Nobledark 40k part 52: Szarekh Does Not Serve Edition

"Nuhnuhnuhnono. No. This is a bad idea Oscar, I can't let you do this."

"I'm doing this, Arik, whether you like it or not."

The two gold-clad figures, the last Man of Gold and the gilded man who had watched his back since the Warlord’s armies had first marched out from Terrawatt, briskly walked down the halls of the Imperial Palace. The Steward had given the order to let the Orks be heard and had told the Administratum adept to have someone escort the Ork “diplomats” to have an audience in front of the assembled military commanders of Old Earth in the war room. If the Orks suddenly felt they had something important to say he wanted everyone to hear it.

"With all due respect this is likely some sort of trap. Most likely a spy to send information back to the Beast or some kind of sabotage ploy. They're Orks. Diplomacy just isn't in their nature. Since when have the Orks ever shown any signs of higher intelligence?"

"When we found out they had built an empire at Gorro. When we found out that it wasn't the only one. When we found out they could organize themselves into a galaxy-spanning WAAAGH!"

Arik groaned, but Oscar knew that response. He had won this debate, for now.

Having reached their destination, the door slid open for the two men and the two entered the war room. As the Steward entered the war room from the side, he looked over at the numerous non-primarch generals of the Imperium, who were debating the best course of reaction over the map of the Sol system and its immediate neighbors in the center of the table. In the Steward’s absence, they had picked up where the Steward had left off, arranging for the inevitable Siege of Terra, as the Fabricator-General had called it.

Chief among them was the short woman standing at the side of the table, who seemed to be taking the lead in organizing the Imperium’s defense during Oscar’s momentary break, mostly by barking orders at men that were nearly twice her size. Honen Mu, former Uxor of the Geno Five-Two Chilliad.

Honen Mu was far from the most imposing figure, the recaff-colored, dark-haired woman being no more than five-foot flat and probably weighing only forty kilograms soaking wet, but by Terrawatt if she wasn’t one of the best strategists that Oscar had ever seen. Give her a regiment of soldiers, and within a few days she would have them dancing on the battlefield. Hers and the other guy’s.

When the Imperium had first encountered the Chilliad during the Unification Wars, Mu was already at the point where the rejuvenants wouldn’t do much more than prolong the use of the Chilliad’s psychic powers, or cept, which eventually burned out some time during the Unification of Sol. Although most Uxors retired to non-combat roles after their cept burned out, Mu had proved talented enough that she not only remained in the Imperial military, but had actually gotten promoted. She may have lost the cept that made Uxors of the Geno Five-Two Chilliad so dangerous in battlefield-level engagements, but she hadn’t lost any of her wider scale campaign management ability. Mu hadn’t been using her psychic powers as a crutch, she was genuinely talented at strategy. In terms of long-term theater-scale planning Guilliman was probably her only equal, and Oscar hated to think of what the two of them would do if they ever decided to go at it to see who the best was. Probably destroy half a sector in the process.

Attached: Geno Five-Two Chilliad.jpg (450x253, 48K)

“Mu,” he said, nodding to each of the generals in turn, “MaSade, von Asterberg, Temoc. How are things going?”

“The Imperium hasn’t fallen apart in the five minutes you stepped out to take a break,” Mu said, speaking for the assembled generals and administrators of the Imperium. “So I think we’re doing fair enough.”

“I trust you all heard the news regarding the visitors we are about to be receiving?”

“How could we not? Ork diplomats. Are you serious? When we it we made the messenger repeat herself just to make sure she hadn’t misheard something.”

On that note, the door on the far side of the room slid open with a hiss.

“And here are the figures of the hour,” Taranis muttered under his breath.

Three imposing figures strode into the room, led by another stuttering Administratum adept. There were three of them, a leader and two hangers-on, all heavy-set and ape-like in proportion. The two flanking figures were nearly seven feet in height, whereas their leader could probably look the Steward in the eye. The three were clad in simple robes, which obscured almost every feature of their body. If it weren’t for the reinforced leather armor on the figures’ joints and their leader’s three meter long iron staff, topped with a roaring metal Ork skull at the tip of the scepter, he would have thought they were kinebrach. The Administratum adept continued to gibber, though one would admit that would be the normal reaction to dealing with a figure twice their size.

“And…as you can see, the Steward is already here, awaiting your message,” he said, clearly trying to square away his diplomacy training with his natural fight-or-flight reaction, “Food and drink are available for all diplomats to the Imperium. And, of course, if you need an interpreter, all you need to do is ask.”

The lead ork reached up and pulled back his hood.

“Don’t need an interpreter. We tell you how to surrender, you surrender. Easy.”

Attached: Laughing ork.gif (1200x1200, 75K)

The silence in the room was palpable. The Imperials all looked at the Ork as if he had just stood up and spoke Gothic. Which, to be fair, he had. Not just Gothic at that, Oscar grimly noted to himself, but fluent Gothic. Yes, the intonation sounded like it came from a tortured Grox, but there was none of the hesitation, none of the misplaced emphasis typical of those who spoke Gothic as a second language. The Ork spoke Gothic as if he had spoken it his entire life.

The Ork seemed slightly bemused by the Imperials’ reaction, as if he was taking pleasure into finally stunning the yappy humies into silence. Nevertheless, he soon seemed to grow annoyed by the continued silence. He had a job to do here, and if the humies wouldn’t start the conversation, he would.

“Oh come on now, don’t look at me like that. Name’s Bezhrak. Here as a diplomat, just like I said, swear to Mork. I even brought you a little gift as a...whaddya call it...a peace offering.”

The Ork reached into his robe and pulled out a shiny, dark object, hefting it across the table. It resembled a Custodian's helm but with a red, ponytail-like crest and a narrower face visor. Oscar recognized that helm.

Jenetia Krole's helm.

Oscar's eyes darted to the Custodian, noticing his hand was gripped so tight around his guardian spear it would have probably left finger marks if it wasn't made of auramite.

"Taranis," he said, voice level, though he wasn’t sure if it was Taranis or himself he was trying to keep calm.

“Fought good and hard this one did. Made some of our Weirdboyz heads explode just by being near ‘em. Course, even the best warriors can’t hold up when you’re being piled on by a few hundred boyz at once. Killed nearly fifty of us before they finally went down. We know you humans have some weird rituals you perform whenever one of your best warriors gets killed, so we thought we’d bring what was left of her back as a token of…

Attached: Imagine this honeyed Ork voice trickling into your ears.gif (500x157, 2.57M)

"You monster!" Arik exploded, "Have you an idea what..."

