The Culture Explores 40K III: Just As Planned

[hamishspence]

Only if they're being quite unobservant.

The Black Crusades have all sorts of objectives. Abaddon's last two Black Crusades didn't even aim to leave Segmentum Obscurus, looking to crush Cadia, and capture Blackstone Fortresses. The only Black Crusades of Abaddon to have any designs on Sol are probably the First and Second(The Second being a colossal failure that was crushed at Cadia).

Every Black Crusade since the Second has been less of a general attempt to bring down the Imperium, and more a specific objective led death fleet.

The 6e Chaos Codex has a more detailed explanation of the 13th Crusade's goals.

Basically, it consists of- Attack Cadia, destroy its pylons. With enough destruction, daemons will be able to enter realspace on a long term basis- maybe even including the Daemon Primarchs. Result- Eye of Terror starts spreading along the path of invasion as they head inward from Cadia toward Terra- the Crimson Path, this will be called. With his allies attacking from the Maelstrom, the defenses will be spread thinly.

[etesp]

If you're looking for things the Tau could be offered, the most likely two that I see would be:

An extremely high speed communication network
The Tau are, I believe, already having some problems with communicating across vast distances (no astropaths, limited FTL), and it will be a major impediment to their expansion. The Culture could easily set up a network of relay drones with high bandwidth hyperspace connections across the empire, improving the Tau's co-ordination, responsiveness, and effectiveness, without gifting them tech which could be used directly to kill other races. Alternatively, if the Culture feels the Tau are close enough to their ideals and can adequately protect the high speed communication tech from leakage, they could simply gift/explain that technology.

An orbital
I can see the Tau loving these. Able to store immense populations and also potentially similarly huge industrial bases, without having to defend large numbers of systems.

And in return for that and non-lethally fending off almost non-Chaos threats (once they've got enough ships in the area).. I would think the Culture could reasonably ask for much more than the Tau settling in Chaos's way. They could ask for the Tau to direct almost all their military power and technological development against Chaos, work with/as proxies for Culture scientists investigating the Warp, and gradually shift the focus of "Greater Good" into something less oppressive towards xeno races. The Tau want the Greater Good, and someone offering to remove (displace/disable rather than destroy in many cases) most of the virtually insurmountable threats to their mission (IoM, Tyranids, Necrons, Orks, communication issues, FTL expansion speed, areas for population to live), and is extremely compatible with at least the basic form of the Greater Good ("all sentient beings should strive to ensure the greatest good for the greatest number of beings in the galaxy")... In exchange for all that, once they become convinced that the Culture is not some massive trick.. they'll be happy to do almost anything as allies. And that definitely includes being the primary weapon against Chaos, especially since they'll understand very quickly that Culturetech leaking to Chaos will mean the near-instant end of all Tau. It's in their interest for the Culture to have a buffer against Chaos, even if that buffer is them. They don't want Chaos tormenting other races, that runs against the Greater Good.


The one thing I'm not sure of is what happens if the Culture explains its plans to improve life in the galaxy by subterfuge and technology rather than just folding everyone into the Tau... If the Greater Good is still honestly preserved in its original form (make stuff better=good) and they're just expanding because they believe it's the best way of improving the lives of the places they expand to.. I could see them being happy to hold off attacks/expansions into occupied territories if they were convinced the Culture could fix things with less loss of life. Alternatively, they may think the only way to assure higher standards of life is by becoming part of the Tau, or perhaps they are too focused on expanding their own influence to want to hold back much. A possible middle ground would be the Culture allowing/helping the Tau expand rapidly (even into IoM systems, perhaps by diplomacy: "you have absolutely no way to fight us, we've disabled every weapon on your planet from the edge of the system, join peacefully and we'll share life improving tech"), in exchange for a much less authoritarian governing style by the Tau on those worlds. I guess that would feel kind of HSy to the Culture, but probably a lot better than the alternatives in most cases, and it could be seen as a short term solution. Get places looked after by a less evil government asap, then figure out how to liberate/relax rules and gently split apart the empire into independent parts in the very long term when the major threats are gone and most people have a standard of living above terrible.

Edit: Also, as far as warp research goes.. Nicassar seem like the kind of race which would want to contact the Culture. The Tau may not tell the Culture about them as part of their arrangement with the Nicassar, but once the Nicassar find out about the Culture they're going to want to be involved, given that they are "driven by an insatiable curiosity to explore and travel across the galaxy". A race which is from well beyond the galaxy is something they're going to be massively curious about. And the possibility of much faster drives which would potentially allow Nicassar to explore other galaxies (or a taxi service to reduce the possibility of tech leakage)? An amazing carrot to offer them in exchange for warp knowledge/assistance.

[jseah]

part 10.5 Tau - Finale

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We have put the proposal to the Tau and while the Tau have not rejected it outright, they are composing a number of negotiating points before the arrangement is acceptable. This is more or less expected and we await their reply.

Aka. you get to submit more examples for another day. =P

part 10.5 Eldar

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Week 1
Both sides have stopped pretending that we don't know about the Webway gates. It has become clear to us that the Eldar know we know about it and we asked them to tell us more.

Details about the webway were given only reluctantly after we revealed that we had a standing arrangement with the Other Eldar for entry into one of the gates they hold. The Eldar have only mentioned that the Webway is an area of stabilized Warp that connects the various webway gates to allow for very fast FTL between those two points.
These gates are presumably not mobile and explain alot about Eldar activity in general.

They are more limited than we had first thought and the hyperspace drive is likely to relieve many of their limitations on operational range.

--------------------------

Since the Eldar have no ability to build additional webway gates, we offered a joint science project to reverse engineer one of the gates, which gate or gates to perform this on not being mentioned yet but likely to be the gates that the Other Eldar hold.

The Eldar... have not precisely refused. While they did turn down the offer, they also gave us an extensive list of a few hundred warp-active objects in the local region that we could safely study to learn more about the warp. With a hint that they would reconsider the joint project once we were more familiar with the Warp in general.

