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[Rolepgeek]

No, see, LW

We're gonna build a Waaagh. And it's gonna be a great Waaagh. The Nids will pay for it. I mean, they're sending us their Genestealers, their Lictors, and their Kraken droneships. I'm sure there are some very cool-looking Hive Tyrants among them, but we can't just let them keep sending us those Genesetealers.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And then it will be a never ending contest of attrition and warfare between them on the fringes of the galaxy. Orks are satisfied, since they can always get a good fight, Nids are never satisfied, because they're nids. Both sides are genetically engineered bio-weapons, whether self-engineered or Old One made. Should keep going a long-ass time, and in the meantime, the tech can develop a way to just permanently eradicate both. Eventually. Or get the Necrons to blow up all those stars.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You gotta wonder though - if Slaanesh dies and the Dark Eldar just keep eating souls without Slaanesh to keep nomming their souls down ... what happens?

They explode.

Obviously.

[Cheesecake]

Unrelated to the current topic, but how did aliens such as orks, necrons, and eldar interact with Dark Age of Technology humans? Were people back then (or in the future, from our time) just as xenophobic as the Imperium? Were they kinda like the tau with republics of all races?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Short Answer: Nobody knows.

Long Answer: The exact composition of humanity during those days is long lost to history, but it is believed that before the birth of Slaanesh and the rebellion of the Men of Iron that there existed some form of united interstellar government, brought together through the invention of the Warp Drive and thereafter the invention of the Gellar Field.

This government, this Federation of Planets if you will, expanded across the whole of the galaxy and met xenos both fair and foul. The Eldar, for their part, were retracting their empire into the space that would one day become the Eye of Terror. It is believed now that the Eldar were made to do this either by the subconscious call of Slaanesh through the echos of the warp, or directly through the machinations of fanatical hedonists who grew to control the Empire. Even before Slaanesh, the horrors that the Eldar inflicted on themselves, each other, and the other species of the galaxy defy description. What is known is that some human technology from that Era, specifically the Ark Speranza, was equipped with weapons technology designed to shift the target through time in order to ensure a hit - a form of weaponry rather peculiar given humanity's other overwhelming power but notably one that could negate the single greatest advantage of the Eldar, the ability to see into the futures of their enemies and know what they would do. It is unlikely that the conflicts between human and eldar were particularly large, owing to the Eldar Empire's retractive isolationism, but the attitudes of both species in regards to the rightful rulership of the stars and human expansionism in particular would have resulted in friction.

The Orkoid species has been going through periods of expansion and regression for hundreds of thousands of years, and the Dark Age of Technology was no different. Given humanity's capabilities and their desire to claim the stars, it is certain that they would have fought Orks. As the Eldar, who historically culled the Ork populations, had been giving up their territories and not leaving the mother worlds, it is probable that humanity encountered the Orks at a period in which they were suddenly free to travel the galaxy and fight in ever escalating conflicts. Though no match for Dark Age technology, the Ork Empires may have been far larger than any seen in M42, and more akin to the groupings found during the Great Crusade, the Orks having once again been given chance to prosper by the Age of Strife wiping out human war capacity.

Encounters with the Necrons would have been rare. The Necrons by and large did not begin awakening until later periods, and so the only contact would have been from humans settling Tomb Worlds. As most Tomb Worlds are isolated, lifeless, and hide the Necron presence on them, this would have been rare. It is possible that all Tomb Worlds were originally such, the only exceptions being those that unexpectedly developed lifebearing capacity during the Necron's slumber or perhaps those few worlds that once hosted living Necrontyr. Regardless, as the control mechanisms of the Silent King were still in place during this time, any Dark Age humans would have encountered unthinking homicidal machines if they awakened the Necrons. As even the modern Imperium is capable of stopping Necrons through deployment of two-stage cylonic torpedoes to structurally compromise the Tomb World, it is certain that Dark Age humanity could have dealt with whatever worlds they awoke early, though such battles would have been a sight to behold.

As for the attitude of humanity itself, it is impossible to say with certainty. Some theories suggest that waves of Men of Iron were sent out ahead of humanity into the cosmos to exterminate sapient xenos in order to clear the way for human colonization. Unquestionably, humanity would have encountered a great deal of xenos with whom peace was an impossibility or a meaninglessly low unlikelihood. The presence of the Orks alone shows that. However, counter-examples exist. Humanity and the Eldar did not seek to wipe one another out even if they fought, which might be considered a sort of peace. At least one substantial xenophilic fracture of the Dark Age was found during the Great Crusade known as the Interex, who were coexistant with the Kinebrach and the Megarachnids, though the former were not permitted weapons in peacetime and the latter were confined to their homeworld due to their incompatibility with human values. You may be beginning to see the problem. Most xenos are never going to have the capacity for peace with humans because they do not share the human conception of reality and all that follows, while those few that do will share enough human value that they will also share the desire for dominance. While xenophilic governments are clearly not impossible, even the prototypical example of the Tau shows that one species will inevitably prove dominant over the others. The Interex show this as well, and yes, it may well have been that the Federation practiced xenophilia and spared those species similar enough to humanity that they could be made to kneel before it. So long as practices of legal restriction and cultural genocide were enforced, these multi-species arrangements may even have lasted. Of course, such groups are almost certainly all long extinct by M42, either having been destroyed by the events of the Age of Strife or brought into conflict with their human neighbors, who inevitably triumphed and destroyed them once deprived of a united government.

