Nobledark 40k 32: Survivor Civilization edition

>Black Crusades
Are the same as canon, massive attacks by Chaos into the Imperium with the backing of all four Chaos gods.

>Isha
Eldar goddess of life/fertility, captured by Nurgle during the Fall of the Eldar and kept around as a test subject. In this AU, she was rescued by a strike team led by Oscar and Eldrad in an act that confirmed the alliance between man and eldar. This was one of the goals of the raid, the other being to rescue a goddess.

If you only read the 1d4chan main page you didn't actually find anything, the drafts page and notes page also on 1d4chan explains all of this.

Short answer, Malys leads the Crone Eldar, Fallen, and Lost and Damned on Black Crusades, which are just what the Imperium calls them. They are just like Abaddon's black crusades, massive rare coalitions of Chaos forces going marching from the Eye of Terror with a mission to fuck shit up, except they're usually more successful because they don't all gun for earth.

The raid on Nurgle's realm was proposed by Eldrad, and was the first big joint venture that united the Eldar and Men. It's the idea that started the whole allied Imperium setting, and the raid was the Eldar jumping on the Great Crusade train when they saw it picking up steam.

A major part of what enabled it was joint Chaos plans proposed by Tzeentch to benefit it, Slaanesh, and Khorne at Nurgle's expense. It was meant to be a no lose scenario where Tzeentch won no matter what and the greatest mortal heroes that were just getting on their feet after the Age of Strife were baited with false hope to their ultimate doom, so he sent his agent with info that let Eldrad get the raid into Nurgle's garden. None of the gods expected things would become a fourway clusterfuck even when three of them tried to cooperate, but it did, and even then the mortal heroes should have been fucked, but they managed to pull through, and shit has been going sideways for Chaos for the following 10000 years. Still, Tzeentch made it so those ten millennia would be varied instead of stagnant, so called it a win. There was a long greentext story with all this a few threads back.

>Black Crusades
So, are there Chaos Space Marines in these Black Crusades? Where did they come from? Why are there so many Lost & Damned? And why are the Black Crusades more successful, given that the Imperium in this universe is also more competent and thoughtful?

>Tzeentch never expected things
So much for a reasonable and light rewrites!

>a few threads back
I know that these alternate Heresies so far have done of two things. Either they've gone the Hektor Heresy route of alienating people by insisting on trying to get details up on the wiki so that newfags actually have a point of reference, or the Imperium Asunder route of "you must have read this many threads to understand what we're doing" so they curl up into circlejerks. But you could at least try a compromise, like preserving the key greentext on the wiki.

The Raid on Nurgle’s Mansion and its consequences is one of the big turning points in this AU, besides the xenophobia and assholishness not being at MAXIMUM levels.

> The scene is M30-ish? Mid-to-lateway through the Great Crusade. At this time Eldrad was nominally the leader of the Eldar people because he was the one yelling loudest during the Fall (and helped get a lot of people to safety). However, the Eldar are starting to go their separate ways now that the crisis is over, and they won’t listen to Eldrad anymore.
> Eldrad looks into the future. Sees the Eldar fragmenting into feuding Craftworlds that barely talk to each other and get picked off one by one, then picking fights with the rising power of humanity which just left both races crawling in the mud.
> This was unacceptable. Eldrad refused to see his people degenerate and die. Only people Eldar would listen to would be their gods, of whom only one was alive and relatively sane. The seers said rescuing Isha would be impossible. Eldrad never liked that word. Eldrad, being Eldrad, decides to kill two birds with one stone. So he goes looking for the leader of humanity.
> Steward, at this time, was encountering this weird pattern where the inhabitants of a world would occasionally be worshipping a pantheon of four gods and would inevitably refuse to get along peacefully with the Imperium and have to be destroyed.
> Knows it has something to do with the Warp, but doesn’t know exactly what. He knows the Warp is full of horrible phenomena, but it’s not like they’re sapient, intelligent, and quasi-organized, right?
> Then Horus and Sanguinius come upon the Interex who basically say “oh hell yes it is”.
> Horus and Sanguinius tell Steward, who comes to hear this personally. Shocked at the idea. Needs confirmation. So he goes to talk to the Eldar (which the Imperium had frigid, but existing diplomatic channels with).
> Just as planned.jpeg

> Eldrad says literally everything the Interex are saying is true. He spells out what Chaos is to the Steward and gives him details. Then he says “I know a way to blunt their power, want in?”
> Steward not sure. Eldrad tempts him by saying he will give them access to everything he knows to resist Chaos and create Chaos-resistant warriors (Grey Knights). Webway access may have been discussed here too.
> Eldrad needs way into Nurgle’s mansion, scours through all the old tomes
> At this time Tzeentch and his biggest follower, the Indigo Crow, thinks things are getting pretty stagnant in the Warp and wants to free Isha from Nurgle (but still keep her in Chaos hands) to use as a bargaining chip to manipulate the other three.
> Eldrad might have found a way eventually, but this seer comes along and shows Eldrad this nearly-forgotten back door that puts them within spitting distance of Nurgle’s Garden.
> Eldrad smells something fishy, but he’s desperate. He uses it.
> Imperium and Eldar use most powerful psykers to open a derelict webway gate on a desolate moon to enter Nurgle’s garden and rescue Isha from his mansion
> It sounds more impressive than it was. They used a backdoor that bypasses a lot of the daemon forces, and the plan was to basically use Steward as a walking Gellar Field.
> Still crazy difficult though. Assaulted by daemons that powered through the field constantly and many died despite both sides sending their best warriors (some of the primarchs and the Phoenix Lords to be). It’s just they weren’t insta-gibbed.
> Steward reaches Isha and Chaos shits itself. Tzeentch forces were trying to bog down reinforcements, now it’s a complete free for all between the four gods and the mortals.

> Steward gets Isha through the Webway portal
> Craftworlders (and by proxy the Exodites) and Imperium earn eternal hatred of the Chaos Gods
> Eldrad realizes he was set up and sets out to give Indigo Crow a Catachan salute
> Chaos goes from being disorganized to semi-organized like in the canon HH series with the purpose of fucking the upstart mortals over.

The raid ended up being one of those events that seemed unlikely to ever happen, but the fact that it did had massive consequences for history (like Alexander the Great steamrolling west Asia, or the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand).

>Threads and references
We try to keep the wiki updated as best we can, but all of our editors seem to have vanished into the Warp. Also we try to answer anyone's question when they ask.

There's also a colossal Notes page that has a good chunk of what is going on but doesn't have a formal codex entry yet.