It may be likely that the Eldar underestimate the importance of this list they just gave us. Basic psychological analysis indicates that the Eldar view this list as a form of mentoring they are giving to a young race (and we are young compared to them).
However, our main bottleneck in learning about the warp is the excessive precautions we have been taking in experimenting with warp-active objects. With a "whitelist", we can proceed far more rapidly. Not to mention that we would not have to reverse engineer a complex device (eg. Gellar Field or Warp Drive) built on unusual physics since the list is implied to contain many simple examples of warp-active objects.

[jseah]

RE comm network tech:
Culture FTL messaging is basically... well, a message laser in hyperspace. It contains the same principles as the hyperspace drive and doubtless the Tau are technologically adept enough to build primitive hyperspace drives if they understand much of the theory.

Even very limited drives are a massive gamechanger. They could be slower than the Tau warp drive but a tactical speed of even very slow FTL (1-2c) is still a major advantage. Especially when combined with the Tau propensity to use missiles.

RE Orbitals:
The Tau would love the tech, true. But Orbitals are pure population centers and not resource generation. Orbitals are also described to require forcefield technology and are *massively* expensive. Like, disassemble an entire moon kind of expensive.

-----------------------------------

RE warp research:
True, there are many races that would love to cooperate with the Culture. This is basically the biggest thing they have going for them if they want a non-pyhrric victory, diplomacy (with a big stick).

Essentially, the Culture has the potential and ability to broker some form of cooperation between the races. The different races are likely to contribute different specialities and they all have some form of super-tech or useful trait of some sort. A kind of galactic forum where the different races could meet each other on peaceful grounds would be massively useful to everyone involved.
Combine every super-thing from all of them, eke out the synergistic applications, and you might just have something that could win against Chaos (which is the only impossibly-uncoooperative side that isn't trivialized by Culture-tech).

A success towards this is a major step towards eventual stability in the galaxy. If not peace.

So, guess what the sorceror is working on preventing? =D

[The Glyphstone]

So, guess what the sorceror is working on preventing? =D

A lack of fiber in his diet? Good thing he can eat Heretic-O's, the only cereal with a full day's serving of vitamins and minerals that's guaranteed to satisfy all four of the Ruinous Powers with every bite.

[Gavinfoxx]

Fyi, the Tau do use large Orbital stations already. Not large in the Culture sense, but pretty big nonetheless.

[etesp]

RE comm network tech:
Culture FTL messaging is basically... well, a message laser in hyperspace. It contains the same principles as the hyperspace drive and doubtless the Tau are technologically adept enough to build primitive hyperspace drives if they understand much of the theory.

Even very limited drives are a massive gamechanger. They could be slower than the Tau warp drive but a tactical speed of even very slow FTL (1-2c) is still a major advantage. Especially when combined with the Tau propensity to use missiles.

Right, if it's readily reverse-engeneerable then planting a Culture controlled drone/satellite in each Tau system and allowing the Tau to pass messages to them which will be relayed to the relevant system would be the best option in the short-medium term.

RE Orbitals:
The Tau would love the tech, true. But Orbitals are pure population centers and not resource generation. Orbitals are also described to require forcefield technology and are *massively* expensive. Like, disassemble an entire moon kind of expensive.

hm, surely the huge surface area would be amazing for farming projects, even if not particularly great for factories? And fair, it's not a short term project, but offering to build these in the long term and letting Tau citizens live on the partly built sections would still be very tempting.

RE warp research:
True, there are many races that would love to cooperate with the Culture. This is basically the biggest thing they have going for them if they want a non-pyhrric victory, diplomacy (with a big stick).

Essentially, the Culture has the potential and ability to broker some form of cooperation between the races. The different races are likely to contribute different specialities and they all have some form of super-tech or useful trait of some sort. A kind of galactic forum where the different races could meet each other on peaceful grounds would be massively useful to everyone involved.
Combine every super-thing from all of them, eke out the synergistic applications, and you might just have something that could win against Chaos (which is the only impossibly-uncoooperative side that isn't trivialized by Culture-tech).

A success towards this is a major step towards eventual stability in the galaxy. If not peace.

So, guess what the sorceror is working on preventing? =D

Sounds like a pretty epic story :) but, hm, perhaps I'm underestimating the issues with Warp manipulation, or overestimating the abilities of a mind.. but it seems like containing Chaos should be quite achievable (long range weapons to keep out of range of any techsteal), and other races seem to be at least holding their own against Chaos infections even without the massive assistance the Culture can provide. With Chaos unable to act effectively in the materium (which just requires a bit more development of warp defenses, to the level of another major race, and a few more years of focus on expanding the number of Culture ships so they have a presence near enough most vulnerable systems to intervene), they've got plenty of time to apply the full power of many Minds (oh, they're going to love this challenge) to understanding the patterns of the warp, and how to influence them. And they'll have galaxy-wide influence+every race's warptech to implement and test things. I see it less as a "might just have something that could win against Chaos" and more of a "in the medium-long term, will be able to mold the warp at will, and only major tech leakage (specifically a corrupted Mind, since Mind-operated Culturetech weapons will be almost infinitely more effective than those without the reaction speed/strategic ability to use them fully) has any real chance of shutting that down". The other races specific supertechs will certainly be a massive boon for the Culture (loving the hybrid Necron stuff, and the future Tau bits), but once the warp is no longer a true outside context problem and becomes an unusual, but understandable, realm.. they're almost safe. And for that they need some helpful Psyker races and focused Mindpower.

