Nobledark 40k Part 25: ROADTRIP YEAAAAAAAAAH edition

bump while I write a thing

Every Legion had its black sheep during the War of the Beast, even the most stalwart and loyal. The Salamanders were no exception.

The full story of Lieutenant-Commander Maartje and the two thousand Astartes under his command is not known. No records survive, and the people involved are not forthcoming. What is known is this:

Lt. Com. Maartje and his men were defending the world of Ndorea, a beautiful world of some five billion people. Having been unified and untouched by the wider galaxy for thousands of years, it had no defenses, no armies, nothing that could protect it from the storm now sweeping the galaxy. And perhaps because of that very innocence, several raiding fleets, both Ork and Croneworld, targeted the world for destruction.

Maartje swore this would not come to pass. As two thousand Astartes were not enough to cover and protect an entire world, he resolved to meet the invaders in space. In a series of brutal boarding actions, every attacker was destroyed, enemy ships turned into crematoria by the Salamanders' justly famed affinity for flame weapons. Multiple enemy fleets were utterly annihilated, the Salamanders returning to Ndorea after each battle for resupply and repair. Over the months, the bonds between the Salamanders and the people they protected deepened, with several Ndoreans even being inducted into the ranks of the Astartes to replace the losses taken in their defense.

Sadly, the defense did not last forever. While the Salamander fleet was away intercepting an incoming swarm of Ork Roks, a Croneworld battleship slipped into orbit under cloak and burned the surface of the world, using well-placed torpedoes to trigger long-dormant volcanoes and fault lines. The Salamanders had their revenge, but it was far too late; all five billion of Ndorea's citizens had burned to death within a day.
-

Maartje, and all the men under him, swore eternal revenge, and tore into the fleets of the Beast with the fury of men possessed. This is where the chain of events gets spotty, as they only intermittently kept in contact with other Imperial forces. Eventually, they stopped responding to orders and hails at all. Then, when the Navy sent a frigate to try and re-establish communications, they boarded and burned it, just as they had the Orks and Chaos forces. Through the rest of the war, they would indiscriminately attack both sides.

When the Beast died and the Fallen fled into the Eye of Terror, Lieutenant Commander Maartje and his men followed. Today, they are the Burning Earth. Retaining their mastery of flame weapons, they delight in burning pretty much anything that catches their attention alive, posing as much a threat to nominal 'allies' as their foes. Whether it's turning starships into flying ovens or choking the life out of a hive city with a masterfully managed blaze, they delight in the flame and the name of Chaos.

Thoughts?

Long ago in one of the old threads, I, user, had an idea for how Kaldor Draigo could be presented in this universe. Kaldor Draigo was basically a Samurai Jack expy in canon, which was an interesting concept but poorly implemented and Mary Sue-ish. So the idea was to go maximum Samurai Jack with it. However, when the new season came out (I told you it was long ago) I held off because it would look like I was merely jumping on the hype train. Since we’re talking Draigo now, I might as well throw my suggestion out there.

Draigo was born in the area off what was once Sino-Japan. It has been suggested in this timeline that the ethos of Grey Knights are a weird mix of idealized knights, samurai, and monks in their code of honor and extreme asceticism. And that is where Draigo stood out. He was not the physically strongest of the Grey Knights, though he was skilled with a chainsword. He was not the most powerful psyker, though he had talent with warpfire. But he by far the most, and the most humble. An ascetic among ascetics.

So when M’kar the Reborn threw Draigo into the Warp with his curse, nothing could touch him. Khorne couldn’t touch him, because he held no hate in his heart. Slaanesh couldn’t touch him, because the only pleasure Draigo wanted was a quiet room and a warm cup of tea, which was borderline sensory deprivation for the Prince of Pleasure. Nurgle couldn’t touch him, because Draigo was single-mindedly fixated on his quest to return to realspace and would not fall into despair. And Tzeentch couldn’t touch him, because Draigo wanted nothing to do with a future he could not make with his own two hands. And with his aegis armor acting like a spacesuit, even the natural aura of the Warp could barely touch him.

M’kar’s curse manifested itself in a funny way. It wasn’t so much that Draigo couldn’t return to realspace, it was that, whenever he had the opportunity to, it was as if fate itself conspired to keep him in the warp. Draigo would find some other person who had just become stranded in the warp, and had to choose between sending himself back or saving them. That sort of bizarre series of bullshit coincidences and twisted fate. A string of bad luck that would put the canon Lamenters to shame. The number of people Draigo saved over the years reached the point where he became the Imperium’s unofficial patron of those lost in the warp, even though it was not officially known he yet lived.

