Nobledark 40k Part XXI: Return of the Roman Numerals

So looking at the timeline, are we going with

M31ish - War of the Beast. Imperium loses some ground from Great Crusade, other areas heavily damaged and/or ork infested.
M32-early M33 - Great Hunt. Imperium removes ork and Cronedar from core territories.
M33-Machairian Crusade. Imperium realizes its rebuilt enough that it has the resources to go reconquer the worlds on the fringes and does so. Imperium expands to its Great Crusade bounds if not a little moreso.
Late M33-M35 - Imperial "Golden Age". Relatively stable, beyond the occasional calamity like Prospero or the World Engine. No constant political upheaval from races like Tau. No cold war that could turn hot any minute with the Necron Star Empire. No tyranids (or genestealers) threatening to destabilize the galaxy.

Maybe mess with the dates a bit, but the general sequence of events?

I said this in a previous thread and I'm not sure what the general sentiment was, but I think having the Macharian Crusade so close to the Great Crusade is sort of pointless. In vanilla the MC is supposed to be like the last hurrah of the Imperium before the ominous time of ending stuff implied for M42, and Macharius is an echo of the lost glory of the Primarchs. Assuming that we want to keep that tone in this AU, then in M33 like half the primarchs are still around and kicking ass, making Macharius much less remarkable. I still think the best time for the MC is right after the Age of Apostasy, as something to unify the Imperium after Vandire almost tears it apart, and at that point only 3 Primarchs are left and they're getting pretty damn old, letting Macharius stand out more.

I dig the golden age, and stuff like Prospero and the world engine make good legends for the long history of the imperium

I see your point. Though I don't think the Imperium really has a last hurrah in this timeline. The issue in M41 is not that the Imperium is necessarily getting weaker, its that its foes are getting stronger. The question to ask is the latest onslaught going to be the one to break the Imperium's back.

It's also hard to imagine the Imperium having two and a half centuries of relative stability and not deciding to do something about all those lost planets until after the 150 year reign of terror and the 10 year civil war that followed.

Machairius at M33 could be seen as "maybe the primarchs weren't just a flash in the pan, maybe more people will arise to replace them". Which ended up being both true and untrue.

I think most of the primarchs are gone by M33. Not counting A & O and their fuckery, we have nine primarchs confirmed dead by that point, three confimed to survive until M36, and five unknown. Problem is some of the unknowns are Astartes, and we have no idea how long they live. Ahriman was not an old man by M34, but he's a psyker and so he doesn't count. Curze turned himself over for execution, and it doesn't make sense he would do it when he was an old man because it would take away from the statement that he was being punished for his own crimes (why execute what the reaper is going to collect in a few years).

I suspect Perturabo would have died before the first Black Crusade. If Dorn died before Perty did Perty would have flipped his lid.

Just like Pax Romana, there is no internal strife but there is plenty of external enemies. Worlds to purge of Orks, fending off a Black Crusade (or two), Dark Eldar raids. Nothing of a major threat destroying the Imperium from within. (pic somewhat related)

Also, we should come up with an official name for the Imperium like 'Galatica Imperium' or 'Imperium of Civilizations'.

World Engine also means when the Silent King revs the rest of them up in M41, the Imperium has enough context to know how hard to shit bricks. This is something that has reached almost mythological status in the Imperium, and now you're saying there's more of them? It would be like telling the ancient Greeks that Tartarus was open and Kronos was back.

Harrowing was also during that time, though I think we had it getting shot with the Astronomican and nearly burning out the psychic lighthouse doing so (at the very least. It makes sense that in Nobledark it is common knowledge that some galaxy-wide calamity happened and someone dealt with it, and if great sacrifices were made to remember them).

finnished my writefaggotry from last thread, heres some 55th omega hydras and alpha legion.

The Hydra uncoils

Inquisitor Alrisia awoke with a jolt. The last electric shock must have knocked her out. Her body felt numb and she was panting heavily. A electric crack was heard and she felt another wave of searing pain flow through her body, she grit her teeth feeling as if they would break under the pressure. She tried not make a sound to keep her composure but could stop herself from sounding a gurgling groan from the back of her throat as he threw her head back desperately trying to keep the pain off her mind. It felt like hours that she endured the painful surge of electricity flow through her body but the shock could only have been for a couple of seconds. The same crack could be heard and the electricity stopped. Her body slumped as she gasped for air. Through her desperate breaths she cold hear a familiar voice.

- Ready to talk mam? The voice belonged to a man and he spoke in a serious sense but she knew there was some humor to it. Not only were they torturing a inquisitor of the ordo securitas but they had the nerve to taunt her while doing it.

- traitor scum. She muttered under her breath as she threw a rageful glance at her captor. Her long black hair was a utter mess, it was hanging over her face and sticked to her forehead by sweat, but she could still make out the man.

He was dressed in civilian clothes, but she could see his flak vest showing through. She knew that face, that sharp jawline, those warm green eyes and that damn beauty spot on his lip. Creal Harkon was his name, sergeant Creal Harkon of squad larnean of the 55th omega hydras to be more specific and soon to be ex-sergeant Creal Harkon when she was out of her restraints. The bastards and his whole squad would pay for this, maybe she would even have the entire regiment executed. The thought of tempestus soldiers betraying her never came to her head,

even when they were ordered to protect her, that's probably why they got her, that's why they could gun down her bodyguards with ease. Because for once in her life she trusted someone, she hadn’t even truly trusted her own bodyguards. But something about that man’s face gave her the sense of trust and loyalty. Might have been his actually decent looking face, her line of work was mostly filled by ugly mugs with a permanent frown on their faces. Was it his professionalism? His aura of authority? Whatever it was he would be the last person she would have trusted and the last that would betray her.

- That's not the answer we're looking for mam, if you’re not going to play along we are going to have to give you some more juice and we have all the time in the world. Creal said and lightly kicked some machinery which gave a nice klonk as he hit it. Alrisia looked at what he had kicked. It was a generator, they had her hooked up to a damn generator. How long have they intended to keep this going? She must have been here for at least 24 hours and the questions were never specific, more vague than anything. ‘’Your life mam, tell us about your life’’ or ‘’tell us about your work’’, at first she almost thought it was a joke, some kind of sick prank pulled off by some stupid harlequin, she had even laughed at the absurdness of the questions, but when the first electric shock came she thought they were just idiots. Idiots she would enjoy killing.

- I'm not going to give you anything you fething traitor and when i get out of here i'm going to rip your bloody spi-. She was cut off as the crack was heard again and she was back to gritting her teeth to stop herself from screaming. The electricity stopped as quickly as it began, she coughed, a pulsing kind of pain was left in her body, she spat at the feet of sgt. Creal.

