Nobledark 40k Part 20: Fuck Roman Numerals edition

I can see the Chaos Gods trying to pass themselves off as humanity’s gods, with varying reactions from attempted suckers…I mean converts.

Some fall for the human supremacy hook, line, and sinker.
Others go with the whole “no god that is worth worshipping would ask for such atrocities to be commited in their name”
Other others would go the Lorgar route (particularly the Katholians), and say the very act of the Chaos Gods trying to pass themselves off as the gods of humanity proves they are not the real deal. God is immaterial, immaculate, and perfect, whereas the Chaos gods are very physical, mortal-born, and flawed. God speaks to everyone, whether it is man, Eldar, Tau, or more, as befits an entity that created all life in the universe.

If they believe what the cultists say, some might even go the route of some African theologies, where if the gods of humanity are evil, then it’s every man, woman, and child’s duty to defy them.
Others might see the fact that the Eldar gods adopted humanity as their surrogate children as a good thing, to get them away from their abusive “real parents” (almost like a reversal of the Aedra and Daedra)

Of course, Chaos isn’t stupid, and probably only gives the bait to people it knows will bite. Indeed, traitor guardsmen might actually be more common in this timeline than in canon. I could never understand why so many guardsmen fell to Chaos during the Heresy, when they could just look at the primarchs and Chaos Space Marines and see what was happening to them. Here, with no fallen demi-gods to provide examples, it’s much easier to convince people (especially planets that have no history with the followers of Chaos) that Chaos isn’t that bad.

>How far did we get with Heroes of the Imperium? Have we made any new ones of our own?

In terms of Heroes of the Imperium, there are so many human and Space Marine characters in canon that you can almost throw a dart and come up with a named character that fits the concept you're looking for.

Non-human characters less so, but that is because GW gives so little attention to the xenos on a personal level. In canon there are only a handful of named Eldar characters (not counting DoW), Eldrad, Yriel, Ilic Nightspear, Iyanna Arienel, and the Phoenix Lords. Tau aren't much better.

However, we do have a few completely novel non-human characters
>Aun'O Da
>Sreta Ulthran
>Rommel
>That Saim-Hann guy (warrior then harlequin then Disciple of Kurnous then Wraithguard, that has to be a story)

>shitposters

I suspect a good chunk of the shitposting is by one person. Their complaints were almost exactly the same as the last shitposter and worded the same way.

While we do need to make sure we don't fall into HFY (especially since everyone is more competent in this timeline), I think there are going to be some who will always accuse us of this just because people are more competent than in vanilla, just like shitposters call Imperium Asunder a Chaos-wank fest and Hektor Heresy...I don't know what derogatory term they use for it.

How about a Croneldar Farsight? Not literally, but at least a "what the fuck do you mean eldar can't whack the impure with chanswords" type. As for the faction as a whole, I could see some super interesting stuff going on with corrupted wraithbone constructs and shit

(cont.)
Given the lack of named Eldar characters in canon, I recommend we steal liberally from Warhammer Fantasy, since that's where a lot of cool elves seem to be anyway.

Indeed, I had a suggestion regarding Asurmen, since there's very little given on his death in canon beyond "died fighting to protect his students on the Shrine of Asur". I thought we might take a page from Aenarion. As in canon, the Shrine of Asur was besieged by daemons during the birth of Slaanesh. In order to protect his students, Asurmen took up his weapons and fought innumerable daemons, and eventually, four greater daemons, one from each of the Ruinous Powers. The point of Asurmen's battle was not to fight four greater daemons and win. No mortal, no matter how powerful, could do that. Instead his goal was to stall the daemons for long enough that his students and the population of the Shrine of Asur could retreat to the safehouses beneath the planet, warded with runes so heavily it would take one of the dark gods themselves to break in, where they could wait out the fallout from the birth of Slaanesh.

"I win."
- Last words of the original incarnation of Asurmen, before being decapitated by a greater daemon of Khorne

Three words. Evil. Eldar. Bjorn.

A wraithguard containing one of the Blood God's greatest Eldar servants, trapped in a wraithguard body after falling in battle. Thing is, he can't feel very much after being put in a wraithguard, and so he is infuriated that he can no longer feel the rush of battle or the thrill of killing your enemy. He throws himself into ever more dangerous battlefields, in the hopes of just feeling something again, if only for a moment.

Khorne is pleased by this, because it means more blood for the Blood God and whatnot.

I agree, humanity has so many canon characters that OC would just feel wanky.

I quite like the idea of porting some thematically consistent characters over from Fantasy, I kinda forgot it existed. I think a Crone Eldar Sigvald the Magnificent would be appropriate, both as a bit of relative levity and because he encapsulates what 80% of CE have become.

How do people feel about bringing in our favorite asskickers, Tyrion and Teclis? Maybe Tyrion is one of the greatest Exarchs and becomes the most recent Asurmen when the previous one falls? Or if we want to use some of his End Times fluff, maybe he somehow absorbs one of the Shards of Khaine from an Infinity Circuit and becomes a demigod murder train? (Probably not the second suggestion, I know End Times can be controversial here to say the least) Maybe Teclis is Eldrad's greatest protege, but leans more warlock than farseer? I do see how bringing characters straight from Fantasy might dilute the 40k aspects though, so I'm interested in what people think.

As a side note, I like your Asurmen backstory, though I believe the PL souls are actually housed in the armor, so it would make sense if the Eldar counterattacked, retook the Shrine and recovered Asurmen's armor.

>Tyrion and Teclis

It would make sense to keep the twins aspect of their characterization. Tyrion being a Phoenix Lord would mean his personality gets nommed by whoever puts on the armor.

>though I believe the PL souls are actually housed in the armor, so it would make sense if the Eldar counterattacked, retook the Shrine and recovered Asurmen's armor

Right, that would be his first death. Though I suppose the daemons could have just dragged his armor into the warp, so they would have had to (and they would have wanted to, daemons just killed their teacher after all) counterattack.

How often do Eldar have twins, anyway? Given that twins are a requirement to make wraithlords, which are fielded enough that there would need to be a ready supply of them for wraithlords to be militarily viable.

The highest rate of twinning for modern humans is about 5% of all births, but higher rates of twinning are almost fraternal twins because they result from multiple eggs being fertilized. We know from Dawn of War III that fraternal twins work well enough for wraithlord purposes, so we don't have to worry about identical twins. Unless Eldar have no sex chromosomes, which opens up a whole 'nother can of worms.

It almost seems like Eldar are naturally predisposed to having fewer births (due to their weird birth cycle) but multiple offspring per birth. Maybe they're like nine-banded armadillos (which always have genetically identical quadruplets), except they don't always have twins.

tl,dr: twins they were

Depends on how durable wraithlords are. If they last a long time (Eldar, duh) and can be restored to functionality after even massive damage, even a small trickle of production would result in there being a lot of them after 10,000 years.