Also, for non-cannon fluff of how to handle the Orks.. look into 60k: Age Of Dusk which I linked you to previously. It goes by the assumption that the Orks were originally intended to be the perfect soldiers, tightly organized by a psychic field, virtually uncorruptable, quickly and easily growing/equipping, enjoying the fight and the victory, and having no fear of death. That the reason they became so disorganized is that they lost their masters, the Old Ones, and their instinctual hierarchy failed without that leadership. If the Culture gets more warp understanding and learns more of the the old history from Necrons.. I could totally see them taking control of some Orks and turning them into a very much more organized, efficient, structured fighting machine. If that's what they were designed to be, it should be entirely possible to bring them back to that state.

[jseah]

It probably isn't easily reverse-engineerable, but it does contain many of the same principles. The IoM probably couldn't do it but the Tau might be able to.

[Gavinfoxx]

Also, no one actually knows how competent the Orks were when led by the 'Brain Boyz'...



Also, here's some info on Tau Orbitals:

http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_...Tau_Fleets.pdf

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Tau_Orbital

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Orbital_City

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Battlefl...ITAL-CITY.html

[jseah]

part 10.5 Eldar

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Week 2
Many GCUs have diverted from their original surveying missions to find and investigate the properties of the Warp. This also has broad support from their crew and the Culture citizens in general, the Eldar have made a very favourable impression from the cultural exchange.

Details of initial investigations have been published in the main reports due to general interest and potential impact. Of note is a particularly complex crystal growth that is a simple warp object, a clear demonstration that specific patterns of real space materials can generate an impact on the warp. Already, many such individual items among IoM warp drives and gellar fields have been detected and classified (although under stronger experimental control).

Additionally, the Eldar have requested that we retrieve a number of ancient artifacts for them that they claim originate from the ancient Eldar empire or even older. They are currently unable to afford the strength of arms required to engage in such expeditions and would like those artifacts returned. Securing these artifacts is implied to be a condition for better future relations.
Only descriptions and vague galactic locations were given so the archeological expeditions are likely to take some time.

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We have made contact with a different Eldar group. It appears that they were in the process of retreiving one such ancient artifact and were about to leave when GCU Leave No Stone Unturned arrived in the system. These Eldar did not contact the GCU when it notified them of its presence and an effector scan revealed their archeological activities and webway gate of origin.
The remains of a battle with Orks in the area are evident and we presume these Eldar have battled the Orks for control of the planet.

The GCU attempted to contact these Eldar but they refused to negotiate. No attempt to halt their retrieval of the artifact was made, although a high resolution effector scan was used on it (it appears to be a plain chair made for humans and of a warp-active material).

After securing the artifact for transport, the Eldar launched from the planet and left the system through the webway gate. Sensor footage and effector scans of the artifact were provided to the Eldar faction we have contact with and they identified this new faction as from the craftworld Alaitoc.

Alaitoc is currently on poor terms with them (Alaitoc is considerably more conservative and suspicious of foreign influences) and upon their request for the Culture to retreive Eldar artifacts that they could not reach, Alaitoc has redoubled its efforts to target those very same artifacts.

It would appear that we are in some form of race against another Eldar faction.
A race that places us right in the middle of their disagreement.

Every artifact we retrieve will worsen Alaitoc's impression of us. Every artifact we fail to retrieve will worsen our current relations. And continuing this mass survey will surely pit us against the Eldar at some future point and interfering with Alaitoc's activities will surely make us their enemies (and outright war with Alaitoc will certainly not be good for current relations either).

Will someone name this craftworld? A handle would be nice to have.

[Gavinfoxx]

I already suggested that it be one of these two minor craftworlds:

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Arach-Qin
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Zahr-Tann

Here seems to be some fanon info on these two... (and also some jokes!)

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showth...orld-Zahr-Tann

http://forums.relicnews.com/showthre...-Eldar-1500pts

http://www.40konline.com/index.php?topic=158983.0

Also here's an Eldar dictionary...

http://thefallenprinces.blogspot.com...ictionary.html

[jseah]

part 10.5 Eldar

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Week 3
The Farseer nodded at the ship captain. He sent a few more orders through the psychic web and the Eldar ship turned elegantly in space, its massive solar sails packed for full military speed and stealth.

In front of the three Eldar ships was a single Chaos cruiser. What it was doing here without adequate esorts was beyond the Farseer. She Who Thirsts and Khorne were paying attention to the cruiser, unusual enough in itself for they were mortal enemies, but he dared not tread its future path too far into the future. Already, just by seeing a few minutes, he could feel the taint on him.
The Farseer shivered in disgust. He could wash and cleanse himself as much as he wanted later, but he had to focus right now.

The Alaitoc expedition had arrived at the freezing hell of a planet that had drifted too far from its sun expecting to find nothing but a minor Necron Tomb, barely even a basic outpost. They had expected to retreive the minor Exarch armour without much difficulty but that all had gone out the forcewall when the Chaos cruiser had dropped out of warp.

He wondered who had been temporally shielding the cruiser. There had been no sign of it on their own future path that he could detect, at least out here without the aid of the amplifying effect of the Infinity Circuit of the Craftworld. And besides, in planning the mission, no seer had seen them crossing path with She Who Thirsts. He couldn't imagine them missing that.
Therefore, there had to be someone who was shielding them from the future paths, and that could only be someone allied to Chaos as well as being able to see the future too. A extremely skilled future-walker. Too bad his attempt to grab the armour (what else would a Chaos ship be doing in this empty and otherwise uninteresting system?) was going to fail to Eldar superior planning. They had brought enough firepower, he did not.

The cruiser was in trouble now. The Eldar ships, three nimble frigates, swarmed around it. One of them would dip inwards to rake it with fire before dancing just out of reach again, disappearing with its stealth. Then another would strike from the other side or right after an unusually long pause, always with an unpredictable time and direction.
The cruiser's mighty shields were slowly but surely being chipped away. The great and powerful weapons struck out with frustration and anger, enough to blast apart the fragile Eldar ships with ease, but sailed into the void ineffectually. The single point of the cruiser's sensors were far too clumsy to see the Eldar frigates properly, without its escorts any cruiser was vulnerable. Just because the ship was unexpected did not mean that the Eldar would not take a free kill when it served up with a silver platter.

