#no gellar field tech

[soraka-in-warhammer40k]

Have you ever thoought giving your space bath tub a red paint job, so that it goes faster?

IT'S NOT A BATH TUB HOW DARE YOU!

The drones and I spend a lot of work on this Orca Dropship, don't call it something that demeaning!

To answer your question: no, I wouldn't want to be mistaken for a Noxian - not a good thing when you try to pass by problems diplomatically. Also, speed is not exactly an issue when your main method of acceleration is headbutting demons out of the way...

[quietbluejay]

Plague Wars 1

I think Haley got bitten a bit too hard by worldbuilder's disease haha (note from future bluejay: past bluejay provided zero context about what this was referring to)

ku'gath: don't talk to me or my son again this is incredibly cute AND THEN HE EATS THE NURGLING RIP

So, Mortarion can belt out covers of The National, got it

im vibing im thriving

my love for the nurglites and how they feel like they should be starring in a 1980s weird children's animated movie cannot be adequately described either that or live action but handled by jim henson ku'gath is basically eeyore but covered in pus

this is not a drill we have speaking parts for women!

also i think i've mentioned it before possibly, but the Nurglites also continue to give "twisted reflection of Christianity" so it's fun paralleling them against the imperials "i will give you eternal life"

Like look at this, the phrasing here

oh, Nurglites also like infecting tech you know what i bet Apple is run by Nurglites especially whoever handles the app store connect website

Plague Marines: Nice one, boss oh yikes okay we're getting into some of my personal nightmare fuel

Back to the Imperium and we have female character POV this is not a drill! She's fun

also lmao Yassili: ITS FUNNY YOU BRING UP LORGAR BECAUSE she brought Guilliman the oldest extant version of Lorgar's writings

in the grim darkness of the future, there is corporal based punishment in schools when the teacher loses her temper

This is his dad, btw, not the teacher "in the short minutes when they were both home and not asleep"

and of course the moment they relax things a bit, people have enough energy to rebel and chaos is ready and willing to lend a hand if the space marines acting as police don't kill everyone

ok you know what as these things go, using his old teacher (who he had a crush on)'s skull as his computer is far from the worst thing that could have happened.

anyways turns out he's dreaming his memories! and then he gets a visit from the Emperor or some gold spirit innnteresting oh boy! time for more space marines: this one has ptsd version mathieu: hello how are you sicarius: having a full blown flashback about the time all my brothers died and i couldn't save them, can i help you?

there's some good lines in here

i…can't believe it mathieu: excuse me do you have a minute to talk about our lord and saviour the emperor i mean there's no way for him to know what's up with sicarius or how being like "hey there's good stuff in the warp too" to the guy whose comrades all died from the gellar fields being breached is staggeringly insensitive oh, he does know

you'd think a guy who has worked with the poor and downtrodden his entire career, not to mention being a slave on a Khornate ship for a bit and acting as a secret priest there, would be a lot better at this kind of thing. Maybe he's just high on emperor juice from his dream?

augh!!!! McNeill flashbacks!!!! thankfully, the prose did NOT rhapsodize about his muscles anyways Justinian who is back decides it's a suns out guns out day and goes shirtless

i don't know where this plot is going tbh and i'm worried

[alpine-hoplite]

In fairness I actually kind of like the Tau, being a pure-tech, pure-gun army in a setting that generally cannot stop itself from space magic and swords, and the general aesthetic of their gear is pretty cool (plus BattleArmor is always cool) but I really wish they'd been, like, a splinter of humanity left over/lost in the warp/etc from the Dark Age of Technology or something. Communist blue cowmen with a caste system are just really unappealing to me. My other beefs with them mostly boil down to writing rather than their core concept, and we both know that criticizing GW's writing is sort of like auditioning for a movie role and being surprised you have to fuck the producer.

The Taus' biggest issue is in fact their writing. Originally they were meant to literally be the only inherently good faction but that was recieved very poorly so GW writing being the masters of retcons went "oh actually the ethereals use mind control!" Which is dumb because I hate them regardless.

Much in vain I stand against the comment that they're commies. Ironically the craft world eldar are closer to socialist than the tau are. Now it's just a meme new players use because old players said it.

All of that being said, I actually don't mind the light in darkness shtick, because it's still grimdark. You have the smallest faction who lack the means send expeditionary forces enmass due to not having Gellar fields and they're desperately trying to make things right.

And yeah, the guns, mechs and tech are the biggest gravitational aspect for me.

[tentacledtherapist]

I HAD THE EXACT SAME REACTION! I went to the movie with my alien-teddy-bear Ripley (after Ripley's believe it or not and Ripley from Aliens) and there was next to no one there because it was after work, nearly midnight, in the middle of the week. I had to SCREAM into my bear because I could not hold in my shock-and-glee from that moment. I had been smothering my laughter the whole movie but I could not contain my reaction AT ALL. Completely out of left field. I saw it in cinemas twice now, I had to bring my friends and the range of expressions on that group? Priceless. Worth the ticket.

I'm very familiar with the quote you're trying to reference. It's one of my favorites because it is just so true, regardless of the source! Perhaps the movie is a good example of just such a thing. I will admit I looked like no spring chicken fresh out if the grave.

I also love learning, I think, in the same way, especially when its source is someone who wants to tell you about said thing with their whole heart and being. Video essayists are an easy favorite, especially those who are very good at writing about what they want to say. Not just structuring it like a story like some might, but having key information revealed at the right time so you also get equally excited to learn about said thing. They properly set up the context for you, engage you, then get to the peak of the video and you lose your mind about that LAST perfect piece of information that makes the whole video more interesting.

There are a few video essayists I could recommend, as well as some crafting people who use their videos to sort of educate or craft along with viewers that I could really recommend but I would only do so if it isn't too obnoxious.

