General Discussion Secundus

[bluntblade]

My ability to write might be hampered somewhat. My tablet's new update disagreed with it. Shouldn't take more than two weeks to sort, but the stuff I'm working on right now won't be able to advance for a while.

 

We should probably emphasise that several Legions, especially the Lions and Scions, will be operating as Clans, Battalions and so on.

[MikhalLeNoir]

Concentrate on a few legions and campaigns amd make them deeper. And cut it in half. It doesn't need to have to be as thick as the first one. I personally prefer in depth campaigns as a too thin stretched oversight over to many battles.

 

 

I think that would also help you too.

Edited February 19, 2017 by MikhalLeNoir

[Sigismund229]

Concentrate on a few legions and campaigns amd make them deeper. And cut it in half. It doesn't need to have to be as thick as the first one. I personally prefer in depth campaigns as a too thin stretched oversight over to many battles.

 

 

I think that would also help you too.

Trouble woth that is that we'd need to split Expansion into 3 books, one for the Eastern Fringe, one for the Malestrom campaigns and one for the battle of the Forge&'serker-GS offensove in the north. 10 books is ambitious, 12 is getting into the realms of fantasy as to what we can accomplish. To put it in perspective, book 1 has taken nearly 2 years and is still tying sim down. Now blunt's pad has packed up and there's limits to what I can accomplish on my own whilst still shouldering the other bits of the project I'm part of, let alone provide feedback for others(I'm doing badly enough there as is).

 

Now if we were paid proffessionals like FW, then it would be different. But we all have day jobs, or of you're like me, school that eat away at our "working" time. So, bearing in mind that we aren't miracle workers, let's keep it open. Let's work on the assumption that Expansion will be one book. If we overwrite, then we can consider splitting it into multiple books. Don't forget that we need art too and Drak is already thinly stretched

 

Also, a part is 6000 words. You'd be surprised at how much you can cram into that ;)

Edited February 19, 2017 by Sigismund229

[MikhalLeNoir]

Then maybe just concentrate first on the eastern fringe and see how much you can get. So instead of writing a part for this and a part for thst maybe just focus. And then we can still decide: wow. Thst job is great. Let it be a book. So we can release more books instead of one really big. I don't want you to write more and more. No I suvgest to split the book in 3 parts and release them as thinner versions. So all the books are the expansion Trilogy but we can throw them out at a faster rate.

 

And maybe the legion who are in the book can provide writing too. Or ask kelborn. He is a good writer and may add a few parts if giving a summary what exactly happens. I can provide material by myself but you have to correct it as I am no native speaker

[simison]

Meros was working on the Preface for Book 2. I've sent him a PM, but he disappeared from B&C entirely at some point in November. 

[Sigismund229]

Mikhal. I like the idea, of an expansion trilogy, one for each theatre of Icarion's expansion, centre, east and north. However, I'm still wary. I could postpone the rewriting of Underwater Madness and see how much I can get done for Book 2 and then give an opinion.

 

sim? Do I have the green light to do so?

[Kelborn]

I can have a look if I can be of help for you. ☺ Just need a summary and patience. :P

 

Currently working on the Black Conda tribe and the story about them.

[MikhalLeNoir]

Meros was working on the Preface for Book 2. I've sent him a PM, but he disappeared from B&C entirely at some point in November.

 

Not sure if real life issues caught up to him or not. I pmed him here and on heresy but he does not answer. He might show up again as he was totally in love with the project. However, he was quite young and a girl could have turned him around ^^ damn you slaanesh

 

 

 

@hec: don't postphone. Finish it and then start book 2. So we can finish book 1 earlier (except we are wating because lb and drowned need their masters) a summary and the chapters would not be too bad then we can split the work and help.

Edited February 19, 2017 by MikhalLeNoir

[Sigismund229]

 

Meros was working on the Preface for Book 2. I've sent him a PM, but he disappeared from B&C entirely at some point in November.

 

Not sure if real life issues caught up to him or not. I pmed him here and on heresy but he does not answer. He might show up again as he was totally in love with the project. However, he was quite young and a girl could have turned him around ^^ damn you slaanesh

Don't even get me started on how much a girl can :cuss with your head at our age :P

 

Kelborn: How much are you normally able to write per day/week?

