Nobledark 40k: Bureaucrat's Wetdreams (or nightmare) edition

Slavery as punishment exist but not the galaxy-wide trade system we see in vanilla. Arbites, Inquisitors, and Mechanics are the ones most likely to have slave camps. Two of those three would use it for prisoners while the Mechanics just doesn't give a shit about the social norm within Imperial society.

Space Marines in this AU seem to be, with the exception of things like the Sharks and the GKs, a branch of the Imperial Army.

Do they get paid?

Also can they retire? Lets say one gets too broken to war properly but not to the extent that it's dreadnaught time. Or maybe the mental elastic snaps and they get PTSD. Could they leave the war to less broken men and try to make new lives for themselves?

Bump

Is anyone really writing about the tyranids?

There was a written intro on the Tyranids and much discussion, but other than that all other writings are from an outsider's perspective in the form of Kryptman.

I only asked because I had a few ideas for a greater intelligence among the tyranids

We've had several mentions of retired Astartes, including one working as an actor in a series of basically-propaganda action films.

We've done something like that with the swarmlord(s) and hivemind(s), but more detail is always better

Bump! Hope I'll wake up to more Space Marine development.

I think that they have been kept intentionally faceless and seen only from the PoV of others to maintain the menacing sense of inevitability and doom.

We reealy do need more chapters of the current era rather than just stuff on the Old Legions.

Which ones do you have in mind? Perhaps if people named a chapter and we try and twist it to fit?

Crimson Fists is easy enough. You get the Crimson Fists and change nothing but the origin of their name. Now rather than their hands being red by the blood of their brothers slain in the HH their hands and blades are eternally red with the blood of the foes of the Imperium in general. Their actions in the war against the Orks remains unchanged as they were already pretty Noble Dark to start with.

Warp Hunters are Fallen Night Lords from WoTB who enjoy being the baddies. They have purple ghost dog theme amongst them and really like exterminating the fuck out of worlds. Infamous for broadcasting their prisoners' suffering system-wide, it was them that also destroyed the Ratlings homeworld in the Gothic War. Acting as "Those Guys" in Chaos where they don't give a shit about the gods and are only working with Crone Eldar and other Fallen because it lets them survive against the Imperium.

I can imagine this being a source of much argument between Angron and Oscar.

>Oblitorator Cyborks with looted necron tech.
>Preparedness level: Inadequate

Bump?

Yes. Oh yes. If thread survives I may try my hand at writefagging something about this.

Now all I can wonder is if there are specific days of celebration for the faithful to Chaos.

Would Chaos Eldar celebrate Slaanesh's birthday?

>Would Chaos Eldar celebrate Slaanesh's birthday?
Vigorously. Slaanesh likes to join them, they throw a good birthday party and love soul-licking.

I think an Astartes retiring would be extremely, extremely rare. There's plenty of old folks today who find retirement strange or difficult because they're not used to having a routine after 40+ years of working. Now think of the same situation with a hyper-disciplined superhuman warrior who has been fighting for potentially centuries. It's pretty much all they know, even if they had a decent life before they were recruited in their late teens or early twenties. Dante and Logan from canon show that age is not generally an issue for Astartes, so I imagine it's a situation similar to "a Witcher never dies in his bed," where its more of a question of *when* an Astartes falls in battle rather than *if*.

Perhaps the Astartes actor was a rare case of one who had a combo of good looks, charisma, and acting potential combined with a combat-ending injury who volunteered for the gig. The augmetics only add to the gritty appeal and mystique, of course.

How does this Imperium deal with Space Hulks and is a chapter setting up shop in one long term plausible?

probably. The eldest space hulks are shards of War of Heaven era Ork War Worlds, and space marines would be the least you'd need to take one over.

Tell me about the navy.

The Navy and the Guard squabble endlessly over who is the preeminent wing of the Army. The Guard cites sheer numbers deployed, tales of planets defended and retaken, the fact that even forty thousand years in the future you need boots on the ground to control territory. The Navy cites cost and weight- a full million-man Guard battlegroup still costs less than a single Navy frigate- the fact that the Guard would be utterly useless without ships to take them where they need to go, and similar rolls of battle honors and gigadeaths prevented. They are more standardized than the Guard, due to the relatively lower number of shipyards vs. the number of Guard recruiting worlds and greater Mechanicus influence. But then, the All-Sector Crazy Person Convention can reasonably claim to be less varied than the Guard.