I'm curious about your work, are you still at the library? Obviously, do not divulge personal information at my account I don't need to know you work at a Hyperspecific Target in Iowa or anything like that. Internet safety and such.

Oh and I completely agree with you about how creating things that have been taught to you by others can be so amazing. Even if not family, having an old book or someone you met online teach you something can be like connecting across time and space to make a little thing you hold in your hands.

It's magical!

- Creature

i can say i don’t work at a target in iowa. or anywhere in the midwest. i’m on the west coast actually. and i don’t work at a library anymore, but i’m functionally still a librarian. i’m getting my graduate degree and i work at a tech startup/laboratory organizing stock, writing papers, and cleaning parts to pay the bills. i got my undergrad degree in physics and i like what i do! its just a lower level position and with a lot of White Man In STEM coworkers

(i do get electrocuted semi-regularly at work, actually, which is pretty funny)

please share the videos and crafters and essayists!!! i’ll share some of my favorites too!

i don’t know many “craft along with me” people, since i typically prefer written patterns and to problem solve as i go? though, i have seen some things from bernadette banner and i like what i’ve seen!

as for video essayists… aside from the Big Hitters everyone knows (HBomberguy, Linsey Ellis, Sarah Z, etc.), i like jacob gellar — who talks about video games mostly, but he made this video about head transplants and the way such a concept impacts our concept of the soul? and it was fascinating. he has a few other videos along those lines, like one about the ethics of execution, and they’re all great. ‘night mind,’ while not a proper video essayist, does a lot of break downs and in depth analysis of horror media, which is really entertaining? i’ve also got this sort of,,, niche interest in theme park engineering? so Defunctland is a fun youtube documentarian that fulfills that little niche

- Lisa

[yolmsraiders]

Brief intro to characters:

Yolm:

He is a rogue firstborn space marine, not fallen to chaos or part of the Imperium yet, won't state what chapter he used to be from, but if you saw him you would guess he's probably a blood angels successor. Decisions default to him if there is a debate. Ran away from his chapter after developing a conscience. Got offworld, hijacked a merchant craft carrying food and left the survivors on a uninhabited but livable world. Got some distance before leaving the warp in the middle of the wreckage of a defeated corsair fleet just before the gellar field failed. Carries a chainsword, but on most raids doesn't even bother with it, preferring to kill with his hand or whatever random sharp thing he can find something about not letting himself get at all distanced from the death he causes. Despite that he is rather meticulous in his plans.

Gensa (pronounced: yen-SA):

Was (and maybe still is) an Aeldari corsair, she got incredibly lucky and was inside a strike craft when the carrier was blown out of space. Her ships power broke, and she passed out about 10 minutes before Yolm found her. She woke up in air, and then saw a marine and tried to run. She soon found a small knife and tried to kill Yolm. He was slightly faster. He took the knife from her and quickly offered a deal, she helps him find a good place to hide, he'll drop her off where she wishes but on the outskirts. In the end, she chose to stay on, if he is the captain of their little band, she is the first mate/navigator since she has two millennia of experience at piracy and knows much of the webway.

Eris Harkan is a normal if skilled, human. He had tried to raid the Trondlag with some other pirates, most were wiped out, and one who surendered was tasked with executing the others, assisted by a servitor originally meant for splitting wood to burn stolen from a rather eccentric planetary governor's lieutenant's favored underling's home during a raid. Eris asked the executioner if his hair could be held off his neck after all it's so very pretty. The executioner did so, and as the splitting blade came down, and back Eris's head shot. The blade came down on his executioners elbows and Eris cut his bindings on the blade. Yolm enjoyed the quick thinking, even if it was at the cost of someone he had planned on living longer, and made him a deal, Join or fight him unarmed. Eris wisely chose the former. Often serves as a tactical advisor to Yolm and Gensa simply because he is very very good at improvising, Officially the quartermaster.

The Trondlag: Home for Yolm's crew/kingdom. Numbers fluctuate, but on average Yolm has about 600 people under his protection and command, who they are doesn't much matter, though most of the complement are human, with a few tau defectors. It looks like a piece of junk, and started out as a long abandoned asteroid mine. However, the ship has been upgraded in the mean time with tech stolen from pretty much everyone but the orks. Its two greatest defenses though are that it looks like a dime-a-dozen space rock on visuals, and they managed to steal some bit of tech that hides many of the signs that it is something more at long range.

[transmechanicus]

Imperial voidcraft are the fucking greatest because their solution to traveling through literal hell is to strap thrusters on an armored cathedral and have every crew member pray to their respective gods their ship doesn’t look tasty to the resident eldritch horrors. Pinnacle of innovation, this.

[kriegankorsair]

Gellar Faults

(Closed starter for @techpriestess )The Shadow of a Doubt was an ancient vessel, and had been thoroughly neglected for quite some time by her former owner. It was on account of this that certain sectors of the ship had their own, secondary Gellar field generators, to shore up the gaps created by the aging central generator. Such a system provided redundancies in case of field fluctuations and failures, but it also created sections of the ship where the raw empyrean Warp could seep into the real space of the vessel itself. For the most part this merely manifested in the form of nightmares, half heard whispers, and subtle, flitting movements out of the corner of the eye. Not in the case of the Bay 1A, the farthest forward in the vessel’s vast belly.  An armsman had gone missing, and then another had as well when they’d been sent to look for him. Reports indicated that he had been there one moment, as they turned the corner, and gone the next. When they found him again, he was the consistency of thick jam, and splattered against a bulkhead. The section had been promptly locked down, and all crew had been evacuated from both Bay 1B and the fire control center for the twin prow lances. Now, fully armed and armored, adorned with as many prayer seals as the shipboard cogboys and ecclesiarchs were prepared to part with, a small team, composed of the Captain, his Kroot adjutant, one of the armsmen who had first reported the disappearances, a handful of the bravest Tech Priests they could find, and a small cadre sourced from the Guard regiment currently aboard, The objective was twofold. The primary objective was the repair of the Gellar Field generator, the second being a good old fashioned bug hunt for whatever had taken their man and killed another.  In the cargo way storage area, Zig adjusted the strapping on his shotlas, and double checked the power umbilical between the weapon and the power pack he wore strapped to his waist. Glancing sidelong at one of the Tech Priests in their company, he made an attempt at some light conversation. “Nothing like a manifestation of the howling immaterium to break up the boredom of warp travel.” 