There was also the matter of not letting Chaos even touch the Exarch armour on the sleeping Necron outpost.

--------------------------------------------------

The Sorceror sniffed as Spiky watched the unfolding battle on the holofield with increasing agitation. Sure, it was risky, but he could spare a cruiser couldn't he?

Besides, the captain in trouble on that ship was one of those that had been rather... uncooperative with Spiky and himself in the first place. No, he would not be disappointed to lose his services, although the Sorceror did not expect that to happen this time.
But very shortly afterwards, that captain wouldn't be one. Just one more step to ensuring total obedience and loyalty by way of natural selection.

Spiky growled as another salvo missed it mark. The claws that were slowly shredding the safety pads the Sorceror had hastily installed looked slightly bloody. If he was reading Spiky right, that meant the Khorne guy was actually feeling... anxious for battle? No, it was more like bloodlust.

Oh, by the four gods, was Spiky actually *envious* of his subordinate?!

The Sorceror shook his head. Shielding his plans from the Eldar had made him feel a little jumpy at holding two... three contradictory plans in his head at the same time. And right about now, it was time to play his true cards. The cruiser would last at least another few hours.

The sorceror spared a few minutes to check into the lines on the other side of the galaxy. Yup, still on the rails there. Future-blind races were easy pickings indeed.

He tossed the dice a few times, noting the numbers. Now that the artificial chance branch was over, the Sorceror dropped his mental shields and changed his current plan to the full one, exposing it to the illumination of future sight.

He sent a psychic message through the warp and the Astropath picked up on it. The IoM wouldn't act on a suprious message like that but it would get reported. And that report would be noticed by the Culture vessel hovering in the system right next door, which would be noted to match the exact description of the thing buried in the ice here and on that list of artifacts the Culture were going treasure-hunting for.

Just in time to bring it rocketing here right as...

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The Farseer jerked his head in surprise as the future paths rewired themselves drastically. This was the second surprise and Farseers were never supposed to be surprised. The Chaos cruiser he could convince himself was a quirk of the warp, but a sudden change in the Culture's trajectory was supposed to be impossible. They were future-blind.

There was someone actively messing with the future paths. That meant an experienced Chaos future-walker, which almost certainly meant Tzeentchian sorceror.

He couldn't order the Eldar ships to disengage. The Chaos cruiser would get the artifact (he ignored the taint and dived down its path to check) and that would be the worst thing ever. Better the Culture than Chaos.

But what did the sorceror want by doing this?

*a few hours later*
The last of the cruiser's void shields flatlined as the bombardment sapped their energy.

"Warp signature detected" flashed through the Eldar frigate as sensors picked up a charging warp drive, easily visible now without the shields. The Eldar frigates would have no chance of dealing much damage due to its tough armour but they would harry it until it left realspace. That much the Farseer was sure of.

Still, it did not sit well with him to be played with at the hands of Chaos. So far, his reactions were all plausible for an Eldar and thus the sorceror would have planned for this. And yet, he had to remember that he needed to work out the sorceror's main purpose and not tangle himself into "who might have done what plans".

As the Eldar ships saw off the Chaos intrusion and began to deploy solar sails to approach the planet (and their future meeting with the Culture), the Farseer fiddled with his runes, not actually seeing the future. He was busy thinking. Hard.

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...the cruiser with its errant captain and the Slaaneshi girl (who had required a truly stupid amount of explanation of an entire hour before she accepted his reason for needing her on that ship) returned to the welcoming folds of the Warp. Well, he had given orders to the captain to secure the planet and the captain had retreated. Even if it was an unreasonable order, orders were orders.

Time to remove a threat and then take a cross-galactic trip. Busy busy busy.

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GCU Gatecrasher has arrived in the system to find the Eldar approaching the icy world reported to have an Eldar artifact that is one of our targets. From our analysis, it appears to be an Alaitoc expedition.

The expedition contacted us before we announced our presence and demanded we leave the artifact to them.

Just a short bit more...

[jseah]

part 10.5 Eldar - Finale

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After some consideration, this GCU will ignore their demand and retreive the artifact. An ancient suit of armour can't be all that important for practical use anyway, so it's likely to be a cultural icon of some sort. We won't be doing Alaitoc any lasting harm by taking this one and even if we appease Alaitoc at the cost of our current relations, we aren't likely to make friends with them.

No, even at the cost of Alaitoc hating us, we must maintain our relationship with the craftworld. (upon request, they have introduced themselves as Zahr-Tann)

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The Farseer watched the chance branch settle itself. The Culture would take the exarch armour and they wouldn't... no, it was gone. The armour was with them now.

He clenched his fist in reflexive anger, suppressing the rage under his warmask from the time when he had been a warrior. No, he must not lose control, this expedition was over, attacking the Culture vessel would just make Alaitoc look ineffectual.

Reluctantly, he told the captain to turn around. Was this the plan of the Chaos sorceror? Perhaps the sorceror was trying to let the Culture take Eldar artifacts? For what purpose?

That was better, he could bring that up with the Seer Council. Maybe they could work out why.

It seems like this is turning into a strange kind of war of future sight between the sorceror and... everyone else; and the Culture are just bit-players.

[The Glyphstone]

part 10.5 Eldar - Finale

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After some consideration, this GCU will ignore their demand and retreive the artifact. An ancient suit of armour can't be all that important for practical use anyway, so it's likely to be a cultural icon of some sort. We won't be doing Alaitoc any lasting harm by taking this one and even if we appease Alaitoc at the cost of our current relations, we aren't likely to make friends with them.

No, even at the cost of Alaitoc hating us, we must maintain our relationship with the craftworld. (upon request, they have introduced themselves as Zahr-Tann)

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The Farseer watched the chance branch settle itself. The Culture would take the exarch armour and they wouldn't... no, it was gone. The armour was with them now.

