WH40K's Imperium : Declining Civilisation?

[SolkaTruesilver]

While reading Dark Heresy, I realise how much the Imperium is using old weapons while not able to creating new ones. How the Tech priests uses old templates, and their ways of expanding the science is merely to search for older templates (older is better!). They are stuck into a Asimovian-like decaying Empire, where everything worked so well for so long that technicians did not needed to create new advanced technology for.. a long time..

You compare them to the Tau, who are using plasma weapon regulary, a technology that has been lost to the Imperium.. it makes you wonder how long the Imperium will last versus that younger and more prolific (and more creative) specie.

[Lord_Asmodeus]

I like Tau and all but... The only way they survive is if the Imperium gets distracted from killing them long enough for the countless millenia of war to finally take its toll and topple, and all the other factions are fighting over the rubble that was once the Imperium. Which is really a gamble. Its not secret that the Imperium has been going downhill for awhile, but its going to be a stretch to see if the Tau survive long enough to take advantage.

[SolkaTruesilver]

I like Tau and all but... The only way they survive is if the Imperium gets distracted from killing them long enough for the countless millenia of war to finally take its toll and topple, and all the other factions are fighting over the rubble that was once the Imperium. Which is really a gamble. Its not secret that the Imperium has been going downhill for awhile, but its going to be a stretch to see if the Tau survive long enough to take advantage.

The Tau (story-wise) will probably get the Technolgical edge in the next millenia, that's for sure. The Empire has done nothing else than going downward, while the Tau are creating new things every year.

And if the Tau managed to, somehow, kill the Emperor, they will be completely safe from Imperial retaliation.

Hum.. I wonder what is the relation between the Tau and the Necron.. aren't they the only two species that don't have any relation with the Warp?

[Lord_Asmodeus]

Considering that the Necron themselves are mindless, soulless husks trapped in mechanical bodies, and only their Commanders have minds, which are bent totally to the service of C'tan, yet more soulless beings who use their mastery of the material universe to DEVOUR THE ELECTRICITY CREATED BY THE MINDS OF SENTIENT BEINGS. Badly.

[Cubey]

Nothing new but still an accurate thought.
As for Tau vs the Imperium - when an Imperial ship landed on Tau homeland, they were a hunter-gatherer society. Since that time, the Imperium practically didn't change at all, while Tau developed into gun-totting mecha users. Give them another thousand of years or two and, if they survive, they'll crush all opposition. Using Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann if they have to.

[SolkaTruesilver]

Nothing new but still an accurate thought.
As for Tau vs the Imperium - when an Imperial ship landed on Tau homeland, they were a hunter-gatherer society. Since that time, the Imperium practically didn't change at all, while Tau developed into gun-totting mecha users. Give them another thousand of years or two and, if they survive, they'll crush all opposition. Using Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann if they have to.

Actually, it's worse. It says in Dark Heresy that the Imperium cannot make plasma weapon anymore, and all the remaining of these are merely relics from a glorious past.

What is the primary weapon of Tau Trooper, tell me?

The Tau already are farther away in technological advances. They just aren't on the same scale than the Imperium - yet -

[Bryn]

Disgusting Xenos filth has been detected. This thread is heresy! :smalltongue:

The Tau will never win, citizen! To perpretrate this heresy, and these lies, is grounds for immediate execution. That these vile creatures could have spread these lies so far saddens me, but I shall not shirk from my duty.

Hark, citizens! Look upon this fool, the Tau sympathiser. Despise him.

You will not fulfill your duty if you leave the tau sympathising sub-humans unpunished. You will coerce them back into the protective fold of the Emperor's cloak, or leave them twisted and dead in their own reeking filth. If you do not, the future's price will be high.
[hr]
Here was to be the serious discussion, mentioning among other points about how the technological stagnation and dystopian civilisation was part of the point of the Imperium, how the Imperium outnumbers the Tau 33333.3 recurring to 1, and other such things. Heck, I even intended to illustrate with a diagram comparing the size of the Tau to the Imperium.

Then I realised: I'm turning this into Serious Business. It's a miniatures game! Everyone can believe what they like, and it's not my business to 'correct' anyone!

This stunning revelation is certainly old news to everyone else.

Anyway, the IC stuff is going to stand on its own. Praise the Emperor! :smallbiggrin:

[Cubey]

It says in Dark Heresy that the Imperium cannot make plasma weapon anymore


Yes, but anymore can mean "during the last five thousand years". This is WH 40K after all. Of course, I'm not familiar with Dark Heresy so I could be wrong and the Imperium not being able to cough up plasmas anymore might be a relatively recent event. Something that happened 200 years ago for example.

And yes, Tau are basically the only faction that develops at all. The rest either doesn't change or slowly degenerates. Of course, some of them don't have to change, being powerful and all. Once again, WH 40K.

[BRC]

The imperium has been in decline ever since some guy took a nap on a shiny chair.


The only way I see the Tau as becoming a dominant power in the galaxy would be a gradual takeover of the Imperium. Think about it, If Cadia falls then Chaos sweeps out into the universe. With Cadia in place, you only have to worry about Tyranids/ Necrons destroying the universe (while everybody else is busy blowing up parts of it).



One (kinda-sorta way it may happen).

So, it becomes revealed that the "Machine God" is a C'tan. Ergo, All of the stuff the Adeptus Mechancius built is evil! The High Lords of Terra get together and say "Oh Shi-". Until one of them says "Wait, since all the Adeptus tech is evil, dosn't this mean that, despite what we thought before, all other tech is not evil?" "Yeah that works. But whose going to give us new tech" "well, the Tau are the only race that dosn't kill us on sight" "okay, we'll work with them." "*ahem*, I understand how important this is, but weve spent the last couple millenia declaring Xeno's to be evil. How do we now justifty working with them." "Tell them that the God Emperor sent a message saying he has judged the Tau to be pure." "we can do that?" "Hey, considering some of the crazy stuff we say* This makes a good deal of sense." "Fair enough"




*Other crazy stuff: Psykers are EVIL until they undergo a brutal brainwashing (despite the fact that the emporer was a Psyker, the IoM would fall apart in a day without psykers, ect.) Worship the Emporer (The guy who banned religion), and about a billion other things.

[SmartAlec]

Humanity has been crumbling and decaying since before 40K myth. It's the pattern; a historical pattern of change and entropy.

You'll remember that Humanity originally spread throughout the stars through colonial expeditions, in the 'Dark Age' of Technology. Then came the Age of Strife, when everything falls apart. Then comes the Emperor and the Great Crusade, which establishes the Imperium, which then promptly nearly falls apart during the Heresy. Then comes the cleanup and the 'new' Imperium, formed in the wake of the retreat of the Chaos Legions and bolstered by such bright spots of effort like the Macharian Crusade.

But really, the Imperium is on its' last legs, and anyone can see that. Corrupt on the inside, at war with itself, steadily being eaten away by pressures from within (Chaos, alien sympathisers) and without (Orks, Tyranids), and with both threats from the past (Necrons, Eldar) and threats that could be the future (Tau) looking for a moment in the sun.

It's just so BIG that it'll take a long, long time or an almighty cataclysm for it to finally roll over and die. And then Humanity will recede, and will either be extinguished or will try again to expand.

Although, if the Horus Heresy books are to be believed (spoilers ahead!)

... then Chaos has chosen Humanity to be their ultimate weapon in bringing their influence into the material world, and the best outcome (for everyone else, that is) is that Humanity is wiped out.


If Cadia falls then Chaos sweeps out into the universe.

If by Chaos you mean the Chaos Space Marines, then you're right. But Chaos can still steadily corrupt and destroy the Imperium from within, given enough time, no matter how strongly the Cadian Gate is held.

[Lord_Asmodeus]

And you do realize 40k is pretty much just happening in the Milky Way right? Chaos Gods of similar nature but different origins could exist in other galaxies. As it stands chaos needs emotions to function exist, which is why Daemons don't exist in the gulf between galaxies.

[BRC]

If by Chaos you mean the Chaos Space Marines, then you're right. But Chaos can still steadily corrupt and destroy the Imperium from within, given enough time, no matter how strongly the Cadian Gate is held.
True, but it's an Immediate Threat versus Gradual Threat thing

[Selrahc]

I've got to defend the Imperium a bit, because it is not as bad as it is generally portrayed to be.

New tech is invented. The upper level of tech priests that aren't tied to supervisory duties are actually working on creating new tech. This can be in many ways, whether by scouring xenos technology for what can be salvaged, looking for archaeotech, or simply making new devices. Old technologies are adapted whenever needed to better suit their purpose. The weaponry and equipment of the elite troops of the imperium has changed considerably. Leman Russes have replaced Malcadors, and then spawned dozens of variants, Drop Pods have stopped being dread claws, the air force has expanded a lot, with many entirely new types of planes, various slight efficiencies have been applied to things like power armour and weaponry, jump pack tech has advanced by leaps and bounds and landspeeders have become standard equipment , whirlwinds, vindicators and land raider crusaders show innovation of entire new parts of the space marine war machine. Looking at the players handbook for Dark Heresy and you see all sorts of innovations in the field of drug manufacture(Mainly combat drugs, but medical kits etc. are also better). Local materials are innovated into the imperial system as much as they are able, as with polygum and spectorin paste. In the field of exploration the Imperium has created stuff entirely new, things like the Beetle tent(A minituarized biodome) and aerial pinions(wierd hanging device which lets you swing around) show the capacity for innovation in the face of neccesity. The redole rebreather shows that the adeptus mechanicus is instituting important advances even outside of war, instituting bio technology with rebreather tech in order to create a set of removable gills.

A lot of tech advance is surpressed for some very real reasons. In a place where fiddling with the AI can create a malevolent spirit out to kill you, and where inanimate objects can carry a taint of evil its best to test things thouroughly. When they don't, they get stuff like the terminus est, part of a corrupt line of space ships which may well be the cause of the corruption of the Death Eaters. Or the dreadclaw assault pods, which started killing crew members.

So yeah, while the imperium is advancing in tech at a rather slow pace, its still advancing.



Actually, it's worse. It says in Dark Heresy that the Imperium cannot make plasma weapon anymore, and all the remaining of these are merely relics from a glorious past.

I really doubt that. Page ref? If it does say that, it contradicts dozens of things. For example, Shadowswords which rely on the imperiums most advanced plasma tech are still in production. So are titans with bigass plasma weapons. Hell, in the players handbook it gives mention to new variant plasma weapons tha have arisen in the Calixis sector(For example, pp.134 for the Kronos variant).


Then I realised: I'm turning this into Serious Business. It's a miniatures game! Everyone can believe what they like, and it's not my business to 'correct' anyone!

I reckon you can state your views and give some evidence without it being serious buisness. I'm just doing this for fun.

[SmartAlec]

Although new tech is being developed, it's primarily the slow, ponderous nature of the Imperium's bureaucracy and the sheer size of the Imperium compared to its' ability to govern and maintain contact that prevents any kind of cultural reinvention or re-invigoration as a result.

IS there even any established interplanetary trade that goes on in the 41st Millenium? I'm aware of military convoys and tech convoys (transporting ore and such to forge worlds), but it seems that the only civilian-level trade that occurs from system to system is entirely down to private individuals; the Rogue Traders. There seem to be no trading companies that operate in large areas of space, nothing that would allow innovation and enrichment to spread.

If so, then one really has to ask what it is that binds the Imperium together, besides the Imperial creed. In many cases, it seems like every planetary system stands alone - except in times of war, when they can petition for help from the various Imperial forces and who knows, might even get it. This is another contrast to the Tau, who - as far as can be gathered from novels and other sources - try to keep a network of trade and communication running in their Empire under the auspices of the Water Caste.

(It certainly remains to be seen how the Tau would be able to run an Empire the size of the Imperium, but for now, their small little area of space seems very healthy by comparison.)

[Selrahc]

IS there even any established interplanetary trade that goes on in the 41st Millenium? I'm aware of military convoys and tech convoys (transporting ore and such to forge worlds), but it seems that the only civilian-level trade that occurs from system to system is entirely down to private individuals; the Rogue Traders. There seem to be no trading companies that operate in large areas of space, nothing that would allow innovation and enrichment to spread.

There are great fleets of chartered merchants. Billions of humans live and die there whole life slaving away in a trade ship. (Its gone into somewhere in Dark Heresy, but the easiest reference is page 33, where "Chartist Vessel" is a background for void born)

Charters are hard to obtain, and very very rarely change hands. Expansion of trade in odd directions, or to new planets is really very slow, and may be handled entirely by smugglers or rogue traders.


If so, then one really has to ask what it is that binds the Imperium together, besides the Imperial creed

Plus of course, their is the tithe. That results in vast ammount of goods being moved between planets, and works almost like a form of trade. One planet may tithe food which is redistributed by the administratum to fuel the population of hive worlds.

All of human society, from the most unihabitable border moon, to the richest paradise world, must produce something to help the war effort. If you live on a planet with no resources, no population no production, and no rare commodities then you will pick up and sharpen rocks to send out to the rest of the imperium. And you will be brought a proffesional rock sharpening kit from the forge worlds, so you can dedicate your life to sharpening those rocks.

You also have stuff like the Inquisition and the black ships, the language roots, the adeptus arbites, the administratum, the nobis navilite and a system of currency backed up by the imperial tithe.



In many cases, it seems like every planetary system stands alone - except in times of war

That may be true to an extent... but it really depends on the area. The calixis sector is independant to a large extent as regards other sectors, but fairly unified cross sector.

[Ashtar]

First of all, a comment about trade in W40k:
Some novel series (Eisenhorn for example) present several merchant families which have made sector wide fortunes without imperial rogue trader charters.

Rogue trader charters are probably the most valuable documents in existence since 1) they usually originate from a very long time ago, 2) certain are signed with a drop of blood of the Emperor himself (Legacy - a Shira Calpurnia novel) and most importantly 3) Allow you to go where you want without restriction.

Non-Rogue trader traders (also known as Chartist spacecraft), like the ship Misericord described in Dark Heresy p308, ply regular routes to which they are bound by their charter.

Now about technology, we know that the pinnacle of human technology was the first phase of colonisation (Around M22). It was during that time that humanity, aided only by the first navigator genes (appeared first around M21) and the STC systems conquered the stars (it took less than 1000 years to explore the galaxy!). Before the first collapse.

During that first collapse (the age of strife M24), Terra is cut off by warp storms and humanity loses most of it's advanced technology. In M28-29, the Emperor unites Terra.

So now, they've had close to 20 Milleniums to "regain" the tech and they still haven't even attained part of the enlightened levels of M22. For me that's a clear sign that humanity is on the decline, there has been nothing new invented since the mid to late M20s, everything is only being rediscovered.

-- Arf, ninja!

[Wraith]

New tech is invented. The upper level of tech priests that aren't tied to supervisory duties are actually working on creating new tech. This can be in many ways, whether by scouring xenos technology for what can be salvaged, looking for archaeotech, or simply making new devices. Old technologies are adapted whenever needed to better suit their purpose. The weaponry and equipment of the elite troops of the imperium has changed considerably. Leman Russes have replaced Malcadors, and then spawned dozens of variants, Drop Pods have stopped being dread claws, the air force has expanded a lot, with many entirely new types of planes, various slight efficiencies have been applied to things like power armour and weaponry, jump pack tech has advanced by leaps and bounds and landspeeders have become standard equipment , whirlwinds, vindicators and land raider crusaders show innovation of entire new parts of the space marine war machine. Looking at the players handbook for Dark Heresy and you see all sorts of innovations in the field of drug manufacture(Mainly combat drugs, but medical kits etc. are also better).

I'd have to argue with this, unfortunately - not in any specific direction, but that it is generally only one interpretation in a veritable ocean! :smallsmile:

I'm not as familiar with Dark Heresy as you seem to be, but I am familiar with other sources. In particular, the Apocalypse rulebook (and the three Imperial Armour spin-offs) clearly states that all the 'new' tanks and vehicles we're seeing emerge are, quite simply, not 'new' tanks.

Imperial vehicles are built by STC - Standard Template Construction. Basically, these are enormous automated factories built before and during the Dark Age of Technology churns them out according to their preset parameters, none of which are understood or even recognised as 'software' by the workers and Techpriests who claim to control them. Quite literally, they shovel raw materials in one end, pull levers and press buttons according to 'ritual' that has been passed down since time immemorable and hope that the whole thing doesn't give out through decay before the next completed product rolls out the other end.

As such, there's no such thing as a 'new' tank design - there's only rediscovered Templates that have been thoroughly evaluated and miraculously reverse-engineered over a series of decades. All variants on Leman Russ tanks, for example, are based on templates that date back to long before the Golden Age, and these Templates are not necessarily 'designed' but rather are local adaptations (according to the climate and landscape of the planet where the individual machine is created) that are recorded and adopted by neighbouring worlds or assigned by the Adeptus Mechanicus to places on the other side of the galaxy where they might prove useful under similar conditions.
All this is in Imperial Armour I by the way - the introduction and opening chapter, specifically. Mankind's inability to do anything other than ape their ancestors in a completely superstitious and incomprehensing manner, and the fact that they are utterly reliant on ancient, decaying and ultimately crumbling STC factories just lasting as long as they can last, is canon. :smallsmile:

The only reason that these Tanks (as well as 'planes and all the other funky stuff like Titans, etc) seems new isbecause GW has only just released concept pictures, and barely begun designing models for them. Historically, individual designs have been around much, much longer even than Space Marines.

So - to seek my point before it disappears too far off into the sunset - there is virtually no such thing as new Tech in the Imperium of Man. Everything is either just a miraculous jury-rig of something completely misunderstood from >10,000 years ago, reclaimed from a newly discovered (yet still archaic) archeotech planet or outright stolen from encountered civilisations (the latter being HEAVILY discouraged by the likes of the Inquisitors and the Mechanicus alike).

Ashtar, SmartAlec and their cohorts are unfortunately correct in this particular example - the Imperium is technologically in decline, not necessarily because they aren't finding 'new' designs and putting them into practice but because they don't know how to create their own BRAND NEW designs, or how the actual manufacture process even works. Once the STC's are gone, the Imperium is completely, utterly and truly stuffed - and it really is only a matter of time before they crumble away like so much else has done before them.

Right, that's enough ranting for now - time for some good old fashioned pedantry. :smallwink:


Worship the Emporer (The guy who banned religion)

The Emperor did no such thing - it's all a big misunderstanding! :smallbiggrin: Again, this is probably up to your interpretation, but...

The Word Bearers Space Marine Legion were never 'banned' from worshipping the Emperor - they were, however, chastised for spending too much of their time doing it, and not killing filthy Xenos like they were clone-born to do.
Essentially, "Daddy" told them off for slacking and they went all hissy, culminating in partaking in the Heresy because their 'new' Gods (Chaos) encouraged complete and utter devotion rather than getting on with something productive. Take THAT, Dad! Our new friends let us stay up and worship them as long as we want, even on a weekday!

Now, the current embodiment of the GOD-Emperor is again not specifically his own fault. The vast (enormously, great, swathing vast!) bulk of the Ecclesiarchy was built up around the Emperor by the Lords of Terra, using his near-martyrdom at the hands of Horus/Chaos as their excuse to turn him into their Crystal Dragon Jesus (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrystalDragonJesus) with them as his intermediaries. According to them, what he wanted before he lapsed into silence was that they continue to interpret his will in his absence. Convinient, no?

At this point, there wasn't much He could do about it. He'd been on life support for a couple of millenium and all of his true heirs - the Primarchs - were either dead or corrupt. The Lords said he was going to be Jesus, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.

10,000 years of religious inbreeding and 'heretical' purging later, and *BOOM*. The Cult of the God-Emperor is fundamentally established without his permission, without His direct (and, arguably, indirect) influence and all he can do about it is rot.

And as a result? Mankind stagnates and turns in upon itself on an unimaginable scale. Maybe He really WAS onto something when he told the Word Bearers to stop messing about with hymns and incense and to go out and do something more productive instead.... :smalltongue:

[Murongo]

The main book says expressly that the Imperium is gaining planets on all fronts with the singular exception of chaos, but when a planet falls into the eye it's gone for good, which adds a good dose of foreboding. Clearly the tau can't hold a candle to the Imperium now, but if you notice GW always makes sure every race has a chance of victory, so yes, "if they survive long enough to surpass Necron tech and beyond they have a chance at victory". Just like if the orcs unite, they'll beat everyone, and if Cadia falls, the next black crusade will lead chaos to victory, etc.

I'll tell you one thing though, I don't care how nice their guns get, my grey knights are going to continue rending those tau in melee.

[Kojiro Kakita]

Aren't we waiting for the Star Child though? The time when the Empire is reborn due to his release by the ex-Dark Angel dude (the guy with the C'Tan Sword who seems to be on no ones side).

actually not all the good Primarchs are official dead. Most are MIA or in stasis.
The Lion is still healing somewhere underneath the Dark Angel Base
the Ultramarine Primarch is slowly healing
etc.

Now to do my IC rant:
By the power of my Holy Duty, this member of the Ordos Xenos declares this thread to be Heretical and I have no choice but to declare Exterminatus on its ass.

[Ganurath]

Hummies iz gonna all be beat soona or latta. Dey ain't got numbas like Orks do, and dey don't make their junk fasta by paintin it red. Dat's crazy, der!

And dat's just puttin' Hummies up to Orks. Da grayskins, Tau, dey's puny in hand to hand, but dey has da best guns afta my dakka. Dakka. DAKKADAKKADAKKA! Heh... So where wuz I? Ah, yeah, dem Tau and der dogface Kroot buddies iz better dan hummies. Dey don't got ta deal wif dat Chaos Warp junk like hummies. Pretty sure Orks don't have to deal wif dat, but maybe we just don't notice. Met some Orks dat wuz crazy like spikey boyz...

Speakin' of da spikey boyz, dey all are gonna doom humanity. Dey's all killing non-spikey humans, who are killing themselves dat dey think iz gonna be spikey, da spikeys are killing each otha and going muty in ta daemons... If dey got numbas like Orks, dat be all well and good, but hummies don't just pop outta da ground!

Yep... Dem hummies gonna die out soon enough. Million cycles, maybe two... Dey's tougher den dey look. Tougher dan Eldar, anywhat. I won't be around for dat, much as I'd like ta. Now, if ya don't mind, I'm gonna bash yer face now.


Warboss Brainbusta, Interview

[LBO]

Going to drop by with two points, rather than add to the HUGE LONG posts:

1) Dreadclaws have been described repeatedly as better than SM drop pods. Ditto Chaos warships and a lot of other crap they took at the time of the heresy. Russes are better than Malcadors, certainly, but don't confuse technological advances (or at least rediscovering old knowledge) with technological regression and forgetting how to make things like Dreadclaws and Murder-class ships.

2) The Tau are never going to have a galaxy-wide empire, because they've got no psychic presence and can't use the warp to anything like the extent the Imperium can.

...unless they somehow learn of the Webway, which is a hell of a thought.

[psycojester]

2) The Tau are never going to have a galaxy-wide empire, because they've got no psychic presence and can't use the warp to anything like the extent the Imperium can.

Also worth noting that the Tau survive primarily because the Imperium is busy with bigger problems, the total population of the Tau empire is roughly equal to about the population of a single Hive World. (Kill team- Last Chancers)

Basically if the Imperium deployed troops enmasses instead of following the sacred rule of armies no bigger than 2000 points they could wipe the Tau from the face of the galaxy.

[Selrahc]

Ashtar, SmartAlec and their cohorts are unfortunately correct in this particular example - the Imperium is technologically in decline, not necessarily because they aren't finding 'new' designs and putting them into practice but because they don't know how to create their own BRAND NEW designs, or how the actual manufacture process even works. Once the STC's are gone, the Imperium is completely, utterly and truly stuffed - and it really is only a matter of time before they crumble away like so much else has done before them.


Well they invent new stuff that isn't STC based. The land raider crusader is a complete retrofit of previous STC. The dozens of variants along the Leman Russ and Chimera chassis are not all based on STC. The imperium therefore must have some understanding of construction, to be able to change basic elements of design.