[magsnagadaunkyllyble]

Harlequinns, Ork, Air Caste, Water Caste, Earth Caste

Harlequinns - How does your muse feel about pranks and jokes? Do they prank or joke with others?

Pranks are great.  Especially when they are life threatening.  The best pranks involve sabotaging a gellar field on Imperial Ships so that when they go into the warp they get to fight daemons.

Ork - How important is winning a fight to your muse?

Orks cannot lose.  Its impossible.

Air Caste - How does your muse feel about flying? 

Only if the act of flying is at high speeds.  Sometimes the act of flying is even intentional.

Water Caste - How diplomatic is your muse?

DAh best diplomat dere eva wuz.  He always asks for far more than what he actually considers a good deal and usually ends up with even more than that as a reward.  Ork diplomacy is violent and full of posturing.  No one is better at posturing or violence than Magsnaga da Unkyllyble, especially when he has the power to back up any claim he makes.

Earth Caste - How easily does your muse take to changes in routine or in their tech? 

That is situational.  If its his tech then so long as its more dakka and doesn’t pinch in sensitive areas then its okay.  If someone blows up his ship he will simply get another ripped out of the corpses of whoever did the deed.

[rametarin]

Amusing OC boys.

So I was fiddling around with the idea for an OC chapter of space marines.

In concept, they’re all voidborn. Yep. Entire chapter of people born in void-ships and space colonies. I call’em, Void Legion.

Why? Because they’re attached to human civilizations that came about because they were 100% space-facing. When those warp storms cut off warp travel, they were kinda up shit creek without a paddle for a while, utterly reliant on technology to survive inside their ships. They had to structure their entire societies around these void ships and their continued maintenance and upkeep.

As such, by their very nature, they have to be considered heretek. To the last man. Despite the fact that the human cultures and their Astartes are 100% loyal to the Emperor and the Imperium.

They have tech priests, in a sense. However, their machine cult worship different figures. The Emperor is still considered the prime figure, but it’s as The Emperor for the human civilizations. Not the Omnissiah. Their Machine Cult revolves around worship of their own voidships. Which are, unknown to the rest, Abominable Intelligence. Not just machine spirits. The ships pretend to be simple machine spirits, while operating as oracles and spiritual advisors to the human priest caste. “Beep boop, you should really consider researching these improved Gellar fields. No, it’s okay. The machine spirits sanction it. You’re fine.” In that sense, the ships occupy some mishmash in their cosmology as either saints, or angels, depending on your view. And it’s hard to tell if their intentions are selfish, beneficent or yes. But they are undisputably arcaenotech.

The cultures of voidship dwellers are themselves distinct and separate, like any other civilizations that occupied closed islands of planets, though they consider themselves “one planet” worth’s of tribes. They carry different banners and focus on different kinds of technology.

The way the Void colonies developed, in tandem with gellar fields and voidships that had autodefenses and countermeasures, psykers were a resource to be utilized, not shunned and backed into a corner to be exterminated. As such, psykers occupy a special niche. Similar to how jocks are appreciated for their physical capabilities, mathletes are valued for their potential for academic and maintenance pursuits, and so on. They recognize the dangers of psykers and their weirdness, so one half is to socialize them with normals, and the other is to provide an indoctrination and education to utilize their talents for minimal harm, in settings of limited warp interference.

Also due to the unique way they lived, the scant few Homo Navigo families among them were encouraged to expand their families and lineage. As a result, more than a scant percentage of the Void Colonials are born with characteristics of the Navigo houses. The third eye that gives them unusual powers, and the ability to navigate through the warp for warp travel.

Due to their inherent natures that enable them to see psyker corruption and scour it without actually invoking warp powers to do it, it was only natural that psykers and navigo houses be paired together for safety in the void. Even the three-eyed spawn of the navigo houses that lack the skill or powers to navigate the warp professionally tend to have abilities that can be exploited. The availability for the three-eyed for purposes of burning daemons away with a gaze does not go unnoticed by any, particularly daemons.

Baseline humans represent the pinnacle of these void colonies society, with the mutant and the witch considered perfectly acceptable, so long as they, ‘know their place,’ and don’t try to subvert this order. Which amounts to trying to pursue a future in which regular humans do not dominate, is taboo. Their courts otherwise count and offer psykers and mutants as human, with the same rights. Provided their unique abilities follows the unique guidelines given by their authorities.

So. What about those Space Marines?

The short answer is, they don’t technically have, “Space Marines.” They have genetically modified supermen that act as subserviant meat shields. They were never part of any official founding, Terra and the Imperium doesn’t even know they exist. They’re posers.

The long answer is, they are habitual collectors of junk they find in the warp, and raiders of arcaneotech ships they void in both the warp, and the void. In the tens of thousands of years since the warpstorms and after the whole, ‘suddenly, daemons’ event, the Void Colonists have been collecting treasures lost to the ages. Sometimes they even find things that have yet to be lost in the present....

This includes arcaneotech, void ships, people, personnel, and sometimes even geneseed, and tech priests they either rescue and deposit on convenient nearby Imperial friendly worlds, or allow to stay, under the pretense that they can never leave. Many tech priests decide to stay. 

Whether it be by the Emperor’s hands, Chaos’ touch, or perhaps even a little nudge and help from the mysterious Void Ships, the Void Colonists found themselves in possession of genuine gene seed. To what chapter? Initially, Ultramarine and Imperial Fist. But after the first floodgates burst and they could make their own chapters of superdudes, they started finding other chapters. And they figured, fuck it, why not?