>the All-Sector Crazy Person Convention
>what is the AU long trail of hangers on following the Traveling Court at any given point?

Officially neither Guard or Navy but a private concern made up of Pirate Deterrents and Bodyguards.

It has a disproportionate number of Voidborn in it, also eldar. The Voidborn because the Navy was founded by Horus and his people and the eldar because they hang around for a long time causing career congestion.

It's also the reason why everyone does everything possible to discourage eldar from pursuing high office.

That just happens to contain a shit load of ships geared up to Navy Elite standards and the excessive number of bodyguards just happens to consist of lots of ex-Guard veterans.

In the same way that the Navigators don't have personal armies. They just have shit loads of bodyguards and heavily armed butlers.

Also a question.

Do the Tau still adhere to a vegetarian diet in this AU. I'm thinking of doing a timeline/summary of Shas'O Kais' life from 887 - 999M41 and it will be a point of mention when he first meets the Kroot during the first deployment of his first tour. The Doomguy incident being his second tour.

There is also the possibility that one or more of the Talismans of Vaul were at the heart of a Space Hulk.

Occasionally the Imperium, or others, manage to find a chunk of Old One weirdness that other ship parts have accumulated around. The corroded and half fossilized wreck with the Shadowlight inside it being one such example.

Shadowlight being one of the things in the Ganymede Vaults with strict instructions that nobody touch it.

This did not stop Inquisitor Jaq Draco form licking it on a dare. The usual sanity destroying effects had not effect on him due to already being so far round the bend that the bend looks like something drawn by M. C. Escher.

More worrying maybe are the gene-stealers in some of the ancient Hulks and the implications.

Maybe the vegetarian diet is fine before the Tau Schism but after that, I honestly think most Tau don't give enough of a shit to strictly follow the old traditions.

It could be one of the things that has divided the traditionalists and reformists down the ages. Not a great point of distinction in and of itself but an indication of what side they lean towards.

The traditionalists are strictly vegetarian because Aun'O Da was a vegetarian.

The reformists are not because Aun'O Da didn't actually put his views on vegetarianism into any of his writings.

There is a Khornate celebration of Khornes birthday. No two sects can agree what day it is. They fight over it.

I like the idea that there is a book of Aun'O Da's sayings.

Everyone assumes its going to be full of super deep and profound Eastern Fringe sayings and exotic wisdom. It full of stuff like "it won't get better if you pick at it" and other such things.

>This did not stop Inquisitor Jaq Draco form licking it on a dare.

God fucking dammit Jaq!

What other crazy shit has he done.

One thing is playing unauthorized mind games with the one known daemon prince of Malal, Apep. Apep also told us we should charge Jaq for the same transgressions with an indefinite number of unknown princes of Malal. This was considered frivolous at best.

There is and can only be one Deamon Prince of Malal.

So Jaq duplicated Apep and got the duplicates(?) to cancel each other out as they all represented bottomless pits?

He locked him in a hall of mirrors and told him he could only come out once he pointed at the real one?

He managed to split the sandy form of Apep in two, expose both halves to contradictory knowledge and experiences and then poured them back together?

Convinced him with slight of hand that his equal and opposite mirror universe self was trying to break out of the univers and into his anti-cell? Was in fact just a recording of Apep with a goatee

I'm genuinely curious as to what it is or is this a "nobody should ever know" moment?

Probably all of those. Apep only stays on Ganymede because its been told emphatically to leave and never return, and instructions have been equally clear to vacate its holding cell so a new prisoner can be assigned to it. Thus Apep remains in prison, guarding its cell so that none can take it.

bump

Slavery was actually mentioned in an earlier thread. Indentured servitude, penal slavery and other “lighter” kinds of slavery are allowed in the Imperium. It was brought up as one of the ways the Imperium differs morally from 21st century Earth in a way we would find anachronistic, but they find normal. Part of this is because Oscar is more concerned with the wellbeing of people than their emancipatory status, and part of this is that Oscar doesn’t like to intervene in a world’s affairs unless they are really doing something that requires bringing the hammer down.

I imagine Angron is not happy about this. To him it sounds like a slave is a slave is a slave, and it doesn’’t matter what fancy words you dress it up in to make it sound like it’s okay to you. Link related.
youtube.com/watch?v=AHu793gEqSE

They essentially get free housing, healthcare, and food for the rest of their lives in exchange for service it sounds like. Mortyboi was mentioned as having a salary but that could have been a Unification Era-thing when the Imperium was not the galactic power it was today.