But you need a surviving twin to pilot it. A twin who has to not only not die all that time but who will eventually (in a millenium or so) die of old age. Plus you need to have one twin die and not both. Maybe the math increases the likelyhood but it looks like making Wraithlords is hard.

Wraithguards don't have the same problem, since they're not piloted and you only need one soul.

Maybe combine these?

>Tyrion and Teclis are the Dissimilar Twins - both achieved greatness along separate paths.
>Tyrion was very physically capable and went far along the paths of the warrior but not full exarch.
>Teclis was weak to the point of having difficulty walking around. But his mind was powerful and he did great things as bonesinger and warlock.
>When Tyrion died in %suitably nobledark manner% his soul was put into a Wraithlord that the other twin now pilots.
>Tyrions powerful spirit actually does the fighting, Teclis just points it at the (right) enemy.
>This lets Teclis, with his powerful mind, to spare the attention for mental exertions of his own.
>TL;DR psyker wraithlord as special character

Knights need twins, wraithlords are much easier to deal with.

I don't see anything in the Lexicanum or 40k wiki about wraithlords need twins or even a pilot. Looks like they're just big wraithguards and are powered by a soul stone.

Or they were the children of an Isha priestess. If any eldar are likely to have twins it's them.

Both grew up big and strong with classically handsome features. Both got drawn down the paths of Khine, both joined the Dire Avengers path. Both build up names for themselves.

Then in one particularly awful battle Teclis takes a nurgle blade in the gut right up to the hilt. It should have been fatal, eventually.

At the end of the battle Tyrion finds his brother with the blade still in him. Pulls blade out and carries his bleeding brother all the way to their mothers temple.

Their mother manages to halt the poison and drive back the infection but Teclis is withered and weak and in pain.

Needless to say he isn't capable of walking the war paths any more. Mopes around temple for a while in a foul mood.

Tyrion abandons the Dire Avenger path and takes up the Striking Scorpion path.

Teclis starts training as a seer. Has many masters as most grow weary of his increasingly acerbic and sardonic personality.

Tyrion gets board of Scorpions. Becomes Swooping Hawk.

Teclis becomes a fully fledged Warlock. Admittedly he has to lean on a wooden staff and wield a stiletto knife rather than the usual sword of office. This makes him no less lethal as his psychic training allows him to know exactly where to shank you with that knife.

Tyrion eventually becomes a well respected Autarch, at his side is always a rather grim figure in ill fitting robes.

We could easily combine these two.

could we change the names from teclis and tyrion

cause that's a little too unoriginal

unless we want to bring in karl franz and grimgor and the whole passel of fantasy

Good point. We only want to be taking ideas from fantasy, not characters wholesale.

Bump

From the Tolkien elf name generator

For Teclis - Triwathon. Meaning: Slender Shadow (trîw+gwath) Male (on) (triwath+on)

For Tyrion - Delgaranor. Meaning: Red Horror (del+caran) Male (on) (delgaran+on)

Unless someone wants to come up with something less stupid.

Not bad.

Just a random housekeeping question, but is the Navigator stuff ready to go up, or did it need to be tweaked at all (i.e., does it all go under Navis Nobilite on Forces of the Imperium, or does Fedor Jiao get his own page?)

Fedor Jiao story is already up

1d4chan.org/wiki/Nobledark_Imperium_Writing#The_Saga_of_Fedor_Jiao

The description of the Navigators maybe in either Forces of Imperium or just in notes.

As user who did the description of Navigators I would suggest Notes because it feels quite unpolished.

Navigator description is great, just needs tweaking if anything. And that's saying something, since some anons several threads ago said how hard it was to write Navigators.

Also, Bleeding Star was the name-to-be for the Cronedar ship, right?

It was something like that.

Another good one to transfer from fantasy could be Eltharion the Blind.

In fantasy he was tortured by Dark Elves and had his eyes gouged out.

In the Noble Darkness he could have been a webway guide captured by Dark Eldar. They wanted to know the passwords to get into Iyanden via the webway.

He refused.

They took him apart a bit at a time.

By the time he friends caught up with his abductors all that was left was a few scraps of flesh wrapped around a soul stone.

When they placed him in the Infinity Circuit the first thing he did was kick his way to the top of the waiting line for a wraithguard shell.

Even before the union of Dark and Chaos Eldar he was all in favour of exterminating every citizen of the Dark City down to the last man woman and child.

Speaking of DEldar/Eldar relationships, I had a suggestion regarding Craftworld Lugganath. In canon, each of the major Craftworld is to be devoted to fighting a specific enemy (Alaitoc and Necrons, Biel-Tan and orks, Iyanden and tyranids). Now, with some notable exceptions (i.e., Iyanden has a pretty good reason to join Kryptman in his “We Hate Tyranids” club) this isn’t the case for this universe. However, if you’ll notice, in canon no major Craftworld has “Dark Eldar” as their preferred enemy, as even though the Craftworlders don’t like their dark kin, they seem to try to avoid fighting with them.

This isn’t the case in this timeline.

In this timeline, Craftworld Lugganath is the Dark Eldar-hating Craftworld. As in canon, Lugganath are still trying to find a way to bring their Craftworld into the webway so they can rebuild Eldar civilization from there. The Webway would literally provide an infinite amount of space for the Eldar to grow and thrive away from the horrors of the galaxy. However, they realize that’s not going to happen so long as the Webway is being squatted in by their cocaine-snorting kin. Not only do the Dark Eldar make it impossible to live in the Webway long-term, they make Webway travel dangerous in general. So Lugganath wants to kick the lazy bums out. Lugganath was always kind uneasy about the Dark Eldar, but it got worse after the War of the Beast, where it became clear the Dark Eldar were willing to kill their own kind with impunity. Also canon has Lugganath’s seer council getting slaughtered by a wannabe Dark Eldar (this seems to happen a lot with Lugganath).

If we wanted to, we could make it so that he was still alive, just mutilated by the Dark Eldar. Placing him in a wraithguard makes him sound like every other wraithguard, since they're all technically blind and can only "see" via psychic sense.

Guy is completely blind (do Eldar have medical technology that can fix that? I imagine they do but Dark Eldar poisons might make that impossible), but he's still one of the best Webway guides alive. Indeed, his lack of sight seems to have made him even better, as now it is impossible for the alien geometries of the Webway to play tricks on his mind.

Actually that does work better.

Last thread it was suggested that the Silver Skulls chapter maintain a presence at the intersections of the webway and send out regular patrols.

They could be very much allied with Lugganath.

Lugganath's end game could be that all permanent eldar habitation be moved to the webway but rather that one or just a few big cities like The Dark City they are working towards thinner spread with a "village" at each intersection, junction and crossroad.

They help humanity and the others be masters of the Galaxy so long as the Imperium helps them become masters of their domain.

I'm hoping to finally finish my primarch story over break, in the meantime I'm distracting myself from work and thinking of Crone Eldar stuff. I was thinking it would be good to have some other powerful, established Crone leaders besides Malys, some not affiliated with a particular god, but others fully committed. I hadn't thought of any solid individuals, but here are some concept that I wrote down.

