General Discussion Secundus

[bluntblade]

Spoiler alert!

[Sigismund229]

Last written exam done.

[simison]

Last written exam done.

 

Enjoying the freedom?

[Sigismund229]

 

Last written exam done.

 

Enjoying the freedom?

 

Well I've still got three oral exams to do but they're not for another week. So for the minute yes

[Sigismund229]

All that's left to do in Book 1 - Alpha Phase is to finish the last Drowned Exemplary Battle and maybe a couple of tweaks to some Iron Bears' lore, according to Blunt.

 

Once that's taken care of, the project as a whole can move to Book 2 - Alpha.

Are we any further on from this point?

[simison]

 

All that's left to do in Book 1 - Alpha Phase is to finish the last Drowned Exemplary Battle and maybe a couple of tweaks to some Iron Bears' lore, according to Blunt.

 

Once that's taken care of, the project as a whole can move to Book 2 - Alpha.

Are we any further on from this point?

 

 

Unless something else is hiding, all that I see is someone needs to do an editing run of the last exemplary battle. The moment someone else can assure me that it's clean of errors, Book 1 Alpha is done.

[MikhalLeNoir]

So book 1 is for the time being finished then?

[Sigismund229]

 

 

All that's left to do in Book 1 - Alpha Phase is to finish the last Drowned Exemplary Battle and maybe a couple of tweaks to some Iron Bears' lore, according to Blunt.

 

Once that's taken care of, the project as a whole can move to Book 2 - Alpha.

Are we any further on from this point?

 

 

Unless something else is hiding, all that I see is someone needs to do an editing run of the last exemplary battle. The moment someone else can assure me that it's clean of errors, Book 1 Alpha is done.

 

 

The Xantriss Insurrection

 

By the twilight years of the Great Crusade, the Drowned built a nigh-on insurmountable wall of secrecy around their Legion. Few Remembrancers remained with them, finding the lack of Army personnel leeched common humanity from the fleets, and the Drowned’s way of making war offered few opportunities to bear witness to their deeds. To be sure, not all tasks could be done by servitors, but the Legion’s serfs formed their own insular community, and were almost as unwelcoming as their masters. So only a few persisted in their studies of the XVIth, and we can surmise they proved easy to monitor. 

 

It is perhaps for this reason that the Xantriss Insurrection lingers in memory as one of the few recorded battles offering a vague warning of things to come. The actual Insurrection was a relatively straightforward affair. In the last months of 999.M30, Colonel Curze and his regiment, the Megaran 54th Phalanx, the so called “War Hounds”, had abruptly ended all contact with the Imperium a few weeks after securing Compliance on Xantriss.

 

Xantriss was a feral death world, covered in tropical rainforests that was dominated by an inordinate number of predator species. The human population had been reduced to a primitive state by Old Night and lacked the technology to maintain control of the surface and so the Xantriss people had endured by burrowing into the soil, creating elaborate underground cities throughout the millennia. It was from these hidden abodes the natives would hunt and to which they would retreat, eking out a miserable existence until the Imperium's arrival.

 

Although possessing no means to hold off Imperial forces indefinitely, the strategos attached to the War Hounds estimated Compliance would only be achieved after an extended anti-guerrilla campaign. Colonel Curze, having no desire to engage in a long and bloody campaign, decided that a show of force was in order. Locating the largest settlement on Xantriss, the Megaran 54th deployed en masse, specifically targeting local predators and the natives' preferred prey. From there, the carcasses were given to the natives for food and trophies. Awed by the 'sky-people's' might and generosity, the humans of Xantriss devoted themselves to the strangers, raising Curze as a god-king, even as Curze repeated similar incidents around the planet.

 

At first, it seemed Curze had succeeded in a brilliant strategy completing Compliance in weeks instead of years. Had the story ended there, there is little doubt a promotion would've occurred and a rising status among the Imperial war machine. Unfortunately, Curze abandoned the Imperium at this critical juncture. From the few records recovered in the aftermath, it is now clear to history that instead of stopping the natives' ill-placed worship, Curze embraced it and grew arrogant, believing himself answerable to no one, not even the Imperium he had once served. Curze forsook his duty and claimed Xantriss, becoming the god-king the natives called him. 