It was a mix of saliva and blood. She could taste the irony taste in her mouth and could smell what she thought was smell of cooking bacon but quickly discarded it as nothing.

- I actually don’t want to do this but, if you don’t start answering our questions i'm going to have to call my boss, and if you think this is bad my boss you can’t even begin to understand how bad he is. So please, for your own good answer the questions. His voice was now irritated, and was that remorse she heard, no it was empathy. She looked back up at him with a serious look but not with the rage as before but with a sense of concern instead.

- why are you doing this? You’re a damn scion, you’re in service to the imperium, to humanity, why would you betray them? Who do you really serve Sergeant.

- I'm doing this because it's my job, if you think it's my job to serve some pompous commander that throws around our lives like used condoms or some inquisitor with a superiority complex that thinks he's better than emperor himself you’re a bloody fool inquisitor. No i serve those who really know how crap gets done, those who don’t need to go through juridical groxshit or sign a endless amount of reports. I haven’t betrayed anyone, besides if anyone has betrayed someone it’s you inquisitor. He stared at her with anger in his eyes, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked at him as if he was holding himself from punching her.

- Did i hit a soft spot? Alrisia said with a big grin on her face. The Sergeant frowned and with a small hand gesture the wave of pain was back. Alrisia still kept her grin as the electricity flowed through her body like water in a river, it felt as if her eyes would pop and the smell of burnt was undeniable. As the electricity was searing her flesh and she was desperately trying to keep herself from screaming she could hear Creal speak.

- have it your way then, this could have gone easier but you just had to be stubborn. The electricity stopped and Alrisia could feel as she lost her sight on things before she lost her conscious.

When she awoke sgt. Creal was gone and instead another man was sitting on a metal chair only a few feet away from her. He was shorter than Creal but there were similarities to their features. The man had almost the same jawline, a similar beauty spot but creal’s was on the opposite side of his lip. This man also had a large face tattoo across the right side of his head, it was a scaly snake, a snake with multiple heads. It was a beautiful piece of ink, the heads were all snarling with animal ferocity and looked as if they could lunge out from his face onto her neck. But it was the man’s eyes that truly caught her attention. Where sgt. Creal’s eyes were a warm green this man’s eyes were a deep, colbalt blue, they shined with an almost unnatural light, almost as if they were glowing. She saw no feelings behind them, no anger, no joy, only cold, dead calculation.

- ah, you’re awake finally inquisitor. The man said with a wide smile, she could see his white reflect the little light inside the room. He was dressed in fine clothing, something that would belong to a rich trader or a lower noble. Something caught her eye with his attire, a small silver pin on the inside of his coat, it would be hidden if he had kept it closed. It was that of another three headed serpent but much more simplistic in its design, still there was no denying that it was connected to his tattoo. There were something about it that sparked something inside her mind, but she did not know what.

- Are you ready to cooperate with us inquisitor? The man said raising an eyebrow anticipating an answer.

- Who are you? She asked with wondering tone.

- Me? Well i’m Alpharius my dear. He replied as if he was happy she asked . It then dawned on Alrisia. The three headed serpent, 55th omega hydras, Alpharius. The three headed serpent was the damn hydra she had heard about in ancient terran mythology. The giant serpent which when you cut of one head two would take its place and that name, Alpharius. That name belonged to one of the primarch that served the emperor during the unification of terra. Alpharius Omegon who had been almost erased from all imperial records, she had only heard about him through the inquisitorial scribes, he had worn the hydra as a symbol. Within this new revelation there was something else, something much deeper inside of her mind that made her head hurt when she thought about it.

- That’s not your real name, that belongs to someone who served the imperium and not some treacherous scum who thinks torturing an imperial inquisitor would get them anywhere.

- how investigative of you inquisitor, no my name is not truly Alpharius, it’s actually Armillius Dynant. But we still use that name for an alias, it’s a sort of tradition to use their name for our purpose.

- Their name? She quickly replied. Armillius just smiled even wider.

- Enough about us my dear, we're here because you failed us. He picked up a pack of lho sticks from a pocket and lighted one, drawing deep breaths of smoke and blowing it out of his nostrils.

- Failed you? I don't work for you, i work for the emperor's imperial inquisition.

- mhm, of course you would think that, but you have in fact been working for us your entire life, do you know the old term ‘’useful idiot’’? Of course you don’t. No Alrisia you might think you have been working for the inquisition and in reality you've been our puppet. He was nonchalant about it, almost acting as if it was commonly known.

- No, i haven’t done anything for you. My work was for inquisition and not you or your masters. Her voice was trembling and the headache was pulsing as if her head would explode.

- Yes Alrisia, your life has been one entire long play, one of the legions more finer works if you ask me. Everything about your life has been planned and calculated. The murder of your father that lead you to join the arbites was our work, the big cult you busted which lead you to be joined into the inquisition was us, your work about destroying the imperiums political corruption which you have dedicated your life too was our doing. Inquisitor Alrisia Santius, we are you. Armillius was staring into Alrisias eyes, those cobalt blue eyes pierced her very beign and she remembered, she remembered everything.

She saw those eyes in the man who cut down her father, she saw them in the officer that helped her during the raid on the cult, she saw them in her fellow colleagues, she saw them in the woman who had told her those words before she executed the woman. ‘’Hydra Dominatus’’.

Alrisias eyes were tearing up and she felt sick to her stomach, she felt like she would pass out. Her work and all she had fought for was a lie, that which had molded her life was but some intricate theatre and she knew nothing about it. They had played her life for thirty six years, every step she took had been planned ahead. She looked up at Armillius with tears running down her face, She now recognized him like he had been aside her everywhere. His smile was back, his sick smile was spread across his face as he blew another cloud of smoke out of his nose.

- you see it now don’t you, that you’re just a puppet in the legions big game. The game which don’t require billions of lives or resources, all you need if too find the right one and guide them towards what you want.

- why? Her voice was trembling and she knew she was sobbing.

- I don’t know, i'm not the one to ask why my superiors do what they do, all i know is that they do it for the greater good, i'm just here to clean the slate and fix what you broke. He shrugged and threw his lho stick but away before pulling out a new one lighting it.

- If i'm just a puppet why are you doing this?

- Because you done messed up my dear. That woman you killed last month because you thought she was a culprit, well she was one of us and now we need to fix it, restore the balance so to say.

Alrisia remembered the woman, she had tried to stop her from doing her job and had shot her and she had said those words before her death. Alrisia had only thought it a treacherous saying and not that it had been a omen.

