. Real fuckin' slow.
But predictable.

Hence, all of a sudden the IG's supply issues suddenly got a whole lot easier.

Or go one step further and have it as slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow.

Sub-light it might take you 40 years to get to the next star.

With the shitty Tau drive it will take you maybe 3 or 4.

It skims the shallows of the warp, thus comparatively safe but holy shit is it nearly useless from any military use.

Mostly civilian transport. If you don't mind getting packed away in a cryo-crate and loaded onto the ship with a hundreds of thousands of other plebs and if you don't mind skipping a few years it's an affordable way to travel.

So it provides some level of interplanetary travel to the peasantry but doesn't make the military OP.

And the Beast?
What about Ghazghkull, since he's supposed to be the closest thing to the Beast since the Beast?

Gazzy is in the 50/50 patch.

The Beast would have been in the Mostly god category buy virtue of how much warp dust he was snorting.

Gazzy is not The Beast yet, but he is growing and with a Brain Boy sitting on one of his shoulder like a cheeky cockney parrot he might surpass The Beast in terms of cunning.