Some say that Draigo rampaged through the halls of the Brass Palace, burned down Nurgle’s Mansion, and shattered the walls of the crystal labyrinth of Tzeentch. None of these stories are true. Draigo did not survive by brute strength, but by his wits, and by being smart enough to avoid anything higher up the food chain. Indeed, the dark gods forbid any direct harm (key word being “direct”) come to Draigo, because they found his struggles hilarious. They wanted to see how long he would go before he snapped and started begging them for aid.

Eventually, Draigo’s travels brought him to Kairos Fateweaver, the Vizier of Tzeentch. Kairos was a bit too high on the totem pole for what Draigo usually dealt with, but due to constantly seeing the past and future (but NOT the present), Draigo was able to beat Fateweaver. After defeating Fateweaver (and royally pissing him off), both of Kairos’ heads suddenly stood at attention and spoke as one. They told Draigo that in this one instance, they would tell Draigo the truth.

“You desired my knowledge Kaldor Draigo, and so I will give it to you. Why, you might ask? Because I know it will make you suffer.”

And so Kairos told Draigo what he knew. Draigo was fated to return to real space five minutes before midnight on the eve of Armageddon. His return was to be yet another herald of an end of an era, where a great empire would fall. And then Kairos told Draigo of a great secret, one that few in the Imperium knew, that if not addressed, would be the doom of them all.

Draigo had always sought to return to realspace, but now Draigo’s travels with a new measure of urgency. He has to get back to the materium, even if it does mean the apocalypse. Because if he doesn’t bring this information to the Emperor, it could mean the end of the Imperium and life as we know it.

That said, after all that (same guy), maybe we should just go with "Kaldor is alive and in realspace". Makes the Warp seem less hospitable and Chaos a bit nastier without some random guy wandering around in there (whether it is Draigo or Oxyotl). And reduces the HFY quotient.

The suggestion the Chaos Gods forbade harm to him was built off that one guy in Fantasy who the Chaos Gods forbade harm to in the Warp for sick thrills. Of course, this doesn't stop daemons from trying to kill him behind the gods' backs anyway.

Also, I agree that it would be nice to have more Necron, Ork, Chaos, and tyranid stuff. I get that tyranids have only minor changes, but Necrons and Chaos have some big changes that could be expanded on.

We finished Arrotyr, though it was noted some changes had to be made to fit him into the timeline. Had a suggestion of how that could be done.

Arrotyr was a descendant of one of the old military families of the Old Eldar Empire, one that could trace its heritage back to the days of the War in Heaven. His ancestor was famous for having once personally bested the Necron Imotekh the Stormlord both tactically and in personal combat, and all members of his house were expected to follow in his ancestor’s stead.

When Arrotyr saw the disgusting murder orgies that sprung immediately prior to the birth of Slaanesh, Arrotyr put two and two together and assumed that the person who was responsible for all this was the goddess of sex and fertility, Isha. Although some in the empire knew of the whole Slaanesh thing, Arrotyr wasn’t one of them. So Arrotyr simply did the “logical” thing and marched his soldiers into the biggest temple devoted to Isha on Shaa-Dome and simply started killing everyone there (shades of the Greeks desecrating the temple of Athena in the Illiad). For obvious reasons, this did not stop the Fall. Keep in mind that while Arrotyr might have considered himself the only sane person in the waning days of the empire, he wasn’t. He was so crazy and ruthless it’s amazing he hadn’t falled to Khorne already (think Eldar Quaritch). However, Khorne was amused by such an epic display of team-killing (plus the butchered civilians) that he blessed Arrotyr and his warriors, making them the flaming skeleton terminators we all know and fear today.

When Imotekh woke up, he either saw Arrotyr as a worthy opponent to succeed his ancestor, or wanted to humiliate him for what his ancestor did to him.

Either that or the old Arrotyr is literally the current Arrotyr, only having gone through several thousand cycles of reincarnation.

It is good and all the more harrowing for it being a chapter usually held up as an example of humanity.

It does seem weird that there's a bunch of 'we fought to protect the imperium against chaos fuckers, failed once, let's go chaos' stuff going on, though

Which examples are those?

I was going more for "led astray by the desire for revenge' there, which I could probably have conveyed better.

