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[Grim Portent]

Blanks are hard to find despite the large population of the Imperium, they usually get smothered in their cribs by their own parents because they're so unsettling. It's rare for one to survive to adulthood, let alone long enough to be found by anyone who can train them into anything useful.

If memory serves the capital world of the Calixis Sector has 500,000,000,000 people living on it, which means at 1 in a million or so for blanks it should have 500,000 blanks on it, but we know blanks of the various grades are supposed to be massively rare, so it stands to reason most of those 500k died young leaving just a few to be found.

Similar matter with true psykers at 1 in 100,000, if they didn't usually drop dead the first time their powers manifested they'd form a much greater chunk of Imperial society than they do. You'd be able to field entire regiments of potent psykers if they were that common in practice.

There are mechanicus dudes, who banish demons by spouting ancient  memes in binary at demons and demonic software.

I knew about blanks, but this?  Wow.  The Omnissiah protects.

The Techxorcists (the RPGs loved to give their alternate ranks for Tech-Priests pun based names) as I recall them being called are basically just a rare branch of the Mechanicus specializing in purging scrapcode and other mild chaos taints from machines. They have a sanctified version of the interface units used by normal tech priests to commune with machinery that stop scrapcode and other machine curses from passing into their own body when they link to begin purging. The purging itself is basically a ritualized form of anti-virus software.

They were an alternate rank for Tech-Priests from one of the DH supplements, I think it was the Ordo Malleus supplement that had Grey Knights in it. Daemonhunters I think. The rank had some bonuses to interacting with chaos tainted tech and got better and earlier access to the lores regarding daemons and heresy. Wasn't much good at fighting actual daemons, possibly worse than a normal Tech-Priest because of lost access to their normal upgrades. I'd rather have a Secutor who can just rip the daemon's head off with his servo arms while hip firing an autocannon than a Techxorcist myself.

[GiglameshDespair]

Blanks happening once in a million might be not that hard to find, if we consider ammount of worlds and population imperium has.

I thought it was rarer - more one in a billion than million. Blanks are rarer than psykers by a huge amount, and psykers aren't common, either.

You have to find them, first, as well. Weaker blanks can just seem pretty unlikeable for some reason, so it'd be uncommon for them to come to notice.
For really strong blanks, though, I think a lot of them are just killed at birth due to their unnatural aura.

That said, there's been at least three organisations of blanks I can think of off the top of my head.
The Sisters of Silence, the Culexus Clade, and the Distaff from the Eisenhorn novels.

[My Name is Immaterial]

Eisenhorn's distaff (a "school" for blanks) was a fairly large organization before Pontius Glaw had them all killed. AFAIK finding recruits for the distaff was not a top priority for Eisenhorn. If some group made it priority #1 (gather them up in the same way the black ships gather psykers) you could probably staff whole armies with nothing but blanks given the size of the imperium.

Wasn't that just what happened with the Sisters of Silence?

[milo christiansen]

There is a simple solution to the "killed young" problem: A large reward.

If an obviously official organization offers a large no-questions-asked reward for "odd" children (blanks or psykers) they would be viewed as a payday rather than an unnatural abomination. Random "odd" children that aren't actually gifted could just be fed into orphanages to be raised a guard cannon fodder or whatever.

Obviously this would require an organization willing to take the long view, and willing to host a presence on many, many worlds.

Testing for blanks is easy, you just need a psyker.

Ninja: I don't really know much about the Sisters of Silence, you may be right...

[sprinkled chariot]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwE24fwZAOQ


May this turn out to be good, dont turn eternal crusade, plz

[nenjin]

To me pulling off Armor of Contempt means you're not a normal, garden-variety human. Normal humans can pull it off sure, but it comes from a deep well of willpower and belief in the God Emperor. That, despite popular belief, does not describe the vast majority of Imperial citizens. Billions may believe in the God Emperor but that doesn't mean they believe in him strongly enough or in totality to ward their soul against Chaos.

Anyways, humans win against Daemons the way they always do: overwhelming numbers.