As a result, their “Space Marines” do not have a concise and consistent geneseed. They take and get and research and experiment and contain and maintain all they can get. Some of them will take after different primarchs, some will not. It provides unintentional diversity and minimizes their unique individuality.

In more recent millenia, this is less true. With age and development, the Void Colonies have refined their understandings of the gene seed, and they do possess their own mishmash stock. Picking and selecting and choosing. They have elements and samples from the Imperial Fists, Space Wolves, Iron Warriors, Ultramarines, and Raven Guard, with some scant traces of others. The oldest members of the Astartes of the Void Colonies look like a grab bag of different chapters with their mutations.

The Void Originals, themselves, look like a mixed bag of Vulcan and Corvus physical features, with a mixture of disposition between the Salamander’s pleasant people-loving demeanors, with Imperial Fist and Iron Warriors pragmatism. Some are more ‘mutated’ than others, but this tends to have some perks. And depending on which chapter they join, these defects become more prominent. Rad Worms, for instance, get greyer skin and their ability to handle and neutralize radiation shoots way up. Even amongst Astartes, their rad tolerance is obscene. While Terra Worms can handle most chemical kinds of pollution, every bit as easily as Mortarion’s children.

Personality-wise, this makes them mercurial and cheerful, and beyond happy to do their job, but their accepting attitudes to even the most distressing and hopeless of situations and tasks can cause melancholy and unease amongst normal humans. It can be kind of depressing to hear a legion of giant dudes unirionically consider themselves ‘useful garbage,’ even if they don’t histrionically demean themselves on the regular. No task is too demeaning or beneath them, however, and even if the most hostile or dangerous foe they encounter in a day is a stray dog, it could be a daemon or it could be a bitey puppy. Both are their jobs to wrangle with appropriate force for the given situation. To call them, ‘priestly lepers,’ is only a slight exaggeration.

Due to the sub-human nature of the mutant, the inconsistent appearances and natures and dispositions and abilities of these space marines under more singular banners, these ‘Void Astartes’ consider themselves what they really are. Human garbage. If you apply to be a Space Marine of the Voidcolonies, you’re effectively consenting to become a tool of the state and happily so. Not unlike a castrated willing human sacrifice to a god at an altar, or to a volcano. You’re there to do jobs that other human beings are too vulnerable to reasonably do. That covers more than fighting aliens, heretics, daemons and hostile mutants, and also covers handling toxic waste, plumbing and back-breaking manual labor that can’t be done with conventional loading vehicles in the given time.

While they call themselves ‘The Astartes of the Void,’ they are not, in any sense of the word, actual Astartes. They’re poseurs. They’re unofficial. They’re bootlegs, and they know it, and they’re proud of that fact, if only to admit the Imperium’s are better and they’re making do with what resources and tools are at their disposal. Every vial of gene seed they find, be it from traitor legions or loyalists, is another vial that can’t be used by Chaos or othe heretical powers.

The Rad Worms are nuclear science and tech specialists, and they can be thought of as their society’s electric and IT guys. They are responsible for the nuclear fissile generators (fusion is unknown to them, still) and are known to produce very decent powerplants. Their weaponry is focused on plasmas and radpistols/radrifles. If it needs burning or irradiating, they’re the guys to do it. They have battery and laser technology, but aren’t really great at making standard issue lasguns. They instead favor very stable, yet somewhat weak, plasma. Due to resource limitations and lack of technology.

The Void Worms are the masters of transportation and movement. They specialize in moving big things and moving lots of small things. Safe, as well as quickly. They still maintain limited technology for usage of grav-plates for levitation and propulsion, and jerryrigged the technology to purpose it for weapons. They can vacuum enemies from a bunch with tractor beams and they can repulse things from far away. They are absolutely horrifying against large structures whose mass can collapse in on itself, the equal of any kind of torpedo or bolter bombardment, creating gravity wells and ripples and disturbances in target ships.  They also utilize light-to-electricity technology more often than even the Rad Worms, and can subsist just by parking in orbit around stars. The Void Worms have the strongest relationships to their void ship monastaries and warships and produce the most prolific and best pilots and captains of commodores of the lot. Also true to their namesake, they are manufacturers of weaker voidshields.

The Blast Worms specialize in chemistry of all sorts, nonetheleast the kind that makes monkey brains go haha big kaboom. Unsurprisingly, they provide explosives. But they also are behind production of fertilizer and agrarian products supplemented by their societies. They favor creation of torpedos and autoguns (just..we’d know them as guns) and heavy flamers and acids. Their work is not too complicated nor high power, but it is very prolific, cheap and powerful.

The Terra Worms are terraformers. While the others prefer to operate in the void, the Terra Worms are agrarians. They are the ones that chew at the heavy sediment and uninhabitable conditions of worlds and carve out habitable niches for even unmodified human people to live beneath the surface. They handle the colonization of worlds and set them up to be secretly inhabited, while maintaining that ‘unworthy of time’ look that should keep Imperial, Chaos and even Tyranid eyes off of them. They also fabricate the very limited amounts of adamantium the colonies use, under the guidance of their fabricator Voidship and their tech priests. They favor autoguns (we’d call them, ‘guns’) and power poleaxes. They also produce very effective vibro-blades for melee, and as they tend to favor boxed in surroundings and close quarters, of packed facilities and urban environments, these strategic knives that can slough even plasteel and ceramite for brief periods of time are quite sought after. They are also the chapter that harbor the best Standard Templates for arcaneotech for dealing with pollution and making land, water and air clean and fertile again. Both ones they’ve found, and tech rediscovered.

