IL XVI - The Drowned

[bluntblade]

i quite like the take we've arrived at. Pionus being irretrievably injured (Curze manages to heal from his mauling by the Lion) speaks to the terrible power of daemon Morro, and like Daer'dd and K'awil's deaths, it signifies a threshold being passed.

 

Also fluff:

 

+++++

 

Idiosyncratic to the point of never acknowledging their given name, that the Drowned turned traitor can seem inevitable in hindsight. Much of this might be attributed to the influence of the wars that the XVIth were called upon to fight, gruelling and with little promise of glory. Yet in records sequestered from the public eye, we can see that the Drowned were infected early by the corruption which would drag down so many of the Insurrectionists, yoked to the darkness by their sinister Primarch.

 

Sons of the Last Seas

The XVIth Legion was raised from a scattering of cities across Terra, all located by those few bodies of free-standing water that remained above or below the surface. In many of these enclaves, water became a defensive weapon in its own right, the inhabitants withdrawing to the depths when enemies drew near and luring the invaders to their doom. The Emperor saw in their resilience and adaptability traits he would find amply useful in his chosen warriors. Thus when the XVIth began their tale in the final years of the Unification Wars it was with an unusual operation.

 

The target was the domain of the ancient Jialter. Its ruler, Klawford, was an inspired scientist exiled from Mars who had set his labour-machines and slaves to erecting three vast dams around his fortress, diverting dozens of rivers and swallowing up lakes to eventually control several hundred square kilometres. The Emperor was concerned that the waters themselves might be used against his armies in a conventional attack, costing him not only valuable soldiers but also much of the archeotech Klawford’s forces possessed. So when Klawford returned only a single living envoy clad in the skins of his fellows, the Emperor turned to the XVIth and bade them devise a means to strike at Klawford through his most prized assets.

 

The Legion, numbering roughly 4,000 at this time, deployed as individual squads into the underground channels that fed the reservoirs, using heavily modified tunnelling machines similar to those deployed in the Tempest Galleries campaign. Although contact with such vast weights of water would spell doom for many of the craft, over four-fifths of the Astartes survived to emerge into the water. They did not go unchallenged, for Klawford had created servitors of fiendish shape to guard his reservoirs, but he had woefully underestimated the power of the Space Marines and as dusk fell they rose from the water. Within nine hours of commencing their mission, the XVIth had captured each dam’s control stations, turning the surface-to-air defences on the craft sent to drive them away and destroy and dams.

 

Klawford’s unassailable defence was revealed as a crippling weakness, but his armies remained formidable, and the Emperor’s warriors died in their hundreds against his swarms of machines, augmented mutants and clone-soldiers. Dozens more were lost fending off further attempts to wreck the dams and lay waste to the lands which Klawford ruled. For the entire night, the cannon-forested tops of the dams were silhouetted by the lights of conflict. Yet when the dawn came, it illuminated the Raptora raised over Klawford’s fortress. The remaining 2,000 Legionaries received the Emperor here, and delivered into his hands the captured warlord. Little is known of Klawford’s fate, but rumour has it that he and a few other Martian renegades were later delivered into Kelbor-Hal’s custody, to be dealt with as the Fabricator-General saw fit.

[Sigismund229]

Actually, did the rewrite of Untara ever get done?

[bluntblade]

Been placed on the back burner while all the Legions get up to speed. I've said I'd tackle it, so maybe after the Book 1 Legions are done I'll jump on that. Actually Sigi, there's been lots written about the Lions but do they have all the usual Book fluff yet?

[Sigismund229]

Been placed on the back burner while all the Legions get up to speed. I've said I'd tackle it, so maybe after the Book 1 Legions are done I'll jump on that. Actually Sigi, there's been lots written about the Lions but do they have all the usual Book fluff yet?

Eh...kind of? They do but I'm not really happy with a lot of it, so going over and rewriting it as well as making adjustments to their fluff to fix mistakes made by my 15 and 16 year old self has been on the agenda for a while but it's always been put on a back burner in favour of writing fluff for legions whose books are more imminent, like the IB, SL, GS etc. and writing book fluff.

[bluntblade]

Fair enough

[bluntblade]

I'm wondering, is there a good reason for Morro not to get an augmetic hand? Cut-my-nose-off petulance doesn't seem right for a Primarch, and I was thinking his efforts to get a good-as-old biological one might be extra thing to nudge him into genetic experiments.

[MikhalLeNoir]

It was because of the cut itself. The wound rots and he tried to attsch an artificial hand if i got it right but it never attached. Damn hrud technique

[simison]

Wasn't it Gwal who made the cut?

[MikhalLeNoir]

And in his tonfa grandfsther is a hrud crystal implemented. It lets things age 10000000 years per second.

 

Nasty little weapon Daer'dd had created for his "older" brothers

Edited September 13, 2017 by MikhalLeNoir

[bluntblade]

Surely that's not a weapon Gwal, of all people, would have on him in a friendly chess match scenario?

[MikhalLeNoir]

They are also his parade weapons. They are presents from his brother. So why he had them with him remains a secret. Mayne someone foresaw something

[bluntblade]

Ehhh... that seems like an awful lot of justification for something that doesn't seem all that necessary. Isn't it enough for Morro to take a wound, despise having to wear the augmetic and be reminded of his weakness? The whole Hrud thing is a bit suspect to me as is.

