#third imperium

[dwarvendiaries]

World naming conventions in Traveller's Third Imperium setting are so funny like we have:

Greco-roman gods (Mithras, Mercury, Little Jupiter)

Famous swords from Middle Earth

People's Names (Mirriam, Winston, MacDermont)

X's world (Lazlo's World, Carl's World, Brandon's Rock)

Newcastle

[amberzonedcomix]

War is weird.

[msvblight]

Converting some discord messages I sent to a friend about an idea I had for a Traveller secenario:

the party are hired for a resupply mission to a remote arctic world where there's an xenoarchaeological expedition happening

upon arriving the satellite around the planet is broadcasting a quarantine message

should the players go down to investigate the ship is hit by an EMP shortly after landing

what's been happening is that the archaeologists found a massive structure created by The Ancients

all was fine, until a few days ago when one of them was killed in an accident - then the next morning their grave was found empty and the killings began.

More and more of the dead crew start walking again, and killing - what's happening is that the structure they found was an ancient hospital. using nanomachines to repair injuries.

Unfortunately it doesn't know what a human is, so it treats death in humans like another injury. repairing the body and reactivating it. sadly all of the brain that activates is the deeply primal, animal, part. So now the party has to figure out how to survive and get off-world.

I'm thinking one of the NPCs, a member of the expedition, was secretly hired on by the "Imperial Security Presidium" - and is the one that set off the quarantine message, and rigged up the EMP to contain this issue. Stashed in the base somewhere he has a case given to him by the ISP that contains a laser pistol, prototype battlefield medication, and a 7 kiloton briefcase nuke. But there are other options available for the players to end the adventure however they want.

[thesixthchaosgod]

"..But in the Warmaster's heart there dwelt a hidden evil and he became seduced by this evil and came to nurture Deamons and other forces of darkness. And he did march upon Terra and with him marched a third part of the hosts of the Imperium which he had seduced to his purpose. And there was terror and bloodshed and for seven days and seven nights the hosts did battle. Until the Emperor - bless His honored name! - caught Horus by the heel and cast him to that place they call the Eye of Terror and with him the third part of the hosts of the Imperium..."

Reject the modern lore, The big E literally yeeted Horus and his forces back into the Eye of Terror, BY HIS HEEL MIGHT I ADD?!

Old lore go hard lmao

[sculptorofcrimson]

"Ophar had never been deceived – he understood why the Custodians looked the way they did. If you concealed your killers in the armour of gods, then they would be worshipped even as they raised their blades. Ophar had lived through the darkest of times, witnessing atrocity from coast to mountain, and knew murderers when he saw them. It didn’t matter what they wore, nor how politely they expressed themselves – Valdor’s soldiers had been created to kill, and kill, and kill again. They had no other function. Emotion had been knocked out of them, replaced by a horrifying sangfroid that bordered on the mechanical. They were devils. They were products of an age of nightmares." - Valdor, Birth of an Imperium, 100

Murderers? That’s calling them lightly. I prefer what that one Thunder Warrior called him:

“You’re a lying, murdering bastard, and we were all supposed to be cracking down on them.”

-That One Thunder Warrior(Whose Name I forgot)

[lulu2992]

Decoding the scripts and secret messages in Rebel Moon

Part 2: Solving the riddle of Noble’s Bone Staff

On December 23, 2023, Zack Snyder posted this:

The idea of uncovering yet another secret got me very excited, so I looked for the Bone Staff in the guide. Here is the image as it appears on the website:

I slightly cropped it, but yes, it really is this small and you can barely see anything... Still, if you look closely, you will notice a series of little vertical lines all along the handle. Well, they’re not just lines; they’re letters, and they form the “secret inscription” fans were challenged to decode!

Contrary to what the post said, though, it seemed to me this script didn’t look like the New Imperium font. Instead, it reminded me a lot of the symbols I had seen elsewhere in the guide, on the Priests and Scribes’ outfits (more on this later), and on Kora’s gun:

I learned from AurekFonts, who worked on several typefaces for the film (along with Louie Mantia, Jr.), that this other font was most likely “designed primarily by the Speculative Civilization Advisor, Adam Forman” and called “Old Imperium”. This is the name I’m going to use from now on.