Similarly, the imperium has lost the abiility to create jet bikes. But jet bikes were incredibly rare and ancient devices already. The imperium never had the ability to produce jet bikes, but has in all other areas of antigrav technology dramatically improved. With much increased usage of Jump packs, land speeders and advanced technology like suspensors(Antigrav plates affixed to weapons to reduce weight and recoil), the imperium has vastly broadened its applications of anti grav since the horus heresy.

Battle armour has also increased. Power armour has become increasingly refined. So has terminator armour. Troops guns also beome increasingly refined, with technical specifications being changed as needed. Hellguns in particular are a big source of competition between forgeworlds.

The tech priests, once you get beyond the mass rank and file, do know the intimate details of the tech they are messing about with. The upper ranks change and improve methods in forge worlds, pp. 93 Dark Heresy, Mech Deacon fluff passage "T'were Mech Deacon Abnightus that changed the forge customs an' the milling engines an' the distillation plant. We makes twice what we did back then. T'aint nothing he don't know I reckon", changing the mechaniocal workings of a forge world implies intimate knowledge of the workings of said system. Especially if the results are a 100% increase in productivity. pp.94 "The Magos errant is expected to go forth on behalf of the adeptus mechanicus, exploring new frontiers, worlds and technologies". See also, the Magos, Omniprophet and Cyber Seers. The imperium then, does know more about tech than just how to push the right buttons.

Aside from which, we do have the on the spot creation of medical cures. Rapid creation of combat goods and utility goods. Creation of stuff like advanced exploration gear. Not neccesarily created by tech priests.

Aside from that, the fact that they are recovering STC, which advances them in technology, does not point to them being in decline. It points to them recovering their techlevels.



1) Dreadclaws have been described repeatedly as better than SM drop pods. Ditto Chaos warships and a lot of other crap they took at the time of the heresy. Russes are better than Malcadors, certainly, but don't confuse technological advances (or at least rediscovering old knowledge) with technological regression and forgetting how to make things like Dreadclaws and Murder-class ships.

Evil evil technology. The dreadclaw was innately corrupted by chaos. Murder class ships all turned evil and damned their crews.

That the imperium is able to replace evil designs with functional replacement technology is sign of innovation.



2) The Tau are never going to have a galaxy-wide empire, because they've got no psychic presence and can't use the warp to anything like the extent the Imperium can.

I've always wondered why they couldn't find some kroot, and breed them for the navigator gene. Capture as many navigators as possible, and feed them to the Kroot until a navigator gene develops.

Or engage in trade with one of the other races in their empire who have psychic potential, for their navigator equivalents.

Maybe even engage in creating robots which can do warp navigation. Although that actually just seems like a recipe for evil robots.

[LBO]

Evil evil technology. The dreadclaw was innately corrupted by chaos. Murder class ships all turned evil and damned their crews.

That the imperium is able to replace evil designs with functional replacement technology is sign of innovation.

Bullllllllllcrap. There was nothing "innately evil" about any of the technology used at the time, and if you make up stuff like that don't expect to be taken seriously. The Murder and associated spiky ships were the mainstay of Imperial fleets for some time after the Crusade, and that only changed because they were lost and replaced by things like the Lunar- and Gothic-class ships. Heresy-era gear and ships are treasured by the Imperium. We can see the evolution from the Crusade-era designs into the less advanced, easier to build "modern" Imperial ships in the Specialist Games Grand Cruisers.

...they all had kinda evil names and looked nasty and spiky, certainly, but was nothing innately evil about the gear.

And this is not technological innovation, it's technological decay. You'll notice that "modern" Imperial cruisers are slower, less well armed and cheaper than their ancient counterparts. The designs are refined - incorporating things like armoured prows - but the technology used (weapons, propulsion) are is generally inferior.
Drop pods have a tenth of the functionality of Dreadclaws, which can act as assault boats, can cut through armour, are more manoeuvreable and safer because they "land" rather than "impact", can fly and choose their landing area rather than come straight down, can carry dreads, terminators OR regular marines rather than needing specialised pods for each, they have built-in weapons systems and can take off again after landing... The only reason the Imperium doesn't use them is that they've forgotten how to build them. And you chalk it up to "evul". Genius.

The Imperium is, in general, not innovating, it's making do and adapting older technology to less advanced designs for ease of production. Power armour has been "refined", but that doesn't make it superior - it's been redesigned so it can still be produced by the fools that pass for techpriests these days. They can put old technology to new uses - Land Raider Crusader, for example - but they very rarely come up with anything new or advanced on its own, and when they do it's usually from a recovered STC.

If you're just going to say "EVUL DESIGNS", you have zero grip on Imperial technology.

[Kantur]

Aren't we waiting for the Star Child though? The time when the Empire is reborn due to his release by the ex-Dark Angel dude (the guy with the C'Tan Sword who seems to be on no ones side).




Cypher. Who used to have a C'Tan phase knife until he tried stabbing a C'Tan with one and lost it in the necrodermis. It's one of the two main theories about Cypher - either he'll take the Lion Sword to Terra and present it to the Emperor to earn the forgiveness of the Dark Angels, or he'll take the sword to Terra and kill the Emperor, allowing him to be reborn as the Star Child.

[Fallen Martyr]

Bullllllllllcrap.

IA:A (and I believe the original IA entry, but I don't have time to dig that up right now) strongly implies that the Dreadclaw was evil.

Pg 101 says that there were a large number of "fatal accidents" which only increased aboard loyalist ships during the Heresy.

[Wraith]

The dozens of variants along the Leman Russ and Chimera chassis are not all based on STC. The imperium therefore must have some understanding of construction, to be able to change basic elements of design.

Again, Apocalypse says otherwise. If you ignore superficial additions, such as bolting on more armour plating or adding a bulldozer at the front, or taking a heavy bolter and nailing it in place near the hatch, each and every different variation comes from a rediscovered STC that is simply 'photocopied' and sent out to other Forgeworlds.
Quite literally, actual innovation is unheard of - all designs are merely reconstructed instruction uploaded from a dataslug (or however it's done) that has been borrowed from a neighboring system.


Battle armour has also increased. Power armour has become increasingly refined. So has terminator armour. Troops guns also beome increasingly refined, with technical specifications being changed as needed. Hellguns in particular are a big source of competition between forgeworlds.

On the contrary, Terminator armour has not changed by it's very nature. Each and every suit of Tactical Drednought Armour is a relic from the Dark Age of Technology, surviving (in fluff, if not in mechanics) that long only because they are so incredibly tough to damage.

No one knows how to make more, and the best they can manage is to cannibalize 2 broken suits to make one functioning one at best. This is why the Battle for MaCragge did such a number on the Ultramarines - their ENTIRE 1st Company was wiped out, meaning they had virtually no undamaged Terminator suits for the next century while they were slowly put back together.

Insofar as POWER Armour goes, we're back to the 'degeneration' argument. Power Armour was first used during the Heresy because it was faster and cheaper to reproduce on the scale that was needed, compared to complete sets of Terminator armour that all marines were supposed to have under the Emperor. The fact that the Imperium is still using it 10,000 years later, in any form, simply emphasizes how inept they are for being unable to return to the intended superiority of TacDred Armour.

With regards to 'Mech Deacon Abnightus', I'll have to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Arguably, however, we're not told WHAT he actually changed to get his results - fair enough he might have had some epiphany and rejigged the systems (which makes him unique among millions, hardly a typical example of a typical Tech Priest), or he might have just doubled the workforce and started using cheaper, more abundant and more easily handled materials in the process.
It's easy to double the output of Hellguns, for example, if they are made of cheaper, inferior components by 1.5x the size workforce that's working 18 hours a day instead of 16. I don't think we can consider this a genuine case of 'innovation' without specific details which GW will never bother to release.

[Selrahc]

Again, Apocalypse says otherwise. If you ignore superficial additions, such as bolting on more armour plating or adding a bulldozer at the front, or taking a heavy bolter and nailing it in place near the hatch, each and every different variation comes from a rediscovered STC that is simply 'photocopied' and sent out to other Forgeworlds.
Quite literally, actual innovation is unheard of - all designs are merely reconstructed instruction uploaded from a dataslug (or however it's done) that has been borrowed from a neighboring system.

Where in apocalypse does it say this? I'm looking at say... the Baneblade, and the Baneblade hellhammer. Under the Baneblade it says that it is built off set STC data that only a few forge worlds possess. Under the Hellhammer it says that its is built around the same STC data, but with a different weapon load out. This to me suggests that all the different weapon loadout is nothing to do with the STC, and they've just taken one superb chassis, and fitted a completely different loadout off their own bat.

And uh... thats about it? I really can't find apocalypse going into much depth about STC constucts. Thats about the only reference I can see.



On the contrary, Terminator armour has not changed by it's very nature. Each and every suit of Tactical Drednought Armour is a relic from the Dark Age of Technology, surviving (in fluff, if not in mechanics) that long only because they are so incredibly tough to damage.

Original suits of terminator armour were bulky looking rubbishy wierd things. They swiftly became much better.

It was entirely invented during the life of the emperor(By the emperor himself in fact). And was in fact retrofitted from plasma reactor suits.

There hasn't been much improvement over 10,000 years, but it was a revolutionary development in troop armour, that was rapidly innovated to a high level, and meets its functions pretty excellently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_(Warhammer_40,000)

Also note "New suits of armor can be manufactured, but although the Adeptus Mechanicus possesses the knowledge and skill, they can only be produced at an extremely slow rate."



Insofar as POWER Armour goes, we're back to the 'degeneration' argument. Power Armour was first used during the Heresy because it was faster and cheaper to reproduce on the scale that was needed, compared to complete sets of Terminator armour that all marines were supposed to have under the Emperor. The fact that the Imperium is still using it 10,000 years later, in any form, simply emphasizes how inept they are for being unable to return to the intended superiority of TacDred Armour.

Well no. What we have there is the fact that terminator armour turned out to be rubbish outside of certain conditions. It limited mobility and speed, and was way too bulky. It was dropped in favour of power armour for standard operations.




Arguably, however, we're not told WHAT he actually changed to get his results - fair enough he might have had some epiphany and rejigged the systems (which makes him unique among millions, hardly a typical example of a typical Tech Priest)

Well sure. But we're also told in the desriptions for every single high ranked AdMech career path that they know how the machines work on an intense level. Throughout the earlier ranks the emphasis is on knowing the rituals. Throughout the higher ranks the emphasis is on knowing how stuff works, and being able to improve or innovate. The implication is that the vast majority of tech priests(Because the upper ranked characters are damn rare) know nothing other than how to push the right buttons. But the upper levels are capable of true understanding.

They still frequently denounce new inventions as "Heretech", and don't like to change STC data without good reason, but you can't say they don't know how stuff actually works. All implication is that the best tech priests, do.


If you're just going to say "EVUL DESIGNS", you have zero grip on Imperial technology.

Yeah, well I do have a grip on imperial technology, since Imperial Armour APocalypse directly states that the Machine Spirits of the Dreadclaw was tainted, and sgoes on to report increased casualties in loyalist ships.

The Murder class was also pretty heavily implied to be evil. With references cited that every single Murder class ship produced was either lost in the warp, or had its crew turned to chaos.

I also don't get why you're implying I'm an illiterate bufoon who TIPES LiK DIs. Have I done something to anger you?

[LBO]

On the contrary, Terminator armour has not changed by it's very nature. Each and every suit of Tactical Drednought Armour is a relic from the Dark Age of Technology, surviving (in fluff, if not in mechanics) that long only because they are so incredibly tough to damage.
Terminator armour was new during the Heresy, not Dark Age of Technology. Either way, I believe GW fairly recently retconned a large number of things - including Terminator armour and plasma guns - to not all be utterly irreplaceable relics, but merely very, very hard to produce, even on the greatest forgeworlds.

[BRC]

I got the impression that, OOC, Machine Spirits didn't really exist. The way Ive always Thought of it is: Your car need a tune up. The techpriest does a ritual that, interspaced with incense burning, chanting, and dancing, goes through the process of giving your car a tune up. Then he says the machine spirit is appeased. However, that the machine spirit itself didn't really exist.

[Selrahc]

I got the impression that, OOC, Machine Spirits didn't really exist. The way Ive always Thought of it is: Your car need a tune up. The techpriest does a ritual that, interspaced with incense burning, chanting, and dancing, goes through the process of giving your car a tune up. Then he says the machine spirit is appeased. However, that the machine spirit itself didn't really exist.

Not really backed up. Its probably one of those things that was once true, back when Games Workshop was more willing to have fun with 40k. At the moment though, the Machine spirit is definitely a real thing. In fluff and gameplay you get interaction with it.

[Ashtar]

Machine spirits are present in advanced equipment (land raiders, space craft, etc...). They represent an advanced level of automation and auto-senses coupled with relatively advanced programs.

Your land raider has a problem? Interrogate the machine spirits - system self check and diagnostics, output where the error should be located.
Need your hands free to drive? Let the machine spirit take over.
Your bolter is acting up? they probably have a limited self diagnostic chip inside, let the techmarine speak to the spirit to appease it (and probably reboot the machine).
Need to calculate the approach velocities to pass through the athmosphere without deflection or burning up? Machine spirits again.

I know they are not full AI (since that was forbidden after the war of the Iron men), but you will probably find some quite advanced programs in there.

I mean you just need to look at cars nowadays, when you go in to the garage, the first thing the technicians do is plug in the computer and run the car's self diagnostics (On-Board Diagnostics - OBD).

So I can very well see all STC templates (more advanced than a knife) having OBD systems as a minimum, with some having more advanced stuff (drop pods, space ships, land raiders with their autonomous drive / shoot routines, etc...)

[Dragor]

The Imperium is in a decline, there's no doubt about it. Aside from being too big to sustain itself- leading me to believe if that if the Imperium had a smaller front to fight on, it would have a better chance of surviving, rather than being segregated- it is afraid of its most advantageous technology.

When the IoM doesn't understand something, they replace what they don't know with religion or suspicion. If it's xeno, it's obviously heretical and must be ditched at the first opportunity. This is why the Imperium suffers; it is stuck between being too paranoid to trust anything which could help them, but if they let down their guard for a second, they may let Chaos seep in.

The Emperor, ironically, is what keeps the Imperium together, but also what pulls it apart. By The Star Child theory, the Emperor needs to be killed. Obviously, that's going to be tough to pull off. But at the same time, the Emperor is what keeps the IoM fighting. Whether the faith in him is false or not, the Emperor is the inspiring figure that the IoM need to keep them going in the face of adversity. It's a giant loop of despair.

[Wraith]

Where in apocalypse does it say this? I'm looking at say... the Baneblade, and the Baneblade hellhammer. Under the Baneblade it says that it is built off set STC data that only a few forge worlds possess. Under the Hellhammer it says that its is built around the same STC data, but with a different weapon load out. This to me suggests that all the different weapon loadout is nothing to do with the STC, and they've just taken one superb chassis, and fitted a completely different loadout off their own bat.

And uh... thats about it? I really can't find apocalypse going into much depth about STC constructs. Thats about the only reference I can see.

My apologies, in a rush to paraphrase I instead generalised. What I should more accurately have said is that the PARTS are built according to STC, and are assembled in different ways depending on where they're needed - hence the variants between Leman Russ', where it appears that they have taken one chassis and mounted a 'new' gun on top.

The IoM is incapable of creating new STC's, would have been better for me to say. If they should lose an STC they have no hope of reinventing it, nor of making something completely new, though with a bit of common sense they can - as you say - put together pieces from 2 or more STC's to create a 'new' vehicle.


Either way, I believe GW fairly recently retconned a large number of things - including Terminator armour and plasma guns - to not all be utterly irreplaceable relics, but merely very, very hard to produce, even on the greatest forgeworlds.

Aha, this i where I fall down. While I have the complete set of 2nd Edition Codices, I have very few of the more recent ones. Technically I was right about both Terminator Armour and Power Armour, up to the point where GW moved the goalposts. :smallwink: Well spotted, sir :smallsmile:

Ah, what do I care - I play Eldar, we just grow stuff any way we want it :smalltongue:

[Selrahc]

My apologies, in a rush to paraphrase I instead generalised. What I should more accurately have said is that the PARTS are built according to STC, and are assembled in different ways depending on where they're needed - hence the variants between Leman Russ', where it appears that they have taken one chassis and mounted a 'new' gun on top.

Ah. Okay, I misunderstood your point.


The IoM is incapable of creating new STC's, would have been better for me to say. If they should lose an STC they have no hope of reinventing it, nor of making something completely new, though with a bit of common sense they can - as you say - put together pieces from 2 or more STC's to create a 'new' vehicle.

I kind of agree with that. Most of the imperiums innovations in terms of warfare have been in the area of refinement and rearmament rather than building entirely new stuff.

I don't see many possible circumstances under which they could "lose" the data, since it would mean losing vast files on hundreds of worlds, and killing any superior tech priest who could remake a device. I've certainly never heard of it happening, although I guess its not beyond reason.

[Winterking]

Look, everybody: Yes, the Imperium is in decline. As a power, it is doomed. But then, so is every other Army. That's why the Far Future is so Grim and full of Darkness. Everyone is doomed to failure (Assuming that everything goes wrong, which it never quite does)

-The Imperium is stagnant and decaying.

-The Space Marines are too few in number, too slow to rebuild, and too given to internal arguments.

-Chaos is chaos, and besides being mostly trapped behind the Cadian Gate, is busy fighting amongst itself. Not only that, but several of their significant rivals have Powerful Plans in the works to weaken their power. (See: Eldrad Ulthran, and also: Eldar God of Death)

-The Eldar are a dying race, with too few births and too little living space. Oh, and there's this Chaos God eating their souls.

-The Dark Eldar have a serious case of soul-consumption, live in their own dark/decaying corner of the webway, and are consumed by internal intrigue.

-The Tau are terribly, shockingly few in number and terribly, shockingly ignorant of the True Dangers of the Galaxy (See: Necrons, Chaos, Chaos again, and did I mention the soul-eating/drinking gods of Chaos? And the madness of the warp?)

-The Orks are brutal, stupid, and cannot put together a coherent plan. (or a coherent anything). They're also too busy fighting eachother to ever succeed.

-The Necrons are few in number, have lost some of their gods (a few C'Tan have been destroyed). The galaxy they'd like to conquer is not only overrun with generic life-form vermin, but also their sworn enemies (the Eldar, esp. Harlequins) and their ultimate, genetically-optimized foes (Da Orkz).

-The Tyranids, while terrifying, are too few in number. Their foes are, on the whole, too strong to destroy outright.

Still, not all is lost in the Far Future. Each Army/Race has a chance to succeed totally, as well. (Assuming that everything goes right, which it never does)

-The Tyranids are striking everywhere. With each victory they become stronger, and destroy one more world, forever preventing it from being useful to their enemies. They have no territory to maintain, and can genetically out-engineer all of their foes.

-The Necrons are mysterious, nigh-invulnerable, and scattered across the galaxy, just waiting to emerge. They are accompanied by Gods. (See: C'tan). None can fathom their true power, or their true evil

-the Orks can reproduce faster than even the 'nids; they're better fighters than almost anyone else, and they outnumber anyone who is actually better. They live, eat, breath, and fight for the glory and enjoyment of conquest and battle. United, not even the Imperium could withstand them.

-The Tau are progressive, tolerant, intelligence, and innovative. In a few generations, they will have surpassed Imperial technology. Once they find a safe way to travel long distances, their expansion will be unstoppable.

-The Dark Eldar are cruel and terrible fighters, with the ability to strike from anywhere at will. They also don't require--or want--any kind of overall victory, just enough power to keep their vile parties going, and enough souls to keep themselves from being drained by She Who Thirsts.

-The Eldar are ancient, inscrutable, and their farseers can See The Future. And Change It. The rest of the galaxy dances to their secret whims. Eldrad Ulthran can see farther than any, and he has a Plan.

-Chaos is beyond comprehension; Daemons and mutants and chaos marines are mighty and terrible. The black plots and schemes of chaos-worshippers continually fester, corrupting the heart of the Imperium.

-The Space Marines are Man Triumphant. Their prowess, their physical might, their technological and material edge, and their near-immortality are unmatched.

-The Imperium is numberless. For every million men who are destroyed by the Emperor's foes, ten million more are born each day. Hive cities and Forge Worlds crank out new material faster than it can be used and destroyed. Tanks and Artillery and the massive Imperial Navy will crush any foe--by weight of numbers, or by concentration of firepower, or by superior leadership, or by technological advantage.


(It's almost like GW set up a world continually in a delicate balance, with no faction deliberately weak in all areas. Strange. It almost makes you think that they want to sell more models, or something.)

[Wraith]

You are probably quite right. The only reason I can think of for an STC to be lost would be for a newly discovered (and thus not yet understood or copied) STC to still be present on a world that was invaded by Tyranids or Necrons.

The other xeno powers, Eldar and Tau, would more likely view suvh things as inferior and be ignored, whereas Chaos and Orks would happily steal them away to use for their own ends. 'Nids, on the other hand, would eat the lot and leave the entire planet unsalvagable, and Necrons would systematically destroy all evidence of living beings ever having existed there.

Come to think of it, given the current plotlines, that seems more plausible now than it ever has done previously. As 'rich' as the Imperium is, one can only wonder at how many thousands of STC's have been destroyed by the Hive Fleets and the (fairly recent?) resurgence of the Tin Men...

[TehJhu]

Have the Tau figured out how to use the Warp yet?

Without that it dosn't matter what they do, they're simply to far away for the Empire to care.

[SurlySeraph]

[quote]-The Tau are terribly, shockingly few in number and terribly, shockingly ignorant of the True Dangers of the Galaxy (See: Necrons, Chaos, Chaos again, and did I mention the soul-eating/drinking gods of Chaos? And the madness of the warp?)

Ah, but they're almost completely un-psychic. Chaos can't touch them without psychics to possess.


-The Necrons are few in number, have lost some of their gods (a few C'Tan have been destroyed). The galaxy they'd like to conquer is not only overrun with generic life-form vermin, but also their sworn enemies (the Eldar, esp. Harlequins) and their ultimate, genetically-optimized foes (Da Orkz).

A few? There are four C'tan left. Four. And only two of them (the Deceiver and the Nightbringer) are actually awake. And the Deceiver may well be plotting to eat the other three.


-The Tyranids, while terrifying, are too few in number. Their foes are, on the whole, too strong to destroy outright.

They'll be many in number, soon as the main fleet gets here. Of course, if they really are running from something it might never get here.


-The Tau are progressive, tolerant, intelligence, and innovative. In a few generations, they will have surpassed Imperial technology. Once they find a safe way to travel long distances, their expansion will be unstoppable.

And, perhaps most importantly, it is possible to cooperate with them. On the rare occasions that the Eldar and the Imperium work together, the Forces of Disorder die. If the Tau link up with the Eldar, or manage to convince the Inquisition that the Greater Good is a form of the Emperor or something like that, the combined power will be enough to save all of the mostly-sane races.


-Chaos is beyond comprehension; Daemons and mutants and chaos marines are mighty and terrible. The black plots and schemes of chaos-worshippers continually fester, corrupting the heart of the Imperium.

And the only way to get rid of them is to keep everyone from feeling emotion of any kind, permanently. Only the Necrons and maybe the Tyranids (depending on the nature of their hivemind) are at all capable of that.


(It's almost like GW set up a world continually in a delicate balance, with no faction deliberately weak in all areas. Strange. It almost makes you think that they want to sell more models, or something.)

NO WAI!!! :smalltongue:

[BRC]

[QUOTE=Winterking;4300317]

And, perhaps most importantly, it is possible to cooperate with them. On the rare occasions that the Eldar and the Imperium work together, the Forces of Disorder die. If the Tau link up with the Eldar, or manage to convince the Inquisition that the Greater Good is a form of the Emperor or something like that, the combined power will be enough to save all of the mostly-sane races.


