IA: The Lion Warriors

[Captain Juan Juarez]

I type like a talk, and that means I put in a common wherever there's a natural pause in speech. But, so far, I like what you've got. ,,,,,,,!

 

I once worked with someone who could - and would - write exactly how they talk, I'm versed in it but it doesn't make the same sense in text-form - hopefully I got that across :D

 

EDIT:

 

I'll finish the crit here, as this is my last post.

 

I can't find any glaring inconsistencies or flaws - my background knowledge is nowhere near as good as Batman or Mr Stompy though - other than spelling and maybe the occasional use of informal speach.

 

For the last part, i can only suggest rereading - out loud - the IA to yourself.

[Plague Angel]

Well-written and good fluff. I like the curse, it feels pretty natural to the sorts of Cursed Foundings we know about. And the "unknown primarch" aspect doesn't come across as too heavy-handed. You may reconsider having their gene-seed too pure though; maybe have just enough slight mutation to rule the Ultras out?

 

For writing style though, every so often there's an odd word choice or two that breaks up the feel or changes the tone. One that comes to mind is the recruitment drive to bring "youngsters" into the chapter. "Youngsters" is such a casual word that it feels out of place with the more straight-forward, semi-formal article style. "Young men" would fit better as an easy change, or you can fiddle with the sentence a bit. Things like that, here and there.

[WingsOfTheFalcon]

Maybe someone with more BBCoding experience than can tell me when every time I edit the IA, the boards reverse what is the body of the sidebars and what is supposed to be the title bit? They're correct right now, but they keep switching on me and its annoying.

Damn that cursed anti-tech geneseed! :tu:

 

I really like the IA, it reads very well and it's good to see someone taking a stab at a cursed founding company and not making a total hash of it.

 

I'm just a bit at a loss about the lack of recruitment/replacement for the Chapter. I think it would take a pretty foolish chapter master to continually commit his Chapter to action when he knows he cannot replenish his troops fast enough to replace the casualties. It's the type of military leadership you would expect of a guard general but not a Chapter Master.

 

Lok forward to seeing how this progresses, keep at it!

[Aegnor]

I like the idea for their curse, quite original to my knowledge, although there may be a slight inconsistency in that Land Raiders go nuts if a Lion Warrior gets onboard, but they can still travel in space ships. I get that serfs pilot T-Hawks etc, but doesn't the machine spirit react at their very presence?

 

The Scottish references are good and not too over the top.

[Lexington]

I like, quite a bit. The writing's solid (though I think there's a bit of language to clean up), and I'm always happy to see Chapters with some introspective themes. The constant refrain of "rarr rarr Empr-AH kill rarr!" gets a little monotonous some days.

 

Anyway, the one thing that catches me here is that there's just no seeming connection between the Lion's Curse and the Sin of Antrimar. Others have talked about it, and I get what you're saying, but it just feels off. Narratively speaking, curses are traditionally manifestations of guilt, both internal and external. Their effects have ties to whatever injury was committed upon those who were wronged, and are lifted only after a price of some sort is paid, usually one that somehow alleviates the original wrong-doing. This actually manifests in the other Cursed Founding Chapters, even the Lamenters - their "sin" was in the attempt to engineer out the Black Rage, which is a tampering with the natural order of things. So, life is hell for the poor lads, down to the fact that they wear yellow, checkered armor. :)

 

Also, any reason for the Biel-Tan attack on Riada? It seems like sort of a random event. Sure, Biel-Tan is pretty belligerent, but attacking an Astartes homeworld with no provocation seems tremendously unwise for a species who has to pick its battles carefully.

[Iron Father Ferrum]

Good points about some of the colloquialisms and such; I'll review it and tidy up the language where necessary.

 

Wings, I get what you're saying about the stupidity of engineering the rate of attrition to be too high, and I'm trying to think of a way to work around that a little. I did put in the fact that they tried to reverse that bit of lunacy by going out and doing a recruiting drive rather than letting the aspirants come to them, but I think it does need a little reworking.

