Nobledark 40k part 37: Hive Architecture 101 and Remedial Political History Edition

Welcome to Nobledark Imperium: a relatively light fan rewrite of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, with a generous helping of competence and common sense.

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Wiki (HELP NEEDED!):
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LAST TIME ON NOBLEDARK IMPERIUM:
>New squat and Crone Eldar units
>Titus' Primaris Initiative, how people are reacting, and how we should handle it
>Hive maps
>Slaugh are awful. We knew this already but just more confirmation.
>Proto-orks are somehow surprisingly adorable

AND, AS ALWAYS, WHAT WE NEED:
>More bugs
>More weebs
>More Nobledark battles

Other urls found in this thread:

m.youtube.com/watch?v=UoDKXozA0M4
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Okay guys, here. Real talk. I know we've been saying "more weebs" for nigh on twenty threads now, but truth be told we really do need some more on the Tau. What we really need is a write-up for Commander Shadowsun if anything. She and Farsight are the Tau equivalent of primarchs and Phoenix Lords, and everyone in-universe seems to know it. Aun’Va has even been slipping her stuff to extend her lifespan even beyond what the cryostasis and rejuvenants would allow, because he knows the Tau need a big cultural hero to look up to and the only other option is a xenophobic renegade.

> Born mid M39, on Tau’n (the Poctroon homeworld) if we go by canon. Would explain why she is more open to xenos cooperation whereas Farsight is more traditionalist. In canon was a student of Puretide, not established if the same is true here.
> Was a student and friends with Farsight, and is implied to have had less platonic feelings towards him (the Greater Good does not approve of this action).
> Farsight crossed The Line during the Tau Civil War. One suggestion was that he may have had a hand in inflaming tensions that led to the conflict erupting into violence, which is a big taboo in Tau culture. Shadowsun thought it was fine to disagree and debate, but actual violence was unjustified. Now all she wants to do is strangle Farsight with his own intestines, and the two have a very personal hatred that only those who were once close friends could have.

(cont.)
> Swore a blood oath to see Farsight dead, but is pragmatic enough that she won’t let the Tau empire burn to fulfill it.
> Has been leapfrogging through time Master Chief-style by using cryostasis after helping stabilize the Tau Empire. Explicit instructions to wake her if Farsight sticks his neck out. Plan has become unexpectedly extended after Farsight failed to die of old age.
> More open-minded and less xenophobic than Farsight (known as an Imperial hero even outside of Tau space, which the Tau will remind you of quite frequently), but at the same time more prone to obeying the Ethereal Council and is more manipulable by them.
> Given her specialties in fighting tyranids and cryostasis, may have gone on the hunt with Kryptman once or twice.

bump

Speaking of writing characters up, we also need some stuff on the Phoenix Lords too, seeing as the Eldar are equal partners in the Imperium. Most things can stay unchanged from canon, but it'd be interested to see the PL work with Imperial forces, especially the Primarchs.

Also imagine the primarch/PL/other-hero wars on Imperial imageboards.

>Not having Shadowsun in top tier. Shit taste desu senpai
>Implying your blueberry is on the same level as someone who solo'd a Bloodthirster
>Silly mon'keighs and their non-immortal leaders, when will they ever learn?
>Our primarchs did more in less than one millenia than the PLs did in ten

How bloody was the Tau civil war?

Are we talking the targeting of civilian population centres and the extermination of families or more of a really large scale ceremonial duel, ritualized and governed by notions of honour?

Did we decided if Aun'Va was Aun'Da or one of his first pupils living unnaturally long?

I'd go with him being a first early disciple rather than him being Tau Jesus. It leaves it so that he is trying to spread the dream of a man he called friend without actually knowing 100% for sure what Tau Jesus would have done in the circumstances. Makes him less grand, more of a person.

Also have his longevity remain a mystery, even to himself. He hasn't been kept young, that's for damn sure. He is an old man and has been for a very long time. His knees click when he walks and he needs glasses to read. And has done for thousands of years.

His longevity is known only to the Ethereal inner council. Everyone else just assumes there have been a line of Vas from Tau St Peter on down the ages.

Bumping for hope of revised Old Earth cross section

Is Lion dead or just in a coma?

It keeps being said that Ferrus Manus was the last primarch but nowhere does it say that Lion died.

By 999M41 are there enough Poctroon around to have soldiers?

Also is any information ever given about them?

Has there ever been a number given on how tall in miles a Hive is?

We have them as looking like Kerbals. When the Tau discovered Tau'n, local Nurgle cultists used First Contact as a distraction to kick off a massive plague. The Tau freaked and did everything they could to help (because they refuse to let the first aliens they've ever meet die of a plague right after), but couldn't diagnose the symptoms. Long story short (it's on notes page), about 1% of the original Poctroon population survived. They're still a ridiculously small minority on their own homeworld.

Lion's was last known to be in a coma and then people lost track of him. It's entirely possible he 's dead, its entirely possible he could wake up tomorrow from wherever he is given the strong Arthurian overtones of much of the Dark Angels. Of course, it's just as likely Russ would show back up again from his mysterious vanishing (i.e., very slim).

Like Tau St. Peter meets the Wandering Jew. This has promise.

I'd say somewhere in the middle. We have mention of things going bad when talk of whether to work with the Imperium went from debate to rioting and violence. Then it escalated into military action, especially once the Ethereals thought their honor had been breached. The issue at heart wouldn't be one worth civilian atrocities by the military, but at the same time it was a much dirtier, more personal war than the Tau usually fought. Half the time civility and honor went out the window.

>Kerbals

Oh fuck that is beautiful. Were they as batshit crazy as the name implies?

I think he's been in the Coma so long that it deserves a capital letter. He is close enough to dead as makes no difference.