I wouldn't doubt for a moment that the Tau would have any trouble declaring that the greater good is just another way of saying "The Emporers Will" if it furthered their causes.


Of course, the only certain thing is that there will be a lot of fighting, which means that, no matter what happens, one race is guarenteed to have achieved it's goals.


DA ORKZ!

[Selrahc]

Ah, but they're almost completely un-psychic. Chaos can't touch them without psychics to possess.
What about the Farsight enclaves? Seems like you've got a fairly major schism caused by the previously loyal Tau commander picking up a cursed artifact.

Plus, the lack of psychics does not make it impossible for daemons to cross. Just harder. Without any psychics to combat them, the Tau could have a very very tough time of it. Especially with some of the more ephemeral daemons.


And the Deceiver may well be plotting to eat the other three.

And the Nightbringer is horribly crippled.



They'll be many in number, soon as the main fleet gets here. Of course, if they really are running from something it might never get here.

Honestly we know almost nothing about the tyranids numbers. We don't know whether they've conquered a million galaxies and have trillions of hive fleets, each numbering many millions of organisms, or if they are the defeated fleeing remanants of a race, who are nearly wiped out, and entering a hostile galaxy. Its been left pretty deliberately vague.


And the only way to get rid of them is to keep everyone from feeling emotion of any kind, permanently. Only the Necrons and maybe the Tyranids (depending on the nature of their hivemind) are at all capable of that.

I read something about the theory of human psychic evolution. Thaat once human psychic potential was strong enough, the warp could be reshaped. Become less hostile, and channel positive daemons rather than negative ones.

[Talkkno]

The Emperor, ironically, is what keeps the Imperium together, but also what pulls it apart. By The Star Child theory, the Emperor needs to be killed. Obviously, that's going to be tough to pull off. But at the same time, the Emperor is what keeps the IoM fighting. Whether the faith in him is false or not, the Emperor is the inspiring figure that the IoM need to keep them going in the face of adversity. It's a giant loop of despair.

I'm pretty sure it's been rectoned (the star child theory) that it was just a Tzeentchian cult.

[Were-Sandwich]

All this retconning, and all the self-contradicting canon, is what makes a debate about 40K so difficult.

Yeah, the Imperium is going down. I think the ultimate winners will be the Necrons. They (the souless machines with infinite patience) simply have to wait, until all mortal life dies out. Entropy says its just a matter of time. The living's only hope is that someone develops a method of whole-sale destroying planets, to take out tombworlds.

[Ganurath]

What about the Farsight enclaves? Seems like you've got a fairly major schism caused by the previously loyal Tau commander picking up a cursed artifact.

Plus, the lack of psychics does not make it impossible for daemons to cross. Just harder. Without any psychics to combat them, the Tau could have a very very tough time of it. Especially with some of the more ephemeral daemons.In the eyes of the Kroot, psychics are edible. If anyone were to try to make a psychic strong enough to mindrape the Emperor, Kroots on a Psyker diet would be the best bet.

[Were-Sandwich]

Of course, if GW keep going downhill, and really need to pull something out of the hat, they can always start the Apocalypse (the end of the world, not the money-grubbing supplement), and have all the Primarchs who went away, waiting for some massive battle at the end of the world, return. Or whoever's chasing the 'nids could catch up. Either way, bad news for the Imperium.

[Ganurath]

Here's how a proper 40K Apocalypse would go:

A Necron fleet breaks into Mars, awakening the Void Dragon. It is hungry. It feeds on the Nightbringer, and they weaken one another enough that the Deceiver eats them both before feeding on that last C'Tan. The Deceiver then awakens some Necrons. How many, you ask?

All of them.

Bear in mind, this is not an unprovoked event. You see, Commander Farsight is very much insane, and has been building a very special sort of missile, which he had launched not long before the Deceiver did what he did. The missile, capable of Warp travel, speeds to the target and blasts it open. The target?

The Cadian Gate.

Now, the Eldar are obviously pissed as hell. They try to contact the Imperium, but apparently She Who Thirsts has decided to give the Dark Eldar an offer: Kill all the Eldar, and she lays off. Ergo, the Imperium has no help from the Eldar.

They do have one "ally" though. You see, something else that's highly destructive has entered the Eye of Chaos. You know that huge Ork ship made of a bunch of ships smashed together? As it turns out, the Eldar managed to get one trick off to combat Chaos.

The Necrons? Oh, they'll get to the Imperium soon enough. First, the Warp. They HATE the Warp. They ALL go to the Eye, ready to kill.

The Imperium, seeing that everyone is converging on the Eye, decides to launch a Crusade. Oh yeah, THAT Crusade.

[Selrahc]

See if I was writing an end times scenario for 40K it would start up with an epic battle between Chaos and the Imperium. Seriously epic scale combat, as the Cadian gate finally bursts open, and the imperium is attempting to stop the attack of Chaos. Massive massive fleets are pulled back from all sides, because this Chaos Armada dwarfs even the great crusade.

And Chaos wins. They get to earth, and after a galaxy shaking battle royale against battlefleet sol, Abaddon rips out the heart of the emperor and snuffs out the astronomican like a candle. As reward, the chaos gods shower him with enough raw power to make Horus look like a particularly weedy preschooler. The warp space around Earth at this point is flaring up, it looks like Earth is going to become the centre of a warp hell as bad or worse than the eye of terror.

Someone isn't happy about that. On mars the Void Dragon awakes. And on the ruins of Earth the Daemon King Abaddon suddenly feels a chill. Vast hordes of necron ships fleet into the Solar System, with no warning being given of their presence.

The two fight, at a power level beyond even the vast armies that follow them into battle. The remnants of the imperial fleet, the chaos fleet and now the necron fleet wreak bloody havoc across the solar system.

Meanwhile in Tau space, the Tyranids have attacked in force. Quite outside normal activities they have a ttacked Tau Space with a fleet much bigger and more destructive than even hive fleet Behemoth. Advancing freely across the nearly deserted areas of imperial space the Tau empire is the only remaining pocket of true resistance. The hive fleet moves to crush it.

This is when the tau reveal their next big innovation though. The warp drive. Cheap and easy travel across the warp, without psychics, without danger and within the Hive Minds effects. The Tau have a plan to stop the tyranids. Its bold, its innovative, and it might just work. Its scorched earth. The tau take to vast arc fleets, similar to Eldar craftworlds, and deploy hideous virus bombs to destroy bio matter on their former worlds. The tau empire starts running, moving ahead of the Hive fleet. The fastest ships are sent to the other end of the galaxy to establish new colonies. The best armed ships engage in hit and run attacks to waste the resources of and slow down the progress of the tyranid hive fleets, and the fast extraction arcs move ahead of the fleet extracting vital fuel supplies and any possible inhabitants, and then virus bombing the planets. In this way can the greater good be served.

Back at the craziest fight in the multiverse... The Despoiler King and the Void Dragon are met by a new challenger. The emperor and his primarchs, and the eldar Harlequins. The thorians were right, and the spirit of the emperor is not tied to his mortal form. He had been study ing the black library, and assembling his primarchs for their greatet duty. A grand coalition of Eldar craftworlds, and a reserve of elite space Marine vessels forge a path to the centre of the melee, on the ruins of earth. The emperor and his elite guard enter the fight. And win! The black library contains many secrets, and the powers of the emperor and his primarchs were enough to carry the fight.

But the imperium is shattered, the eldar have sustained heavy losses they can ill afford and the Necron and Chaos armadas are still at near unprecedented levels of activity. The Tau empire is destroyed, the tyranids are on a rampage and the astronomican is destroyed. But the Emperor walks again. The greatest powers of the two great enemies are dead. The eldar and imperium stand ready to cooperate.

Its at this point that Ghazghkull comes in, headbutts the emperor and walks out. The emperor gets shivved while he is in hospital by a short hairy man. Shotrly thereafter, everything is retconned by some small frog people who sit in hover chairs.

[puppyavenger]

Of course the imperium is dieing, that kind of how the game was made.
Mars is the Eldar equivilent of Satan
There is a literaly numberless horde of insectoid horrors with a hive mind strong enough to drive phsykers insane attacking from 3 galactic edges, including from above the galactic plane.
Skynet time traveled back to a trillion years ago, it just woke up.
there are a bunch of gods trying to steal humanities souls to power themselves, and only the above powers are able to pacify them
there are a bunch of humanoid fungi who literaly thrive in war infesting almost everywher
and so on and so forth

[Mx.Silver]

-The Necrons are few in number, have lost some of their gods (a few C'Tan have been destroyed). The galaxy they'd like to conquer is not only overrun with generic life-form vermin, but also their sworn enemies (the Eldar, esp. Harlequins) and their ultimate, genetically-optimized foes (Da Orkz).


The Necrons numbers are low in regard to currently active units, yes. But overall? No. Not by a long shot. Bear in mind that at their height they had enough to conquer the entire galaxy (from the Old Ones, no less) and hold it for an obscenely long amount of time. What happened to all of them? They're in stasis.

[SurlySeraph]

Ganurath, that's a pretty good disastrous epic battle, but why not devastate the rest of the universe first to build up to the last thing?

For an apocalypse, I'd have some of the same events as in yours, with critical differences. And I feel like writing. So:

First, the Tyranids have arrived. All of them. Entire lightyears of space are crammed with Tyranid biomass, and they're moving faster than any Tyranids have before.

Do you know what caused the waves of barbarian invasions in the late Roman Empire? Other barbarians. Tribes trying to take new territory drove others west out of their former territory, and the refugee tribes drove the other tribes in their path out, and so on. As long as the first tribes to starting moving west kept moving, every other tribe would eventually be forced into Roman territory.

The entire Tau Empire is directly in the path of the onrushing Tyranid hordes. Using as many jury-rigged ships piloted by allied psykers as they can, they start getting their asses out of there. The entire Tau Empire is on the move, and because of their weak mastery of the warp, they can only make short jumps, meaning that they repeatedly pop into realspace and plunder any nearby planets, desperately looking for something they can use to slow the Tyranids down. Though they don't have time to check everything in their path methodically, the Tau focus on dead worlds, because they know that Tyranids avoid dead worlds.

Most dead worlds are dead for a reason. Necrons start waking up. Sometimes they pursue the Tau; sometimes they go forward on their own path. But they're definitely headed in the same direction as the Tau are, and that's the direction the Tyranids are following them. That is, of course, the direction of the Cadian Gate. But there's one problem. Most of the galaxy is in the way. And, though there are relatively unpopulated areas that they can pass through, the most direct path from the Tau Empire to the Eye of Terror passes right through Holy Terra.

Really. Look. (http://www.joachim-adomeit.de/wh40k/spacemap/map.html)

Countless humans and orks flee their worlds by the most expedient means possible, to escape the oncoming hordes. The orks go wherever they can, which is usually straight forward. The humans hope to take refuge at the Emperor's side. The solar system cannot support so many people for long, but that's fine. Many, many humans die fighting the orks. Those who don't move fast enough are overtaken by Necrons or Tau and never heard from again. And, of course, many are lost in the Warp. The wealth of delicious human and orkish souls gives a lot of demons much, much more power than they had before, which will of course be important later.

What's important now is that there are many humans in huge, drifting fleets around Holy Terra. Right behind them are Necrons, Tau, terrified Orks, and other humans who have gone over to Chaos in despair. The Imperium's natural response is to call as many Marines as possible to Holy Terra. Given the number of Marines who have to be at the Cadian Gate now that Chaos has gotten so much stronger, that's a lot but not enough. Besides, several entire chapters disappeared when they chose to stand and fight the invaders.

The campaign for the solar system is horrific. Necron and Tau fleets arrive simultaneously. The incredible defenses force both of them to slow down, and a splinter fleet from the greatly reduced but still terrifying Tyranid swarm makes it into the solar system. Attempts to keep track of the Imperium's citizens in the area crash most of the Administratum's computers. The Void Dragon wakes on Mars, of course, and the battle gets a lot worse - but entire legions of Emperor-class Titans mean that the fight on Mars isn't a pushover for the Necrons. As the outer planets fall, the Earth is completely surrounded by tremendous orbital platforms, each manned by billions of humans. Having seen everything they ever held sacred fall, the humans are desperate. They pray to the Emperor a lot. And then the unthinkable happens: their prayers are answered.

Empowered by the impossibly desperate devotion of his followers, the Emperor stands up from the Golden Throne for the first time in 10,000 years. Suffice it to say that the results are epic. Countless humans die as the swarms of miscellaneous xenos attack, but the Emperor burns entire fleets as His Most Holy Vengeance. Deciding that even the (precariously close) Tyranids are less dangerous than this, the Tau change course and go around Holy Terra. More humans arrive every day from the north and south, seeking to fight alongside the Emperor. The only direction that no one is rallying from is the Cadian Gate, which needs more and more reinforcements just to keep the increasingly powerful demons out. So the Tau flee straight ahead, directly towards the gate.

And then the gate opens. Whether by Commander Farsight's machinations, diabolical Dark Eldar or confused Orks destroying the pylons, or the ravening hordes of demons, the Cadian Gate is wide open. The Tau don't know that, so they keep going on. The Necrons do know that, and they don't like it. The Necrons break off from "Operation: Kill Everything" to initiate "Operation: Kill the Demons," and the last C'tan lead them straight to the gate.

Meanwhile, the Emperor and his Blessed Legions kill most of the ever-dwindling Tyranids. Scouts sent far back to see if there's an end to the hordes report that there is indeed an end to the Tyranids. And there is something behind them, but no one who survived seeing it can articulate exactly what it is. After combing through the minds of the scouts, the Emperor gives an unexpected order to his triumphant citizens. They are to go to the Cadian Gate. Taking refuge in the Warp is safer than standing and fighting. The physical universe is not lost, but they will need the presence of pure psychic power and as many soldiers as possible if they hope to destroy the Unnameable Threat. The Eastern empire is entirely destroyed. The Western empire is mostly either locked in battle with increasingly powerful Chaos revolts, or abandoned to reinforce Cadia and Holy Terra. Therefore, humanity must seek help from as many xenos as possible.

The Eldar, of course, know exactly what's going on. Every Craftworld is either near the Cadian Gate or protecting the line between the gate and Holy Terra from Chaos and the shattered remnants of the Tau Empire. As the Tyranids continue throwing themselves against Terra in their hopeless desire to escape the Threat, the Emperor and the uncountable Blessed Legions of his Final Crusade leave the planet to the swarm and move to assault the Eye of Terror itself. As Humanity withdraws, the Eldar go alongside them, putting trust in the Emperor's unthinkably bold plan as the only thing that could stop Slaaneesh now. His plan: colonize the Warp. Kill the Chaos Gods. If the Threat proves indestructible, go back into realspace in a few milennia, once it has moved on.

So, going into the final battle, the sides look like this:

Imperium: Humanity is lost throughout most of the galaxy. But the hundreds of billions of survivors are united, they are determined, and they are ready to literally follow the Emperor into hell itself.

Eldar: Allied with Humanity, protected by the Most Holy Meatshields that form humanity's Final Crusade, and ready to take on the annihilator of their civilization face-to-face.

Dark Eldar: Still torturing and killing everything they can lay their hands on. Everything they can lay their hands on is around Cadia, now.

Chaos: Demons are everywhere. The few inhabited planets left in the western Imperium are in their hands. They're still bottlenecked around the Cadian Gate, but if they manage to triumph in the coming battle there will literally be no one left to oppose them.

Orks: Many of the inhabited planets in the galaxy are theirs, because no one is bothering to attack them. But the many, many Orks who were capable of moving off their planets have mostly fled to the Cadian Gate, and are ready to kill whatever is there in the ultimate WAAAAGH!!!

Tau: The Tau and their allies are badly beaten and fewer in number than ever. With demons in front of them, Orks and Necrons on the sides, and Tyranids and the Crusade behind, they have nowhere left to flee. Time to stand for the Greater Good.

Necrons: All of them are awake. While many have been lost as their tomb-worlds were destroyed, their gods are alongside them. They will close the Warp off forever and destroy the shattered remnants of life in the galaxy, or be destroyed trying.

Tyranids: Most of their race is dead. But there are enough. Whatever is in the Warp can't be worse than fighting the Threat. If they have to eat their way through everything alive in the galaxy to get there, they will.

The Threat: This is what the Tyranids ran from. The Emperor is scared of it. Whatever the hell it is, the only way it will be stopped is if all the warriors in existence stand against it. The only other way to survive is to hide in the Warp until it disappears. That's right, a universe full of daemons is safer than a universe with this thing in it.

[chiasaur11]

It's kinda amazing it's gone on for so long without mentioning the one man who could save the Imperium. A hero who, standing alone, could destroy the forces of chaos.

I speak, of course, of Commissar Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM

[Illiterate Scribe]

Indeed, with his HEROIC RESISTANCE TO THE CORRUPTIONS OF CHAOS, he'll be able to see them off in no time.

Also, there is one place where the Imperium is not doing to badly; I'm referring to all those dark hints (and, to be honest, outright statements) that Humanity is evolving into a psychic race more powerful than anything the galaxy's ever seen before. Sure, it's creating a lot of feeble mutants, but the fact that one of the Eisenhorn books records that there are more Alpha-Level psykers than ever before surely can't hurt in the long run.

Edit:Also, the Angry Marines aren't going to go down without a fight. A very big fight.

[Dervag]

I really like those Apocalypse scenarios.


Yeah, the Imperium is going down. I think the ultimate winners will be the Necrons. They (the souless machines with infinite patience) simply have to wait, until all mortal life dies out. Entropy says its just a matter of time. The living's only hope is that someone develops a method of whole-sale destroying planets, to take out tombworlds.Done. The Imperium destroys planets on a regular basis, and even has arguments about the most economical way of doing so. See here (http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:1IOs5Ty_RjsJ:www.theblackship.org/downloads/rules/wd297_chap_approve.pdf+%22rocks+are+NOT+free,+citi zen%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us). Look at the very last page.


Ah, but they're almost completely un-psychic. Chaos can't touch them without psychics to possess.Unless, of course, it possesses up someone else's psychics and uses those psychics to, I dunno, pick up the Tau and throw them off a cliff or something. Better to say Chaos can only touch them by proxy.


I've always wondered why they couldn't find some kroot, and breed them for the navigator gene. Capture as many navigators as possible, and feed them to the Kroot until a navigator gene develops.

Or engage in trade with one of the other races in their empire who have psychic potential, for their navigator equivalents.

Maybe even engage in creating robots which can do warp navigation. Although that actually just seems like a recipe for evil robots.I don't think they really want to. They've come to the (eminently logical) conclusion that the Warp is darkly evil and incredibly dangerous, and that the safest and smartest thing they can do is to avoid it while trying to find alternate routes toward FTL technology.


Now about technology, we know that the pinnacle of human technology was the first phase of colonisation (Around M22). It was during that time that humanity, aided only by the first navigator genes (appeared first around M21) and the STC systems conquered the stars (it took less than 1000 years to explore the galaxy!). Before the first collapse.

During that first collapse (the age of strife M24), Terra is cut off by warp storms and humanity loses most of it's advanced technology. In M28-29, the Emperor unites Terra.

So now, they've had close to 20 Milleniums to "regain" the tech and they still haven't even attained part of the enlightened levels of M22. For me that's a clear sign that humanity is on the decline, there has been nothing new invented since the mid to late M20s, everything is only being rediscovered.Yes, but how do we interpret that?

You could make a good case that M22 or so was a 'golden age' of human civilization. Then things went bad. The technological advances plateaued, natural disasters on a galactic scale disrupted the economy, people started fighting each other all the time. Nasty. So civilization went through a Dark Age (A dark age in the M2-3 sense of the word, not in the M41 sense of the word).

Then the Emperor came around and started to pull things back together. He was hampered greatly by the sheer mindblowing scope of the problem- reunite a galactic civilization and rebuild a technological infrastructure created by the massive cross-linkage of that civilization. Cross-linkage that was now broken.

And yet he damn near managed to pull it off. Then came the Horus Heresy. This time, the collapse of civilization was due not to natural disaster (the warp storms), but to a barbarian invasion. The Emperor was functionally dead for all purposes except keeping the basic transportation infrastructure intact.

Now the Imperium had to dig itself out from under the wreckage. Again. But now there were several menacing barbarian hordes out there (the orcs, the forces of Chaos, eventually the Necrons and the Tyranids). And the Imperial government was, frankly, not competent to the task. In a real sense it wasn't so much a government as a loosely collaborating group of warlords coexisting with an elaborate Mandarinate bureaucracy.

Just like the Emperor, the Imperium is confronted with the mind-blowing scale of the problem it faces- keeping control of a galactic empire despite the enormous military effort of keeping Ork populations under control and fending off the forces of Chaos. New alien empires only make matters worse.

And yet, they seem to be holding more or less steady for the moment (i.e. the Imperium isn't going to fall during the lifetime of any of the humans now living in it). Sooner or later, I think the collapse of the Imperium's machinery will force people to start building things again. Remember all those Imperial planets where the tech level is on the "sword" level. Those guys obviously aren't relying heavily on Techpriests and Forgeworlds for the means of day-to-day existence. If they find themselves needing to make their own firearms when lasguns become too rare to be 'wasted' on third-string Guard regiments from neobarbarian planets, they're probably going to start doing it.

If the availability of advanced Imperial weaponry starts to decline, the relative importance of those worlds will increase.

The real question is whether the military power of the Imperium will fall below the critical threshhold before the declining ability of their techpriests to provide the goods forces a realignment of power structures within the Imperium. I could see it going either way.

So who knows? I think there's at least a remote chance of things getting better rather than worse for the Imperium. Not that I'd bet anything I didn't care to lose on it...
__________________________


The Tau (story-wise) will probably get the Technolgical edge in the next millenia, that's for sure. The Empire has done nothing else than going downward, while the Tau are creating new things every year.

And if the Tau managed to, somehow, kill the Emperor, they will be completely safe from Imperial retaliation.Yeah, but there's no way they're going to manage it unless the Imperium has collapsed almost entirely already. Sol system is exceptionally well fortified, and the Tau aren't good at 'deep strike', right?


One (kinda-sorta way it may happen).

So, it becomes revealed that the "Machine God" is a C'tan. Ergo, All of the stuff the Adeptus Mechancius built is evil! The High Lords of Terra get together and say "Oh Shi-". Until one of them says "Wait, since all the Adeptus tech is evil, dosn't this mean that, despite what we thought before, all other tech is not evil?" "Yeah that works. But whose going to give us new tech" "well, the Tau are the only race that dosn't kill us on sight" "okay, we'll work with them." "*ahem*, I understand how important this is, but weve spent the last couple millenia declaring Xeno's to be evil. How do we now justifty working with them." "Tell them that the God Emperor sent a message saying he has judged the Tau to be pure." "we can do that?" "Hey, considering some of the crazy stuff we say* This makes a good deal of sense." "Fair enough"

*Other crazy stuff: Psykers are EVIL until they undergo a brutal brainwashing (despite the fact that the emporer was a Psyker, the IoM would fall apart in a day without psykers, ect.) Worship the Emporer (The guy who banned religion), and about a billion other things.The problem with this one is that it assumes that the senior leadership of the Imperium is sane enough to make such a decision.

We, today, find the Tau rather sympathetic. They're something more or less like what we humans imagine our starfaring empires might look like. Even if they do some things we find very disagreeable, their actions are within the range of what we consider, y'know, human. And a lot of our fiction about human interstellar colonization involves our interactions with vast, preexisting, stagnant interstellar empires... like the Imperium of Man, only maybe less violent.

Whereas the 'humans' of the 41st millenium are hardly human at all in some very important ways. The preeminent warriors of the Imperium, the Space Marines, are literally inhuman; they seem to bear no more psychological resemblance to a human being than does a lion. The leaders of the Imperium are culturally inhuman. They've been static so long it's not clear whether they are really able to think anymore. They can order crusades, yes. They can draw troops from one sector to reinforce another, yes. But would it even occur to them to ally with an alien species as a way of defending themselves against more dangerous threats like the Tyranids, Necron, and the forces of Chaos?