>Tzeentch
Think of every trickster myth where the clever and savvy trickster tries to go for something big, but burn themselves in their hubris because they tried something too ambitious to handle.

>Black Crusades
CSM known as Fallen in this timeline. Majority come from Dark Angels, who in this timeline were the largest legion and had 60-75% go traitor because Lion delegated everything to his beloved (but paranoid, and resentful, and charismatic) brother Luther. So it's like two legions went rogue.

CSMs are rarer in general though. Champions of Chaos are the Crone World Eldar, the ones who survived Slaanesh's birth. Black Crusades are an issue because in addition to spiky super soldiers and daemons now you have immoral Wild Hunt-style fuckers after you. They're more successful in a sense in that Malys is just out to burn as much of the Imperium as she can (more like Joker to canon!Abbadon's Bane) and anything extra she can net (like wrecking Prospero, or destroying Panacea, or stealing Eldar archaeotech) are bonuses.

It's not so much "light" as "light-hearted". A 7.5 instead of a 10 on the grimdark scale, with the grim concentrated in particularly large blotches like the DAs, Badab, Altansar, etc. Anything more hopeful than canon, Hektor Heresy, or Asunder is light-hearted by default, even if its "you will probably be eaten by tyranids" instead of "you will be eaten by tyranids".

>So, are there Chaos Space Marines
Yes.
>Where did they come from
Most of them fell during the War of the Beast, which had added Chaos dickery this time around.
>Why are the Black Crusades more successful
Slaanesh didn't eat *all* of the Eldar this time around, so now there are a few trillion Chaos Eldar lying around. They're like the Dark Eldar, except more so.
>Like preserve the key greentext on the wiki
We do. Everything tends to get dumped in the 'drafts' and 'notes' pages, though.

Since Urisarach is technically an Interex world, the Imperium might say "Alright, you want to play zookeeper with the giant spiders, you go be stupid. But make no mistake, if this becomes an issue we will be getting involved directly".

They have a lot of weird organic technology. "Trees" which they used for weather control and to block radio communications. Either some kind of caste system or genetic engineering that produced flying Megarachnids that could secrete cement. In Horus Rising the Megarachnids were impaling Space Marine corpses on the tree towers to feed the flying ones.

Mostly used natural weapons (though that could be because the Interex took their guns and materials needed to make them). Eyeless, communicated through clicking noises (echolocation?)

And we know they're not tyranids, because they have eight legs instead of six.

I'd repost the Indigo Crow/Garden Raid greentext but don't know where it is in the archive, the 1d4chan page only has links up to thread 26

Go to the archive, the last Nobledark thread should be just a few from the top. Click the Nobledark tag and scroll down on that page, all the Nobledark Imperium threads are there.

I like the idea that they could be "garden variety" local pseudo tyranids, like how we've referred to Tyranids themselves as "mere" intergalactic predator superorganisms, stalking in the new environment they've migrated to. Megarachnids and various other horrible hive/synapse-based sapient bio-hate-machines that are native to the galaxy are the funnel spiders, hornets, and fire ants to the Tyranids' wave of locust, so reduced in scale they don't read as the same sort of threat, but ultimately similar in nature. Really the Tyranids just seem to be a large ecosystem of psychic bugs adapted to space travel and to control by a warp-mind, the warp gods of the megarachnids and other buggy monsters of the milky way are just paltry in comparison, and dont matter. Part of that is because the psychic bugs of the galaxy are eclipsed by higher orders of psychic life, and corresponding gods. Psychic reptiles and mammals and reptile and mammal gods, and psychic fungus-men too and fungus-man gods.

>the Eldar (which the Imperium had frigid, but existing diplomatic channels with).
This is another turning point. The Eldar Empire enslaved countless human worlds during the Dark Age of Technology. They were even mucking around in the Solar System. Why is the nascent Imperium just frosty with them rather than reasonably pissed off? At the very least, the Eldar owe substantial reparations - probably more than the Craftworlds can afford - to humanity to show their good will.

> At this time Tzeentch and his biggest follower, the Indigo Crow, thinks things are getting pretty stagnant in the Warp and wants to free Isha from Nurgle (but still keep her in Chaos hands) to use as a bargaining chip to manipulate the other three.
Another turning point. In the OU, the period of the Great Crusade is a time when the Primordial Truth is deeply threatened by the rise of humanity. Why isn't this the case in the AU? The Steward seems to be every bit as capable when it comes to ruining the machinations of Chaos. Is Chaos just Dumb in this timeline?

>Think of every trickster myth where the clever and savvy trickster tries to go for something big, but burn themselves in their hubris because they tried something too ambitious to handle.
This sounds a lot like "Chaos is Stupid".

In order: first, Oscar doesn't have the same history with the Eldar that the canon Emperor had. He wasn't around during the Dark Age of Technology, he was only unsealed from his tube at the very end of the Age of Strife, he just didn't see all of the atrocities the Eldar Empire committed. Besides which, the Craftworlds themselves committed no or very few atrocities, responsibility lies with the Eldar Empire, which is now gone and was succeeded by the Dark Eldar and Chaos Eldar. Good luck demanding reparations from them; maybe they'll laugh themselves to death.

Second; again, I think this is mainly because of Oscar's relative lack of history compared to the God-Emperor. Canon Emps had been opposing Chaos from the shadows for thousands of years before he founded the Imperium; he was known to the Gods. Oscar was a "literally who" to them up until he managed to succeed in the Raid; it was only after that that the Chaos Gods started taking Oscar seriously as an adversary.

Third; got us there. I will say I don't think it's out of character for Chaos to be stupid. They must all remain true to their own natures, even when that's self-destructive.

>Eldar Empire enslaved countless human worlds during the Dark Age of Technology
There are direct descendants of the Eldar Empire that still call themselves that, live in the Eye of Terror, and are as bad if not worse than they were before the fall. The Craftworlders are much more repentant and less aloof because the self-styled "legitimate Eldar Empire" put them on the ok-to-rape list for leaving the murder orgy and thinking the fall wasn't the best thing ever. There were Dark Eldar fucking around on earth during the unification, and this distinction was made clear to Oscar, and even the Dark Eldar think the Crone Eldar are fucked up.

>In the OU, the period of the Great Crusade is a time when the Primordial Truth is deeply threatened by the rise of humanity. Why isn't this the case in the AU?
The Raid happens shortly after the unification of Sol, in the first sphere of major reclamation, and is as much a punch in the fucking teeth as the OU creation of the primarchs was an implied threat. In the AU the primarchs are all more or less normally conceived commanders and statesmen, and so they never really caught the gods' attention.