I've mostly been reading the 1d4chan articles so far (just noticed this thing existed the last thread that was made, seemed neat), but it seemed the few fallen marine groups mentioned followed that pattern.

Yeah, I'm gonna agree with this user here, it seems pretty much the same as the other Fallen groups we have in terms of motivation.

There could be 2 Draigos. 1st was the Sino-Japan born. Part of the original founding of the Grey Knights and currently running around the Realm of Chaos.

Draigo the Second was the one that rose to be the current Grandmaster of the Grey Knights. The name is coincidental, they aren't related.

I think there's been sufficient variation so far. The Night Lords got into a fight with other Imperial forces over their methods, *then* fell to Chaos. Sigismund's defense of Necromunda was actually ultimately successful. The Iron Warriors fell slowly over the course of a long and bitter siege. A lot of the beats are the same, I will admit, but the details are different.

I like it, although I'm not quite sure it's necessary. Do you have any idea what the great secret actually is?

They should have to go to the AdBio, not necessarily their homeworld but to one of their training facilities.

Or they might be able to have one of the bio-druids come to them. It seems that the AdBio have less of a stick up their ass compared to the AdMech.

Not sure how Isha's disciples would be helpful to Space Marines as anything but field medics given that Space Mariens aren't natural by even the elastic definitions of Isha's chosen.

Seconding this unless it's meant to be left a mystery.

Hell, could just have taken the name in honor of the original. Could even be a thing with the Knights - they have a tendency to take a new name when they become full marines, frequently that of one of the early members whose traits they wish to be an exemplar of. 'I will be as fierce as blah/resolute as bleh/wise as bluh, and thus shall be known by his name' kind of thing.
Also leads to people outside thinking there's a lot less Knights than there are (since they keep repeating names, though not all do) thus making them a bit more mysterious

That's good.

Also might give the impression to plebs that they genuinely are immortal.

This raises the question of how the GKs actually operate in this AU.

What sort of flavour should they be?

There's some stuff in the ooooold threads (like thread 5 or something) where GKs are described as pretty close to the canon warrior-monk/knight compared to other SMs in this AU, which lean a bit more professional/military. They were one of Magnus's projects with help from the Eldar, and because they have an entire galaxy of daemons to deal with their numbers peaked out somewhere around 10,000, falling to around 7,000 by M41.999 due to all the craziness and attrition going on.

This is entirely going off my memory, so if anyone wants to go archive diving and correct me, feel free.

That sounds about right, yeah. They wouldn't be secret, which might affect how they go about things compared to canon.

Yep. As mentioned, samurai-monk-knights. Trained with the help of Eldar (who helped turn them from "merely" daemon resistant to daemon shredders, one of the Eldar's gifts in return for the raid I think), and were a joint project between Magnus and Russ. Russ' involvement was a bit of an olive branch on his part to Magnus, and was one of the last things he did before he disappeared. Magnus is typically seen as their "founder" because he was the individual who put the most work into them, even though a lot of other people did as well.

Not organized into chapters but more flexible brotherhoods, which means they don't break apart into 1k-3k chapters (did we ever decide what chapter size was? I remember it was higher than canon and the wording in the codex was "you should be about this size" as opposed to "you have to be this size"). Heavy attrition in the last millennium, if not earlier (I don't recall exactly when it started).

Publicly the Grey Knights are seen as a public morale booster. There are posters. However in person the Grey Knights have kind of a James Bond-esque aura. As in "If I told you what I'm here to do, I'd have to kill you". Most people do what they can to help the Grey Knights then get the hell out of the way, lest they be sucked into their own personal Call of Cthulhu campaign.

All their creepy junk gets stored on Ganymede in this timeline, for which they act as the riot guard in case things go ploin-shaped.

Good point. There had to have been some other motivations for falling among the Astartes beyond "he who fights monsters" and "Galactic. Eldar. Conspiracy".

It was mentioned that some of the Night Lords turned out to be real sociopaths as opposed to Kurze's Judge Dredd meets Batman personality. Skyrar was said to be a real monster, though his personality was never fleshed out. There are probably a bunch of marines who turned out to be real horrible people. Even if the people in charge are good, doesn't mean all of the footsoldiers are the same way.

I agree it's probably not necessary.

Couldn't really think of what the secret was meant to be. Obviously it was supposed to be in part secret, but I was thinking something like the Terminus Decree was sabotaged, or Chaos figured out how to open a Warp Rift beneath the Imperial Palace.