Arik was obviously about to go on some moral spiel about how barbaric the Ork's actions were, but he was stopped by a sudden larger-than-usual excitement-induced coughing fit.

"And what are you going to do about it, shinyboy, cough blood all over me?"

Bezhrak sneered, before apparently remembering something.

“Oh, that reminds me. A mutual friend wanted me to pass this along to you.”

The Ork drew a coin from his robes and flicked it at the Steward, the coin bouncing across the table a couple of times before finally rolling to a stop at the Steward’s feet. It was a gold coin, albeit one that had been heavily stained with dried, blackened blood. Human blood, ork blood didn’t stain that color. The Steward didn’t want to know where that blood came from. Embossed on the face of the coin was a symbol that was very familiar to the Steward.

The symbol of Ursh.

"And what is that?" The Steward said, eyes darting to the symbol like he had just spotted a venomous snake.

"Oh, that? That's just a gift from an old friend of yours. Couldn't remember the chap's name, he just kept going on and on about all his titles. Said he was busy dealing with the khan, the priest, the slave, and the sorcerer, but he just wanted you to know he was back and that he'd get around to seeing you soon enough.”

“I highly doubt you were sent here just to give gifts. You said you had a message from the Beast? What is it?”

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“Want to get straight to business then. Respectable. All right then. The great Beast has you by the guts. Struggle, he’ll rip ‘em out. Surrender, and all you lose is your pride.”

“And that’s it,” the Steward said as dryly as possible.

“Well, you’d have to submit to Ork rule of course. We’ll even let you keep your homeworld, even though you took ours.”

All the mirth briefly disappeared from the Ork’s voice at that last line.

“Oh,” Bezhrak said, slipping back into the role of smooth diplomat, “One other thing. You tell us where the pansies are keeping the lead pansie that the other group of spiky pansies wants back. That gets them off our back and then, as far as we’re concerned, the war is over.”

“And what exactly would Ork rule look like?” the Steward said rhetorically.

“Oh I think you already know what that would look like,” Bezhrak said, a hit of smugness in his voice.

Indeed, the Steward did have some inclination as to what Ork rule would look like. When the Orks descended on a world, occasionally some of the local people would submit and worship them as gods, considering them agents of divine wrath made manifest. If there was one thing humanity seemed to excel at, it was convincing themselves to worship powerful natural entities as gods, something he knew all too well. Sometimes he really felt embarrassed by some of the things his species did. Those that the Orks deemed sufficiently Orky were allowed to fight alongside the Orks as cannon fodder, painting themselves green and firing autoguns into the air. Digganobz, they called themselves.

And the Steward had seen firsthand from the helmetcams of the Iron Warriors on Prax what the Orks did to those they deemed insufficiently orky. Turned into cattle, teeth knocked out and pumped up with steroids and growth hormones to the point that they could barely be described as bipedal, let alone human.

Attached: DIGGANOBZ.gif (500x281, 2.2M)

Brains insensate to the point that all they could do is open their mouths upon stimulation by light to have nutrient-filled industrial hoses forced down their mouths. Personally it almost reminded him of the Slaugth.

Bezhrak looked around the war room. “So?” he asked, his expression basically screaming that he was surprised the assembled humans hadn’t answered immediately “Give up or die? Choose.”

The room remained deathly silent. Bezhrak looked back to the other orks, as if seeking affirmation that they were all seeing the same thing, before turning back to the humans.

“Don’t want to die? Last chance?”

The Steward broke the silence.

“I think you know our answer.”

Bezhrak sighed.

“Useless,” he said, “worse than snotlings”.

He looked over to his fellows, throwing his hands up in exasperation.

“No reasoning with humans. They’re just illogical. Break ‘em, kill ‘em, eat ‘em, they understand that. Try to talk to them in terms they understand, and they turn around and do the exact opposite. They say they want to live but try and offer that to them and all of a sudden they want to fight, which is fine by me, but…”

"Enough."

The Steward's voice was flat and monotone, low but just on the edge of hearing. Almost more felt than heard.

"You send us veiled threats in the form of gifts. You give us an offer that we cannot possibly fulfill. This isn't a peace offering. It's intimidation. What is the purpose of all this?"

Bezhrak snorted.

“You look down on us. Call us ‘barbaric’. Look at us being proper Orky and think we’re dumb, think you’re better than us. Because you’re ‘civilized’. But look at us now. Look at what the ‘barbarians’ have done. It’s not the ‘civilized’ folk of the galaxy who beat you back all the way to your home planet and come knocking at your door, now is it? We’re much tougher than you give us credit for. You push us, we push back. You hit us on the head, and we become more clever. You try to kill us, and we just come back for another go.

And look where being ‘civilized’ has got you. You lot just let someone walk right into your halls and insult you all right to your faces. But you wouldn’t dare harm ‘em. Because they’re a diplomat. I mean, after all, it wouldn’t be the civilized thing to do.”

The Steward stood, his hand grabbing the ear of the chair and snapping it with a loud crack. His face was a mask of stone, only his eyes showing the sheer anger burning underneath.

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“I have, tried, time and again, to be reasonable. Tried to be optimistic, to assume the best in people. And I keep getting it thrown back in my face. Well then. Maybe it’s time I stopped being reasonable. Perhaps it’s time I get unreasonable.”

Bezhrak grinned, teeth and tusks bared.

“So what are you going to d…”

The Steward thrust his hand up in a claw-like gesture, palm facing him, the sheer psychic force stopping the Ork' retort in his throat. As if crushing an orange, the Steward slowly clenched his hand into a fist, the Ork’s body crumpling in time with the flexing of his fingers. As he died, the Ork screamed “WAAagh!”, like many of his kin. But it was a high-pitched, wheezing WAAAGH!, one that if people heard it would have sounded more like a cry of desperation than a battle cry. Though that may have just been the air being forced from his lungs. The Ork’s body burned with golden fire, spores erupting into golden motes before they could even hit the ground. If he didn’t know better, the Steward could almost have sworn he saw fear in those eyes.

The remains of what had once been the Ork known as Bezhrak hit the ground with a wet plop., both Orks and humans shocked by what they had just seen. Then the Steward snapped his head to look at the remaining Orks, methodical and almost robotic in his motion.

“I assume the rest of you are smart enough to carry a message?”

The Steward did not even wait for the Orks to answer.

“That”, he said, pointing at the fist-sized, leaking remains of the Ork on the ground, “That is my message. Go back to the Beast and tell him that is my answer to his demands. Now get out.”

