General Discussion

[Raktra]

Right guys, I have an idea for how my whole "Old Blood" idea for the 'serkers will pan out, but I want approval first, because I don't wanna snowflake. The idea was to have an expedition of Berserkers (with Raktra) head to Prospero after Magnus' whole thing and harvest blood samples, tissue, etc etc from the remains of the mutants and such there. Whilst this was happening, a skirmish between various Gods' daemons breaks out, until eventually the incursion is entirely Khornate, with An'ggrath at their head. Massacring goes on, horrible daemony things, Raktra kills An'ggrath, Khorne is pleased that his chosen mortal passed his test. This could also explain what happened to the legion's librarius. Basically like Lorgar's little venture into the Warp in Aurellian. The blood gets used in experiments which gives us the altered/mutant 'serkers as I mentioned awhile back, and Raktra loses his eye to the Bloodthirster like in his art. BUT THEEEEEN, to tie into the Prosecution, the Berserker that accuses the Serpent of sedition etc. is one of the future loyalists who has been convinced that the loss of the legion's psykers and other such things was the Serpents' doing, rather than daemons.

So, the question is - would this be appropriate? Am I handing too much special sauce to my legion/primarch by doing this? Criticise, advise, comment.

[Slips]

Hmmm.

 

The Premise is fine: A potential champion of Khorne being lead to, unbeknownst to him, a test to see if he is truly worthy and sowing the seeds for future assimilation/worship.

 

However, how would you justify the Zerkers going to the Prospero System in the first place and why would there be any Daemons Around? It doesn't really make sense for a Daemonic incursion to be present at a location where there is no long any mortals around to feed off of.

 

You could, instead, have them find a desolate Planet the color of rust entirely desolate, drawn to it due to a beacon of some kind calling them to it. And upon landing and investigation reveal the planet to being a (unknown to Raktra and the Legion) Daemon Planet dedicated to Khorne but set into Permanent Stasis with some very powerful Dark Age era Tech.

 

They find some cryptic messages whose meaning had been warped over the millenia by the presence of those trapped in the vast stasis vaults and once they turn off/destroy the stasis generator(s), a Localized Warp Storm occurs in the planetary system which, due to its Khornate Nature, outright kills a few of the Librarians and, over the course of the insanely intense combats, results in all of them dying through pretty much any and all possible means: Warp Shenanigans, Daemonic Soul-Eating, Protecting the Primarch, Catching a sword with their Ribcage, etc.

 

And with all this BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! Shenanigans occurring on a Planetary Scale a warp rift opens and a Super-Khornate Daemon of your choice appears to promptly then get their butt handed to them by Raktra.

 

Its still a rather special Scenario for the 'Zerkers but it, at least to me, doesn't end up feeling quite possibly as Hamfisted as them stumbling upon the remnants of the Thousand Sons implosion/demise/whatever and there being "SUDDENLY DAEMONS FIGHTING EACHOTHER".

 

And since they encounter literally a planets worth of Berzerkers who were more than a match for them....

[Big Bad Squig]

In fairness, Raktra, I've got space zombies, so I think anything you do now is entirely within the realm of plausibility ;)

 

On the subject of Dune Serpents, do we want the Serpent accused of sedition to be a loyalist or one of the few traitors that defect to the eagle warriors? Just to flesh out the idea of Raktra's deluded 'Zerker:

 

If the serpent is a traitor (turned early on by colleagues in the Eagle Warriors Legion, he could have been present on Prosperous/insert daemonworldhere and set in motion the daemon incursion in an Erebusy fashion. If he was spotted, this would give the 'Zerkers reason to believe that the whole thing was the XIV's doing (cemented by the Serpents' views on gene alteration). If, on the other hand, the accused serpent is a loyalist, he could have been part of a small expedition to Prospero to scavenge whatever they could. The fleet then encounters the Berserkers harvesting blood and tissue samples, which causes the aforementioned serpent to challenge the Berserkers' senior officer. The confrontation is serious enough that the Berserker has reason to believe that the events on the later encountered daemon world were engineered by the XIV out of spite.

Edited January 15, 2016 by Big Bad Squig

[Skalpynock]

Scouring Prospero for the blood of those who fell? Looks like I've preceded you here. Not that I am any averse to your idea. Tumor-shield-guy is who I visualise when talking about the Flesh-change.

[Grifftofer]

Honestly my thoughts were more along the lines of: Poor An'ggrath. I mean, he just gets his ass handed to him by everyone doesn't he? :P

[Nomus Sardauk]

Wouldn't Ka'bahanda (I can never remember how to spell that) be a more time-appropriate choice than An'ggrath? I know the passage of time doesn't really mean anything in the Warp but wasn't An'ggrath created sometime after the Heresy to replace Ka'bahanda as Khorne's favourite due to Kabby constantly getting his ass handed to him? Or maybe you could just crank things up to eleven (does that count as a Lost Legion pun if everyone is a Lost Legion?) and take crazy ol'Skarbrand out for a run?

