The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction - Page 19

Gavinfoxx · 11-13-2012, 12:44 PM

As best as I can determine in the wiki, these are some canonical, named, Radical Xenos Inquisitors that seem to be alive in early m42:

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Bronislaw_Czevak
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Helynna_Valeria
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Gregor_Eisenhorn
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Kryptman

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Glyphstone

Kryptman?

Yea, I think so. I think Eisenhorn (!!) is still active at this time...

Jseah: Put the 3-book anthology/omnibus 'Eisenhorn', by Dan Abnett, on your to-read list! It's one of the better 40k books. Jseah: for those of these characters that have novels associated with them, you might consider reading the novels. Some of these might use a writing style that you can manage, perhaps? In addition to the Eisenhorn Omnibus, that puts these novels on your reading list: Warriors of Ultramar by Graham McNeill and Atlas Infernal by Rob Sanders. Some of the other bits are already on your reading list (one of these inquisitors make an appearance in the Ciaphas Cain novels). Also, regarding Tau, one of The Last Chancers novels (which I already mentioned) is quite useful.

Selrahc · 11-13-2012, 12:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Glyphstone

Kryptman? He's got no confirmed death-date, and considering he's already Exocommunicate Traitorus, he wouldn't have a whole lot to lose by dealing with the Culture

When did Kryptman get made Traitoris?

The Glyphstone · 11-13-2012, 12:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Selrahc

When did Kryptman get made Traitoris?

After the Kryptman Gambit - you know, where he started mass virus-bombing every inhabited planet (without evacuating them) in the path of Leviathan to starve the Tyranid war machine? He later managed to divert the hive fleet into fighting the Orks, but apparently his Traitoris status never got revoked.

jseah · 11-13-2012, 01:34 PM

part 7.5 IoM contact

Spoiler

Right, I am starting to think that doing anything with the IoM is likely to just break it.

What happens if the Culture just takes the hit and doesn't retaliate? As in, it just breaks any fleet that tries to gather to attack it (they intercept the orders and the ships never even make it to warp), but otherwise leaves the IoM alone?

Forum Explorer · 11-13-2012, 01:39 PM

The IoM is actually very used to taking heavy losses. To the point where the Culture would be surprised. I mean they literally lost almost an entire chapter of Space Marines in order to stop the Necron's World Engine and that didn't even phase them.

So if the IoM got one of their fleets smacked down by the Culture? Nothing significant would happen to the stability of the IoM. They'd just be down ships.

Gavinfoxx · 11-13-2012, 01:39 PM

It's notable that the IoM takes staggering strategic scale losses all the time, without really changing.

Systems, sectors, huge losses of ships and planets and star systems, etc. etc. etc.

It happens with absurd regularity, and at extreme scale.

Some Culture people would notice this in their history, and put into question the assumption that they would stop just because they took some major losses. Their sheer resilience to this scale of losses, given their governmental structure, would be unheard of in The Culture's history.

As far as that strategy... I don't really know how the IoM would respond. Ever-increasing secrecy and more convoluted and fallible ways of gathering fleets to attack The Culture, I would presume. The sorts of things that end up with ships trying to get to a place at the same time, while not being a part of the same fleet... which the IoM is really bad at.

And yea. Just having ships damaged --not even destroyed-- is not really that big a deal. They take pretty staggering losses all the time.

I'd expect them to continue trying to do the same ineffective thing for quite some time, with minor variations.

Tiki Snakes · 11-13-2012, 01:43 PM

I'm not sure that doing ANYTHING will break it, just that most of the arrogant type of plans and goals the Culture have in mind are very likely to.

Simple comparison; Even the radicals who want to reform the imperium intend to do so slowly.

The culture could potentially fix the Imperium without ever going near it. A central point of the setting is that the Imperium does horrible things because they are necessary at least in part. Remove the Tyranids from the picture and that'll take a good bit of pressure off. If they can make a similar impact on the other problems facing the imperium, (reigning in the Necron/Eldar thing to be less of a direct threat to humanity somehow), maybe providing some secret assistance against the forces of chaos, then that gives the Imperium room to breathe.