- But don’t worry about it my dear, when we're done here you’re going to live on like nothing ever happened, not you as in you but a replaced you. It’s kinda hard to explain but have you heard about Lord Commander Byron Wiltons?

Alrisia knew who he was, Lord commander Byron was the commander over the Elysian 15th Drop troops also known as the sky burners. He had been waging war against a crone world before suddenly during the conflict deciding that he should go and fight the tyranids. It had been a peculiar change of mind but because of his authority no one questioned him.

- Well lets just say that the Lord commander did not do as expected and now he's been replaced. He blew another cloud of smoke and then reached for a datapad from one of his pockets and started to go through it. Alrisia was just staring blankly at him, tears running down cheeks mixing with the sweat.

- It’s actually marvelous what a little genius and some sharp tools can do to face, this is top class work, no stupid rejuvenation can do this stuff. He showed her the data pad screen, its blue hue illuminating her face. It was a picture of her, at least it looked like her at first glance, same facial features, same jawline, it even had the small scar under her left earlobe that she had gained during her childhood, but what did not fit Alrisias face and made her whimper in despair was the pair of deep, colbalt blue eyes that had no feelings behind them but cold calculation. That's why they asked those vague questions, they wanted to know those details they already did not.

- please, don’t do this. She begged Armillius with despair in her voice, she plead him that she would not betray them again.

- I'm afraid that's too late now my dear, you should have stayed in line. Armillius stood up, threw his lho stick to the ground and stepped it out. He walked behind her she could hear a door open and close.

She heard the electric crack once again and this time she could not stop herself from screaming.

that was fun writing, hope you guys like it.

Is good. Really shows the shady shit that people would do for the survival of the Imperium, cruel but not needlessly cruel.

>we are you
Pretty much sums up the big secretive three.

It's also not outside the realms of possibility that The Hydra has a whole library of useful personalities kept in storage that they just keep reusing in new bodies.

>Warp effectively act as a parallel galaxy so the Croneldar has an endless amount of materials to be converted into war assets, they just lack the numbers or industry to do it.

Keep in mind that those materials are not reliable to grossly understate it.

Yeah, the vanilla fluff indicates that apart from summoning daemons or the occasional daemon weapon, materiel needs to be obtained in the physical universe, hence Chaos needs to raid for supplies and slaves and such. Otherwise they could just magic things out of the warp or have tireless daemon labor produce everything.

I guess this raises the question of what Oscar thinks of all this, he frowns pretty heavily on teamkilling and general dickishness. And he definitely knows it's going on, he knew the original Alpharius, presumably the AL still reports to him, and even if they didn't he can read the minds of everyone on the same planet on him in a few moments.

It's possible Oscar doesn't know the comings and goings of every member of the AL.

He is not as individually powerful in this AU as in Vanilla.

He would not be in favour of much of what they do but it's possible he doesn't know in the same way as he doesn't know about The Dragon of Mars. He knows they have secrets but so does everybody.

It's also possible that he wouldn't be able to cleanly stop them without even worse shit going down.

AL might dress up as other Space Marines, Fallen Marines, or even Orks to fight the enemies of the Imperium but they don't teamkill. Generally being dickish but never resorting to it unless the alternative is worst. Hydras are probably directly working for either AL or Omega Marines (whoever ask first), knowingly or otherwise. Omega Marines should be the one teamkilling Imperials both human or Xenos. Things like assassinating a Seer for knowingly sending a Corp to their death or poisoning an Argi world right before it rebelled.

Alpha Legion and its offshoots probably also have a higher-than-average number turn traitor. When you're embedded in secret cults with little to no backup its really easy to fall if what they're saying starts resonating with you.

>It's also possible that he wouldn't be able to cleanly stop them without even worse shit going down.

Urgh, its like that recent issue in that one country where the country's own president couldn't shut down its CIA/KGB equivalent.

>assassinating a Seer for knowingly sending a Corp to their death or poisoning an Argi world right before it rebelled

I can see the first one, but the second seems a little strange. Can you honestly say that the Omega Marines wouldn't do the same if they had the same knowledge. It's like in the story above, where an inquisitor ends up hooked to a car battery and tortured for killing an Alpha Legion spy she didn't know was undercover. It seems a little myopic. But maybe that's the point, the Omega Marines are enraged at the death of one of their own despite them being in harms way. Despite fighting for the Imperium, they are not tame monsters.

>the country's own president couldn't shut down its CIA/KGB equivalent
The USSR right after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

(same)
That said, I agree with that the Omega marines should be the teamkilling dickbags that are completely off the books. Like, not even off the books Blood Ravens style, where their records are probably sealed by the Inquisition somewhere. As in totally black ops, not even officially sanctioned, seen as renegade Alpha Legion by those who know of them but don't know enough to be silenced.

A&O probably split them off from the main legion long ago to do all the dirty stuff even the Alpha Legion couldn't be associated with.

>the second seems a little strange
Since the Omega Marines found evidence the Argi world will rebel but can't present it because they shouldn't even exist. Meaning they have to hand that info to the AL which might not be close enough to put down the rebellion or contact others not close enough. As the Omega Marines are basically none existent they don't have the weapons or numbers to fight a conventional war. Leading them to poison food production and stockpiles, so that when the Imperium response by sending a few regiments, the world just surrenders without a fight because 1/4 of the people died due to mass starvation.

Reminder that the Imperium's grimdark teamkilling idiocy is one of the things we were reacting against when creating this shindig, so if there is extrajudicial teamkilling it should be applied VERY carefully and rarely, both in-universe and narratively. For example, a seer purposely sending human troops to die could be solved with a court marshal and summary execution, and an AL member abducting and torturing an innocent Inquisitor should be considered renegade and hunted, presumably by other AL members since they seem like a largely self-policing institution.

>solved with a court marshal
Not if the Seer has enough friends in high places, escape, or the prosecution doesn't have enough evidence. That and the evidence was obtained illegally by Space Marines that shouldn't even exist so that's a problem.

I meant killing the seer who foresaw the Agri-world would rebel and poisoned the food supplies accordingly. Didn't know it was meant to refer to something else.

Sorry, I meant to say the Omega Marines assassinate a Seer or the Omega Marines poisoning an Argi world.

Let's not miss the forest for the trees here. And let's not forget, in the Assassin fluff the Emperor showed he is perfectly willing to personally liquidate any institutions that lack accountability and get out of hand.

This is true. If they become too monstrous they get one, and precisely one, chance to stand down and submit to a formal investigation.

Refusal would result in a personal interest being taken and as the Assassins will attest it is not a gentle option.