[Raktra]

I thought Lorgar fought An'ggrath at one point? I'm fine either way, big Bloodthirster is big.

 

I'll reply to the other stuff later, currently sneak-typing this on my phone at work.

[Hesh Kadesh]

Honestly my thoughts were more along the lines of: Poor An'ggrath. I mean, he just gets his ass handed to him by everyone doesn't he? :P

He is basically Worf. He got his ass handed to him by a bloody human on Vraks. He is the new Avatar.

[Slips]

Yeah, at least Ka'Bantha had the distinct honor of getting his ass handed to him by Sanguinius not some random crap mortals :p

[Raktra]

Okay, I'm back. Let's go through this doody.

I forgot you already went there, Skalpy, so I'll have to change tac.

 

So, alternate idea (and some logic behind it):
The psychic asplosion of Magnus happens, someone gets the idea to re-make Akira from it, anime flourishes in the Imperium. Okay, that's a lie. The incident happens, and the warp ripple that it causes makes the psychic "beacon" Slips suggested happen. Possibly in a similar way to Perturabo seeing the Eye all the time, Raktra has this planet's location constantly being burned into his mind? Anyway, they head there, and there's an incredible pressure in the Warp that affects every 'serker present, so the Librarians form a psychic barrier around them.

 

The deal with the planet is that it's basically going to be a time-echo of Uran, showing blurts of the past from prior to the prison complexes being set by the Imperium there. Basically, the reason that it was chosen to be a prison world, aside from its general death-worldy-ness, is because of the "angels" tearing the place to bits keeping spirits low and other daemon crap. So the Berserkers learn this and it's their final push towards joining the insurrectionists.

So, the Berserkers are angry, on a freaky warp-world, and there's a thin veil between here and the warp. So you can guess where I'm going with that. Khorne uses this to rip reality open and send in his forces to test his potentials out. A mix of that and Khorne being Khorne kills the Librarians, and the 'serkers win etc.. Raktra gets an eye ripped out. Everything's hilarious, and Khorne is pleased.

 

Later, the whole thing with harvesting warp-tainted blood happens, but this time it's from the corpses held in the time-echoes etc, hence "Old Blood". Now, thoughts on the modifications?

[Nomus Sardauk]

Hmm, both versions seem a little convoluted to me if I'm honest... If I may, I'd like to suggest a different solution.

 

I don't know if the location of the Berserkers' Fortress-Monastary has been stated before so please forgive my ignorance but consider this; the Berserkers' FM is built atop the foundation of the prison-fortress Raktra was raised in.

As the legion grows larger the FM has to expand to accommodate, leading to excavations under the foundations that uncover the remains of an ancient structure dating back to Uran's tulmultous past, buried and forgotten beneath the prison. When the Berserkers investigate they are assaulted by enemies resembling their old nemeses, the angels of Uran, and in blind panic they quickly re-seal the ruins with explosives but at the cost of a large group of Berserkers being trapped within. An emergency message is sent to Raktra who furiously storms back to Uran determined to annihilate them and take revenge for past humiliations.

 

When Raktra arrives and they re-open the ruin things have changed, the spilt blood of the trapped Berserkers has awoken something within, the angels' forms become clearer & more distinct (possibly Chaos Furies?) and the deeper the Astartes push into the ruins it becomes more evident the ruin is a primitive temple, with hundreds of sarcophagii containing the preserved bodies of wolfman-esque warriors (from where the old blood comes from). At it's heart they find a small warp tear over a bloodstained altar from which the angels are spawning, fighting his way to it, Raktra furiously splits it in twain with the Grinder, causing the tear to snap shut and the angels dissipate.

 

That's when all hell breaks loose. Scant moments after it seemed to shut, the tear explodes open again, but this time nightmares of blood and brass surge out of it, not the angels, with An'ggrath at their head. Raktra duels An'ggrath and shows him what a badass really looks like, losing an eye in the process, but kicking An'ggrath's sorry red rear back through the tear and sealing it for good.

Edited January 17, 2016 by SanguiniusReborn

[Raktra]

You know what? :cuss it, I like that. I know EXACTLY how I could work with that.

[Nomus Sardauk]

You know what? :cuss it, I like that. I know EXACTLY how I could work with that.