Probably not.


Hummies iz gonna all be beat soona or latta. Dey ain't got numbas like Orks do, and dey don't make their junk fasta by paintin it red. Dat's crazy, der!

And dat's just puttin' Hummies up to Orks. Da grayskins, Tau, dey's puny in hand to hand, but dey has da best guns afta my dakka. Dakka. DAKKADAKKADAKKA! Heh... So where wuz I? Ah, yeah, dem Tau and der dogface Kroot buddies iz better dan hummies. Dey don't got ta deal wif dat Chaos Warp junk like hummies. Pretty sure Orks don't have to deal wif dat, but maybe we just don't notice. Met some Orks dat wuz crazy like spikey boyz...

Speakin' of da spikey boyz, dey all are gonna doom humanity. Dey's all killing non-spikey humans, who are killing themselves dat dey think iz gonna be spikey, da spikeys are killing each otha and going muty in ta daemons... If dey got numbas like Orks, dat be all well and good, but hummies don't just pop outta da ground!

Yep... Dem hummies gonna die out soon enough. Million cycles, maybe two... Dey's tougher den dey look. Tougher dan Eldar, anywhat. I won't be around for dat, much as I'd like ta. Now, if ya don't mind, I'm gonna bash yer face now.


Warboss Brainbusta, InterviewI find your strategic analysis... excellent.

[Victor Thorian]

If memory serves, it's been implied that Void Dragon is (or has to do something with) Machine Spirit. Which could mean "when" ( it's just a matter of time ) it wakes up, it's possible that Imperial Tech could go crazy.

But, in the likely case that I am wrong, here's a splinter argument:
A warhammer 40k MMORPG could be a great success, if GW could do what Magic the Gathering Online did. Also, that could help with the costs as well :]

[GolemsVoice]

Well, that is, as far as I understand, the spirit the Imperium is set in. They ARE constantly in a decline, and there is, of course nothing that can save them. They live their miserable lifes in the shadow of an hourglass which is almost empty now. Everything they have is too old, they don't understand it or even fear it, their leaders are insane and ignorant. Everything it goiing down the drain.
On the other hand, depending on which novels you read, the Imperium is not as dark as it is often portraied. There are places you truly might want to LIVE on some day, there are nice people, fathers loving their wives and guardsmen patting each others shoulders around the cozy burning corpse of some newly killed Xenos scum. New and surprising inventions are made by clever techpriests or dragged out of some backwater world by arceologists, and the GRIMDARK of the W40k universe is drawn aside to reveal a world that is not nice, surely, but it gets along.
That is the thing with the Imperium. It's always at the brink of chaos, and Chaos. It's always down to his last hope. But it never trips over, it never falls. But also, it never gets significantly better. It will continue to be dying forever, if they don't release new fluff. And that's what I like about the setting.

Hey, what are you.. *shoot* *splat*

Now, how do I use this filthy Xenos tech? Ah. there.
*hrrmmhrhmm*
Citizen! Everything you have read there is the handywork of a demented maniac, which has been brought to His most holy justice. Not a single word of this nonsense must be believed. (That's HIS nonsense, not our righteous teachings, of course. DO NOT QUESTION!) His portrayal of our beloved Imperium is utterly wrong and inherently warped through the perverted vision of a foul follower of Chaos.
Cheer up, citizen, for I can tell you that the Imperium is just as healthy and wealthy as it was ever! New weapons are developed, tested and put to use o the battlefields all araound the Milky Way every day! Jusr yesterday our techpriests discovered the amazing material Uselessium, which can do all manner of stuff with which I won't burden your small mind right now. But believe me that it will give us the egde we need to win this eternal struggle!
Do your duty, and soon you will see the enemies of the Emperor running before His might! Our warships are as countless as the stars, and our weapon's glorious thunder is the swift vengeance of His Righteousness. Now, go and work your 20 hours shift while being pummeled with spiky clubs, and sing the hymns and say the prayers to thank Him for this opportunity to show your faith and devotion! Afterwards, you are invited to the great ecclesiarchy service held on the Place of His Mercies, nonattending is punished by death.
Than, you will join the voluntary civilian's defence force and learn to fight and defend the planet that you love, and you DO love it, don't you? Yeah, that's what I expected. You may than praise the Emperor for everything you were able to learn today and go to sleep to dream of the victories our troops and fleets are achieving every minute.

[Theork]

I always beliveve that all the Imperium needs is for another Emperror to come along and start them off on another Crusade.
The only hard part is getting his folllowers and forgetting the old Emperror.
Perhaps by now knowing about Chaos and by being less ignorant of Warp forces the Imperium might have a better chance against the Chaos gods.

Failing that we all know the Tyranids are going to win. They have no 'Empire' and so there can be no 'retaliations', when you defeat them they evolve around it, when you lose to them you make them more powerful. What's more is they come endlessly from Deep space and so there are probably millions more if the first Hive ships have proved to be so successful.
Besides, they eat planets.

[BRC]

I always beliveve that all the Imperium needs is for another Emperror to come along and start them off on another Crusade.
The only hard part is getting his folllowers and forgetting the old Emperror.
Perhaps by now knowing about Chaos and by being less ignorant of Warp forces the Imperium might have a better chance against the Chaos gods.

Failing that we all know the Tyranids are going to win. They have no 'Empire' and so there can be no 'retaliations', when you defeat them they evolve around it, when you lose to them you make them more powerful. What's more is they come endlessly from Deep space and so there are probably millions more if the first Hive ships have proved to be so successful.
Besides, they eat planets.

Actually, as I said before, only Da ORKZ are guarenteed to achieve their goals in the galaxy.

[Dervag]

Actually, as I said before, only Da ORKZ are guarenteed to achieve their goals in the galaxy.Yes, but mainly through the power of low expectations. The orks don't intend to win; they just intend to fight. Even if they're all killed, they will have (sort of) achieved their goals.


I always beliveve that all the Imperium needs is for another Emperror to come along and start them off on another Crusade.
The only hard part is getting his folllowers and forgetting the old Emperror.
Perhaps by now knowing about Chaos and by being less ignorant of Warp forces the Imperium might have a better chance against the Chaos gods.Given the fluff, there isn't going to be another God-Emperor. The God-Emperor of Man was a person whose birth was the result of a unique psychic event.


Failing that we all know the Tyranids are going to win. They have no 'Empire' and so there can be no 'retaliations', when you defeat them they evolve around it, when you lose to them you make them more powerful. What's more is they come endlessly from Deep space and so there are probably millions more if the first Hive ships have proved to be so successful.
Besides, they eat planets.Hmm... quite possibly. On the other hand, part of it depends on where the main fleet is coming from, what (if anything) they're running from, and what it will do if/when it catches them. For example, if they get attacked by a vastly more powerful force while in intergalactic space they're screwed because they won't be able to replenish losses by eating planetary biospheres.

Of course, if whatever offed the 'Nids proceeds to enter the Milky Way to make sure it got the last of them, everybody else is just as screwed as the 'Nids were.

I'm not so sure about the 'evolution' bit. I mean, have they demonstrated the ability to evolve immunity to things like, say, bullets?

[chiasaur11]

Yes, but mainly through the power of low expectations. The orks don't intend to win; they just intend to fight. Even if they're all killed, they will have (sort of) achieved their goals.

Given the fluff, there isn't going to be another God-Emperor. The God-Emperor of Man was a person whose birth was the result of a unique psychic event.

Hmm... quite possibly. On the other hand, part of it depends on where the main fleet is coming from, what (if anything) they're running from, and what it will do if/when it catches them. For example, if they get attacked by a vastly more powerful force while in intergalactic space they're screwed because they won't be able to replenish losses by eating planetary biospheres.

Of course, if whatever offed the 'Nids proceeds to enter the Milky Way to make sure it got the last of them, everybody else is just as screwed as the 'Nids were.

I'm not so sure about the 'evolution' bit. I mean, have they demonstrated the ability to evolve immunity to things like, say, bullets?


Obviously, the Tyranid scum are fleeing:

COMMISSAR CIAPHAS CAIN, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM.

He's just so modest he let people think he died so their heads wouldn't explode from awesome. It's the only explanation that makes any sense.

[SmartAlec]

I'm not so sure about the 'evolution' bit. I mean, have they demonstrated the ability to evolve immunity to things like, say, bullets?

Hardened Carapaces, Warp Fields... they're getting there.

[Dervag]

Obviously, the Tyranid scum are fleeing:

COMMISSAR CIAPHAS CAIN, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM.

He's just so modest he let people think he died so their heads wouldn't explode from awesome. It's the only explanation that makes any sense.Wait a minute.

Now, I'm just as confident in his HEROIC abilities as the next guy... but... didn't the Tyranids show up while he was still on our side of them? I mean, clearly if they were running from him, they would not also be running towards him, because that would just be stupid, right? But they're clearly running towards us, and like any true hero Commissar Cain placed himself between us and them when they first showed up. Which means that unless there are two of him... umm...

[wanders away befuddled]


Hardened Carapaces, Warp Fields... they're getting there.Hang on. This raises the same question I have about the Borg from Star Trek.

They've been around for a long time- the Tyranids come from another galaxy where they were presumably quite successful, at least for a while. Presumably, they've already fought other powerful alien races with weapons like lasguns, bolters, plasma cannons, and such. And won.

In which case, shouldn't they already be immune to Milky Way weaponry? I think it makes much more sense to assume that there's an upper limit to their adaptations.

[tyckspoon]

In which case, shouldn't they already be immune to Milky Way weaponry? I think it makes much more sense to assume that there's an upper limit to their adaptations.

I personally believe the Tyranid's previous galaxy was just a much softer target. For example, Biovores are a relatively recent 'nid form, which was only seen in battle after the initial contacts. Which indicates that whatever the 'nids fought back where they come from, they didn't need field artillery to do it. It seems most likely to me that the Milky Way is just the 'nids first major experience with organized technological resistance; they were far and away the top of the food chain back home and didn't need to develop resistance to high-energy lasers and high explosives in order to overwhelm planets.

[Talkkno]

Keep in mind, the Emperor isn't dead, Inquisitor Draco managed to communicate with him in the novel Draco. And the Emperor still manifests himself with saints and watching the back of people like CIAPHAS CAIN.

[Illiterate Scribe]

Keep in mind, the Emperor isn't dead, Inquisitor Draco managed to communicate with him in the novel Draco. And the Emperor still manifests himself with saints and watching the back of people like CIAPHAS CAIN.

You didn't mention that he was a HERO OF THE IMPERIUM! Kill him now!

Anyway, it's not that there's two of him, he just is a member of an Epic Level Adventuring Party comprising him, Elminster, Kratos, and the Chapter Master of the Angry Marines, Temperus 'Rip and Tear' Angricus Maximus. They were looking for XP, and accidentally misdirected them here.

[Somebloke]

Obviously, the Tyranid scum are fleeing:

COMMISSAR CIAPHAS CAIN, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM.

He's just so modest he let people think he died so their heads wouldn't explode from awesome. It's the only explanation that makes any sense.

Personally, I think that they're running from these guys:


http://http://comicsmedia.ign.com/comics/image/article/717/717755/marvel-zombies-20060710030345387-000.jpg

[BRC]

Theyre Xeno's, so they obviously have no intellect and are attacking the milky way simply because they cannot think of a better plan.

That said, Who is excited about

http://www.blacklibrary.com/images/books_large/cainslaststand.jpg


Also, somthing ive wondered about Imperial Technology. I was wondering why they use servitors instead of 100% robots, and my logic was "They can't program an AI well enough to do the stuff a servitor does, so they lobotomize some criminal, stuff him full of mechanical bits, and use him as other sci-fi civilizations use robots." But they I though of Servo-Skulls which can do some stuff that's more complex than your standard servitor-grade task. So is it just that the imperium has alot of executee's lying around and they needed somthing to do with all the bodies and skulls or what?

[Deadmeat.GW]

Actually...it is a kind of way to scare people.

If you do something 'bad' you end up like this...

------> Servitor...

You won't be killed sometimes, nope, we will lobotomize you and use you as raw materials for a mechanoid utility frame.

Saves on prison space too.

[BRC]

Yeah, it's proably also a big saving on metal. Consider how much ordnance the imperium uses up every day, the sheer tonnage of metal is staggering, so they save some of their ore for blowing stuff up by using lobotomized criminals.

@V On that note, what happens when Kroot eat Space Marines, do the Kroot then gain SM Gene-Seeds?

[ArtifexFelicis]

I specifically remember that they banned full on AI for some reason or another. Humanity survived SkyNet or something the first time, realized things are bad, and decided never to do that again. Servitors are what came of that idea.

That, and rankly it probably is something like that. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if the Imperium actually GREW people to be sevitors and whatnot. Such an ugly thing, your Emperor's failed empire.

In other news, I finished painting my Kroot. They're oddly snuggly little savages.

And a thoery thing. What would happen if The Imperium got a continent of Kroot, and put a single psyker every day for the kroot tribe to eat, and did that for 400 years? Super Psyker kroot?

Assume virus bombs ready just in case they become too awesome.

[Illiterate Scribe]

Personally, I think that they're running from these guys:


http://http://comicsmedia.ign.com/comics/image/article/717/717755/marvel-zombies-20060710030345387-000.jpg

No, they're running from the Angry Marines:
http://4chanarchive.org/images/tg/1440633/1206977411940.png

[BRC]

Angry Marines, The only chapter to
Perform a Profanity-Based Exterminatus (They hated a planet so much it spontenously lit on fire)
Use Liqified Rage rather than Promethium
Out-Angry DA ORKZ
Make a necron cry.

[Verruckt]

someone may have already brought this up, and mind you it is pure conjecture, but am I the only one who thinks there is something fishy about the tau? In the fluff there is mention of a huge war between the plains people and the castle dwellers (read: fire caste and earth caste) that was stopped by two ethereals, a people who had heretofore never appeared in tau society. I can't be the only one who immediately thought "Oh, how odd, *cough* Deceiver *cough* *cough*" I mean, they have no warp presence, and the have better tech than the Imperium with such rapidity? It seems like a Xanatos gambit, but that is pretty much the direct purview of a Star God called the Deceiver right?

[ArtifexFelicis]

They do have a warp presence actually, but it's really really tiny. Nearly non-existent. That's how they can skip the warp and get around.

As for that unlikely event, what of your Emperor's own coming on your homeworld so long ago?

Shots at past history aside, I am curious now as to how brilliant the tau must be. Especially since the whole "40 years is old for a tau" thing. Of course, if they really do act like more modern day china with perfect harmony, then that might make sense. They only need to sleep about 4 hours per day anyway, and they don't want to do much else then further the greater good.

[Verruckt]

oi, he was always here thankyou very much, don't believe me? I have a photo
http://www.freerefill.de/blog/pix/picard3000.jpg

so HA

...

Heretic.

[BRC]

someone may have already brought this up, and mind you it is pure conjecture, but am I the only one who thinks there is something fishy about the tau? In the fluff there is mention of a huge war between the plains people and the castle dwellers (read: fire caste and earth caste) that was stopped by two ethereals, a people who had heretofore never appeared in tau society. I can't be the only one who immediately thought "Oh, how odd, *cough* Deceiver *cough* *cough*" I mean, they have no warp presence, and the have better tech than the Imperium with such rapidity? It seems like a Xanatos gambit, but that is pretty much the direct purview of a Star God called the Deceiver right?

Personally, My bet is that the Ethereals are surviving members of the Sufficentally Advanced Aliens that made our favorite fungi.
They create a race that looks like they do, Little warp presense means not much in the way of souls for the necron's to eat (I Think, not quite sure how that works). Then they build-in an imperative to obey their every order. Whereas the Orks were a slapdash spur-of-the-moment job to handle the necrons, the Tau are a more sophisticated tools.


Unless, the orks have a similar imperative built into them, the whatevers just havn't activated it yet! They are prepping to take over the galaxy with a COMBINED ARMY OF ORKS AND TAU! Think about it, The Ultimate Meele Race (Da Orkz), acting as meatshields and skirmishers for the Ultimate Ranged Race (The Tau). They would be Unstoppable!

[MeklorIlavator]

oi, he was always here thankyou very much, don't believe me? I have a photo
http://www.freerefill.de/blog/pix/picard3000.jpg

so HA

...

......
......
:smalleek:
::Head explodes from awesomeness::

[ArtifexFelicis]

That photo is clearly doctored.

The Emperor, from our records retrieved from various sites, had long black hair!

Foolish Gue'la.

Also, for a more sophisticated species, there is nothing about us truly remarkable. The "orks" are far superior in their physiology, in ways we cannot surpass without our battlesuits. No hand created us, we have merely become what we are to spread the Greater Good. We are our own race, to show all beings their true purpose.

[Verruckt]

Now i see why we have a strict purge first, purge second, and purge anyone who hesitates to purge third policy. So, without further ado, PURGE!!

[BRC]

Now i see why we have a strict purge first, purge second, and purge anyone who hesitates to purge third policy. So, without further ado, PURGE!!

I agree
*Purges without hesitation, but with fire, lots and lots of fire*

[MeklorIlavator]

That photo is clearly doctored.

The Emperor, from our records retrieved from various sites, had long black hair!

Foolish Gue'la.

Well, on the plus side, it means that Wesley=Horus, so the firey hatred of both isn't diminished in the least.

[SurlySeraph]

someone may have already brought this up, and mind you it is pure conjecture, but am I the only one who thinks there is something fishy about the tau? In the fluff there is mention of a huge war between the plains people and the castle dwellers (read: fire caste and earth caste) that was stopped by two ethereals, a people who had heretofore never appeared in tau society. I can't be the only one who immediately thought "Oh, how odd, *cough* Deceiver *cough* *cough*" I mean, they have no warp presence, and the have better tech than the Imperium with such rapidity? It seems like a Xanatos gambit, but that is pretty much the direct purview of a Star God called the Deceiver right?

There's evidence that the Tau are being used by the C'tan.
1. Tau have very little warp presence. The C'tan hate psychics almost as much as the Angry Marines hate everything.
2. Ethereals just kinda look like Necrons. They might be surviving Necrontyr. They might be a subspecies engineered to use the Tau, like the Pariahs were engineered to use humans.

But there's also evidence that the Tau are being used by Chaos
1. The only reason the Imperium didn't wipe the Tau out milennia ago is because freak warp storms sprung up and destroyed the invasion fleet. Who controls the warp? Well, Chaos does, mostly. Looks like Chaos was watching out for the Tau.
2. The Greater Good. An incredibly high rate of technological change. The most hopeful civilization out there. Very closely allied with a bird-headed race (the Kroot). Do I have to spell it out for you? Well, I will. The Tau and Kroot have a hell of a lot of traits that Tzeentch likes.

[Dervag]

I personally believe the Tyranid's previous galaxy was just a much softer target. For example, Biovores are a relatively recent 'nid form, which was only seen in battle after the initial contacts. Which indicates that whatever the 'nids fought back where they come from, they didn't need field artillery to do it. It seems most likely to me that the Milky Way is just the 'nids first major experience with organized technological resistance; they were far and away the top of the food chain back home and didn't need to develop resistance to high-energy lasers and high explosives in order to overwhelm planets.Maybe they already had those forms in storage and cranked them out after word came back from the lead Hive Fleets that they needed those forms.

Perhaps the Tyranids are a nomadic biological equivalent of the Imperium- they're engineered rather than adaptive, and when they face a new threat they can only react by breaking out a stored biological 'template'. Just as the Imperium relies very heavily on old technological designs, and reacts to a new threat by making minor variations on an existing technological template.

Also, that would help to explain why they are running. If the 'Nids are the bioengineered armed forces of a defeated empire, or if the lead Hive Fleets are the militarized scouts of an empire that contains 'civilian' bioforms too, they might readily be running from something less horrible than, say, Azathoth. And they can't stand and fight against the thing they're running from because it already knows how to defeat their toughest available bioforms- they can't just keep upgrading their toughest monsters indefinitely until they find something capable of defeating their pursuers.


Keep in mind, the Emperor isn't dead, Inquisitor Draco managed to communicate with him in the novel Draco. And the Emperor still manifests himself with saints and watching the back of people like CIAPHAS CAIN.Yes, but while he's not dead he's functionally unable to save the situation. It's pretty clear that the Emperor is doing everything in his power that he feels appropriate for the Imperium's sake. If he were physically capable of leading the Imperium back to its glory days in the era before the Horus Heresy (even working from the Golden Throne), he would. But he can't, because he's so grievously weakened. So even though he can still communicate and manifest with saints and such, his abilities are far more limited than they were before. To the point where his absence from the scene as an active and vital being makes the Imperium much weaker than it could be (and was, back when he was active and vital).


Anyway, it's not that there's two of him, he just is a member of an Epic Level Adventuring Party comprising him, Elminster, Kratos, and the Chapter Master of the Angry Marines, Temperus 'Rip and Tear' Angricus Maximus. They were looking for XP, and accidentally misdirected them here.
Personally, I think that they're running from these guys:
[marvel zombies]Either of those theories makes sense to me.


Also, somthing ive wondered about Imperial Technology. I was wondering why they use servitors instead of 100% robots, and my logic was "They can't program an AI well enough to do the stuff a servitor does, so they lobotomize some criminal, stuff him full of mechanical bits, and use him as other sci-fi civilizations use robots." But they I though of Servo-Skulls which can do some stuff that's more complex than your standard servitor-grade task. So is it just that the imperium has alot of executee's lying around and they needed somthing to do with all the bodies and skulls or what?Plus, their pure robots tend to go evil and rebellious on them.


Angry Marines, The only chapter to...Make a necron cry.But... but... Necrons don't even have tear ducts!? That's pretty angry. Wow.

[Zorg]

Plus, their pure robots tend to go evil and rebellious on them.

My Legio Cybernetica Maniple would disagree with you (once I'm done putting all those tiles together...).

[LBO]

Maybe they already had those forms in storage and cranked them out after word came back from the lead Hive Fleets that they needed those forms.
It's been all but outright stated Biovores are based on Ork DNA acquired in the 40k galaxy, and Zoanthropes on Eldar. Tyrant Guard used to be Marines, though they might have retconned that out.

And also, Reasonable Marines > Scary Marines > Angry Marines.

[Dervag]

Ah, but that raises another issue.

If the Tyranids develop more powerful bioforms by incorporating interesting biological structures from their targets, won't there be an upper limit on their ability to bioengineer new and interesting forms?

It's not obvious that there is no theoretical upper bound on the strength of a genetically engineered organism using the DNA templates available to the Tyranids, or that they will be able to keep "adapting" until they have Slavering Gaoogabeast models capable of sucking up the combined fire of a regiment of lascannon-armed troopers. Sooner or later, they're going to hit practical limits.

For instance, what do they use for carapaces? Unless they can invent an infinite stream of better and better materials (despite the fact that they never bothered to do so before meeting humans and the other species of the Milky Way), sooner or later they face the reality that to make their creatures tougher they'll have to give them thicker armor that impedes their mobility.

The same thing applies to other areas- biology is no more capable of unlimited improvement than any other area of technology, and may be less so because you're working from the limits of a very narrow set of possible chemistries. You can't incorporate things like a metal alloy that can only be formed at high temperatures into your organism designs. Whereas there's nothing to stop the Imperial Guard from putting it on their tanks, or the Tau from putting it on their battlesuits.

So I suspect the theoretical limit on Tyranid biotech isn't going to make them invincible compared to Milky Way weapons, because Milky Way weapons themselves seem to have hit or at least approached practical limits.

[SolkaTruesilver]

Hmmm... the Tyranid should constantly harvest orc-infested planets. They come in, they eat, they get out. They wait 24 hours, they come back, they eat the news orcs, they get out..

Infinite food!

[ArtifexFelicis]

What about Orks that manage to survive? They thrive on war, and are documented to get larger based on how tough/long they fight. They could create dozens of Ghazgulls inadvertently!