[Kelborn]

Heavily depends on reallife.

Most of the time, I'm writing either at work or when my wife+ son are sleeping.

 

I was able to write about 3 or 4 scenes for my story last week. Ask Mikhal, back when I joined the B&C, I had the time to write down entire IA articles within one or two months. But that was before my wife gave birth to my son. ☺

[MikhalLeNoir]

U could teach your son to write^^.

 

But yeah. Kids cost time. So writers: don't get someone pregnant or this will take forever^^.

[Sigismund229]

U could teach your son to write^^.

 

But yeah. Kids cost time. So writers: don't get someone pregnant or this will take forever^^.

Well there goes my plan for next weekend... :P Edited February 19, 2017 by Sigismund229

[MikhalLeNoir]

Of course you habe then about 40 weeks to finish ALL writing.....hehe

[Sigismund229]

So basically we'd need to give up sleep? Sounds like fun

[MikhalLeNoir]

Imagine your work after hundreds of hours without sleep^^

[Sigismund229]

Imagine your work after hundreds of hours without sleep^^

I'm trying not to

[Sigismund229]

Made a start on the 1st chapter of the 1st part of the fluff detaiking the Eastern Fringe campaign. As you can see, it's too short by far. Any ideas what extra details I could add in?

 

The two legions who Icarion would initially send to fight on the Eastern Fringe were the Drowned and Steel Legion, the grim XVI^th and mechanical XVIII^th. Both possessed traits ideal for such a campaign of annihilation against a fellow legion followed by a rapid conquest: pragmatism, ruthlesness and utter disregard for what others thought of as their honour. On their own, each was a formidable force, the Drowned alone possessing more than twice the number of legionaries commanded by Azus. Together they were a hammer blow designed to shatter Imperial defences on the Eastern Fringe in a single stroke. However, as was often the case in the Insurrection, both legions had their own motivations for wanting to be the Stormlord's iron gauntlet in the East.

 

The Drowned were driven by their own desire to prove themselves superior to their brother legions. They still burned with frustration at their perceived failure on the Day of Revelation and none more so than Sorrowsworn Morro himself. He had come within a hair's breadth of ending Pionius Santor but had been thwarted at the last second and the Scions Hospitalier had remained a significant force among the Warmaster's armies. The Drowned saw this eastern campaign as their chance to set the score straight once and for all. They would destroy the Dune Serpents and kill their primarch or drag him back to Madrigal in chains as a prize and they would not simply grind away at the Dune Serpents through attrition. They would make a show of it, a grand gesture to prove their superiority once and for all.

 

The Steel Legion were also motivated by the chance for spoils. However, they had no great desire to capture Azus. Instead, their gaze was fixed on the forge world of Hephaesta, a well known repository of knowledge found in the eastern campaigns of the Great Crusade and greedily hoarded by the Mechanicum. Of all the legions, the Steel Legion had been the closest to the Mechanicum during the Great Crusade yet still they did not know all of the tech-priests secrets, nor did the tech-priests know all of theirs. In this eastern campaign, the Steel Legion saw a chance to increase their own knowledge of the machine by taking by force what the Mechanicum had been unwilling to volountarily share with them.

 

As ever, the Stormlord had succeeded in choosing those of his legions best motivated for the task which he required of them. They would need every bit of that motivation however, for the plan which they were to enact was ambitious.

 

Icarion's plan for this conquest was a great encirclement of the Eastern Fringe. The Drowned and Steel Legion would cut a path around the Eastern Fringe, seizing warp hubs and ports, cutting it off from the wider Imperium and so from any reinforcements. Then, and only then, were they to swing about and carve their way inwards to the core of the Eastern Fringe. If these worlds were seized then the rest of the Eastern Fringe would surely fall in quick succession, with even the most well supplied worlds being starved into submission in less than a year.

 

The Insurrectionists reasoned that such a threat would force the Dune Serpents to stand and fight. While they undoubtedly preferred to hit and then run, they would have nowhere to run to if the core systems fell, no supply lines to fall back on. Therefore, when the Drowned and Steel Legion closed in on the core worlds, it would leave the Dune Serpents no choice: fight or die. Once pinned to the core systems, their lack of numbers and heavy equipment would be the telling factor and they would be crushed by the strength of either one or both of the legions sent against them. With them would fall the core systems and the rest of the Eastern Fringe with time. The Eastern Fringe would be the Stormlord's within two years.