R8 me senpai

Electric boogaloo

Yes.

But the question is still

Does the Omega Legion actually employ Marines? Or do they call in "favours" from chapters with dubious dealings?

I would say they do have Space Marines but there is just so few of them they can't act like a conventional military force. That means they use mostly use regular humans for everything not combat related. To keep a secret chapter a secret, they recruit so few members because the more mouths there are, the more likely somebody will talk.

The point I'm trying to get across is that the reason why they act like teamkilling assholes is because thats the only time they appear. When you need shit done that even the AL won't do is when the Imperium calls in ghe Omega Marines.

Would it not be fitting if after the war to unify terra, alpharius and omegon split into two different organs, either too in fighting between the two or they saw that they both saw that they exceeded in different areas, so alpharius made the have alpha legion which exceed in the more inderect infiltration so puppets and sleeper cells while omegon made the omega legion who make agressive infiltration or military action, both might make what the imperium see as inhumane or unorthodox when they themself its for the greater good. It would be nice tie-in to their normal fluff, that they joined horus so the galaxy would live and the theory that the alpha legion suffered from an civil war between the primarchs. Or is this already decided and have i missed what been said?

The bio for Alpharius and Omegon is a little scant on details as I think it was purposely written to be vague, so no, nothing like this has been discussed. However, I will say that the Alpha Legion civil war might not work thematically, as the Primarchs are all mature leaders of sound judgement who can work issues out instead of demigod autists with daddy issues. While we do have the major internal split in the Dark Angels, this is because we specifically noted that Lion is terrible with people (probably somewhere on the mild side of the spectrum) and narratively and thematically the Fallen are key to the DAs.

picking up where I left off
Fulgrim himself was attempting to engineer a coup. Having seen the Imperium in his advance raids and equated it with the empire of old he deramed of, he wished to cut down the old leadership of his nation while it seemed within his power and steer it into his bright vision. He had surpassed even Lucius as a swordsman during his adventures in the New Atlantis campaign, and now Fulgrim planned to use his charm, fame, and the lure of technological enhancement to access necessary targets, and to ingratiate his cadre of enhanced officers in the matters of succession before decapitation. Though his early plan went well Fulgrim overestimated his own and his agents' ability to manipulate a government in the mounting chaos of total war with the Imperium, and it was not long before the self styled superhuman was at the mercy of Merikan secret police. He was saved by two plainly dressed men that introduced themselves as Ames and Ozzy, and bore the sigil of a hydra.

Under the aegis of these two Hydra contacts the Doe cadre continued Fulgrim's strategy to build support in the mass produced populations of the manufactories further back from the coast, but Fulgrim himself was to concede direct involvement in the operations in the capital. While Fulgrim's laboratories in the capital became the futurist's edifice to an advanced, phoenician Merika to the wonderment of the officer class and Lucius built up the manufactories of Moton into an advanced fortress city on the near edge of the Kalbi territories Fulgrim had little contact with either project. These power bases were tended by the Doe Cadre's inner circle under the direction of the Hydra and Major Lucius respectively, and while Furris visited his old home while it was under the major's command his work took him yet further from the center of the Doe conspiracy.

This is sort of what the setting was built around. The Primarchs were supposed to be great leaders among great leaders.

Unlike Vanilla's petulant idiots.

In this AU they earned their positions.

Yeah, i made them vague when i wrote them and keeping it as that is great, i just dont see as some other anons wrote that AL would not resort to team killing and replacing, ive would like to thing that AL would be the ones who would resort to killing their own for a greater purpose or for them not to ruin their plans. They would probably try to keep it away from the publics eyes and have it so no one would suspect that anything has changed.

Same user as AL would be infiltration on the battlefield and OL is infiltration off of the battlefield.

That’s one of the things I like about this timeline. It really shows you why the primarchs were figures of such awe. The Emperor chose the primarchs because they were the best of the best, and in most cases because they were good men. Contrast with canon, where so many of the primarchs were so screwed up because, to put it bluntly, you can’t choose your own family (or, if you want to take the cynical/Master of Mankind route, the Emperor could only make so many primarchs and so he had to make every one count).

>Dark Angels

The whole situation with Lion and Luther was also based around sibling rivalry, the one thing guaranteed to turn otherwise reasonable adults into petulant manchildren.

For all we know, many Omega Marines could just be Alpha Legionaires wearing different armor when they perform tasks off the books, much like how Omegon had that set of unpainted armor.

It's also possible that the brothers just had a disagreement over how to lead the legion and resolved it among themselves. Though I agree that of all the legions the Alpha Legion is by far the most likely to teamkill in the name of a greater good (not that they'd be happy about it).

Under the cover of another exploratory mission to the bunkers and cracks of the western mountain line, Fulgrim and his mechanists traveled the length of the rocky spine and loosely governed western territories beyond. It was true they again delved the chains of fortresses and redoubts and sunken chambers under those lands for new relics of the golden age, but only least of these fruits ever reached Merikan high command. More than this, Fulgrim secured the support of the enclaves whose knowledge had driven his successes years prior, and in the druidic labs of the geno-hippes (an ancient title) Fulgrim and his proto-Alpha legion contacts established forward positions from which to build Astarte forces. The work done in these installations unified Fulgrim and the Geno-hippes' cybernetically and biologically upgraded "Doe" MkII Astarte with the Deutch-Jemanic genesmiths' MkIII pattern. By Fulgrim's promises and intrigues much of the western territory would come to favor his succession, and for his technological efforts on their behalf they held him in better regard than high command. The collaboration of the Geno-hippes allowed state of the art supersoldier assets to be built in the mountain enclaves even into the heart of governor Rogal Dorn's beleaguered territory. Less than a year since it nearly died with its indiscreet leader Fulgrim's conspiracy was at its zenith. The destruction and capture of the airbases on New Atlantis saw the top Merikan marshals and generals returned to the capital to prepare a counterattack to keep the theater of war on the artificial continent as well as the fortification of the atlantic coast. Lucius had made dramatic use of the Doe combat cyborgs Fulgrim had premiered in europe to aid the hapless commander tasked with the re-conquest of Dorn's dominion entrenched in west and northern Kalbi, but these showy operations had done more to lionize the super-soldiers as they strode about in gleaming gold and purple.

