The Empire in WH40k

[Connor MacLeod]

In any case, would the Emperor's Flashlight be needed in a galaxy with a tame Warp? I thought a large portion of the purpose was to help ships get around the fact that the Warp in the 40kverse was massively chaos-infested and screwy and hostile. Correct me if I'm wrong, I may well be.

If the link posted in another thread is accurate, I would call the idea of the SW galaxy being 'tame Warp' into question. While not the Hellish realm of WH40k, the descriptions match the Force quite well, and there's been some nasty Force-based troubles in it. It's most likely safe from possessions, but I dunno about blind navigating.

Actually I don't think the Warp and the Force are remotely comparable. For one thing, psychics and telepaths can exist independently of Jedi (Force powers aren't precisely psychic in nature.)

[fgalkin]

Well its more than just money or even manpower. There lots of resource worlds and locales in the SW galaxy they need to build and maintain their technology (tibanna gas for weapons and engines, lommite and zersium and other metals for starship construction, etc.) and i question whether any of them are found in the WH40K universe (some might.. or alternatives might..) Which means that downsizing them is actually worse than one imagines - there are hundreds of billions of stars in the SW galaxy, and while most of them aren't occupied, they also have those resourecs.. so we're talking about a far greater "diminuation" than just 50:1..

And that also creates problems with taxation. If there is only a million or so worlds (or even millions) at the Empire's control, its going to need to give up some of the "populated" worlds/systems in order for resource worlds/systems.. which is going to boost that taxation ratio up even higher.

Aside from the silly quote about neutronium being found on only one world, I doubt any of those things are found on less than fifty planets.

That's nto the point. The point is, consumption of those resources is going to be at least 50x greater (or 50x scarcer.. depending on how you interpret it.)

I think that's better than having most of the GE's worlds have massive contingents of whoever owns them in Wh40k. The GE would have to go to war immediately, and on millions of worlds at once.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Enforcer Talen]

what would happen if the empire built up a task force and attacked the eye of terror? it hasnt been shown warp changes hyperdrive, iirc, so sneaking in shouldnt be too much trouble - and duchess has shown millions of ships can be conjured at will. chaos might be somewhat confused when squadrons of eclipses start opening up in the eye, neh?

and how does centrepoint work? could it turn off stars, and just freeze the chaos worlds?

[Connor MacLeod]

Aside from the silly quote about neutronium being found on only one world, I doubt any of those things are found on less than fifty planets.

That's nto the point. The point is, consumption of those resources is going to be at least 50x greater (or 50x scarcer.. depending on how you interpret it.)

I think that's better than having most of the GE's worlds have massive contingents of whoever owns them in Wh40k. The GE would have to go to war immediately, and on millions of worlds at once.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

I'm not quite sure I'm following you here. Could you please elaborate?

[fgalkin]

That's nto the point. The point is, consumption of those resources is going to be at least 50x greater (or 50x scarcer.. depending on how you interpret it.)

I think that's better than having most of the GE's worlds have massive contingents of whoever owns them in Wh40k. The GE would have to go to war immediately, and on millions of worlds at once.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

I'm not quite sure I'm following you here. Could you please elaborate?

The IoM is a 1 million worlds. The GE is much larger than that. So large, in fact, that it will cover most of the galaxy and encroach on the territory of other species. Since that would make this vs meaningless as, the GE would have no enemies, the fair way to do it is to let the GE have all its worlds, but at the same time, leave the alien populations intact. Unfortunately, that would mean that a lot of Imperial citizens would find themselves living next door to a bunch of Orks.

Now, you may propose to solve this by making the Empire stay in its galaxy and access the Milky Way via wormhole. Unfortunately, that would give massive advantages to it, since it now can attack anyone at will, with no fear of retaliation (all it has to do is hold the wormhole). Besides, the thread is not "the GE vs. the Wh40K galaxy", but whether the the GE could survive in a situation similar to that of the IoM, and includes being under constant attack by everybody else in the galaxy.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[SylasGaunt]

What forms can the taint take? Physical objects seem to be one, but are there others ? Can you be corrupted by touching a "tainted" individual? Breathe the same air as they do?

Well you can just get screwy mentally, you can turn into a raving psycho.. hell you can even turn into a disgusting blob of malleable flesh called a chaos spawn and go around trying to eat things.