Alternately, it could be that the secret itself isn't actually that big, but the implications of it ARE. Something that even Chaos shouldn't know, yet does. Or something that is seemingly inconsequential in and of itself, but with further thought means some horrible horrible shit is going to go down unless something's done about it.

Seeing as he attacks the greatest temple of Isha in the Shaa-Dome, the High Conservator of Nurgle who was once one of Isha's priests might have an interesting relationship with the Marshal of The Old Helm, especially after the actual birth of Slaanesh.

The constant infighting and bacstabbery of Chaos is the Imperium's greatest advantage over them. This would be one more rivalry to be grateful for.

Are there Legion of the Damned in this AU?

Yep. They're the poor guardsmen and Astartes caught between dimensions as quantum space ghosts when Ahriman tried hiding Prospero from the Fourth Black Crusade.

I don't know if we've come down on either side of the debate yet, but I'd prefer Draigo to be a name/title that each GK grandmaster inherits, similar to and

I was thinking: Mandrakes come from some weird shadow dimension between the Materium and the Warp, right? Perhaps the state Prospero is stuck in has some relation?

Could be that, while not every Grandmaster is named Draigo, more Grandmasters HAVE been named Draigo than haven't.
They do not choose the name seeking leadership, but end up there due to the traits they aspire to emulate and some odd coincidences here and there. A few HAVE tried to game the system when this was noticed. They ended up in a position of leadership, but that was more Sergeant Draigo than Grandmaster Draigo.
On the outside, it looks like this one guy steps up to lead when he's needed, and steps down when he's no longer needed to lead. The Knights do nothing to confirm or deny such beliefs.

Maybe, given there's something distinctly wrong with the mandrakes and Vect seems to have some kind of control or allegiance with them yet they aren't directly allied with Chaos or the dark gods.

Eh, I meant it more as an actual position than a name itself - as in, the new grandmaster assumes it once promoted after the death of the previous Draigo.

I like the idea of the Grey Knights taking on new names more than 'Draigo' being a specific title, desu.

Done with my big paper on the sistine chapel and insufflating a skinny white guy at post finals, contemplating the fate of Fulgrim. Expect to actually finish the bio within a week or so.
"Draigo" could be something akin to Augustus, or even have a history like Caesar

I'm with this guy, taking on previous names is already a thing in canon and if I see "Draigo" appended onto every GK Supreme Grandmaster I'll puke.

I'm imagining that the following of Isha was at an all time low by that point. It would have been a sad battle. The priesthood weren't fighters and there weren't that many of them, priestess' or congregation.

It would have been more tragic than epic. Almost a ritual sacrifice of a rival gods followers.

>Almost
Might have been literally that, towards the end.

IS there a chapter/regiment that specializes in Dark Eldar and the fucking up of them?

Has the Soul Forge been claimed?

So far we have imperium(with eldar and tau), nids, necrons, and chaos(split between daemons, CMS, and chaos guard), but should we add in some new xeno faction or take some cool xeno race from canon and make the relevant?

We have the Q'orl, there are the Saruthi from Vanilla that could be expanded to be a far bigger threat and there was mention of the Rak'Gol in the previous thread.

No. It is a mercenary manufactuary. There was some suggestion that at its heart is an anvil with a short length of broken chain attached.

I thought it was mentioned that it's an even bigger point among the Chaos Gods that the Forge stay neutral (or at least, they would like to control the forge, but neutral is an acceptable second), since there are fewer CSMs and a higher need for Obliterators. Of course this doesn't stop the gods from scheming behind each other's backs anyway.

On a galactic scale, the four powers worth any mention are the Imperium, tyranids, Necron Star Empire, and Chaos (which also has the Cronedar, who outnumber the CSM by a huge margin).

Orks come in fifth, mostly because they've been manipulated into being cannon fodder by Cronedar for centuries. Ghazzy's big plan is to break the Orks off into their own independent faction and make the Orks great again. That's not to say they are still one of the most common threats in the galaxy, but they currently aren't organized in a manner that would make them a threat on par with, say, the Necrons. Dark Eldar would be on the same level, but the Cronedar have roped them in to fill the ork-shaped hole in their forces.

C'tan come in sixth, if only because there are only four of them, two are doing nothing, and the other two are currently acting through proxies.

There are lots and lots of other threats in the galaxy to the four major powers. Q'orl, Rak'gol, etc. But they tend to be comparatively minor powers.