So, nobody knows.

[Kot]

I think it'd be pretty funny if Tau conquered the galaxy with AI that didn't go full G1AD0S or Skynet, with the warp being so utterly upset by the lack of machine spirit souls, soul souls (beyond bland Tau rice souls) that life goes on relatively normal, with only the occasional warp fuckery. Like Tzeentch trying to do just as planned but the Tau live such glaringly warp-free and peaceful unambitious life without need for hope that no one asks for Tzeentch's help. He becomes a poor hobo chicken with a sign reading "will offer unlimited power in exchange for soul rice pls" but none of the Tau ever take that deal, too busy with their AI waifu virtual reality.

Inb4 Chaos God of Artifical Intelligence

Now the question is, if you managed to get all of these Titan-breakingly powerful psykers in one area without immediately causing a million warp dicks to appear and sacrificed them together - could you make a second Emperor? That seems like something the Emperor would try doing if he wasn't Mr. Bones on his own wild ride

It was more about self-sacrifice and possibly noone except Emperor knows how to do it. It should be also noted that them guys (Shamans) becoming Emperor caused humanity as a whole stop producing psykers for like ten thousand years or more.

So beyond nids (or something bigger than nids), possible other humans or orks? Or old ones

No humans, Old Ones maybeee, lots of Orks, at least in older fluff. In newer fluff it's only Tyranids hate speeches apparently.

[Grim Portent]

You gotta wonder though - if Slaanesh dies and the Dark Eldar just keep eating souls without Slaanesh to keep nomming their souls down ... what happens?

They explode.

Obviously.

Given the effects gorging on pain and souls has on the Dark Eldar at the moment, I suspect they'd gradually become godlike beings if they weren't killed. Without Slaanesh to suck away their souls they'd just keep getting more powerful, shrugging off once mortal wounds, moving faster than even other Eldar can percieve, striking with strength unrivalled and so on. Each one could become akin to a Phoenix Lord (or worse) surrounded by a corona of tormented souls ensnared by the soulthirst of the Eldar.

[sprinkled chariot]

You gotta wonder though - if Slaanesh dies and the Dark Eldar just keep eating souls without Slaanesh to keep nomming their souls down ... what happens?

They explode.

Obviously.

Given the effects gorging on pain and souls has on the Dark Eldar at the moment, I suspect they'd gradually become godlike beings if they weren't killed. Without Slaanesh to suck away their souls they'd just keep getting more powerful, shrugging off once mortal wounds, moving faster than even other Eldar can percieve, striking with strength unrivalled and so on. Each one could become akin to a Phoenix Lord (or worse) surrounded by a corona of tormented souls ensnared by the soulthirst of the Eldar.

But each of them will have other such beings hunting for him, because dark eldar.

[Tack]

Also the older and stronger they get, the worse the efficiency on their hoodoo.
A dark Eldar that powerful would probably have difficulty existing.

[Grim Portent]

If Slaanesh was gone I suspect the efficiency on their soul eating would stay more consistent over time than it is now, since the reason for the inefficiency is that they lose more power to Slaanesh faster as they age. Without being forcibly drained by the Warp they'd only lose their vitality at the same rate Eldar normally do, which is rather slowly, and since they can top it up with pain and suffering they'd become more or less immortal once they pass a certain threshold of power.

They'd basically become like daemons. The more they eat the stronger they become after all, but with the 'soul hole' that Slaanesh feeds on them through gone they'd lose power far slower and stay at high levels of power more easily.

[Loud Whispers]

Spoiler: WORST END (click to show/hide)

Imperial nids

[Egan_BW]

You gotta wonder though - if Slaanesh dies and the Dark Eldar just keep eating souls without Slaanesh to keep nomming their souls down ... what happens?

They explode.

Obviously.

Given the effects gorging on pain and souls has on the Dark Eldar at the moment, I suspect they'd gradually become godlike beings if they weren't killed. Without Slaanesh to suck away their souls they'd just keep getting more powerful, shrugging off once mortal wounds, moving faster than even other Eldar can percieve, striking with strength unrivalled and so on. Each one could become akin to a Phoenix Lord (or worse) surrounded by a corona of tormented souls ensnared by the soulthirst of the Eldar.