The guide says the message on the Guardian Gun means “My life for hers”, so I now had 10 letters to work with. On the bone staff, I also noticed the “brackets”, which I concluded served as spaces/word separators in Old Imperium, were upside-down compared to the ones on the gun, so I deduced that, to read the message, I first had to rotate the image by 180 degrees.

But even after doing all that, decoding the inscription remained difficult because of the image’s fairly low resolution... After a lot of squinting, I still managed to count the words and determine how many letters they contained. The message is a 38-word sentence that looks something like this:

---[-------(7th letter is grey)[-----[-----(puntuation mark)---[---[-[----[----[------[---------[--[-----[----(3rd letter is grey)[----[-----[--[---------[--[-[-------[------[---[----[-----[-----[---[----[----[-----[--[----[--------[-------[---------[--[--[----(puntuation mark)

I tried to find the 10 letters I knew... but I was struggling. Then, suddenly, I remembered this:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold

The poem... it had to be a clue! I looked at “The Second Coming” again, and my eyes were drawn to the last verses:

The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

38 words, a punctuation mark between the 4th and 5th words, another one at the end... As for the grey letters on the staff? They correspond to double letters in the poem (“darkneSS” and “slEEp”). Everything works perfectly!

The secret inscription on Atticus Noble’s Bone Staff is the final sentence of the 1919 poem “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats.

December 24, 2023, around 7 pm CEST; challenge completed!

And now that I had been introduced to the Old Imperium font, why not try to decode it too?

[capitalisticveins]

Someone make Imperium Baaabe do something I wanna see them again

[rosykims]

couldnt sleep last night too busy rotating leda von valancius around in my head like a grimdark rotisserie chicken

[tms-ebott]

Is the Imperium run by Human's or monsters?

[theromaboo]

The Fourth Day of Britannicus

Today I am doing Imperium: Nero.

What. What did they do to him? I think the general rule of thumb is that when the actor for Britannicus has the five o'clock shadow, he's too old. I do not like this. He does not have the Britannicus energy.

This is supposed to depict someone who can't be older than 13 (I actually don't know how old he is supposed to be here because I didn't watch the entire movie. I merely skimmed it like you would do a book. I remember that earlier in the movie, Messalina was still alive. I seriously hope there was a time-skip and Brit was 13 here, because while this looks much too old for a 13 year old, this looks incredibly too old for someone who can't be older than seven. I'm just going to assume he's 13. But keep in mind that he can be any age younger. I just don't know)

I really don't like this one. When I saw that this was Britannicus, I honestly didn't know whether to laugh or cry (though it seems that Britanncius wasn't the only one to get the short end of the straw. *cough* LongDarkHair!Nero *cough*). No offense to the actor, of course. He just isn't a good actor for Brit. Brit was a child. This is a grown man. I cannot see him as Brit. To me, this is only a symbol to represent him.

And maybe that's the problem with this Britannicus series. It's either "Too old. Not good," or "Young looking. Good," which is kind of boring. Maybe I should look past age for a more interesting analysis. But it's hard!

I'm trying to imagine him as much younger, the age of Britannicus. Do I dislike this simply because of age? Yes. I think Britannicus would look great with that hair and facial features if only the actor was younger.

I guess, to me, the most important part of a depiction of Britannicus is the age. If he looks much too old, I will never be happy. But if he looks the appropriate age, I will be happy and I will be okay with quite a lot of variation.

This is different than how I feel about depictions of Cocktavian, because in that case, I'm extremely picky and will not be happy until he looks exactly the way he looks in my head. To this day, I have not seen a single depiction of Cocktavian I was happy about. I think the closest was an illustration of him from a children's book about ancient Rome. I really liked how he looked, but the thing is... the illustration had dark hair and eyes! Yes, I believe all colors of hair and eyes and skin are beautiful, but in my head, Cocktavian is fucking blond like the sources say.