Calgar: I've been in a fucking coma since the Battle of Ultramar, and I'm still trying to figure out when I'll wake up.
Lion: Get on my level scrub.

I'm seeing it as both sides going to extraordinary lengths to avoid civilian casualties and keep the actual violence contained to the Fire and Ethereal castes. The whole reason for the war was to sway/guide the people down the correct path, killing the non-combatants would just feed the other side.

Despite all that it was the first time large scale Tau on Tau violence had been done since the days of Aun'Da. Think of Babylon 5 and no Mimbari having killed another Mimbari (except accidents, duels and cases of genuine insanity) since the days of Valen.

Then boom, the unthinkable happens. Tau don't react well to disorder at the best of times but previously they could comfort themselves with it being inflicted on them from outside and they they would overcome it with good order and the rule of law. Their law being the source of disharmony would have been abhorrent to consider and insane to live through.

It would have been a defining moment for the species by that point. Brotherhoods formed and torn apart in blood and suffering the likes of which mere years previous would have been incomprehensible.

By the standards of the Arbiters stationed on worlds like Necromunda it would have gone on reports as a very large but polite riot.

Other than Shadowsun, Aun'Va, Shas'O "Doomguy" Kais and Farsight are there any other named characters for the Tau?

Are there any named characters for the Vespid or the Kroot at all?

>Are there any named characters for the Vespid or the Kroot at all?
In canon or here? Here we don't have any yet. Canon has very few named Kroot. Anghkor Prok is the most famous, he was a guerilla fighter on Pech fighting the Ork invasion. Despite the Kroot evolving from Kroothawks that ate Ork carcasses, long-term the Orks would have sucked the life out of Pech by orkiforming it. He fought them for years before the Tau showed up to lend a hand, and in return earned the loyalty of both Prok and the Kroot. Even though the Kroot take on mercenary contracts from anyone against the Tau's wishes, the Kroot will never take contracts against the Tau or eat Tau meat without permission because of this.

The only other named Kroot characters are a few Shapers in the Last Chancers and Ciaphas Cain series. There are no named characters for the vespid.

As for other notable Tau, there's Aun'Shi, who's notable for being an Ethereal who likes to lead from the front lines and is pretty good with an honor blade in close combat (hey, it's technically "leading"), who was brought up as a possible example of how the empire has changed since the more rigid days.

There's Puretide, who's was basically Tau Sun-Tsu and codified the Tau code of war based on a mishmash of historical techniques and tribal hunting strategies, much of which was drawn from his own considerable experience. He probably wasn't murdered by the Ethereals in this timeline to make computer chips.

There's El'Miyamoto, who is basically a loose canon Fire Warrior who doesn't play by the rules, but gets shit done despite his unorthodox and risky methods.

There's Sho'Aun, the Tau Battlesuit otaku who designed the heavier-end battlesuits and the first Tau titans.

And there's Farsight's the Eight. Farsight's seven companions, comprised of five Fire Caste warriors, an A.I. engram, and an Earth Caste scientist who had to GET IN THE FUCKING BATTLESUIT O'VESA. We weren't sure if they would be separatists or loyalists given in canon they are loyal to Farsight, but at the same time are rather unorthodox.

Bump?

Wasn't part of the issue that the separatists feared the rise of outsider-inspired ideas was going to lead the Ethereal Council to force them to follow the Greater Good in a way they didn't believe in? In that case there might have been some reason for the Earth, Water, and Air Caste to fight, because it's their belief system that's now at stake. Not that the Ethereals and Fire Caste would have wanted them to, but funny things happen in an environment of uncertain fear and mob mentality.

As a historical parallel, are there good records of riots/rebellions in Tau-like societies like Imperial China or Feudal Japan? Do they tend to involve lots of formality and dueling or do things tend to get messy.

Is Farsight Tau Oda Nobunaga arming the more populous Earth Caste with guns?

>Is Farsight Tau Oda Nobunaga arming the more populous Earth Caste with guns?
I think this would be a cool element to include, that in his crusade to reestablish the Tau traditions of old, Farsight is essentially breaking them all and establishing new ones, all while being too blind to most of it, and excusing what he allows himself to be aware of by saying it's for both the Greater Good and the greater good.

I seem to remember reading in canon that some Spires can pierce the sky, but I'll be damned if I can remember the source. For all I know I'm getting Hives confused with the Fang.

These seem broadly right to me, I see the Tau Civil War as starting off like the Wars of the Roses, with sporadic and relatively contained clashes between the two factions, but then rapidly escalating into a major and paradigm-shifting conflict like the American Civil War when both sides refused to back down. To both sides, the other faction's actions would have been unconscionable breaches of Tau'va: from the loyalist viewpoint Farsight was undermining all of Tau society through sheer hubris, whereas to the secessionists the Ethereals were leading the Tau down a path to destruction, hence the refusal of both sides to give an inch.

To continue the American Civil War analogy, this probably would be the major cultural turning point for the Tau, the "loss of innocence." In the same way that the US Civil War raised philosophical questions about whether the union and the grand experiment of democracy was viable, the Tau Civil War probably would have undermined people's faith in the Greater Good itself. For the first time, there was no consensus on what the Greater Good even entailed, and to a society as rigid and structured as the Tau it would have been a huge shock to the system.

So while population centers and civilians were probably left unmolested, the casualties of the war were probably huge. Every Tau citizen personally knew someone who fell in the war.

(Cont.)
At present, the Farsight Enclaves and the Tau Empire (are they still called an empire if they're in the Imperium?) are in a tense Cold War standoff, with the Damocles Gulf border region heavily fortified by both sides. While the regular Tau forces are vastly greater than Farsight's, they're too pressed by other threats like the Nids to commit the forces necessary to retake those worlds and the casualties would be intolerably high if they did, which is pretty much a reflection of the canon Imperium's stand off with the Tau.