To Khorne it probably was, since that's what got Arrotyr his blessing

There's Lugganath among the Eldar.

The Orks are still a pretty independent faction; the Chaos Eldar don't have that strong a grip on them.

It would also have earned Arrotyr the ire of Nurgle and his white knighting followers for hurting their mother-waifu.

And both of them would be endlessly mocked by Tzeench and Slaanesh

Did a description of Craftworld Lugganath from what we had for 1d4chan. Does it sound good enough?

pastebin.com/aeYn1HqA

Also, should Lugganath have any special ties to Isha? IIRC, in canon they were supposedly close to Isha for some reason, but I'm not sure if that would also hold here.

Sounds more than good enough.

I think in Vanilla they were the only craftworld to take the rumors of Isha's survival seriously.

As Isha is the patron of growth and healing they may consider her their patron still as they intend to found a new and better empire in her name.

Clarification (again) - the name Kaldor Draigo itself is the title that gets passed down, both for the illusion that he's immortal and to honour the original a la James Bond

Also I didn't realise the taking on previous names was a canon thing, please don't sue me

Some thoughts on the Mechanicus:

The Dark Mechanicus are all hereteks, but not all hereteks are Dark Mechanicus. 'Heretek' is effectively a political designation, Techpriests that reject the authority and teachings of Mars.

Thus, there are groups designated 'hereteks' without leaving the Imperium or even being doctrinally heterodox, for reasons of rejecting the political authority of Mars. This happens for a variety of reasons and takes a variety of forms, from simply blithely ignoring any orders emanating from Mars to outright declaring secession. Such succession is often accompanied by a petition to join the Imperium as a subject of the Administratum, which places the organs of the Imperial state in a bind. On the one hand, the Charter of Unification which bound Mars and Earth together at the beginning of the Great Crusade clearly states that Mars has authority over all forge worlds; like the Imperium, the Mechanicus is not something you simply leave. However, there are precedents for worlds switching alignment between one member civilization and another, and prying a forge-world from the grasp of Mars and thus reducing its near-stranglehold on the Imperial economy is always a worthy goal. Such conflicts are always fraught with peril and unpredictability; the red tape generated will tie up bureaucracies for decades, and even minor armed conflict is not unknown.

It also means that the Hubworld Mechanicus is a Heretekal institution.

Some day the Hubworlders might even give a shit what Mars has to say. Some day. Might. Stranger things have happened. No they haven't

Also reading up on the last thread. How different do the "natural" Fenrisians look?

Human. Whatever else is in their genes, it is minor and long diluted.

Like said. They're not even different enough to qualify as abhuman. The differences are about as much as how people living in Peru and Tibet have adaptations to living in high altitudes, Polynesian populations have adaptations to surviving starvation, and European, Indian, and east African populations can digest lactose.

I think this was actually brought up in a previous thread as one of the ways to revamp the Korod Technocracy. For those who weren't around, the Technocracy was supposed to be a sort of "Balthasar Gelt and the College of Magic" thing in 40k, founded by a guy who went "fuck Mars" and went to start his own. One suggestion was the guy was a tech-priest who got excommunicated from the AdMech for tech-heresy.

“What kind of fool do you take me for. He’s Draigo. He’s Draigo. You’re Draigo. I’M DRAIGO! Are there any other “Kaldor Draigos” I should know about!”

*Warp rift opens in the middle of the room and the original Kaldor Draigo comes flying out of it and slams into a wall*

“Present”

A thought I had:

The war-regalia of the Chaos Eldar are often literally painful to look at, and sometimes also difficult to look away from. Clashing color-patterns, bizarre eye-capturing whorls, jagged and deceptive angles and textures, combining into a whole that strains the human eye and mind beyond their limits. Not enough for damage, not enough to be a weapon in and of itself- that is the domain of the Gorgons and their exotic, specialist equipment. But enough to give them an edge. Difficult to shoot something when it hurts to look directly at it.

Such designs are foremost the domain of the Slaaneshi, of course, the masters of sensation. But the techniques have disseminated; Tzeentchian crones also make a great deal of use of such techniques, and a handful of Khornate of Nurglite forces who want an edge in battle badly enough to overlook the source.

Thoughts?

Sounds exactly the sort of thing that they would do and nicely differentiates them from the Dark Eldar to observers.

I really like this and think it needs putting on the 1d4chan page.

I like that.

Each Brotherhood is an autonomous group.

They recruit from a common pool so as to maintain even numbers spread and prevent the formation of in-house factionalism.