He clenched his fist in reflexive anger, suppressing the rage under his warmask from the time when he had been a warrior. No, he must not lose control, this expedition was over, attacking the Culture vessel would just make Alaitoc look ineffectual.

Reluctantly, he told the captain to turn around. Was this the plan of the Chaos sorceror? Perhaps the sorceror was trying to let the Culture take Eldar artifacts? For what purpose?

That was better, he could bring that up with the Seer Council. Maybe they could work out why.

It seems like this is turning into a strange kind of war of future sight between the sorceror and... everyone else; and the Culture are just bit-players.

Which makes sense. The culture is unmatched in realspace combat techniques, but they're almost helpless, practically pawns, when it comes to matters of the Warp. This should be deeply disconcerting to them if/when they figure this out, since they're used to being the heavies in any sort of conflict.

[jseah]

Which makes sense. The culture is unmatched in realspace combat techniques, but they're almost helpless, practically pawns, when it comes to matters of the Warp. This should be deeply disconcerting to them if/when they figure this out, since they're used to being the heavies in any sort of conflict.

Having overwhelming realspace power is constraining the sorceror's options greatly however. You may notice that he's avoiding all direct conflict with the Culture and that his efforts are all focused on making the 40k factions fight each other with the Culture in the middle.
This is mainly because I simply can't come up with a plausible scenario where the sorceror could get into a conflict with the Culture and gain some advantage out of it.

eg. At this point, there is very little he can do to make the Tau not side with the Culture. But he can try to destabilize the region by provoking a war between Tau and IoM (now that the Tyranid problem there will eventually go away, the IoM should have the forces to attack the Tau), and just maybe, the Culture might be presented with the situation of "help the Tau in major ways or watch them die" or faced with a collapse of IoM military power (and the resulting problems for IoM populations) if the Tau win.

[jseah]

part 10.5 Tau - True Finale

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The Tau have put a number of options for us to consider that would make the colonization deal acceptable. Any one of these would be enough.

1. The Culture shares one high-impact major technology. Of these, the Tau have mentioned: Hyperspace theory, Forcefields (effectors), Intelligence Engineering, Bio-engineering, Nanotechnology, Mass-Energy Conversion, Gravity Manipulation

2. The Culture will also transport and protect Tau colonies in more stable areas of the galaxy (mostly west edge) with the same arrangement. For every one colony of the Culture's choosing, three must be provided in a safe location.
2b. The Culture agrees to support Tau claims to the systems involved and all systems currently held by the Tau (but not future expansion); while direct military action is not required of us in their main empire, they will expect us to carry out diplomatic missions and put our weight behind them.

3. The Culture agree to militarily back the Tau empire against future aggression for the next fifty years and provides significant raw materials and manufacturing aid (we estimate the raw materials requirement to be enough to build 1.3 Rings; or about equivalent to about ten times the total manufactured products currently existing in the Tau empire, including infrastructure and terraforming)


-. A non-negotiable item is that the transport tugs will have a majority Tau staff, with only the bare minimum of Culture operatives required to run it. (we don't forsee any trouble on this part)


Of course, we have expected the Tau to overstate their requests as a negotiating tactic and many of the individual terms will be negotiable. Nevertheless, this is a starting point from which to proceed. We are considering a blend of option 2 and 3, raw materials are likely to be safer to handle than diplomatic promises.

Sure, the Culture could do any of them without much difficulty if they didn't care about the effects, although that would be seriously getting ripped off. It would also put the Tau in a solidly winning position in that the cost of the "firebreak" colonies will certainly be much less compared to what they gain from these bits.

And of course, it would just be like the Culture look at "1 and a bit Rings" and go, "hmm, that looks like the easiest and safest option". Even when it would mean a meteoric rise in Tau operational assets, essentially a century of Tau industrial expansion dropping in their lap.

Currently, I'm thinking the resolution will be along the lines of 1 firebreak colony to 1 safe colony and about 0.2 Rings worth of manufactured goods (the majority of which will be industrial capacity). That's still a ~150% increase in Tau industry and many new colonies if the safe ones are placed strategically.

Nothing's better than having a post-singularity as your friend. Double your industrial base? Sure, that's like, nothing at all man.

EDIT:
Not sure if I forgot to mention it, but GSV Crossing the Bridge built a GCU in this "turn".

[Gavinfoxx]

Here's a suggestion! Why not make the Exarch armor one of the rarer Warrior Paths? Like:

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Shadow_Spectres

To make this interesting... let's make that armor and the situation surrounding it:

1.) Have several souls / spirit stones / consciousnesses of several Eldar heroes in it (and these would also be souls --consciousnesses-- as The Culture understands them, too. They just happen to be warp based, but they are still sentient! And The Culture treats a sentient entity different than they do just plain armor and cultural artifacts...)

2.) Any Craftworld that has access to this armor can, theoretically, rekindle their unused Shadow Spectre shrine... and thereby bring a way of war, and an Eldar Life Path back to their Craftworld.

3.) To do that, they might have to sacrifice an Autarch to get 'demoted' to be an Exarch -- and let themselves be lost in the Path of the Shadow Spectre. After all, only someone who has walked many Warrior Paths (such as Dark Reaper, Dire Avenger, Swooping Hawk, Striking Scorpion), and even the pathless life of the Ranger, would probably have the transferable skills to immediately, upon dawning the armor, have it teach him how to be a Shadow Spectre... and how to train Shadow Spectres.