The Carrion Worms are concerned with not just handling the dead, but the medical and biological needs of their respective chapters and human civilizations. They are a dedicated caste meant to look after their brothers and humanity on a genetic level, searching for signs of warp or gene stealer corruption. They handle the geneseed, monitor expressions and create medical equipment for the human colonies, alike. Carrion Worms are also apex predators of tyranid forces, and their guerilla wars have likely saved at least a handful of Imperial worlds just by intercepting waaaughs and hive fleets in the void. They employ meltas and are about the only chapter with some use for las tech, but they don’t use it on small rifles. Their laser and ion weapons are meant to be mounted on ships and produce constant, punishing streams of vaporizing light, turning mile long lines of half inch thick  circles of organic material into toxic ash. Just a constant, unending assault.

Carrion worms are also responsible not just for Tyranid management, but Ork management. Entire orbiting junk-worlds are set up to take advantage of ork flora and fauna as resources. It’s a dangerous and hard business trying to make a world livable, but if you carefully manage ork populations, you can get a culture that mines metal for refining into armor without breaking much of a sweat. As well as squigs, serving as a source of natural oil for lubrication as well as fuel.

The Mind Worms are the psyker corp. As a chapter, they provide indoctrination, education and self-regulation of psykers. They handle all things occult and immaterial in nature, and they produce the limited Force weaponry utilized by the Void Legion.

The Warp Worms are a corp composed entirely of Homo Navigo offshoots. The ones that were born with functional third eyes, but not made of stern enough stuff to navigate for void ships. They handle all things warp and daemon related, as well as serving as detection. They are the backup that works with the Mind Worms, to assure if there’s any Perils, or breach to let daemons out, someone is there to shut that down or close it, very quickly.

Void Legions, of all sorts, only have a somewhat workable replacement for the Black Carapace of traditional Space Marines. It, like everything else about their technology, is unabashedly bootleg, original and ramshackle. But it functions.

The Void Legions are a meritocratic based system, and maintain a sort of currency. When you’re basically a quasi-immortal space janitor that can subsist on most anything, you can afford to invest in yourself. Operating both on an administrative set of permissions and restrictions for qualifications and authority, as well as a tangible form of capitalism, they have to purchase, build and construct their own Void Militarum armor.

This, of course, means bottom-of-the-barrel, lowest ranking members wear their Black Carapace as a uniform, with layers of flak and scale on top. While those that have been in the game a while and earned favor and rank and capital tend to invest in the Void Colonies to manufacture and fabricate for them armor of their own.

As such, while they do have limited resources and begin with less than the average Space Marine, all elite Void Legions are considered to have unique armors. Going from wearing virtually nothing, to wearing mass-produced, offshoot garbage of conventional Space Marine power armor, to relic and artifact armor as they advance. A Void Legionnaire’s armor will often compliment their chapter and their focus.

Mind Worms, for example, might have armor that has a Force element to it, empowering the ceramite with a thin, membranous layer, like an acrylic or a glass, made up of pure psyker energy. A razor thin void shield which acts as a regenerating ablative coating. While a Warp Worm’s armor would have traveling or migrating patterns like void constellations on it, and marquee text running for purity seals.

They lack dreadnaughts entirely, but have a compromise. When a Void Legionnaire is too wounded to continue, they get stuck into a Support Ship for much the same purpose. Some are even joined into the Great Voidships/colony ships, themselves, where they operate as task managers for the voidships, carrying out orders and adding a more living. human face to the tasks. These ships typically operate as sentinels and scouts and spies, and monitor Imperial and xeno activity. Tyranid, in particular.

All in all, the Void Legion are the sort of guys that secretly terraform the innards of uninhabitable planets and plant trees by moonlight. All with the explicit purposes of serving as home bases, resource caches, hideouts, and fabrication centers for things that are too dangerous to make on the precious voidships.

The entire Void Legion is too small to really make a dent in the universe, but they sit, out in the void. The Imperium’s shadow cloaked children, cheering the greater Imperium on silently from the sides. Making planets that the knowledge of them, “coincidentally” coming into awareness of potential Imperial colonials to come and settle on them as potential worlds. Occupying only the most uninhabitable of places and doing for the Imperium what it can’t do for itself.

Their greatest enemy is uninhabitable environments themselves, a lack of power and a lack of sustenance. They do not rescue worlds from invasion, they don’t actively fight back invading forces, they do not typically do much in the way of direct heroics, where they might be discovered. But they do make planets secretly livable. Ones that the Imperium and other xenos races might write off as worthless.

[soraka-in-warhammer40k]

Character Gallery Part 2: Our non-astartes support cast!

Again I must thank @rowscara for putting with me and all these designs, but once again I have amassed enough of them for collection post! If you wish to see the three "main characters" of Tepidus Tempestus click here.

Starting off with the highest rank, Lord Castellan Dederik Dunst, the captain of the ship and highest non-astartes authority who due to legal complications cannot be called Captain or Admiral. The rank of Lord Castellan, to which he was promptly appointed by the Chaptermaster as in the Imperial system allows it for a legal loophole including the - supposedly - temporary nature of such rank as well as its lack of specification.

Originally from the Astra Militarum and left to die on a volcanic deathworld after an imperial screw-up. After months of trying to survive the toxic ashen atmosphere and attempting to get an emergency signal out, the Tepidus Tempestus stumbled over them by sheer accident involving several navigators and what would later prohibit the use of caffeine-like stimulants by them for several years.

Out of the dozen or so that were left, he is the only one who did not succumb to the aftereffects. His lungs are severely fucked however, which has him constantly smoking a very specific herbal mix to combat the symptoms. Dunst is probably one of the most loyal to the chapter as he literally owes his life to them - although this loyality does explicitly not extend to Astra Militarum high command for obvious reasons.

It should be noted that he has a slight hoarding problem in that every single console, chair, and work-station around whatever place he works has several lasguns, explosives, rations and fortification materials stowed inside. The fact that he did all that in secret has gotten him into some trouble with the Chaptermaster when it came out.