If they have been getting more recruitment than the attrition rate they scoop out volunteers from each Brotherhood and form a new Brotherhood from the mixture of veterans and N00bz. There has never been considered a limit on the number of Brotherhoods there are.

All special equipment and vehicles are also held in common between Brotherhoods

How extensive is the Eldar involvement with the GKs?

So their color schemes are literally the worst of 80's hair-metal style 40k?

Bumf

Worse, if at all possible. I'm also thinking of dazzle-pattern camo a bit- obnoxious patterns as a form of defense.

Add to this that they were the single largest individual chapter at their height. Now the Space Wolves and possibly the Black Tempelars outnumber them.

Do they still use mind wipes? I'm guessing not but I have to ask.

You mean on other people? Almost certainly. There are indeed things it is better for the regular man not to know, not to remember; memory suppression is effectively a form of psychotherapy.
On themselves? Maybe. I imagine the sort of person who becomes a Grey Knight would be the sort of person who would do it to themselves if they thought it would give them an edge over the gibbering and demonic.

I suppose a month or two of missing time isn't so bad a thing. Especially considering the things those months might contain.

It's a hell of an improvement on Vanilla where genocide of Imperial citizens is considered standard procedure.

Cadia was green, once. There were forests, green plains of flowing grass, lakes and rivers. The sky was blue, once. The air was clean. Once.

That was a long, long time ago, though. Before nobody knows how many millions of nukes went off in that clean sky, before how many millions of tons of gas and poison were released by both sides, before how many daemonic hordes trampled over its surface and were pushed back by how many billions of tanks.

The ground is churned mud, discolored by the iridescent sheens of ancient chemical weapons. The sky is bruised smog, the air corrosive and lethal in minutes. Geiger counters crackle and hiss. All landmarks, all features of terrain, have been chewed up by artillery barrages and orbital bombardment until all that is left of entire mountains is mud-filled craters. Unexploded munitions, some millennia old, litter the ground. Every rain exposes ancient corpses and ruined war machines, to be covered back up when the ground shifts again.

Imagine if the battle of Verdun had continued for ten thousand years.

Civilization on Cadia, such as it is, has moved underground. Vast underground vaults, hardened against shock and bombardment, house factories, armories, farms, apartments, schools, mines. All sheltered from the attention of enemy warships by at least a hundred meters of rock, if not more.

Each of these cities is, of course, also a fortress. Every corridor a chokepoint, every intersection a killzone, every building a bunker. Every entrance rigged to collapse. In many cases, the entire city is rigged for total destruction if it falls, to deny resources to the enemy and spite them one last time. Atomic demolition charges, magma floods from geothermal taps, simply bringing the ceiling down with melta bombs.
-

The entire planet is a fortress, spiderwebbed with defensive lines and connected by underground passages. There is not a point on the planet that cannot be hit with at least one gun. Individual bunkers fight on for as long as possible before the crew abandons the position and falls back to the next line through the tunnel system, just a hundred meters away. Areas the enemy thinks secure are struck by commandos through secret passages and hidden sally-ports. Fortresses surrounded on the surface can hold out for years with supplies flowing into them through the tunnels. When the enemy gets into the tunnels, they will find nothing but booby-traps, collapsed passages, and ambushes.

Some of the bunker systems extend down halfway to the mantle. Even if the surface, the cities, the top fortification layers, all fall, resistance will continue. Tunneling machines loaded with atomics crawling up from the depths, like very slow ICBMs.

Imagine a combination of the Maginot Line, VC tunnel systems, and the Japanese defense of Peleliu and Iwo Jima.

Normally, the reaction of the Archenemy to defenses of such magnitude would be warp-work, drown it in daemons and drive the defenders mad. Not on Cadia, not with the Pylons, not under a Null-Field powerful enough to stitch the Eye of Terror shut. Daemon engines stutter and malfunction, Nurgle's plagues are banished by conventional treatment, daemons are banished by the humble lasgun. Victory will have to be by fire and blood.

Sadly, Chaos has plenty of that as well.

In places, the bodies of the dead are mounded high enough to be terrain features.

Thoughts?

have we come up with any noise marine equivalent?

There probably are actual Noise marines, there are less CSMs around but that's not the same as none. There's also the Gorgons, who use sonic and holographic attacks to fry and occasionally control people's brains.

Really good.

I’m not sure Cadia ever had a history as a civilized world.