Also, Slaanesh is obsessed with playing with its toys (the remains of the Eldar Empire) in the Eye of Terror and building its perfect kingdom of pleasure, Khorne is supremely arrogant and had declared himself "BLOOD KING OF THE GALAXY" after the War in Heaven, and was seeking a worthy foe to curbstomp, Nurgle was settling in for the long haul with his Waifu (Isha) because he predicted the galaxy falling into a long slow death spiral like the OU, and Tzeentch was looking for an angle to prevent that same long, predictable stagnation-unto-death and more focused on playing the Great Game than the consequences of its plotting.

>Dark Eldar and Chaos Eldar. Good luck demanding reparations from them; maybe they'll laugh themselves to death.
>reparations
>paid in rape-bucks
>exchangeable for one unmentionable violation per banknote
>Vect says he and Malys both owe Oscar several trillion

The reason relations weren't worse is that no one, including most of the eldar, even remembers what happened during the Dark Age of Technology. Oscar never lived through the worst of the Age of Strife, so he never got his xenophobia on. Pre-raid, the Imperium actually regarded the eldar better than a lot of other xenos species because they were willing to talk instead of just shooting on sight and were pretty much willing to leave you alone as long as you did the same. That puts them leagues beyond the likes of the Laer or the Nephilim.

The issue of records was actually touched on with the squats. The space dorfs, who do keep pretty records of the DaoT, remember when the eldar decided to ignore their mutual protection pact to get high when the squats were drowning in orks and are pretty pissed off about it. The squats demand an apology and some form of reparations. The Craftworlders claim they're all dindu nothins who represent the good parts of the Eldar empire (and are too proud to apologize). The squats ain't buying it.

Relations during the DaoT weren't all one-sided either, Eldrad tooled around the Great and Bountiful Human Empire when he was the eldar equivalent of a teenager. The eldar weren't seen by the other races so much the boogeyman of the galaxy as that advanced race that despite having the technology to conquer the galaxy preferred to look inward and mostly stay isolated in their own little empire. There were plenty of wars, which got worse the closer you get to the Age of Strife, but they tended to remain small because the Eldar wanted to raid, not get shot and humanity and the other races didn't have the logistics to conquer the Old Empire.

Oscar doesn't have the raw power canon Emperor does (at least not in M30), and he was making a lot of this up on the fly instead of having some master plan. The Raid is the moment where Oscar and the rest went from "interesting relics and toys" to "upstarts to be destroyed for the Primordial Truth"

I always love it when these AUs pop up. I'm gonna get to reading and hopefully I can contribute.

Or they could actually have been 'Nids a at some point in the past, got stranded, went feral and are now incompatible with the rest of the Hive.

Although originating from the same common ancestor in the Eldar Empire, each of its three offshoots have developed in wildly different ways. This applies as well to the philosophy and technology of their armored vehicles.

The Craftworld Eldar military forces are descended from, essentially, civic militia. Thus, their war machines were optimized for ease of construction, ease of maintenance, and ease of piloting; war machines a part-time non-professional volunteer force could use and maintain. The aftermath of the Fall, when the survivors were thrown back onto highly limited resources and the whole population had to be mobilized to survive, only reinforced this paradigm. 10,000 years of Imperium have loosened it; the number of super-heavy vehicles in the Craftworld arsenal has increased both in absolute number and proportion as more resources become available. Likewise, more specialist designs for specific battlefield roles have become commonplace as the need for every tank to potentially fill every role lessens. Still the typical Craftworld grav-tank remains a stripped-down (in terms of mechanical complexity, not necessarily weight) generalist.

Dark Eldar vehicles have very little in common with either their contemporaries or the Elder Empire under the hood. Their abandonment of the psychic forced them to also abandon most of the typical Eldar technologies- wraithbone in particular. They had to recreate their vehicle technology from scratch. This is not actually the cause of their notorious fragility; that is a deliberate philosophical choice. Anyone slow and stupid enough to get hit at all deserves to die, or so the thinking goes. Agility, speed, firepower, more or less in that order; everything else can go hang. An excellent setup for a hit-and-run raider.

The forces of the Chaos Eldar, in contrast to the second-line defensive forces of the Craftworld Eldar and the pirate raiders of the Dark Eldar, are descended from the main military clades of the Elder Empire. They are meant to take and hold territory. They are heavy; often slower than Craftworld vehicles but much more durable. A great many walkers and hybrid grav/leg vehicles, faster and less affected by terrain than a pure leg vehicle while carrying more armor than most pure grav vehicles can manage. More insectile that the Craftworlders' preferred anthroform designs. More resources available for construction means more exotic weaponry, more energy shielding, more bizarre subsystems like regeneration, cloaking devices, teleportation. And that's before 10,000 years of Chaos exposure is factored in. Most armor fielded by the Chaos Eldar is a daemon engine of some description; ghastbone is an excellent host medium. The original classes of vehicle fielded by the Elder Empire have become something like taxons of animal life, branching into a hundred different descendant species. Each one uniquely terrible.

Thoughts?

To be fair, the AU did start as a much lighter rewrite, since the scope of things changed was much smaller. Obviously over the course of 32 threads lots of ideas have been added, but the basic principle remains: we want things to be at least recognizable to someone familiar with 40k instead of being completely new universes with Space Marines and Chaos ported in. To that end, we try to keep the OC steel donuts to a minimum; we still have the same aliens, same legions and Primarchs (though reinterpreted to fit the AU), and anything from canon that is not explicitly discussed or contradictory can be assumed to exist/have happened. The main exception would be the Chaos Eldar, since we needed more villains because relatively few SMs fell due to no Heresy. So not a "light" rewrite in absolute terms, but relatively light compared to some of the other AUs this board has produced.

And we are aware of the criticism that this AU is a bit Imperium centric and we've tried to address it by making other factions the focus of individual threads, but at the end of the day how much a faction gets fleshed out is based on what fluff gets written and right now most of it has been for the Imperium. We're pretty open to new contributors so we encourage people to write things up if they can make an improvement.

Always good to have new faces. The wiki is a mess right now but most of the things we've discussed have been posted there, so if you have the patience to sift through it you should be able to pick up a majority of the content.

It's a good summary of the tank styles of the 3 big Spess Elf militaries and meshes with the already fluff. needs to go in the Chaos Forces section.