And if that tainted individual is a follower of nurgle, most certainly YES (and then we get into fun things like plague zombies).

Sort of a "True faith" sort of effect, in other words.

Yep. In IIRC Malleus there was a scene like that.. with a deranged old religous nutter chasing Cherubael (a summoned daemon prince.. I forget if this is before or after he used up his host) around a bit with an Aquila sign.. of course as I also recall the guy ended up being incinerated by a pissed off daemon.

Of course I'm not entirely sure if that's something Emperor specific or whether true faith in any religion will do.

What sorts of things are harmful to them? Only blessed objects, or are there others?

Blessed objects can do it.. psychicly based weapons like the Force weapons of the Grey Knights can to. Depending on the daemon you can make do with sufficient conventional firepower to (like the huge daemon-thing part of the Death Korp of Krieg took out when a tank commander detonated his own ammunition stores when it was peeling open his vehicle).

Eh.. that might be a violation of the laws of symmetry - if a certain quantity of mass/energy comes from whatever dimension or plane the daemon resides in, an equal amount of mass-energy will be transported to that plane/dimension in question. So arguably for that to work, the daemon is still going to have to suck in some matter/energy from somewhere in order to not violate physics or anything. (although where he might draw it from is certainly open to discussion.)

Daemon's aren't really made of what I'd call 'conventional matter' IIRC.

I don't suppose daemons might be "summoned" by performing ritual sacrifice or something, can they?

Well I figured that.. I'm just trying to figure out how the taint might logically be passed or transferred

Well in one of the Gaunt's Ghosts books they destroy a chaos icon. One of the men gets caught by a couple shards from it and seems fine at first. Later though? Screaming daemon time.

Also in Traitor General it's mentioned that just being on a chaos infected world long enough can do it (imperium troops even had a kind of 'antibiotic' to help deal with it that involved holy water among other things).

[white_rabbit]

chaos might be somewhat confused when squadrons of eclipses start opening up in the eye, neh?

The worst possible move any invader of 40ks galaxy could do is fly into the Eye of Terror.

Where Greater Daemons turn a star cluster in pretty flowers.... And we know that a single Greater Daemon on the outskirts of the Eye can warp into a Warpstorm capable of destroying an Imperial fleet....

Its just a really bad idea.

What forms can the taint take? Physical objects seem to be one, but are there others ? Can you be corrupted by touching a "tainted" individual? Breathe the same air as they do?

You can be corrupted from Light years away, The abomination Teturact used chaotic psykers, dozens at most, to create chaotic infestations on planets in another system. Nurgle types do the same sort of thing.

[Petrosjko]

what would happen if the empire built up a task force and attacked the eye of terror? it hasnt been shown warp changes hyperdrive, iirc, so sneaking in shouldnt be too much trouble - and duchess has shown millions of ships can be conjured at will. chaos might be somewhat confused when squadrons of eclipses start opening up in the eye, neh?

and how does centrepoint work? could it turn off stars, and just freeze the chaos worlds?

I mentioned the former possibility, GE invading the Eye.

The thing is, we don't know that hyperspace works in the Eye, we can't say what operates in there. Reality bends at the whim of the Chaos gods, and it quite likely might be the only place that they could match up directly at the start of the scenario.

[Lost Soal]

what would happen if the empire built up a task force and attacked the eye of terror? it hasnt been shown warp changes hyperdrive, iirc, so sneaking in shouldnt be too much trouble - and duchess has shown millions of ships can be conjured at will. chaos might be somewhat confused when squadrons of eclipses start opening up in the eye, neh?

and how does centrepoint work? could it turn off stars, and just freeze the chaos worlds?

I mentioned the former possibility, GE invading the Eye.

The thing is, we don't know that hyperspace works in the Eye, we can't say what operates in there. Reality bends at the whim of the Chaos gods, and it quite likely might be the only place that they could match up directly at the start of the scenario.

Inside the eye of terror, the laws of physics basically do not exist.
In the novel Eye of Terror, a Bloodthirster grows to such a size that he uses the head of its axe to swat a planet. One swipe would destroy half the attacking fleet, assuming they didn't run the moment they caught sight of it.

[Connor MacLeod]

The IoM is a 1 million worlds. The GE is much larger than that. So large, in fact, that it will cover most of the galaxy and encroach on the territory of other species. Since that would make this vs meaningless as, the GE would have no enemies, the fair way to do it is to let the GE have all its worlds, but at the same time, leave the alien populations intact. Unfortunately, that would mean that a lot of Imperial citizens would find themselves living next door to a bunch of Orks.