The thing is despite being one of the most famous worlds in the Imperium, Cadia was never actually incorporated into the Imperium during the Great Crusade. In canon Lorgar made a pilgrimage to Cadia shortly before he fell to Chaos, where he found a bunch of purple-eyed tribals using knapped stone tools. After the Heresy the Imperium killed every last man, woman, and child on the planet like they did with every other planet associated with the Heresy, and then resettled it with new stock in M32, who then developed the exact same purple-eyed mutation as the planet’s original inhabitants, to serve as a bastion against Chaos.

Since this is a nobledark universe and the Imperium is not trying to hide their failings like a child trying to hide their soiled bedsheets from a parent, I’m assuming that Cadia wasn’t purged in this timeline. The current inhabitants of Cadia are, at least in part, descended from the original tribals. The original inhabitants of Cadia didn’t really worship Chaos per se. Being so close to the Eye of Terror, Chaos didn’t have to be subtle or enticing, and the Cadians didn’t so much worship Chaos as pray that the gods would leave them alone, like people used to do for “unpleasant” gods in old Earth mythologies. Like all tribal worlds the Cadians had stories of monsters in the dark eager to snatch the unwary, only due to being right next to the Eye of Terror these stories were more literal than most. What the Imperium did is give the inhabitants guns, and taught them that the daemons of Chaos could be fought, and more importantly, killed.

Of course, the Imperium still shipped in millions of people from other worlds to populate Cadia. In both timelines, Cadia was envisioned as a fortress world, building a stronghold literally on the doorstep of the Eye of Terror as close as you could get before the Warp started to overtake you to try and stop any attempt to leave the Eye of Terror before it even started and limit Chaos holdings in realspace. A tribal population in the millions who were just getting the hand of not using stone tools is not enough to man an entire fortress world, and the Imperium knew it. As mentioned previously, Ulthwe loved this idea, because it means that now there was another meat-shield to stand against the forces of Chaos that wasn’t them. In the early days of Cadian history, it was probably the inhabitants of Ulthwe giving the new immigrants to Cadia the “listen up you lot, this is what you need to do to survive in the literally ass-end of the galaxy. Additionally, as has been mentioned before, this means a lot of Cadian culture is actually Ulthwe culture, or at least Ulthwe influenced, since the population of Ulthwe is greater than Cadia by at least one order of magnitude.

How big is Ulthwe, anyway?

Ulthwe is said to be one of the larger Craftworlds. I think it was mentioned in the previous threads that canon has "Mid-sized" means about Earth size. Some sources have the largest be near-Jupiter size. Some say they are "only" the size of Luna, but dense enough to house Earth-level populations. It's hard to say, as GW isn't consistent with how Craftworlds are depicted. We threw a dart at the wall and had Iyanden (the previous biggest population center before Kraken) at about 100 trillion. Most are much lower than this.

The biggest Exodite world, Halalthel, is said to have had a population in the "millions" in canon. But it's Space Amish central, so that's to be expected.

Ulthwe might have lower than average population compared to Biel-Tan, Saim-Hann, Alaitoc, and the like, given that they suffer from constant Chaos incursions.

What is agreed is that the eldar are a drop in the bucket compared to the quadrillions of abhumans.

Does anyone have the fluff for Valhalla? It seems to have vanished from the 1d4chan, or never got put up there in the first place.

I actually think that this is massively superior to Vanilla Cadia. It shows that this has been the nightmare killing ground for millennia.

I like that. The original people to discover Cadia still just have to be the Word Bearers. Instead of going to Chaos they look up at the broken sky and radio for reinforcements. The crusty old Katholian Yndonisic veteran leading them declared "we're going to lay siege to the gates of Hell". Due to changing logistical issues Black Legion with the original Word Bearers detachment kept on as spiritual advisors, psychology help and intermediaries with the locals who's trust they earned.