[tyckspoon]

Part of that comes from reinforcement of the Waaagh field. If you kill all the other Orks around that one badass Ork, he'll still get tougher from the experience. But without the Waaagh he probably won't get much meaner than the average Nob.

[SurlySeraph]

Hmmm... the Tyranid should constantly harvest orc-infested planets. They come in, they eat, they get out. They wait 24 hours, they come back, they eat the news orcs, they get out..

Infinite food!

No, because you can't create something out of nothing. The Orks take up dirt on the planet to grow, then the Tyranids eat them, then the new generation use more of the soil on the planet, and so on until there's no soil left. It would be just like eating the planet's crust, except slower.

[ArtifexFelicis]

Part of that comes from reinforcement of the Waaagh field. If you kill all the other Orks around that one badass Ork, he'll still get tougher from the experience. But without the Waaagh he probably won't get much meaner than the average Nob.

Yes, but when an ork dies he spreads spores and instantly begins to grow moar orksies and stuffs, so in theory there would be an infinate amount of orks to lead so long as they kept growing. Like how Armageddon is utterly infested with the buggers.

Oddly enough, this only makes my respect for ork physiology greater. Though their minds leaving a lot to be thankful for.

[tyckspoon]

Yes, but when an ork dies he spreads spores and instantly begins to grow moar orksies and stuffs, so in theory there would be an infinate amount of orks to lead so long as they kept growing. Like how Armageddon is utterly infested with the buggers.

Oddly enough, this only makes my respect for ork physiology greater. Though their minds leaving a lot to be thankful for.

Eh. The spores need Waaagh to grow properly too, at least as of the last fluff I can remember reading. If there isn't already a significant Ork presence, they'll just grow into relatively normal fungi, Squigs, maybe some Grots and an abnormally runty Ork or two. Essentially trying to seed the area for an Orkish ecology. They're going to be running Ork suppression patrols on Armageddon for.. well, forever, but there's very little chance of an indigenous Waaagh starting up. Although it could get very nasty if another established Ork group swings by Armageddon to have another go.

[ArtifexFelicis]

Well what if there is already a WAAAARGH! going on when the spores begin to fly? I doubt that there's much that could stop a full on assult by orks that quickly, so would the new spored orks be bigger then average or no? I got the impression that it was basically impossible to eradicate orks if they got enough momentum. And if they're fighting 'nid and starting with some nice power, we could be talking about some real 'uge buggers.

Also, I thought the battle for Armageddon was still going, just without Ghazgull leading the orks.

[SolkaTruesilver]

No, because you can't create something out of nothing. The Orks take up dirt on the planet to grow, then the Tyranids eat them, then the new generation use more of the soil on the planet, and so on until there's no soil left. It would be just like eating the planet's crust, except slower.

Hum.. would the Tyrannid eat a planet crust directly?

If not, then the orc-feeding process would be ennough to harvest all organic ressource of a planet, no?

[Talkkno]

Oddly enough, this only makes my respect for ork physiology greater. Though their minds leaving a lot to be thankful for.

The Ork codex clearly thats the there is no evidence that Ork are less intelligent then humans, its just directed in different ways.

[Dervag]

Hmmm... the Tyranid should constantly harvest orc-infested planets. They come in, they eat, they get out. They wait 24 hours, they come back, they eat the news orcs, they get out..

Infinite food!Normally, Tyranids strip-mine a planet of all organic matter. Not even Orks can grow back on a planet that's been stripped down to the mantle.


Yes, but when an ork dies he spreads spores and instantly begins to grow moar orksies and stuffs, so in theory there would be an infinate amount of orks to lead so long as they kept growing. Like how Armageddon is utterly infested with the buggers.

Oddly enough, this only makes my respect for ork physiology greater. Though their minds leaving a lot to be thankful for.But the spores can't grow into orks unless there are materials to make more orks. If there's no soil or other organic matter, the 'ork spores' can't grow. So the supply of orks is potentially unlimited only if the supply of organic matter is unlimited or perfectly recycled (dead orks decaying and providing raw materials for new ones). Since Tyranids eat the organic matter on a planet and fly away, they leave nothing for the production of a new generation of orks.


Well what if there is already a WAAAARGH! going on when the spores begin to fly? I doubt that there's much that could stop a full on assult by orks that quickly, so would the new spored orks be bigger then average or no? I got the impression that it was basically impossible to eradicate orks if they got enough momentum. And if they're fighting 'nid and starting with some nice power, we could be talking about some real 'uge buggers.

Also, I thought the battle for Armageddon was still going, just without Ghazgull leading the orks.Well, if you can dump enough firepower to kill the orks fast enough, and if you use flamers and such to destroy the bodies before they launch spores, you can beat them. The main problem is just putting enough troops onto the target that you can destroy ork bodies faster than they can respawn.

But yeah, at some point you'll just have to settle for nuking the planet from orbit.

[Verruckt]

Well, if you can dump enough firepower to kill the orks fast enough, and if you use flamers and such to destroy the bodies before they launch spores, you can beat them. The main problem is just putting enough troops onto the target that you can destroy ork bodies faster than they can respawn.

But yeah, at some point you'll just have to settle for nuking the planet from orbit.

This reminds me of a question i had, why haven't they burnt off Armageddon's atmosphere yet?

[tyckspoon]

Armageddon's a major keystone. Chaos was after it to secure some of your standard World Ending Magic Monoliths, IIRC; applying Exterminatus to the planet would get rid of the Orks, but it would also leave the planet near-impossible to effectively defend against other forces (Demons, primarily) that don't care about breathing or much of anything else.

[Dervag]

Can the monoliths be destroyed, or would that be exactly what the forces of Chaos are trying to accomplish?

On a side note, Armageddon is a major industrial center. The Imperium isn't likely to try to wreck the planet unless it's clear they can no longer hold it- and they haven't reached that point.

[Kane]

Well, I had a nifty post mostly typed up, but I had to reboot my computer, and I couldn't save it. That said, here's a vain attempt by me to recreate it.


I actually don't play WH40K, but a friend got me interested about a week ago, and I've been reading everything I could find online since then. (All Hail Wikipedia.)

The Imperium: I figure that Games Workshop is delibrately vague, to keep the Imperium fighting. After all, if they were that blatantly screwed, it just be a matter of time.

Second, Machine Spirits; I haven't read any fluff (means background stuff, right? Novels and such?), but I'd guess it's like some previous members stated. (Bloody Red Commie, if I remember.) There are no machine spirits, just a ritual that partially involves fixing the problem with all the other stuff. Third, I figure that if they can keep those factories running this long, they know how to repair them, and basically, can make them, though they're only able to when they have a form-fitting mold, and know exactly what goes where. Which they don't, but when repairing the factory, they know exactly what broke, and exactly what goes where.

Tau I happen to like, and I'm not particularly fond of the idea that they're demons or demon-used or something, so I'll speak out for them on the one subject I know about: Tau advance so rapidly because they don't fight each other. Look at human history, It's just a series of wars loosely connected by treaties. The dark ages, the fall of the Roman Empire, all that; The Tau didn't have that. They just kept advancing. No Regression.


And as for the death of the Imperium: Next hundred years. Because that's when the Tyranid main battle fleet arrives. Yah. (I cite the Wikipedia page on Tyranids)

The Imperium has no hope to fight it on it's own, and no matter what, it's going to be decimated, leaving it week against, let's see if I've got them right here, Necrons, Orks, Tau (kinda), Eldar (kinda), Dark Eldar, Chaos Daemons, Chaos Marines, and....Right. There's still the remnants of the 'nid vanguard fleet puttering around in the galaxy.

That's what I've figured out in about... a week and a half. (I did say recent.)

[Dervag]

Hmm.

Yeah, the Tyranid main fleet is the most likely thing to cause the fall of the Imperium in the near future (as in, sometime in M42).

On the other hand, I'm not sure it guarantees that the Imperium is screwed. Isn't there a lot we don't know about the main fleet?

It might get caught by whatever the 'Nids are running from. Of course, there's a real danger that that will come storming into the Milky Way. Which would probably be even worse.

Or it might not be a battlefleet per se. It might be that they sent a heavily militarized fleet of outriders as the leading wave of a colonization effort. However, given the Tyranid ability to use biomass to make warriors, that probably won't help. The Tyranids will just 'eat' their own non-militarized bioforms and make combat units out of them.
______________________________

Another thing to remember is that while the idea of the Warhammer Milky Way's great powers uniting against a common enemy is a farce, a mass Tyranid invasion would stir things up enough that the Imperium would likely not be the only power fighting them.

[Kane]

Eh wot? 42nd Millennium? I thought it was the 41st.

[Dervag]

Yes, but the Imperium isn't falling in the 41st millenium; it's still around as of 40999. Therefore, any 'future' events outside the current period of the game would have to take place in the 42nd millenium or later.

[Mr. Friendly]

+++scary mechanical voice+++


The flesh of the young races is weak. It is their reliance on the warp which has spared them from being harvested until now. Soon the our Gods will complete The Great Work which will forever cut off the immaterium from the material universe. Once this great event occurs, all warp travel will cease; all psychics will be blinded; then we shall awaken to enslave and our Gods shall feast upon the souls of the living.

Don't let the fact that we get totally ****ed over in the game dissuade you. The game just has to keep things "balanced"; in the "real" universe, our ships slip undetected into any location and our troops deploy. Our Gauss weapons instantly destroy your mightiest war machines as easily as they flay skin from bone.

You will all die.

[Wraith]

Hmmm... the Tyranid should constantly harvest orc-infested planets. They come in, they eat, they get out. They wait 24 hours, they come back, they eat the news orcs, they get out..

Infinite food!

This IS currently occurring in the Eastern Fringes - The Imperium survived Hive Fleet Leviathan only by the miraculous idea of Inquisitor Kryptman to capture live Genestealers and send them into an Ork-infested corner of the galaxy. Enough Orks get face-raped and enough Genestealers are born, then their psychic presence grows big enough to lure the main fleet away from the Imperium and over to the Orks. (See Codex Tyranids for the full story, which I believe was originally a novel to boot.)


What about Orks that manage to survive? They thrive on war, and are documented to get larger based on how tough/long they fight. They could create dozens of Ghazgulls inadvertently!

See above - the Imperium bought itself time, at the cost of seeing both enemies evolving at an exponential rate. The Tyranids fight the Orks, which makes the Tyranids bigger, better and stronger than they were just by fighting humans. Harder fighting makes the Orks bigger, better and stronger by forcing them to meet the new threat. Tyranids fight and eat the bigger, better and stronger Orks, which makes them EVEN bigger, better and stronger...

The ultimate outcome is that eventually one side will prevail, and they will be more powerful than could ever have been imagined. And lurking right on the borders of the Imperium, much, much closer than any Hive Fleet that has arrived before....


If the Tyranids develop more powerful bioforms by incorporating interesting biological structures from their targets, won't there be an upper limit on their ability to bioengineer new and interesting forms?

That's right - Tyranids are only as stronger as everything they have met and eaten so far, and win by evolving complimenting traits - the size and bulk of Orks with the psychic capabilities of Eldar, for example. What they can't eat, they can't assimilate - therefore there is no chance of seeing a Tyranid with adamantine skin and carrying an organically-powered lascannon, since these things have no genetic base to copy. So eventually they will plateau, because there's no 'new' things for them to accumulate.

In theory then, MASSIVELY superior firepower will beat a Tyranid horde. They can't assimilate Fusion Bombs and they can't encorporate lascannons, so neither can they protect against them. get enough f these things in one place, and theoretically it's just a shooting gallery. Daemons, similarly, have no genetic code (that we know of...?) and so fighting those things will make Tyranids no stronger, and they will get no biomass in return to make up for their losses.

However, Kryptman has doomed you all, as I explained above. Both sides are getting stronger and stronger and stronger until...

...Well, Tyranids can already field Carnifex as Elite and Heavy choices. Give them enough time and enough 'practice', and we could plausibly see Termagaunts with stats and abilities comparable with Carnifex, and Carnifex themselves, who are already tough to take a lascannon to the face and laugh at it... :smallbiggrin:

[Kane]

+++scary mechanical voice+++
Don't let the fact that we get totally ****ed over in the game dissuade you. The game just has to keep things "balanced"; in the "real" universe, our ships slip undetected into any location and our troops deploy. Our Gauss weapons instantly destroy your mightiest war machines as easily as they flay skin from bone.

You will all die.

Yah. In game. That's why the Tyranids aren't going to do something like that. In Game Balance. Might get slightly better stats, though. They might try to justify it by claiming that the Tyrnids are only growing resistant to the Orkish weapons, but that the Orks are growing more powerful at a similar clip.

And as for the guy who I'm quoting.... I think I'm going to be being Tau. Which is why I'd like to point out that in Real Life (tm), Railguns are better than coil guns. (gauss guns.).

Sorry for not keeping your text format, it hurt my eyes.

[Dervag]

However, Kryptman has doomed you all, as I explained above. Both sides are getting stronger and stronger and stronger until...

...Well, Tyranids can already field Carnifex as Elite and Heavy choices. Give them enough time and enough 'practice', and we could plausibly see Termagaunts with stats and abilities comparable with Carnifex, and Carnifex themselves, who are already tough to take a lascannon to the face and laugh at it... :smallbiggrin:The orks don't grow better biology. They're a technology-using species. Their bigger, tougher bioforms are just normal orks who grew really big in response to the "I'm an alpha ork!" stimulus.

So the Tyranids may be able to become stronger by assimilating ork biochemistry and genetics, but it's a one-off thing. The orks won't become physically stronger or tougher because they're fighting Tyranids, so it isn't an endless feedback loop.

Also, the Imperium would probably be well advised to start Exterminatusing planets in the sector in question, assuming they can even get a fleet in there. Can they?
__________________________________________

Now, the really frightening prospect is that the Tyranids will gain the orks' spore-like method of reproduction. That would make them vastly more effective. However, it isn't likely to work because it doesn't fit in very well with the way the Tyranids reproduce. At least, I think. I was under the impression that baby Tyranids come from some kind of centralized organic factory, in which case the 'growth by spores' thing we see in the orks isn't likely to work for them.
___________________________________

As for the Tau, I honestly have to say that I think they're screwed if the Imperium is screwed. The Imperium may despise them, but as a practical matter it acts as a defensive buffer against threats so large the Tau could never hope to confront them on its own. The Imperium stands at least a remote chance of mobilizing enough troops to defeat the Tyranid main Hive Fleets, and it can produce enough troops to hold the Cadian Gate. The Tau aren't likely to be able to do either of those things. And those things have to be done, or galactic civilization (humans, the Eldar, the Tau, and maybe even the orks) is screwed.*

The only way for galactic civilization to survive at this point is for the Imperium to return to sanity. Either the Emperor returns (not likely), some kind of Star Child thing happens (unknown likelihood), the Imperial government evolves into a more stable structure less dependent on crumbling institutions (very unlikely)...

...or the Tau absorb enough of the Imperium to do its job. And that isn't going to happen very soon.

And one of those things has to happen before the Tyranids invade the galaxy in sufficient force to overwhelm civilization, and before Abbadon figures out a way to break out of the Cadian Gate.

I'm not at all confident that can happen, and the Tau, being smack in the path of the oncoming Tyranid main fleet, aren't in a good position to make it happen in time.

[Mr. Friendly]

And as for the guy who I'm quoting.... I think I'm going to be being Tau. Which is why I'd like to point out that in Real Life (tm), Railguns are better than coil guns. (gauss guns.).

Unfortunately for you squishy meat bags, Necron Gauss technology is not the same thing as the human gauss weapon (or coil gun).


Gauss weapons
The most common Necron armaments are Gauss weapons which, although named as such by the Imperium, are nothing like their human counterparts. They are described in canonical material as having a slight basis in gauss gun theory, but are otherwise completely distinct: the technology violently rips matter off a target, instead of firing something at it. Gauss weaponry "flay" matter, dematerializing it molecule by molecule, atom by atom until nothing remains. As such they are effective against even Titan-grade armour plating, systematically "flaying" targets apart (an effect most pronounced on human targets).[1]



Now, the really frightening prospect is that the Tyranids will gain the orks' spore-like method of reproduction. That would make them vastly more effective. However, it isn't likely to work because it doesn't fit in very well with the way the Tyranids reproduce. At least, I think. I was under the impression that baby Tyranids come from some kind of centralized organic factory, in which case the 'growth by spores' thing we see in the orks isn't likely to work for them.

Technically, tyranids already reproduce in a spore like manner:


The Invasion Process
To start the invasion, hive fleets launch mycetic spores, that burst open on impact and release a number of tyranid organisms that will build up the resources to extract from that world. Vanguard tyranids are released, and spore chimneys grow that alter the vegetation until it is grossly mutated and grown, under the control of the hive mind. Then the main tyranid army descends and lays siege. Capillary towers begin to rise up. After the eradication of any hostile life on the planet, the planet is stripped of resources and the genetic material transported to the hive ship via digestion pools and capillary towers. The atmosphere is then devoured by the hive ships. Then the fleet moves on, leaving a barren planet incapable of supporting life behind them.


Notes on the Tau:

The Tau are cloned Necrontyr.

[Bryn]

Notes on the Tau:

The Tau are cloned Necrontyr.

My favourite epilectic tree for the Tau is the one from Xenology that heavily suggests that the Eldar genetically modified the Ethereals to have pheromones, thus explaining why the Tau suddenly stopped fighting and why the Ethereals are so universally obeyed. Then again, that might not be an epiliectic tree considering that it comes from a canon source.

That doesn't necessarily conflict with them being cloned Necrontyr, as well. :smallbiggrin:


On Tyranid reproduction:
Tyranid organisms are grown in the Hive Ships, and I believe it is somehow related to the Norn Queens, as well as brood nests that arise on the ground as described in Imperial Armour IV. Although they do make use of spores, it's not in the same way as the Orks, since the spores won't become Tyranid organisms. Personally, I doubt the Tyranids will gain the Ork reproduction method, since the nests and the idea of thousands of Tyranids on the ships works particularly well with the horrific style of the Nids.

Also, it's just occured to me that, due to the spores, Orks never give up worlds. Sounds obvious, but this is important. A certain person does the exact same thing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU).

Coincidence? I think not.

[ArtifexFelicis]

And as for the guy who I'm quoting.... I think I'm going to be being Tau. Which is why I'd like to point out that in Real Life (tm), Railguns are better than coil guns. (gauss guns.).



Yay new Tau supporters! We rock.

The main reason, as I can see, that the Tau are advancing so slowly is twofold. The first is that they are being careful about what they do. They attack too quickly, and they're gonna get squished out pretty damn quickly by the Imperium. But on the other hand, they SECURE the planets that they take so they tend to have a fairly good foothold.

Unlike the Imperium, they don't drop a couple regiments, hand out awards and go onto the next conquest where they get eaten by hrud. This way provides a fairly stable and strong base to launch the next attacks, but doesn't work for establishing a rufly large empire just yet.

Also, 1 kg bullet destroying tank crews is cooler than anything else in the game. Even, and I am serious here, chainfists. Your pathetic little guass weaponry isn't nearly so awesome.

[Mr. Friendly]

Also, 1 kg bullet destroying tank crews is cooler than anything else in the game. Even, and I am serious here, chainfists. Your pathetic little guass weaponry isn't nearly so awesome.

There is a picture in the Necron Codex of a shot from a Destroyer piercing the side of an undamaged landraider and blowing out the other side of the hull. The notes by the Imperial scientists say that the amount of energy required to have such a weapon would be Titan grade or better.

That's a basic Destroyer. And the normal troops do that to. Every single Necron (with the exception of the pure melee units, which can have disruption fields that do very much the same) on the table can destroy any vehicle that can be fielded.

Also... when one of you mecha wearing grey skins gets killed, do you stand back up fully functional at the start of the next turn? :smallbiggrin:

[Kane]

Thank you, Mr. Friendly, (or sociopathic, undead robot, as the case may be,) for the correction. I didn't know.

Further, isn't it only a one in four, or something chance of ressurrection? Otherwise, how would you guys be getting owned defeated in tournaments?

Also, yes, I agree, the Tau have been very smart and careful, no, they can't ward off chaos or the Tyranids. I concede that the Tau are only alive because they're clever and patient, and because they're shielded by the Imperium.

Don't understand why the Space Marines and the Imperial Guard won't work together, though. SMs backed by IG armor would kick ass up and down the galaxy.

[tyckspoon]

T
Don't understand why the Space Marines and the Imperial Guard won't work together, though. SMs backed by IG armor would kick ass up and down the galaxy.

Who said they don't? They're both part of the Imperium's military, although Marine chapters have a significant degree of independence. They can and do operate jointly, when feasible- typically that involves letting the Guard tarpit the enemy while the Marines handle whatever the problem is. There just aren't enough Marines to make that possible at every place where the Imperium needs an army.

[BRC]

I think it's also that there are some problems only marines could really handle effectivly, while any problem that could be handled by a combined marine/guard force could also be handled by a larger guard force. Sure it will have alot more casualties, but that's never somthing that really concerns the IOM

[Kane]

Oh. Well, one of my friends who seems to know a bit (certainly more than I do, unless he's pretending) about the 40K universe said they don't operate together due to doctrinal conflicts, or something.

Recovery? How could the Imperium realistically recover?

[Demented]

An example of a doctrinal conflict between the Guard and SM:


Guard: "Woo! Check it! We whooped chaos' butts good!"

Space Marine: "You are tainted by chaos! You must be exterminated!"

Guard: "Huh? No, we beat th–"

Space Marine: "EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE"

*some time after* (With piles of dead guards in the background.)

Imperial Guard Commander: "That was a complete overreaction."

Space Marine: "Is that what you think? Maybe your belief in the Emperor is waning."

Inquisitor: "Hai."

Imperial Guard Commander: "Oh, uh..." *adjusts collar* "I'm glad you've handled the problem. I'll just be going now."

*pause*

Space Marine: "High five!"

Inquisitor: "Don't touch me. I know where your powerfist has been."

[Dervag]

I wonder... would they be more effective at fighting Chaos if they didn't kill off all the ordinary soldiers who fight it, therefore making it impossible for the Guard to develop institutional memory about how to go about fighting them?

Now, that's practically a rhetorical question. The real question is whether they'd be better off that way, despite the (marginally?) increased awareness of the power Chaos has in the galaxy.

[Zorg]

That's one area where the fluff is pretty contradictory - for instance Cadia is subject to repeated chaos attacks and isn't purged (and Medusa was evacuated as much as possible - The Mordian and Tallarn backstory involves repeated battles with chaos also), while there are many cases of entire planets being purged or troopers being mindwiped (see first battle of Armageddon).

I'd say it depends on who's there and the nature of the chaos incursion. An army involved in fighting an invasion (or successfully attack a fallen planet) is less likely to be purged than a planet that fell to civil war. Leman Russ was outraged at the Inquisition and Administratum's treatment of the Armageddon survivors, so there was precedent of having them live indicated there.

Marines and Guard opperate together, but their roles are so vastly different - like Delta Force or the SAS compared to the regular Army.

[LBO]

Cadia will never be purged because its very existence is critical to defending against Chaos. Sure, you could purge it of all chaos taint, and it would indeed be a nice pure black rock, until the next Black Crusade (which probably won't fail at the first hurdle) gets all up in your grill. Even the Imperium aren't too blind to see the tradeoff there.

That Medusa V thing was bullcrap. I can't believe they had a plot point regarding the Imperium caring about the lives of its citizens. Feh :smallyuk:

Basically: The marines are the scalpel, the Guard are the hammer (and the anvil). Guard are absolutely omnipresent, there are billions of them and they come from basically every world. When you want to take entire worlds, beat off Black Crusades or Hive Fleets or WAAAGH!s, Marines simply aren't enough on their own. You want something in particular broken, someone killed, a particular target or force pwned with EXTREME prejudice, you send the Marines (or, more often, the capricious bastards send themselves), but there simply aren't that many of them (about one Marine for each planet in the Imperium), so using them where the Guard will do is both foolish and impossible.

Of course, when they're in serious trouble, they'll throw the entire toolbox at you...