If they can change the situation so that the Imperium ISN'T beset on all sides by forces that want nothing more than it's utter destruction (with the main difference being how soon they want it), then you'll have a much better point to start working from.

Edit: Yeah, the above posts have it about right. More likely, if the particular inquisitor responsible for this feud with the culture keeps losing entire fleets, chances are he'll meet with a regretable accident when enough of his enemies within the Inquisition itself have had enough.

Gavinfoxx · 11-13-2012, 01:45 PM

Agreed with Tiki. As a salient example, most of the fascist style darkness is because of fear of Chaos, for the most part.

Also, I like the unfortunate accident idea... ;)

I would, however, posit that not all the people who want to reform the Imperium want to do it slowly.

Hell, a radical enough Inquisitor in the Recongreagator faction might just say, '**** it, I'll never get anything done within the Imperium. This is my only chance to even possibly get humanity at the top of the heap!' and totally go Traitoris and throw in with the Culture, and try to work them from within such that they put humanity at the top of the pile. This would only happen once/if he realizes how powerful they are, though.

Selrahc · 11-13-2012, 01:56 PM

Remember that the Ordo Xenos has contact with the Eldar. Some Inquisitors have even been inside the Black Library. Anything the Eldar know, the Inquisition could *potentially* find out. If you can think of a plan that would require the IoM to have some knowledge of the Culture to conceive of... well that is a possible vector.

Quote:

What happens if the Culture just takes the hit and doesn't retaliate? As in, it just breaks any fleet that tries to gather to attack it (they intercept the orders and the ships never even make it to warp), but otherwise leaves the IoM alone?

Why even bother? If you're driving along in a car and a dog starts barking aggressively at you, you wouldn't get out and murder the dog. It's just a dumb animal and it can't possibly hurt you.

jseah · 11-13-2012, 02:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gavinfoxx

Some Culture people would notice this in their history, and put into question the assumption that they would stop just because they took some major losses.

That is fair enough, but it also doesn't square with the stated difficulty of replacing ships and troops. The Ultramarines were noted down as not being able to be brought back to full strength for over a century. And there aren't THAT many space marines in a chapter anyway.
A Lunar was cited as taking years to build. One bloody cruiser.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tiki Snakes

If they can change the situation so that the Imperium ISN'T beset on all sides by forces that want nothing more than it's utter destruction (with the main difference being how soon they want it), then you'll have a much better point to start working from.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gavinfoxx

Agreed with Tiki. As a salient example, most of the fascist style darkness is because of fear of Chaos, for the most part.

So let's see,
The tyranids are soon to be a non-problem. They might nom a few planets, but the Culture just wipes them out wherever they run across a fleet.
The orks are going to remain a pest, but also a non-problem.
The Eldar and the Necrons, the Culture does not control. They treat them as similar to other Involved civilizations. If they attack the IoM or each other, the Culture will not interfere.
The Tau about to become a major problem. At least after a few years.

The Culture want the IoM to be less oppressive and less xenophobic, as well as less AI-phobia, and less theocractic and more technocratic.
Which is about as likely as... as well, the basin of water in my kitchen suddenly freezing over. At least, as long as the Warp exists.
And they want to do this by:
1) not making Chaos a more major problem than it already is
2) preferably not involving a bloody revolution/collapse

That is the thing they are going to try, and my feeling is that it will end badly. You can't give them any tech without first solving the Chaos problem, and implementing the solution for the IoM. And 'solving' Chaos would require them to shut off the warp.
Which would result in a bloody collapse. The solution to that being giving the IoM tech, which you can't do until you 'solve' Chaos or you will make 'solving' Chaos a whole lot harder than it already is (which is nearly impossible)

It's an impossible situation. And if the Culture had to choose between 'solving' Chaos and the bloody collapse, they'll choose the collapse.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Selrahc

Why even bother? If you're driving along in a car and a dog starts barking aggressively at you, you wouldn't get out and murder the dog. It's just a dumb animal and it can't possibly hurt you.

