User:Not LongPoster Again/Scratchpad

Knights Inductor Mk. II

Key ideas for revision:

• Focus on tactics, not toys (goodness knows Games Workshop and Forge World are giving the Marines enough toys these days).
• Stick to An Investigation into the Heresy of the Reasonable Marines -- not that everyone is happy with these (with good reason), but stretching further is extra risky (save that stuff for AUs, like The Eldar Gambit perhaps?):
  • Oversized chapter through oversized squads (~3000, squads of 20-30 works out about right).
  • Close ties to an Adepta Sororitas convent (~2000, from the Order of the Sacred Rose).
  • Long period of isolation to build up their home sector (and substantially involving themselves in running large parts of it), resulting in a powerful manufacturing base (enough to give Land Raiders to IG units) and a robust education program (which leads to a hefty pipeline of well-trained military and civil defense units and lots of potential Aspirants).
  • The specifics on these can be massaged -- after all, Inquisitor Immam may have been exaggerating in her report or basing it off of faulty data (for example, were the Knights really isolated for 1300 years, or were records of intermediate contacts lost?), and even if those numbers are exactly true as of 572.M41, they might rise or fall afterwards.
• Why did the Imperium bother founding a chapter of Reasonable Marines? Or, if they didn't intend for the Knights to be Reasonable Marines, surely someone noticed that they were doing things differently and decided not to purge them. Some ideas:
  • The Imperium was going through the Nova Terra Interregnum at the time of their founding (M35). Burning every rebel world would leave the Imperium gutted, and taking them by force was going to be too expensive. There had to be another solution -- a force that could make use of diplomacy where it was appropriate while having the physical and psychological might to smash enemies that needed smashing -- a carrot-and-stick all-in-one package. Since this was a new thing and made the High Lords uncomfortable, they appointed some Inquisitors to keep an eye on things. Paradoxically, this might have given the Knights more room to experiment, as the other Imperial institutions figured that their handlers would blow the whistle if things got out of hand (not quite sure on this last point).
  • On the other hand, if they weren't meant to be in the planetary reconstruction business from the beginning, when and how did the Knights get started on it and how did they (for lack of a better phrase) get away with it? What, if any, was the level of Inquisitorial oversight pre-isolation? Was a precedent set for building the chapter to a larger-than-usual size?
    • Maybe they were created with the goal of working more productively with IG and other Imperial forces (possibly descended from Dark Angels because the Inquisitors who set their creation in motion had a sense of humor?). Sticking around the "little guys" and bonding leads to everything else.

New revisions for feedback:

• User:Not LongPoster Again/Index Astartes Knights Inductor Mk. II

Aprior Sector Setting Notes

The Aprior Sector generally gets more conservative as you go to the edges -- those systems are more exposed to threats and Imperial traffic. Standards and norms of behavior are much more militarized, with a very dim view taken of anything that disturbs the status quo. The Knights Inductor (and all Space Marines) are held in awe, but regarded from a distance; familiarity with them is unheard-of, and Aspirants from rim systems are stereotypically easy to integrate and mold militarily, but difficult to get along with in personal matters.

Navigator corporations

Idea seeded by Not Not LongPoster. After the Knights got stuck in the Aprior Sector, their fleet's Navigators realized that they were beyond the reach of the Navis Nobilite's protection contracts. They decided to form cooperatives to ensure their protection and mutual success, and they struck a new contract with the Knights, offering exclusivity in exchange for protection and autonomy.

By M41, the "NaviCorps" are rich enough to own their own cities (and a planet or two, maybe?), and are a subtle but powerful force in the politics of the Sector. They haven't given up on thousands of years of political subterfuge and underhandedness, and they don't take kindly to nosy investigators -- even the Inquisition are forbidden from the Navigators' Quarter on Terra without invitation -- and the Knights have little choice but to put up with the NaviCorps' shenanigans, given that they are not exactly the Imperium's golden boys, and the Navigators do deliver on their promises...usually. Remember the introduction to "Guy Noir" segments of A Prairie Home Companion: "A dark night, in a city that knows how to keep its secrets..."

The NaviCorps' main advantage is in genetics research -- they've figured out how to keep mutations under control through pre-natal genetic engineering. Naturally, things go wrong now and then...

Name ideas: TriOculum (name based on Tri-Optimum from System Shock, and "Three Eye"), Third Eye Genetics (per NNLP), more to come...

Shenanigans: augmenting navigators with machine spirits (leads to totally-not-System-Shock), investigating Tyranid synapse creatures (performed by totally-not-Weyland-Yutani, leading to totally-not-Alien), more to come...