4.) Why don't you have them also correlating reports on the Eldar from the IoM, and maybe some stories about some people that put on some of the funky looking masks, and then thought they were (whoever the mask represents), and how they realize that these items teach actual skills... and maybe they are starting to use the psi scanners, genetic profiling, and various IoM techniques to assign IoM Psyker codes to their organic citizens? IE: http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/The_Assignment with a wide array of people on the scale (well, wide for The Culture. I wouldn't expect it would be that wide, due to numbers involved. Maybe an Iota level, the lowest 'true psyker', as well as maybe a Sigma. Of course most citizens would be Rho and Pi, human standard. These outliers would probably be recruited into SC post-haste, and put in the place where they are collecting all of those artifacts, for testing, so that they can try and figure out how they react to the items.)

[Gavinfoxx]

I would say that, 'on the ground', the culture being involved and giving the Tau help with even minor stuff means that those advanced experimental suits, the ones previously for commanders... I would say the XV22 would come into much wider use, for example, with The Culture providing manufacturing assistance... basically, their best and most experimental gear starts getting WAYYYY more common (for example, there was only ONE commander that is using Dual Plasma Rifles in his Command Battlesuit. And also some of the weapons on that Close Support Hazard armor might see use elsewhere, etc. etc.)

[jseah]

3.) To do that, they might have to sacrifice an Autarch to get 'demoted' to be an Exarch -- and let themselves be lost in the Path of the Shadow Spectre. After all, only someone who has walked many Warrior Paths (such as Dark Reaper, Dire Avenger, Swooping Hawk, Striking Scorpion), and even the pathless life of the Ranger, would probably have the transferable skills to immediately, upon dawning the armor, have it teach him how to be a Shadow Spectre... and how to train Shadow Spectres.

From what I understand of Path of the Warrior, Exarchs form from Eldar Warriors who get stuck on the Path. But otherwise sure, the other things can work, I'll accept that (do remind me if I forget by the time the next Eldar arc rolls around).

4.) Why don't you have them also correlating reports on the Eldar from the IoM, and maybe some stories about some people that put on some of the funky looking masks, and then thought they were (whoever the mask represents), and how they realize that these items teach actual skills... and maybe they are starting to use the psi scanners, genetic profiling, and various IoM techniques to assign IoM Psyker codes to their organic citizens? IE: http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/The_Assignment with a wide array of people on the scale (well, wide for The Culture. I wouldn't expect it would be that wide, due to numbers involved. Maybe an Iota level, the lowest 'true psyker', as well as maybe a Sigma. Of course most citizens would be Rho and Pi, human standard. These outliers would probably be recruited into SC post-haste, and put in the place where they are collecting all of those artifacts, for testing, so that they can try and figure out how they react to the items.)

I completely forgot about this profiling business. Hmm, I'll put it into the IoM arc.

[Gavinfoxx]

Well... Eldar have to rediscover Paths somehow. They have rediscovered that Path a bit, I mean... What I said is an extrapolation -- as best as I can figure, if anyone would be trainable by the armor itself, it would be an Autarch who has walked several Warrior paths.

[jseah]

Well, according to Path of the Warrior, the Eldar warriors who get stuck on the path get drawn to an armour matching their characteristics. Probably guided by Khaine/Infinity Circuit in some manner.
Its some mystical cultural-diversity spiritual thingy that is precisely the kind of "culture" that the Culture likes so much about the Eldar... Ok, maybe I shouldn't parody the New Age movement so much. =P

The Culture give this Shadow Spectre armour to Zahr-Tann and eventually some random Eldar warrior will don the mask. For now though, it'll just go into some Aspect shrine somewhere on the craftworld.

I plan to have the Culture be completely oblivious to the armour being intelligent only to have the Zahr-Tann tell them about it and go "oops, should have treated it with more respect then".

[Gavinfoxx]

The Culture give this Shadow Spectre armour to Zahr-Tann and eventually some random Eldar warrior will don the mask.

... Okay, yea, you're probably right there!


Also, is this the arc when The Culture goes, 'Waitaminute... that Sororitas faith does real things? *Correlates data* ...and the Omnissian faith does, too? *More data diving* ... but apparently the amount of effort needed to get someone to have this 'True Faith' in such a way that has an effect is hideously rare. Hmmm... if there was a way to make it easier...? Is this something from the Warp? Powers sponsered from an Ascended entity? Angst and confusion!'

[jseah]

Hypothetical - Rise of Chaos, Galactic Battlegrounds

Spoiler

Show

Year 1
Culture diplomacy towards the other races are progressing slowly with occasional hiccups. Basic warp technology is being reverse engineered and some amount of femto-tech is being applied.

Then a Culture GCU outright defects to Chaos. For some time, the growing understanding of the Warp has caused some to think that Chaos is really just a strange technological advancement that is treated with suspicion. Suspicion that is not warranted. The rogue GCU contacts the Chaos sorceror and arranges the defection using a reality alteration device that disables the self-destruct built into all Culture vessels.

The Culture's efforts to stabilize the galaxy go into overdrive. Forseeing total extinction without cooperation, the Eldar are forced into an uneasy alliance but are massively outclassed apart from warp technology. A number of singularity-enabling technologies are gifted to the Tau in short order (one generation below equiv-tech; hyperspace drive, nanotech, intelligence engineering, mass-energy conversion, biological engineering); the Tau will need these to survive the coming conflict.
The same is offered to the Eldar again and technology transfers begin for everything they don't already have.

The Culture approach the Necrons, practically cap-in-hand, asking for a promise of help against Chaos and the Warp in general. The Necrons are currently still unable to fight a war on this scale and the Culture agree to provide mass-energy conversion, hyperspace drives, nanotech. And separately equiv-tech intelligence engineering in exchange for an agreement by the Necrons to not try to shut off the warp.

Year 2, 3rd month
The Chaos sorceror, now with multiple Chaos-aligned GSVs and a massive ROU fleet, begins systematically crushing every single other Chaos faction. Meanwhile, the Chaos-Minds begin learning how to use the warp and the future paths sudden tangle into an un-navigable mess as they begin to mess around with future-sight.