Attached: No man threatens a messenger.gif (480x270, 6.06M)

The Orks left the room as quickly as they could, having seen what happened to their leader. The rest of the room looked between another, unsure as of what to do. Even Arik Taranis and Honen Mu seemed torn between whether they should come to the Steward's aid or leave him be. For most of the people in the room the Steward was their leader, and for many he was as close to them as a family member or a friend. However, they had also just seen their friend crumple a full grown ork into a lump the size of a beverage can. Finally, it was Mu who worked up the courage to break the silence.

"Are you...okay?"

Oscar took a moment to compose himself, taking a deep breath in and out. He had let his emotions get the better of him, and that was wrong. He wished Malcador was here. Malcador had known how to get through to him better than anyone else. It was times like this that he wished his adoptive father was still around.

“Yes,” he said, easing back into the role of stoic, unbreakable Steward of the Imperium, “I’m fine.”

“So what happens now?” Arik said, looking over at the remains of the ork on the ground. "It looks like diplomacy went about as well as expected."

“I don’t know,” the Steward said, once again feeling that gnawing feeling of uncertainty in his gut, “I just don’t know.”

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(same)
By the Throne, at least that half-assed Black Library novel is done. Anyway, here are the post-story notes to point out some of the reasons why things were written a particular way.

The omission of the primarchs from this meeting is very deliberate. This piece was originally meant to put a spotlight on the non-primarch figures of the Great Crusade: Malcador, Taranis, Mu, Krole (who isn’t present but her absence is felt). And also give some characterization to Mu, who we’ve mentioned as being one of the Steward’s top non-primarch generals but have never fleshed out. However, I’m not sure how quickly the primarchs would have returned to Earth, and if they were there they would have shown up (being Oscar’s top generals). The in-universe reason for Angron not making it was he was in the hospital at the time (either in hospice or just being treated), given he died shortly after the WotB. If the primarchs were there then it would have been them reacting to the Beast's demands instead of Oscar (because there's no way they wouldn't be there), and then we wouldn't get "ork in a cup".

Originally, it was supposed to be Malcador who was the one to ask if the Steward was alright (highlighting Malcador’s role as Oscar’s surrogate father), but then I found out Malcador had died of old age long before the War of the Beast. That meant of the two people left who had any characterization (Taranis and Mu), Mu was the most likely to reach out. Taranis would definitely give Oscar a bro-hug, but he would have done it behind closed doors where Oscar was no longer the Steward, but just Oscar. Am worried it comes out as a little wanky towards Mu though.

Also note how the narration changes based on the scene. The narration (and the characters) refer to him as the Steward primarily when he’s in public performing his job as Steward of humanity. It refers to him as Oscar when he’s in private or when his guard slips.

It’s been mentioned several times that the Beast’s fatal flaw was an excess of Wrath, EVEN COMPARED TO OTHER ORKS. Orks love fighting. They love fighting and winning even more. The Beast isn’t angry that the Imperium declared war on him. He’s angry that they took his empire from him. Not only that, but they did so in one of the most underhanded methods possible, by tricking him and then nuking him from orbit rather than facing him in Glorious Melee Combat. The Beast’s anger isn’t much different than if Ghazghull lost Makari (or vice versa), or in Fantasy Skarsnik’s despair at losing Gobbla, though the Beast let his anger rule him. The Beast’s anger gave him the motivation to unite most of the Ork race within a few years, but it also led him to making a lot of short-sighted, kneejerk decisions without thinking of the consequences like allying with four certain spectral dirtbags and trying to make a statement to the Imperium as opposed to just krumpin’ the gits.

Bezhrak (who if you couldn’t guess is also a survivor of Ullanor) is the Beast’s mouthpiece for his summation of the Imperium. The Imperium sits on its high horse looking down at the Orks. They look at them being proppa Orky and deem them barbarians, and use that as an excuse to do whatever they want to the Orks, despite the double-standard by Ork standards of the humies being just as warlike. Well you know what, being ‘barbarians’ has worked out pretty well for the Orks so far. And now look at where we are. Who’s laughing now?

The dialogue is a little wonky because I’m not sure if Orks can differentiate between human genders, since they have only one. In canon they’re said to have trouble telling normal humans apart unless they have a nice hat or are really memorable (Yarrick). Hence why Bezhrak referring to Isha and Krole is a little strange.

The mention of Oscar having regrets about agreeing to the Raid on Nurgle’s Mansion is based on something I realized a few threads ago. We know Oscar isn’t perfect. He’s made mistakes. Heck, Oscar likely keeps an actual book of what he considers to be his failings lying around after the whole incident with Lorgar. I was thinking about what other actions he would consider mistakes, when I realized that during the War of the Beast, up until the end of the Siege of Terra, it was likely that he might have considered the Raid a mistake. Consider the following. It wasn’t until Eldrad showed up at the Imperial Palace to lend a hand that the alliance really started to pay dividends. Eldrad showing up in spite of the fact that his people needed him too shows to Oscar that the Eldar are willing to hold up their side of the alliance, and sets the stage for the Raid really started to pay off after the end of the WotB.

It was also mentioned that Eldrad arranged the marriage between Isha and Oscar not only for political reasons, but to keep Isha stable. This could go both ways. If Eldrad didn’t show up at the Imperial Palace to help with the siege, in the unlikely event that Oscar survived, he would likely be bitter and vengeful towards the eldar because he would have seen them as running off and leaving humanity holding the bag. Then, without another biologically immortal being around for long-term social stability, Oscar would likely retreat into himself as his family died off one by one, preferring to surround himself only with his custom-made toy soldiers (the Custodes) who at the very least wouldn’t die on him of old age. There were probably grief counselors for the Men of Gold back in the DaoT, but there sure as hell aren’t any now. You would essentially get the canon Emperor a few millennia late. Isha and her court at the least keeps him grounded in the worst case scenario when there isn’t someone like Sebastian Thor around.

There were supposed to be three gifts from Bezhrak to play off the symbolic rule of three, but I couldn't think of a third given what we had. Indeed a lot of the throwaway references could be reworked.

And to anyone thinking it's weird for Orks to have diplomats, let me put it this way. It was even worse in canon. The High Lords of Terra acted like such dipshits that Bezhrak came off as the civilized, reasonable one in the room and seemed to actually be offering vassalage, rather than intimidation through diplomacy. Some of the dialogue directly parallels Bezhrak's speeches in canon to show the differences between the two universes. It was hard reworking some of Bezhrak's complaints because the Imperium here isn't responding like idiots.

Bezhrak's "zog you" summation could also probably use some work. I'm not sure if it came across right.

It's a good and evocative piece of work. You really do feel that the ork knew beyond cultural differences that he was taunting more than just relaying information and you do feel that he had it coming.