Astartes rarely "retire", but occasionally you get one that can't be on the front lines anymore. They tend to get desk jobs for the military away from the action because it's at least not totally alien to them. Also while they tend to overestimate how squishy an unaugmented human is, they still have centuries of experience comparable to only the most heavily rejuvenated members of the Guard.

It's rare though. Usually it's either death or dreadnaught.

I've actually thought about this one. Not the original author, but my idea was the guy got a lungful of tyranid spores, which he was able to live through at the cost of his multi-lung and oolitic kidney, among other organs. Got forcibly benched, and when told his options were paper pushing or doing this decided to do what he felt had the greater benefit for the Imperium.

Despite having good relations with the cast and crew, things aren't all nice for him. He'd rather be out on the field shooting things, and feels guilty about it. The cranky, world-weary attitude of his character isn't all talk. He calls it method acting.

Tau are naturally *mostly* herbivores. They evolved from an analogue of ungulates on their world. They eat some protein, in order to fuel their enlarged brain, but in their pre-space flight days the Tau diet was mostly plant matter along with any small animal that was too dumb to get out of the way. Like an Earth duiker or something.

Today it still tends to be mostly plant products (especially protein-heavy grains), but they supplement it with fish or shrimp.

I like the idea of Da being a vegan, but that could have been because he lived in the primarily agrarian Earth empires where there was nothing but grain. If he was a Fire nomad things would have been very different.

Problems would have arisen the moment Angron ends up in a campaign to take a nation that uses slavery and it becomes apparent that the Warlord isn't the Great Emancipator that Angron mistook him for.

Oscar declared all the Nordic Afrik slaves free on the basis that it couldn't make the nation any more dysfunctional and that style of slavery was abhorrent to the marrow. Then he handed the ruined nation over to Guilliman to fix and incorporate into Europia. Europia itself had an institution of slavery but so regulated and amended it wasn't comparable. It was just the logical conclusion of a feudal society where everyone is short on cash.

Also Europia was part of the Imperium so Angron would have assumed Oscar was going to come back at some later date and fix it then.

Shit would have gotten angry when they take territory from the middle eastern nation whose name escapes me but Ahriman was from there. It was Chaos corrupted so it had to be subjugated but the slave system was, on paper at least, basically the same as Europia and the problems arose from lack of oversight and accountability.

Oscar opts to fix the system rather to tear it all down. Angron flips his shit and raises his fists in anger against the Warlord.

Thankfully there's not a lot that a Thunder Warrior can do against a Man of Gold so the Warlord was forgiving. Also Angron was at the shit end of his medication cycle and was fine again (relatively speaking) once he got some more calming pills. The Red Angel had sacrificed much for the Imperium and was a walking example of why the Super Soldier project needed considerable more work done.

...

>Inquisitor Jaq Draco

Wooow. I never expected anyone to surpass the character who previously held the title of Most Insane Inquisitor Ever Written, but Jaq has now achieved exactly that.

>Warpstone
Nothing to see here folks. To say large rat people exist is absurd, now stop spreading misinformation before the Inquisition imprison you.

Fourth Black Crusade
>Prospero was almost destroyed by Chaos until Ahriman preserved the planet by teleporting it to a pocket dimension.
Is this accurate because that is the only thing on the wiki about the 4th BC.

>Rat People
Those don't even exist in the Eye of Terror, and if they did they'd be easily exterminated. You shouldn't bother we in the Cabals either.

Ahriman was from Achaemenidia. Achaemenidia was in an alliance against Ursh with Ducht Jemanic, Bania, Terrawatt, and Uralia. So it would have been very anti-Ursh, and likely anti-Chaos. They must have been on good terms with Macedonia because the map says they became part of the Tharkian Empire after Unification.

Achaemenidia's biggest problem was it was at the crossroads between Europe, Africa, and Asia, so you kept having troops moving through Achaemenidia going to somewhere else. Ahriman probably was a child when the Warlord's forces marched through there repeatedly to get to the Afrique League and bypass the worst terrain to get to Ursh.

Fucking with thrones would be an especially heinous offense, because the more you think about it, the more that a reputation-based currency (like banknotes and paper money) is the only way to go in a galactic economy.

Human cultures in the past have mostly used gold and silver for their currency because they were one of the few elements that were rare enough to buffer inflation and counterfeiting but yet not rare enough that minting a currency was impractical. Most other elements either did not fulfill these criteria or were radioactive.