They might be able to. The IoM uses Warp technology and psykers, which is still an unknown.

In the analogy, it's not a dog that is barking at you, it's a magic mist that might bite your arm off or not even scratch your hairs.

EDIT: the thing here is that they either break up the fleets or just avoid them altogether.
And they can't really do the second since they can't track fleets in Warp.

Gavinfoxx · 11-13-2012, 02:12 PM

I think now is about the time when a Tzeentchian Sorceror (probably csm, no less) contacts The Culture directly, in an attempt to parley... and he has a bunch of future sight info on his side.

Don't you agree?

Gavinfoxx · 11-13-2012, 02:16 PM

Yes it takes years to make a ship... but the Imperium is constantly making more, all over, all the time, even before a given ship needs to be replaced...

look more at the navy and guard, less at the astartes.

Tiki Snakes · 11-13-2012, 02:24 PM

Well, the IoM is oppressive because chaos can burst through into the middle of the civilisation at any moment.
They are Xenophobic because they have yet to encounter a significant alien race that wouldn't cheerfully destroy them to save inconveniencing their own people or worldview. (The Tau aren't a million miles away from this, but for two things. They are new kids on the block, no chance to have a major psychological impact yet, and they mostly use the softly softly approach because they'd get stomped otherwise, it's hard to say how genuine it is.)

The problem with building a space marine chapter back up is that it is limited by the number of space marines you start with. They need Progenoid glands, harvested from existing space marines, to create new ones. Most likely, this was the major time constraint in the Ultramarines situation.

If they Culture can restrain themselves from directly causing the IoM to be crippled and destroyed, it could all work out still. The Tau are going to be a difficulty, if handled fairly. They are able to be idealistic and so on at least partly because they are so very small and have so very few direct threats. The big boys largely ignore them and they haven't really attracted chaos's attention yet. As their Empire comes to include more humans and other warp sensitives, they will and without the Imperium's Iron Fist, they will quite likely go through something just as destablising as the Heresy was. Any other take on the situation is, frankly, hard to credit as anything other than unreasonably positive.

With the culture in the picture and feeding them Tech, this just means that Chaos will get Culture-tech via another route than the expected one, or the Culture will have to insist on them removing the Humans from all the worlds they annex somehow. Or making them adopt large swathes of the Imperium's oppressive habits.

The AI phobic thing is another point where the Culture really should learn to be less judgemental. Look at what they plan, what they would allow, and what they may very well do to the Imperium and all of the people in it. They really aren't that fundamentally removed from the AI who decided that whiping out their former masters was a good idea, and they really should be able to empathise with a society that has rules against creating beings capable of and likely to attempt to genocide their own race. If they want to change the IoM attitude to AI they need to do it by example.

If the Culture did want to leak tech to a part of the imperium in order to help them against Chaos, there could be ways of doing it relatively safely. It would just mean somehow finding the right faction. If they could find an open minded enough loyal Space Marine chapter, they could reasonably expect that they would keep the tech out of chaos hands and that it would be used to fight the enemy. If they pick the right chapter, they might even be able to guarantee it would be used exclusively against chaos, as the chapters often have prefered foes.

Edit : If you leaked certain tech to say, the chapters that permenantly guard the eye of terror, who have held against chaos for tens of thousands of years, then you might get some interesting and relatively safe differences over time. Conversely, if you give the right advantages to the right chapter/s, you could be looking at an unstoppable crusade right into the heart of the eye of terror that could actually make a legitimate difference.

Gavinfoxx · 11-13-2012, 02:25 PM

Also, how will that calming the warp (via necron style pylons, increase in tau style dull souls, and inquisition style warp suppressors) affect the still extant eldar gods in the warp?

Also... The Culture needs to build an astartes chapter. I mean through infiltrating the normal founding process, and secretly putting their own bits in, undetected... If they want a proxy, they should make one!