The guns of the imperium were turning squarely to Merika, massive Skandian naval forces and the air forces of Europa and the quadruple alliance gathered at New Atlantis. The ancient Merikan starships that hung in orbit over the continent were moved in a careful dance to deny space superiority to the heirloom fleet the Imperium brought to bear, as well as guarding the panama fortresses from the long time foe. Fulgrim returned to the capital as plans were being drawn up to leap back to New Atlantis and charge from Europa to Uralia with Doe cyborgs leading the way. Others were being conceived to quickly stamp out Governor Dorn's decades long rebellion and annihilate it to the last, with the field marshal already engaged backed by masses of advanced weapons deployed from Moton. Neither plan would see action, and as Fulgrim returned to announce promises of support from western military governors with all due fanfare he was accompanied by a brigade of what seemed to all a new generation of cyborg soldiers, fair and clad in bright ceremonial armor. Days after he arrived Merika and the Imperium were fighting in and above the atlantic, all west of the artificial continent. Air Forces clashed above the naval blockades and the coasts, and orbital assets made firing lines hundreds of kilometers long. Orders began to issue to Moton to begin operation in Kalbi, and soon Doe designed and piloted gunships and drop troops were buzzing northwest towards the Merikan position. Impenetrable havoc erupted when the first company of Terra's Sons, led by Fulgrim the Futurist, fortified the Doe laboratories and began conducting brutal raids on enemy factions within the Merikan command structure and officer corps also entrenched in the capital.

So the Kroot in this AU were still recruited into the Tau Empire before they all joined the Imperium but what about afterwards?

Even in Vanilla the Kroot were notoriously difficult to keep in line. With much easier travel across the galaxy and the Tau no legal right to stop them once they get out of the Tau Empires bounds they could travel far. I'm imagining nomadic hunting bands latching on to the Imperial Guard. Their price for joining the battle? Being allowed to join the battle and eat the foes, should the foes be worthy of being eaten.

Also with the greater prominence of the AdBio how do the Shapers feel about splice animals?

Are there splice cattle that they avoid or, heresy of heresies, seek out?

Also it is stated that Shas'O'Kais, Tau Doomguy, is to have his body put in a meat freezer and sent to Pech for an elaborate funeral feast. This is freakish behavior but how much so?

In the first hours of fighting the citadel of the high command had been raided by teleporter insertion of un-blazoned power-armored commandos. Subsequent fighting over the building saw it bombed to rubble by Merikan air assets. Fulgrim officially seized dictatorial emergency powers, and with a company drawn from his long honed circle of mechanists he corrected his rivals in the capital, making great show of the advanced forces the same officers had counted on for their grand strategies. The Futurist took Merika's reigns and cowed the old fractious military houses in the wake of what he called an opportunistic Hy-Brasealian attack and his enemies attributed to the Imperium.

Prior to the decapitation of the Merikan military the Kalbi expeditionary force had embarked on a hard offensive against Dorn, counting on support from Moton's special forces. Lucius lead the second company of Terra's Sons and cybernetic Moton drop brigades to smash the expeditionary force against Dorn's built up battle lines. The Merikan cruiser above Kalbi was quick to reposition for the the bombardment of the Moton citadel, and its few volleys were devastating before it was crippled by boarding forces of Merikanized skitarii led by a second cadre of Terra's Sons. In the capital there was stalemate between Fulgrim and the remains of the upper command structure, with most of the lower officers either sided with the futurist or destroyed, but the campaigns in the north were fast concluded and Lucius advanced southeast with Dorn's forces. The Merikan Orbital Brigades and Navy were old institutions and remained staunchly opposed to Fulgrim, and supported ground forces throughout the gulf coast and around the panama fortifications. As Merikan reserves were mobilized towards the unfolding disaster in Kalbi the Astartes forces in the rockies swept east across the continent at the head of the western territories' military forces and made rapid progress securing the Merikan heartland despite orbital bombardment from opposing factions. The machine-stubber and rocketeer and armored fighting carriage battalions that had been the Junta's unbeatable scourge were little use against equivalent forces backed by Astartes and Skitarii, and as the Terra's Sons force convened at Moton Merikan air forces fought the futurist's aces above the great plains. Within a week of the stalemate the Merikan navy and space brigade had retreated and shortened the blockade so they could both bombard the capital and keep imperial forces from doing the same.

My guess is the relationship between the Imperium and the Kroot is about the same as the Kroot and the Tau in vanilla. The greater Imperium sees the Kroot as a protectorate. The Kroot see the Imperium as preferred clientele. In vanilla, the Kroot are supposed to work exclusively for the Tau, but still hire themselves out to other races such as the vanilla!Imperium, suggesting they don’t really have much of a concept of alliance beyond a mercenarial one.

In theory this dissonance between how the two powers view their relationship should lead to severe consequences. In practice, the two definitions end up being about the same, because there are so few people for the Kroot to ally with outside of the Imperium. The Kroot won’t work for Necrons, orks, or Chaos, who are the only other major groups that would hire them, so they end up being a much more reliable ally than the Tarellians, who are sometimes found in Chaos or ork warbands.

The Kroot have to eat the flesh of sapient creatures to survive. In vanilla, it’s implied the Tau are intentionally curbing the Kroot’s tendencies into an evolutionary dead-end so they can expand into the former Kroot enclaves. Given that the Tau are genuinely good people here, this is probably not the case.

>I'm imagining nomadic hunting bands latching on to the Imperial Guard. Their price for joining the battle? Being allowed to join the battle and eat the foes, should the foes be worthy of being eaten.

This is probably exactly how it happens. Kroot fight in exchange for supplies and the right to eat the dead. The Kroot are implied to have first gained sentience when Kroothawks scavenged some orks. The Kroot are veritable ork-eating machines. You want to see what a natural predator of orks looks like? This is it.

(cont.)
>This is freakish behavior but how much so?

Kroot religious beliefs seem to be based on those of certain tribes in Papua New Guinea. When an individual dies, the only way to keep their spirit alive is by eating their flesh.

If the Kroot found out that many species were actually incapable of eating their own dead (like humans, with the prions, or Tau, being primarily herbivorous with some seafood and very little red meat in the diet), they would probably pity them.

Or it could be that the Kroot are intentionally opting out of their heaven. The war isn't over, the price has not been met. Orks trampled their homeworld, burned the ancient jagga trees, made omelettes out of their young and desecrated their sacred grounds. They awoke war. War will come for them. War will eat them. So long as the debt is unpaid they won't know rest. The full blood price is the death of the orks. All of the orks to the last grot.

Incidentally, what would happen if the orks started eating Catachan Devil or Fenrisian Kraken? They were once 'Nids but they have mutated to the point where they are 'Nid no longer.