But in space that is meaningless. There is enough gold and precious metals in asteroids to make gold coins effectively worthless. Gold becomes more valuable for its conducting ability than its power to represent a unit of demand. What becomes more valuable is whatever a system doesn’t have, whether that’s food or metals that aren’t common in the system for whatever reason. So we’re back to the barter system.

Unless you have a strong central government able to impose its will and say “we say this token is worth so much and we will back this with our financial reputation”. If the central government is stable and not liable to collapse, this makes the currency a stable medium of exchange. Counterfeiting thrones is now a direct act of undermining the government’s reputation.

Thrones are still probably metal in some way because gold is harder to counterfeit than paper. And since civilization as a whole is rolling in gold and other precious metals (particularly ones that are not in high demand like adamantium), why not put that metal to use?

Yep. Basically huge Crone fleet made it to Prospero in the hopes of pillaging the planet. Ahriman and some other sorcerers pulled a slapped-together ritual designed to seal Prospero in a pocket dimension so no one could get the planet, and fucked up. Preserving is a bit of a loose term here (go ask the Legion of the Damned), but Chaos didn't get their grimy hands on anything of note.

It wasn't the only thing that happened but since Prospero was the biggest training grounds for psykers and astropaths outside of Old Earth as well as the cutting edge of psychic research in the Imperium Chaos felt like it could call this one a win.

I was actually going to post this last thread since it seemed like there was no new writing coming in. But since we’re talking about ideas for modern Space Marine chapters…

The Minotaurs are something of a boogeyman among Space Marines. A group that make even battle-hardened Astartes quiver and speak of in hushed tones. The reason for this fear and paranoia are rather simple: The Minotaurs are Space Marines that hunt Space Marines.

The first recorded instance of a Space Marine considering tactics against other Space Marines was the Ultramarine Aeonid Thiel. During the Great Crusade, Thiel was dragged before Guilliman by his fellow Ultramarines for teaching the marines under his command tactics for fighting other Space Marines, which they saw as a sign of treachery. Guilliman asked whether this was true, and upon being told it was, asked Thiel to explain himself. After hearing Thiel’s explanation, Guilliman asked the two Ultramarines who had brought Thiel to him to leave the room, and then congratulated Thiel for his ingenuity. He was willing to entertain possibilities no one else could or wanted to consider, and just because people. The Space Marines were created by the Imperium to be their finest warriors in the reconquest of the stars, and who is to say another, more hostile human empire could not have had a similar idea. Thiel would be rewarded for his ingenuity, though for obvious reasons not at that very moment. Thiel would finally be validated and his actions recognized during the War of the Beast, where the actions of Luther and his Fallen showed the idea that a Space Marine could turn traitor to be a frightening reality.

(cont.)
The Minotaurs were originally founded by a War Hound named Leon Kravidos shortly after the Age of Apostasy as a chapter dedicated to fighting against the Fallen. Kravidos knew that in order to fight other Space Marines his men would have to be at the very peak of their potential. Therefore, he created a downright grueling training regimen by Space Marine standards, designed to make his men prepared for anything. Despite his job, Kravidos was actually well respected among Astartes, and was deeply mourned when he died in battle. For thousands of years after that, the Minotaurs were rather unnotable among Space Marine chapters. Their job of hunting down Fallen space marines was well known, but they were seen as people just doing their job as opposed to someone to be feared. That is, until the latest Chapter Master of the Minotaurs, Asterion Moloc, took control of the chapter in 200.M41, after the death of his predecessor in the Badab War.

In contrast to many in the Imperium who spend much of their time in pursuit of a particular foe, such as Inquisitor Boaz Kryptman and the tyranids, Asterion Moloc does not feel a festering hatred for his enemy. Instead, he seems to take the attitude of a big game hunter hunting the most dangerous game. He seems to take a perverse joy in hounding his targets to the ends of their endurance, before delivering the final blow. He spends hours reviewing all known records and tactics of his quarry, so that he know every possible move his prey can make before they do. He does this even for chapters that have not been assigned his target yet.

(cont.)
For obvious reasons, most space marines are uncomfortable with the Minotaurs, considering them, in the words of one Astartes scout who wished to remain anonymous, to be “team-killing frag-heads”. Indeed, the Minotaurs in recent years have been known to be a bit too eager in their desire to fight Space Marines, sometimes flying off the handle at an innocent chapter at the urging of some particularly radical or puritan Inquisitor. About the only people who feel comfortable around the Minotaurs are the Sisters of Battle, who often cooperate with the Minotaurs in operations involving the Fallen.