It's mentioned, I think, in the Vanilla that they do have Ice-Hives but beyond that nothing else beyond small interstellar empire. Presumably in Vanilla it was heavily defended given that Dorn was head of it's armed forces if not outright leader and Dorn just loves building walls.

I can't remember if in Vanilla the Phalanx was of Inwit make but in this AU it is definitely not. But Phalanx was also not set out among the stars like the other 4 of the 5 Big Bastards but remained in Sol as a faithful guard dog.

When Dorn discovers Inwit it will therefore be in a lesser ship. I'm going to suggest Hammer of Terra due to the fact that it's an actual Battle Barge and it's the sort of name Dorn would give to his flag ship being the blunt old soldier that he was. Presumably in this AU it gets destroyed by Big Mek orks in the opening months of the War of The Beast rather than Iron Warriors.

We know it was a Survivor Civ level nation and if in Vanilla it had a primarch land and build the Gothic Death Star there then it would have been a substantial one. It would have been less than 500 worlds as Ultramar had 500 worlds and is regarded as the greatest of the Survivor Civs (Hubworlders had more worlds but they were not as good).

So it would have had a few hundred maybe? If it has even one hive world as it's capital then that means it woill have needed worlds that were agri-worlds or at least produced substantially more food than they were using. This means a level of specialization only available to Civs that not only have warp travel but reliable and economical warp travel.

They would not have had Navigators, Sol had a monopoly on them it seems. They would have been using Tau style shitty slow warp hops to get anywhere and presumably no FTL communication. This would limited the size of the Inwit Empire.

The Demiurg were the first non eldar/non-human xenos to join the Imperium in thanks for charging into an Armageddon War like Poland at Vienna.

We haven't really touched on them beyond that plus nomad traders.

It could be that their dislike of the eldar in general and Chaos Eldar in particular is born from their homeworld now being somewhere inside the Eye of Terror now.

Add to this that demiourgos is an old Greek word for craftsman. Also the Demiurge in Gnostic beliefs is a divine creator. Bentu'sin is the Tau name for the Demiurg and means 'wise-gifted ones'. Bentusi were a race in the Homeworld series, they were nomadic traders that were grafted into their ships. Both Homeworld and the first Dawn of War game were made by Relic Entertainment.

Add all that together and you have a race of nomadic supreme craftsmen that make excellent and wonderful things. They are low in numbers and it's possible that there is as many as only 1 of them per ship that would possibly put their overall population in the thousnads. They are grafted into their ships in body, mind and soul and operate their toys via their minds and interact with other people via robotic avatars.

Their god is/was a divine creator type being that they all try to imitate. I'm not saying it was Vaul but it was Vaul.

It is very possible that they were an ancient off-shoot of the eldar race from millions of years back where the old pre-uplift genes resurfaced and they sprang up differently. Less psychic for one thing but more emotionally stable. Nobody gets to see them in their ships so it's hard to say for sure.

Their ships are mostly super-bulk cargo haulers with small but highest grade workshops built in and enough fire power to defend them. As their ships are extensions of their own bodies and minds they become highly customized and no two are much alike.

Prince Yriel has a Demiurg First Mate on the Hoec's Grace but nobody can tell for sure if it is one or if it is just something that they made.

The demiurg are organized into Brotherhoods, with one Bastion-class vessel often home to one Brotherhood. That implies a lot more than just one Demiurg per ship.

With Ultramar set up as it's own little personal Rome, now complete with the rebuilding of a new Legion in all but name, we could reintroduce this controversial fucker.

The whole "half-elder" thing is bullshit. He is full blooded elder, he's just a massive Ultraboo.

He is at least a very competent farseer even if he does demand that his title be Court Soothsayer because ultraboo. He is officially an independent advisor to Titus and Calgar before him.

It was partly his predictions and advice that got Acting CM Titus to start with the whole Legio Primaris project.

No that isn't Power Armour he's wearing, it's Carapace made to imitate Power Armour. He wears it sometimes for official photos and on parade days because he thinks it looks cool and he wants people to think he is in some way actually part of the chapter. Normally he wears a toga because ultraboo despite them going out of fashion a long time ago, coming back into fashion briefly 50 years ago and then quickly dying out again.

A brotherhood of Demiurg could be one Demiurg bound to their ship and a small number of apprentices/youngsters who aren't old enough to have their own ship-body yet.

The First Mate on Hoec's Grace could have been one that ran away due to the freakish aversion to being physically grafted into a living mountain of machinery.

>their homeworld now being somewhere inside the Eye of Terror now.
only thing that contradicts previous stuff, their homeworld is well outside of the Eye of Terror and they were sequestered on it until Perturabo accidentally gave them a lift during the great crusade. Their god, Quah, who had been with them since the Old Ones uplifted them, was killed in the fall of the Eldar Empire, and his corpse lies on that world as a massive, shared hallucination.

You're thinking of the Hrud. Different species.

A bit on the Titus part:

Maybe the entire Space Marine and Hiveworld Graia cluster fuck went a bit differently.

Titus wasnt a Captain yet. He was one of the two candidates chosen for that position (the other being Leanndros, or someone else) and Chapter Master Calgar went along as a... Supervisor, to see whom would pass the test. (Well, orginally he was to go to Graia himself, but he took the chance.)

They quickly went through most of the shit in game, with Calgar slightly sitting back as Titus and Leanndros do their waving contest. Doesn't get too hyped, as to leave the two a few to kill. Titus would be Titus, doing stunts that would get him some serious berations from Calgar and Leanndros, but he brought results. Leanndros be the fuck he was, and always complain about Titus' 'recklessness'. Titus got a bit too close to Mira for the old man's comfort.

Things went well, they steam-rolled everything just as in game (Again, CALGAR!!!) and went to rescue the Lord Inq Drogan. It was a trap, even more than in game. Nemeroth's plan was to make a Demon World, and now the Ultramarine's Chapter Master is here? Fuck (yes!) Calgar got Sidonis'ed. But thanks to his 3+ save he managed to only wound up into a coma. Chose Titus as his successor. Leanndros got butthurt, saying that Titus' fault what got Calgar coma'ed, and now got promoted?! Surely, Chaos was at play - maybe the possessed blade did something to Chapter Master? How could he do this otherwise?

Then Titus went and killed Nemeroth, etc etc. Went back to Ultramar with Calgar's half-dead body in tow. After they went home, rumors spread. A schism began within the Ultramarines, with Titus on one end and Leanndros on the other.

Tl;dr Titus got promoted by a Sidonus'ed Calgar. Leanndros got butthurt.

Is good.

oh, I guess so

The Mechanicus must have a gigantic collective girlboner for them.