Now, you may propose to solve this by making the Empire stay in its galaxy and access the Milky Way via wormhole. Unfortunately, that would give massive advantages to it, since it now can attack anyone at will, with no fear of retaliation (all it has to do is hold the wormhole). Besides, the thread is not "the GE vs. the Wh40K galaxy", but whether the the GE could survive in a situation similar to that of the IoM, and includes being under constant attack by everybody else in the galaxy.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Which is why, as I have previously suggested, it makes sense for there to be more than one womrhole in different locations - possibly enough that the Empire knows of only a handful at best (doesn't mean the 40k side knows much about them either.)

And the corollary is true.. the WH40K side can fortify their end of the wormholes as well.

[Connor MacLeod]

Well you can just get screwy mentally, you can turn into a raving psycho.. hell you can even turn into a disgusting blob of malleable flesh called a chaos spawn and go around trying to eat things.

And if that tainted individual is a follower of nurgle, most certainly YES (and then we get into fun things like plague zombies).

Then it does seem that at least in some if not most cases, there is a physical carrier for whatever the corruption is (if its enchanted, engineered, whatever.)

Yep. In IIRC Malleus there was a scene like that.. with a deranged old religous nutter chasing Cherubael (a summoned daemon prince.. I forget if this is before or after he used up his host) around a bit with an Aquila sign.. of course as I also recall the guy ended up being incinerated by a pissed off daemon.

Of course I'm not entirely sure if that's something Emperor specific or whether true faith in any religion will do.

If its anything like True Faith, it may not even have to be something like an organized religion, just an extreme, sincere belief.

Blessed objects can do it.. psychicly based weapons like the Force weapons of the Grey Knights can to. Depending on the daemon you can make do with sufficient conventional firepower to (like the huge daemon-thing part of the Death Korp of Krieg took out when a tank commander detonated his own ammunition stores when it was peeling open his vehicle).

So in essence they're vulnerable to certain "kinds" of energy/force/matter whatnot, though raw firepower can do it in a pinch if you can manage it.

Daemon's aren't really made of what I'd call 'conventional matter' IIRC.

I don't think that neccesarily matters.. the rules would still apply. Unless they were like some weird force-field 'entity" or something like that.. (IE no physical presence here.. one might speculate their "force" can extend across dimensions or something.)

Well in one of the Gaunt's Ghosts books they destroy a chaos icon. One of the men gets caught by a couple shards from it and seems fine at first. Later though? Screaming daemon time.

I heard about that before I think, thats what lead me to think about a physical 'transfer mechanism'.

Also in Traitor General it's mentioned that just being on a chaos infected world long enough can do it (imperium troops even had a kind of 'antibiotic' to help deal with it that involved holy water among other things).

'antibiotic'? Like an actual medicine or is it some sort of mystical "artifact/potion" thingy?

[Connor MacLeod]

You can be corrupted from Light years away, The abomination Teturact used chaotic psykers, dozens at most, to create chaotic infestations on planets in another system. Nurgle types do the same sort of thing.

So in other words, you drop an infeccted "host" onto a target planet and they infect the rest of the planet.

[Lancer]

no, white_Rabbit just said that they used a few infected psykers to infect a planet in a completely different star system.

[SylasGaunt]

Then it does seem that at least in some if not most cases, there is a physical carrier for whatever the corruption is (if its enchanted, engineered, whatever.)

There can be a physical carrier like a disease sometimes. Exposure to warm energies can do it to though I'm not sure if you'd qualify that as physical.

If its anything like True Faith, it may not even have to be something like an organized religion, just an extreme, sincere belief.

Possibly, but like I said I'm not sure if that's something Emperor specific or not.

So in essence they're vulnerable to certain "kinds" of energy/force/matter whatnot, though raw firepower can do it in a pinch if you can manage it.

Yeah. The Grey Knight's use psychically imbued boltgun ammo that is more effective against daemons (in-game rules it cancels the invulnerable save they get). It's not a sure kill kinda thing though if I'm recalling right from Grey Knights.

I don't think that neccesarily matters.. the rules would still apply. Unless they were like some weird force-field 'entity" or something like that.. (IE no physical presence here.. one might speculate their "force" can extend across dimensions or something.)