Marshal of The Scions of The Old Helm
>Highest ranking figure among Khorne's remnants of the Eldar empire's military, claims authority is descended from the old empire's chain of command
>Access to some of their best surviving large-scale weapons and naval assets from before the fall
>the Marshal holds crone worlds in the eye and is granted warp real estate from Khorne, and has official palaces in the Shah-Dome, but most of its holdings in the shellworld are limited to the outer layers
>the Marshal controlled the backbone of Crone forces and needed to be appeased by Malys at the expense of the other factions until Luther and the fallen became an analogous option

High Conservator of The Attendants of Isha
>The original High Conservator was a decadent leader of Isha's priesthood that embraced her captivity as a wedding of the generative mother and the eternally preserving father
>welcomed in the garden of Nurgle, the upper priesthood that clung to Isha became immortal, pseudo-deamonic beings that fawned over their 'mother'
>The upper leadership of the Attendants witnessed Isha's rescue and are absolutely dedicated to her recapture
>Other than being patient, implacable, and insanely hard to kill, the Conservator and attendants have a large following in the slums and horrible places of the galaxy
>Their eternal readiness to campaign and their ability to motivate wars makes them useful to Malys, and they have a few powerful leaders, but they have few holdings that aren't warp real estate from Nurgle and weak armies

Been trying to dredge the old threads for the stuff we had on the major factions of Cronedar. Reposting the ones on the various flavors of Nurgle.

>I imagine that since the fall there had been eldar going to nurgle to be close to isha, but since the raid they've been psychotically dedicated to dragging Isha back to the garden, but their actual loyalty to nurgle is questionable, and they now only cooperate because they both most want to steal back plague-dumpster waifu. For Isha's part, their company is just slightly preferable to nurgle's own, and they mistook this preference, and her mixed pity, disgust, and sorrow for genuine love for them, and they believe they will be welcome, eventually. They hope the prophecy with Oscar and Malys turns out, because they think it means they will get to "rescue" Isha.

>In other words they are the eldar equivalent of greasy neckbeard M'Lady white knight orbiters who see Isha as their incestuous mother+waifu.

>Then there are the actual Nurgle ones who are rarer. They see the fall of the empire without any romanticism, only as evidence of the universal trend towards entropy and decay. The only possible means of enlightenment is despair and the acceptance of all being lost and fucked up and decaying without meaning. The clockwork of the universe counting down towards the end of all things. Inexorably. Irredeemably. Inevitability. It doesn't upset them much. They are past despair and into the enlightenment of acceptance and believe that by sharing Nurgle's gifts with all living things the inhabitants of this dying universe will be happier in the long run. Or dead. More probably dead. But if you're dead you aren't unhappy.

>Chaos Guard
I see forces like the Blood Pact being popular among the Crone Eldar as cannon fodder forces next to Orks. Seeing as most of the renegade Guards regiments would fall under either Crone Eldar or Fallen Marine overlords and Slaanesh would be the patron Chaos god for a large chunk of these regiments. Most would act like the Chaos Emperor's Children to compensate for the fact they will be outnumbered by loyalist forces. Jack-of-all-traits and master of none are common among the Chaos Guard as they have to adapt to each different battle then use their small force to defeat a larger loyalist force. Chaos Guards regiments that failed to master this are quickly crushed by overwhelming Imperial troops. The nature of the fighting for the Chaos Guard makes them become more elite than regular Cadian Guardsmen. What the Chaos Guard lacks in troops are more than made up for by Warpcraft and smart officers. How the Chaos Guard is often in a position of rebellion or under an overlord's service that lives inside the Warp, have them use cheaper weapons and armor. The industry and looting that supply the Chaos Guard is simply not enough to keep up with Imperial manufactorums, leading to the rise of subbers being used by Chaos Guardsmen instead of Las weapons along with cultist militias being thrown to distract the enemy away from the real valuable Chaos Guardsmen.

The Imperial Guard see the Chaos Guard as an elite force that is much better at combat than Orks but is less of a threat to the Imperium as a whole compared to Orks.

Just for the fact, Chaos Guard regiments work for Chaos means many of these Guardsmen will act like barbarians. They would lose some semblance of professionalism on the battlefield while turning into full Huns after a battle. Sacking planets to stay supplied or just for the fun of it, the Chaos Guard would be infamous for cruelty and bloodshed to the wider Imperium.

>chaos guard regiments
>smaller than ig regiments

Hahahahahahaha. No. If you want your small amount of Chaos forces vs. lots of loyalists fantasy, stick to the Chaos Space Marines.

Chaos Guard AS IN THE LOST AND DAMNED always outnumber the IG.

Stick to the lore, you fucking Sonichu fag.

(cont.)
The Indigo Crow (or some other esoteric title)
>The preeminent Crone sorcerer and seer, an independent Tzentchian scholar of vast power, not bound to the service of a liege or court
>Able to call on some level of cooperation between the dark academies of warp-lore in the corrupted webway around the eye
>Its unclear if this is a single individual, an assumed title passed between great tzeentchian eldar, or some more unusual entity, but in any case it is the Crones' answer to both Eldrad and Ahriman
>Has incredible supernatural power and knowledge, and is the conduit for much of the Tzeentchian Crones' access to Tzeentch's realm and boons, but little miliary power
This one needs the most work in my opinion.

Chosen Taskmaster of Slaanesh
>The Taskmaster is selected to direct Slaanesh's material domain in the Eye of Terror while the inner circle enjoy the revels
>Holds power over significant portions of the Shah-Dome, including massive habitation, industrial, and technological assets, made even more imposing by direct connection to Slaanesh's palace
>While the Taskmaster has the strongest realspace assets and most readily granted and utilized warp boons, Slaanesh can provide less in terms of raw power and reality distortion.
>The Taskmaster's strategic purpose is to wield the ruins of the eldar empire Slaanesh has claimed to make the prince of pleasure arch-enemy of the Imperium as a means of expanding his influence on the warp, which works well for Malys

what the hell is your problem?

(cont.)
Also had an idea for an individual Cronedar that can best be thought of as "Eldar Typhus". Was going to call her "Malaria" for reasons that will become obvious, but realized that name is too close to Lady Malys to fork.

When Isha was freed from Nurgle's mansion, Nurgle no longer had a guinea pig for his experiments, and Malaria offered herself as a substitute. However, the Lord of Stagnation eventually realized it just wasn't the same, and gave up on her. To everyone's shock and horror, Malaria actually survived, but not before she was merged with the destroyer hive creating Malaria, the Living Hive.