This was my idea for a high concept of the Minotaurs while still sticking with the familiar beats of canon, specifically Space Marines who disturbingly excel at killing other Space Marines.

In the Nobledark Imperium, it seems less likely that the High Lords would need their own personal attack dogs, since they aren't as overt, paranoid backstabbers as in canon and they already have so many beatsticks they can pull out (the Sisters come to mind). But Fallen? It makes sense that at least one chapter would be specialized to deal with them.

In the past, it was mentioned that to fight Space Marines under unfavorable odds the Sisters would have to call in Astartes help of their own? Well, in those cases, the Minotaurs are the Space Marines the Sisters call in.

The idea is that instead of being the High Lords attack dog, Moloc creeps everyone out because he acts like a big game hunter hunting the most dangerous game. He gives the impression of being intelligent while giving you the impression that he's figuring out how your head would look over a fireplace.

Hmm, this is an interesting point I hadn't considered for the Angron fluff. I think of chew on this and throw our some ideas in the thread to see what sticks. Especially since I was thinking of having Oscar guilt trip him by mentioning the enslaved people across the galaxy to get him to join the Great Crusade, since if it was up to Angron he would have called it quits to live with his family.

He still very much could. There is slavery, well regulated and with the dignity of manning unreasonably diminished, that Oscar tolerates. Then there is enslavement to Chaos and to xenos who treat humans as food you can stick your dick in.

That level of barbarity is very much like the Nord Afrik and they will be dealt with in the same manner. And for all that Angron may dislike Oscar's reasoning sometimes they do agree more than they disagree.

Who was the previous holder?

bump

Possibly they are a breed of primeval beastmen adopted by chaos and mutated further away from baseline humanity.

It was put forth previous thread that the Horned Rat is a deamon joint project of Nurgle and Tzneetch from back in the old days when it was just them and Malal..

As his patrons have twisted from their purpose and become monstrous so has he but he was imprisoned in/as the Balemoon of the Impossible Planet of the Tyrant "Star". He is a primeval deamon from the olden days when the rules of The Game were different, there will never be another like him created. Thankfully.

It's hinted at that it is still preserved somewhere.

The planet itself is still there and there have been expeditions to it, it's just everything of note that was on the planet has gone. All the cities, the houses, the fields, the monuments, those strange crystals, the trees, the grass, the fish and the people. It's just a lifeless rock now. When the first Imperial people came to investigate there wasn't even any microbes on the planet, just dust and rock and water.

It is said that the place is haunted. It is.

I'm voting for Gregor "all of the Deamons" Eisenhorn.

Actually not quite, Eisenhorn is closer to insanely stupid than stupidly insane. The guy I was thinking of was an Inquisitor in a really bad unfinished story I found on Fanfiction.net a couple years ago when I was really desperate for reading material.

Eisenhorn's decisions made sense at the time and were sensible when taken one at a time. His fall was slow and reasonable.

Oh yes, I was referring more to the disastrous end result-- and the fact that Eisenhorn at his worst *wasn't* the craziest Inquisitor I'd seen.

Is the Great Harlequin that runs the Dark Carnival actually Ceggers somehow and against all the rules in the flesh or is he possessing someone in a Macha/Isha sort of deal?

Also can humans become his adherents or is it a strictly eldar only club?

>Also can humans become his adherents or is it a strictly eldar only club?
Harlequin are still Eldar only, because they're an immortal, semi-sanctified performance troupe and humans don't live long enough to memorize all their scenes and lines.

However, the Dark Carnival encourages all attendees to dress as clowns, make colossal fools of themselves, take all the drugs, and honk when they orgasm. The human attendants of the Dark Carnival are generally pretty well suited to supporting Harlequin tactics, and the harder members like Savlar Chem-Dogs and vacationing Navigators might be able to keep pace with them, but the harlequin are still a distinctly Eldar subculture.

887M41

Tau Fire Caste born to distinctly average parents. Mother and father worked in the T'au PDF equivalent. Name their son Kais, probably the most common name on T'au. Young Kais spends his childhood and early adolescence in the Fire Cast boarding school in the mountain town of Ash’nat Ruush being raised communally as is tradition with Tau.