Pretty good.

How many different survivor civs are there? There's the Interex, Ultramar, I think Inwit counts, but I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting a couple.

Wait, there was an Okish envoy to the High Lords in CANON? Why have I never stumbled across that!?

So far we have...
Ultramar
Interex
Inwit
Colchis (have spaceships but never felt the need to go anywhere)
Diasporex (bit of a grey area since they are a xenos-human plurality)
Voidborn Migrant Fleet
Mechanicum of Mars and its Forgeworlds
Hubworld League (Squats)
Savlar (should not be counted as one, but got the protection because it was the only way the Steward could stop Mars from destroying the only remaining Neutronium facility in the galaxy in a pissing match)
Auretian Technocracy would be one if it lived. It may not have given it got destroyed by Horus in canon.

There are probably a few others. The general rule of thumb is have spaceship will travel...I mean are Survivor Civilizations. By the Steward's standards any of those civilizations could have spearheaded the reunification of mankind and were just as legitimate inheritors to the GaB Human Dominion as Earth was.

Yup. Google "The Great Beast has you by the guts", and you'll find mention of it pretty quick.

A great start for this thread. It was clear how much thought was put into the different characterizations and reasoning for actions, and the writing itself is pretty good for a "half-assed Black Library novel." Not sure if there's anything that could/should be pointed out with a single read-over. Any more plans for writing?

In addition to the ones listed, the Nobledark Member States page mentions Colchis and Necromunda. Savlar is also legally considered a Survivor Civ, although it probably wouldn't be if not for its neutronium exports, and the Hubworld League also falls under this designation.

Also, the Ork diplomats story above the Auretian Technocracy is mentioned to be negotiating with the Imperium, but the question of their fate post-WotB is left unanswered. Wiped out by hordes of Orks for their technological goodies? If they'd survived, their STC databases would have significantly helped the Imperium back onto its feet, but it has been kicked while it's down an awful lot during the WotB.

1d4chan.org/wiki/The_Beast
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheBeastArises
Yeah, the canon Ork diplomats were actually more civilized than user made them out to be here. It's insanity (likely the point).

Wow. And here I'd thought Orks couldn't grow beyond nomadic cannon fodder.

It is jot guaranteed that the SCP was for something super useful. It could be for a vending machine

How about the STC was for 'simple' terraforming technology? The Imperium will have a lot of world to recolonize after the Beast and well, might explain their miraculous recovery.

Should not be too miraculous. There should be no quick and easy fix for the devastation of The Beast.

>methodical and almost robotic in his motion

Which is exactly how Oscar should be when the gloves come off. Oscar is not human, he looks human(ish), acts human by habit because he was raised by humans and people like to think of him as human but he is not. When the chips are down he is a quasi-organic android and potentially very, very unsettling.

He hardly breathes, his heart beats on the occasion when he needs it to rather than constantly, he can remain in a stationary position for days at a time and when he moves it is with an inhuman and mechanical precision. All the funny little movements that people make unthinkingly he learned by copying people for their ease of mind.

I really like this story.

My only criticism is the use of "non-primarch" generals. It seemed unneeded and is jarring in that it makes it seem like the Steward does not value them as people as much as the primarchs when in this AU the Emperor isn't as into nepotism. But that's probably just me being incredibly picky.

Of course it isn't that miraculous - we have settled that the terraforming progress was slow, expensive and time consuming or very draining and requires physical presence of a goddess. I'm just saying that, maybe, that STC is what allows the terraforming to happen in the first place, that's all.

It could be that they had a pre-AoS Seed Bank of the old extremophile microbes and other simple organisms used in the early stages of terraforming.

Imperium could finish an old abandoned DaoT project that was abandoned half way through, it could repair old colony worlds so long as the environmental damage wasn't too extensive and they could terraform a world from scratch so long as it fell into an extremely narrow list of characteristics. The AdBio were making ground in tailoring things to extend the range of what they could do but progress was slow and it would take thousands of years for any real progress.

The Auretian Seed-Bank would allow worlds considered unworkable to be turned habitable in a practical time scale (by Imperium standards). Add to this an they had a few rather pathetic interstellar ships and they were contenders for Survivor Civ status.

WotB happens Auretia and it's colony worlds are stomped flat, it's fleets swept away and the majority of it's people exterminated. By some miracle the Seed-Bank survives intact.

Auretin Technocracy accepts inclusion into the Imperium as a Survivor Civ, as a Survivor Civ rather than a direct vassal they aren't entitled to the same level of charity in their rebuilding. They trade access to the Seed-Bank for a helping hand.

By the conclusion of the Macharian Crusade the Auretian Technocracy was rebuilt. Not to it's former glory, you can't just paper over the shit that happened to them, but to a functioning and prosperous society.

What was the symbol of Ursh?

Is this the origin of the 8 pointed star? If it is what symbol are the Cronedar using?

There's no way the Cronedar would be using a symbol the mon-keigh originally came up with. And if the symbols were exactly the same you'd think the Steward would have figured things out earlier since all these societies were not only worshipping the same pantheon but seemingly independently came up with the same symbol.

There was a mention last thread that the original, original use of the eight-pointed star may have been the symbol of the Old Ones that Chaos co-opted. This has even been suggested in canon based on the shape of the activated Blackstar Fortresses.

At the very least, you'd think Ursh would have some symbol of your own, since Oscar recognized the coin as Urshii rather than a generic coin with the Chaos emblem stamped on it.

Does Chaos have an alternative Symbol other than the star that we can steal from Vanilla for the coinage of Ursh and presumably the Bloodpact?

I like that. Not everything has to be ancient doomsday weapons.

I'd say that's taking it a bit far. He is still organic and has organs and DNA. Inhumanly precision but he isn't a robot.

What do we know of Inwit?

Original writefag here, has it more how it was intended to come across. Think of how when some people snap they seem to go into “safe mode” and become cold, methodical, and nearly unresponsive until the crisis has passed. The mention of it being “robotic” was more symbolic than anything else, to remind the reader that while Oscar looks and acts a lot like a baseline human, he isn’t. As shown by how Oscar crumples the Ork like a beer can immediately after. In Oscar’s case it might be a bit more literal than it is for normal people, though it wasn’t meant to come off as Oscar being a mandroid that just fakes being a person.

Case in point Oscar being mentioned to need rest. I wasn’t sure if Oscar needed to sleep, until I realized that given that geneseed in this timeline is at least partially reverse-engineered from (the Omophagea has been mentioned to be of the Druids) he probably has a Catalepsean Node. So he probably does need sleep, but a lot less than a baseline human and can probably get away with power naps most of the time.