Malaria is a disgusting creature. Half of her body is covered in hive-like outgrowths, home to growing maggots, rot wasps, daemon flies, and plague gnats. The parts of her body that are not covered in outgrowths, including most of her face save the area around her left eye, look as pristine and flawless as they did the day of the Fall. However, this is only a veneer of normalcy. Malaria has almost no original tissue left, and if one were to break Malaria in half (as has happened several times), one would see that her insides are nothing more than honeycombs for the insects inside her with a thin veneer of skin on top (and then get stung by a bunch of angry Nurgle bees). She shouldn't even be able to move, having no brain, muscle, or bone.

Malaria herself does not care. She is in a constant state of pleasure, happiness, and religious ecstasy as pupate inside her body, giggling like an innocent child in spite of the horror she leaves in her wake.

I'm going to go scrub my brain now.

I was basing the idea of Chaos Guard being better than IG on how the Blood Pact with 600 troops beats IG force of 2.000.

>always outnumber the IG
Why should that be the case? Where you have the Tau, Eldar, Space Marines, and countless other loyalist forces up against what is basically a human-only Chaos Guard, it pretty much means the Chaos Guard will be outnumbered all the time. The Chaos Guard can only survive as a combat force if it becomes better than the average Guards regiment. Even when they are better, they still aren't super duper commandos compared to Guardsmen or Orks. For Crone Eldar, the Chaos Guard is just easier to control than Orks while still being just as combat effective. To the IG, they fight better than the average Guardsmen regiment but not as rowdy as the Orks.

The Chaos Guard is probably also made up of a lot of cultists. That is, the ones that actually succeed in dragging their planet into the Warp to be playthings of the dark gods. They probably weren't all guardsmen, but they're called Chaos Guard because they're baseline humans that fight for Chaos, what else are you going to call them?

I agree with the sentiment that once they actually get to the Warp and find out how Chaos actually works, they're often going to find themselves under the control of Cronedar or the Fallen because they're at the very bottom of the foodchain.

(same as )
Now that I think about it, the Lost and the Damned are probably about as tough on average as a Death Worlder. The Warp is not a nice place, and if you're a weakling in the Warp you either get eaten or you get 'ard. So on average, one-on-one a Chaos Guardsman probably beats a regular guardsman, especially in close combat, unless you're up against a Catachan or a Cadian.

>Tau, Eldar, Space Marines, and countless other loyalist forces up against what is basically a human-only Chaos Guard

Not that guy, but Chaos also has the Fallen and Cronedar. Indeed, the Cronedar probably outnumber the Dark Eldar, Exodites, and Craftworlders combined by a large margin, since they're the ones from the old Eldar homeworlds that were as densely settled as Old Earth is in M41. Even if 90% of the proto-Cronedar were nommed by Slaanesh for breakfast when schlie got up for morning recaff, that's still a lot of Cronedar.

I was taking the idea of where if the Chaos Guard is only made up of former IG and cultist that are the same or weaker than an IG regiment. So they would outnumber the IG regiments.

The idea being that Crone Eldar or Fallen Marines don't intervene to save say a Chaos Guard rebellion. In the initial start sure the Chaos Guard would outnumber loyalist forces but once a Crusader Army arrive to crush the rebellion if the Chaos Guard is equal or lesser than the IG in combat effectiveness then the very idea of Chaos Guard is doomed to fail from the start.

This is also taking into account when a Black Crusade happens, the Chaos Guard is let loose to attack Imperial forces and systems while either Crone Eldar or Fallen Marines fulfill objectives. The Chaos Guard must be better than the average IG in order to drag out the fighting long enough to allow Chaos to actually get shit done. If the Chaos Guard former Guardsmen are equal to the IG then the Imperial Army wouldn't even register them as a speed bump when coming in to stop a Black Crusade.

In this AU Old Earth is not the over populated city-planet of Vanilla.

It has distant and separate Hives surrounded by vast idyllic agrarian land.

>work, not fork
>as flies pupate

Friggin' autocorrect

Last thread it was also mentioned that the Cronedar have used blasphemous magics to keep parts of the Webway stable in the Eye of Terror. Lugganath would have to do something about that to keep the Webway from turning into She Who Thirst's pantry.

So it sounds like Lugganath's plan is...
1) Remove Kabal
2) Seal off parts of Webway leading into Eye of Terror
3) Move Eldar into Webway
4) ???
5) Profit!

The whole point is that while a Chaos soldier might be tougher and stronger than an Imperial Guard, his or her equipment will be ABSOLUTE DOGSHIT.

You know how the AdMech is really bad with tech because they don't always know how things work?

The Dark Mechanicus is worse. FAR worse. But not the way you think. The Dark Mechanicus has far more understanding of technology than the Adeptus Mechanicus, but they're extremely egoistic and they only really care about killing other Dark Mechanicus members. They're all mad scientists that want to kill all the other mad scientists.

Which means that Chaos soldiers get absolute dogshit for gear.

Old WD articles about creating your own Lost and the Damned regiments talked about taking regular IG parts, and mangling them so they looked like they had been looted from the dead. The Dark Mechanicus doesn't care about the Chaos soldiers to outfit them like the AdMech does for the Imperial Guard.

How you fit that in your Nobledark universe, I dunno. But it's something to keep in mind.

Also, only now I realise that this is the nobledark thread.

My little outburst at the end of
is a bit uncalled for.

Meant in canon. And I think the situation is more like a giant layered city. The very tops of Old Earth are vast layered tracts devoted to farmland, while caverns underneath grow edible fungi, alga, and other food items. Anything that looks like flat land is probably at least ten stories off the bedrock.

I think the oceans are also supposed to be partially built over as well. They're not evaporated like in canon, but Old Earth is said to look green, rather than blue, from orbit (unless they're like solid algae farms).

Of course, that's the ideal for hive worlds. Many hive worlds have had their hydroponics break down over 10,000 years of use and the Imperium doesn't have the resources right now to repair them. Some of them they're not sure how to repair because they were built by Perturabo. Earth is lucky because it's not only the capital, it's the seat of the Astronomican, the home of the biggest psyker schola remaining after the destruction of Prospero, etc., so extra care is taken to make sure it stays in working order.

From what I know about the Dark Mechanicus is that they are larger than vanilla or at least big enough to outfit and make fleets inside the Warp. I too doubt the Dark Mech ever think of working for the Chaos Guard to produce supplies. They would only care and work for those that can provide knowledge or rare assets like Fallen Marines, Crone or Dark Eldar.

Materials to manufacture weapons for the Chaos Guard wouldn't be a problem inside the Warp since Chaos can just magic things into existence to build ships. The problem comes in that most of the Chaos Guard would operate outside of the Warp for an extended amount of time where they can't just magic in resources to make weapons. That means either Chaos Guard troops would loot supplies (which is not sustainable logistically speaking) or use manufactorums to produce supplies (that can't even dream of competing with Imperial industry).