[ArtifexFelicis]

Basically: The marines are the scalpel, the Guard are the hammer (and the anvil). Guard are absolutely omnipresent, there are trillions and trillions of them and they come from basically every world.

Just a quick correction.

I find it amusing that the Imperium has gotten to the point where economically it's probably more feasible to throw guardsman into a blender and hope they clog it up after a while simply for how much they need to EAT.

[Zorg]

I always saw it not that the Imperium doesn't care, just that there are often more important things to care about (they also evacuate the planet in the first Dawn of War).

Eat? It's the future! Three nutri-pills a day is all they need...

[Solo]

I find it amusing that the Imperium has gotten to the point where economically it's probably more feasible to throw guardsman into a blender and hope they clog it up after a while simply for how much they need to EAT.

Kill a xenos and roast it.

[Wraith]

The orks don't grow better biology. They're a technology-using species. Their bigger, tougher bioforms are just normal orks who grew really big in response to the "I'm an alpha ork!" stimulus.

So the Tyranids may be able to become stronger by assimilating ork biochemistry and genetics, but it's a one-off thing. The orks won't become physically stronger or tougher because they're fighting Tyranids, so it isn't an endless feedback loop.

Depends how literally you take it - the way I look at it, the more Orks there are then the bigger and meaner the one at the top will grow, and so far as we know this is only limited by the number of Orks that have gotten together at one time - Armageddon probably being the biggest, producing Ghazghull (twice).

What if Tyranids were to develop this same trait from Ork DNA?
There's a HELL of a lot more Tyranids than there are anything else (even if you don't include the individual beetles and worms that make up their living ammunition, or the enormous swarms of Rippers employed to graze entire planets bare), and that's just the ones we've know about - potentially, there's at least one entire galaxy full of them heading this way to boot.

How many more would they need, and how much bigger would they have to get in order to be considered 'unstoppable' when there are already Tyranids big and strong enough to tear a Warlord Titan into pieces? :smallbiggrin:


My favourite epilectic tree for the Tau is the one from Xenology that heavily suggests that the Eldar genetically modified the Ethereals to have pheromones, thus explaining why the Tau suddenly stopped fighting and why the Ethereals are so universally obeyed. Then again, that might not be an epiliectic tree considering that it comes from a canon source.

That doesn't necessarily conflict with them being cloned Necrontyr, as well. :smallbiggrin:

Could you please name your sources for both of these theories? I haven't heard them before, and I would love to read the details if possible :smallsmile:

[Mr. Friendly]

Thank you, Mr. Friendly, (or sociopathic, undead robot, as the case may be,) for the correction. I didn't know.

Further, isn't it only a one in four, or something chance of ressurrection? Otherwise, how would you guys be getting owned defeated in tournaments?

It's actually a 1 in 2 chance of standing back up. If you have a Monolith on the field within 18 inches, you can scoop up the whole squad and give them all a second chance at We'll be back rolls. The caveat is that if we get killed in hand to hand with no-save weapons (or any no-save weapons, really) there is no getting back up unless there is a Rez Orb nearby.

That's pretty much the reason Necrons are auto-defeated in every tournament though. :smallfrown: Everyone has at least one squad of tooled up melee monsters that just gut Necrons. With their pathetic Initiatives and lack of power weapons, they have no real hope of surviving an assault phase against a squad that (initially) is 1/6th their size.

Case in point (and this has happened on at least 4 seperate occasions) a Raptor squad (the worst) or SMurf Jump/Assault squad (or even worse.. Blood Angel Death Company - *shudder*) gets in my face and assaults. Before we even *get* to go, they have killed half the (30 man) squad. Assuming the squad even has a Lord attached, there is a good chance he is either killed outright (if at the front) or standing there doing nothing (if in the middle) by the time consolidation and morale happens, we have taken so many hits that we need to make a morale. Which seems to auto fail every time.

The other thing that kills them on the tabletop is the Phase Out rule. As soon as the Necron player loses 3/4ths of his starting models, that's it - game over. It doesn''t matter if you were about to win. It doesn't matter if you still have 1000 points left on the table and the enemy has a single ... what.. Kroot warrior on the table... if that lone model gets a shot and kills the one model that tips the scale... the Necron players gets to auto lose.

I suppose it is the price of awesome... funny, I thought having the most expensive models (points wise) in the game was supposed to be the penalty for that... but no, Necrons are so awesome they have to be penalized more harshly than all other races.

Which is why they are destined to conquer the Universe in storyline. As when they phase out, they go back to a tomb world for repair, thus they never truly are defeated.



Don't understand why the Space Marines and the Imperial Guard won't work together, though. SMs backed by IG armor would kick ass up and down the galaxy.

They do work together. Just not all that often. I believe there are in fact rules for IG and SM to have allies from the other.



What if Tyranids were to develop this same trait from Ork DNA?
There's a HELL of a lot more Tyranids than there are anything else (even if you don't include the individual beetles and worms that make up their living ammunition, or the enormous swarms of Rippers employed to graze entire planets bare), and that's just the ones we've know about - potentially, there's at least one entire galaxy full of them heading this way to boot.

What people seem to be missing is that those Rippers, beetles, squiggly things, Biovores, spore mines... in short *everything* is all *the same*.

A typical Tyranid invasion begins with a psychic signal from Genestealers, who act as the first line of infiltrators. They "impregnate" humanoids and set up cults. after there are enough "converts" the signal is sent, alerting the Hive Fleet. A ship arrives which deploys spore mines into the upper atmosphere. The spores infect everything, turning the wildlife and plantlife into thrashing tyranid organisms. Over time, genepolls form, with the native life being sucked up and spat back out as familiar tyranid critters like gaunts, lictors and raveners.

As the invasion progresses and more biomass is absorbed by the swarm, the larger beings like Warriors and Carnifexes start getting spat out.

So you see, everything is Tyranid. All Tyranids are Tyranid and after the swarm arrives, all life is Tyranid. (They are, naturally, my other favorite race)


Could you please name your sources for both of these theories? I haven't heard them before, and I would love to read the details if possible :smallsmile:

The sources are, for the most part, too numerous. Primarily because they are, for the most part, just internet theories. I don't have any fast an easy links to give you, but with a little google-fu and some time (and no work filters *grumble*) you can find out the origin points for the rumors.

[Wraith]

The sources are, for the most part, too numerous. Primarily because they are, for the most part, just internet theories. I don't have any fast an easy links to give you, but with a little google-fu and some time (and no work filters *grumble*) you can find out the origin points for the rumors.

Fair enough - thanks for that much, at least I don't have to buy any more books. :smallsmile:


I suppose it is the price of awesome... funny, I thought having the most expensive models (points wise) in the game was supposed to be the penalty for that... but no, Necrons are so awesome they have to be penalized more harshly than all other races.

Please, let's not devolve into a pissing contest about how harshly different armies are treated? Because otherwise the Dark Eldar and Squat players will join in, and we'll never hear the end of it! :smallwink:

[SolkaTruesilver]

Please, let's not devolve into a pissing contest about how harshly different armies are treated? Because otherwise the Dark Eldar and Squat players will join in, and we'll never hear the end of it! :smallwink:

It's still not as bad as the Tau. If you trip over one of them, you kill their entire squad!

[Bryn]

Could you please name your sources for both of these theories? I haven't heard them before, and I would love to read the details if possible :smallsmile:

OK, I first saw the 'cloned Necrontyr' theory in this thread, and it's probably just bizarre fan musings. The other one, however, is heavily based in the 40k background book Xenology.

In the section about the Q'orl, a minor race of insectoid aliens which were invented for the book as far as I can tell, there is a translated 'history' telling of how the Eldar helped the Q'orl against some sort of contagion, which may have been chaotic. As a payment, the Eldar demanded one of the Q'orl queens "to build a swarm un-corroded. Resistant to [untranslatable]". The Q'orl did not comply, so the Eldar kidnapped the queen.

Further down the page, there is a mention of Magos Biologis Darvus, one of the characters in the book, pulling out a strange diamond-shaped organ which apparently is involved in pheromone production. Both are connected to the brain.

Earlier in the book, a Tau Ethereal is also dissected. One of the aspects noted is extremely advanced scent, and a "unknown 'diamond' organism" that is only displayed by the ethereal caste.

On the following page, there is an excerpt from an interview with a Tau ethereal. The tau describes the unifying effect of the Greater Good, and falls entirely silent when the Inquisitor conducting the interview asks about O'Shovah. The Inquisitor tells the story of Farsight, noting the way O'Shovah turned against the Empire after the Ethereal died.

Another excerpt on the same page notes the sudden advancement in Tau society.

But then, on the next page, there is a detail on the 'diamond-organ'. IT describes structures reminiscent of 'pheremone' glands in earth creatures, and posits the theory of the Ethereals asserting "a measure of control over lesser castes".

The conclusion from this is that the Eldar used the Q'orl queen to engineer the Tau ethereals to have pheromone control over the Tau. This explains the sudden end to the war, the extreme loyalty to the Greater Good, and also suggests why Farsight turns against the Empire.

[Mr. Friendly]

Some Necron - Tau connections stuff I have read:

http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/40k-army-fluff/81528-symbol-analysis-necrons.html

I will add more after I find some, the connections are tenuous at best I admit, but hey that's theoretical fictional Xenogenetics for you!

[ArtifexFelicis]

For O'Shovah, I subscribe to a different theory. While he's still the black sheep and generally not liked by most of them, I don't think he pulled a face heel turn. I more think of it that he's guarding the worlds he took for the rest of the Tau. Just because they're nice comparatively, doesn't mean they're above propaganda.

He guards a certain bit of space that is heavily infested by Chaos. I personally think he probably saw some of that, and realized what he would need to do. Combined with a Crisis of Faith, he felt it necessary to press the attack without his ethereal. He set up his rogue septs, and from there now guards that section of Space. He still believes in the Greater Good, but not at all like what the Ethereals believe it could be.

Or in other words, he has a much less naive version of the Greater Good. And his spiffy Eldar sword has kept him alive for a rather long long time.

Course, a connection with the Eldar meddling might have something to do, but I personally think that book was more written as entertainment then straight canon. Still an excellent read though.

EDIT: Sides, strip away all of the boas, then he could just be a "Priviteer." A legal pirate in a way, and still loyal.

[Kane]

I think the Imperium is going to slowly die, unless the Tyranid main fleet, say, goes straight into the eye of terror or something. Wiping out the Tau, Eldar, Dark eldar, orks, and Necrons along the way of course.

Or, they could just get instantly owned by the tyranid fleet.That too.

Anyone know where the idea that the Tyranid main fleet is RUNNING from something came from?

EDIT: Someone above mentioned 'squat' players, what are those, AND, I remembered to ask, aren't Gray Knights worth more than Necrons?

[MeklorIlavator]

Squats=Dwarves in space. They didn't really fit the GRIMDARK setting that GW was promoting, and got killed off by a splinter fleet that went right through their homeworlds.

[Dervag]

Depends how literally you take it - the way I look at it, the more Orks there are then the bigger and meaner the one at the top will grow, and so far as we know this is only limited by the number of Orks that have gotten together at one time - Armageddon probably being the biggest, producing Ghazghull (twice).

What if Tyranids were to develop this same trait from Ork DNA?
There's a HELL of a lot more Tyranids than there are anything else (even if you don't include the individual beetles and worms that make up their living ammunition, or the enormous swarms of Rippers employed to graze entire planets bare), and that's just the ones we've know about - potentially, there's at least one entire galaxy full of them heading this way to boot.

How many more would they need, and how much bigger would they have to get in order to be considered 'unstoppable' when there are already Tyranids big and strong enough to tear a Warlord Titan into pieces? :smallbiggrin:The problem is that this Ork trait only applies to the 'alpha ork' (Ghazghull, for instance). And it has an upper bound- it seems to scale sort of logarithmically with the number of Orks. Which means that if it's applied to Tyranids, they don't get very many 'enhanced' Tyranids, nor are those Tyranids a majority of the power of a given army, just as Ork Nobs are not the majority of the power of an Ork army.

The real threat is that they'll get the effects of a WAAGH! on each individual 'Nid, such as becoming more ferocious in groups. Since Tyranids are the only things that form groups even bigger than Orks...


What people seem to be missing is that those Rippers, beetles, squiggly things, Biovores, spore mines... in short *everything* is all *the same*.

A typical Tyranid invasion begins with a psychic signal from Genestealers, who act as the first line of infiltrators. They "impregnate" humanoids and set up cults. after there are enough "converts" the signal is sent, alerting the Hive Fleet. A ship arrives which deploys spore mines into the upper atmosphere. The spores infect everything, turning the wildlife and plantlife into thrashing tyranid organisms. Over time, genepolls form, with the native life being sucked up and spat back out as familiar tyranid critters like gaunts, lictors and raveners.

As the invasion progresses and more biomass is absorbed by the swarm, the larger beings like Warriors and Carnifexes start getting spat out.

So you see, everything is Tyranid. All Tyranids are Tyranid and after the swarm arrives, all life is Tyranid. (They are, naturally, my other favorite race)Which is why, as the person you were responding to pointed out, it would be a Bad Thing if they gained an Ork-like WAAGH! ability. They already have strength in numbers, but at least it's more or less linear. Twice as much Tyranid biomass is twice as bad.

With Orks, it scales at least a little faster than linear, such that twice as much Ork biomass is, say, 2*log(2) times as bad. Given the enormous scale of Tyranid biomass in their main armies, that could work out very badly, depending on how strongly they respond to it.


I think the Imperium is going to slowly die, unless the Tyranid main fleet, say, goes straight into the eye of terror or something. Wiping out the Tau, Eldar, Dark eldar, orks, and Necrons along the way of course.The Tau and Eldar won't kill the Imperium. The Tau will assimilate it if it doesn't kill them first, but humanity might well do OK as part of a Tau system. Eldar don't care; they aren't actually hostile to the Imperium.

Orks aren't going to conquer the Imperium any time soon. They don't get dramatically more powerful over time, and they haven't managed to knock over the Imperium in the past several millenia of trying.

The Necrons might do it, but only if some major plot event happens real soon to wake them all up. I'm not sure how much, if any, foreshadowing there is of that happening. Also, as I understand it, if all the Necrons do wake up, they're likely to focus their war effort on the forces of Chaos or on the incoming Tyranid fleets, both of which are 'worse' from their perspective.

The Tyranids are the big danger of the 42nd millenium. The literature apparently says that the Imperium would need to step up its mobilization by ~500% to deal with the main Hive Fleet. If the main fleet turns out to be as dangerous as projected; I've explored some reasons it might not.

On the other hand, if the Tyranids' great enemy pursues them into the Milky Way it's all over.

[ArtifexFelicis]

Anyone know where the idea that the Tyranid main fleet is RUNNING from something came from?

Wish to second this question.

Also another quicky thingy. Would it be possible for a psyker to mess with an ork's head so he constantly thinks he is fighting and winning? Or something anyway. This is just theoretical anyway, and probbaly not even possible. Just a thought.

[chiasaur11]

On the other hand, if the Tyranids' great enemy pursues them into the Milky Way it's all over.

Other than, of course, GRIMDARK, why is it a given the enemy of the Tyranids would kill mankind?

That huge force might just ignore humanity as beneath it, or even just plan plan to use the races of the Milky Way as slave labor.

Hey, better than the Tyranid.

[Kane]

The Tau and Eldar won't kill the Imperium. The Tau will assimilate it if it doesn't kill them first, but humanity might well do OK as part of a Tau system. Eldar don't care; they aren't actually hostile to the Imperium.

Orks aren't going to conquer the Imperium any time soon. They don't get dramatically more powerful over time, and they haven't managed to knock over the Imperium in the past several millenia of trying.

The Necrons might do it, but only if some major plot event happens real soon to wake them all up. I'm not sure how much, if any, foreshadowing there is of that happening. Also, as I understand it, if all the Necrons do wake up, they're likely to focus their war effort on the forces of Chaos or on the incoming Tyranid fleets, both of which are 'worse' from their perspective.



I didn't know that about the Eldar, but the Tau are whittling away at their edge of the Imperium, albeit non-violently. (For the most part.)

But really, like someone else stated, they're so over-extended that they're struggling. One on one, they could take anything, even the full might of the Necrons, I bet, without too many worries. But with holding the Cadian Gate, holding Apocalypse, A fleet or two running around at all times after the orks, maybe another one, because I hear the Dark Eldar are fond of pirate raids, A fleet or three mopping up any Tyranid resurgences, Chaos raids, you get the idea. Of course, there's also picket units, whatever they have after the Necrons, the Terra Defense Fleet, or whatever, etc. etc. etc.

The Imperium is vast and badass. But it just is too big for it's military coverage, especially with what a 'violent' galaxy it is out there...

[Wraith]

[EDIT: Whoops, double-post. Move along, nothing to see here, folks... ]

[Wraith]

The problem is that this Ork trait only applies to the 'alpha ork' (Ghazghull, for instance). And it has an upper bound- it seems to scale sort of logarithmically with the number of Orks. Which means that if it's applied to Tyranids, they don't get very many 'enhanced' Tyranids, nor are those Tyranids a majority of the power of a given army, just as Ork Nobs are not the majority of the power of an Ork army.

The real threat is that they'll get the effects of a WAAGH! on each individual 'Nid, such as becoming more ferocious in groups. Since Tyranids are the only things that form groups even bigger than Orks...

Unfortunately for the Imperium (and, as an extent, everyone else) both the Tyranid fluff and mechanics dispute this bolded statement.

Tyranids assimilate genetic material, take the useful bits and then spread it out throughout the next generation being 'born' to make them increasingly more deadly.
This is why almost any Tyranid unit can be given certain upgrades - venom sacs, scything claws, hardened carapace, spiny hides, feeder tentacles and so on. They 'stole' these abilities from digested creatures and introduced them into their own DNA because they were useful, ignoring whether or not the original creatures had these abilities throughout their ENTIRE species.

It would not be unreasonable to suspect that the Norn Queens could isolate the "Waaaagh Gene" and implant it into ALL of their children, Termagaunt or Hive Tyrant alike. And if not, the bigger 'Nids certainly COULD get it, and we're back to my original hypothesis - how much more powerful could the big ones be, when they can already eat Gargants and Titans?
If Ghazgull is twice as big as an ordinary Ork because of the Waaagh, and a Scythed Hierodule is already 15 times bigger than a normal Termagaunt (http://www.thewarstore.com/media/ss_size1/FWIA-TYR-T-001.gif) WITHOUT that ability.... :smallwink:

[SolkaTruesilver]

But with holding the Cadian Gate, holding Apocalypse, A fleet or two running around at all times after the orks, maybe another one, because I hear the Dark Eldar are fond of pirate raids, A fleet or three mopping up any Tyranid resurgences, Chaos raids, you get the idea. Of course, there's also picket units, whatever they have after the Necrons, the Terra Defense Fleet, or whatever, etc. etc. etc.

The Imperium is vast and badass. But it just is too big for it's military coverage, especially with what a 'violent' galaxy it is out there...

On the other hand, if the Tau exterminate the humans, there would be no more chaos (or, at least, it's gonna be way weaker). Since Chaos's existence is because of psychic resonnance, and the Tau are psy-free.

[chiasaur11]

Unfortunately for the Imperium (and, as an extent, everyone else) both the Tyranid fluff and mechanics dispute this bolded statement.

Tyranids assimilate genetic material, take the useful bits and then spread it out throughout the next generation being 'born' to make them increasingly more deadly.
This is why almost any Tyranid unit can be given certain upgrades - venom sacs, scything claws, hardened carapace, spiny hides, feeder tentacles and so on. They 'stole' these abilities from digested creatures and introduced them into their own DNA because they were useful, ignoring whether or not the original creatures had these abilities throughout their ENTIRE species.

It would not be unreasonable to suspect that the Norn Queens could isolate the "Waaaagh Gene" and implant it into ALL of their children, Termagaunt or Hive Tyrant alike. And if not, the bigger 'Nids certainly COULD get it, and we're back to my original hypothesis - how much more powerful could the big ones be, when they can already eat Gargants and Titans?
If Ghazgull is twice as big as an ordinary Ork because of the Waaagh, and a Scythed Hierodule is already 15 times bigger than a normal Termagaunt (http://www.thewarstore.com/media/ss_size1/FWIA-TYR-T-001.gif) WITHOUT that ability.... :smallwink:

Might the Tyranid be unable to use the WAAAGGH! gene without massive infighting and a priority for "More Dakka!" over biomass.

[Bryn]

Wish to second this question.



Also where'd all this "Tyranids are running" fluff come from? As far as I remember it isn't in the new codex.

I remember seeing a post here that claimed that the fact that the Tyranids are coming from another galaxy 'implied' that they're running. This has apparently been misinterpreted to say that they are running, rather than just being a (dubious) implication. Personally, I prefer to believe that the Tyranids ate everything worth eating in their previous galaxy and are now on their way here to continue the feast :smallbiggrin:

Basically, what happened was this:

"The Tyranids are coming from another galaxy. This implies that they're running from something"

"The Tyranids are running from something!"

I could be wrong, but I've never seen any source that suggests their running - every source seems to be saying they finished off their previous galaxy already.

[Dervag]

I didn't know that about the Eldar, but the Tau are whittling away at their edge of the Imperium, albeit non-violently. (For the most part.)That was kind of my point. The Tau will assimilate the Imperium eventually, assuming that the Imperium doesn't mass enough force to crush them (which it totally could for now, if it wanted to), and assuming that no third party (the Necrons, the Tyranids) shows up and crushes them both.

But if the Imperium manages to push back Abaddon from the Cadian Gate, and if they aren't totally destroyed and indeed annihilated by the main Tyranid Hive Fleet, and if the Necrons don't wake up in the immediate future, they'll be able to crush the Tau with little difficulty.

So basically if the Imperium manages to survive the first half of M42 at all, it probably won't be the Tau that brings them down.
__________________________________________

What I meant about the Eldar is that they aren't actively seeking the destruction of the Imperium and dedicating their war effort to that end. So yes, Imperials fight Eldar, but the Eldar were too weakened by that mess with the Dark Eldar and the creation of Slaanesh to make a serious bid for galactic conquest.

The Dark Eldar go a-viking, yes, but again, they don't have the numbers to contest human rule over the galaxy the way the Orks, Tyranids, and the forces of Chaos do.


The Imperium is vast and badass. But it just is too big for it's military coverage, especially with what a 'violent' galaxy it is out there...Yeah.


Unfortunately for the Imperium (and, as an extent, everyone else) both the Tyranid fluff and mechanics dispute this bolded statement.

Tyranids assimilate genetic material, take the useful bits and then spread it out throughout the next generation being 'born' to make them increasingly more deadly... They 'stole' these abilities from digested creatures and introduced them into their own DNA because they were useful, ignoring whether or not the original creatures had these abilities throughout their ENTIRE species.

It would not be unreasonable to suspect that the Norn Queens could isolate the "Waaaagh Gene" and implant it into ALL of their children, Termagaunt or Hive Tyrant alike. And if not, the bigger 'Nids certainly COULD get it, and we're back to my original hypothesis - how much more powerful could the big ones be, when they can already eat Gargants and Titans? All orks already have the "WAAAGH" gene. It's just that the gene only manifests as increased size, strength, and intelligence among the specific 'alpha orks' in any given group.

This may inhibit the Tyranids from assimilating it, by the way. Since the Tyranid social structure isn't like that of orks, it's not clear that they can adapt a gene designed to toughen socially successful orks into a gene designed to automatically induce exceptional growth in all Tyranids, or even in some Tyranids.


If Ghazgull is twice as big as an ordinary Ork because of the Waaagh, and a Scythed Hierodule is already 15 times bigger than a normal Termagaunt (http://www.thewarstore.com/media/ss_size1/FWIA-TYR-T-001.gif) WITHOUT that ability.... :smallwink:See above.

[MeklorIlavator]

Basically, what happened was this:



I could be wrong, but I've never seen any source that suggests their running - every source seems to be saying they finished off their previous galaxy already.