I imagine the Eldar have called for Farsight's assassination several times, seeing as he holds one of their most sacred relics, whereas the Ethereals staunchly refuse any Imperium intervention, seeing this as an internal issue and matter of honor. The Emperor for his part probably holds out hope for a reconciliation with Farsight, as all hands will be needed against the coming dark and the final battle, and they cannot afford to needlessly lose such a talented ally and rich worlds.

Despite what weebs would have you believe, East Asia is not all HONOBURU SAMURAI or kung fu masters. Look up the list of deadliest wars on Wikipedia, several of the top 20 are rebellions in Imperial China and and the Sengoku era in Japan was a bloodbath. That's how war goes, shit gets messy quick.

How knowledgeable are the Tau on warp and psyker shenanigans in this AU?

I like to think that with increased contact with the Imperium, the Ethereals are more than informed about the threats of the Warp, and they might even be a little thankful that their signature is so small.

The Poctroon, Vespid and Kroot were all part of the Tau Empire before being absorbed into the Imperium and presumably are part of the Tau empire together under the Imperium.

IF I wanted to maek a Vespid character what should I know about them beyond big insects?

Is that a literal piercing of the sky or a ,ore figurative sense that you need breathing equipment at the top?

Not that it matters. Some of the Old Earth Hives definitely get into space because the Orbital Tethers are grounded in them.

>Are they still an Empire?
Ultramar is still called an Empire despite being within the Imperium. So I suppose the galaxy is large enough for there to be an empire within an empire (empireception).

> Imperial stance on Farsight.
Sounds pretty good. The big thing about Farsight compared to all the other adversaries in this universe seems to be that compared to the tyranids, Chaos, Orks, and most of the Necrons, Farsight is actually a relatively nice guy (especially if you are a Tau). He doesn't go around killing babies or wearing human skin, and his primary reason for rebelling was so the Tau could just be left alone. He actually cares about the people under his command. It's just that he's a xenophobic asshole.

He's the kind of guy if you were an Earth Caste walking into a bar, he would invite you over for a drink and nearly bowl you over with his sheer charisma. At least, until you find out what his political leanings are and where you stand on the issue.

The Tau know about the warp and psykers. They don't have those abilities, but they have good theoretical knowledge of it. Indeed, it may give them a bit of advantage over daemons, because they don't have the innate primal fear of daemons that eldar and humans have. This means they tend to deal with daemons by, say, hitting them with void-to-surface weaponry and refuse to play the daemons superstitious games unless there's no choice.

I think we have a bit of this already. The Farsight Enclaves already have a bit of deviation from the norm in that the Fire Caste has way too much power than dictated by the Greater Good and Farsight is technically calling the shots over the Ethereals, but people (including Farsight), tend not to notice this.

What is the Tau homeworld like? Are there very well designed mega-cities?

also how often has homeworld been taken?

As in been captured? Never, unless you count the Chaos-caused A.I. rebellion and the Civil War. Attacked? Probably several times, given that Shadowsun has been woken up for shit-hits-the-fan level stuff. Thing is T'au is right in the middle of the polygon-shaped space that is the Tau Empire. Resistance gets increasingly harder as you get towards the core (and the planets in the core are in a tight cluster). Though I'm sure Chaos, being Chaos, has tried to answer the question of "how many warbands does it take to get to the crunchy center of the Tau Empire".

I really like the image of Shadowsun being the Tau WMD that walks like a mortal.

It has the lovely image of Aun'va as some sort of Davy Jones dinosaur of another era that the others of his kind defer to out of respect/fear and when shit gets too hard to handle he declares "release the Shadowsun". Those are the days that you know shit has got beyond real. If is the legendary 1s Sphere veteran commander than by now she has fought everything from Dark Eldar to xeno Skynet. Like Kryptman she is awoken when needed and preserved when not. Like Kryptman she is getting on in subjective years now despite this though not to the same extreme. Like Kryptman she is awake in the final days of 999M41 and it doesn't look like she will sleep again soon.

Humans have stories of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, Tau have Shadowsun.

Farsight was to be her replacement for when she has to sleep the sleep of the never waking. Maybe she secretly hopes that one day he will somehow still be.

Imperium has Saint Celestine around whom the masses flock with songs ion their lips and fire in their hearts. Shadowsun is this also. When she wakes up the other casts start to readily form citizens militias to ease the burdens of the Fire Caste PDF equivalents. Not actual soldiers, goodness no. That would be against the scripture. They just assist and serve as best they can right up to what they can bend the scripture to accommodate.

Shadowsun believes in the spirit of the teachings but is a soldier and has seen some shit. More shit up close and awful than probably any other Tau bar maybe Kais. She believes in the Greater Good and the Empire as if fights for the Greater Good and the Imperium as it seems to mirror and facilitate the Greater Good but she also believes that Aun'Va was a late bronze age bureaucrat and blind obedience to the rules of another time taken in a vacuum and not adapted to this time will always lead to disaster. Her original dispute with Farsight.

Are there psychic Vespid or are they like the Tau with the bluntness?

From reading the 1d4chan it seems that all Securitas are sisters but not all sisters are Securitas.

Are the Katholian sisters like Mirium Cain and the Fenrisian Valkyries augmented like the Securitas?

Read William Hope Hodgeson's 'The Night Land'. I would describe it as one of the first nobledark stories in fiction, and one of the earliest 'very distant future' sci-fi stories, as it was published in 1912. It concerns an adventure story in a year 'so far in the future numbers cannot explain it', after the sun has suffered a serious malfunction and collapsed, only emitting a very minimal amount of infra-red light and a small amount of heat.