 

Lex, I hear what you're saying (see what you're typing?), but I can't think of how much clearer it can be. Would it make more sense is Antrimar was a forge world? That way, there's a cogent connection between the Curse and the Sin? As for the Eldar attack, I tried to put some hints in there about Riada formerly being an Eldar colony world, and Biel-Tan is all about cleansing Exodite and Maiden Worlds of human inhabitation. With their abilities of precognition, it just made sense they'd risk an attack on a Chapter world that is A.) sparsely populated and B.) that cannot defend itself as fully as they should be able to. Do you think I should insert extra provocation?

[Lexington]

Heh, I totally missed the "fay inhabitants/Eldar" connection, Deus Ex. I guess it seems to me like Imperials would recognize Eldar handiwork, but once you examine that idea, it's pretty easy to see how they might not, given that probably less than one in a hundred billion humans has ever so much as seen an Eldar. Expecting some random explorator group to have full knowledge of the pointy-eared aesthetic lexicon is kind of bizarre. Though part of me thinks it'd be nice to tie the Biel-Tan attack into the Lion's Curse somehow, that might be guilding the narrative lily a bit too much.

 

As to the curse itself, I had the same thought, but it feel like making Antrimar a forge world would, ironically, be both too explicit and not particularly good for an explanation. The idea's too on-the-nose. Don't want to get in the way of your creative process, or harp on something that really might just be my own particulars coming into play, but I think it might be useful to consider tying the Curse into the method of the Lions Warriors' scouring of the world, or possibly the nature of the population's uprising. Maybe the Lions used some kind of large-scale EMP device to disable the factories and shipyards of the planet, resulting in millions dying of sudden environmental exposure? There could also be some stronger allusions to the idea that it's the vengeful spirits of Antrimar's dead wrecking hell with machine spirits, or that some particularly monstrous act reverberates throughout the very geneseed of the Chapter.

 

These are just ideas to keep in mind, of course; gestures in directions rather than a roadmap. Whatever you feel is the best path here, take it, and if my babbling doesn't bring up any real concerns for you, feel free to ignore it. :)

[Iron Father Ferrum]

First up, I made some language changes and edited a few others turns of phrase I thought needed it.

 

Those are some good ideas, Lex, and definitely something to mull on. Luckily, I've got some time to think about it!

[Iron Father Ferrum]

Working off of Lexington's ideas for tying the Curse more fully into the Sin of Antrimar, I've decided to go a little more in-depth on how the war on Antrimar was fought. Being a hive world, that means lots of sieges (as I've already explained), and that means lots of Land Raiders and Vindicators. Since I've already established that the first machine spirits to rebel were the Land Raiders... well, suffice to say the tanks themselves were used as the weapons of war that dealt some of most greivous casualty-counts to the civilians. This way, its the machine spirits themselves that did the killing at the behest of the Lion Warriors, and thus they are the ones most rightly pissed off.

 

Make sense? Good idea, or bad?

[Vermis]

Not sure how much unwanted necromancy this is, but I've been thinking about painting up a few Lion Warriors for Epic as well as 40K and I like what I see here. 'No tanks' in Epic sounds synonymous with 'death', but I guess that wouldn't be out of character. Could easily tweak the White Scars list from Fanatic magazine too.

 

A few questions:

 

Did you ever resolve the issue of the chapter's spacecraft?

 

Do you think it's likely that aircraft and titans would fight alongside the Lion Warriors? As long as the LWs aren't inside that vehicles, I'd guess. How would the human elements of the Navy and Titan Legions feel about it?

 

What about landspeeders? Do they count as slightly dim, like bikes and jumppacks, or did they throw their lot in with the tanks?

 

Are terminators really 'too slow', with the ability to teleport in?

 

Given the themes of the Cursed Founding and dour scots, do you think there's any call for a character who regularly moans "We're doomed! Dooomed!"