[calypsolemon]

I'm curious about your take on Beatrix, Ras, Rapton, and Imperium as a whole. I know we're only halfway through the season, and some people like to wait till they see the whole big picture before making judgments, but I wanna know how you personally feel about them!

honestly its mostly None Thoughts on the characters. Ras is probably the most interesting character in terms of I think "something more seems to be going on there that we're not privy to," but without further info i can't exactly say what. Rapton is just kind of afunny guy. And Beatrix... I'm going to be honest my first impression of her is "that girl is not giving me ruling empress of a cult-kingdom vibes" but thats again, based on very little info.

As for imperium itself I do think its a little.... poorly thought out at times? I feel like so far we've seen this sort of flip-flopping between imperium citizens being scared of dragons, seeing them as mindless beasts that can be easily beaten down, and seeing them as friendly companions that work alongside imperium to give them energy. This could be somewhat intentional as a "mixed-messaging" thing on the part of imperium, but I think this combined with how quickly sora was convinced that hurting the dragon was bad makes their indoctrination look incredibly weak in a way that... doesn't really align with the amount of power they supposedly have? Personally I realyl think that sora should have spent a good montage or so working with LaRow getting increasingly doubtful of what she was doing, rather than immediately jumping to rebelling against them.

[g2battleconvoy]

So something I noticed in the later footage that they've released for Space Marine II is that, on the left, you see Titus doesn't have his trusty chainsword attached to his hip.

Yet the image on the right, from the Reveal Trailer that was unveiled during the Game Awards 2021, there *is* a chainsword attached to his hip.

Granted, the first Space Marine didn't have that detail either due to technical limitations, but it's a interesting detail. Perhaps it is a technical compromise due to how the game is working right now? I don't work at Focus, so I can't say for sure. But I figured I'd mention it anyway.

[fuzzy-melonlord]

(A few years after Wrath was given to the imperium and uh. However long that breaks down into for after Milo and Viktoriya died. Lust is called into a meeting in the castle in the middle of the day while Wrath is out. When they get to the room, however, the king is nowhere to be found, and instead, Pride is sitting at a table alone, writing something in a notebook.)

(Lust audibly groans in annoyance when they see Pride)

Hey, where's the King? I'm supposed to here for a meeting with him, sugar. And maybe a little more if I play my cards right

@vampire-bite

[wwelove829]

Do they look hotter since stepping back on American soil, or?…

[robot-roadtrip-rants]

Actually yeah, I could see him as the kind of guy who likes scented air, and after innumerable church services in 40k he's probably had his fill of incense.

And. Like. Dude's from Space Rome. Guilliman must have one of the most decadent bath Experiences in the Imperium. No way it doesn't have scented candles.

One has to imagine the heights the Imperium of man might reach if it weren't for the fact that they probably spend like 10% of their gross domestic product in just the fabrication and shipping of votive candles

[javier-pena]

circumstance

Pairing: Marcus Acacius x f!reader

Word Count: 2k

Rating: Explicit

Summary: On a stormy night, you’re haunted by a ghost from your past.

Warnings: dub con | unprotected p in v sex | creampie | unsanitary sexual practices | cheating | coercion | possessiveness | (brief) fingering (f receiving) | biting | oral (f receiving) (mentioned) | mentions of food and alcohol | mentions of blood and war

Notes: God idk what it is with me and seeing random pictures of Pedro characters that make me go feral. Anyways, wrote this in an hour, hope this is anything. I had Latin in school but I’m not vouching for any of the Latin words in this. I mostly wrote this because I’ve had a vendetta against international bestselling author Robert Harris ever since I was 15 years old. This is loosely based on a scene from his novel Imperium that has been haunting me for almost 20 years now. Also based on this post by @ozarkthedog.

***

There’s war. Outside the city, the land is burning. Behind the city walls, life goes on as it always has. There’s decadence and dissipation and life. That’s your part of the story. That’s all you’ve ever known. The comfort and the safety. That’s all you’ve ever needed to feel fulfilled.

During the night, when the city quiets down, when the people return to their homes and the public life ceases, you can sometimes hear it, like a storm brewing over the distant sea, like the rumbling of a volcano miles and miles away, taking deep breaths before spewing its fiery death. On clear nights, nights free of clouds and wind, nights where the air is so heavy it feels like a blanket weighing you down, you can even see it, the light from the battlefield, the glow of a carnage that swallows everything, even itself.