Just going a bit further it also has the first force field (The 'air clog'), the first cthonian/chaos beasts (the 'great watchers'), the first light saber (the 'diskos'), and the first arcology (the 'redoubt').

I highly recommend it.

Bazump

I have no clue. Fenrisian Valkyries have something done to them that activates latent Canis Helix genes in them that are supposed to be turned off through genetic copyright. Normally any such genes would have a DaoT self-shutoff sequence to deactivate them to keep the supersoldiers from breeding true. Hence the whole "Daughters of Russ" thing. Otherwise the genes would be junk DNA and they would be normal women, but whatever is done to them turns them into werewolf-themed valkyries.

Miriam Cain might be an actual Sister for all we know. Fanaticism within reason is considered a plus for Sisters because it blunts their mind to Warp corruption. As long as they aren't going to go burninating, say, non-Katholians for no reason strong faith isn't exactly a reason to turn them down.

I don't know. Lexicanum says nothing about Vespid psykers. It's said the Tau had trouble talking with them when they first met, but that could be as much due to Tau not being able to receive telepathy (see Dawn of War) than Vespid lacking psykers.

The Vespid are said to need a communications helm to communicate with other species. Like the Q'orl they "talk" through pheromones, though psykers could always use telepathy with them and the Tau with their ability to sense pheromones can get the gist of what they are feeling. Given that this is Nobledark, I assume the communication helms are not hidden mind control devices. Even without the mind control the Vespid "get" the Tau in a way that other races do not, they understand the caste system and the idea of putting the whole above the self.

You know, I actually had idea for a character piece for Shadowsun. I never got around to writing it because I wasn’t sure if everyone would have liked the direction it would have taken and since Shadowsun is an up-for-grabs “primarch” in a sense I wanted to give someone else first crack. But it seems we are all on a similar wavelength here.

It was supposed to be written in a short, straightforward format, like a cross between Eastern poetry and the bluntness of a soldier who has seen some shit. It would start with the following, straightforward statement.

“My life is war.”

It would point out that from Shadowsun’s perspective, literally every waking moment of her life for the last nigh-on a hundred years has been some form of conflict. The closest she has ever gotten to “down time” is the moments of strategic planning and stretched of boredom between FUBAR events. She goes to sleep only to wake up a moment later wondering “what in the name of the Tau’va is wrong now”.

It would point out that Shadowsun has essentially lived through every major military conflict of the last millennium, which would be the equivalent of a soldier fighting in every war since the late 18th century, and all the changes in technology that implies. Imagine having to constantly relearn how to fight as weapons go from muskets to bolt-action rifles to semi-automatics. Shadowsun would point this out…albeit in a rather cynical fashion.

“Sometimes the weapons are different. Better, faster, they say.
In the end they are all the same. I pull the trigger, and something dies.”

(cont.)
Shadowsun would muse a bit about all the comrades she has lost, from the long-time friends she had to abandon at the end of the Civil War to the fleeting friends she made during her brief bouts awake. She is more philosophical on the subject as opposed to Kryptman, who redirects all his anger at the Hive Mind for “making” him live this way. She knows she has lived much longer than she should, and she is suspicious of it.

“I do not know how I have lived so long. Even though I have spent most of the last millennium in cryo-stasis, I still use up a little bit more of my life in every war or battle I fight. The Earth Caste who wake me speak of new drugs, new medical breakthroughs, but even this is not enough to explain my extended lifespan. I should have been long dead by now. As should he.”

“He should have been dead a hundred times over by now.
And yet he is not. His stubbornness appears to let him thwart the course of nature.”

And here we get to the meat of the situation. Farsight. Shadowsun has killed legions of foes for the Tau empire, a list that would make Khorne proud, and yet the one foe she wants to kill has always seemed to elude her grasp. Shadowsun believes that he is to be her final opponent, and if she can kill him, then she can finally rest. A whole Miles to Go Before I Sleep kind of thing. But it’s essentially become a game of wills between the two of them, and it’s taking a self-admitted toll on Shadowsun.

“And yet I will not bend or break. The people of T'au need a hero, and I must be it for them.”

Unfortunately my brain turned into pudding and I couldn’t finish it. Also I worried it was too similar to Eldrad’s “got to make sure everything is prepared before old age gets me”. Posting here in the hopes that maybe it will inspire someone else.

Shadowsun has probably figured out by now that Aun'Va is more than meets the eye. The "my identical grandson for whom politics skipped a generation" works after a while, but someone who knows the guy personally would see right through his act in seconds.

She doesn't voice what she knows because Aun'Va being in charge is literally for the Greater Good, but it allows her to be more critical of him because she knows he knows she knows and she sees his feet of clay through the shared ages.

>Maybe she secretly hopes that one day he will somehow still be.

Worst possible end, Farsight decides that he needs to die in order to atone for kicking off the Civil War and decides to fall on his sword to die “honorably” a la the Ancient Greeks and Romans. You need someone else to hold your sword for you to do that. Farsight gives Shadowsun the Dawn Blades, and commits Death by Shadowsun in order to both restore his honor and his ailing friend’s health. Shadowsun is now immortal, the exact opposite of what she wants.

The reason Shadowsun hasn't been able to face him in person might be because while he still thinks he was in the right, he is embarrassed that he ruined their friendship and refuses to fight her.

How is progress on the map of Terra's layers going?

This could definitely work, it's planned-out already and there's not much to dispute this rendition of Shadowsun's character.