Fulgrim and Terra's Sons first company continues to fight for the capital under heavy shelling and the highest rate of lance strikes the capital's overwatching ship could muster. They were supported by most of the remaining officer corps against the remaining High command holdouts, themselves supported by Merican marines and loyalist military regiments. Fireteams of Astartes in Imperial livery are active in south and Imperial soldiers landed in Newfoundland and the gulf were met by the advanced guard of the forces that started from the rockies or Moton. Lucius and Dorn's forces and the Terra's Sons company that lead the southern campaign march on the eastern seaboard and pacify or simply co-opt the remaining ground forces, nearly all of which remain unclear on the state of affairs. Merikan Space Brigade gets forced to retreat from the battle for the capital by subsequent attacks, leaving the Merikan Navy to go regroup over the Panama defenses, which had become the stronghold of Merikan loyalists. In short order the Merikan blockade was broken by the Imperials and the Merikan Navy suffered mutiny and folded. The Imperial Navy and Air Forces accompanied the battered Merikan Navy into the harbor of the capital, and the cratered slopes of its anti-fallout pyramid bunker-citadels were lined with Merikan officers and civilians as Imperial engineers and officials of every land and discipline piled off amidst the columns of proud soldiers in the livery of Franj, Gredbritton, Achemedinia, and Europia. The Imperial delegation was marched to the Doe complex by the Futurist's own men of equal, clad in purple with emblems of raptors and well known to the capital from the past weeks. The Imperials had hardly arrived at what had become the de facto seat of government for a day before those same engineers and Furris's mechanists came together drafting plans for reconstruction.

The remains of the Space Brigade took aboard much of the Panama garrison and its war material, but lingering on between the changed Merikan regime and Hy Braseal did them no service. Fulgrim quickly restructured the Merikan regime with the backing of his supporters in the western territories and the officer houses. Any who had unsure loyalty or joined him in the confusion of the coup soon found they had everything to gain by his favor and everything to lose between Fulgrim's personal forces and the armies of the Imperium at his back. Some days after the landing of the Imperial armada Fulgrim had strode forth in purple robes on the balcony of the High Officer and proudly announced the comfortable terms on which Merika would go on to join the Imperium, as if he had been made to fight for them. In fact, he had already delivered them the dominion mostly in tact, and what dirty work had needed doing was accomplished in the coup. What remained of the Merikan Space Brigade never reconvened after regrouping at Panama. The bulk of the small fleet drove for deep space, and vanished from history, while about half their number mobilized to attack the Imperial ships above the eastern seaboard, of which two were disabled and one captured. Those that remained over Panama held for two months, and subsequently defected to Hy-Braseal.

(more to come later)

I see the core of something interesting in here, so I hope you take this as constructive rather than critical when I say this really, really needs some editing. The blow by blow of every action is dense and all the build up and battles could probably be summarized in a few paragraphs. For example, you mention, "It was true they again delved the chains of fortresses and redoubts and sunken chambers under those lands for new relics of the golden age, but only least of these fruits ever reached Merikan high command." No mention of this or any technology recovered ever comes up again and doesn't particularly serve to detail the setting either, so why is it here? I know the feeling, you have a bunch of ideas and things you want to say, but for the sake of narrative you need to pick and choose what's important, because as it stands I'm losing the flow of the greater narrative arc in all the detail.

There's also stylistic stuff like the varying tone and word choice, as well as switches from past tense to present tense back to past. Paragraphs and line breaks would also help to break up the blobs of text.

Take a keen look at what you have and make some edits and I'd be interested to see what emerges.

>Or it could be that the Kroot are intentionally opting out of their heaven.

The only issue is the Kroot need to keep eating at least some sapient flesh to stay sapient. Otherwise they end up like Krootox and Knarlocs. The flesh doesn't have be from living beings, so the best way to get a ready supply of it is to eat their own dead.

>They were once 'Nids but they have mutated to the point where they are 'Nid no longer.

In this universe, it was suggested that the Catachan Devil and the Fenrisian Kraken aren't 'nids. Instead, the Ymgarl genestealers have been committing bioespionage and raiding the Milky Way's evolutionary pantry, much as they did with Zoanthropes and the Eldar. Smash and grab operations such that when the Hive Fleet makes galaxyfall, it already has some of the best toys in the genetic arsenal.

According to the Kroot regular 'nids taste pretty good but are addicting.

You're right on the nose about the copy editing, I was hammering these out between classes and you've pointed out the same flaws my writing always picks up. Still, I'm writing for fun, not brevity, so I'll include the details I enjoy, and the tone and focus of the content is much in line with what I've already written for fulgrim. Like usual I welcome any proofreading or editing the thread wants to do, but I'm busy and don't have time to make a second edition, and find this work to be no less polished than much of the other writing in the thread.

About 100 years after the Imperial Civil War, the entire Ultima Segmentum had many "Xenos worshipping cults" trying to take over worlds to rebel from the Imperium. Ordo Securitas had to put them down with great effort. Meaning the Hive fleets had been preparing to attack the galaxy for a while now, that's why when the Tyranid hit, entire sub-sectors were lost before Terra could respond. A few xenos civilizations on the edge of the galaxy and outside of the Imperium just disappeared because how powerful the Hive fleets were.

That's the Genestealer Wars, isn't it? Imperium suffers from a plague of genestealer cults to the point where it becomes a pandemic, but eventually manages to eradicate the majority of them (although there are always enclaves that are missed on Space Hulks and Hive Worlds).

Genestealer levels as of M41 are considered "low", despite the tyranids rampaging through the galaxy as in vanilla. That should tell you how bad peak genestealer was.

I always liked how the Genestealer Wars here both established the genestealers as a credible threat even without their connections to the tyranids, and the nice little meta-humor nod to the changing canon of 40k thrown in. Like in early editions, genestealers were considered the primary problem and tyranids were relative nobodies, until it turns out the genestealers were vanguards for something much worse.

The Ordo Xenos would also be all over like flies on shit, especially when word gets out: "Hm, that's funny, these cultists and rebels seem to have 3 arms and purple skin."

>xenos-worshipping cults are a big threat
>these cults could even destroy the Imperium from within
>xenos they are worshipping are literally whos
>xenos aren't even a minor threat by themselves
Several centuries later
>literally who xenos are now besieging all of the galactic east
>endless amounts of more and different literally whos are pouring into the galaxy
Every time GW moves the story forward, they have to destroy everything.

Bottom left corner.

>Let me tell you
>About Tyranids

Im going to write some stuff about the little guys now, some stuff about civilians.

>The only issue is the Kroot need to keep eating at least some sapient flesh to stay sapient

So they eat their dead and the occasional donated oddity like Shas'O'Kais. But how long can they keep that up? No all deaths result in a body that can be consumed and the oddities are rare.