Yes, girlboner. They're fully aware they wouldn't be the man in that relationship.

To them yes, but the girlboner would also be shameful boner.

In many ways the Demiurg are all that they dream to be. Free and unbound each a law unto themselves but still acting decently, communion and connection to the Machine as deep and intertwined as anything the Mechnaicus could achieve in this age, freed from the limitations of the flesh all but totally but still retaining a natural intellect and not falling to the sin of the Silica Animus and add to that craftsmen almost without peer.

But they are godless and they are heathens. They had a god, some primitive idol of a blacksmiths forge grown with age to gross proportion, but now he is dead and they are alone. There are some similarities with the Vaul deity of the pagan eldar, maybe there is a connection of cultural contamination but what of it? That's just exchanging one type of weakness for another. The Mechanicus have a god, the great and everlasting Omnissiah and they feel his love and his strength within him always Laughing_Mag'ladroth.holo.

The hate that they look up to the Demiurg and they hate that the Demiurg are what they want to be but have forsaken everything that they are.

As for the Demiurg, they hold no ill will to Mars or it's priests or it's reject priests. Mostly because they don't have to interact with them very much.

It would be pretty funny for humans in general to be in awe of the famous space elf goddess of battle...But among the rest of the eldar, there is a minor joke about her Napoleon complex. Which few would repeat to her face, she is still a highly placed member of the Imperial military. But her brother Ronahn loooooves pushing her buttons.

I can already hear the exaggerated Italian "comedy" accent.

I had actually been thinking about this, but coming from the other direction with Tigurius. Tigurius isn’t a half-eldar by any means. Instead, he is what you get when you raise a psyker human in an Eldar society.

Approximately 300.M41, an eldar enclave world on the eastern fringe was completely overrun by orks. This world was an outpost of Craftworld Iyanden, who headed up the Imperial counter-attack to reclaim the world. Among those part of the force was one young eldar woman, who was particularly horrified by the situation as all of her living family were living on that enclave world.

Once the orks were dealt with, the focus of the group changed from reclaiming the planet to finding survivors and burying the dead. The eldar woman in particular was frantic as she looked for survivors, searching through the ashes for any sign of her family. Eventually, she noticed a strong psychic signature coming from beneath a fallen wall. Lifting the wall, the woman hoped to find a member of her missing family. But what she found disappointed her.

It was a human baby, one who had been protected from the carnage that had befallen his world by being hidden by a large slab of rubble. The baby's psychic signature was powerful enough that she had mistaken him for an eldar infant, but sadly he was not a member of her missing family. The eldar continued to search, but she was unable to find any trace of either her family or the baby's, living or dead. Both of them were alone in the universe, with no one else to depend on, so she did the only thing she could. She the baby with her back to Iyanden and adopted him as her son.

Tigurius was brought up like an eldar child, learning about discipline and self-control from an early age. Indeed, his lessons were probably stricter than most eldar children, in order to keep the notoriously sloppy self-control of a human psyker from affecting anything on the Craftworld. However, it soon became clear that Tigurius could not remain on Craftworld Iyanden. He was already beginning to reach maturity, whereas his friends would remain “children” for years more. He could not function on the Path system, as he had neither the longevity nor the discipline to see a Path to its conclusion. Tigurius could not stay with the Eldar, he had to go back to his own people. And so, a bereaved mother drew her adoptive son close one last time before sending him out into the galaxy.

Tigurius eventually gravitated to the Space Marines, whose sense of discipline he saw as the closest thing he could get to the Paths of his old home. The Ultramarines were the one of the nearest chapters, and Tigurius saw their blue and gold color scheme (the same as his old home of Iyanden) as a sign that he was meant to be there.

Although Tigurius was a powerful psyker, what really made him stand out from other Librarians was his self-control. Growing up in a society where one learned to control their emotions as soon as they could speak, Tigurius had learned a degree of finesse that would take other Librarians decades to master. Whereas among the eldar he was sloppy, among Space Marines he was a prodigy. This discipline is what allowed Tigurius to be one of the few beings to make psychic contact with the tyranid Hive Mind and live to tell the tale. He didn't manage to hurt the Hive Mind, but he managed to look upon its visage without going insane and get the *I HUNGER* message (one of several people to do so). Tigurius may be regarded by his fellow Ultramarines as introverted and emotionally closed off, but damn if he isn’t one of the best psykers they’ve ever had.

Tigurius being raised among the eldar is also supposed to be an explanation as to how the Ultramarines got a psyker that is so damn powerful, as well as a nod towards a certain retconned Ultramarine. It’s been mentioned previously that one of the reasons the eldar are such good psykers is not just raw power but because they’ve had thousands of years to practice (which is also why seers also tend to be older individuals). The only way to get to a comparable level in humans is to put them through training from hell, which is what the Grey Knights do. Tigurius spent his entire childhood in an environment tailored to teach control and refinement over psychic powers, not to mention being strong enough to be mistaken for an eldar child. He had a lot of potential, but it took seven hundred years of experience before he got good, and even then a Grey Knight or farseer would probably flatten him. Also he has trouble getting people, being used to insular and stoic eldar culture.

In terms of why the eldar woman adopted the human child, note that her family had just been wiped out, and having a child to take care of kept her from dwelling on it. Tigurius was as much a coping mechanism as a regular adoption. For the woman, it was either raise the child or go into one of those self-destructive grief spirals the Eldar are at risk for. Also note the whole idea of Tigurius having to “go back to live with his own people”. While a noble sentiment, it is still a little derogatory, and shows how in some ways the eldar have trouble “getting” the other races.

Calgar got put in a coma by the Swarmlord. Could be that it was the second company who got sent to fix the Graia fiasco. Titus wasn't a captain yet, and neither was Cato Sicarius. Titus was A veteran member, but Leandros was senior to him, and didn't like his manner of freestyling rather than going by the book.

Captain, however, saw that Titus was flexible and got results. Captain got himself killed trying to fight Nemeroth, and named Titus his successor over Leandros based on merit.

Leandros got butthurt, thinking the possessed blade must have done something to the Chapter Master (Titus' warp resistance didn't help). So when they got back to Macragge Leandros started complaining about it.

This meant that when Titus started doing things that made the other captains raise their eyebrows, Titus had a ready made hateclub who was already suspicious of him and all too willing to fan the flames and spread rumors.

Titus delendo est.

This a far superior explanation.

Call me soppy but I hope he Captain Carrot style writes home often about his adventures among the humans.

Bonus points if he marries a Fenrisian.