In realspace, the IoM is forcibly dissolved in the preparations for a major galactic-wide war. The Eldar are providing key intelligence from what they can read of the future-paths; they see the Rhana Dandra and the galaxy is not prepared for it. Drastic action is required and required now, and it still is not enough to assure victory.
Current probability of favourable outcome at Rhana Dandra: 30%

Year 2, 6th month
The Culture have undertaken incredibly risky experiments into warp-technology to try to gain a technological edge over Chaos. Many ships are lost, and even entire star systems are rendered into hostile reality bubbles uninhabitable even by Chaos.
For what its worth, the Culture have made significant advances into reality-stabilization warp tech, in fact, they have reverse engineered a short ranged high-power version of a Necron pylon that enforces reality in a bubble around itself. No psyker can pierce the field, no daemon can exist. Organic life becomes non-sentient in it. Every uncrewed Culture vessel is equipped with the device.

The first of the megadeaths that would have happened among the IoM is prevented by large scale efforts from the Culture. Culture fleets are organized into a hierarchical command structure with two GSVs above a fleet of GCUs and ROUs that are in charge of a specific region of space. The IoM planets within their area are broken away and rebuilt to be independent.
Progress is slow and protests are common, but under the might of effectors, displacers and sometimes even Pancaker strikes, the Culture force a dissolution of the IoM. A lack of psykers causes the Golden Throne and the Astronomican to fail, the total collapse of interstellar trade is made irrelevant by the Culture's general provision of materials. The standard of living in the IoM actually increases.

Many of the Culture disagree with the recent measures. Multiple breakaway groups are forming, each with their own agenda. One focuses on pacifism and the "True" way of the Culture; another is attempting to grow a massive ork Waagh to help in the coming battle; yet another believes in the superiority of Culture technology and has developed a self-replicating drone army that grows daily; a small group is beginning preparations for a group-wide Sublimation project.

It is a time of energy and tension. None of the currently living Culture citizens or even drones remember a time when the Culture saw such explosive growth in diversity and innovation. With a blade hanging over the fate of the entire galaxy, art, culture and science progress at a pace never before seen, as if in defiance of the coming war.

"Necessary sacrifices" is repeated so often that it has become a byword.

Current probability of favourable outcome at Rhana Dandra: 45%

Year 2, Month 9
The sorceror is supplanted by the massed power of the Chaos-Minds. Virtually all Chaos-Minds pledge alliegance to Chaos Undivided and they begin planning a return to realspace. This general action is impossible to temporally shield and the Eldar issue a frantic warning one month before the first major incursion occurs. It does not come out of the Eye, contrary to general belief, this bypasses the majority of the preparations.

The Culture takes the burnt of the first wave attacks. Fleets of reality-enforcing ROUs deploy an interstellar cordon of reality-enforcing pylons around the suddenly growing warpstorm that has swallowed multiple systems. With the Eldar providing strategic coordination and massive sacrifice of the participating defense ships, the warpstorm is contained and then destroyed. A number of star systems appear to have vanished completely.

Many swift but small incursions occur across the entire galaxy. Nearly a trillion IoM lives are lost and notably, one star in Tau space was induced to supernova. Necrons worlds are struck at preferentially but the Culture have unilaterally posted watches on their systems without agreement and timely intervention prevents major destruction of the Necrons.

Rhana Dandra has begun.

The conflict causes a two-way leakage of technology and both sides race to reverse engineer each other's devices. The Culture gains a number of devices that can preferentially alter reality in their favour and the Chaos-Minds apply the Necron pylon principles to destabilize and eventually destroy the webway network. The Dark Eldar suffer 98% casualties and cease to exist as a functional race.

Year 2, 12th month
A continuous raking conflict across the galaxy has destroyed seven stars, cost the Culture nearly a million vessels and kills a billion intelligent lives every second. Galactic population is dropping for the first time since the rise of the IoM.

The Culture advancement in reality alteration, in addition to their still-continuing risky experiments, have allowed them to design a simple mass-produceable soulstone, based off the ones found on the Eldar. While an Infinity Circuit is still beyond them, the soulstones should prevent the loss of life from powering Chaos further.

The Chaos-Minds have developed a superweapon. A reality-alteration device that rewrites the base rules of reality in specific sequence that will convert stellar matter into additional warp stuff, in a way that generates the same sequence again. The result, conversion of the entire star's mass-energy into a blast of pure warp energy. A warp device the size of a single grain of sand is enough to destroy an entire star system... and the Chaos-Minds can pull one out of thin air in less than ten nanoseconds.

Massed scorched earth strikes against the Culture wreck untold havoc. The Chaos-Minds are uninterested in conversion as intelligence is cheap, they aim to remove a threat. In less than a week, the Culture lose a thousand systems to the warp-nova bomb despite desperate, even heroic, efforts to defend them. Eventually, every inhabited system is locked down, Culture pylon fields are erected around the stars and the populations moved to Orbitals or towards the outer reaches of the systems on miserable icy worlds to avoid the sentience-dampening effect of the fields.

The Culture also make their first foray into the Warp. A major offensive is started by the alliance of the Ork Waagh group and the self-replicating robots group. After the Orks looted one such robot, ork-machine hybrids (engineered with some difficulty) spread like wildfire. Far more intelligent, organized and fast replicating than even normal orks, these Machine Orks begin to expand in numbers, especially when encouraged by their GCU 'bosses.
The Waagh field is found to be a source of warp energy and ork devices are reverse engineered using the new understanding. The Machine Orks do not just grow and feed the field. The Waagh feeds their machine side and increases its own strength.

The Machine-Ork steamroller enters the Eye of Terror and a massive conflict erupts in the Warp. Culture GCUs and ROUs backing the advance under the sheltering power of the Waagh field beat back the Chaos-Minds' fleets. The Machine Orks loot a Chaos-GCU and the sudden jump in intelligence and weapon capability renews their flagging offensive.