We’ve also mentioned the lines between robot and human were extremely blurry during the Dark Age of Technology. The Men of Gold are a pretty good example of that. He has DNA and organs, but he was also custom built from scratch and probably has a lot of technically non-biological components like plastics. Oscar is biologically immortal, so he must have some way of growing those components naturally in his own body without outside help (which makes sense, as most plastics are just carbon compounds that nature hasn’t figured out how to make or degrade yet). There was a description of how the Men of Gold were built that was a good example of this. Whether he is a very human-like android or a very heavily modified human custom-built from scratch is an open question.

(same)
Indeed, the entire story can be summed up as “Oscar has a really bad day and is pushed to his breaking point”.

It's also worth noting that Bezhrak kind of got what he wanted out of the confrontation. He pushed Oscar until he lashed out and broke the rules of civility that Oscar held so dear by killing a diplomat whose only crime was being a complete asshole and taunting him (which was kind of Bezhrak's point). Heck, its highly possible that like in canon Bezhrak was probably unarmed during the whole thing. Yes, it got him killed, but he actually managed to keep the moral high ground.

It's like Robert E. Howard said, "Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing."

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Pointing out the fact that the generals there were the “non-primarch generals” is kind of a meta thing for the reader. I was just going to say “generals”, but then readers would go “wait a minute, the primarchs are the nineteen best generals the Steward has, where are they?” Answer is they are mostly out there organizing things on the front lines. Nobody expected the Beast to just teleport Ullanor past the battle lines and try to YOLO the Sol System. So now the primarchs are panicking and trying to get back to Old Earth before the Beast wrecks it, and Oscar has to work with the people's he's got at the moment who are planetside.

Khan, Magnus, Corax, and Lorgar have finished up with Doombreed and Magnus and Lorgar are on their way back to Earth.

From what I can tell from canon, Magnus, Lorgar, Vulkan, Russ, Sangunius, and Angron all were around for the Siege of Terra. Fulgrim and Ferrus Manus last I recall were said to be holding down Mars. Corax, Lion, Curze, Guilliman, Horus, and Perturabo did not. Dorn, Mortarion, Khan, and the twins are unknown.

Suggestions for how to better word that would be appreciated.

>but he actually managed to keep the moral high ground.

Depends on what standards you believe in. Someone intentionally taunting someone with the promise of death and worse of trillions of their citizens and their dead daughter with the intention of provoking a reaction has no right to complain when they get a reaction. Not being able to handle the reaction and having to go home in a soup mug does not mean you won, it means you're a moron who miscalculated spectacularly.

Should have rephrased that. By Ork standards, he had the moral high ground by showing how hypocritical the Imperium was in his eyes (basically, to Bezhrak, the Imperium is just as uncivilized as the Orks are but they're just putting on airs). To everyone else he was a moron and a bully who didn't show much of anything, because everyone who is not an Ork knows that if you're threatened with complete annihilation sometimes civility has to be put to the side for a while.

Just my suggestion. The coins themselves are octagonal. On one side is the head of whatever Despot they were minted in the reign of and the year date, Ursh date is counted from the founding of Ursh.

On the other side is typically four circles one inside another with a simple cross over/through them.

Around the edge is some sort of text in Palace Urshii, the ceremonial and legal language of that realm. What it says depends on the day it was minted but is typically a snippet of unholy scripture.

Bar a few examples saved for posterity all the Ursh coinage on Old Earth was melted down.

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In canon, the only thing ever said about the Auretian Technocracy beyond they were a peaceful multistellar power is they were killed for their STCs by the corrupted Horus, who used them to bribe Kelbor-Hal into turning on the Imperium (at least that's what Lexicanum says, I haven't read False Gods). Which suggests whatever the Auretian Technocracy had it had to be sufficiently interesting to get the AdMech's attention. But then again the Mechanicus have always gotten excited about STCs. In canon when two guardsmen found blueprints for a mono-molecular knife both were rewarded with a planet each.

That said, I like the idea that most of the Auretian's STC designs were for terraforming. The only thing is I think it's been said the Imperium were capable of terraforming worlds back during the Crusade, then lost it afterwards. There was a mention of terraforming in the Beast Arises series.

Of course, there's nothing stopping the Auretian's STCs from being something that made terraforming substantially easier.

Did we ever get a timeline on the Mechanicus Civil War sorted out?

No, nor did we decide if Kelbor Hal just suppressed knowledge of Chaos (and the things in Noctis Labyrinthus after his adventure there) and was deposed for gross incompetence so bad it caused the biggest schism in Mechanicus history short of the Iron War itself, or if he actually went nuts just following the War of The Beast and split the Mechanicus himself, and was killed in the resulting war.

I doubt that the Beast would have as much to offer him as Horus did. I'm more in favour of him getting removed for incompetence.

It might not be that it was lost so much as they can't afford the time or expenses.

With the preservation of the Seed-Bank the expense is far less, though it still takes a long ass time.

Beast wanted the Seed-Bank because terraformed worlds are good for growing orks.

Presumably the interstellar nation was named after the homeworld indicating that for most of the AoS it was only one world of note that, when the Warp Storms started to lessen, started colonizing it's neighbours. Perhaps the neighbour worlds were empty, perhaps they were occupied by regressed primitives, either way is irrelevant as Inwit was the one with the cool shit so they made the rules.

In Vanilla they are known to have hives at least partly carved from ice. Given the structural properties of ice I'm going to have very big doubts about that. More likely they have hives covered in ice.

Which begs the question of why anyone would want to live there. In the DaoT mankind was at it's apex (even if they weren't the ones calling the shots in the last days of the GaBHD) and could choose to live anywhere that didn't have eldar already camping on it. To that end I'm going to suggest that Inwit wasn't always a frozen shit hole. For most of it's inhabited history it was quite warm but then it started to cool not long after the onset of Old Night and with out the DaoT toys they couldn't fix the problem and ad to adapt.

Originally the planet was a little too colt to be made habitable but the Iron Minds, in the early days of the Iron Minds when they were just notably better than Men of Iron but not yet very godlike, made a whole bunch of silver foil solar mirrors to bathe the planet in additional light and warmth. Then they started to terraform. This was later then the terraforming of Stillness and as such had much better techniques available, doing what should have taken a thousand years in just a few hundred. Given the extended human life spans of the era this was ridiculously fast from a social stand point.

Inwit is 80% water coverage when the ice has finished melting with no landmass bigger then about half the size of Madagascar. Soon there is grass growing on the land, fish in the sea and people claiming beach side properties. This is the Inwit Golden Age.