The lack of ability for the Chaos Guard to get supplies means either they are throwing out swords and stubbers to every civilian in sight to make cannon fodder cultist. Alternatively, the Chaos Guard regiment can still use Las weapons and the more popular Autoguns from lootings and easily manufactured weapons from occupying worlds. If there are weapons to spare than a combination of both. The Chaos Guard regiments that try to act like IG regiments will try to keep Las weapons from their old days and used captured or produced weapons afterward. Because the renegades don't have the economy backing them to have a steady flow of Las weapons, Chaos Guard would be filled with melee weapons, Stubbers, and old vehicles or generally ancient/cheap things to keep themselves fighting.

Physically, anybody in the Chaos Guard above cultist level is stronger than a normal Guardsmen because of the Warp or magic toughing them. That and along with battlefield Warpcraft with smart officers are the only thing allowing the Chaos Guard to defeat Imperial forces.

Yup. When you run out of guns, loot the guns of the enemy's dead. Lasguns are simply to reload.

And having an army that has a higher focus on melee combat because swords and axes don't need reloading sounds perfect for a Chaos-influenced army. Just need to make sure everyone doesn't go full Khornate and charge en masse into the lasgun and shuriken pistol fire.

The smarter Lost and Damned offficers probably use the Dark Mechanicus' ego to their advantage. I.e., if you supply us with stuff, we'll go knock over your rival, or attack an Imperial research facility for you. Play the mad scientists off each other.

I like the idea of the Chaos Guard being the melee mirror of the IG and so far there is no Chaos faction that is really melee focused. Melee weapons not needing to reload is a great reason why the Chaos Guard use CQC than range combat. Having the Chaos Guardsmen be strong enough to beat a Cadian in melee is a good way to counter the lack of even mediocre guns the Chaos Guard don't have. Cultists are sure as shit aren't good for anything but be meat shields for proper Chaos Guardsmen. The Chaos Guard would have troops tanky or crazy enough to charge at a Guardsmen gun line for melee combat. They can also avoid fire by dodging or plan to close the distance where the enemy can't return fire.

>so far there is no Chaos faction that is really melee focused

Well, there's the Orks, but they're less Chaos and more manipulated by Chaos into fighting on their battlefields where the best fighting is in exchange for avoiding targetting Chaos troops.

>They can also avoid fire by dodging or plan to close the distance where the enemy can't return fire.

Ye gods, urban combat with the Chaos Guard. I'm reminded of that AGP story where Shoggy's group had to fight Orks, then traitor guard, and said they'd rather fight the Orks again please.

You know, the aforementioned posts in the last thread really drives home the point of just how advanced the Old Ones were to everyone else. We talk about mountain-sized terraformers and time-altering blades of humanity and Eldar as being irreplaceable relics of a lost golden age, to the Old Ones they were about as high-tech as iron-smithing. To the Old Ones, gods were little more than supercomputers, perhaps smarter in some respects by the race that created them but ultimately constrained by their programming. They uplifted and created advanced, space-faring races in the same manner that humanity and Eldar create tools.

The Necrontyr, which had developed technology beyond what any living race in the galaxy could achieve, fought the Old Ones for dominance. They lost. Badly. The only way the Necrons could defeat them were to create their own pantheon of gods to level the playing field and the Old Ones in literally the one place where the Necrontyr could weather the fallout better than the Old Ones: the Immaterium. But the Necrons still had advanced enough technology that they weren’t snuffed out like a candle. High-end Necrontyr stuff in many respects is probably comparable to low-end Old One stuff, just like high-end, long forgotten DaoT Eldar and humanity stuff is akin to the average Necron tech level.

The scary thing is that unlike all the other races in the galaxy, save the Orks, the Necrons remember their old stuff.

>AGP story
That fits considering the IG can mow down tons of Orks charging at them in an open field, but as soon as they have to fight the Chaos Guard in a city it was a death sentence. Plenty of ways for the Chaos Guardsmen to flank and close the range to butcher the Guardsmen or swarm a location with an endless amount of cultists.

I realize the regular Cadian regiments doesn't have anything to deal with a decent melee force. The Cadian Doctrine is to dig in to mow down attacking enemies before they get into melee. When attacking, the Cadians use mass artillery support with charging infantry to dig out defending enemies. Chaos Guard acts as a hard counter to the whole charging across the open field because they would have enough troops to succeed or attack in a cover rich environment. Cadians attacking Chaos Guard wouldn't really work when Chaos Guardsmen just wait out the artillery barrage in bunkers or Cadians facing enemies right on top of them to prevent artillery support due to friendly fire.

That's what Beastman assault sections, Ogryns, flamers, and grenades are for.

Eh, that might be underselling DAoT humanity and pre-Fall Eldar a bit. DAoT humanity had, among other things: a cure for all diseases as part of the STC, ships that could casually shoot black holes with perfect accuracy in warp storms, Titans that were pretty much Evangelions (Castigator Titan), and IIRC bullets that could go back in time to hit their target. Details on pre-Fall Eldar are scant but I imagine around the same level.

So no, they're not on the same level as the Necrontyr and Old Ones, but in a theoretical fight they probably still could have given either of those species a bloody nose at the very least.

Most Cadian Troops don't have the luxury of having lots of those things to deal with an army.

That's more what I was getting at. Necrontyr, Daot Humanity, and pre-Fall Eldar were probably close to the same level, but Necrontyr were just a biiit ahead, enough to drag the Old Ones down to their level.

Plus, kind of like the Forerunners and Precursors in Halo, the Necrontyr managed to win by figuring out the specific stuff that was super effective against the Old Ones.

My point was more than we see the accomplishments of DaoT humanity and the pre-Fall Eldar as a mountain, only for when we reach the peak of that mountain to realize that there's another, even larger mountain in the distance that we hadn't even realized existed until now.

This raises a good question. If Chaos Guard is a hard counter to the Cadian/Ulthwe strategy (you know, the most common strategy in the Imperium and the one used by the guys guarding the Eye of Terror), how is the Eye of Terror reliably held? Do we just go with , plus Fenrisian Line Regiments and Sisters (now with enhanced guardsman-tearing kung-fu grip?)

The Eye of Terror is held because Chaos Guard don't pour out of the Eye of Terror or the Maelstrom. From what it sounds like the Chaos Guard is a very real force that mostly exist within the Imperium and outside of the Warp. They would congregate around the Eye of Terror or the Maelstrom when a Black Crusade occur to help in the break out and act as fodder along with Orks. The thing is the Chaos Guard unlike the Imperial Guard, is not a unified organization and act as independent regiments until they come together during a Black Crusade. Meaning they don't just roll out the red carpet for Chaos at the Eye of Terror and keep the Imperials away all the time. They only roll out the red carpet in the event of a Black Crusade and only then. Having them be a hard counter to the Cadian/Eldar combo is one of the few things keeping them alive against a bigger enemy. They have dogshit weapons, constently outnumbered, and no supplies so they need some advantages to prevent them from becoming "Shouldn't they already be dead" tier troops.