I asked my gramp, a veteran VC for any suggestion for writing the Cadian defense effort fluff as while the Cadians may have a lot of weapons and supplies diverted to them, there may be times where thoze are not available for the cut off units and else, and he gave me these few... ideas:

-booby-trap cover: any piece of terrain feature that may be used as cover by the enemies from kill-zones must be trapped, mined, or actually another kill-zone itself. Like Perty's forts, for example. Especially effective in tunnel fighting.
-a cheap airlock can be created using a few planks of wood, some mud and a plastic sheet.
-a tunnel 3 metre deep can withstand small bombs, 5, medium, 10, MOAB (at least, with ferrite-rich earth)
-combat-manufactories set up in sub-surface bunkers to fix and recycle weaponries, etc.
-Easy, instant booby-traps: nails. 1.5 to 2 inches nails can be spread out randomly close to a kill zone (or anywhere, for that case.) Doesn't even need to be covered. When someone steps on a nail, they will cause a 'minor' distraction (and the guy who stepped on it will lose a leg, hence incapacitated), and that is when you bring out the guns. Or, in reverse, bring out the gun may cause them to be too distracted trying to silence/hide the gunner to notice the traps.
-punji pit: a small pit slightly bigger than your foot, nails lined up on the inside will incapacitate the unlucky sob who steps into it. Easily covered with... anything actually. Use as above.
-tiger pit: a pit filled with stakes, covered up. Will take care of a sob.
-Rotateary tiger pit: like a normal tiger pit, but covered with a gyroscopic top, used to hide the bastard that fell down when it rotates back to position.
-a kind of IED made easily from a cooking pot filled with explosives (and/or nails) and some firing pin. Used as emergency mine or disable tank tracks when it is rolled under one.
-ran out of grenade launcher? Used a thick rubber band as a grenade slingshot.

I suppose that this is the mirror of Krieg. Bothe worlds ultimately the same in environment but Cadians are bro-tier.

bump

I thought, in the Noble Darkness at least, that the major craftworlds operated in the tens of billions with pre-Kraken Iyanden the only one to pass the 100 billion mark.

Might not sound much considering that they are meant to be the 2nd largest species and account for 8 - 9% of the entire Imperium population. You also have to take into account that bar a few notable exceptions like the Forgeworlds, Krieg and at least officially Old Earth basically every human world and most of the xeno worlds have at least a few elder living on them.

That's over a million other little outposts, not including Exodite, settled Maiden Worlds and all the minor craftworlds.

I remember there being a basic outline on the 1d4chan page but it is gone now. Unless I'm imagining that I saw it.

From what I can remember in the threads that dealt with this way back when it was linked with Yme-Loc craftworld. From what I can remember the notes on it could be summarized more or less as this.

>Agri-world. One big continent covered in the greens and golds of fertile farmed land.
>Nice climate, no seasons because of little/no orbital tilt. No natural satellites of note.
>Productive and exported huge amounts of food to a dozen worlds. Imported mostly processed "biological waste".
>Sparse population - only a few unremarkable regiments ever raised.
>One day a very large chunk of dirty ice gets spotted on a collision course with planet.
>Imperium sends a small fleet to nudge the ice a few critical degrees whilst it's still a long way off.
>Warp shenanigans. Time dilation effect. Fleet not going to arrive for ~30 years.
>Everybody fucking panic.
>If Valhalla launches everything (not very much) at the ice it will break up. Rather than kill everybody it will alter the climate to ice age for the next half a million years.
>Better than extinction. Preparing to launch.
>Yme-Loc appears at system edge and is accelerating towards the planet.
>Refusing to answer signals.
>Reconfiguring craftworld even as it accelerates
>Ice getting close to weapons range of planet
>Yme-Loc getting really close to ice. So close that it will be destroyed if Valhalla launces attack on Ice.
>Yme-Loc slams into Ice and keeps on burning those engines because FUCK YOU ICE!
>Ice and Yme-Loc now inseparable but Ice diverted into a nice stable but highly elliptical orbit around Valhalla
>Yme-Loc claim the Ice as their own.
>Some years later orks arrive.
>Eldar and Valhallans fight together, brothers in war.
>Bonds of friendship forged.
>Start talking to each other and form defence and trade pact.

It's on the Notes page. Well, should be on the Notes page. It still needed to be written up as a full entry as opposed to the informal style we talk to each other with here.

Eldar numbers were said to be in the low trillions (which I think is relatively close to canon). Then someone suggested Iyanden had 100 trillion. They'd have to be in the low trillions to outnumber the Tau, who have a space as large as Ultramar and number in the hundreds of billions at least.

I think there may be a few eldar on Earth, but their living there is highly regulated and like, say, Hawaii in the U.S. they don't so much own a place to live as rent it. You would have to have representatives from each of the Craftworlds at the very least, and the High Lords have a number of Eldar on staff as advisors.

Just checked, it is still there, on the Notes page.

That's a good point and it shows that the biggest problem Krieg has always had is the Kriegers.

Are there any Valhallan characters from Vanilla we can adapt?