This lasts for a bout 1,800 years (subject to change if the dates don't add up right). Then the Eldar Empire ruins everything for everyone forever. The Iron Minds go bonkers, war destroys most of the good shit on the surface, the planetary archives are part of the local Iron Mind and so they have to essentially burn all the libraries to remove it and they have to do it too quickly to print off hard copies assuming that they could even do that at all by that point and not have the printer shit out deamons. Everything goes Mad Max + Waterworld with occasional outbreaks of Event Horizon. As the planet was mostly a holiday resort sort of place there weren't too many later stage Men of Iron so the Iron Mind's ability to directly Terminator everyone was not as great as it could have been. Inwit was also a long way down the list for getting a Man of Gold so that wasn't an issue at least. Some clever and quick thing king bastard not saying that it was Tiberius but it probably was a Tiberius managed to disconnect the solar mirrors from central control so that the Iron Mind couldn't turn them away from the planet and let them all freeze or try and use them as a magnifying glass and laser people from orbit.

Mankind survives on Inwit and starts trying to rebuild. Actually manage to survive with some degree of sophistication. Nowhere near what they were like before but they were still capable of building star ships after a fashion and building something from the ashes.

Then orks loot the solar sails because they were nice and shiny. Then orks start kicking the shit out of Inwit in a harrowing 40 year war as the ice caps expand and the glaciers march down from the mountains, crops fail, fish die, temperature dwindles, eternal winter is here again. Silver lining is that the orks can't propagate in permafrost so Inwit didn't have that problem. they did eventually manage to kill all the orks and to their horror rescued a whole bunch of human slaves.

They learn from the slaves that this shitshow isn't just confined to this patch of space. The GaBHD has fallen. Utterly fallen. Fallen so hard that no two stones are left atop one another levels of cast down. Up unitll then the Inwit had kind of hoped it was just their Iron Mind that had shit it's cogs and that help would arrive at some point from Earth or one of the other old hubs of civilization. And winter was coming now in earnest.

The seas were freezing and everything was shit. The move their cities to the levels above the estimated places where the ice sheets will reach and start to give serious consideration to hydroponics green houses.

By the time Dorn and his merry band of Calbi fuckwits arrive Inwit considered Earth to be a thing from the history books. They assumed that there was no other surviving humanity left among the stars. When ever they had sent their ships out they had only ever encountered Orks and Eldar pirates and mass graves and fields of bones. They were quite happy that they knew they were not alone, that someone somewhere was surviving.

They apply for inclusion into the Imperium as a Survivor Civilization for that sweet, sweet protection deal. Out of all the Survivor Civs they were the most compliant with Mars and it's decrees about technology for the reason that they had the most to gain by submitting and importing masses of tech-adepts. Inwit technology was advanced enough to make an interstellar fleet capable of fucking up ork raiders and deterring pirates but only barely. Thy didn't have artificial gravity, they didn't have void shields that were capable of being affixed to a star ship, their warp drives were slow and inaccurate, their ship weapons were mostly variations of rail gun and fusion warhead and every engagement they had fought had been very costly. And they knew that they were only fighting small fish and that sharks would swallow them and not even notice.

How often do Dreadnaughts awaken and what sort of life do they have in this AU?

Makes you wonder what they did with The Beast's body after the Slaying of The Beast.

Burned it, most likely.

Would there have been some sort of ceremony to it?

Almost certainly not. Probably had the Steward, Magnus, and Eldrad in attendance to ensure nothing bad happened with all the evil juju he had been pumped up with, but no ceremony.

I wasn't even sure if there was a corpse left at first but Eldrad's bio says that "just" the chest was turned into charcoal.

But yeah, they wouldn't have given him a ceremony. Bastard didn't deserve it.

much more advanced and integrated cybernetics, ability to remove enough armor in downtime to not feel like they're stuck in a coffin, and even longer lifespans. That's not even starting on the rare wraithguard/dreadnaught composite designs that various adepts excommunicated by Mars and the OMB have made over the years.

>ability to remove enough armor in downtime to not feel like they're stuck in a coffin

I had not heard of this.

I had not heard of this before either. I was under the impression that usually by the time they put you in a dreadnaught you are like the late Steven Hawking (RIP) but without the physics degree. Much of the time you don't even have arms without a sarcophagus.

I like that they might have a better quality of life with better interface with their dreadnaught shells and such but having them capable of living a normal life kind of ruins the idea of the sacrifices they make.

Agreed. Especially regarding the sacrifice thing. At best there are attempts at better quality of life, but they still probably spend most of their remaining life sleeping. A dreadnought chassis is definitely something you don't want to be stuck in.

I like the image that they do what they can for them. It's not healthy in mind or body to have them sleep for centuries at a time without a break. They wake them up at regular intervals and take them on walks around the grounds perimeter, Space Marines aren't generally ones for parades and most of the time it's at least in part to give the Living Interred a change of scenery and meet new people for a couple of days. They get invited to film nights in the great hall. Some of them even come in as speaking guests for the neophytes to teach them first hand history or philosophy. Mostly they do still sleep though that might be partly because of the drugs.

Most of them are in some measure of constant discomfort, mortal wounds endured for centuries and longer. Space Marines do have neural shunts and such things to filter out and block the pain signals but they still feel the pain as an informative message rather than it actually being painful. But they do still feel something. As a result most of them are on some sort of pain killers when at home and it's often pretty strong stuff just to effect their super human flesh. Makes them drowsy. They stop dripping the morphine into their box and IV tubes when they are on missions, they need to keep sharp.

As the years pass they also have less and less reason to stay awake. Their friends who knew them when they lived all die eventually and they remain like some sort of living fossil surrounded by feckless children and strangers. They can request termination, it's a simple and easy process. Painless also. They just give you all the morphine, switch your heart off and pass a very large electric current through the brain. Death is more or less instant. Few ever ask for it. Dreads are heroes of the Imperium, Heroes die in battle holding the line like good soldiers. Pride makes them linger on into the darkening twilight, pride and spite.

Sometimes they do die in their sleep. Space Marines are not immortal.

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I think works. The nature of a Space Marine Dreadnought means the pilot will never have the same life that their comrades will, but they are still regarded as human as their brothers.

>As the years pass they also have less and less reason to stay awake. Their friends who knew them when they lived all die eventually and they remain like some sort of living fossil surrounded by feckless children and strangers.

Damn. Dark, man. Though what you write is kind of what nobledark settings are about. People try their best to help each other, even though the world generally deals them a shit hand.