Fan · 11-13-2012, 02:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gavinfoxx

Also, how will that calming the warp (via necron style pylons, increase in tau style dull souls, and inquisition style warp suppressors) affect the still extant eldar gods in the warp?

Also... The Culture needs to build an astartes chapter. I mean through infiltrating the normal founding process, and secretly putting their own bits in, undetected... If they want a proxy, they should make one!

Just as a note, supressing the warp also supresses emotion.

The more you "Remove" the warp's presence, the less present those emotions will be, these emotions also include the will to live.

Shutting down the warp is an actual impossibility without murdering all sentient life in the universe.

Also it takes MONTHS to a year to make a ship, and that's for cruisers, not for frigates which can be produced much quicker.

Though with Mr.RT I'd imagine that SOMEHOW it'd seem like a good idea to him to start mass producing things that are a little less.. benign.

Selrahc · 11-13-2012, 02:37 PM

Quote:

EDIT: the thing here is that they either break up the fleets or just avoid them altogether.
And they can't really do the second since they can't track fleets in Warp.

They don't have stationary assets.. what is keeping them from just scooting away in hyperspace? If the IoM fleet even finds them, which they would have a bloody hard time doing. What with the Culture fleets being basically invisible, and IoM future sight being incredibly vague and non-specific.

I mean, what. A Culture vessel is sighted above an important IoM planet! Danger, scramble the jets. 2 weeks of bureaucracy later, the rapid response fleet of 10 vessels from the local area show up. And the Culture vessel that caused the furore slips off into the void, leaving narry a trace. Or sticks around and just doesn't engage them in combat, because from the Culture's perspective these are pathetically short ranged, impossibly slow hunks of flimsy metal that pose no tactical threat.

Intercepting and disabling every single ship which receives orders to attack the Culture just seems like a hell of a lot of work to go to, for not much operational gain.

Gavinfoxx · 11-13-2012, 02:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fan

Just as a note, supressing the warp also supresses emotion.

The more you "Remove" the warp's presence, the less present those emotions will be, these emotions also include the will to live.

Shutting down the warp is an actual impossibility without murdering all sentient life in the universe.

Are you sure? The warp used to be dramatically different in how it functioned than it currently is... why not just make it act like it used to?

God Imperror · 11-13-2012, 02:46 PM

Personally if I were to contact a space marine chapter and give it tech to play around I would go for the Mentors (wiki) for they are the most likely to give it some proper use, also they are probably the ones able to teach others to use it. They are also known to mistrust the imperium, even if being loyalist themselves.

On the Chaos problem I would be very careful with the Alpha legion not only with Tzeench. Seriously Alpharius and Omegon are probably one of the bigger threats for the Culture as they are masters of non conventional battle, and they Alpha Legion is probably somewhere out there plotting.

jseah · 11-13-2012, 02:49 PM

Selrahc: that might apply for a standard random 10 cruisers in a system. If the IoM digs up something like the Blackstone Fortress (which they will), it's hard to tell what the Culture might do to it when they are unable to predict if they can even avoid getting hit by it.

I mean, they did just get burned by the Necrons. And Chaos.

Fan:
Emotions are a solvable problem. The Culture has intelligence engineering purely grounded in realspace tech, they can just as easily rewire emotions. I understand why Banks doesn't have people who don't think like humans do in his stories, but it is obvious that the Culture should have some of those... they can make up whole new emotions if they really wanted to.

Remember that to the Culture, 'soul' doesn't exist and 'identity' is a solved problem. Something as trivial as an inbuilt mental shortcut (which is roughly what emotions means to the Culture) is far too easy to emulate.

Tiki:
Space marines have gone over to Chaos though. But perhaps...

Is there a space marine chapter that does NOT use psykers apart from the Warp drive?

What I'm thinking is that they might still drop weapons technology and optimizations to the Marines' STL drives and hope that's a big enough edge. The trick is in preserving that edge.

Tiki Snakes · 11-13-2012, 02:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gavinfoxx

Are you sure? The warp used to be dramatically different in how it functioned than it currently is... why not just make it act like it used to?