 

The Imperium would not let this stand. For this gross betrayal, ending the Xantriss Insurrection fell to Morro and the Drowned. Of the battle to come, the void war was the most well-recorded aspect as the remembrancers encountered few restrictions as they did their work. It was after the Drowned had swept away Curze's small fleet that the first of the mysteries would begin. In line with their brutal pragmatism, the Drowned would unleash a six-hour bombardment of the surface, targeting the largest concentrations of the native population and the few surface bases of the Megaran 54th. Yet, the supposed location of the rogue Colonel, who was based in Xantriss' largest subterranean metropolis, was spared completely.

 

Instead, the Drowned launched one of their largest orbital drops from their twin Glorianas, Queen of the Damned and Horrorheart. Since no remembrancer was allowed to be quartered on either ship, no one outside of the Legion witnessed this undertaking except from a distance. Fighting would last two days as the Drowned scoured the tunnel networks of the Megaran 54th and their native allies. Forbidden from the surface, the remembrancers did their best to piece together events from overhearing casualty reports, watching for equipment requests, and monitoring additional deployments to Xantriss. From this hazy web of information, it was discovered that the natives' knowledge of terrain and skill at ambush tactics proved a lethal combination with the Megarans modern equipment even against legionaries. 

 

Expecting nothing less than annihilation from the Drowned, Curze's devoted followers fought with the desperation of a cornered rat. Natives would lure local predators to attack and distract the Drowned before sniping at them from the foliage. Below, the Megarans would fight costly withdrawals before collapsing entire tunnels to bury their adversaries. In turn, the Drowned fought as they always had, giving no quarter. Flamers and other promethium based arms became the Drowned's most used weapons as they burned away the forests and filled tunnels with asphyxiating smoke they were immune to. The final blow would arrive when Morro finally took to the surface to personally enact Curze's execution, smashing through the last of the Megaran's defenses. 

 

A day after the battle’s climatic conclusion, the remembrancers accompanying the fleet were given leave to see the battlefield for themselves. What they found on the surface was a hellish landscape. Promethium strikes still burned and everything seemed to be ash and dust for miles around the landing zones. The Drowned did little to guide the remembrancers as they were busy reaping tallies from the natives to replace casualties. With little apparent oversight, the remembrancers continued their work and would discover more mysteries around the Xantriss Insurrection. 

 

The first of them would be found in one of the capillary tunnels where one remembrancer discovered the remains of an earlier skirmish. The Drowned's infamous practicality often dictates their combat style, with most enemies being dispatched with only a few blows as the Drowned advance. Yet, in this site, native soldiers and members of the 54th were found torn apart and slain with what appeared to be mindless rage. When questioned, a Drowned sergeant explained that a wild predator had managed to slip in and was responsible for the carnage, before forbidding all remembrancers from returning to the site. The explanation, although technically possible, seemed suspect given the Drowned's defensive perimeter.

 

Another mystery came about when several remembrancers investigating the former battlefield were struck by a wave of strong emotions and a sense of 'wrongness'. These incidents only occurred to those who had a natural sensitivity to the Warp and its effects, yet did not possess the strength to be outright psykers. Furthermore, these 'waves' were geographically rooted only to specific areas of the battlefield. Unlike the earlier discovered skirmish site, these areas had already been cleaned of bodies, unusual in and of itself, given the Drowned's disdain for the chore. 

 

Finally, a remembrancer found a strange vial of an unknown substance outside of Curze's final stand, half-buried in the cave wall. Unwilling to share their discovery with the Drowned, the remembrancer hid the vial and had it analysed after rotating to a different Legion. Only then was an apothecary able to explain that the vial contained narcotics, strong enough to affect an astartes, designed to induce a kind of battle frenzy.

 

 

 

Your wish is my demand.

 

So does that mean Underwater Madness and the Madrigal Purge have both been rewritten?

[simison]

I'm not seeing any errors, so I'll submit it to Grifft before the day is over.

 

And, unfortunately not. Alpha Phase is the general history and the legion fluff chapters. The campaign fluff would be Beta Phase.

[simison]

After 1 year, 7 months, 23 days, we have completed the first major book milestone as Insurrection officially completes Alpha Phase. And, to be honest, a lot more work was actually done besides Alpha. We have 7th edition rules for four out of the six Insurrection Legions, a great deal of work has already gone into the campaigns, and this doesn't touch on the progress made in Expansion, Emancipation, and Escalation.

 

(On a side note, how on earth did our first four book titles all start with a vowel?)

 

So, with all of this progress made, I have a question. I've been playing with the idea of publishing a 'preview' of Insurrection. The idea is we create a separate PDF that has only the general history and the Legion fluff chapters. We do one last scan of it to clean any errors, continuity or mechanical, but then we show it everywhere. We let the B&C community and the internet know we are making significant progress in BotL.