IIRC, it was mentioned in this timeline that the Emperor and Bjorn know each other. They didn't originally, Bjorn was just another rank and file soldier who went on the Raid to Oscar (at best he might have remembered Bjorn in passing as someone Leman recommended as one of his best soldiers, then the guy who led the Vlka Fenryka after Leman vanished), but as the years went on as more and more of the veterans of the Crusade-era died Oscar and Bjorn found themselves in increasing contact with one another simply because they were some of the few people who remember the good old days. Oscar has been known to ask for Bjorn's opinion on things like the current tyranid situation since he's lived through everything from the War of the Beast to the Harrowing.

Busy day bump.

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I don't recall seeing this before. Is it new?

It's meant to be dark, being a Dread sucks. Tankred and Bjorn put a brave face on it but nobody ever wants to be one.

Given their more integrated into humanity nature some of them might be able to get jobs as military advisors to the PDF and local IG regiments.. They do have thousands of years experience.

I'd like to add to this that Inwit knew what they were doing in terms of technology, the AdMech didn't pull a fast one on them. They essentially accepted stagnation of their technological development for the future for a massive tech-boost right now. Future was uncertain and they knew that it was far more likely something big would happen to them before they got to the level of anything approaching the Imperium.

What should their religion and culture be like?

They seemed to place a big emphasis on stoicism and toughing things out in canon. That's partially where canon Dorn got it from. That said they don't seem to be ice Spartans, canon Dorn remembers his adopted grandfather highly.

If their tech is so low (compared to the Imperium) then they would have to make up for it with cunning. They will abandon ground but they will be planning to retake it later. Also enjoy your IED picnic.

Wait a minute, but Inwit had interstellar travel. That's how they got to be a Survivor Civilization. They had a small interstellar empire in canon.

Doesn't mean it was as fast as the Imperium's also they didn't have Navigators.

Did Ultramar have Navigators?

How widespread are Navigators since they were engineered in the DaoT? How did the Imperium get them under their wing? Was it like Mars and the Voidborn where the Sol-born group established themselves as head honcho of the rest or are they technically a mercenary group? The presence of the Navis Nobilite on the High Lords suggests the latter is not the case.

Also it just hit me that if in canon the Q'orl were able to carve out an interstellar empire visible on the galactic map without Warp engines and Navigators (which is stated to be their big weakness in canon) there must be some way to move throughout space without jumping blindly into the Warp or depending on sleeper ships. Makes the idea we have here of it possible to have (relatively) reliable travel over short distances with stable Warp currents more plausible.

Ultramar may have survived with the right combination of close enough together, surviving global infrastructures and a natural trend for mild local warp currents that it could make do without Navigators. Or it did have a few local families of them as part of it's old pre-Guilliman Reforms nobility.

The Navigators may not have been as centralized as they are now with each extended family being a law unto themselves. They would have been extremely involved with the Void Born as the Void Born were everywhere, had the most ships and were the group that did the most long distance traveling and would therefore have needed them most. Also reading what we have up on Horus it looks like the VBs were predominantly interstellar traders and often quite rich by the somewhat shit standards of the time. The Navigators like rich, they would quite happily have sold their services for a cut of the profit.

Therefore the Navigators, ever astute, could see what direction the wind was blowing when Horus united all of their Void Born associates/friends into a singe cohesive nation and signed his people and by extension theirs on to the Imperium. With typical Navigator cunning, or at least the cunning of the Navigator Elders and the obedience of their kin, they start selling their services on mass to the Imperium in both it's Trader Fleet and Navy. Made easier by both of those having large amounts of their VB friends already in position of some influence.

Navigators unite into a single fractious institution and use their monopoly on their strange ability to apply for and receive a seat at the High Lord's table. As an Imperial institution rather than a nation within a nation the Navigators continue to hold power all down the ages whereas the Void Born fracture back into disparate tribes upon the death of Abaddon the Last.

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Is it possible to un-deamon a deamon world?

Possibly, with enough rip-and-tearing. The problem is that the cost in lives, materials, manpower, and time required to achieve sufficient rip-and-tearing is so prohibitive as to not be worth it in most instances. And this is with elite units like a Space Marine chapter factored in; without big boys like that in play, Exterminatus is pretty much the only option.

It should be noted that Exterminatus usually doesn't even work on daemon worlds in canon. As said in the Ciaphas Cain novels, after a certain point Exterminatus stops becoming an option because the world isn't all there anymore. Most daemons worlds are places where the Laws of Physics become Kindly Worded Suggestions of Physics and conventional weaponry doesn't even work.

Of course usually by that point the world has been pulled into the Warp by the Dark Gods. Most daemon worlds in canon are in the Eye, the Hadex Anomaly, the Maelstrom, or other such holes in the boundary between reality and the Immaterium.

It's possible to reclaim a world that has a significant daemon incursion (Armageddon is a good example of this in canon), but to reclaim a world in the Warp or the Eye would probably require pre-Fall Asuryan levels of power.

Created it for use in the Leman Russ Mk. 24 pic to show the size of the MBT even after its height was reduced by over a meter. I thought I'd posted it before, but it seems I must've forgotten to. Left side is a Guardian, right side is a Guard tank operator armed with a lascarbine.

Nobledark seems to follow the same rules as canon on this one. It's possible to stop the transition of a planet into a daemon world with enough firepower/luck/magical intervention, but once it's done not even Exterminatus is guaranteed to work.

Bump.

I could see Ultramar having a few Navigator families. Like the Void Born, the Navigators seem to have been all over the galaxy pre-Great Crusade but in dispersed unorganized clans and houses that had contact with one another maybe once every 50 years. Horus was unusual in that he was basically the Genghis Khan/Modu Chanyu of the Space Roma and was able to organize what were normally a bunch of disorganized clans into a single force that could make waves.

Navigators have always been more interested in internal organization than Void Born were because they have to make sure the Navigator families keep producing Navigators. Navigators have an additional reason to want a say in Imperial policy because they have always been a lot more worried about prejudice against them. Void Born could be written off as pale skinny humans and can fuck off into deep space where no one can find them if things get too hot. Navigators are clearly different from the beginning, get weirder as they get older, and people tend to keep a closer eye on them because they are necessary for space travel.

Ironically, the fact that the Navigators were always so obsessed with interactions between is what keeps them from fragmenting like the Void Born did after Abbadon died.

Nope, hence why it was mentioned with the Ork Diplomat story above some details are probably going to have to be changed. We had floated the idea of another High Lord being killed during Vangorich's rampage than the Fabricator-General (though the Assassins taking down what is probably the most heavily augmented individual in the Imperium is awesome, it makes the Mechanicus Civil War have less impact).