If an obviously official organization offers a large no-questions-asked reward for "odd" children (blanks or psykers) they would be viewed as a payday rather than an unnatural abomination.

1. It'd be like looking at a nuclear bomb that could go off at any minute as a payday. It's hard to monetize something comfortably when you're terrified it will kill you/rend your soul.

2. Psykers are considered by part of the Imperial Tithe. You owe the Imperium your psykers in exchange for its protection (and it's for your own good.) The Black Ships aren't going to pay Imperial Worlds for their psykers when they have a total license to go and get them anyways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwE24fwZAOQ


May this turn out to be good, dont turn eternal crusade, plz

It's being made by the same guys who did Van Helsing (IIRC.) The aRPG 2.5d game they cranked out two versions of in two years. So I'm not super hopeful for it, but I'm willing to keep tabs on it. (Unlike Eternal Crusade.)

edit

They're going on and on about tile-based randomly generated levels like no one has ever done this before. I see signs of Diablo 3's ideas about what "content that won't bore you" there, like Kill X Creatures daily objectives and missions and shit.

Basically, this looks like Diablo 3 with an online meta-story component, which I don't feel like they've really revealed at all, other than to say it will be there. "There will be stories and stuff that change based on how players decide to do things!" Because it's not like we've been sold ideas like that before that turned out to be weak.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The people of the Imperium are ignorant and superstitious to a fault. No reward would preserve psyker and blank children from being killed as witches. Blanks are even worse, really. A psyker can hide that they're not a real person as long as their power doesn't overflow, but a blank? You can just look at one and know inherently that they're a talking corpse, a disgusting inanimate thing that moves despite being a violation of all sense.

Only the very desperate or very foolish would suffer such a pale imitation of a child.

[Kot]

The people of the Imperium are ignorant and superstitious to a fault. No reward would preserve psyker and blank children from being killed as witches. Blanks are even worse, really. A psyker can hide that they're not a real person as long as their power doesn't overflow, but a blank? You can just look at one and know inherently that they're a talking corpse, a disgusting inanimate thing that moves despite being a violation of all sense.

A reward would. Just say you're hunting witches and offer rewards for delivering them alive for interrogation. Sure, you would get some dead guys and various bullshitery, but in the end you would end up with quite a lot of Psykers.

Only the very desperate or very foolish would suffer such a pale imitation of a child.

Blanks AREN'T that bad for most people. They're unsettling, sure, but more in the sense of "not having any friends while growing up, parents hating them and so on". After all, quite a lot blanks survive until adulthood at least.

[nenjin]

I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong with triggering pre-teen psykers.

[Rolan7]

Unless CAN A DA gets involved...

[pisskop]

terra is still an amalgamation of nation-states fighting each other, wasteland tracts, hive cities, and Es palace, right?


i kinda want to see a game where you play as head of a terran state trying to get powah, competing with other states and raiders and the palace

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Nope, Terra is one giant world-sprawling hive with no oceans and very little atmosphere. The Imperial Palace covers most of Europe, and the Astronomicon is built in the hollowed out Himalayan mountains.

Pre-Unification Terra was a bunch of warring barbarian nations and wasteland, no hives.

[My Name is Immaterial]

Pre-Unification Terra was a bunch of warring barbarian nations and wasteland, no hives.

And Thunder Warriors! *intense guitar riffs in the background*

[Digital Hellhound]

Pre-Unification Terra was a bunch of warring barbarian nations and wasteland, no hives.

And Thunder Warriors! *intense guitar riffs in the background*

Is the magazine coming out of the barrel? And what's holding that sword on, willpower?

I love John Blanche's art, though. I'd love to see the HH covers in his style.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

In fairness, the round is a rocket, not a bullet. You don't strictly need to keep the chamber design.

One thing I'm noticing about this image is that it seems to have a bunch of references to the later Legions. Hair is simultaneously very White Scars and like Abaddon's. Scale loincloth is Salamanders. Giant pelt is Space Wolves. That gem on the chestplate looks a lot like the Blood Angels emblem. Golden color of the Imperial Fists. I wonder if that's all intentional.