But each of them will have other such beings hunting for him, because dark eldar.

THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE.

[nenjin]

Spoiler: Rogue Trader Session 11. "You fucked with the Wrong Ship." "Imperial Decadence." (click to show/hide)

11 sessions. By far the longest contiguous campaign I've run now.

The crew decided to not help the massively over-reproducing, bug-like Xenos creatures. Not surprising really. Vague promises were made to return and help if the Kai-Go could scrape enough worthwhile minerals out of the dirt with their tendrils to make it worth the crew's while. A few Kai-Go tried to hitch a ride on the Gun Cutter on the way back up to the ship but the first mate spotted them, and kept two. One to give to the Techpriest on board, and on to give the Medicae to keep in a bio-regenerative tank.

Their Astropathic Choir picked up a faint distress signal from a nearby star system, and the decided to go check it out. It was really gratifying to hear players say stuff like "They could already be dead by the time we get there" and "It's probably a trap."

They made translation to the Warp and I ran the warp encounter with the Eternal Warrior and surprise surprise, he got owned even when I started cheating like cray cray. I honestly was so busy working on the main encounter I totally forgot I was going to do this so I had to wing it all with vague stats and traits in mind. The entity appeared in the crew's mess hall and when the Captain and other players arrived it asked if the Captain was in charge, then challenged him to a duel. Or tried to, at least. The Captain immediately dove into combat with him before I could even completely issue a challenge, and the rest of the crew promptly said "Well there's no way we're going to let you fight THAT alone" and they all jumped in. The creature was pissed and told them they had no honor and proceeded to fight them. Man, it is HARD to keep stuff alive under the weight of multiple power swords, melta pistols and meltaguns. The Eternal Warrior could easily crank out 25+ damage, AP6, two attacks, multiple parries and dodges, couldn't be ganged up on...still wasn't enough. I gave him an AOE mid fight, I gave him a soul sucking power just to bump him over the 60 wounds he started with......big bad combats in RPGs always kinda get me down because they're so hard to feel like you did well as a GM. But as usual I forgot a lot of things like fear checks and what not.....Still numerically he was outclassed. Even with upwards of 16 total soak...meltaguns.

On the plus side, the players ate it up. I had them genuinely unnerved by the encounter. They got desperate and were going to mind control a random crew member and send him in with a pair of krak grenades in his hands....when I decided to make it metal and the dude willingly sacrificed his life for the ship. He charged in, detonated his krak grenades and promptly vaporized himself (and did 0 damage to the EW.) Then at one point the Captain charged the Eternal Warrior intending on grappling him, and promptly got backhanded 10 feet across the deck in power armor. The fight ended when the bodyguards toting Meltaguns made the scene and focus fired 13 meltaguns at the EW. I really need to do something about melta weapons. Or at least really impress upon my players how they're not designed to be used aboard your own ship. I've said it often enough. Maybe I need to start having fights in parts of the ship where meltaguns can do some real damage, like the Plasma Reactor or Life Support.

Anyways, the sword floated there in front of them after the Eternal Warrior was dispatched. I decided since the fight was so easy to still bait the players a little. The plan was if someone actually dueled the EW and won they had the rights to its armor and weapons, and become cursed as the Eternal Warrior. Since they fought it dishonorably, no one had rights to the soul of the Eternal Warrior....but just in case I left the sword out there for a fool to take it and one almost did. (The slowly-becoming-not-a-noob-roleplayer.) My plan was for it to take his hand off at the wrist if he tried to claim the sword but I gave him enough hints that it'd be a bad idea and there were enough veteran roleplayers around that the Captain finally said "No you can't have it" and it disappeared. Ah well.

All in all it was a fun encounter but I knew how badly he was outnumbered and outclassed, and it's a problem with epic RPG fights that I've never felt good about how they turn out. But as I've gotten older I've lost the need to "win" my encounters so I'm more focused on whether my players bought into it and were excited. I think I had them excited this time.

In the aftermath, the Captain ordered everyone to fast and go to Imperial Sermons (I got so tired of all the discussion about the sword I gave everyone a point of Corruption for standing around it and debating. So the Captain got real religious all the sudden to cleanse himself.) Everyone in the crew got two lashes on their back (in honor of the two krak grenades the crewmen carried to his death in the fight with Eternal Warrior.) The crew refers to them as "The Scars of Muldoon" now. The Captain initially wanted to broadcast pict captures of the fight with the Eternal Warrior and Muldoon's sacrifice all across the ship for the week...but the guy working on the pict recording blew his willpower roll and therefore blew his brains out after staring at what the pict tried to capture of the Eternal Warrior for too long. After that they kiboshed the pict idea and burned the recordings. At the end of the fast week they held a feast across the ship in honor of Muldoon, and will hold one every year called "The Feast of Muldooon." "What does Muldoon feast on? He feasts on glory."