Her personal mission is to uphold the values of the Imperial Tau'va by adapting to new tactics and destroying whatever she's pointed at better than anyone else can, and to find closure by ending her former friend's life. She doesn't really concern herself with issues that aren't relevant to this, having a sort of tunnel vision that makes her an extremely dangerous opponent and which probably helps her cope with having to constantly play catch-up in the fastest-developing society in the entirety of the Imperium. She's built her entire life around fulfilling this purpose, becoming cynical and jaded instead of wrathful and manic the way Inquisitor Kryptman has, as a person who hasn't quite lost everything and is simulataneously expected to be a paradigm of the Greater Good's ideals.

Tldr; Eldrad would be the kind of person to focus on the big picture, plotting and manipulating fate in pursuit of a better future, while Shadowsun is ironically more like the "better, faster" weapons that she uses rather than a galactic strategist or stereotypical Magnificent Bastard. And therefore, if someone were to write a character short about her, she should be perfectly fine without ripping off traits from the others that we already have.

would she have asked him about the longevity? does he knownthat she knowa?

There would have been another constant for her since the Tau Civil War, and that would be Imperial high officials. She was the idealistic champion of unification with the Imperium in her original youth before the civil war, cold sleep, and all the wars that followed, but in the following centuries they would not be exempt from her mounting cynicism. This is not to say that she would doubt the union, but on a personal level, as her kinsmen fell away through the decades and centuries, she would find all her lasting contacts are with alien, ancient lords and officers. Of the Tau, only Aun'Va would be constant, but she would come to know the high, slow-ageing officers, diplomats, and adepts sent by the Men of Stone, their harsh and even longer lived metal priests, their indomitable, pillar-like Generals of the Astartes, and the strange, undying Eldar that accompanied them in all endeavors. O'Kais might understand the horrors of the wider galaxy, but even he isn't quite able to relate to the experience of falling out of his culture and into the courts of elder beings.

And whatever perplexed, incredulous relationship Shadowsun has with her fellow and elder traveler Aun'Va, he has many times over in the face of the Imperium's sovereigns.

Was there ever an actual write up for the Big Blue Cockatoo?

Given her age and such would she be slightly racist against Kroot?

When she was young they had just joined the Empire, were armed with primitive black powder weapons and their homeworld was unsafe as quite a lot of the more remote tribes still ate visitors.

Also Tau are vegetarian and meat is the food of barbarians. Exception being Kais due to living alongside humans and others for so long and they definitely do eat meat.

There's a bit in the Notes page but if you want to do a writeup and transfer it to the other page then please do.

I ask because I remember a long and winding greentext about how the Raid was contingent on a massive miscalculation on his part.

I don't think his master plan was copied across.

I was reading the Notes page and found a writeup about the secret societies in the imperial government. It really seems to need editing, a lot of the phrasing is unclear and it uses a bunch of alternating names, but what I gather is this.
>upper level Astra Militarum, Inquisition, Administratum, Mechanicus, Aristocracy (Courtiers, Navigators, and Rogue Traders), and a few Xenos make up the Illuminate Order
>Higher ranks of Astra Militarum, Navy, and Inquisition can make use of Alpha Legion via their official capacities, but only know what they can find about the Omega Legion
>all factions in the Illuminati chase secrets like Void Dragon and The Hydra, with degrees of success
>essentially a very powerful social/political club, like galactic Masons

>Alpha and Omega legions report to the Hydra, and keep tabs on the Illuminati from within and without
>both do secret stuff, Alpha is top level tradecraft and blackops, Omega is for risky and dirty business
>Omega seems to answer only to the Hydra, Alpha's assets are available to high level officers in official work

>The Hydra has its roots in the Unification, possibly Terrawatt, and includes the Imperial family, close personal allies and confidantes, the leader of the Custodes, few High Lords, and presumably the primarchs when they were alive
>Essentially Oscar's inner circle, and the ones that set things in motion behind the scenes in the Imperium
>The Illuminati have tons of crazy theories about what their nature and aims are, and are unclear as to their membership
>the populace of the galaxy have little to no knowledge of The Hydra, to the point of thinking it a motto, if they know anything at all
>while the Illuminati plan to do things with the Cthonian ring in the future, The Hydra is already doing stuff with it
>The Hydra is the point at which the Imperial government changes over from great men to demigods and gods, and entails the long term strategy tied to that fact.

also, both the Illuminati and Hydra seem preoccupied with the Great and Bountiful Human Dominion, Iron Minds, Men of Gold, and Cthonia, as well as godhead in general.

theres also mention of chaos false-flag opperations and FOBs in the Eye of Terror in connection to the Omega Legion.

I'll rewrite it after I finish Fulgrim

Cool, I'll check it out.

I'd recommend Night Land Retold.

Hodgson tried to write it in the manner of a 1700s gentleman. He wasn't good at it. Retold makes it much more pleasant to read.

It's endured way, way more shit in this AU than in Vanilla.

I am all for it resembling for the most part The Cursed Earth.

Each city is a nation unto itself. A hard citadel at the heart of a protectorate of fertile land. Usually walled in some way at the border.

Beyond the Great Walls is the wasteland. There is all the shit both weird and mundane as you would find in Judge Dredd.

The cities are actually pretty nice to live in and the people are mostly content with this. The wasteland isn't a concern most of the time given the relative ease of traveling over it.

Assuming the whole place doesn't get eaten by 'Nids or whatever in the next 50 years then eventually the toxicity and radiation will have died down to the point where it becomes worth the effort of reclaiming it.

Presumably it ended up this way during their A.I. rebellion.

Haven't been in one of these in a while, but did we ever come to a decision on how Nobledark RIP'N'TEAR assassins would work? If at all.

like this
m.youtube.com/watch?v=UoDKXozA0M4

but with more knife

high speed, high lethality, drug fueled but precision RIP AND TEAR

this. oh shit it was painful to get through

also wife beating

Sangfag wrote a really good story regarding an Eversor. Really hit the notes of whay people had suggested while still portraying an individual who was somewhat...disconnected from the rest of humanity despite his best attempts otherwise.