There was a comment in an interview with some person at GW about what the demiurg look like. They said they are quasi-reptilian looking, with stone-like skin and crystalline growths instead of hair. A lot of fanlore has them as silicon based. So it might be that adding cybernetics to them is a lot easier than for squishy carbonites that have to have some kind of interface.

The difference in opinion between some Demiurg might be that while some see no problems with cybernetics, they see cybering yourself up so much you can't detach from the ship as overkill.

If it wasn't mentioned in any of the actual published lore then it's not in the lore.

Do we want it in the Nobledarkness as silicon lizards or as cyber space dorfs?

I'd say silicon lizards, to limit the overlap with the Squats.

Did they give any indication as to how big the stone lizards were?

Also it is probable then that Prince Yriel's first mate is something that the Demiurg made rather than a demiurg itself.

Perhaps it's a Demiurg heavily modified to interface with an Eldar ship instead of their normal cybernetics?

wraithbone cybernetics ahoy

The Imperium has something of a contradictory relationship with its Hives.
On the one hand, the Hive is the ultimate symbol of civilization. Indeed, the word civilization itself comes from an ancient word for 'city', and hives are the ultimate cities. The ultimate expression of man's triumph over nature. Defended like nearly nothing else, cosseted behind meter-thick adamantium walls, void shields fit for a battleship, anti-orbital weapon silos also fit for a battleship, PDF forces numbering in the tens of millions. Often nearly autarkic, immense farm-terraces, fusion reactors good for thousands of years, mines stretching out like roots clear down to the mantle. The Imperium in microcosm, enduring and ferociously spiky.

At the same time, they are also among the most ungovernable place in the Imperium. The actual architecture of a hive stops bearing any resemblance to the blueprints within decades. The population escapes any census. A hive is larger than nations; many of them are, in fact, divided into multiple independent states. Even a well-ordered and centralized hive may have dozens of microstates hidden away in the wainscoting. Many poorly-educated people in the depths of the hives never realize that there is anything more to the universe than one giant, endless hive.

Many, many, many people have remarked on this apparent dichotomy, that the greatest symbols of its might are often also where its control is weakest. Sometimes the Emperor has commented on this, and declared that there is no dichotomy. The Imperium does not depend on centralized control. It is the collective dream of its citizens, of collective security, of collective prosperity, of collective defiance of a universe that wishes them dead. The hives do not need censuses and blueprints to be part of the Imperium. They pay their tithes and send their children to die on distant battlefields without such things.

Because the Imperium does not demand that people kneel. It demands that they stand.

Would they even work on a non-eldar?

TBF the Imperium is at best a federation and more likely a confederation (other mebers being Mars, Atsartes homeworlds and lands/planets controlled by the ministorum)

This time around there is no ministorum and the Space Marines are a subdivision of the Imperial Army.

maybe this would sum it up better:

>Graia got WAAARHHHG'ed. Drogan called for the Ultramarines, then murdered/soul-raped by Nemeroth.
>Ultramarine Second Company deployed, Cpt. Sidonus deployed along with Veteran Titus and Leandros to field-test these two to find his (future) replacement.
>Titus was flexible, got results. Cpt. Sidonus got Nemeroth'ed, named Titus his successor over Leandros based on merit.
>Leandros got butthurt, thinking the possessed blade must have done something to the Chapter Master (Titus' warp resistance didn't help). So when they got back to Macragge Leandros started complaining about it.

>Titus did stunts that made other Cpt raises eyebrow/ dislike. Not helping is Leandros.

>Hivefleet Behemoth happened. Calgar got put in a coma, but also named Titus his successor over the whiny (but admittedly very badass) Cato Sicarius.
>Okay, once is a coincident; but TWICE? FHUCKING CHAOS PRICK!!! - Cato Sicarius and Leandros. Ultra-butthurt.

>Succession crisis between Cpt. of 1st Company Cato Sicarius and Cpt. of 2nd Company Titus. Titus had a ready made hateclub who was already suspicious of him and all too willing to fan the flames and spread rumors.
>Even after being tested for signs of corruption by Inq Thrax, Chapter Librarian Tigurius and the Emperor himself, the rumours and controversies about Titus refuses to subsides.

>>Wut now?
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Maybe Anthony versus Octavian?

Succession crisis would have to end with Titus as the Acting Chapter Master to keep the authority to make the Legio Primaris but with enough uncertainty that it is contested.

Given that not all of the Starchild Prophesies have a good outcome it's not impossible that some of those notes might be in danger of being cashed in.

>Because the Imperium does not demand that people kneel. It demands that they stand.

This. This is the concept we should be basing on.

I thought it was that the succession crisis was just starting up, and that Titus' decision to make the Legio Primaris is what has basically won him a new round of critics. Its an open question as to whether things can be settled peacefully (which is at least on the table, since the Ultras aren't as power-hungry as most politicians are), or whether the Ultras will have an outright fight right when War in Heaven 2 hits and the tyranids come back for another go. It would be another 999.M41 thing.

Just a bit to turn the crisis up another notch and incorporate the SM storyline into more fitting with this AU: good men are rare and few in between, but good things would come to them, eventually.

I will admit, I got that from some of the Angron writefaggotry; specifically, his first meeting with the Emperor.

If you go by TvTropes' definition, it started out as "The Federation" until as somebody in the past thread said it became the "The Hegemony". Where The Imperium will save the galaxy from Chaos and Tyrnids weather it wants to or not. Often using crisises to come in to save a civilization then offer to let them join the Imperium or use economic/military insensitive to lure them into turning the Imperium into a necessity.

I'd say that good men aren't rare in this AU. They just have differing opinions. The Imperium was set up so that man would rule man, not super men. Super soldiers serve, always have done and done so proudly.

When they rule they run the risk of turning into Huron Blackheart. All that is human within them is magnified and then trained to war. All of their hate and pride magnified to inhuman proportions.

Point is that many of the Ultramarine officers think that Titus is going to turn into Luther v2.0 with Franj replaced with Ultramar. Another camp are just wanting to have the rules, rules put there for good reason, to be obeyed. They point out that a good Chapter Master would discuss these proposals with the chapter council before taking them to the Senate as a matter of good form and that also Titus is only Acting CM until Calgar either gets up or dies.

With the expectation of the minority who genuinely are a cavalcade of turds and just want him to fail for their personal gain. Looking at you Leandros.

SO in this AU should Cypher be and remain Dark Angel or is he something to do with the Alpha Legion?

He's shadowy, unification era Dark Angels, so he's essentially tied in to high level conspiracy shit even if he isn't actually connected to the Alpha Legion.