 

Also, I had an idea for a battle on a gas giant for the Drowned in which they are entirely equipped with volkites for maximum choom value. Currently thinking their foes should be Mechanicum. Any other ideas?

 

EDIT: Maybe loyalist Eagle Warriors?

Edited February 20, 2017 by Sigismund229

[simison]

In the middle of my Tutoring shift. So, I can't focus enough to give good feedback, but here's the link to the podcast: http://age-of-darkness-podcast.blogspot.com/

[TheBlindPrimarch]

I'm good for a little writing too, though i have a two year old son and another on his way in and around July so not too sure how much attention I'll be able to divert to writing but if you have something you need written and can stand my barrage of information seeking questions I'm your guy. (Just don't expect it quickly.)

 

And Mikhal, if you want to do some writing, I'd be happy to edit for you.

on another note...did we ever figure out what was happening with that artist Raktra was talking about?

[simison]

 

on another note...did we ever figure out what was happening with that artist Raktra was talking about?

 

!

 

*glances at Raktra*

[Chief Captain Redd]

As long as it's not bolter porn scenes, I'll gladly write whatever is needed.

[Sigismund229]

Realused we probably need a "Kingdom Divided" part a la HH book 6. So started one with this bit of broad fluff about loyalty during the Insurrection. Want to check it rubs no one's legion the wrong way.

 

Throughout the Insurrection, not even the loyalty of the legions could be trusted, nor could it be predicted. Just because a primarch had sworn his allegiance to the Emperor or the Stormlord, it was far from assured that all or even a clear majority of his sons would do likewise, with many legionaries, especially those who had served on detached duty for many years, choosing to defect and follow a different path. In some cases, these legionaries would defect only to be tortured by guilt over their betrayal of their father and brothers and defect again in order to be reunited with their legion. In a few rare cases, they would later decide to switch their allegiance back to how it originally fell. One example of such a case was the Godslayers 108^th Brotherhood. Scarcely a year after the Day of Revelation they saved a unit of Scions Hospitalier from their destruction at the hands of a combined force of Harbingers and Eagle Warriors over the third moon of Ekra, mercilessly pursuing the Insurrectionists to the edges of the system and inflicting heavy casualties upon them. However, just two short years later the 108^th was spotted again, this time as part of the massed Godslayers assault on Oskis in the latter stages of the fighting in the galactic core, a battle during which they were thought to be broken. Yet they were not and over the next twelve years there would be multiple sightings of the 108^th as part of raids on Insurrectionist supplies alongside legionaries of the Drowned and Predators. They appear to have been broken for good by members of the Steel Legion, as while there are a few scattered sightings of legionaries in their livery they are never in strength, even at the Siege of Madrigal numbering just a few dozen.

 

Rarer still were those legionaries who, while they fought for the opposite side to their primarch, still obeyed their primarch's orders and refused to fight their former legion brothers. Such was the case with the Dune Serpents 97^th and 32^nd companies. Both renounced their allegiance to the Emperor and took part in both assaults towards Terra as well as assaulting refugee ships fleeing the Blood Crusade. However, during the campaigns on the Eastern Fringe there are pict feeds of Dune Serpents from these two companies boarding several Steel Legion strike cruisers. At no other point are they seen fighting against the Insurrectionist so it seems that their loyalty was to their primarch and legion first, the Stormlord second.

 

More common than this were those legionaries whose minds were broken by the sheer magnititude of the betrayal ripping the Imperium apart. Hailing from Loyalist and Insurrectionist legions alike, these broken legionaries seem to have been drawn disproprtionately from the legion's Terran elements. It is known that the Grave Stalkers and Warriors of Peace, the last legions whose primarchs were found, seemed to suffer more from this manner of defection than from changes of loyalty. Two prominent examples of this type of defection were the Sons of Grief and the Scavengers. Both scoured all heraldry, leaving their armour bare metal after the fashion of the early founding of the legions in the late years of the Great Crusade and sought whatever death their broken minds drove them to search for.