Might be a bit too much in the "Tau ball-kicking category". A.I. rebellion was millenia ago after all. Maybe something like immediate post-WWII Europe. The place is looking nice again, but there are still places that bear the scars of old battles. And there's always the occassional equivalent of an active landmine discovered in someone's backyard.

I thought Illuminati tended to be the aristocrats whereas high ranking Administratum members (Inquisition, military, Administratum) tended to oppose them (though there is a disturbing amount of overlap). Illuminati are a problem because they like to dig into everyone's secrets, not just DaoT, and so they do things like dig into Imperial secrets or accidentally wake up Necron Tomb Worlds.

The most zealous of them hate the idea of an artificial being (which in their mind usually equals servant) being in control of the Imperium and are looking to ways to "reprogram" Oscar. The higher-ups in the Imperial government also know of Oscar's origins (he doesn't exactly make a big deal of hiding them) but don't give a shit that he was born in a lab and don't like the idea of someone brainwashing the Emperor (the Illuminati as a whole tend to get tarred with this brush). The Hydra also doesn't like them because they like their secrecy and they're not fans of waking up Tomb Worlds or brainwashing the Emperor.

That would probably work better.

They had the Cursed Earth phase, they are past it now.

The mega-cities remain but the land between them is green(ish) and pleasant ad productive. Only occasionally does an old killbot get unearthed

Hydra existed longer than the Imperium A&O were part of it. They were primarchs and therefore already of great accomplishment.

>geothermal heat sink
Every time

Figure that works with The Hydra being a Terrawatt Clan organization. Probably not the same Alpharious and Omegon, but holders of those names, could have been the ones behind Malcador's original journey.

This brings back The Hydra's preoccupation with the Cthonian ring, if not the Man of Gold that would become emperor.

I bet at least a few of the Illuminate would theorize that Alpharious Omegon was and remains the Golden Man of Old Earth, or Alpharious and Omegon being the Golden Men of Earth and Mars, ruling the Imperium through their much younger sibling.

Once a new inductee to the Illuminated few floated the idea that the secret master of Terrawatt and the Hydra could be some kind of super ancient shapeshifting psychic demigod formed from the unified souls of gurus from the dawn of human sapience, cultivating the Imperium as an unseen hand in all things. He was subsequently disinvited from all future gatherings of the Illuminati and was later dismissed from his position at the Schola Psychana.

Those would be in universe tinfoil hat theories.

>How is progress on the map of Terra's layers going?

Slowly.

I can't draw or computer for shit. Also work and life eating up my time.

That Schola Psykana official insists he was the victim of reprisals from his supposed arch-manipulator guru, but really its because his theory was clearly derivative of apocryphal accounts of a similar being supposedly encountered in the Himalayas by Magnus and the Warlord. Said accounts were dismissed by Magnus as quaint fictions invented by bored apprentices about their headmaster's youth, but they remained in the Schola's archives.

I'm curious, does anyone know which writefag wrote the Long Odds story about Eldrad?

Khanfag did.

>dat theory

I keked heartily.

what was in those mountains should remain a mystery

Would the old Dark Age monsters be equivalent to The Shrike?

This. Emperor was not sad or glad that they went. They went without violence in the end but had been strong enough to keep everyone out since the day the Earth stopped making sense. There is no evidence of where they went, just that they went.

Add to all of this Magnus as a young man wandering in to their lands and being the first in millennia to wander out again but not unchanged. One eye missing and scars across his face and head and strange text in red in across his body in a language not know to mortal man in that age of strange forgotten scripture.

Agreed.

An idea on the Path of the Enforcer.

Eldar are designed to be super soldiers to fight in the War in Heaven. This leads a lot of them to have murderous and overly aggressive instincts in early adulthood and late adolescence. In vanilla this meant that they had to be booted off the craftworld for a few decades until they had worked through their murderous rapist phase and could return to society as productive and contributing citizens.

In this Nobledark Imperium this is not an option as booting them off the craftworld to murder across the galaxy means that they are being shit heads to the Imperium. The Imperium that is protecting their craftworlds, that their craftworlds are contributing and benefiting members of, the Imperium that their All-Mother is the joint head of state of.

This is now no longer an option.

So when a late-teens elder starts getting all murderous the Enforcers hopefully catch them before they try to do something stupid. The delinquent is then dragged to the nearest Shrine of the Aspect Warriors. They do not have a choice in this. This is not Vanilla "every elder can follow their desires because every child is special snowflake" eldar society. There is still a fair amount of that but only within the confines of the Law. Break the Law and the Law breaks you back.

In the aspect temple they are broken and rebuilt into something not shit. They will learn discipline or they will get another broken rib. They will learn to control their inbuilt murder boner generator or the beatings will continue. They will learn that there is a right way, a wrong way and a very wrong way and what the consequences of each are.

99% plus survive and reform. most of the failures end up running away to the Dark City thinking that there they will be accepted for who they are (they are wrong). Few actually die.

It is not a perfect system, it's just better than the alternatives.

I imagine that this was the brutal way that were broken and regimented by the Old Ones.

Possibly the monsters built at it's height, just before it all imploded. These were the things built when the Ring World was, soldiers built by god-like things to guard their troves.

Should the Necrons still have the Celestial Array in this AU in working order?

Bumping

I'm struggling with this.

What needs to be added to it?

Can I redesign the Tau writing? It triggers me how an alien language just uses an A-Z alphabet.

I'll base it on a kind of fusion of Korean and Japanese.

If you think you can it sounds good

I'm going to be rather amused if an AU originally based on waifuing Isha and Emps spawns a conlang.