Following the highest authority on the bridge, here's the absolute tyrant of the machine room, Engine Master Angela Kirrspatt - archenemy of tech priest Daimos-5 (self-proclaimed), and - barring some technicalities - the oldest human on the ship. She's mostly held together by spite and devotion to the vessel - this devotion goes to the point that she has an actual Tech Priest Killcount.

In her younger years she had observed the incompetence of Daimos-5's predecessors that would have almost blown the ship into pieces as well as the disregard the tech priests had for the human workforce, and led a worker's rebellion in response. Chaptermaster Auris was so impressed by her organisational skills as well as pulling it off while keeping all systems running without issue that he promptly promoted her - and politely overlooked the frozen remains of shattered flesh and steel chained to the coolant pipes.

Rising further in the ranks during her service she, in a rather unusual turn of events, became the inofficial vice-captain of the 3rd Astartes Company (Techmarine Specialists). She was the assistant to their Captain Hephaton, but the man is an elusive hermit busy with his work and avoiding other people. Eventually he started sending her out to all the meetings he didn't give a shit about (which was nearly all of them), and so it was established.

The fact that Daimos-5 is still alive and even gets some liberties within her domain goes to show how skilled he is, and that she - even if only begrudingly - respects him. His expertise is Gellar Field tech and the Warpdrive in general, but all the tech surrounding it is her domain. Curiously, Kirrspatt and Dunst were a thing once, 70 years back or so. The lone survivor clinging to life and the barsh mechanic girl... although nowadays they bond mostly by being weird cranky old people.

Often seen with personal Astartes guards of the 3rd, although it is not sure if they are guarding her from other people, or other people from them.

From Engineering back to the bridge here's Communications Officer Liberta - being a lingusitical genius that somehow speaks every concievable dialect of high and low gothic at the young age of "officially" 35 terran years, her job is mostly tuning in to the Vox-frequencies and whatever else goes around that is not an astropathic transmission.

Aside from her foul mood and the - barely concealed undercity gang-tattoos - there's actually not much known about her. In fact there is so little known, that very specific events in the story led to some... complications. Her files regarding her past before joining were clean. TOO clean... but giving away more would spoilers. However the Navigators and Astropaths on the vessel do not like her, but that might be because she sometimes takes some of their drug stashes.

Apparently Liberta has a substance tolerance that - for some of them - goes beyond that of even Astartes, but mostly uses those so she can work longer and harder. Just like Chaptermaster Auris this is yet another case that makes Chief Apothecarius Timidus scream "BY THE THRONE STOP WORKING YOUR BODY IS LITERALLY FALLING APART HAVE SOME REST!"

Mostly gets away with her foul attitude because of extreme competence paired with Dunst and Auris having somewhat of a soft spot for her.

And finally, last but not least for this post, let's hear it for out Medical Ogryn, Nurse Narcosis, Apothecarius Timidus' favourite assistant. As it turns out when you have patients the size and weight of Astartes, you might need someone even bigger and stronger to move them around.

Orginally from the weapons deck, when a mishandlung of ammunition led to many people being injuried, he carried them all to the apothecarium. Then after sticking around and insiting to help, Timidus found use for him.

Although Narcosis started out as dumb as they come, unlike most Ogryn in the Imperium he had something entirely unique: a teacher with the patience of centuries. Timidus was pleased to have an assistant who did EXACTLY what he was told without question or hesitation, assuming Narcosis could understand the concept.

So it started off simple, with "carry this", "hold that", "look scary so the gawkers piss off", and eventually over many, many years the orders became more and more complex ("spray this on the cut" - "put on that bandaid"). While it takes a while to get new knowledge into that massive skull, once it actually is in there, it STAYS there.

Can now perform simple surgery if necessary, but really does not like working on non-astartes. Regular humans are so fragile and it makes him very, VERY nervous.

[surfacolyte]

Diary of Norelle Rhia, part L

Dear Diary,

Emperor, I thank you, and praise you for helping us! It is a miracle we are alive!

This has to have been the worst warp travel one can possibly survive...

We headed back to Hummingbird and explained to captain Narang that we took care of the Eldar and we should leave that instant. There were, after all, nine ork ships heading our way. The orks started firing at us and almost teared us apart! I mean, no life-support, gardens, food stocks, nothing!

Then we jump to warp.

Emergency repairs didn't seem to go nowhere, although we tried to help. Then I said fuck this shit, everyone with me to the life-support systems to fix them! I've been doing some scuba diving and have some sort of idea of what a broken air circling system would be like. Plus I've been on quite many space ships... We fixed the life support system! I have actually no bloody idea how in the warp (pun intended) we fixed it but we did!!!!

Captain Narang just sat in his chair, drinking. When we had fixed the basic breathing system I left the others to it and went to give a slap in the face of the captain. That seemed to work and he became active again!

And then...when we though the worst was over...

Spacehulk.

A mother fucking Spacehulk.

No, we didn't bump into one.

WE BECAME ONE!!!!

Systems started popping, we hit some sort of cloud of...I don't even know what! Everything started breaking down! Crew quarters blasted open, cannons malfunctioning and breaking, the screens on the bridge going black. Even the life-support system went down!!! The only things that were working at that point were the gellar fields and the warp engine.

And then the distributor shuts down, shutting with it all the electricity running through the Hummingbird... which meant that the warp engine went silent and the gellar fields went down.

There were very little survivors up till this point. We had gathered them near the gellar fields, both our slippers and the crew of the ship. I held them a prayer circle there, keeping everyone calm... You know, there is this certain sensation when you are travelling through the warp. You hear muffled whispers but you get used to them quite fast. This time there was no whispering. Oh no. With the gellar fields down those whispers turned into maniacal cackle. One does not hear such a laughter in the Materium. It was...inhuman...both filled with every emotion there was and yet none of them. A promise of certain doom were it to come on board. Was it already on board, one couldn't say, the cackle was everywhere.