This night isn’t clear at all. This night brought rain and hail and thunder so violent it shakes the foundations of your house. You’re alone, reclining on your triclinium, too drained from dinner to move much. The storm promised some reprieve from the muggy summer air, but the heat is worse now than it was this afternoon. The wine you had with your meal, the glass in front of you now refilled a third time, combined with the weather makes your head feel like it has been wrapped in wool. Even breathing seems laborious.

But there are footsteps against mosaic floors, and footsteps mean visitors and visitors mean business. Business at such a late hour is never a good sign. With a groan you stand, with a sigh you straighten your tunic, and then the footsteps are drowned by a clap of thunder so loud you flinch.

What follows it is not the sight of one of your servants or even your husband. In the gloomy darkness that always follows a flash of lightning a shadow moves into the room, and when your eyes have adjusted to the dim lights of the lucernae all around you, you flinch again, this time with cause.

A man is standing before you, looking like the slain ghost of a soldier from the battlefield nearby. He is covered in dirt and grime, wet from the rain, wet from the blood he has recently spilled. His armor looks black in the darkness, and your eyes flicker to his side in trepidation only to discover that he’s still wearing his sword. He’s still wearing his sword, going against the rules of your house, the rules of your husband.

“Where is he?” the stranger asks, his voice deep and dangerous like the thunder outside.

You could play dumb, you could act like you don’t know who he’s talking about, but in that voice you discover something familiar, like a memory of a distant dream, never quite forgotten.

“He isn’t here,” you reply. “He might come back later, but he’s with the senate.”

The man steps closer, quick strides that take him right to the foot of your triclinium. You step backward until you reach its head, trying to put the piece of furniture between the two of you. Your hands are clammy.

“Good,” the stranger answers with a twitch of his lips that’s all too familiar for all the wrong reasons. “I promised you I’d be back for you, and I always keep my promises.”

There’s a doorway behind you leading through a small peristyle straight to your husband’s tablinum. You glance at the court, at the shrubs and flowers and fountains that you know are there but that are currently hidden by curtains of rain and darkness.

“Don’t –,” the stranger starts, but it comes too late.

You turn and run, skip down the two steps from the porch into the garden itself, your feet splashing into puddles as you run and run. Heavy footfalls behind you, heavy breathing, and a heaviness in your heart, calling back to a similar moment years ago that happened on such a different day full of laughter and sunshine and secret kisses exchanged in secret corners.

You reach the doorway to the tablinum. “Stop!” you bellow, and to your surprise he does. To your surprise, this works, and you don’t know what to do with that. “What do you want, Acacius?” you ask, your heart growing even heavier when you name him.

“You know what I want,” he answers, the rain loudly hammering against his armor, the water dousing his hair, making his curls stick to his forehead. “I came back to collect what you owe me.”

“We were children,” you remind him.

He’s up the steps faster than you can say those three words, the years between now and that summer afternoon seemingly having left no traces.

“Keep telling yourself that,” he growls, the storm raging over the city reflected in his eyes.

You step backwards into the tablinum, one hand protectively slung across your stomach. “You should leave, Acacius. I have nothing more to say to you.”

But there is only so far you can go before your back connects with your husband’s writing desk. And once it does there is nowhere for you to run to.

“I don’t need you to say anything.” His face is cast in shadows now, but when another flash lights up the night sky, you see that his expression is completely blank. “I just need you to lift up those expensive skirts of yours and let me take what’s mine.”

“Go back to that battlefield of yours,” you reply. “Go back and defend Rome like you’re supposed to. Or are you too much of a coward still?”

You should have known he would not take that kindly, should have known that provoking him wouldn’t make him leave. But when you feel his cold, wet hand wrapped around your wrist, when you’re being yanked into his chest, turned around, and shoved up against the desk, it still catches you by surprise. Some part of you, the one that never left that sunny afternoon, didn’t think he’d have it in him. Another part wanted him to.

His body presses into you with such force the desk scrapes against the stone floor with a creak loud enough to be heard over the storm. The sound that cannot be heard is the gasp you let out when he pushes up your tunic, exposing your legs to the humid night air.

“Don’t –,” you start.