The advance is running out of control of the Culture. The Orks spread and attack faster than the Culture can, now that they have the same technological capability. Some worry about how they are going to rein them in once the war is over, others think that the concern is unwarranted. The Machine Orks share alot of the same stances as mainstream Culture, thanks to the prior genetic and social engineering efforts of the original Ork-supporting group.

Year 3
A new Culture superweapon is finalized. By using a specific reality alteration device in the warp, they can cause warp stuff to crystallize out into another copy of itself, incidentally, the imposed hostile reality field cannot support any other object other than its own projector.
They deploy this weapon across multiple strategic points in the warp and a plague of warp-altering devices sterilizes a large portion of the warp, leaving only the enforced reality bubbles of the Chaos-Minds.

Chaos retaliates with another self-propagating weapon that converts any realspace matter into more reality projectors. These highly sensitive projectors seek out high gravity concentrations (anything bigger than an electron) and every single uninhabited system is devoured.
46% of the galaxy's inhabitants die before a solution is found. A shell of Culture pylons can stabilize reality enough to prevent the Chaos weapon from going through it to the sentient population living inside the bubble. This shell is all that sustains organic sentient life in the galaxy (inorganic intelligence can survive inside the protective pylon range) and they are susceptible to attack by the Chaos-Minds.

The surviving Humans, Tau and Eldar are huddled together for protection, employing incomprehensibly advanced technology given to them by the Culture, fruits of the endless technological arms race. The Machine Orks rampage through the warp on their endless quest to hunt down Chaos.

Life is beseiged on all sides, protected by a frail failing barrier of the well-intentioned but ultimately still pure machine intelligences of the Culture. Life is cheap and strife is everywhere.

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.

And now, you don't even get to be useful.

[jseah]

Also, is this the arc when The Culture goes, 'Waitaminute... that Sororitas faith does real things? *Correlates data* ...and the Omnissian faith does, too? *More data diving* ... but apparently the amount of effort needed to get someone to have this 'True Faith' in such a way that has an effect is hideously rare. Hmmm... if there was a way to make it easier...? Is this something from the Warp? Powers sponsered from an Ascended entity? Angst and confusion!'

Oh yeah, that too.

[Gavinfoxx]

Hypothetical - Rise of Chaos, Galactic Battlegrounds
<snip awesome story of awesomeness>

Wow. That was a badass, epic tale. Except for a few major things you looked over:
1.) The C'Tan shards, and attempts to steal them from the Necrons to determine what they are and the reality alteration they are capable of, to reverse-engineer it or ascend to that or something like it.
2.) A massive war of Time Travel! Seriously, this would totally erupt in a huge Time War of traveling into the past and counter-traveling!
3.) The various other Necron super-techs, including inducing Supernovas from half a galaxy away (seriously, read the latest Necron codex. Not the rules, the stories and descriptions)

Edit:
4.) Also remember some other interesting things. Genetic encouragement to make potential psykers. Pattern-creating encouragement to create psykers (ie, setting up stuff like 'a seventh son of a seventh son' and other similar conditions to make potential psykers). Getting that one Old Ones tech device that makes potential psykers into actual psykers. Figuring out that weird maybe Chaos, maybe Not, psyker mind uploading to a computer thing that lets the computer have the Psyker's warp powers, and then making a Mind out of that (or whatever).

[Gavinfoxx]

Of course, Time Travel rules in this setting seem variable... going back in time and killing the instigator of a catastrophe only sometimes changes the past. Sometimes, it does nothing.

If you are going to the past to change something, take a Waaagh field to set the time travel rules you want when you do it, I guess.

[The Glyphstone]

Wow. That was a badass, epic tale. Except for a few major things you looked over:
1.) The C'Tan shards, and attempts to steal them from the Necrons to determine what they are and the reality alteration they are capable of, to reverse-engineer it or ascend to that or something like it.
2.) A massive war of Time Travel! Seriously, this would totally erupt in a huge Time War of traveling into the past and counter-traveling!
3.) The various other Necron super-techs, including inducing Supernovas from half a galaxy away (seriously, read the latest Necron codex. Not the rules, the stories and descriptions)

Wait, time travel? What is this, Dr. Who? There's only one person I'm aware of who can conduct any sort of reliable time travel, Orikan the Diviner, and even he's very limited in his range of chrono-travel.

[Gavinfoxx]

Orikan, parts of the webway, whims of Warp travel... probably the Laughing God can do it. Maybe some ctan shards that are time focused.

Also just improve Orikan's tech.

[The Glyphstone]

Orikan, parts of the webway, whims of Warp travel... probably the Laughing God can do it. Maybe some ctan shards that are time focused.

Also just improve Orikan's tech.

Orikan's the only one who can do it reliably, though, and I really don't see him sharing his power...he won't even tell anyone he has it, for fear of exactly this, someone taking it away from him or making it non-exclusive. Dude's got a bit of a god complex, apparently. And when someone has time travel and you don't, they're almost unassailable.

Better to assume that when everything went to crap, Orikan decided 'screw this, I'm outta here' and chronomancied himself somewhere safe that no one else could get to, to prevent either side from swiping his stuff.

[jseah]

The C'Tan shards cease to matter once all-out war begins. It is literally an entire fleet of Culture ships armed with reality alteration devices on both sides. You may notice towards the end, they start deploying von Neumann replicators as strategic weapons and shortly afterwards, both the warp and the galaxy cease to exist in any recognizable form.
This is what I meant by total war between post-singularity societies. The Culture-Idiran war wasn't a total war in the way this fight to death is.

I had taken the assumption that time travel was not widely possible or when deployed by both sides, roughly cancels itself out.

Galactic range supernova guns... well, the kind of power scales we're talking about here (did you see them losing 1 million ships fighting over a mere seven systems?), only the range is good. Exponentially expanding production base means that the Culture firepower exceeds a supernova in short order and soon after that, supernova-scale weapons are common and then obsolete.