If by military insensitive you mean the offer of military support and protection in exchange for a yearly fee then yes.

Of course they don't have to join the Imperium. Nobodies forcing them to join. Of course, the Imperium doesn't have to stop them getting orked either because it has no obligation to protect anyone outside it's borders.

Glad you enjoyed the Angron stuff so far. If anyone is still waiting on it, it will come eventually, but I've hit a bit of a creative slump combined with not a whole lot of free time. Will write what I can.

A thing, about a battle between the Tau and the Imperium. Wound up way longer than I expected.

The Imperium and the Tau did not often clash directly, prior to integration. A few flare-ups in the centuries after first contact, before the borders were finalized and diplomatic channels became well-established. Such clashes are not well remembered; both sides were usually half-hearted about the fighting, and after Integration the busy propagandists of the Administratum made sure such conflicts were consigned to the dustbin of history.

A few battles refused to be erased quietly. One such was the battle of Gollopo.

The world Gollopo itself was a human world, settled in the Dark Age of Technology and forgotten in the Age of Strife. It was re-discovered almost simultaneously by both Tau and Imperium explorers. It was in the grey zone between the Tau and Imperium zones of control and near a strategic warp lane, meaning it was highly desirable to both sides. And- this is where the trouble really began- it was divided into nearly a hundred independent states, all of which had long and often nasty histories with each other.

Both sides sent diplomatic teams. The debate over which superpower to join immediately polarized Gollopo's politics. Everyone believed that a nation without a protector would be carved apart by the ones that did, resulting in a mad rush for advantage. Long-standing alliance blocks broke up over the question; ancient enemies uneasily found themselves on the same side. When Prunzik started leaning towards the Tau, its long-time enemy Francha immediately started soliciting the Imperium, only to switch positions towards the Tau when Prunzik started leaning towards the Imperium. When the Inland Empire declared for the Imperium, its subject colonies along the North Shore immediately invited in the Tau in a bid for independence.
-

The Sokhmar and Lankhmar immediately launched genocidal campaigns against each other in a desperate bid to settle their thousand-year grudge before either could secure the assistance of a galactic military.

As the situation deteriorated, both diplomatic teams summoned military reinforcements. And then more. And then more.

Things finally boiled over in the Saarland. A near-impotent buffer state between Prunzik and Francha, both its parliament and its population were almost evenly divided between pro-Tau and pro-Imperial factions... which also corresponded with long-standing pro-Francha and pro-Prunzik factions. Street fighting broke out, which soon descended into guerrilla war, with both Prunzik and Francha supporting their chosen sides. First with money, then with guns, then with 'observers' and 'advisors'... Finally, Francha declared that the Saarland was a failed state and sent an expeditionary force across the border to restore order. Lord General Six Serpent ordered the Imperial Guard to secure the pro-Imperial sections of the Saarland three days later, and Shas'O Vaina moved his cadres to intercept.
The war was on.

The first clashes in the Saarland were dramatic, but ultimately inconclusive; the Imperial Guard was driven out of the Saarland by fast-moving Tau armor threatening to slice their columns into pieces, but Tau follow-up offensives were blocked by combined Prunzikan/Guard fortifications and careful deployment of the few Baneblades available.
-

These would be the largest direct clashes of Tau and Imperial forces; any hope that the fighting could be confined to the Saarland died within days, as every nation on Gollopo plunged into war, every ancient grievance and modern ambition subsumed into the clash of galactic powers. (Although a few were not quite sure what side they were fighting on; the Federated Oskarrian States switched sides four times over the course of the war.) Guard and Fire Caste forces were divided among multiple theaters, fighting closely alongside the native armies.

At the beginning, the Imperium held the advantage. Although less advanced than the off-worlders, the Golloponi armies could not simply be ignored. The Imperium had proven more effective at recruiting the local nations; their status as fellow humans, greater degree of local autonomy, and art-deco meshed better with Golloponi pride and aesthetic sense than the Tau's alien-ness, more invasive policies, and smoothly curving ceramics.

However, this advantage of numbers proved hard to leverage. The Tau could simply move and concentrate faster, and seized the operational initiative early. They kept the Imperium reacting to rapid-fire series of feints, diversions, raids, and genuine offensives, too off-balance to launch their own offensives. Morale began to decline, especially among the Imperium's local allies. To Golloponi sensibilities, the Tau war machines were frighteningly alien and incomprehensible, and local regiments were often routed by even a single Tau skimmer unless backed up by the Guard, while Tau-aligned forces were inspired to greater heights of courage by the alien powers of their allies.
-

As the war dragged on, the momentum began to swing in the other direction. The Imperial-aligned armies grew accustomed to facing down the Tau, and attrition began to take its toll. The Tau required spare parts and ammunition from a supply chain stretching all the way from the Tau Empire itself; with the low speed and relatively smaller size of Tau ships, they were simply unable to sustain the operational tempo they had set early on once their stockpiles were exhausted. On the other hand, the Golloponi early-industrial tech base required only minor upgrading to start supplying spares and ammunition for the Guard. And the Tech-priests accompanying the expedition were well-versed in the procedures for such upgrades.

While the Tau attempted to launch their own upgrade program, the Earth Caste engineers were less skilled in using limited resources; they knew how to make microchips, they knew how to train someone to make microchips, but they didn't know how to get to microchips starting from a coal-fired steel mill. The Mechanicus did.

By the middle of the second year, the Imperium was able to launch a grand offensive, rolling back previous Tau gains. Committing their remaining reserves, the Tau fought a series of holding actions, buying time to consolidate a series of defensive lines. It worked, and the offensive ground to a halt outside the core territories of the Tau alliance block.

With all room for subtlety gone, the war entered its bloodiest phase. The Tau did not have the reserves to launch any major offensives, especially once the Imperial block entrenched themselves in turn, but were able to shatter the spearheads of any offensive. Most of the dying was done by the Golloponi, as the Guard and Fire Caste husbanded their strength and looked for some decisive opportunity.

It never came. After three years and about twenty million deaths, the war was ended by a negotiated settlement. The nations that aligned themselves with the Imperium would become part of the Imperium; the nations that sided with the Tau would become part of the Tau Empire. Nations that had been split would either become neutral, their independence guaranteed by both sides, or be split into multiple nations, as determined by the locals themselves.