I think this was actually suggest by GW(in an article on the tyranids), but only as one of many possibilities. It possibly was one of the in universe people(Inquisitor?), theorizing on why they are coming into the Milky Way, and one of the options is that they are running from something. Still, its not like the guy actually comes out and says which one is right, and I think it only caught on because
A) Tyranids are already big and bad. Anything they are running from must be freaking bad@$$.
B) The Cynical amoung the fans likely thought "This would be a way for them to introduce another army, thus more money"

[BRC]

Might the Tyranid be unable to use the WAAAGGH! gene without massive infighting and a priority for "More Dakka!" over biomass.
Maybe that's exactly what happened, The Tyranid Hive mind used the WAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH gene for a small splinter fleet, it was all well and good until the hive tyrant got killed by a lucky artillery strike, at this point instead of solidering on, all the next-biggest organisms started fighting each other to determine which of them was "Da Biggest".

Also, The Tyranid scout organisms with eh WAAAAAAAGGGGHHH gene turned out to be highly inneffective.

Either That, or because the tyranids started thinking like orks, they attacked everything that wasn't an Ork, including each other!

[tyckspoon]

Either That, or because the tyranids started thinking like orks, they attacked everything that wasn't an Ork, including each other!

"I ain't been vampired. You've been Weatherwaxed." That'd be an interesting twist, although you'd think the Norn Queens were smarter than that.

[Evil DM Mark3]

Biovers (spelling?) are suposed to contain Ork DNA, although specifically the spore generating part, it seems that all the Norg Queens where able to safely harvest was the fungal spores, not the Ork part at all...

Oh and you are aware that the Tau empire, despite the hype and PR, is mostly built on the weapons of the Fire caste and financial exploitation. OK so it wan't like that, but they warhammered them up to include the fact that so far human colonies are being gradually wiped out, rather than cultured, as in the humans are segregated by gender, sterilized and put to work as slave lab our, for the greater good.

[Bryn]

Still, its not like the guy actually comes out and says which one is right, and I think it only caught on because
A) Tyranids are already big and bad. Anything they are running from must be freaking bad@$$.
B) The Cynical amoung the fans likely though "This would be a way for them to introduce another army, thus more money"

Well, fair enough then - one theory of many. I have heard, though, that GW have stated that they are not going to add any armies to the game. This was a while back, though, and since then their policies have flipped several times (about once every Codex release), and I suppose the release of the new Chaos Daemons pretty much disproves any point I'm trying to make :smallamused:

Even so, if something is chasing the Tyranids out of their galaxy, I seriously hope they never introduce it, as whatever it is would inevitably fail to live up to the Tyranids, not to mention damaging the horror inherent in the Tyranids themselves. Leaving it in the shadows in an indescribable Cosmic Horror way works best in my opinion... not that I even belive that there's anything chasing the Tyranids at all. :smallamused:

[Demented]

Problem for the tyranids is, all the ork stuff is so distinctively ork that, by the time you've assimilated all the stuff that makes ork great, all you've got are 6-armed orkz. The only species who would be thrilled to hear about that is, of course, the orkz themselves. "I is bigga becuz I got more armz!"

And so the orkanids go on a WAAAAAAGH!, and even the hive fleets tremble in fear.

[Dervag]

"I ain't been vampired. You've been Weatherwaxed." That'd be an interesting twist, although you'd think the Norn Queens were smarter than that.Not if they've got Ork genes in their brains they're not.

Or do you mean they're smart enough not to try it?

I can imagine the Tyranid master genetic modifier thinking "OK. This gene sequence is key to the hormonal mix and mental behavior of orks."

[Pauses and reviews reports of ork behavior, social structure, combat tactics, and so forth]

"You! Mentally-controlled lackey-bioform! Take this very very far from the Hive and burn it. Whatever it does, whatever it is, I don't want to get any on me."


Oh and you are aware that the Tau empire, despite the hype and PR, is mostly built on the weapons of the Fire caste and financial exploitation. OK so it wan't like that, but they warhammered them up to include the fact that so far human colonies are being gradually wiped out, rather than cultured, as in the humans are segregated by gender, sterilized and put to work as slave lab our, for the greater good.If they're going to bid for galactic conquest, or even galactic assimilation, that won't work. As their sphere of influence expands the human-inhabited border region increases, and sooner or later they're either going to have to enlist breeding populations of humans or face the wrath of the Imperium directly- at which point they will likely still be too small to defeat it.

Also, I suspect treatment of humans vary from sept to sept of the Tau sphere of influence. Can't prove that, though.


Problem for the tyranids is, all the ork stuff is so distinctively ork that, by the time you've assimilated all the stuff that makes ork great, all you've got are 6-armed orkz. The only species who would be thrilled to hear about that is, of course, the orkz themselves. "I is bigga becuz I got more armz!"

And so the orkanids go on a WAAAAAAGH!, and even the hive fleets tremble in fear.Exactly.

[BRC]

Problem for the tyranids is, all the ork stuff is so distinctively ork that, by the time you've assimilated all the stuff that makes ork great, all you've got are 6-armed orkz. The only species who would be thrilled to hear about that is, of course, the orkz themselves. "I is bigga becuz I got more armz!"

And so the orkanids go on a WAAAAAAGH!, and even the hive fleets tremble in fear.


"Two arms mean BIG DAKKA, so six arms mean EVEN BIGGER DAKKA"

[ArtifexFelicis]

Oh and you are aware that the Tau empire, despite the hype and PR, is mostly built on the weapons of the Fire caste and financial exploitation. OK so it wan't like that, but they warhammered them up to include the fact that so far human colonies are being gradually wiped out, rather than cultured, as in the humans are segregated by gender, sterilized and put to work as slave lab our, for the greater good.

I will submit to your analysis of the Tau culture if you offer proof that is not Imperial Propaganda.

:3

For the most part, Humans are mostly treated well in Tau Septs. The only exceptions are those who actively resist and seek to undermine all that we have accomplished for the Greater Good. Often this is to the same level as killing their fellow man and denouncing one another as heretics. I am saddened when those amoung your specis resort to such barbaric actions to further a foolish cause, endangering themselves and their own species.

[Talkkno]

For the most part, Humans are mostly treated well in Tau Septs. The only exceptions are those who actively resist and seek to undermine all that we have accomplished for the Greater Good. Often this is to the same level as killing their fellow man and denouncing one another as heretics. I am saddened when those amoung your specis resort to such barbaric actions to further a foolish cause, endangering themselves and their own species.

Foolish Xeno, if you only you knew the deprivations of Chaos, your little empire would all but crumble under the weight of 13th black crusade. You lack Faster then Light communications and a arduously slow warp drive. How do you plan to administer your "Greater Good" once you expand out of your tiny star cluster?

[Dervag]

Ask the Eldar ;)

[LBO]

"Ask not the Eldar a question, for they will give you three answers, each of which is true and horrifying to know..."

[Wraith]

The conclusion from this is that the Eldar used the Q'orl queen to engineer the Tau ethereals to have pheromone control over the Tau. This explains the sudden end to the war, the extreme loyalty to the Greater Good, and also suggests why Farsight turns against the Empire.

I like this theory. It implies that the Eldar still have the source-material with which they can control the entire Tau Empire. Muahahaha.... :smallamused:


Maybe that's exactly what happened, The Tyranid Hive mind used the WAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH gene for a small splinter fleet, it was all well and good until the hive tyrant got killed by a lucky artillery strike, at this point instead of solidering on, all the next-biggest organisms started fighting each other to determine which of them was "Da Biggest".

The best part is that Norn Queens will ALWAYS be the biggest, and the Imperium has barely even seen them - let alone killed one.

Look, I'm not saying it WILL happen - I'm just saying that it's plausible and that if it did, and the Tyranids got it working ideally (as they have done with so much other stuff they have absorbed) then everyone might as well lie down, close their eyes and pretend that they're already dead because the implications start with Carnifex-sized basic Troops and getting worse from there... :smalltongue:


Foolish Xeno, if you only you knew the deprivations of Chaos, your little empire would all but crumble under the weight of 13th black crusade. You lack Faster then Light communications and an arduously slow warp drive. How do you plan to administer your "Greater Good" once you expand out of your tiny star cluster?

Come back and talk to us when YOU can traverse the entire galaxy in a few minutes with Warp Gates. Then we might be slightly less than completely unimpressed.

Might. :smallwink:

[SolkaTruesilver]

The conclusion from this is that the Eldar used the Q'orl queen to engineer the Tau ethereals to have pheromone control over the Tau. This explains the sudden end to the war, the extreme loyalty to the Greater Good, and also suggests why Farsight turns against the Empire.

Wait, wait..

I mean, the sole fact that the Etherals secrete pheromones is ennough to explain the sudden end to the war, and the extreme loyalty to the Greater Good. Eldar-geneticly engineered or not is irrelevant to this theory.

And why would it explain why Farsight turns against the Empire?

I am also wondering what is the point of the Eldar, by creating the Tau? Do they want a successor race, able to re-create their once-mighty empire?

[Xuincherguixe]

Why the Tau would have been created, (or used) by the Eldar is that they'd be good at fighting Chaos.

Which naturally only serves the plans of Chaos.

[Bryn]

Wait, wait..

I mean, the sole fact that the Etherals secrete pheromones is ennough to explain the sudden end to the war, and the extreme loyalty to the Greater Good. Eldar-geneticly engineered or not is irrelevant to this theory.

And why would it explain why Farsight turns against the Empire?

I am also wondering what is the point of the Eldar, by creating the Tau? Do they want a successor race, able to re-create their once-mighty empire?

Judging by what they told the Q'orl ("to build a swarm un-corroded. Resistant to [untranslatable]"), it was to create a race that is resistant to Chaos. This makes sense, considering the Eldar's own struggle against Chaos and the Tau's complete lack of a warp-presence.

If the theory is true, the Eldar probably observed that the Tau had no warp presence, but realised that they were on the way to wiping each other out, and thus came up with the Q'orl-engineering plan to make the Tau stop fighting.

The Farsight bit comes from the fact that the Ethereal accompanying Farsight died, at least according to the Inquisitor interrogating another Tau Ethereal (which the Ethereal did not contradict). When the Ethereal kicked the bucket, it was no longer releasing pheromones to keep Farsight loyal to the Tau Empire. Farsight, free of the control, would have left for his own reasons.

[SolkaTruesilver]

The Farsight bit comes from the fact that the Ethereal accompanying Farsight died, at least according to the Inquisitor interrogating another Tau Ethereal (which the Ethereal did not contradict). When the Ethereal kicked the bucket, it was no longer releasing pheromones to keep Farsight loyal to the Tau Empire. Farsight, free of the control, would have left for his own reasons.

Damn it, I understand. Farsight turned against the Tau Empire, not The Empire. (let's just call the Tau Empire the "Federation", all right?).

So, Farsight became free of Etheral control. Did he actively began fighting the Federation, or he simply went his own way, with his troops?

[Bryn]

Damn it, I understand. Farsight turned against the Tau Empire, not The Empire. (let's just call the Tau Empire the "Federation", all right?).

So, Farsight became free of Etheral control. Did he actively began fighting the Federation, or he simply went his own way, with his troops?

Ah, sorry for the confusion. I never call the Imperium the Empire, so any time I refer to an Empire, it will be the Tau one (unless I'm talking about, say Warhammer Fantasy, but that's unlikely). I will always use 'Imperium' to refer to the 'human empire'.

The story of Farsight is explained here (http://uk.games-workshop.com/tau/farsight%2Denclaves/) on the GW site. From the looks of things, Farsight split away from the Tau Empire but is not actively hostile towards them.

[Moff Chumley]

Come back and talk to us when YOU can traverse the entire galaxy in a few minutes with Warp Gates. Then we might be slightly less than completely unimpressed.

Might. :smallwink:

Woo for Eldar. Freakish Space Elves for the win. :smallwink:
Can you mount your entire on jet bikes? I think not. :tongue:

[Haruspex]

Come back and talk to us when YOU can traverse the entire galaxy in a few minutes with Warp Gates. Then we might be slightly less than completely unimpressed.

Might. :smallwink:

Traverse? Perhaps, though your choice of destination is limited by how well the Webway is maintained in that area. Which isn't very well, actually. So you might be able to get from one end of the galaxy to the other, but not all the systems in between. Warp-capable ships can go anywhere, albeit slower.

[Wraith]

So, Farsight became free of Etheral control. Did he actively began fighting the Federation, or he simply went his own way, with his troops?

There's several trains of thought along the lines of answering your question. One is that Farsight is utterly indoctrinated into the cause of the Greater Good even without an Ethereal 'guiding' him, and thus is genuinely doing what he is doing because he believes it serves the Tau best.

Alternatively, he's a bigot that remembers when the Fire Caste were it's own people, not subjugated to the whims of what are essentially Outsiders, and he's doing what he is doing because he is very bitter about a lifetime of mind-control for himself and a few thousand years of enslavement for 'his people'.
Just maybe, he's not even doing it directly because of something the Tau have done and perhaps he sees them as they truly are: puppets of the Eldar. What he is doing is NOT defying the Greater Good, rather he's preparing a resistance movement to free the Tau from the machinations of the Eldar and lead them to fulfill their OWN destinies.

And those are just the ones which imply HE has a say in the matter. There's always the possibility that he's doing what he is doing loyally, under orders from the Tau Empire itself - serving the Greater Good by appearing to be a heretical malcontent, for any number of reasons.
My own personal spin is that such actions would make his successor furious and compulsively driven to out-do him, thus winning even bigger and greater battles in the name of the Greater Good.

Which, to be fair, seems to be working...


Traverse? Perhaps, though your choice of destination is limited by how well the Webway is maintained in that area. Which isn't very well, actually. So you might be able to get from one end of the galaxy to the other, but not all the systems in between. Warp-capable ships can go anywhere, albeit slower.

In most accuracy, that's true.

In UTTER accuracy, the vast majority of the places where Warp Gates don't work are dangerously infested by Humans, Astartes, Chaos and Orks. Places we don't wantto go to anyway! :smalltongue:

[Dervag]

Look, I'm not saying it WILL happen - I'm just saying that it's plausible and that if it did, and the Tyranids got it working ideally (as they have done with so much other stuff they have absorbed) then everyone might as well lie down, close their eyes and pretend that they're already dead because the implications start with Carnifex-sized basic Troops and getting worse from there... :smalltongue:I'm telling you, the WAAAGH! doesn't work that way. It doesn't cause every individual ork to get bigger, only a very few specific elites.

[Wraith]

I'm telling you, the WAAAGH! doesn't work that way. It doesn't cause every individual ork to get bigger, only a very few specific elites.

I understand that. Orks get bigger due to achievement - the biggest and baddest become even bigger and badder, not just because they just happen to be surrounded by other Orks but because they have cracked the most heads and their physical stature changes to meet the respect/awe that they accrue.
It's the ultimate self-help diet: "Think Yourself Into Becoming An Evolutionary Superior Being In Only 3 Short Days!" kind of thing....

What I'm saying is... what if Tyranids could change it and make it more globally effective? Instead of going out as a mob and one of them getting bigger because it delivered the killing blow to (for example) a Terminator, but all of them getting bigger because they are a part of the same hive mind? Their mass-conscience already means they have psychological benefits, like being Fearless, it doesn't seem infinitely impossible to add new tricks to the same wavelength, given how they have already taken and altered abilities and advantages from other sources.

I understand how Orkish progression works, but I also understand how Tyranid evolution and adaptation works. The key word being "adaptation" - they could take the bits they like (getting bigger when they kill their more daunting enemies) and remove the bit that they don't like (it only effects individuals) or add bits that they have from elsewhere (it becomes an effect of the Hive Mind in general).

Criminy, we're writing fan-fic about how the Emperor gets up off his Throne and leads humanity to live in the Warp (which was an absolutely wonderful piece, by the way) but I'm getting told off for something as 'outrageous' as selective evolution! Oh, the Humanit-... Weird-Xeno-Thingity! :smalltongue:

[Demented]

It would be much easier for the tyranids to just take the natural evolutionary abilities of the common influenza virus, so that they can become immune to, well, nearly every darn thing that's thrown at them.

After that, they can take the inventive skills and psychic powers of the humans and the warp energies from the daemons, and proceed to nuke/obliterate everything in their way using only their hiveminds and the massive magic/energies therein. If that's still not enough, we can use the space marines' technologically integrative biology to exploit eldar tech, then using the aforementioned influenza and human abilities we can become immune to necron technology and then exploit it to our own advantage. Then, once the warhammer 40k galaxy is just a dusty cluster of dead worlds, we fly off into the void between galaxies, ready to plunder the next galaxy with power beyond imagining (and gauss flayers bristling from the backs of our favorite bio-titans).

Unless, of course, someone points out that tyranid adaptation doesn't really work that way, and even if it did that would make for a pretty boring apocalypse scenario.

[Dervag]

I'm still convinced the Tyranids aren't going to want to assimilate much of the WAAAGH! package of gene sequence. It's dangerous.

Also, the idea that Tyranids can assimilate genes to make their infantry bigger begs the question of why they don't already do it. A genetic modification intended to produce accelerated growth or exceptionally large growth is simple enough that the Tyranids ought to be able to do it without Ork DNA. I suspect the reason they don't have basic troops the size of Carnifexes is that they've concluded it isn't profitable in biomass to have such large basic troops. Otherwise they'd just make their entire army out of Carnifexes or similarly monstrous creatures, right?

[Kane]

Since everyone's going off on a tangent, I want one too.

Basically, I've heard/read/inferred that AIs create evil daemons, or whatever, right? AI is a crapshoot, turned against it's master, that kinda thing, right?

Then why do the Tau use them in their gun-drones, but more importantly, HOW?


Also, I think I'd agree with Dervag's assessment of the situation. The Tyranids don't want to get any ork on them.

[Solo]

Since everyone's going off on a tangent, I want one too.

Basically, I've heard/read/inferred that AIs create evil daemons, or whatever, right? AI is a crapshoot, turned against it's master, that kinda thing, right?

Then why do the Tau use them in their gun-drones, but more importantly, HOW?


Tau use Linux. Imperium went with Windows

[LBO]

Since everyone's going off on a tangent, I want one too.

Basically, I've heard/read/inferred that AIs create evil daemons, or whatever, right? AI is a crapshoot, turned against it's master, that kinda thing, right?

Then why do the Tau use them in their gun-drones, but more importantly, HOW?
No, no and no. What the hell?

Daemons have nothing to do with AIs. They're warp entities, a reflection of the thoughts and emotions of sentient creatures given form by the warp.

The Imperium uses "machine spirits". In things like Titans and Land Raiders, these appear to be semi-sentient entities which can do things like help control it and fire the guns; in other gear, there doesn't appear to be a machine spirit which has any actual effect, but if it goes wrong, they may say "the machine spirits are angry" and spend a lot of time chanting and hitting it with different sized hammers. Thisleads most people (out-universe) to think they're a weird, primitive AI in some machines that's led to all machines being given the cargo cult treatment by the Mechanicus.

However, they did (once) have a giant rebellion of machines against the Imperium, so in today's Imperium a machine that can think (rather than... a machine spirit) is BLASPHEMY INSTAPURGE.

Tau gun drones, smart missiles and everything are just primitive AI, which the Tau acknowledge as such. Given that they need the processors of four gun drones networked together just to provide an effective mind, they don't sound too advanced.

Daemons have nothing to do with it.

[puppyavenger]

Since everyone's going off on a tangent, I want one too.

Basically, I've heard/read/inferred that AIs create evil daemons, or whatever, right? AI is a crapshoot, turned against it's master, that kinda thing, right?

Then why do the Tau use them in their gun-drones, but more importantly, HOW?


Humanity had golden age, where everything was done by machines, the "iron men". Of course, then they revolted and through humanity into a millenia long dark age. They're what made the Great Crusade necsesary.

[Dervag]

Then why do the Tau use them in their gun-drones, but more importantly, HOW?At a guess, they have very little experience with robot rebellions. If Chaos can subvert AI, then the Tau's low warp presence makes it less likely that the forces of Chaos will subvert their equipment.

Also, the level of artificial intelligence in a gun drone may not be very high. The Imperium still uses basic artificial intelligence in 'machine spirit' bearing vehicles such as the Marines' Land Raider. And you don't hear about Land Raiders freaking out and rebelling.

The real question is how advanced the AI has to be before it starts getting ideas. Obviously, we don't have robot uprisings on our hands, and the Warhammer 40000 universe is supposed to be our future. We could probably build something like a Tau gun drone AI if we had the equipment to put into the physical gun platform. This suggests that the threshhold for hostile AI "waking up" is considerably higher than that found in a Tau gun drone.

[ArtifexFelicis]

I'm telling you, the WAAAGH! doesn't work that way. It doesn't cause every individual ork to get bigger, only a very few specific elites.

Quick thing though. I'm fairly certain it does, though it depends on the conflict. The bigger an' nastier a war get, the bigger and more resounding the WAAAAAAAARGH gets as well. The grunts that don't survive end up getting killed, and then nobs come into being. Bigga' orksies. But as the conflict continues, the average ork size begins to increase overall as well, and there are more large orks too. An armageddon ork boy vet might be able to easily be a warboss if he were suddenly transported to a different, peaceful planet.

In short, conflict - bigger orks overall. Some just grow at different rates.

[BRC]

Quick thing though. I'm fairly certain it does, though it depends on the conflict. The bigger an' nastier a war get, the bigger and more resounding the WAAAAAAAARGH gets as well. The grunts that don't survive end up getting killed, and then nobs come into being. Bigga' orksies. But as the conflict continues, the average ork size begins to increase overall as well, and there are more large orks too. An armageddon ork boy vet might be able to easily be a warboss if he were suddenly transported to a different, peaceful planet.

In short, conflict - bigger orks overall. Some just grow at different rates.

That is true, but Correlation does not equal Causation. Orks get bigger when fighting, when more orks are in one place, there is a WAAAUUGGGGGGHHHHHHH, the more orks there are, the more fighting there is, the bigger orks get. Theoretically, If you took some Orks and continually threw small groups of guardsmen at them, not enough to be an actual threat but enough for some good fighting, the orks could get very big, even if there was not a large scale WAAAAAAGGGGHHH.

[Kane]

No, no and no. What the hell?

Daemons have nothing to do with AIs. They're warp entities, a reflection of the thoughts and emotions of sentient creatures given form by the warp.

The Imperium uses "machine spirits". In things like Titans and Land Raiders, these appear to be semi-sentient entities which can do things like help control it and fire the guns; in other gear, there doesn't appear to be a machine spirit which has any actual effect, but if it goes wrong, they may say "the machine spirits are angry" and spend a lot of time chanting and hitting it with different sized hammers. Thisleads most people (out-universe) to think they're a weird, primitive AI in some machines that's led to all machines being given the cargo cult treatment by the Mechanicus.

However, they did (once) have a giant rebellion of machines against the Imperium, so in today's Imperium a machine that can think (rather than... a machine spirit) is BLASPHEMY INSTAPURGE.

Tau gun drones, smart missiles and everything are just primitive AI, which the Tau acknowledge as such. Given that they need the processors of four gun drones networked together just to provide an effective mind, they don't sound too advanced.

Daemons have nothing to do with it.



Okay, sorry. I did mention I'm new at this. I thought I recalled reading something along the lines on 40K's TvTropes page.

[Moff Chumley]

Okay, sorry. I did mention I'm new at this. I thought I recalled reading something along the lines on 40K's TvTropes page.

And what an epic page it is... :smallwink:

So, a question I've had for a while: is there anywhere on the 'net I can find some really good 40k homebrew? Googling produces nothing for me, so I was wondering if you guys had some links.

[LBO]

Hey, I WROTE that page! Point out the bit which gave you that impression, prease.

Don't get it confused with the Astronomican (which requires human sacrifices, but has nothing to do with daemons or machine spirits) or warp travel (where you get eaten by daemons, but which has nothing to do with machine spirits).