This is the difference between calming the warp by kicking chaos's ass and calming the warp via the retcron pylons. One removes the source of the turbulance, one removes the connection to the warp itself. The latter is a seriously bad thing.

Edit - it may not have a direct analogue in the Cultureverse, but for the crossover it really needs to be a respected point. Cutting off the warp could and should be a doomsday scenario for the entire galaxy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gavinfoxx

Also... The Culture needs to build an astartes chapter. I mean through infiltrating the normal founding process, and secretly putting their own bits in, undetected... If they want a proxy, they should make one!

This is actually a pretty valid possibility.

Also, Chapters vary immensely. It is conceivable for them to lack any particular consituent that others possess, or even have their own unique things and/or structure.
A chapter lacking Psykers wouldn't be hard to find. A chapter with no tech marines would also be possible. If they were secretly having their own founded, they could lack both and no-one would have any reason to really question it (though they'd have a pretty bad working relationship with Mars and their faction/s, this isn't a major problem as such).

Gavinfoxx · 11-13-2012, 03:01 PM

Black Templars. Maybe their successor chapters, Red Templars and White Templars, but White is supposedly codex astartes compliant, so they might have Librarians.

Not having psykers doesn't make you more chaos resistant in general. If you want chaos resistant, use Sororitas. Or Grey Knights, of course.

jseah · 11-13-2012, 03:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tiki Snakes

Edit - it may not have a direct analogue in the Cultureverse, but for the crossover it really needs to be a respected point. Cutting off the warp could and should be a doomsday scenario for the entire galaxy.

Which doesn't square with the stipulation that both sides' tech work as presented. Because, at a certain fundamental level, you can't have the same explanation do both.

Culture intelligence engineering makes no sense in a universe where souls are literal things. And vice versa.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gavinfoxx

Not having psykers doesn't make you more chaos resistant in general. If you want chaos resistant, use Sororitas.

My hilarity hairs are vibrating. I'll think about that. =D

Fan · 11-13-2012, 03:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gavinfoxx

Are you sure? The warp used to be dramatically different in how it functioned than it currently is... why not just make it act like it used to?

Yes, I'm sure. Each of the Chaos Gods embodies, and empowers, a series of emotions.

Slannesh, while he also embodies lust, hedonism, and various other debauchery, embodies True Love, benign pleasure, and compassion.

Tzeentch, while he embodies schemes, lies, and entropy. Also embodies change, forward thinking, planning, and ambition.

Khrone, while he embodies anger, hatred, and war also embodies Honor, righteous fury, and nobility.

Nurgle, while he embodies decay, death, and disease also embodies the concept of family, unity, and the will to live, and strive against adversity.

There is no way to kill the Chaos Gods without removing those emotions from every thinking being in the universe, and further than that, it's also the only way to truly close the warp, and by cutting them "off" from it, the universal warp that ALLOWS people to feel these things.. is gone. It's no longer a mental shortcut, it's no longer possible.

That's why the Old Ones fought against the C'Tan, because if they succeeded in sealing off the warp it would cause an emotional shockwave initially so vast, and powerful that in the death screams of the chaos gods they would either drive every sentient to a blood curdling all rage, or kill them from the overload.

Gavinfoxx · 11-13-2012, 03:07 PM

Sororitas also dont use psykers ever.... incidentally. Edited my prev post. Also, didn't the chaos gods empowering positive emotions get ignore-conned?

Tiki Snakes · 11-13-2012, 03:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jseah

Which doesn't square with the stipulation that both sides' tech work as presented. Because, at a certain fundamental level, you can't have the same explanation do both.

Culture intelligence engineering makes no sense in a universe where souls are literal things. And vice versa.

My hilarity hairs are vibrating. I'll think about that. =D

Bear in mind that the Sororitas are basically tools of the Ecclisiarchy founded to get around a legal loophole.