It could be that what we read as the Tau language has just been changed into an analogue to make it easier for us/Imperials to understand, sort of like how Low Gothic is supposed to be almost totally incomprehensible to a modern-day human but is translated into English.

Although that's probably one of the stupider excuses that GW could come up with.

It looks pretty nice(especially the mix of architectural styles in the Hive City), but the caverns just look like they're there to destabilize the surface. If you're looking for inspiration of questionable quality for what these caverns do, look no further.

At the bottom, caverns could be specialized towards infrastructure that wouldn't get a lot of foot traffic and/or benefit from being down there, like power plants(geothermal, nuclear, hydroelectric, whatever wouldn't produce a lot of fumes), filtered water reservoirs, mines, and a conduit or two to process magma and deliver for the Daisy Chain or busy factories(not sure about that last one, it might be many more miles down).

Mid level subterranean features might include an Astra Militarum garrison not far from the Hive City, hydroponic farms and water processing facilities returning clean water to where it's needed, major munitions depots for high-yield planetary defense weapons and the garrison(s), electrical utilities on a massive scale, sewage treatment for all the crap that millions in a city would produce in a day(if that's not already dealt with by the city), and manufactorum clusters producing local goods(like cars and clothing that can be quickly adjusted for fashion changes).

>It could be that what we read as the Tau language has just been changed into an analogue to make it easier for us/Imperials to understand, sort of like how Low Gothic is supposed to be almost totally incomprehensible to a modern-day human but is translated into English.

I would almost say that, at least in this universe, people tend to use names like Shadowsun instead of O'Shaserra or Farsight instead of O'Shovah because it's easier to fit with human naming conventions, or it's easier to distinguish one individual from another given how Tau names work (both Farsight and Kais have Kais as one of their names, for instance).
Or at least in those cases the nom du guerre is so familiar that even mentioning the name "Shadowsun" is enough to make people shit bricks, because they know exactly who you're talking about.

Or maybe it's more of a cultural thing, places like Ultramar or Gue'vesa tend to use the original because they feel it's more respectful, whereas farther away places use translated names because they feel it gets the point across (the logic being "this person has what is supposed to be a name showing how awesome they are", translating it gets the cultural intent of showing off their deeds across).

Who knows, we and GW have been kind of inconsistent in how we translate things. Farsight and Shadowsun are referred to in the same sentence as O'Kais and Aun'Va.

(cont.)

Lastly, there's the caverns just below the surface. They would be designed for heavy civilian traffic, with the exception of one dedicated to weapon housings for banks of anti-ship missiles/lasers(less prone to secondary explosions compared to macrocannons), fed by ammo dumps/power plants further down. Air reprocessing plants would whir away to keep surface air clean and breathable without a mask and preventing death by suffocation underground. Around the Hive City would be at least one cavern dedicated as bunkers for civilians to be evacuated to in case of an enemy assault.

The rest, I'm not fully sure about. There would be offices that couldn't gather the capital and political clout to claim a spot 'downtown', aka the Hive City where the big players are, and residential areas that try to simulate the day/night cycle for those who don't live in the city. Some of these might be for the people who don't want to live in the crowdedness (and sometimes, squalor) of a densely-packed urban area and can afford to use the transportation lines(massive underground subways?)/personal transports but just aren't wealthy enough to live in the upper regions of the spires, while others can't afford the transportation they need for a paying job outside of the city. With housing comes stores and markets, so at least one of the caverns would essentially be an oversized shopping mall, likely oriented towards the rich and the middle class, who have the time and money to travel to and buy goods there.

Also, batteries for solar/wind farms on the surface? Such a resource likely wouldn't be left unused, considering that the Imperium is actually trying to keep Terra from becoming a dirty rock in this AU. Terra's hive cities have far more space to work with than most hive cities, which is why reason my suggestions went the hybrid 1950s-modern direction, but these suggestions probably have a logic flaw in them somewhere, so take them with a grain of salt.

They were basically a bunch of Ancient Greeks/Celts genetically modified, handed lasers, and told to go shoot the skeleton-looking guys. I imagine normal methods of control were not on the table.

Are you me? I was thinking of a similar idea to expand what had been said before about how Eldar have mandatory military service to knock the crazy out of the heads of the youth (to explain why there are so many Guardians running around).

The first Craftworld to ever develop a standing militia, as opposed to an as-needed defense force was (as in canon) Ulthwé and its Black Guardians. In contrast to other Craftworlds, Ulthwé didn’t have the luxury of only having a part-time army, due to being in the orbit of the Eye of Terror. Even after Cadia was built up as a second bulwark, the Black Guardians were still necessary to keep the Craftworld from being overrun.

The second Craftworld to create a standing militia, and the one whose model most of the other Craftworlds followed, was surprisingly enough Craftworld Biel-Tan. The autarchs of Biel-Tan saw the advantages of mandating military service. Shortly after the War of the Beast and the union between the Steward and Isha, human military had been pushing for greater Eldar involvement in military affairs. The Eldar had been extremely helpful in providing intel, but when it came to actually fighting they either provided no help or provided a pittance of Aspect Warriors. At the same time, the population of Biel-Tan was getting restless. The youth of Biel-Tan had been energized by the rescue of Isha, seeing it as the rebirth of the Eldar Empire, and were itching to reclaim worlds. However, though many of Biel-Tan’s youth were eager, they were untested and naiive to the battlefield.

(cont.)
The autarchs of Biel-Tan saw a way to turn this political landscape to their advantage. Form Guardian militias out of the war-hungry youth and send them off as auxillaries to aid the (at that time) all-human Imperial Guard. No fancy Aspect Warrior gear, just the basics. Show them what war is really like, not enough to kill them, but enough to get the aggressiveness and overconfidence kicked out of them. Those who found war to not be to their liking would nevertheless have battlefield experience, and be unlikely to freeze on the battlefield in the event that they would be called upon to defend their Craftworld. Those that still harbored a taste for the battlefield would prove experienced aspirants for the Aspect Temples.