>plus Fenrisian Line Regiments and Sisters
And Eldar Guardians and Aspect Warriors. And, you know, all of the *hundreds of thousands* of other Imperial Guard regiments. Also, it is probably safe to assume Cadian Shock regiments- the regiments raised on Cadia itself; are very capable at CQC, whatever their 'specialization' is.

I just noticed a bit of an issue with the Necrons.

The idea that we were kind of leaning towards was after the biotransferrence, the C’tan gave Szarekh complete independence and the ability to control the Necrons unless a C’tan gave them a different order as some sick parody of gratitude, similar to how Homunculus gave Hohenheim immortality at the cost of billions of people in Full Metal Alchemist. This ended up biting them in the ass when the Silent King ordered the Necrons to fire on the Deceiver and the Nightbringer before they could countermand his orders after the C’tan cannibalized each other.

However, given that we’ve established the C’tan are only able to control “orphaned” tomb worlds in M41, how did we get to this point? Did the Silent King manage to figure out some way to sever the controls after all? Or maybe just subvert the ones for the C’tan such that any amount of free will could override them, but couldn’t manage to figure out how to break his personal control because it would be the equivalent of a computer performing repairs on itself?

Eldar Guardians are part of the standard Guard regiments. Regiments on Cadia are more combined Cadia/Ulthwe than anything else.

Though I see your point about Cadian Shock Troopers actually from Cadia would be better at CQC, given they fight Chaos Guard on a more regular basis.

The issue is more that the Cadian style of combat is considered the standard across the Imperium. Many Guard regiments use a similar strategy, unless they're Machairians (play to your strengths) like Catachans, Fenrisian Line Regiments, etc.

>Having them be a hard counter to the Cadian/Eldar combo is one of the few things keeping them alive against a bigger enemy. They have dogshit weapons, constently outnumbered, and no supplies so they need some advantages to prevent them from becoming "Shouldn't they already be dead" tier troops.

I see your point.

I would assume the primary factor in their survival is that it is a very large universe and even an utter dogshit unit could rampage around for years on the fringes of the Imperium before being stopped.

Could be that the override signal has to be given by a sufficiently intact C'tan. By the time the shards got their shit together enough to figure out how to send the control signal in their compromised stat Silent King had already changed the passwords.

I rather prefer these 2 explanations for the Chaos Guard's survival: that Chaos Guardsmen are all hard as nails like Death Worlders (maybe even more so) due to the super natural selection of the Eye of Terror, and that they survive via sneaking around the edges of Imperial space and raiding.

The idea that Chaos Guard are so superior in melee combat as to hard counter Imperial tactics doesn't really work for a few reasons. First, Chaos buffs don't work like that. In canon, the Chaos Gods are pretty picky about granting buffs to people, so being a faceless Chaos mook isn't going to be enough to get even a bit of warp strength. Secondly is just a matter of common sense: the advantage that range weapons give over melee weapons is vast, and there's a reason melee fighting went obselete. Even shit like the Zulus beating the British at Isandlwana was more due to massive British tactical failures than melee actually being viable. I do like the idea that Chaos Guard are better melee fighters and try to exploit that advantage against the Imperials, but to lean on it heavily as the reason for the Chaos Guard's survival/success doesn't make sense.

Tactically, what if the Chaos Guard are sort of like the Dark Eldar? They avoid direct confrontation and use ambushes, raids, and hit and runs as much as possible, but use stealth and blending in with human populations to get in and out instead of speed and webway of the DE. Also, since Chaos emphasizes individuality, maybe Chaos has more innovative tactics than the Imperium, and is more flexible to changing battlefield conditions compared to the Imperials?

This is a neat idea, any fleshing out for the two xeno hordes yet? (Tyranids and Orkz)

It could be a combo. Remember that we are trying to buff Chaos to be viable against the Imperium.
So, sections of the CG are buffed by Chaos, other sections use sneaky raids and infiltration. All of them go through natural selection in the Eye of Terror, and other gaping wounds in reality.
Another advantage could be a cell structure that gets called together by worship spawned visions. This not only makes tracking them harder, it also allows them to create and recruit cultists just about anywhere - and you can't really find that anywhere if the guardsman is good at infosec.
Tactics are also a major game changer - almost every Chaos Guard unit runs away from an open field engagement. They turn cities into deathtrap mazes, they scatter traps around, can entrench an area like they're the bastard child of the Viet Cong and a Mexican Drug Cartel (and faster than the IQ, to boot), and only the Orks beat them for being able to salvage components for traps and weapons out of battlefield scrap. Hell, plenty of them could build their own basic infrastructure.
You wanna dive into a forest and play mongoose? Those tunnels eat regiments, and you can never be sure that they didn't get inspired by Dorf Fortress - and they're the dorfs and the happy fun stuff rolled into one. You could bring in excavator equipment and high explosives to strip mine the area down until you run out of tunnels, but they can always dig more. Not even collapsing the tunnels is sure to work - there is always a backup bunker. The only way to be sure is to send people into a meatgrinder that plays to the Chaos Guard's strengths, and hope you don't choke your entrance with your dead.
Or a good orbital bunkerbuster. But see the above about "We don't know how far the tunnels extend". It's a good start though.

Offensively? Not sure yet. They probably draw local and IG forces off to said deathtrap with bait forces while they prep to do the same setup to whatever objective you must hold.

Brain Boyz are returning.

Gazzy is taking up the mantle of The Beast.

Some orks in the Octavius sector are farming Nids.

Wazdakka has managed to gain access to the webway and somehow navigates it.

We are up to 5th or 6th Great War for Armageddon.

Obliterator Boyz are a thing.

Bug Boyz are very much a thing.

Chaos orks are uncommon but not so much that people are surprised by them.

This is shamelessly stolen from a previous thread.

However, I'm not sure how much has been written about the Nids beyond that snippet on the Swarmlord.

I don't think there is a great deal that can be written about the nids as a faction as they aren't so much a faction as a natural disaster that other factions have to deal with.

Bar the Swarmlord and the implication that the Hivemind may actually be sort of sapient and malevolent rather than adaptive and just hungry.

The Civilization vs Chaos angle could in this AU be seen as an escalating war that's been getting progressively hot for the entirety of Imperial history.

At first it's AoS and the eldar are just recovering from The Fall. Cronedar are re amalgamating after majority get nommed, DEldar are founding The Dark City as their new home and Craftweorlders are still getting shit working on the ships.

Oscar is waging his Earth Unification and declaring war on Chaos, although he doesn't know Chaos is actually a sapient and sentient collection of things in it's own right yet. For Chaos' part in the war they don't even notice him. Just one more localized planetary level little warlord among hundreds of thousands.

Then shit gets interstellar. Now Oscar is one among hundreds at most. The gods still barely register him beyond "quaint". Oscar has met the eldar. Now he knows stuff.

Chaos never really sees it coming. One minute they are playing cards and giggling a little about the petulant tard rage of some insects and then BAM! Someones kicked the door in, slain the property guards, kidnapped Isha and left a mile wide tail of ohgodwat on the way out.