The Adeptus Mechanicus 

Forge Worlds really aren't in style for the Apriori; they are dependent on other worlds for food and men, and they can easily become a single-point-of-failure. Instead, they have Workshops, at least one in every System, and often more -- multiple workshops on a planet, even. They tend to specialize in a particular field, though the major customers -- the members of ASEC, basically -- keep a few general-purpose manufactora ticking over, just in case someplace gets lost.

Some Workshops have a rather corporate feel (think "defense contractor"), or, if the Sector is feudalized (which it might be, on certain scales -- consider later), they may align themselves with some of the Houses. Result: more opportunities for conflict, as they compete for contracts. One workshop might produce a product that is superior to the old STC pattern, but research and development are costly. Also, landing a big contract can mean tremendous profits and an economic powerhouse to the region, so there's a lot of pressure to get costs down; this can lead to skimping on safety margins, quality assurance, and environmental and workplace regulations. Sure, that plant's emissions will cut ten years of the life of everyone living downwind, but at least it's putting them to work...

Some example workshops:

• Fortis Industrial Armory makes personal armor and weapons, and is one of the competitors for the Trooper armor contract.
• Apodidax Aeronautics makes aircraft and aircraft components.

Thoughts for the Day

• Security begins with vigilance. (I would have gone with "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance", but "freedom" isn't a word that really applies to the Imperium, even in the Aprior Sector.)
• The greatest enemies are Ignorance and Panic. (Based on FDR's "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" and Dickens' "ignorance and want" passage from A Christmas Carol.)
• The appropriate response to criticism is refutation, by word or deed. (Not violence. An idea that can't take a little criticism isn't worth holding.)
• Intolerance is the last defense of the insecure. (As seen on Slashdot.)
• Keep Calm and Carry On.
• He who would break a thing to understand it has left the path of reason. (From the MIT Hackers' Code.)
• Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end. (Immanuel Kant)

The Character of the Knights Inductor

The Knights Inductor are called Reasonable Marines for a good reason, but there's always a spectrum. Consider the following hypothetical situation: a non-hostile non-Imperial settlement (Exodite Eldar, for example) is under threat by some outside-context threat, like Tyranids.

• The most zealous Imperial forces might attempt to destroy them both -- their task is to destroy the enemies of the Imperium, and "hate the xenos" applies equally to all. A particularly "smart" Inquisitor may let the Tyranid land on the planet and then pronounce Exterminatus to take care of both.
• Most Space Marines and some Knights Inductor would ignore the village -- their task is to protect the Imperium, so why should they take on the risk of protecting a non-Imperial asset?
• Other Knights would attempt to protect the settlement -- the only way to end the cycle of violence is to prove trustworthiness by showing trust.

Non-Powered-Armor fighting 

As they grew their numbers, the Knights often found themselves with more Marines than suits of Power Armor. This was not usually a problem, as they were seldom all deployed simultaneously, but there were many occasions where a force had to deploy with reduced armor support. Possibly represented in rules with "not-Scouts" with WS4/BS4? (They will probably be employing the more easily produced and maintained Trooper armor in that case. In the codex Scouts can be armored with these, so they could be upgraded to have WS4/BS4 for +2/+3 points perhaps. "Upgrade to full Marines." They don't HAVE to use Trooper armor though, they can be upgraded without it) Remoon101 22:38, 28 April 2012 (BST)

Possible rule representing this kind of "growing pain" and incentive to use non-power-armored Marines: detachments (Primary or Allied) that are not led by a Captain or Chapter Master (i.e. led by a Librarian, Chaplain, Master of the Forge, or Lieutenant [one to four of these per Company, basically Captains-in-training, generally tapped to lead detachments on away missions; possibly represented in rules as a cheaper, less-upgradeable Captain, or maybe as an upgrade available to 1 Sergeant per army?]) are limited to a maximum of something like 24 suits of powered armor (possibly only counting Tactical, Assault, and Devastator squads, or maybe all Marines in the Detachment; in any case, Relic or Artificer Armor probably shouldn't count against the total) and 6 Terminator suits -- this represents the limited amount of suits of armor available to a detachment smaller than a full Company.

If I might add an alternative viewpoint...

What the Knights Inductor have set up isn't a rational system so much as it is a rationality cargo cult. While this seemingly provides them with certain cognitive tools that would permit them to avoid the obvious failure modes plaguing the rest of the Imperium, much like the Imperium they lack a theoretical understanding of how the tools they employ on a regular basis actually work. In the long run, this is their greatest weakness- the belief that their way is the only way to understand the universe and keep the myriad threats to Mankind at bay, and their refusal to consider the possibility that they too could be wrong.