896M41

Kais is lives up to his unimaginative name and passes with sufficiently above average grades to be placed in the Interstellar Army of the Tau rather than it’s local defence force. Although Kais passed with good grades on the notoriously traditionalist homeworld he was definitely in the pro-Imperium reformist camp, a thing that annoyed his tutors somewhat.

That and his lack of interest in the more philosophical aspects of the Greater Good. Which is not to say that he lacked faith in the cause but that he lacked patience with things without immediate practical application. He saw that his job was to defend the realm, not quote scripture.

897M41

Shas’Saal Kais is sent to “cut his teeth”, to use an Old Earth phrase, in the ongoing war for the hiveworld Agrellan / Mu'gulath Bay against the predations of the Ak'Haireth Resurgence. The world, although officially part of the Imperium proper, had substantial Tau investment and presence and was seen as a vital gateway between the two realms and a model of cooperation. The campaign to remove the fungal infection that was the Ak'Haireth was ultimately successful though costly. Shas’Saal Kais becomes Shas'la T'au Kais.

991M41

The greater deamon Tarkh'ax assaults the up until then nowhere world of Dolumar IV in a successful attempt to kidnap the Ethereal Aun'el Ko'vash. Reasons for doing so were later found to be to try and find a way of possessing Tau of the leadership caste for the most obvious reasons. If such a thing is possible is still undetermined as Ko’vash managed to commit suicide sometime into the proceedings but sadly before a substantial joint Tau – Imperial force made planet fall. By the time the main forces had arrived Tarkh'ax was already eroding reality on the planet from the Governors Palace and Dolumar IV was becoming a deamon world. It was a frantic and desperate mad dash to the Palace to stop the deamon prince at any cost.

Part of this force was Shas'la T'au Kais. Nobody is sure what happened to Kais on Dolumar IV but every body knows what he did. The Imperial Army, the other Tau, even the Space Marines soon found that they couldn’t keep up with Kais. His helm-cam recorded his progress, his body count that would be the envy of a Warhound veteran, the sheer magnitude of the things he cut down from deranged thralls to Fallen Marines to Chaos Spawn and ultimately Tarkh'ax himself almost single-handedly.

Knowing that the Ethereal Council would try to cover up the events as best it could Kais removed and hid the storage crystal from his helmet. In the time it took the remnants of the Tau cadre to return to T’au Kais’ mental state deteriorated due to the things he had seen. He uploaded the contents of his helm-cam to the planetary info-net. When the law enforcement found him he was sitting near catatonic in the data-hub.

Kais spent the next three years unresponsive in the Por’Vre Jeph’dar sanctuary for damaged souls.

>991M41
>Should have been 901M41

904M41

Video surveillance of the Por’Vre Jeph’dar Sanctuary shows an eldar later identified as a known Handmaiden entering the facility and making her way to Kais’ cell. No eyewitnesses confirm this despite the figure having walked past several members of staff.

The next day Inquisitor ██████████████████████████ of the Ordo Malleus arrives at the Sanctuary and commandeers the miraculously recovered Kais.

The large part of Kais’ life spent in the service of the Inquisition is known to only a few with any certainty as his records are highly classified. Higher than most Inquisitorial files. What is known is that the Kroot have first claim on the old Tau’s body should he die uncorrupted, although what he did to earn this honour and what they did to deserve such meat is unknown. It is known that he had considerable experience commanding both Space Marines and human Guardsmen prior to the events on Kronus, though the circumstances are unknown.

989M41

Kais returns to the Tau Empire a very different creature. His skin grey and leathery with age in the places it wasn’t scar tissue, he spoke numerous languages to some basic degree and walked with the confident stride of an experienced commander.

Kais is bumped up the command chain to Shas’O Kais, though the Ethereals refuse to return the “T’au” to his name.

Later 989M41

Shas’O Kais heads the Tau contribution to the re-conquest of the planet Kronus alongside Colonel-Farseer Taldeer and her Cadians.

Kais and Gabriel Angelos, who was heading and independent detachment of Blood Ravens to Kronus for undisclosed reasons, form an odd friendship possibly based on their mutual experiences with the Inquisition and the eternal war against Chaos to say nothing of each others towering reputations.

The Tau contribution contained many Kroot who held Kais in some degree of awe or possibly fear and named him Laar’Nak Shak; The Walking Death. The Kroot were not actually officially part of the Tau army originally but Kais called in a favour and hinted that they might get settlement rights if they leant a hand. It was suspected the Kroot shaper just wanted Kais for his body.