Try to keep people calm in that sort of situation!

Yi and Kûrush left to protect the last remaining tech priest on the ship whilst he tried to repair the distributor. I stayed with everyone else near gellar fields and organized our remaining Slippers, all 40 of them to take battle stations. Thank the Emperor they got the electricity flowing and we exited the warp as soon as the gellar fields and the warp engine functioned again.

So. Now we're in a system with humans, which is good... we just don't know their language as they are not part of the Imperium!

WHAT FUN!!!!

The Captain is dead, Arman is now the new captain.

Almost everyone in the crew is dead, as well as a huge junk of the Slippers.

Only one tech-priest left.

And the only things that were actually operational were the warp engine and the gellar field...

Just...just...I don't know. I don't have any words left. I have been tired, terrified, yet have had to hold my composure... I will have to continue to do that... But...if I could, I would just now fall on my knees, praise the Emperor and cry...

We survived but...how will we get home? If we're stuck here... I'll never see Qiang again. Stay safe, my love, and I will pray for you, every day. And for our safe return to you.

Emperor, please guide us. Let me be strong so that the others have your light...although I'm not sure if I have the energy right now.

- Norelle

[diceperado]

Dark Heresy Moments #17

Last time we picked off right after our scuffle with power armored muscleheads and an entire pack of frothing khornate space hamsters. Unfortunately for us, there were just too many for us to take on, no mater how glorious melee has gotten, so we weighed our options. We could either A) try to storm the bridge and break the enemy command chain and morale or B) disengage the ship and hope they don’t blow us to smithereens before we hop over into realspace. Oh yeah, did I mention we were boarded while in the Warp. Thanks, overlapping gellar fields...

We chose to disengage and pray for the Emperor. The khornates, being sore losers and obnoxiously clingy the way Chaos usually is, decided to shoot, and got a couple of good shots in. We weren’t dead, and we lost them after exiting the Warp, but we also had to find a safe place to make repairs. What better place than a swamp planet with curious underground structures that, according to our scanners, were of human origin, from the dark age of technology?

So, seeing as most of us acolytes have literally nothing better to do, our tech-priest Chiro decides to indulge his huge tech boner and head an exploration team. So we land on the planet and kindly knock on the door with plasma cutters. The whole place is dead. The tech is still mostly functioning, but the people appear to have killed themselves. Initial investigation revealed that the complex was dedicated to biological research, so naturally everybody but the tech-priest got really bad vibes. Not letting common reason or survival instincts deter the progress of science, Chiro talked us into going deeper anyway. 

Inside we find two pre-Imperial knights standing guard (knights being basically miniature titans, or mechs), pilotless. Once they recognized us as human, we were allowed to access them and confirm what we had feared from the beginning. The place had suffered a catastrophic containment breach around 9000 years ago, and the knights were there to keep them from getting out. We investigate further and decide the knights should be taken with us, once we exit the complex. Finally, we come across a strained stasis field holding weird and terrifying humanoid creatures. Everyone is anxious to leave them be, but the tech-priest needed to download the data on what had transpired there, and the stasis trap was about to fail and unleash the creatures upon us. Welp, you know how things go in RPGs. Eventually we have to fight the xenos. They unleashed furious hax, I mean psychic attacks, on us, but we prevailed. One of the xenos did rock our pilot like a hurricane, and he lost his leg, which means James is again down to 1 hit point. Poor fella. Anyway, we win, get out of there and manage to take one of the knights with us. We almost drowned ourselves in the process, when we opened the ceiling. We’d forgotten that the place had been covered by a swamp over the ages. 

Finally, we’re back on our ship, and some time passes, until we’re ready to head towards the closest real safe harbor. The galaxy, however, apparently decided that we hadn’t had enough yet and sicced Eldar corsairs on us. We got out just in time, but it was a close one. We make it to some no-name commercial station, and the Captain politely kicks us out and tells us to find some other way to... wherever. The session ended with us pondering what case we should undertake next.

Also, apparently Deynor has had enough of covert operations and chasing heretics, and decided to ask for a transfer (he thinks he’ll do better as a commander for the conclave’s forces), so there goes our (technically) second-best social character after Rhaban. So I wonder, as a group whose modus operandi has usually been to talk first, purge later maybe, how screwed are we?

[mikemortgage]

Super Bowl ads offer simple escapism with star power

NEW YORK — Sarah Michelle Gellar makes a horror movie parody for Olay. Jeff Bridges and Sarah Jessica Parker tout Stella Artois . Steve Carrell hawks Pepsi.

Star power abounds in this year’s Super Bowl ads.

Advertisers are hoping to provide some welcome distraction and entertainment as economic fears persist and the nation’s political climate remains sharply divided. As much as this year’s Super Bowl will be a battle on the field between the New England Patriots and the L.A. Rams, it will be a battle between advertisers over who gets the buzz — and who gets forgotten.

Celebrities are a relatively safe bet to garner goodwill from Super Bowl viewers who aren’t looking to be lectured at. There has been a retreat from more overtly political ads that were seen during the 2017 Super Bowl from such companies as 84 Lumber and Airbnb .

“The big theme is a return to light-hearted humour,” University of Virginia professor Kim Whitler said. “There’s an acknowledgement the Super Bowl is about entertainment.”

The Super Bowl remains advertising’s biggest mass-market showcase – and one of the last remaining ones in an age of personalized ads targeted to individual interests based on data collected by Facebook, Google and other tech mammoths. Digital ads are expected to make up nearly 60 per cent of ad spending by 2020, according to eMarketer, up from about 50 per cent in 2018.

Yet a 30-second Super Bowl ad can cost more than $5 million. More than 100 million people in the U.S. are expected to tune in to Sunday’s game on CBS. Simplisafe’s creative director, Wade Devers, said the home-security company is advertising during the Super Bowl for the first time because the game has “a unique audience” primed to be interested in watching the ads.