Enter Reasonable Daemonette. Her role is to be "reasonable" long enough for everyone to get comfortable with the idea that Chaos might not be completely bad, and then begin peddling corruption disguised as rationality. She starts with sharing small half-truths about matters that are recognizably ambiguous and can't be disproved in any way, then plays on the Knights Inductor's pride in having avoided the dogmatism of the rest of the Imperium, lets them convince themselves that contrarianism is the same thing as free-thinking, and eventually dupes them into attacking the Imperium on the premise that only the Knights Inductor know how to rule the Imperium properly and must save it from the ignorance and corruption that the High Lords have allowed to spread unchecked. And since the Emperor has done nothing to stop it, he too must be responsible for the Imperium's sorry state and must be disposed of for his own good- which is exactly what Chaos wants them to do.

Of course the Imperium thinks that all traffic with Warp powers is disastrous! They're so caught up in their cultishness and blind fanaticism that it never even occurred to them to explore the fringe possibilities! Why, the Knights Inductor know better, as they always do. They've already found Reasonable Daemonette! If they search carefully, surely they'll be able to find more exceptions! (Needless to say, by that point they will have become Chaos Space Marines and won't realize it until it's too late, if at all.)

--Newerfag (talk) 08:52, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

I promise, I'll answer you, but it will be a few days yet (busy wih travel). Sorry for the delay and thanks. --Not LongPoster Again (talk) 12:34, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

(Sorry for taking so long to get back to you.)

This is a pretty cool idea, worthy of Tzeentch (or at least a Lord of Change). In the Timeline and on various talk pages and threads I've mentioned the idea of a company or two falling (for much the same reasons as you articulate -- basically overestimating the control it's possible to achieve over a Chaos thing, trying to use it, failing, and then getting caught up in a loop of trying to redeem their previous failure because "it will work this time for sure!"), but the whole chapter falling is nifty too.

The problem I have with your suggestion is that the "cargo cult" mentality is exactly what I'm trying to get away from. I also don't enjoy stories where the bad guy wins in the end, to be honest. I guess you could spin this story into a "victory" for the good guys by saying "And then the Inquisition burned them all from orbit, saving the Imperium from further harm, The End," but that still leaves a bitter aftertaste.

That's grimdark for you. You just gotta get used to it.--Newerfag (talk) 04:47, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

As I think about it, I suppose it could also be envisioned as survival horror -- the main character is the one guy (or one of a few brothers or serfs) who sees that everything is going horribly wrong and is terribly conflicted about how to deal with it ("Leandros was right" from the other side), and when everything hits the fan, his concerns shift from "what do I do to keep my Chapter from slipping up terribly without provoking the Inquisition to destroy everything" to "how do I get out of the Fortress-Monastery without getting eaten by daemons?" More nifty ideas. --Not LongPoster Again (talk) 03:21, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Now this would work very well. Perhaps the lone survivor could realize that being a crazed fanatic really is the only "reasonable" thing to do in a galaxy where reason gets you killed or worse and sign up with the Deathwatch as a Black Shield in the hopes of proving his faith when the rest of his Chapter failed to do so.--Newerfag (talk) 04:47, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

"Weekend thread" story ideas

Emprah damn it, I just know I'm never going to get anything else written until I've exorcised some of these ideas.

• Newerfag here again. As always, I've inserted my commentary here for your convenience. Make of it what you will.

"Path of the Daemon" 

An Eldar Craftworld (maybe not a whole one -- a colony or expeditionary division perhaps) decides to approach the Slaanesh issue the same way they deal with their other emotional issues: section it off into a Path with a separate personality. Story follows an Eldar being introduced to the path by an Exarch, featuring daemonette transformation. Later chapters explore how Eldar following that Path interact with others (e.g. their families -- I'll have to read BL's Eldar stuff before I take a crack at that).

• Put simply, no sane Eldar would even think of joining such a "path"- they value their souls over all else and would never allow Slaanesh even the tiniest foothold into them. If their families knew what such Chaos Eldar (since that's basically what they are) were doing, they'd cut all ties with them at the absolute minimum and probably try to kill them with the help of any Craftworld forces before they could spread their corruption any further. Perhaps more of a body-horror TF fic would work better for this scenario- for example, a new Warp Spider making a warp jump gone horribly wrong that lands him/her into a Chaos Cult's headquarters and gets a heaping helping of erotic torture. In the end he/she gets the chance to agonize about how they're turning into what they hate most right before finally succumbing to the power of She Who Thirsts. --Newerfag (talk) 04:47, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Noblebright Monstergirl Encyclopedia stuff 

Inspired by [1], something(s?) about True Love and "humanity" (not literal Homo sapiens, but the figurative sense, like caring) overcoming corruption, or at least making it a little better.

• ELH is our resident monstergirl expert, so you'll have to take it up with him. I don't know enough about the MGE to really say anything on the matter. --Newerfag (talk) 04:47, 31 January 2014 (UTC)