Also the fact that they will have to bulk out the majority of their diet with non-sapient meat like grox and beef would result in this being watered down further. Eventually without another Ork invasion to spice things up and press the reset button they will fade away.

To this end I can imagine the AdBio getting involved. The gradual death of the mind to an organization whose everything is about the preservation and expansion of knowledge this is some serious horror movie business.

They can't correct the "fading" effect inherent to the Kroot themselves due to the non-standard genetics. It would take centuries to decipher and longer to fix, also the Shapers wouldn't allow such tampering.

This leaves only 3 options;

1. The handing over of unclaimed bodies in near-Pech space for the common good of the Kroot. Unpopular and impractical and the need would still massively outstrip supply.

2. Breeding sapients for consumption. That's massively Crone Eldar levels of fucked up and would cause the intervention of the Arbiters, Inquisition, Path Judges and possibly even the Emperor himself.

3. Cloning donated tissue samples in a factory-labs. They don't need to grow the whole organism, just some nice lean muscle tissue. The Imperium is generally against the consumption of flesh of it's citizens but they would make an exception in this case and so it is the most likely.

Hardcore traditionalist Kroot would turn their beaks up at option 3 but options 1 and 2 are not exactly in lien with their hunter faiths either. To the hardcore Shapers their is only relentless battle for flesh in the conflicts of the Imperium. It is said by the more pragmatic Shapers that maybe some kroot they need to cut down on the amount of ork in their diet.

>(more to come later)

Waiting with hope.

Also is the user last thread with the Angron story still here?

I think Kroot may also suffer from the same fucked up imprinted genetics issue the primarchs in vanilla do. It's mentioned in canon that Kroot also take on behavioral traits of whomever they eat. Eat a lot of Dark Eldar, and they become sadistic dicks. Eat a lot of vanilla!humans, they become religious nutters, eat a lot of orks, they become more violent. Cloned meat may suffer from the problem that it was never alive, and so lacks the behavioural information the Kroot need.

Or they could prefer the cloned meat. If it's enough to maintain sapience but not affect their behavior, Kroot would like it because it would be like having food that wasn't drugged for once in your life.

Or that doesn't exist as much in this timeline, since we dialed back some of the more ridiculous memory-transferring stuff.

Let's dial back the "remember shit from eating it" levels of fucking retardation if possible.

Eating Dark Eldar (before they went to Chaos and landed on the no-eats list) would not result in them becoming sadistic assholes despite the media propagated folk belief. Given that the Dark Eldar are still genetically the same as the Craftworlders it would make them more agile and dexterous and give them an increased likelihood of having psychic children.

Down side is that it would "push out" some of the older ork genes so they might loose a bit of muscle mass.

Yeah, I'm still around, it's just a crazy week at work so not a lot of writing is going to get done.

I've posted other stuff, you may be able to tell which writefag I am by my excessive love of commas

I think we did that with the Omophagea too. It was either the pet project of the genesmiths or the hippies (I think the latter) in the Mark III that the Warlord wasn't too impressed with and it only gave minor results (general impressions, not whole memories).

Are the Dark Eldar the same subspecies? There isn't the same level of gene flow as in canon, and the Craftworlders aren't being dumb and trying to get along with them despite the Dark Eldar raiding the Craftworlds and killing their aspect warriors as part of the incubus initiation ritual.

For the elder the generation gape is not that much since the Fall. Well out of living memory for all but the odd freak and out of the living memory of most anyone has met.

The founding of The Dark City and the Dark Eldar as a whole is as far removed as the American war of independence is from modern USA.

Next part will be post-unification/great crusade era stuff. My description of the fall of Merika got a bit overwrought when I realized it was the last war of Unification, but at least I'm no longer keeping Dorn from being written.

Please tell me you have added it to the page. I would but it's difficult on phone.

I like this picture.
Each time I see it I image this as something that is seen by old veteran guardsmen that is just happy on his retirement, knowing that going through all this shit was worth it.
Horrors of his youth are now just a fairy tale for kids to play with, his and his friends sacrifice paid off, and he knows that he may rest and pass away peacefully surrounded by his family.

I like the Taldeer and LIVII reference. It fits for this AU.

I can easily see both of them as poster couple of human-eldar friendship, with big amounts of biology cogboys working overtime to make their daughter possible.
After all who would not fight harder if he knew it could let to him getting qt eldar waifu?

We've already cast this one already.

As of 999M41 Taldeer is in the final days of the first natural hybrid pregnancy in history. It is an impossible pregnancy. It is assumed to be a trial run for the prophesied Impossible Child of Isha and Oscar. This has a lot of people very worried because of the other stuff in the Starchild Prophesies.

Any previous hybrids were one ofs done at great expense by the AdBio for reasons of dubious morality or just to see if they could.

Eldrad has seen the face of his granddaughter in his visions but he doesn't know if he will get to see her with his own eyes due to his impending mortality.

They are not on any posters due to their relationship being considered most improper. Also Taldeer would murder anyone who tried to make such a poster.

The Phoenix Lords in this AU were the eldar that traveled Oscar and Asurmen to rescue Isha and didn't develop any sort of PTSD afterwards.

But what of Arhra the Fallen Phoenix?

*cough*Drahzar*cough*

Seriously, the one blurb we have on Drahzar is that there are rumors that he was involved in the raid on Nurgle's Mansion. Which would make sense if he was Arhra. Of course, it could not be true, but who knows.

I was going to mention this in the last thread, but never really got a chance to. In one of the previous threads, it was mentioned that M41 humanity is probably somewhat different from modern humanity due to genetic tinkering during their Golden Age. Funny thing is, this probably extends to some extent to the Eldar too. The Eldar weren’t always a bunch of long-lived super-psykers. Once they were just a bunch of primitives banging rocks together, just like everyone else. It’s just that since then, unlike the other races, they’ve undergone massive self-improving genetic engineering to become the long-lived, highly-skilled, all-psyker race that we know and love. Heck the Emperor’s plan in canon was essentially to turn humanity into Eldar 2.0.

The Eldar have undergone massive genetic engineering at least twice in their history, once by the Old Ones when they were originally uplifted, and then by the millions of years they had on their own to get good following the War in Heaven. That’s at least sixty million years to figure out as many alleles as possible to maximize longevity and health. Indeed, they probably could have done more, but just found reincarnation to be a more effective solution. As a result, by the time of the Fall, the Eldar had tinkered with their genetic code for so long that the artificial modifications were seen as just a normal part of the Eldar genome because everyone had them. Heck, it was mentioned that with medical treatments and genetic therapy the pre-Fall Eldar could live even longer (Vect and Eldrad both being at least 10,000 years old).