Also, it squares easily enough to my mind. In a universe where the warp is calm, dormant, the Culture have no problems cloning, intelligence engineering, all of that, no problem. In the 40k universe, there is something...broken in that metaphysical layer and it is closer and more permenant, but it is (for the purpose of crossover) still present in both universes. The Culture just don't do anything directly with it. Directly severing a metaphysical layer of reality could and should cause significant devestation on either setting, it's just that there are factions insane enough to consider doing it anyway in 40k.

If that makes sense?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fan

Yes, I'm sure. Each of the Chaos Gods embodies, and empowers, a series of emotions.

Slannesh, while he also embodies lust, hedonism, and various other debauchery, embodies True Love, benign pleasure, and compassion.

Tzeentch, while he embodies schemes, lies, and entropy. Also embodies change, forward thinking, planning, and ambition.

Khrone, while he embodies anger, hatred, and war also embodies Honor, righteous fury, and nobility.

Nurgle, while he embodies decay, death, and disease also embodies the concept of family, unity, and the will to live, and strive against adversity.

There is no way to kill the Chaos Gods without removing those emotions from every thinking being in the universe, and further than that, it's also the only way to truly close the warp, and by cutting them "off" from it, the universal warp that ALLOWS people to feel these things.. is gone. It's no longer a mental shortcut, it's no longer possible.

That's why the Old Ones fought against the C'Tan, because if they succeeded in sealing off the warp it would cause an emotional shockwave initially so vast, and powerful that in the death screams of the chaos gods they would either drive every sentient to a blood curdling all rage, or kill them from the overload.

There are two points on this. Firstly it has been ignore-conned.

Secondly, that's okay, because the plan to sever the warp to solve this problem was also ignore-conned at about the same time, far as I understand, so that kind of makes each point equal.

Fan · 11-13-2012, 03:16 PM

They still embody the emotions, I don't see that having been changed at all.

Also what does ignore conned even mean? Because it hasn't been reprinted in awhile it's no longer valid?

deuterio12 · 11-13-2012, 03:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tiki Snakes

Edit : If you leaked certain tech to say, the chapters that permenantly guard the eye of terror, who have held against chaos for tens of thousands of years, then you might get some interesting and relatively safe differences over time.

Horus Heresy-around year 30K.

Current timeline-around year 41K.

So no, no chapter has held against chaos for multiple tens of thousands of years, because no chapter is multiple tens of thousands of years old. And people say I'm the one making up numbers.

Plus the imperail force tasked with permanently watching over the gate is 100% IG (Cadia). Even the IoM isn't so incompetent to put on guard duty of the Eye of Terror the dudes that have a well known 50% betrayal rate when exposed to chaos. Chapters are only called for mop up duty once the cadians have blunted the last chaos incursion.

Gavinfoxx · 11-13-2012, 03:23 PM

Ignore Conned is our term for the GW practice of 'quietly pretending that a particular plot point or setting detail doesn't and never existed when new materials are presented.'

Rather than retcon, where they say 'that never happened' or 'that was an eldar or tzeentchian misinformation plot.'

Also, where in the most recent games, codices, books, or whatever.has there been any reference whatsoever to Chaos Gods having anything to do with positive emotions??

And yes Fan that is exactly what we are.saying, because that is how GW changes the setting.

Fan · 11-13-2012, 03:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gavinfoxx

Ignore Conned is our term for the GW practice of 'quietly pretending that a particular plot point or setting detail doesn't and never existed when new materials are presented.'

Rather than retcon, where they say 'that never happened' or 'that was an eldar or tzeentchian misinformation plot.'

Also, where in the most recent games, codices, books, or whatever.has there been any reference whatsoever to Chaos Gods having anything to do with positive emotions??

And yes Fan that is exactly what we are.saying, because that is how GW changes the setting.

Yes, in the most recent Codex: Chaos Demons.

This is all fairly recent.

Gavinfoxx · 11-13-2012, 03:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fan

Yes, in the most recent Codex: Chaos Demons.

This is all fairly recent.

That's 4th edition. Chaos has a 6th edition sourcebook out... that goes into detail about the gods and the daemons...