Phew! Glad to hear you like my idea, I just thought it would allow the Berserkers to obtain their "old blood" whilst simultaneously enabling the Raktra/An'ggrath throwdown and explaining the Angels' origins, not to mention how they kept popping up on Uran despite being their warp-spawned nature. Not to mention having the Temple ruin situated under the prison could even potentially tie into the beginnings of the Children of Desolation, maybe the group's founder took his inspiration from a dark, fevered dream of ancient savagery, or perhaps he dreamt not of what had already occurred, but of what nightmares were yet to come... ;)

 

Regarding the werewolf-esque bodies, I'll admit I kind of added them in at the last minute as I realised I'd almost forgotten to include where the "old blood" came from, in my mind they're warriors transformed by drinking daemon blood in the profane rituals once conducted at the temple. If you think of a better idea then please don't hesitate to change it, it's just all I could think of at the time that was similar to the source of old blood in Bloodbourne.

Edited January 17, 2016 by SanguiniusReborn

[Raktra]

I was gonna do wolfmen anyway! A lot of the mythological side of my lore is inspired by Bloodborne, so they were to feature heavily anyways. Happy coincidence there.

[Nomus Sardauk]

Oh I know you're taking inspiration from Bloodbourne, that's why I made sure to include the werewolf men and the old blood, plus the buried temple is meant to recall the labyrinth of the old great ones hidden under Yharnam in the game.

[Raktra]

Bloody Pthumerians really screwed up my lore theory for that game...

[Sigismund229]

So, I just realised that I probably ought to check a few things about Turrus&co. with you guys as I'm worried that there's a danger of special snowflakeism.

1. I know that Madrigal is located in or near the maelstrom but is it still possible for Turrus and friends to hide out there?

 

2. The way I've written it atm, they rely a lot on a crude form of very unpredictable chaos reliant cloning which sometimes results in a weaker kind of Gal Vorbak and also means most of them are mad. Is this ok?

Edited January 17, 2016 by Sigismund229

[simison]

Sorry for the absence. University started last week, and it was unexpectedly busy. 

 

Sigi, could you remind me what Turrus' story is?

Edited January 17, 2016 by simison

[Sigismund229]

After a mission which went wrong, of which Turrus was the sole survivor, he was found in the wilderness mutturing about "nurgleth". When his sanity returned, he began to show pyschic powers and a gift for genetics. Eventually, he pushed jis ecperiments too far and he and his followers were exiled from the legion.

[simison]

Gotcha. I'd ask Athrawes how well covered the Maelstrom is to see if Turrus could go to hiding in there. As for the watered-down Gal Vorbak, it sounds okay to me, but do we have anyone else who have their own versions of that crew?

[Big Bad Squig]

Some of the corrupted Godslayers were based around Gal Vorbak (in terms of rules), but not too closely really.

[Hesh Kadesh]

Morro's using those who would normally go into Dreadnoughts as vessels for Slaanesh Daemons, as an analogue for Gal Vorbak - this as a result of Rakarth's "abominations" failing, and Be'lakor using Rakarth as the means to his eventual escape from imprisonment (which is a plan to basically, turn all the Chaos Gods against Tzeentch to make him weaker, take the Emperor's soul, and ascend as the 5th Chaos God). But none of them are really "Ooh, daemons, get in mah belly" 

 

I'm still working on a plan for how my guys just turn rather gribbly, and perhaps the Qarith could have something to do with it? I've tried conciously to stay away from that, and I don't want it to be a "McGuffin" which changes him like the Laer Sword did for Fulgrim.

 

I've had a scene in my head where Russ is playing Chess/Wargames with Morro in an effort to rebuilt the relationship, and Russ taking White, Morro taking Black - Russ goes first, as normal, then Morro moves about 7 pieces at once, Russ gets annoyed saying "that's not in the rules, you can't do that", and then Morro making a comment about how life doesn't play by the rules, and to be prepared for that, with a full blown fight ensuing on the Hraknfel, with both Primarch's tearing a chunk out of one another, before being stopped by another player - perhaps Alex, or Icarion. Morro is heavily wounded, after the fight, and he relents to Rakarth's attempts to help him, which is when he starts being grafted with Daemonflesh which is basically one of the big 3 slaanesh daemons (N'Kari, Ingethel, or Zarakynel, not decided yet, although I think Zarakynel is most appropriate) in the Heresy.

[MikhalLeNoir]

Hmmm...

Gwal would like to step in as he doesn't like his brethren fight. But Morro isn't convinced and maybe then Gwal cuts his arm off in Darksiders manner. ;)

[simison]

It'd be nice if Alex successfully managed to stop one bro fight before the Insurrection.

 

Anyway, so we have three different versions of the Vorbak hanging around. I'm fine with this so long as maintain two standards. One, each version needs to be distinct from the others. Obviously, I'm seeing Daemon and Damned rules happening to all of them, but the rest of the sheets could show differences, perhaps highlighting the differences between the various gods of Chaos. Two, none of them should come into existence until after the Emperor has returned to Terra. Preferably a decade or two after that point.

[Raktra]

I can change mine up a lot if needed.