 

The Sons of Grief seem to have hailed predominantly from the III^rd legion's remaining Terrans. Led by a dreadnought, Venerable Leif, they fought across the northern Imperium, venting their grief at the destruction of their life's work on loyalist and traitor alike. They were finally destroyed by the Iron Bears nine years into the Insurrection on Kranath, near the Three Fires sector, their last vox transmission reading We fought. We lost. Now we rest. Thank you brothers.

 

The Scavengers were another such group active near the Maelstrom, seemingly composed of a mix of Void Eagles and Grave Stalkers. By the time of their destruction at the hands of the Harbingers, there was little left of whatever they had once been. Grief and rage obscured all else to the point that many could not remember their own names and had become more beast than legionary, beasts which needed to be put down for their own good. In the years before their destruction, they had attacked nearly every legion they ever encountered and laid waste to any civilian shipping they could, seemingly believing themselves to be the only true loyalists left in the galaxy.

 

Such tales of loyalty from sons of traitor legions or traitor sons of loyalists are more common than any know or will admit. Amidst the chaos and confusion of the Insurrection, there are hundreds of tales that went unrecorded by witnessess and whos participants did not live to see the end of those dark days. Not even pict evidence can be entirely relied upon. Sometimes units used fake heraldry in order to confuse the enemy or infiltrate into his ranks. However, more common is the simple reason that over the course of the Insurrection many units were destroyed and reformed several times as legions took losses and rebuilt(the Berserkers of Uran 112^th company was founded no less than eight times over the course of the Insurrection, the Warbringers 27^th March and Halycon Wardens 9^th company five times, although these are exceptional cases). Therefore, survivors of the original unit might be part of an ad hoc unit and still bearing their original heraldry while the official refounded unit was elsewhere, giving the impression that some units were deployed to several warzones at the same time when in fact it was members of different iterations of the same unit, sometimes fighting on different sides of the Insurrection.

I'll weave all the fluff sections I'm writing tigether later, when I have a broader overview of what I"ve written

 

Redd&theBlindPrimarch. Two questions. How much do you think you can feasibly write? Anything you particularly feel like writing?

Edited February 20, 2017 by Sigismund229

[simison]

Finished shift, finished podcast. No shout-out. I am disappoint, although enlightened. I didn't realize unicorns were a thing in the early days of the Lightning Bearer project.

[TheBlindPrimarch]

I could write you books Sigi, but I won't as I do have other things I'm working on, namely my own legion and the two(three?) other stories I'm currently writing for the BotL. Given a clear picture of what you want and as long as the information I seek is readily available I can usually put together a decently long short story pretty quick. I'm working on a three book trilogy so a story lasting a couple pages is nothing.

 

And as far as what I would like to write...I don't care, whatever you need. For projects like this I work better(and faster) if you give me a clear picture of what you want to see instead of giving me free reign to come up with something completely on my own. I can come up with characters, plot...stuff like that but you need to give me guild-lines. For example, say you wanted me to write a big battle. These would be the questions I asked you:

 

-Who vs Who?

--OK, now give me information on both sides so I have something to work with.

-Where?

--Describe the place.

-What do you want to have happen?

--Give me a rough idea, just enough so i have a direction to go with the story.

 

In other word, I look as this as a contracted writing assignment, and even though I'm not getting paid for my time, It's your story, these Legions aren't my babies, they're yours; this group's. I'm just writing it for you.

Edited February 20, 2017 by TheBlindPrimarch

[MikhalLeNoir]

As long as it's not bolter porn scenes, I'll gladly write whatever is needed.

And now i try tomfigure out what space marine porn would look like....thx man.

 

 

Sig, maybe ooen a new thread and go down on the actors, the places etc of the eastern fringe campaigns. A good thing would be to jave loyalist versions of those legions we established i. The prior booms or those who will be in this book. So we habe already legion rules and we just have to add chars or maybe a special unit. That would save us work in the crunch.

 

 

@blind: reminds me that i wanted to overhaul the story you edited. Make it more kidsfriendly^^

Edited February 20, 2017 by MikhalLeNoir