Then the war gets hot. Turns out Oscar wasn't "quaint". Turns out Oscar was a threat. Turns out Ceggers and Khine and Isha are all still participants in the Great Game. And they are out for blood.

Oh shit what is this Omnissiah thing that's just started coalescing? What is "The Dragon"?

Where are all these prophesies coming from?

QUICKLY, KILL EVERYTHING! RELEASE THE BEAST! RAISE THE ELDAR! SET OUT THE DEAMONS! OH FUCK IT ISN'T WORKING!

And it's only been getting more frantic since the first Black Crusade.

Soon the cold war that went hot is going to go incandescent. The old pantheon survivors are lining up.

On the side of Civilization you have;
Ceggers
Khine
Isha
Impossible Child/Ynnead
Void Dragon

On the side of Chaos;
Khorne
Slaanesh
Tzneetch
Nurgle

On no ones side but will wreck everyone who gets too close;
Gork
Mork
Malal
Nightbringer

Oscar and his friends turned the ruin at the end of the Age of Strife into a galactic sized delivery mechanism for his bitch slapping hand.

Shit is heading towards the big push towards dawn. But is that a sunrise or is the horizon on fire?

Talking about Ynnead, we should just have it be the Eldar name for the starchild instead of whatever the fuck stupid shit it is in canon.

The Starchild Prophesies all differ. There will definitely be an Impossible Child. Ynnead will definitely arise soon they may or may not be the same individual.

Ynnead being the Starchild is one of the main possibilities of the Starchild Prophecy and the one I’m personally most in favor of. However, it’s a post 999.M41 thing, which means that it is at best an alternate future that could happen, rather than canon. Anything else is an equally valid possibility, up to and including Vect’s Magical Realm.

It would be interesting to see what the human supremacists reaction would be to Starchild!Ynnead. Here is a god who is literally, by definition, half human. Oscar may be a Man of Gold but that essentially makes him a human with some bits added. Here you have a benevolent deity (at least if Oscar and Isha raise him right) that is undeniably human to some degree.

Ynnead is also the god of rebirth. The ultimate breakdown between the barriers that separate species. Don’t like living as a human? Be reborn as an Eldar. Don’t like living as an Eldar? Be reborn as a Tau. Ynnead doesn’t just herald the Singularity. Ynnead is the Singularity.

Basically this. The Chaos Gods have also been trying to gain power as well. 10,000 years of detente like the Horus Heresy.

Also Hive Mind and Outsider. I would say Deceiver, but he doesn't seem interested in playing the Great Game anymore.

Was suggested that there were some Chaos orks that don't like Ghazzy favor of "Gork and Mork", and he's gonna have to (and will) krump them if he wants to unite the WAAAGH!

Should be noted that the Armageddon Wars are all Ork-related in this timeline.

Tyranids are deliberately being written as faceless and unindividualistic as possible. Kryptman is being used as a vehicle to further explore the tyranids without giving them too much personality.

We also have Doom of Malan'tai written, and there was that suggestion of biological espionage by the Ymgarl Genehounds.

Even if the Hive Mind is sapient, it's not in the way we know it. It's more like a wasp swarm (or better yet, a bear) that realizes that it has to kill off all the soldier bees before it can gorge itself on the workers and honey. It can recognize threats, but it shows no malice towards them. Just a prioritized target that has to go down before they screw up lunch.

We really need more shit on Inquisitor Boaz Kryptman.

I'd say Outsider is against the Great Game becasue as an idea that is desperately trying to erase all acknowledgement that it exists or ever existed getting involved in a that shit show would be counterproductive.

Starchild Ynnead would drive more of xenophobic to a more radical state and right into the arms of Chaos. When the illogical or religious are confronted by hard evidence countering their beliefs only one of three things will happen. They will take in the information then discard their old belief, or block out the information as false and keep believing in their belief, or drive them to become more radical in an attempt to snuff out counter arguments. By snuff out counter arguments, I mean dismantling the Imperium then establishing smaller independent stares.

Involvement of the Outsider is less voluntary and more because he's getting roped into something he doesn't want as one of the few whole C'tan. Anyone that can get him to do what they want has a huge advantage on their side, regardless of what Outsider wants. Good luck trying though.

The Deceiver is shattered in as many pieces as Khaine, and seems to be more interested in playing with his C'tan vampires and small scale dickery. It's possible he does have some master plan, but it's not obvious at the moment. Also no one would want the Deceiver on their team because he's a team-killing dickbag.

>It's more like a wasp swarm (or better yet, a bear) that realizes that it has to kill off all the soldier bees before it can gorge itself on the workers and honey. It can recognize threats, but it shows no malice towards them. Just a prioritized target that has to go down before they screw up lunch.
After binging nature documentaries I posted some stuff in earlier threads about making the tyranids slightly less pulpy by shifting their overall characterization as a faction away from super exaggerated ferocity and overblown malicious hunger and making them more in line with being a natural predator, just scaled up to an ecosystem the size of our local group. Mostly this came down to it being just as big a threat, but is hardly assured its prey, and there being some chance that the hivemind chose a quarry that will at best make it very ill. Between the Necrons and the Old Ones we can see that the tyranids aren't even close to the apex of physical or psychic mastery, and the Chaos gods seem almost like a more sedentary form of the same phenomena. Its fun to imagine a supercluster sized ecosystem full of predatory super-organisms traveling the open space between galactic 'reefs' full of other, highly competitive super-organisms, hidden in the dark or shrouded by the glow of their galaxy respectively. The hivemind is like a bird sticking its head in a hole, and while it has a sharp beak, if there's hateful robot skeleton in the tree its fucked.

I think this actually has some basis in canon. In canon, when the Silent King went bumming around intergalactic space after the War in Heaven, he saw things that made even the Necrons, who were used to some serious shit after the War in Heaven, go "nope". The tyranids were just the most pressing of the lot because they were heading straight for the Milky Way.

>While the majority of the necron race slept away the aeons, his great majesty Szarekh, the Silent King, journeyed far and wide beyond the borders of this galaxy. Such unspeakable things did he witness as cannot be adequately articulated in our noble language, nor any other. The most dire of all these extragalactic enemies were the tyranids"

I suppose what I'm getting at is meant to go so far as to say that the Silent King going "nope" at the extragalactic ecosystem isn't because its on such a high power level, but because its like a spider wandering into a pond. To have forces with technology or artifice significantly greater than the Necrons kinda needs something to the tune of timelords kicking around, which is silly. Instead I imagine it to be a difference in kind instead of magnitude, where the Necrons or Imperium could do just as well as the Tyranids as intergalactic predators if they were to go full Culture and start building Phaerons with inertialess drives/build The Ship and dedicate their entire respective faction to the goal. Ultimately, the Tyranids aren't just reduced to dumb animals, nor are they a cartoonish space demon. Instead they're the beasts the forest to the (AU) imperium's idealized 1700's in space, good for fretting over nature red in tooth and claw, and to the Necrons they're big game, suitably met with a victorian scoff and a Carnifex gun.