While it may seem surprising that other Craftworlds would follow Biel-Tan’s lead, when Ulthwé had come up with a similar idea years before, it becomes less so when one considers Eldar cultural influences. Ulthwé was always seen as an odd duck amongst the Craftworlds, and the Craftworld’s customs were its own. Biel-Tan was the center of Eldar culture, and for many years Biel-Tan dictated overall Eldar cultural trends. Iyanden was the only other major pole of Eldar culture at the time, and Iyanden wanted no part in any attempt to cooperate militarily with the mon-keigh.

That was the basics of what I had so far, the rest was an expansion of what had been suggested before.

The purpose of serving in the Guard auxilla from the Eldar point of view is not to cultivate martial perfection, like an Aspect warrior, though many often strive to perform well regardless. Instead, the point of this lesson is to teach and reinforce discipline and self-control learned in their younger years on the Craftworlds. Eldar have a tendency to get emotionally overwhelmed. If you can keep your emotions in control on the battlefield, you can keep them in control anywhere.

(cont.)
This may seem barbaric, but in truth the galaxy is such a big place that the vast majority return home unharmed or even without seeing combat. An Eldar's stint in the militia can be as dangerous as a war for Armageddon or as mundane as serving as a guard for an important Administratum center. There are also slight variations between Craftworlds. Iyanden, for example, only began mandating military service until after the battle with Hive Fleet Kraken, and even then only for the Navy. The casualty rate in general is very low (and to be honest, even on battlefields, casualty rates for humans tend to be proportionately higher than for Eldar, because Eldar tend to be better at avoiding fire).

On top of that, the system is still heavily biased in favor of the Eldar. An Eldar is only expected to serve the same amount of time as a human Guardsmen (few decades), which most Eldar do and get on with their life, whereas Guardsmen who retire (if they retire) do so because of old age (the average guardsmen doesn't get rejuvenants, after all). From the Eldar's perspective, it benefits them and gets the non-Eldar parts of the Imperium off their back (though the Imperium didn't necessarily want a militia, they would have probably been happy with more Aspect Warrior support or Eldar technology for guardsmen, both of which would be less favorable).

Additionally, normal Guardians are never sent to the worst battlefields in the galaxy, the gate worlds of Ulthwé and Cadia. That is the sole domain of the Ulthwé Black Guardians, except in times of crisis like during a Black Crusade.

i have no idea how to even start drawing that

So how inherently dangerous is an eldar youth compared to a human? They are tall and rangy but is the inhuman grace inbuilt or a learned thing?

Keep in mind that they are still following the plans left by Perty and extrapolating from there based on his notes, and previous designs.

They were interlocking fortresses that turned the planet into a fortress but they were not prisons and were actually nice to live in. It was suggested way back when, unless I'm imagining it, that the original hives were stepped pyramids in basic shape with the steps supporting what are no ancient forests of fruiting trees that look like romanticized primeval forests full of fruit.

Point is it would be Rivendel or Lothlórien as much as Helms Deep or Minas Tirith .

I would say a bit of half and half. They are naturally slightly more agile than humans with and have a better sense of balance but this is honed over time. a human hits a peak when they know what their body can do but the body hasn't started to fall apart yet.

Eldar don't fall apart until the very end centuries later. In all that time their natural aptitudes are honed. When they go off on their adolescent hormonal aggression binge they are in their late 30 - early 50s. At tat point they are not massively more ninja than a human of 30 years in good condition.

But after not many years past that the human starts to decay with age. The eldar remains in their prime and they just keep getting more and more graceful until they hit a hard limit on what they are capable of. This limit is reachable for a truly exceptional human of the sort that either ends up as a winner in interstellar gymnastics competitions or recruited by the Assassins if found early enough.

Then you get the exceptional eldar who live on the path of the Aspect Warrior. They are far superior to the average eldar and when you combine that with centuries of training and exercise and that harsh lessons of the Long War you get something truly horrifying.

Thankfully by that point they have calmed down a lot.

Warlocks and Seers can look like they are dodging bullets sometimes by this inhuman grace coupled with the precognition.

You have no idea how happy it makes me that there is a Fulgrim to look forward to.

How far have the Tau spread across the Imperium with access to better travel and a friendly Imperium?

I would say that they have sent missionaries out to spread the good news of the Greater Good quite far, mostly so that they could surreptitiously see if what the Administratum scribes and ambassadors were saying was true. Actual missionaries don't go more than a hundred light years past their old border.

The ones that have made it as far as the Daisy Chain have had their little minds blown. Despite the comforting insistence from the high ups back home the delusions of their importance in the galaxy has been stripped away.

Don't forget that Eldar are capable of selectively expressing parts of their DNA based on whatever path they are on via some kind of epigenetic effect. In canon you hear about it most for those on the path of the Warrior and the Seer, but it seems to be present for all paths. Those on the path of the Warrior are literally more swole than average, and those on the path of the Seer literally have more psychic kick than average, traits that turn off if or when Eldar leave the Path.

My guess is it has something to do with the Eldar's bizarre method of organizing DNA ("megasomes" in Xenology), since epigenetic effects in Earth organisms are often based on DNA physically blocking RNA from binding to protein sites and extra thick chromosome analogues would be perfect for that.

Thick basic genetic organisation (and hence the ease with which the Eldar could be messed with) may have been what drew the Old Ones to Shaa-Dome in the first place, like the proto-Orks and their regenerative ability.