We did say that Kelbor-Hal's problem was he didn't stomp down on the assholes like Anacharis Scoria who came back from the wilderness of the galaxy with "enlightenment".

I do like the idea that the Steward dreaded working with Zagreus Kane until he found out he was the exact opposite of Kelbor-Hal. Kelbor-Hal would tell you what you want to hear but not mean it. Zagreus Kane was blunt, harsh, and uncompromising, but he believed in the truth above all else, rewarded those under him who performed beyond expectations, understood when it was necessary to be brutal and when it was not, and didn't treat the rest of the Imperium like tools to be used.

I like this idea. Gives you the idea of an egocentric dictatorship without hitting you over the head with the eight-pointed star being painted on everything.

Also considering that Ursh was originally not Chaotic and only became corrupted with Kalagann's successor, it makes sense they would use a different symbol.

Honestly Kelbor Hal's place as unifier of Mars, Olympus Mons Brotherhood supremacist, suppressor of knowledge of chaos, etc sets him up as somewhat similar to canon Emps, much like the Mechanicus is a microcosm of canon preserved in the AU. Hal's fall by the end of Great Crusade and War of The Beast is an interesting parallel to the canon Emperor's.

Kane I can see being loved more by the Imperium at large than his own people, given the purge.

How long was Ursh sane for? Was it the immediate successor to Kalagann who went wrong or did things look hopeful for a while?

How do you go about un-Grimdarking a setting? Looking to do something similar for Shadow of the Demon Lord. Should I just write a whole new setting? Are there specific mechanics that push or reinforce a Nobledark / Noblebright setting (the way Insanity, Madness, and Corruption push horror)?

I wrote a thing.

A squad of men with chemical sprayers walks over a burned field, churned by tank treads and artillery fire, clad in bulky grey protective suits and bug- eyed masks. One of them spots something, and points- a green fungal stalk, pushing its way out of the abused soil. They surround it and hose it down, the growth visibly withering under the fungicidal assault. One of them plants a small flag, marking the spot for follow- up crews. Dozens, hundreds of other squads walk beside them, in a loose line stretching out to either horizon.

In a half- forgotten underhive sump, a charnel mound of corpses a dozen deep, blood shaded black under red low- power lighting. An apparent Guardsman walks in and ambles over to the body pile, inspecting it. Suddenly, a charnel beast lunges from the center of the pile in a welter of gore, something like what you would get if a Catachan Devil fucked a bale of razor wire and then a surrealist madman tried to create a sculpture of the resulting offspring in obsidian, wrapping sadistic tendrils around the man and dragging him into the mound. Then the melta bomb embedded in the lifelike servitor's chest detonated. A dozen twists and turns back, a pair of enginseers prepared another suicide servitor; they weren't sure how many creatures there were.

The carbonized remains of spore towers rise high above the ground, the stench of promethium and phosphorus still thick in the air. A team of engineers bustle around the base of one, planting explosives, before retreating to a safe distance. With a muffled thump, the spore tower falls to the ground, crumbling, sending up a thick wave of choking black soot. Tens of thousands more remain, thin streams of ash drifting from their peaks in the wind.

Endless rows of holding cells, each containing a person. Bound and restrained in their beds, to prevent them from hurting themselves or the orderlies tending them, fed by IV lines. Lost deep in chaotic madness. Servitors move among the cells, refilling IV bags and changing bedpans. Monitoring machines beep and whir, filling endless reams of printouts with the jagged lines of brainwave and heartrate. Psykers and psychologists consult in low tones, flipping through thick case files. Several stories above, the Interrogator reads the summaries with a careful eye. He has two stamps; {MOVE TO LONG TERM TREATMENT} and {EUTHANASIA RECOMMENDED}. He uses the first hardly at all and the second a great deal. He is very, very tired.

An engineering vehicle beats the dirt with its mine flail, sending up sprays of dust punctuated by the occasional explosion. The engineering battalion had been here before a few months ago, when they laid the minefield down; now the battle was over, the enemy repelled, and they had to remove it. A mine that somehow escaped the flail detonated beneath the track, making the machine lurch; its hatches opened and its crew spilled out, shaken but unharmed, to make their way back to safety. A tank recovery vehicle moved into action, carefully traveling down the cleared track to haul the mine- clearing vehicle back out. The wrecks of two more vehicles left sitting at the edge of the minefield, enginseers fussing over them, show that this isn't the first time this has happened.

After the battle, cleanup. War is a messy thing, especially where most of the Imperium's enemies are concerned.

Orks and tyranids scatter spores wherever they go. Dark Eldar and Croneworlders delight in leaving behind an incredible array of hideous booby- traps. Nurgle's followers leave behind his myriad gifts, those of Tzeentch subtle sorceries. The Imperium itself tends to scatter unexploded ordnance when it goes to war, from land minds to dud artillery shells. Once the fighting has concluded, there is still a great deal of work to be done before the battlefields can be turned back to other purposes. Years, decades, sometimes centuries of work.

There is no unified authority for taking care of these issues. The Imperial Army has the Office of Battlefield Reclamation and its array of specialized engineering regiments. A number of Sororitas orders, both Militant and Hospitaller. The Inquisition deals with the human wreckage, sorting the still clean from the irremediably tainted. A great deal of the burden falls on the afflicted planets themselves.

No matter who does it, in every case it is a long, difficult, expensive, and often thankless task. And an endless one as well; there are always more battlefields in need of cleaning, more wounds on the face of the galaxy to be turned into scars. The work continues.

Grimdark represents one of four possible results on an axis of noble-grim and bright-dark. Both axes represent different aspects of the world.

Bright/dark represents the nature of the world. In bright worlds life is generally nice. Dark usually means the universe is actively hostile and out to get you.

Noble/grim usually refers to the people of the setting. Noble settings generally run on the idea that people are at their heart good, and turn evil as a result of circumstance or by being the one jerk in a thousand who makes more jerks by proxy. In grim settings people are generally assholes who are only out for themselves at best.

Noble/grim also reflects individual agency. Noble settings run on the butterfly effect. A single decision can cascade down history until it has massive changes. Grim settings are static. It doesn't matter what an indivdual does, history is set to go a certain way (usually a bad way) through inertia.

Note that being a Noble setting does not protect you from bad shit. A BBEG who has benevolent motives which just happen to require mass genocide and ends up screwing the world for generations to come also fits with the definition of Noble (good motives, individual action) despite being evil as hell.

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It's good and evocative and gives a rewl scale of the work involved in the Impeium's wars.