He shushes you, one dirty finger touching your lips. You can smell the storm and the blood on him. He can feel your shaky breath.

“Just this once,” he mumbles into your hair.

Maybe you should fight this, but you don’t know how. He kicks your feet apart, and maybe you should kick back, connect your heel to his shin, and run. He bites the spot where your neck connects to your shoulder, and maybe you should bite his finger that is now resting against your lips while the rest of his hand is wrapped around your chin and throat, bite down hard until the bone cracks. He runs his other hand down your backside and pushes it between your legs, groaning at the warmth and wetness he finds there, and maybe you should use this moment of weakness to climb across the desk and search for something to defend yourself with.

All of it passes and you do nothing. All of it passes and you push backward against him, sucking his finger in between your lips. He pulls it out of your mouth, grabs the hair at the back of your neck, and pushes your head down toward the desk, your shoulders straining in protest. The groan you let loose is read as defiance by him.

“I told you to be quiet,” he hisses. “Just …”

He trails off and at first you don’t know why but then the hand at the back of your neck is gone and you sigh with relief, a sound that turns into something less human when he pushes two fingers into you.

“God, you’re tight,” he groans, his forehead resting against your shoulder.

“Please …,” you try again, but you’re not quite sure what you’re asking for.

There’s a rustling sound behind you, leather and fabric being moved frantically, and then his fingers are gone, replaced by something thick and heavy spreading you open. You lift yourself up on the tips of your toes, trying to adjust, trying to lessen the burn, but he digs his fingers into your hips and pushes you back down, right onto him.

“Stay,” he orders. “Just … just take it.”

His words are slurred now, and your vision is blurry, your eyes wet from biting your lip so hard you can taste blood on your tongue. He rocks into you, and your nails scrape against the wood of your husband’s desk, leaving marks in their wake. But you do as you’re told.

“That’s better.” He bites your shoulder again and you gasp from the sudden burst of pain, gasp from the way you constrict around him in response. He laughs, a rumbling like thunder, then pushes your upper body against the wood, holding you down, one hand in your hair, the other firmly locking your hip in place.

Another bolt of lightning must have illuminated your face, turned sideways for him to see the trepidation in your eyes because he says, “Don’t cry. I’m going to take good care of you.”

You don’t know how to tell him that you’re not crying because you’re afraid of him. You’re crying because you don’t remember the last time you’ve felt this way, the last time sex wasn’t just a duty you had to fulfill but something someone wanted from you, and just from you, so much so he would abandon his duty to take what’s his. You don’t know how to tell him you’re terrified of what that discovery might mean for you and your marriage, how you’re hoping your husband is going to walk in right this very moment and free you from the bonds that bind you to him.

Acacius starts to lose control of his body then. He’s pushing himself up deeper and deeper into you, groaning louder with each thrust. You know those sounds, dread them when they’re coming from your husband, encourage them now with desperate whimpers of your own. He grips your hair again, pulls you up flush against his chest so hard you yelp with pain, fumbles with your tunic until he finds that bundle of nerves between your legs that he loved to kiss when you were both free to enjoy each other’s company. But it’s just for a brief moment he considers your pleasure before hitting the desk with his open palm, holding onto the wood, and letting go.

You close your eyes, waiting. It doesn’t take long for him to let out a sigh, to still deep inside of you. You can feel him twitch, you feel his hot release, but most of all you feel the sting of a promise broken. Your whole body is on edge, wound up, pulled taut, and there is nothing he’s going to do about it.

When he’s done, he pulls out of you and lets your tunic fall down around your legs. You turn to face him, your cheeks burning with shame, but his face is once again hidden behind all those shadows that come with a starless night.

“You wanted to take good care of me,” you point out, trying to keep your voice steady.

“I just did,” he says, running his thumb from the corner of his mouth along his bottom lip. “You’re mine now. Leave that between your legs for him to find.”

“Acacius …,” you try, a name once so familiar then so strange now growing familiar again.

He crowds you against the desk, chest to chest this time, and wraps his thick fingers around your throat. The kiss he presses to your lips is hard, devoid of all tenderness. “Mine,” he repeats. “Never forget that.” And then he’s nothing more than heavy footsteps against mosaic floors.