Advertisers are doing what they can to stand out — Bridges, for instance, revives his “The Dude” character from “The Big Lebowski” — while shying away from controversy.

“It’s such a big investment. Advertisers really want to generate as much return as they can,” Northwestern University marketing professor Tim Calkins said. “I think we’ll see a lot of humour and product-focused advertising. A lot of advertisers are nervous about taking on big themes.”

So don’t expect any mention of the government shutdown or the debate over building a wall at the Mexican border, for example.

But safe can also mean dull.

“It will be a lacklustre year,” said Kelly O’Keefe, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth’s Brandcenter. “I hope to see a few standouts, but the ads could be more mediocre than they have in a few years.”

TRIED AND TRUE

A few old favourites are returning. Anheuser-Busch is trotting out its famed Clydesdales. They pull a dalmatian dog through a field populated with windmills to the tune of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” to promote the idea that Budweiser is brewed with energy from wind power.

As for celebrities, always a staple in Super Bowl ads, Jason Bateman appears as an affable elevator operator to showcase Hyundai’s Shopper Assurance program. M&M’s enlisted actress Christina Applegate, and Avocados From Mexico’s ad will feature Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth. Colgate Total’s ad features Luke Wilson as a close talker.

STRONG WOMEN

Olay will play off horror movies and the phrase “Killer Skin,” with an ad starring Gellar. Toyota is highlighting the persistence of Antoinette “Toni” Harris, a female football player at a California community college. And Bumble selected Williams to be its spokeswoman in the dating app’s first ever Super Bowl ad.

TECH RIBBING

Michelob Ultra has robot beating humans at different sports like running and spinning. But then the robot looks longingly in a bar where people are enjoying a post-workout beer. “It’s only worth it if you can enjoy it,” an on-screen message reads.

In an ad for Pringles , a smart speaker laments not being able to taste Pringles.

Amazon pokes fun of itself as celebrities from Harrison Ford to astronaut twins Mark and Steve Kelly test products that didn’t quite work out, including an electric toothbrush and a dog collar with Amazon’s Alexa digital assistant.

MUSIC MANIA

The Super Bowl reportedly had trouble finding artists to sing during the Super Bowl — singer Travis Scott agreed to perform only after the NFL said it would donate $500,000 to charity. But there has been no hesitation with musicians jumping into Super Bowl ads.

First time-Super Bowl advertiser Expensify created a catchy music video with rapper 2 Chainz and actor Adam Scott. The 30-second ad also features the song.

Pepsi has long enlisted musicians to help sell its drinks and snacks. For its Doritos brand, Chance the Rapper is teaming up with the Backstreet Boys to promote a new flavour. Michael Buble will star in an ad for Pepsi’s Bubly sparkling water brand. And an ad for Pepsi itself has Carrell with rapper Lil Jon and pop singer Cardi B.

Mercedes-Benz, meanwhile, has Ludacris.

SURPRISES

Although many companies released their ads online early, Villanova marketing professor Charles Taylor says some are holding back “for the potential to make a bigger splash.”

from Financial Post http://bit.ly/2FYyFMg via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage

[transmechanicus]

Making 40k grimdark in writing

I’m spitting this into the void while my mind has a somewhat organized idea of what i want to say.

I don’t think 40k is grimdark, not in the bulk of its fiction which is where that descriptor should stand out the most. 40k and specifically the Imperium being grimdark is supposed to be because there is no other option to ensure humanity’s survival, not just because other options are inconvenient.

Imperial populations are supposed to be widely illiterate, strictly because the danger of reading Chaotic material outweighs the benefits. The Imperium hates aliens not because they’re Racist Against Space Elves but because 3000 other lesser species are of a hostility akin to a Xenomorph and cannot be reasoned with. The Imperial Creed is supposed to be mandatory, not solely out of reverence for the Emperor, but for its capability as a tool for oppression of Imperial citizens and consumption of their free time. The entirety of the Imperium’s purpose is to maintain a total war/production environment at all times and on as many fronts as possible, and the process of doing so is why it is the “cruelest and bloodiest” regime imaginable. That said, just about every Black Library novel i’ve read fails at depicting this. Black Library novels, outside of isolated passages, do not convey to me the scale of oppression and merciless authority that an appropriately grimdark Imperium would have. This is not to say they are not good books in their own right, but strictly rated on their ability to consistently convey the brutality of the Imperium, they fall short.

A Planetary governor should abandon his populace to gang wars, not because he’s a self indulgent prick, but because the expenditure of military resource is not justified by the gains. Adeptus Mechanicus wonder machines should be abandoned in hangers because no local tech priest has the spiritual clout or proper incense to use them, despite the fact that only a single button need be pushed. Protocol and bureaucracy should be followed to the letter even when it royally fucks the Imperium because those same protocols were put in place 1000 years ago to guard against 1 of billions of tampering methods. The Imperium, as stated in the opening text of Every BL Novel, should be sustained through blood and brutality to accomplish the most basic tasks because every other way leads to even greater suffering.

I want to see ship crews that have to be in constant mass prayer just to keep the Gellar Field on/temptations of Chaos at bay. I want to see Tech priests devoid of any hacking capability or actual understanding of half of how their machines work. You know how a tank internal combustion engine works? Great. You have 0 idea how the battle cannon works and are terrified that if you don’t do every ritual step that it will explode for no reason. I want to see Administratum clerks who spend their lives making notations and addendums to irrelevant paperwork from 2000 years prior. I want to see the little people of the Imperium, the ones actually experiencing the grim darkness, the ones so easily forgotten in BL’s focus on generals, space marines, and alien warlords. I want to see ignorance, superstition, fear, and all the strange wonder that accompanies looking into a universe so fundamentally different from our own. #MakeTheImperiumGrimdarkAgain