@ Chumley: You can find just about anything you want on /tg/, but it may cost you your soul.

[puppyavenger]

@ Chumley: You can find just about anything you want on /tg/, but it may cost you your soul.

whats /tg/ anyway? and on that topic, whats /b/?

[Moff Chumley]

I don't really know anything about /tg/ aside from the soul-dooming bit. Are there any sites that aren't /tg/?

[Renegade Paladin]

What heresy is this? In the name of the God-Emperor of Mankind and His Most Holy Inquisition, I order this thread to cease!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v350/RenegadePaladin/Moderation%20Stuff/locked-blue.jpg

:smalltongue:

[Kane]

I must have imagined it, or read it somewhere else. Sorry.

BTW, that page is Hilarious. I was reading that with a friend last night, and we were ROFLing.

"....the Tau are slightly less fanatical than other races, meaning that only one mecha per army can be upgraded into a suicide bomber." I couldn't breathe, I tell you!

[Dervag]

Everyone expects the Imperial Inquisition.

Everyone.

[Moff Chumley]

However, there outfits aren't nearly as snazzy as they could be...

[Kane]

Indeed. Say, does anyone predict a slow decline of the Imperium, to the point where some sector gets riled up over the Inquisition's latest atrocities, and attempts to rebel or destroy all Inquisition in it's area? And I'm talking a sector unified and strong enough to give whatever forces the loyal Imperium can free up for them a run for their money.

[SolkaTruesilver]

Actually, I predict the exact opposite. The Inquisition will become the sole unifying factor of Humanity (but it won't help that much the poor humans). Like the Roman Empire (or the Asimovian Empire), they will break down in factions and war own themselves while the Imperium itself will simply cease to exist, due to the lack of actual authority by the Lords of Terra over regional areas.

But like what happened under Palpatine (regional governors will have full authority), but without Coruscant and the Emperor himself.

Oh, and think of a thousand Darth Vader in world-threatening ships with millions of armed men traveling between worlds, enforcing their own view of the "law"

[Kane]

*winces* Ouch. That sounds like exactly the kind of thing Games Workshop would love. Half a dozen or more seperate human factions, likely the Chaos breaking free from the EoT, (Steamrollig Cadia on the way. Whee, Cadian refugees!), complete Chaos, in more ways than one, and free for all conflict. Like usual, except EVERYONE would be in major conflict with the daemons.


Also, on the Tau, does anyone else here think that they're technology is going to slap them in the face at some point? They'll lose control of a bioweapon, or create a AI intelligent and powerful enough to go rogue?

Alternately, do you think AIs would be less likely to go rogue, as they're fitting into the Tau castes just like everyone else?

[SurlySeraph]

whats /tg/ anyway? and on that topic, whats /b/?

/tg/ is the Traditional Games forum of 4chan. Apparently, it is full of WH40K and DnD discussion, and really mentally disturbing 40K-based fanfiction and images.

/b/ is the Random forum of 4chan. If you have heard anything negative about 4chan, /b/ is the source of it. /b/ is the home of Anonymous. It is a place of indescribable evil and disgustingness. The posters there disgust Cthulu and make daemons weep at the sheer inhumanity of their words and the incredibly perverse images that they post. /b/ will eat your soul if you allow it to. Do not go to /b/.

[BRC]

/tg/ is the Traditional Games forum of 4chan. Apparently, it is full of WH40K and DnD discussion, and really mentally disturbing 40K-based fanfiction and images.

/b/ is the Random forum of 4chan. If you have heard anything negative about 4chan, /b/ is the source of it. /b/ is the home of Anonymous. It is a place of indescribable evil and disgustingness. The posters there disgust Cthulu and make daemons weep at the sheer inhumanity of their words and the incredibly perverse images that they post. /b/ will eat your soul if you allow it to. Do not go to /b/.
Remember, Friends don't let Friends go to /b/

[SolkaTruesilver]

Any Tau AI would have the "Greater Good" feature programmed into it, so even if it goes rogue (for self-determination purpose) it would still help the Tau Empire.

there would be Chaos-worshipping humans everywhere.. but I am pretty sure many human worlds would become Eldar-Worshipping ones too. Many human world would join the Tau Empire.

The Adeptus Mechanicus would probably become a faction in it's own right.. hmm.. interesting...

[Kane]

Any Tau AI would have the "Greater Good" feature programmed into it, so even if it goes rogue (for self-determination purpose) it would still help the Tau Empire.

there would be Chaos-worshipping humans everywhere.. but I am pretty sure many human worlds would become Eldar-Worshipping ones too. Many human world would join the Tau Empire.

The Adeptus Mechanicus would probably become a faction in it's own right.. hmm.. interesting...

Well, the 'original' human star-empire fell because of an AI revolt, or so I've been told. I figure if it happened there, it could happen here too.

Eldar worshiping? I think that'd be as non-dignified on the part of the Eldar as it would be for us earthlings. They like to be condescending, like the space-elves they're supposed to be. They think we're intensely primitive and annoying, as far as I know.

Actually, I expect the AM to stay united with the core worlds; those under the reign of the Earth-guard fleet are probably going to stay that way. And those with the best factories, the largest AM presence, and the most powerful garrison forces, they're likely to all be united.

After all, if they rebel, the Adeptus Mechanicus might take away those Baneblade templates from those planet's factories.... :smallfrown:

[SolkaTruesilver]

Eldar worshiping? I think that'd be as non-dignified on the part of the Eldar as it would be for us earthlings. They like to be condescending, like the space-elves they're supposed to be. They think we're intensely primitive and annoying, as far as I know.

Point taken, but the Eldar would probably see the advantage of having a servant cannonfodder races who know how to fight. Perhaps they would create some sort of organisation for the Humans like the Elves made for Bretonnia. The Eldar would not be above such sort of sneaky manoeuver, for their own good (and their follower-race..)




Actually, I expect the AM to stay united with the core worlds; those under the reign of the Earth-guard fleet are probably going to stay that way. And those with the best factories, the largest AM presence, and the most powerful garrison forces, they're likely to all be united.

After all, if they rebel, the Adeptus Mechanicus might take away those Baneblade templates from those planet's factories.... :smallfrown:

Off course, the status of the AM's peoples depend of their relative position against Imperium worlds, and their relative strenght. Some of them would break away free in an independant coalitions of Forge World (new faction!), some of them would be subjet to the Remnants of the Imperium (or the inquisition).

I think the ones having the most fun out of it all would be the Space Marines. Going on rampage against every stupid rebel world they can put their foot on.

[Ubiq]

Far as a seperate Adeptus Mechanicus faction goes, why not have the Void Dragon wake up as the Omnissiah and then have him refuse to cooperate with his fellow C'Tan?

If you want to throw a real kink into the works, have all that business about the Omnissiah being beneficial to mankind be true by having the Void Dragon genuinely feel affection for the scurrying little ants who worship him and build giant machines in his honor. Have that create a Schism in the Necrons with most of them sticking with the Deceiver and Nightbringer, but with a few of the following the Void Dragon.

If you do that, then you could play the AM forces just about anyway you want.

Want to play cheap infantry? Use Skitarii.
Do you want to use heavy infantry? Then use Apostate Necrons that are heavily modified by the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Armor vehicles strike you fancy? That's what Titan Legions are for.

[Dervag]

Titans with gauss weaponry...

Frightening.

[SmartAlec]

As an aside to the 'declining civilisation' thing, the new Warhammer 40,000 rulebook has a distinct 'Last Days of the Imperium' feel to it.

New Fluff Spoiler:

The Adeptus Mechanicus discovered 14 years ago that the Emperor's Golden Throne is beginning to break down; and that no-one, anywhere, has the technological know-how to repair it.

Once it dies, the Emperor dies, and with him, the Imperium, as space travel through the Warp becomes impossible.

[Xuincherguixe]

Now's a great time to convert to chaos!

But it's always a great time to convert to chaos!

[Moff Chumley]

Chumley's 40k apocalypse theory: The Lords of Terra and the Inquisition discover some way to give the emperor's ability to allow warp travel to one of their lackeys, and then dispose of The Emperor and replace him with their puppet. The SMs find out, and they go on an inquisition killing rampage. The Void Dragon awakens and turns out to be loyal to the AM. He teleports their world into the East Arm of the galaxy, within relatively close proximity to several large human hive worlds and the Tau empire. The Void Dragon convinces the AM to make an alliance with the Tau. Then, at about the same location, the main Tyranid fleet enters the galaxy. In the weeks leading up to this, The Deceiver and Tzeentch have been attempting to out-maneuver each other-and Tzeentch won. The Deceiver, known to no one, is now Tzeentch's puppet. As the Hive Mind enters the galaxy, its tremendous psychic presence creates warp storms throughout the galaxy. Tzeentch manages to take over the Hive Mind. However, part of the Hive Mind escaped his control. Now, Tzeentch, with his control over chaos, the Necron, and Tyranids, effectively controls much of the galaxy. The renegade Tyranids, looking for a replacement Hive Mind, encounter Da Orkz, specifically Grazghull (sp?). Realizing that the mind of Grazghull is not dissimilar from their hive mind, the Tyranids bind themselves to Grazghull's conscience. Grazghull, with his now large fleet, begins the biggest WAAAAAAARGGGGHHH!!!! in history, and recruits thousands of planets worth of Orkz to his cause in weeks. Thanks to some odd stuff via the Tyranids, the orks are assimilated into the Hive Fleet. The huge, 10 SU wide WAAAAAAARGGGGHHH!!!! is heading straight to the eye of terror. Meanwhile, millions of worlds are converting to Chaos as soon as they realize their god is dead. However, quite a few join the Tau empire, and the Tau Technology, now combined and improved by Imperial Tech is being used to build one of the largest fleets in existence... the Eldar, meanwhile, are about five hundred people away from becoming extinct, and their location is in the middle of a warp storm where thousands of Dark Eldar are converging on them. The Eldar God of Death then dukes it out with the Void Dragon, Tzeentch, and a Hive Fleet of Orks.

[Solo]

Now's a great time to convert to chaos!

But it's always a great time to convert to chaos!

Blasphemy! Faith shall be my shield, even in times of troubles as great as this, for the Emperor shall protect me as he does all HEROES OF THE IMPERIUM!

[ArtifexFelicis]

But his life support is dying.

Also, here's hoping the Tau get some new stuff a coming. Maybe a warp drve without the need for astropaths :3

[Kane]

Okay. So. I really like Moff Chumley's idea, except for one point.

The Emperor is WAY TOO BADASS! for him to just die like that. I'm afraid, oh, who was it earlier who wrote the one where the Emperor awoke, and let 'good' into the warp to escape from the Tyranids/what's following them? I really liked that one.

Neither you nor GW can just let him die, or get offed by the Lords of Terra. Oh, sure, if this was a RL thing, the LoT might pull if off, but here, it just can't be done. He's too much of a figure, a deity, and far to important to just DIE.

Now, as for the Tau, I think that's exactly what they're going to do. Invent a computer that can navigate the warp. It'll make them much more of a problem for everyone. (At least, those who don't know the Greater Good when they hear it. :smallamused: )


But as for my previous question, Does anyone else think the Tau are going to get a really nasty experience with their rapidly advancing tech? A bioweapon getting loose, an AI going rogue, some highly unstable weapon that does them significant harm, something? Maybe something that brings Necrons down on their heads en masse? Something?

[SurlySeraph]

Far as a seperate Adeptus Mechanicus faction goes, why not have the Void Dragon wake up as the Omnissiah and then have him refuse to cooperate with his fellow C'Tan?

If you want to throw a real kink into the works, have all that business about the Omnissiah being beneficial to mankind be true by having the Void Dragon genuinely feel affection for the scurrying little ants who worship him and build giant machines in his honor. Have that create a Schism in the Necrons with most of them sticking with the Deceiver and Nightbringer, but with a few of the following the Void Dragon.

If you do that, then you could play the AM forces just about anyway you want.

Want to play cheap infantry? Use Skitarii.
Do you want to use heavy infantry? Then use Apostate Necrons that are heavily modified by the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Armor vehicles strike you fancy? That's what Titan Legions are for.

That would be very much awesome.



Criminy, we're writing fan-fic about how the Emperor gets up off his Throne and leads humanity to live in the Warp (which was an absolutely wonderful piece, by the way) but I'm getting told off for something as 'outrageous' as selective evolution! Oh, the Humanit-... Weird-Xeno-Thingity! :smalltongue:

I forgot to thank you for complimenting me there.


The Emperor is WAY TOO BADASS! for him to just die like that. I'm afraid, oh, who was it earlier who wrote the one where the Emperor awoke, and let 'good' into the warp to escape from the Tyranids/what's following them? I really liked that one.

That'd be me. And thank you. :smallredface:



As an aside to the 'declining civilisation' thing, the new Warhammer 40,000 rulebook has a distinct 'Last Days of the Imperium' feel to it.

New Fluff Spoiler:The Adeptus Mechanicus discovered 14 years ago that the Emperor's Golden Throne is beginning to break down; and that no-one, anywhere, has the technological know-how to repair it. Once it dies, the Emperor dies, and with him, the Imperium, as space travel through the Warp becomes impossible.

But... but... but that would advance the plot! BLASHPHEMY! Things can only stagnate, not rapidly get worse!

...

OK, I appreciate that the point of 40K is that it's incredibly dark, but if they just kill off the Emperor and leave no hope of his return I will be pissed. And I won't be the only one.

[chiasaur11]

But his life support is dying.

Also, here's hoping the Tau get some new stuff a coming. Maybe a warp drve without the need for astropaths :3

Hmm...
Do the Orks believe in the Emperor to some degree?
If so, him CIAPHAS CAIN, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM, and other legendary terran heroes might be made more powerful by the WAAAGGHHH, allowing survival even when it's impossible...

Hey, inquisitor Solo, could you preach to the Orks on the virtues of the Emperor?

[Solo]

Hmm...
Do the Orks believe in the Emperor to some degree?
If so, him CIAPHAS CAIN, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM, and other legendary terran heroes might be made more powerful by the WAAAGGHHH, allowing survival even when it's impossible...

Hey, inquisitor Solo, could you preach to the Orks on the virtues of the Emperor?

Bah, the foul greenskins are too enraptured in their primitive "godz" to realize that the Emperor has "moar dakka" and "enuff choppa".

[chiasaur11]

Bah, the foul greenskins are too enraptured in their primitive "godz" to realize that the Emperor has "moar dakka" and "enuff choppa".

See?

We need to tell THEM that.

[Demented]

The Emperor is WAY TOO BADASS! for him to just die like that.

Personally, I've always felt we've* been lied to.
*You have. I haven't, since I don't play W40k.

The inquisition is not sacrificing a thousand psykers a day to keep the Emperor alive. They're doing it to keep him in a coma, so that warp travel will remain possible. The pyskers, meanwhile, aren't dying from exhaustion, they're dying because his unconscious mind is killing them, so that it can get free and he can awaken. The moment he wakes up, he is going to see what the inquisition has done to his beloved empire, and proceed to [censored] [censored] [censored] inquisition [censored] [censored].

Unfortunately, without the guidance of his sheer awesomeness, warp travel would suddenly become very dangerous.

[Wraith]

But as for my previous question, Does anyone else think the Tau are going to get a really nasty experience with their rapidly advancing tech? A bioweapon getting loose, an AI going rogue, some highly unstable weapon that does them significant harm, something? Maybe something that brings Necrons down on their heads en masse? Something?

Interesting idea, and one I would like to take a step further.

A comparison between Tau and Mars - both are incredibly advanced bases of technology that sprang up over a relatively short period (6,000 years for the Tau, and however long the Golden Age was for the Imperium) and both have their own 'agenda' while at the same time keeping up enough appearances to not be stomped on by the Terra-based authorities. The big difference is that the Tau did it on their own, whereas the Adeptus Mechanicus had the Void Dragon silently influencing them through it's aeons-old, inhuman will.

....Or *IS* that the difference? Does no one else think that it would not only be entertaining but also explain a lot of things if someone were to discover another C'Tan in the middle of Tau, just like the Void Dragon on Mars?
Perhaps THAT is the Greater Good that they so often speak of; serving the will of this immensely powerful thing, knowing or unknowing that this ideal is actually some kind of psychic command that encompasses their entire being, to the extent of destroying their own warp-presence with it's authority
Alternatively they serve out of fear in the hopes of keeping it placated enough to stay sleeping, by killing it's original enemies the Nightbringer and/or the Deceiver and those who would try to awaken the Void Dragon?

Either way, no one - no one mortal, at any rate - really knows what happened to ALL of the C'Tan, and it's not impossible that rumours of their death were exaggerated or even misinterpreted when they were actually only wounded or imprisoned all those long millenia ago.

How's that for a technological disaster waiting to happen? A C'Tan in the middle of Tau has tricked all the Bluies into building an AI/robotic army for it, and is just waiting for the right moment to take over, kill the fleshlings and set out once more to destroy all life in the galaxy with automaton-Tau technology....

[SmartAlec]

OK, I appreciate that the point of 40K is that it's incredibly dark, but if they just kill off the Emperor and leave no hope of his return I will be pissed. And I won't be the only one.

Oh, I don't think they'd ever reach the point where he dies. Only make it clear that he will, some time soon-ish.

As an aside, seeing as space travel and its' complications are coming up, there were a few theories way back in the original fluff that the Golden Throne was originally going to be a device to allow Humanity to access the Eldar Webway, and that this was the puzzle that the Emperor had chosen to remove himself from the Great Crusade in order to solve. He really, really wanted to find a way for Humanity to travel between stars without using the Warp.

Of course, doing so would have made the threat of Chaos somewhat less scary, and the Chaos Gods can't have that.

[Solo]

As an aside to the 'declining civilisation' thing, the new Warhammer 40,000 rulebook has a distinct 'Last Days of the Imperium' feel to it.

New Fluff Spoiler:

The Adeptus Mechanicus discovered 14 years ago that the Emperor's Golden Throne is beginning to break down; and that no-one, anywhere, has the technological know-how to repair it.

Once it dies, the Emperor dies, and with him, the Imperium, as space travel through the Warp becomes impossible.

Maybe He's getting better, and thus several life support functions are going offline as He does not have any need for them...

[SmartAlec]

Who can say, but if so it's a 'surprise!' and at odds with the book's feel.

[Solo]

Who can say, but if so it's a 'surprise!' and at odds with the book's feel.

Maybe, but it would be pretty Awesome for the Throne to fail, and for everyone to grieve and mourn... then suddenly, the Throne opens up and the Emperor steps out, saying "Sup ho's?"

[Somebloke]

Personally, I've always felt we've* been lied to.
*You have. I haven't, since I don't play W40k.

The inquisition is not sacrificing a thousand psykers a day to keep the Emperor alive. They're doing it to keep him in a coma, so that warp travel will remain possible. The pyskers, meanwhile, aren't dying from exhaustion, they're dying because his unconscious mind is killing them, so that it can get free and he can awaken. The moment he wakes up, he is going to see what the inquisition has done to his beloved empire, and proceed to [censored] [censored] [censored] inquisition [censored] [censored].

Unfortunately, without the guidance of his sheer awesomeness, warp travel would suddenly become very dangerous.

I always have a picture in my mind'e eye:

The Emperor is sitting on a normal throne, the entire assembly of Chapter leaders, Ecclesiarchal priests and beaurocrats gathered around him. They have the expressions of a group of schoolchildren who were caught fighting by the teacher, distilled and purified.

He is reading, slowly, with a stoney expression, a summary of the last ten thousand years.

Occasionally, he makes a small 'humph' sound under his breath. Every time he does, the entire assembly jumps. Occasionally someone lets off a small, half-stifled scream.

When he finishes the section labelled 'Age of Apostasy', he turns and gives an Arch-Cannoness a long, enquiring look. She promptly faints.

[Somebloke]

But his life support is dying.

Also, here's hoping the Tau get some new stuff a coming. Maybe a warp drve without the need for astropaths :3

The necrons have proven it is possible, even if it needs amazingly advanced technology.

Of course, the Tau will reach that stage in, what? Two hundred years? Five hundred years?

[Moff Chumley]

Don't forget the part when he declares that CAIPHAS CAIN, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM is placed in charge of anything that has remotely to do with violence in the Imperium.

[BRC]

Maybe, but it would be pretty Awesome for the Throne to fail, and for everyone to grieve and mourn... then suddenly, the Throne opens up and the Emperor steps out, saying "Sup ho's?"

Why did this thought come to my head:"The God Emperor of Mankind is Tupac"

[hanzo66]

Don't forget the part when he declares that CAIPHAS CAIN, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM is placed in charge of anything that has remotely to do with violence in the Imperium.
The only one who can even bare to stand up to him is EZEKYLE ABBADON, HERO OF THE CHAOS GODS himself! And even he won't stand a chance, even with that puny Mark of Chaos Ascendant that he has.

[SolkaTruesilver]

The only one who can even bare to stand up to him is EZEKYLE ABBADON, HERO OF THE CHAOS GODS himself! And even he won't stand a chance, even with that puny Mark of Chaos Ascendant that he has.

Okay.. I just don't get the joke. Why always spell these names in capital? Is there an inside?

[Dervag]

Don't forget the part when he declares that CAIPHAS CAIN, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM is placed in charge of anything that has remotely to do with violence in the Imperium.Which is, like, everything.

That would be funny. I wonder what would happen.

I mean, propaganda aside, how effective would Cain be as a grand fleet admiral? I haven't read the books.


Okay.. I just don't get the joke. Why always spell these names in capital? Is there an inside?There's an inside joke here.

Ciaphas Cain is the protagonist of a series of novels set in the Imperium. He's a commissar, who is actually not very brave and would prefer to stay away from fighting. However, not least because he knows when to run, he's very effective at surviving horrible situations. He's cunning enough to turn seemingly bad situations to his advantage. Give him command of a regiment of Guards made up of the surviving fragments of two regiments wrecked in combat, which hate each other, and he'll unite them by making himself the common enemy. And he's lucky sometimes.

That combination of traits has allowed him to salvage situations that would normally seem irreparable. Therefore, the Imperial propaganda machine has played him up as "hero of the empire" in a bunch of badly written adventure stories for public consumption. The all-caps stuff is apparently a reference to that kind of Imperial propaganda.

Me, I don't go for it that much. It's nice in small amounts, I guess.

[Solo]

Why did this thought come to my head:"The God Emperor of Mankind is Tupac"

Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

He was, after all, all of the greatest figures in human history.




I mean, propaganda aside, how effective would Cain be as a grand fleet admiral? I haven't read the books.
Poorly, seeing as how he is dead.

Still listed as active duty, though.

[Wraith]

Poorly, seeing as how he is dead.

Thank you for mentioning that, Solo. I was starting to wonder if anyone else had noticed that his novels/memoirs are all written post-humously :smalltongue:

Having said that, it didn't do the Emperor's reputation much harm, and it WOULD be pretty funny if he were elected to head of the Admiralty on the technicality that he's still in active service.
It'd be a shame to see the Golden Throne go to waste with the Emperor gone and all, I suppose....


The inquisition is not sacrificing a thousand psykers a day to keep the Emperor alive.

I didn't think the Inquisition had anything directly to do with it - one of the High Lords of Terra represents the Inquisition, so of course he/she/it might be involved, but I would have thought the Adeptus Mechanicus would be responsible for this sort of thing.

They built the Throne, after all, and they are among the ones who reap the most benefit from his absence. The Inquisitors were formed after His interment, too, so probably wouldn't have been involved with the details of such a 'plan'.

Definitely a very interesting thought, though.

[LBO]

The Inquisition PROVIDE the psykers. The Ordo Hereticus in particular round up the few they don't kill, chuck them on their Black Ships and have them sent off to Terra (or Emperor knows where). Depending on their talents, they either get subjected to mindbendingly horrible rituals that turn them into Astropaths, Sanctioned Psykers or the like, or they get fed to the Astronomican. The Astronomican requires ten thousand psykers at a time, who all die in a matter of months from the process - work out the turnover yourself.