I agree with you, and that's what I was trying to get at with my previous post (am ). The threat from extragalactic entities is not from the power levels outside the galaxy being higher, but that the universe as a whole is just so weird and unconventional that there are loads of foes who are simply outside context problems to the people of the Milky Way.

And lacking context and strategy can be just as lethal as sheer power. It's like someone once said with the Ultramarines "it doesn't matter how well-oiled your war machine is if you don't have a plan in the first place".

Vect's magical realm?

Malys kills and rapes Oscar while Vect watches

In that specific order, no less.

Of course a Dark Eldar would come up with deprived shit like this.

Yes, the DE are rather deprived. Of exactly what, we'll have to find the list, but let's start with sanity and spell check...

>blending in with the human population
That is not going to be happening with Sword-hands McGee and a former Guardsmen with a giant tattoo of a Chaos Star. The Chaos Guardsmen are in not a state to act like civilians when they do shit like dancing on top of a dance floor build on prisoners to kill them on a weekly basis. Such a thing is viable for cultists which are just civilians given weapons then told to charge. Although the cultists might talk oddly they can be passed off as harmless civilians. The Chaos Guard would fight like a guerrilla force when at a disadvantage just to survive. If there are enough men or at an advantage, they should act like a conventional military force.

At worst if all of the different Chaos Guard battle-groups somehow managed to unify, they become a Segmentum level threat. Of course this never happens as the closest thing to that is 1 or 2 sectors being threatened near the Eye of Terror and the Maelstrom by battle-groups during a Black Crusade. Given this low priority, the Imperium has better things to do than snuff out the Chaos Guard, like fighting Orks or preventing Dark Eldar raids.

Unrestricted by Imperial doctrines, the Chaos Guard battle-groups can mix and match tactics to adapt to the ever changing battlefields. So when a battle-group is fighting a Kreiger Korp, they can throw the Cadian and Fusilier Doctrine into the trash because that won't work against the unique way Kreigers fight. Instead the battle-group can fight like Iron Warriors with their pre-planned killzones and delayed withdrawal into a death maze. Something a Imperial Guard regiment can't do like switching tactics depending on each individual battle is allowed for Chaos Guard battle-groups. Leading to innovative officers compared to the stagnant Imperial officers.

This makes it seem like guard regiments can only ever do one thing and can't innovate, as opposed to normally trying to play to their strengths. Do you really think if a battle's starting to go ploin-shaped the guard (except perhaps Kriegers) won't try to modify their tactics? Now granted with Chaos its a lot less obvious what they're going to be from the start, as opposed to just looking at a guard force and easily saying they're Cadian Shock Troopers or Fenrisian Line Regiments, etc.

I'm all for the Lost and the Damned on the defensive being like Viet Cong/asymmetrical warfare and on the offense being like anachronistic Warriors of Chaos/technobarbarians with lasguns. Melee can still fuck you up if you get taken by surprise but the enemy remains well-organized, and between the cultists acting as meatshields the actual melee fighters can get in close and keep the guard from firing at the ones with actual ranged weapons.

How did the guard in this timeline even come about? IIRC, in canon the Emperor planned for Space Marines to perform all infantry-related tasks while baseline humans operated artillery and tanks and whatnot. Did the Steward in this timeline just see the use in having regular humans around and using Space Marines as heavies?

It makes sense because we have the Warlord's troops essentially divided into "normal" and "super soldier" divisions from the beginning, not to mention we have discussed things like the Uxor who commanded baseline humans. By the time the War of the Beast ended, the Imperium still controlled so much space (having lost a lot of worlds, but holding ground was never the Orks or Cronedar's primary goal so much as wrecking shit) and the Space Marines had suffered so many casualties that it simply became more practical to raise Guard regiments for small-scale stuff than call in the Astartes for every feral ork who figures out how to make a Rokk.

In this AU it's more likely that, like with himself, the long term goal was to make Super Soldiers obsolete. At some point the wars would be over, the butchers shops would be closed and the existing Space Marines could try and make lives for themselves.

How did the Guard come about? As an amalgamation of the old national armies of the Unification that just kept getting added to.

IG regiments don't so much act like stubborn old guard with tactics, but strictly follow the doctrine they have been taught until they get their ass handed then modify said doctrine. If the regiment survive to the next battle the cycle starts all over again with them following their doctrine strictly. CG battle-groups don't follow any set doctrine but already adapt with changing tactics before the battle starts. They would copy tactics done by other forces be it enemy or friendly but never strictly follow a doctrine like the IG.

Keep in mind that sometimes whole regiments go over at once and take all the training and structure with them.

Chaos Guard is a generic term for humans at war on side of Chaos. Their exact nature is mostly defined by origin.

1. Raised from primitive or ruined Chaos controlled human worlds. These are the stereotypical Lost and the Damned - cultists, mutants, madmen. Whenever Cronedar or Fallen need a expendable soldiers or workforce they visit such worlds and herd the meat into transporters.

2. Raised on Chaos controlled world that have actual infrastructure. These are more or less like PDF. Stubbers with some las, iron armor. Some sorcery, gifts from the Gods on officers and elite subdivisions. Often brought along by greater forces, but might do their own raiding or piracy in frontiers.

3. IG that were turned. Fight as they did before, but with less supplies and more sorcery, sometimes demons. Materiel tends to deteriorate with time. Skills too if they recruit replacements from cultists. If they have a specific Chaos patron, may move over to its doctrine in time - khornate rushes, nurglich chem/bio weapons etc. Usually follow the plans of whoever turned them. Otherwise will either join larger Chaos force or establish territory somewhere Imperium are unlikely to pursue them short term.

4. IG that turned and managed to keep their shit together for the medium/long term. Similar to (oversized?) mercenary outfits that take payment in arms and armor - have IG or slightly better equipment but lots of recycling. Try to have some internal manufacturing capability if possible. Recruit from cultists or slaves but have standards and training. Raid for stuff or assist other Chaos types for pay. Often known by their particular name like Blood Pact instead of generic Chaos Guard.

How prevalent should Blessings and Possessions be?

In a no value Cannon Fodder horde I'm guessing not very due to their worthlessness until worth is obtained by doing something to justify the investment so basically 1 in 10,000 pressganged end up with some sort of gift.

1 in 1,000 for the PDF due to being better than the mindless braying horde.

Turncoat Regiments I would imagine that the instigator and close circle that got shit done would benefit most. Maybe Instigator being fully possessed and his acolytes being blessed.

Chaos raised regiments would have the Colonel and maybe the captains possessed. Colonel definitely but maybe the captains just blessed. Lieutenants maybe blessed also.

Does this sound right or is this being too generous with the Chaos Juice?

Well, Chaos is supposed to be more generous in this version, as I understand.
And many of its blessings are decidedly mixed.
So it seems OK.