Most of all that came straight from my players, I just embellished it a little. I don't think you get much more grimdark than that.

So we moved on to the real adventure.....they entered a system with no planets surrounded in a huge dust cloud made bright pink by the light of the anomalous star at the system's heart. They found the ship sending the distress signal...it was totally wrecked and had been for years. Damn Astropathic Warp Echoes. What they found next to it was more intriguing though...a space station, or space fortress, styled like a big medieval castle with gold plated walls and all sorts of gaudy finery.

I've been wanting to run this adventure for a while. I always love me some Imperial Decadence. Batshit crazy nobles gone mad with power and privilege.

So basically, a well-to-do Imperial Noble family from the Segmentum Solar eventually produces a morally depraved, lunatic ruler who likes their debauchery and dabbles in the Cold Trade. Eventually they lay their hands on a Xenos artifact with ties to the Warp and Slaanesh (maybe a Yu'Vath artifact) and it drives him over the deep end. He starts slowly migrating his power base out of the Imperium and builds this Castle out in the Koronus Expanse to rule over it like a god. They slip the scene before the Inquisition can catch up them, and have been living for 400 years surrounded by their servants and other families that followed them into self imposed exile.

As you can imagine, things went poorly eventually. The mad noble goes truly mad with power, ruling his domain cruelly and indulging in every savage pleasure a debauched noble in the grip of Slaanesh can think of. Wrecked in body, mind and soul, the noble has themself hardwired into the fortress to serve as its eyes and brain. At one point in their madness they send their servitors and loyal servants on a murderous rampage, depopulating most of the fortress, leaving it mostly empty of living, thinking people. Now all that remains are a handful of hunted survivors, descendants of the former nobles who lived there, legions of robotic servitors from maids to "police" to battle servitors, crazy blade jester servitors, a fucking chariot servitor that wouldn't be out of place in a Colosseum and....I dunno, maybe some more shit I'll think up before next game. And of course, one completely mad, half mechanized noble high on warp dust and courting the favor of Slaanesh.

All that said, I didn't want to make it a super horror show. I want to strike a balance between the themes of faded decadence, destructive madness and then, at the pinnacle, chaos. So I've gone to pains to give the whole thing like an 18th century vibe. I picked out a lot of symphonies to play as background music (aka stuff that is constantly blaring out over vox speakers across the entire fortress 24/7 at max volume), all the servitors are wearing livery and clothes, everything is gold-plated or gold-lined and covered in dust or corpses. I kinda want it to be a little like a detective story as they're walking through the aftermath of the castle's history. I've sort of been dropping hints to the Slaaneshi nature of the castle. The symbol of the house is a rose crossing a crescent moon, the entire system is filled with pink dust (not actually related but thematically it works) and of course, decadent nobility. I hope someone puts the pieces together, that'd make me smile.

I'm not sure on a couple things. Like when or how to introduce the villain, if he should be the witty chatty type or the grotesquely debauched half-human thrall of Chaos type. Part of me wants to make him the kind of villain that talks to them over the Vox, acts friendly and cordial, says crazy shit.....another part of me wants to hold that in reserve as long as possible for the build up. Not sure which way I'll go. I know this will end in combat and I'm trying to decide (based on this most recent big bad conflict) how to make it edgy. I could always just give him a bodyguard of Daemonette's, and I probably will. But as far as he goes....I dunno why but I have this image in my head of a guy basically built into the floor on a sort of rotating throne, while giant gold manipulator claws in the ceiling come down and snip guys in half. It's the kind weird, illogical thing that I think would make the encounter pop (plus power claws hit really fucking hard.) I may also give him vague psychic powers. Something to give the psyker player something to worry about.

I think it takes time for a campaign to really start to cement itself. My PCs always deride NPCs but Ive surrounded them at this point with memorable characters and they're now constantly creating their own narratives and rituals out of what happens. It's taken a while but I'm really pleased with how the campaign has gelled. It's becoming an odyssey, really, which is what I was always going for. I'll be both happy and sad when I run out of reasons or excuses to delay their date with Gromkol.

[stabbymcstabstab]

If you want to limit the use of melta weapons, while fighting on the ship. Just have them fight next to a Gellar Field Generator they'll stop.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Skyslann here might be wanting some company again. The old sort aren't very talkative anymore...

[Radio Controlled]

Thanks for the write-up nenjin, these are always entertaining to read.