(cont.)
Many of the features of the Eldar seen today seem to be related to or enhanced by their longevity. Sort of like how humans went from being “that species that uses tools” to tool use defining our species’ entire lifestyle. The Eldar have taken their longevity and min-maxed the shit out of it. The Eldar may be naturally graceful, but that grace is enhanced by having centuries to train their body, similar to how old people today are able to move more efficiently because they are more used to the quirks and limits of their body. The same is probably true with psykery. It has been mentioned in vanilla that psychic species require longer development than non-psychic ones, something that would be offset by an extremely long lifespan and low death rate. Additionally, the longer lifespan allows for greater refinement and control of psychic powers, which shorter-lived psychic races like humanity can only accomplish through training from hell (e.g., Grey Knights).

I say this because it relates to an idea I had regarding Fabius Bile.

pastebin.com/E97tBwU8

Additional comments in spoilers for those who haven't read document yet.

I couldn’t think of the right word to describe Bile’s relationship with Vect. It’s not like Bile holds a position of high power in Vect’s Kabal. As another user said, it’s more like Bile owes a few years of unpaid rent and has Asdrubael Vect standing over his shoulder menacingly. Vect likes using Bile because Bile fears him more than he hates him, and because it keeps the other Haemonculi whose services he patronizes on their toes.

I left out a greater description of Bile since this was supposed to be more about the New Men. However, Bile has plenty of other personal projects beyond perfecting the New Men. Such as getting genetic data from Oscar and Sanguinius, as well as the Mark III S in general. Bile has gotten all the information he can out of the normal gene-seed, and any of the three would be hugely beneficial to his work.

The reason Bile’s New Men are failing is warp fuckery, like with ansible twins. If you were to do the exact same thing as with normal methods of splicing and in-vitro growth, you would end up with an odd but socially well-adjusted strain of abhumans. But since Bile is using Dark Eldar technology and the New Men are literally grown from pain and suffering, they turn out wrong (especially since they’re psykers).

There is the question about cross rank fraternization.

Technically speaking, they're both outside of traditional Imperial Army hierarchy, with Taldeer being the nebulous rank of Colonel-Farseer, and Liivi being an attached assassin, but one is supposed to be giving the other orders.

Plus, Sreta Ulthran. Taldeer, despite forsaking her duties to the House of Ulthran is still tied by blood. Who knows what Sreta thinks.

We know what Sreta thinks. Taldeer went into the military to get away from Sreta and her cartel-ing and nepotism. Found the frank, straightforward nature of the military much more to her liking than the byzantine politics of the house of Ulthran.

Ironically, this act of defiance made Taldeer one of Eldrad's favorites among his extended family, because she was willing to go out and forge her own destiny rather than rely on the family name.

Sreta doesn't like it because it's caused a schism in the family. Taldeer leaving off on her own has shown that Sreta's not all-powerful and it's possible for someone to succeed without her, and the members of House Ulthran who Sreta snubbed or those who found her too slimy for comfort support Taldeer, despite Taldeer not giving a flying fuck about the politics of House Ulthran.

Is good.

It certainly show the callousness of dear old Dr. Bile. Who cares if you accidentally create a race of second rate axe murderers inside the bodies of super soldiers, just herd them at the Imperium and start again.

There was also something mentioned in the last thread about how due to a quirk of his superhuman physiology he is dying and has been dying for a very long time.

His method of longevity has been direct consciousness transfer. He makes a clone body from a cell of his original corpse, or the earliest copy he still has, and grows it in a jar. Once it reaches fully developed he implants it with all the astartes parts. If it survives that he dowloads into it.

So far he is on his 117th body or some such number.

When the AdBio found out what he was doing they declared it to be "Total fucking bullshit! Brains do not work that way". Further attempts to determine how he performed his bullshit have not resulted in any success so far.

A lot of the traits of the New Men (particularly the flaws) are taken verbatim from the Afriel Strain. It sounds more like the results of something Bile would do in this timeline since the AdBio would know that genetics do not work that way (and the Warp certainly doesn't).

Deliberately wrote the New Men in such a way that they wouldn't be seen as innocents forced to be monsters, and yet avoid the implications of "genetic engineering bad, ooga booga". It also adds a bit of the arrogance and madness of Dr. Bile. A reasonable scientist would think "maybe I should create the race of psykers through nice, reasonable methods that don't involve anguish and pain, if for no other reason than I want well-adjusted individuals". Bile can't see the problem that's staring him in the face and until he does he's going to keep getting monsters. If he did things normally the results would be as emotionally normal as Oscar.

Resurrecting the Men of Gold also seemed like a good goal for Bile since Oscar isn't a vegetable and the Primarchs aren't demigods. He wants Sangy's DNA because A) Mark III S geneseed, and B) genetically engineered for maximum compatibility with it.

>There was also something mentioned in the last thread about how due to a quirk of his superhuman physiology he is dying and has been dying for a very long time.

We never figured out if he is dying or not. In canon he was dying because someone sabotaged the majority of the Emperor's Children geneseed. Here that's not the case, because geneseed is interchangeable between chapters (except Space Wolves and Iron Hands, who don't use it). Fulgirm's legion got wrecked by Iron Cage (or whatever we decide to call it).

Forgot to add, it was mentioned that he HAS performed the clone-and-switch at least a few times, because he's still alive by M41 and even an Astartes in Commoragh would have aged to death by now.

Honestly, from the description they don't even seem that poorly adjusted. I mean, if you want them to interact with other species then only having empathy for other New Men is a problem, but if you just stuck a bunch of New Men on their own planet and let them create their own society it seems like it would turn out fine.

I wonder if any New Men have defected to the Imperium. A lot of them probably resent being discarded and used as cannon fodder.

The only having empathy for New Men thing is supposed to be due to warp fuckery and massive trauma. I had a thought that one of the few instances the New Men showed empathy outside their own kind was in the surrogate experiments where their surrogate parents were threatened. Of course, being socially maladjusted, this empathetic response took the form of removing the threatening individual's arm. Think Afriel Strain, they seem to want to do the right thing, but they just don't get it.

Really the bigger issue is I didn't want the Imperium to get their hands on a population that without augmentations can reliably fight an Eldar or Sister and win. Or letting the Imperium know it is possible to make people like that. The quirky abhumans finally being free to live in peace would probably be one of Eldrad's Golden Age things, along with (non-canonical) best-case scenarios like Ynnead creating the biological singularity, or the Void Dragon slapping the AdMech until they get over their fear of inventing.

Page 10 bamp