 

Of course, it may be wiser to hold our fire for now, until we've crossed a few more milestones. 

 

What do people think?

 

Regardless of that decision, I will now focus my efforts on bringing Expansion across the Alpha finish line. 

[Sigismund229]

After 1 year, 7 months, 23 days, we have completed the first major book milestone as Insurrection officially completes Alpha Phase. And, to be honest, a lot more work was actually done besides Alpha. We have 7th edition rules for four out of the six Insurrection Legions, a great deal of work has already gone into the campaigns, and this doesn't touch on the progress made in Expansion, Emancipation, and Escalation.

 

(On a side note, how on earth did our first four book titles all start with a vowel?)

 

So, with all of this progress made, I have a question. I've been playing with the idea of publishing a 'preview' of Insurrection. The idea is we create a separate PDF that has only the general history and the Legion fluff chapters. We do one last scan of it to clean any errors, continuity or mechanical, but then we show it everywhere. We let the B&C community and the internet know we are making significant progress in BotL.

 

Of course, it may be wiser to hold our fire for now, until we've crossed a few more milestones. 

 

What do people think?

 

Regardless of that decision, I will now focus my efforts on bringing Expansion across the Alpha finish line. 

Anything in particular I should focus on?

[simison]

My next step was to do a complete overview of Expansions' factions and see where we stand there. I'm still waiting on Skal to answer a question for the Morning Stars and the Void Eagles and want to give him time to respond since he is active.

 

House Toho is Kel's, while the Shepherds of Eden are essentially Blunt's.

 

But Squig is MIA, so I'd like it if you could start working on the Dune Serpent Insurgo force (the Gurkani) or get the Dune Serpents rolling. 

 

Finally, I'm not sure where the Steel Legion stands right now, so if San needs help, that could be another front to work on. 

[Slips]

Going to go ahead and ask everyone to read this post here:

 

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/334857-8th-edition-and-the-new-bolter-and-chainsword/?do=findComment&comment=4786753

 

It basically means what you think it means with regards to this project.

[Sigismund229]

XENOS AUXILIA!!!

[simison]

Good gravy, Slips! Nearly gave me a heart attack since I thought we were about to be shut down.

 

Extremely interesting development though. This means I can bring in all my notes on the Munetari here.

[Chief Captain Redd]

Awesome! And I think we should publish a preview, it's pretty gorgeous and even my non 40k Friends were impressed.

[Ace Debonair]

Hope this is the right thread to do this in:

 

I'm just dropping in to say this project is mighty impressive and one heck of an inspiration.

A galaxy full of Lost Legions? Magnificent!

 

Plus the sheer amount of work that is going on here is pretty incredible.

Good stuff, guys!

 

I'm kinda kicking myself that I missed out on joining this party, but given all the emphasis on rules and the like, it's probably for the best.

 

(Plus the whole ocean-world-primarch thing has kinda been done, so I'd have had to come up with another Legion anyway )

[Kelborn]

Thanks, Ace!

 

Tbh, there's still room for new members.

There's a lot left to be covered, so don't hesitate to ask. :)

[Ace Debonair]

...Actually, I've kinda just come up with another idea for a new Lost Legion of my own, so working on that might keep me busy for a little while.
This project has definitely set the bar pretty high, so I'll have a lot of work to do before I'm done with Agrath Blackblood the Envenomed and his Legion.

[Kelborn]

Though I hope that it will not happen again but we were forced to exchange two Legions in the past.

 

Never say never. ;)

 

Keep us posted about your Legion, brother! :tu:

[simison]

Though I hope that it will not happen again but we were forced to exchange two Legions in the past.

 

I'm going to have to clarify on this point, but we will not exchange any more Legions again. We have Legions who could use new managers/creators, but every Legion has been interwoven enough into BotL's lore that we can't replace them. 

 

That said, there is still the post-Legion age which will offer plenty of opportunity to showcase new Chapters/Orders. Or, as I briefly mentioned, if you are willing to take over the reigns for an 'orphaned' Legion, I am willing to facilitate that.

 

Regardless, thank you for stopping by and for the encouragement!

 

To everyone else, I have one vote in favor of the preview. Any other input?

Edited June 19, 2017 by simison

[MikhalLeNoir]

Preview it !!!!

[Sigismund229]

Preview it !!!!

+1

[Raktra]

Preview it.

[Kelborn]

+1