[MikhalLeNoir]

It is Hesh story. The hrud thing was always the tonfa daer'dd had created. Or one of those.

 

I wanted to cut of hesh arm he needed a reason for rakarth to implanth him with the larvae. Oh Gwal, you had this device on your character. How about cutting morros arm of with it? Then i have a never healing wound which i can use to justify the larvae rakarth injected into my primarch and they will be my primarchs downfall.

 

Not my story.

 

Of course Gwal could jave used anything and as we know Morros body is not full fledged primarchy and a cit of arm could very well make problems to heal and an augmented arm could e rejected by the body like it sometimes happen with transplanted.organs

[bluntblade]

Why isn't Morro's body properly "Primarchy"? I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be, and we have no guarantee that a regular Primarch could regain lost limbs. Morro's bitterness + an augmetic will probably be enough, and not risk head-scratching from our readers.

[MikhalLeNoir]

That you have to ask hesh. If you read back the thread it is often emntioned that morro was compared to his bros weaker and not fully developed and so he wanted to be better..hesh had three phases in mind. Normal morro, larvae morro and giganto morro.

 

He didn't want the augmented hand. Nothing worked so he seekd the help of urien raksrth.who imllanted those larvae and were.the first.step into ruin.

 

Not sure if the augmented hand stsys true to hesh vision. He plotted everything out and I can only repeat his plot. Maybe he wanted to distsnce homself from stsr wars? Or he never had the idea.of the hand ( i think he had and the paet was.rejected ny his body)

 

But you have to ask hesh. Not me^^ change things-> hesh

Remember the plot -> ask me. I might remember.

[Kelborn]

Found somethin' for ya, lads.

 

Hesh's describtion of Morro as of 2015:

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/314610-primarch-lookalike/?p=4193560

 

Hesh's describtion of Morro as of 2016 (which is basically the same but with additional pictures and references):

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/312574-brotherhood-of-the-lost-the-drowned/?p=4440400

[bluntblade]

Had an idea for a rumour which gets attached to Morro. That he didn't learn language from people, but through the Omophagia or whatever it's called, as he preyed on the humans of Styx

[Kelborn]

I'm not sure about that.

Curze did hunt upon the people of Nostramo and learned the language by himself.

 

Perturabo could already articulate himself and had an intimidating / suppressing tone when being found on Olympia by the people of Lochos.

 

I can only think of Russ and Johnson who could not speak with humans due to being grown up in the wilderness of their homeworlds.

 

But I assume that all Primarchs (even Russ and Johnson) were able to speak due to their superior intellect.

 

Perturabo even knew about stellar constellations and other specific stuff like composition of stone, etc. while climbing the mountain on which he crash landed.

Edited September 18, 2017 by Kelborn

[Sigismund229]

Actually Curze did hunt and eat the people of Nostramo ;) although that doesn't seem to have been the cause of his ability to speak Nostraman. Like all primarchs, it seems like he just could like when Corax comes out of his pod and seems immediately to be able to speak whatever they speak on Delivarence.

 

Although, I'd be tempted to shy away from that because we already have K'awil hunting his home world's people except that unlike Curze, K'awil does it for the sheer joy rather than out of any noble ideals of justice.

[MikhalLeNoir]

Didn't Morro lived in an orphanage? I recall having books found in his old birned orphanage which he wrote. ( could be fluff from far in the past)

[simison]

That's really old fluff because Hesh did approve of my new version where Morro was living out in the wilderness before Hesh disappeared again.

 

Regarding the earlier debate about the nature of Morro's wound, all I'm going to say is that Hesh is back to being Missing again. So, while he still retains the right to retroactively approve or disapprove fluff, the Drowned and Morro are now open to outsiders' writing fluff as they see it.

[bluntblade]

I think we gave up the orphanage thing. The fluff Sim gave me to work with was Morro making first contact with the cities as an adult.

 

Plus Morro's not hunting people so much as killing whatever poses a potential threat to him.

[MikhalLeNoir]

Oh...i liked his snippets of lyric. But maybe he wrote them later..

 

Missing again? This Hesh...

 

Okay. Blunt, what do you want to change?

 

My idea to keep most of the story intact ( larvae->rakarth->dr. Zoidberg) would be, that Morro has 2 blades coated with poison and when he attempts to stab Russ Gwal interferes is able to snatch one bladee from morros grip and as morro still attacks he has no choice and cuts his arm off.

 

The poison would be the reason for the never healing woind and we can follow the larvae-> rakarth path.

 

But we can leave the poison and Morro attaches a bionic hand bit views it as inferior than flesh ( cool contrast to the iron hands by the way) and follows the gene way to create a substitute. Would Rakarth still ne a thing or not?

Edited September 18, 2017 by MikhalLeNoir

[bluntblade]

I don't see a need for the blade to be poisoned. We can go with amputation not being reversible for a Primarch. Larvae still works, though, but I'm going to be wuite sparse with the details.

[MikhalLeNoir]

The poison would have served to a) let the wo und rot and make papa nurgle happy ( too sad morro falls for slaaneesh) and b.) showed that morro planned to kill russ.

 

@sim: is his look, especislly the armor now also open? Bad some ideas in contrast to Pionius for a Mord Jules Verne Style Diving Armor

Edited September 18, 2017 by MikhalLeNoir