Here's the funny thing, they need warp energies to sustain themselves otherwise they tend to go 'poof' out of the material world.

'antibiotic'? Like an actual medicine or is it some sort of mystical "artifact/potion" thingy?

Kinda both. It administered by the team's medic and it contained compounds that supposedly help to counteract the effects of warp-contact and that were suspended in blessed water. Not sure how effective it really is but when the Ghost's doctor beaned a Wirewolf in the chest with a vial of it the daemon-thing.. well, it did a lot better than hitting it with a truck did.

[Lost Soal]

Quote:

Yep. In IIRC Malleus there was a scene like that.. with a deranged old religous nutter chasing Cherubael (a summoned daemon prince.. I forget if this is before or after he used up his host) around a bit with an Aquila sign.. of course as I also recall the guy ended up being incinerated by a pissed off daemon.

Of course I'm not entirely sure if that's something Emperor specific or whether true faith in any religion will do.



If its anything like True Faith, it may not even have to be something like an organized religion, just an extreme, sincere belief.

Malleus stated it was the Aqulla symbol itself which drove of Cherubael. Once he'd recovered enough strength he melted the Aquilla.

As for true faith, every living Ork believes in their core about the existance of Gork and Mork, they build temples and symbols to them, and as the ultimate sign to them they build Gargants in the form of Gork and Mork. There has been no mention of these having the pain causing effects that invoking the emperors name has

[white_rabbit]

You can be corrupted from Light years away, The abomination Teturact used chaotic psykers, dozens at most, to create chaotic infestations on planets in another system. Nurgle types do the same sort of thing.

So in other words, you drop an infeccted "host" onto a target planet and they infect the rest of the planet.

Not really, while this is a perfectly viable method of doing it, Teturact and his psykers could infect people with plagues via warp sorcery. hell, Teturact himself could somehow teleport/induce self generation of toxins and disease. Its often how he took star systems, he just sailed past the space based defensive systems while guys who were perfectly healthy 30 seconds ago choked on their own rotting flesh.

Heh, brushing through the old fluff for Nurgles rot, it actually says " It cannot be stopped by energy fields, dodged, or cured by a medi-squig "

Ultimately, corruption is whatever the hell you can imagine. You can become tainted by reading or seeing a particular language or words (you can also have you head blown off ) You can be physically "irradiated" by some form of artifact, as in you step into its aura/radiance and you start turning into a Gribbly. A powerful enough entity can turn you into a squishy chaos spawn regardless of your "faith" A space marines zealotry and fanatical belief in the emperor won't save him from simply being turned into a chaotic spawn if he pisses off the wrong entity.

So in essence they're vulnerable to certain "kinds" of energy/force/matter whatnot, though raw firepower can do it in a pinch if you can manage it.

Subject to conditions I would say, for example a Daemonic incursion in Titan: Cold steel was completely invunerable to the massed energy weapon fire of a dozen titans, but its substance was vaporised when hit by the casings and shells of their solid ammo weaponry, (heh, their entire ammunition supply would have vaped about 5%) But their physical forms i.e. the Titans themselves managed to banish the daemon, which manifested itself with a warp burst that they thought was a nuke.

Another example of this sort of thing is how in the 2nd edition rules, Daemons were unaffected by graviton guns, which were basically gravity field manipulating weapons, or electro-shock weaponry like Nid voltage fields or vehicles with electrified hulls.

I think the potential invunerability of a Daemon is also reliant on its situation, i.e. a low level Daemons of slaanesh summoned by a Daemon Prince of Slaanesh in Farseer where completely invunerable to the small arms and infantry heavy weapons used against them, but got dissolved by what was essentially a Daemon/Force weapon, while in Bloodquest, some Daemonettes of the Same type were dismembered by a pissed off space marine with a power fist!

The difference being those Daemonettes were probably bound to a specific individual (Slaaneshi champion called Proteus) making them much more manifest in reality. Which is key to how powerful a daemon is really.

In Hereticus, a Daemonhost laughs off a dozen or so soldiers pouring las+solid ammo fire into him, but in the same series a Daemonhost gets vaporised by explosive autocannon fire.

*shrug* Different daemons, different rules, the more powerful a Daemon is, the more likely they are to force reality to their whim, as opposed to being forced to manifest in less durable forms by a lack of warp energy.