M992

With the successful conclusion of the Kronus campaign Shas’O Kais returns to T’au and accepts a training job at the Ash’nat Ruush Boarding School where it is presumed he will sped his final years trying to impart his wisdom to the next generation of Fire Warriors.

>So, is it any good?

Bump

I enjoyed it

Pretty good.

I going to be a bit spergy about power levels for a moment and say that it needs a better explanation for how he accomplishes the events of Fire Warrior, otherwise it's kind of nonsensical. Like it's established that Tau are physically inferior to humans, and most Space Marines couldn't solo a Lord of Change, so there would need to be some compelling reason for Kais to be able to solo a minor daemonic incursion. Like yeah, I get it, it would be kind of snowflakey if he was some special Tau supersoldier, but it was *also* be snowflakey if he's just a normal Tau and does all that without proper explanation.

shut yor mouf, ya grot

Kais going Full Doomguy is not only in the Vanilla fluff but also an important defining moment of Nobledark Kais that people in universe can hardly believe. They wouldn't find it hard to believe if it was easily explainable.

It isn't in vanilla though, Fire Warrior is non-canon. Even if we go by that, the novelization implies Kais had help/buffs from Khorne so he could foil the Lord of Change's plan, so even in vanilla it isn't like Kais is normal.

My problem is that it clashes with the logic of the universe to an extent that it becomes narratively unsound. Sure, outliers exist: Harken is an outlier for a Catachan, Draigo is an outlier for a Grey Knight, they do cool shit their fellows can't. But Kais' feat of soloing Chaos marines, daemons, and a Lord of Change puts him well above most Mk III S marines in this AU and arguably in the neighborhood of vanilla Primarchs, which is absurd, so not providing some justification makes it seem like an ass pull.

(I did say I was sperging a bit about power levels)

Nice. My only big criticism beyond if reading in a "choppy" manner is that it is too short and contaisn too little. Could serve as the bare bones for someone to flesh out at a later date if it goes on the 1d4chan.

Also I can't say one way or the other whether Kais and CM Angelos would become friends as we haven't said what sort of man the Nobledarkness has made the CM.

It's Tau Doomguy. If it was sensible it wouldn't be Doomguy. Also some threads ago someone pointed out that, aided by the low reality threshold of Dolumar IV at that time, he could have been acting like a lightning rod for the collective Tau faith in the Greater Good and getting mad buffs from it. Essentially for a brief time he was Tau Ephrael Stern.

Do you have a link to who was?

And of the Hunters of Krounus (sp?)? Has there been anything on them?

We did have an explanation for how he soloed a Lord of Change. He duct-taped his malfunctioning pulse rifle to a lot of detpacks and ran the other way. The Lord of Change may have even been partway in through the summoning ritual and didn't have time to pull back into the Warp.

A better way of saying things might be Fire Warrior is Kais' story after decades of propaganda. He still RIPPED AND TEARED like a pro, but its more heroic to imagine him doing it on foot with his sidearm Die Hard style as opposed to fighting smart with everything he can get his hands on. Likewise, it's much more dramatic for Kais to fight a Lord of Change one on one and somehow not get torn to pieces in 30 seconds as opposed to the reality of him just chucking a bomb into its face.

>Ephrael Stern.
On the subject of this has she been adapted to this setting yet?

The Doomguy story/game could be an in universe film funded by the Inquisition to annoy the Ethereals. Presumably as a favour to Kais from an unnamed Inquisitor.

Nobody has talked about her but man she sounds like appropriate in this AU considering the buffs the Imperials have. From what it looks like, she stared into the Warp and the Warp looked back. After that, her insane abilities might be her being able to harness WAAGH! energy and the more people believe in her strength, the stronger she becomes.

Do the Adepta Securitas allow psykers into their ranks?

Sorry, no clue-- I might have found it by searching either "inquisition" or "inquisitor" or filtering by Character-Inquisition. But if you find a fic where the crazy inquisitor has a mute surrogate daughter he named Twerp, that's the one.

Bamp

Not high-level psyker I'm assuming, just for the fact that order also work with a lot of classified information and they don't want a walking time-bomb near them. Even worst is the psyker could be (unintentionally) leaking or sabotaging things, Orders Militant wouldn't have a problem taking in powerful psyker Sisters like Librarians but not Securitas.

Bump?

That Eldar is using some Wraithbone A E S T H E T I C.