Most Tau-Imperium conflicts were prosecuted halfheartedly, neither side really wanting to fight one of the few other true civilizations among the stars. Gollopo was not. There has been some debate as to why, but ultimately it has been ascribed to the influence of the Golloponi themselves. They regarded the war as 'the End of History'; although things would certainly keep happening, the history of Gollopo and its nations would be subsumed without a trace into the history of the Imperium and/or the tau Empire. A footnote, remembered only as a place where these two giants once fought. Thus they fought with incredible fervor, as their last chance to make a mark on history as independent nations. That fervor came to 'infect' the off-world forces they were allied with, the two working increasingly close together as the war dragged on. They fought together, bled together, died together, and came to regard the war in the same light.
Or so the thinking goes.

Thoughts?

Just got on bump, gimme a while to catch up.

Pretty good. I assume this Guard contingent on the planet was mostly human? Since Tau raids and feints might not end so well if there is integrated Eldar support in gravtanks and jetbikes chuckling at the Tau idea of "speed" and cutting them off before they can even start running. Not to mention the havoc Eldar could wreak on supply lines.

I'm not sure if it was intended this way, but I saw this as a more balanced take on potential Tau-Imperium conflicts compared to canon. What always bothered me about canon is how the writers seemed to disregard logistics and attrition for the Tau; they're supposed to have taken significant casualties in each of their expansion campaigns, but some how they're ready to go again at full strength in just a few years? This portrayal seemed much better: Tau dumping in significant resources and effort into the conflict, while for the Imperium it was a tiny proxy war that accidentally went hot, and was probably minor enough not to make it to the full attention of Segmentum Command. Good thing for the Tau too, the conflict would have been over a lot sooner if Astartes or, god forbid, Titans were deployed.

It's good. It shows that the road to peace has no been without trial.

It also give more reason for Farsight's dislike of the Imperium.

Yeah, mostly human. The Eldar don't really have a reason to care about the Tau, so I assume they wouldn't commit many, if any, forces to those theaters.

If it happened in one of the earlier spheres of expansion Gollopo might have gone full Imperium in the centuries since the Tau's various crisis, before the whole Tau Empire. It would have been a couple centuries removed, but it would also have been one of those things that would have driven the Tau and Tau aligned mad as it demonstrated the strength and seniority of the Imperium in the most undeniable way. The fact that Gollopo went to the Imperials two centuries or so down the line, when the AI rebellion was fucking up the first sphere of expansion, is something that's on Farsight's list of reasons humans suck.

I wonder what downtime socializing is like for assassins?

Their numbers are few, their services are never unsought and the Imperium is wide, by all probability they don't often meet fellow assassins once they are released from the temples.

They would more than likely have to socialize with normal people. They are nowhere near as psychologically broken as they are in Vanilla after Oscar forced reforms onto them so at least making friends might be an option now.

But it would still be awkward and they would for the most part still be psychologically weird due to the fact that Assassin training is still long, intensive, starts at a young age and with no time put aside for socializing beyond what is needed for the job.

Also it takes a specific sort of personality to be considered for Assassin training in the first place. All assassins start out with the aptitudes to cultivate to take another human life in cold blood dispassionately and with no feelings beyond a workmans pride in a job well done but without any unseemly glee.

Taldeer and LIVII and their relationship are exceptions not just for being human and elder but because someone managed to make an emotional connection with LIVII.

That said some of the assassin temples require deft social skills to get close to their targets so they would be specifically trained to be good company.

Also it doesn't help that Taldeer has very shapely ears and given that she is usually the shortest one in the room in eldar company everyone has a very good view of this fact. Her time at the Ulthuan estate with Sreta and her cronies being groomed to be the perfect little housewife to be sold off for influence and fortune making was not a happy time for her, no matter how gilded the cage and pampered the lifestyle.

She was seen as utterly unsuited to the military life, least of all the Cadian military life, and it was assumed that she would come running and crying home after her first month of hardship in the training grounds assuming that she wasn't kicked out sooner.

They did not expect her to love every minute of her time running the increasingly hellish obstacle courses or find such satisfaction and accomplishment in the weapons practice ranges.

Eldrad was in hysterics at the whole thing, least of all because he didn't like Sreta much at all and watching her get a social bloodied nose was tea and crumpets to the old patriarch.

Both.

Every secret society counts Cypher as their agent. Every secret society both loves and hates him as he has betrayed each one as much as he has helped them.

Nobody is sure exactly what game, if any, Cypher is playing. Some believe that Cypher is several people but if that is true then it's several people who look very much alike in identical armour with identical weapons.

Also despite rumours he does not have the Lion's Sword. Lion's Sword is still in the armoury in The Rock on the shelf it was placed on when they brought the comatose Lion in.

I like it. It shows that even though the Tau are friends with the rest of the Imperium now, things haven't been all sunshine and light.

And the reasoning for the fighting is pretty good. The Imperium had been trying to get on the Tau's good side for centuries and get them to join, but the actions of the locals forced both sides into war.

Hey, are Eversors even a thing in this universe?

I can't imagine people being turned into thoughtless murdermachines would sit well with this Imperium.

No, but heavy cybernetic human cruise missiles are sometimes necessary. They aren't mindless or indiscriminate any more, but they're still fast as hell, loaded with enhancements, high to the eyeballs on prefered combat drugs, and still fond of absolutely insane kamikaze tactics if their mission goes tits up. They are the smallest and most old school of the temples, but they still get lots of work when you need the Imperium's closest approximation of the Great Enemy's frenetic pace and manic destruction. You use Eversors to hit Crone targets, Ork warbosses, and Dark Eldar, because they can keep up and even thrive in those environments.

I like the idea that she might be Eldrad's last child. Eldar for grandfather just means venerable father, every member of the Ulthuans calls Eldrad grandfather.

Taldeer is considered somewhat tragic in that, at the tender age of redacted, she has become path-lost on the paths of the Seer.

At what age are eldar considered adults?

bump

I now have this image of an Eversor who is the most laid back and nonchallant dude in the universe because he he is drugged up tto his eyeballs with painkillers and 40K weed equivalents in order to let him socialize and act like a human between missions. Then when the order comes they flush the relaxations drugs and replace them with combat stims and he's a murderbot again.

"567K, we've just received the mission briefing. "
"I'm gonna have to be a monster again, aren't I?"
"'fraid so, son. "

It makes you wonder if Polymorphine comes with side effects and what they would be.

bumpan

Well, we know in canon that it hurts like hell and if you haven't been properly trained, your body will shapeshift to death.

Don't recall anything other than that, though.

Any indication of what it's made out of?

I don't think the composition of polymorphine was ever expanded on in canon, and it's not really that important anyway.