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 Post subject: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-17 04:17am 

Everybody knows the Imperium of Man from Warhammer 40000 is doomed:

As of 999.M41 they are barely holding out against Chaos Warmaster Abaddon's 13th Black Crusade at Cadia.

They had barely held out against the biggest Ork invasion at Armageddon.

On the Eastern Fringe the Tau are preparing to launch yet another colonization wave that would guarantee the fall of many Human sectors to Tau Empire dominance.

An entire Tyranid hivefleet bearing towards Segmentum Solar straight at Holy Terra and so far nobody seemed to be able to stop them.

The Eldar are still dying out and still refusing to co-operate.

Everywhere Heretic rebellions, Warp Storms and Xeno/Daemon invasions are occurring with increasing frequency and the armies and navies of the Imperium are too stretched out to deal with all of them.

And the worst news is, the God Emperor of Mankind looks like is about the hit the bucket when it was discovered that the Golden Throne is failing, and the Adeptus Mechanicus had lost too much technical and scientific knowledge to fix it, meaning that not only is the Astronomicon failing but it also means that the Imperium's greatest defense against the Warp is about to go off too, leaving Humanity to face a bleak uncertain future...

Here's the question - is there actually any possible way they could reverse the situation? Barring all the unlikely lights at the end of the tunnel scenarios they were given? Is there actually anyway to save the Imperium or are they all fucked at this point?

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-17 05:05am 

It isn't really doomed, consider:




In fact Abaddon is locked up securely in the Eye of Terror. He's landed on Cadia, but since he wasn't able to get space superiority that doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot.




"Biggest"? Unlikely. There was a Ork Warboss that came close to killing the Emperor at Ulllanor. Armageddon is tottering, but the situation for Ghazhgull is such that that he "bravely ran away". Also, Armageddon is just one forge world out of literally tens of thousands.




"Guarentee"? Nonsense and poppycock. The Tau fleets move as slow as molasses, and while they have a higher level of technology on average, it isn't overwhelmingly so. Certainly not enough to make up the vast numbers of Humans, Orks, and Tyranids that batter the Tau.




So far the only real problem that the Imperium miht have trouble surmonting.



So? The Imperium went 10,000 years with them not being a close ally. They are not big players on the galactic stage.



More stretched out than during the immediate post-heresy era, the Nova Terra Interregum, or the Age of Apostasy? Unlikely.



Parts of the Golden Throne are failing, and that still doesn't mean anything. The Emperor hasn't spoken to anyone in his physical form since the days immediately after his fight with Horus. His soul is trapped on the throne, like Terri Schiavo. It's just as likely that he'll be a full time warp god if given sweet release from his mortal coil.

And no Astronomicon is not the same as "being unable to navigate the warp". There are large sections of the galaxy where the beacon is dim or not seen, but under firm Imperial control.




It'll stumble forward, as it always does. The biggest threat in the bunch are the Tyranids, but we know that the Imperium is going to continue for at least several decades after 999.M41, so don't worry about it.

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-17 05:54am 

Lonestar covered it pretty well.

Also:



looks like the imperial fists gonna have to get shit done again

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-17 11:45am 

The only thing the Imperium is 'doomed' to is more perpetual grimdarky status quo crap. Unless you give Dan Abnett and ADB control of the fluff or something.

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-17 12:20pm 

Except that the Necron pylons are degrading, and who knows what Abaddon might be able to do to that.


And its so significant that the intro ruleset to both the Third and Second Armaggadeon war states that if it fell, the defences of entire sectors will fall apart.


Well, there are all those old prophecies that Inquisitors quote, that if the light of the Eldar die out, not even the Imperium will survive.


Actually, if the Golden Throne fails, I can imagine several scenarios that will screw the Imperium up. The loss of the Astronomicon and long range, reliable travel is one. The Imperium for all its siege mentality is still highly interdependent and the loss of trade could screw things over. The most important thing is that the Imperium will have its ability to respond to threats speedily degraded and this might be the straw that breaks the camel back.

The Golden Throne is also connected to the Webway and the loss of the Emperor might unleash hordes of Daemons and other warp creatures on Earth, along with the loss of all her centralised telepathic training facillities. Worse case scenario of course, is that Earth becomes another gateway to the warp similar to the Eye of Terror.........

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-17 12:41pm 

http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_Cus ... Armageddon




Comissar Yarrick

2nd Armaggadeon War ruleset.

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-17 03:21pm 

If the pylons degrade, Abaddon himself is screwed. With no stable means of exiting the Eye of Terror, any "Black Crusades" he launches will be reduced to mere raiding parties, for the Imperial Navy to defeat piecemeal. (To paraphrase another board member, without the pylons, ships exiting the Eye of Terror can't coordinate their attacks, because while one ship in a fleet might reach its objective on schedule, the Eye's ability to screw time may mean another ship in the same fleet won't reach its objective until YEARS LATER.)

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-17 03:26pm 

Do Chaos battlegroups have the same problems with warp navigation that everyone else does? I would expect that their patron deities would grant them smoother sailing than that...

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-17 03:28pm 

The answer is clearly than to build the biggest ship that can possibly be built. Or outfit a small planet with engines or something.

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-17 03:31pm 

No, the answer is to kill Abaddon because he's an incompetent fuck and defile his corpse. And use it as a sacrifice to the Dark Gods. Then you must dance to ear-raping music in a square-shaped circle until the Dark Gods are pleased enough that they vomit vast quantities of the *special sauce* on you.

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-17 03:48pm 

They don't have problems to the same degree, but the benefits they get in Warp navigation only go so far; without stable routes out of the Eye, the forces of Chaos have problems.

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-17 04:36pm 

Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the Ultramarines and spiritual liege to every Space Marine and every man, woman and child of the Imperium, finally manages to heal and returns to life. All of mankind sees the wisdom of his ways and unites behind him, and the High Lords of Terra willingly step aside for him; recognising that he is more intelligent, handsome, and all-around nicer guy than they could ever hope to be.

Even the Space Wolves, who had until now lied to themselves that Leman Russ was in any way comparable to the great Roboute Guilliman, accept his inherent superiority and greet him as their true patriarch (in spirit).

On war-ravaged Cadia, Guilliman's strategic and tactical genius allows him to defeat the the chaos space marines; the traitors (who, or course, had only turned to chaos in the first place because they knew that they could never live up to the legendary stature of such a transcendent, awesome man as Roboute Guilliman; nor could they hope to achieve the greatness of his Ultramarines) lose any semblance of morale and collapsed in on themselves, fearing the wrath of their rightful liege-lord. Abaddon orders a retreat into the Eye of Terror, but under Guilliman's guidance the Imperial fleets observe a semblance of basic competence and destroy the bulk of the fleeing Chaos forces as they try to escape.

Ursarker E. Creed, Lord Castellan of Cadia, bows down to Guilliman and says 'My lord, you truly are a tactical genius far beyond I, and the greatest commander the Imperial Guard have had the fortune to fight under.'

'MY FRIEND,' speaks Guilliman; 'THE TIME FOR LORDS IS OVER! THE TIME OF TYRANNY IS AT AN END! YOU MUST CALL ME ROBOURTE!'

What a guy.

The Golden Throne eventually fails, and the Emperor dies; but with the guiding light of Roboute Guilliman's guardianship over the Imperium, and his preternatural administrative abilities, only a tiny handful of systems are lost.

Then the Emperor returns and does his space-Hitler bit (killing a bunch of Orks and Tyranids etc). He sees how Guilliman has converted the Imperium into a well-maintained, sane society and says:

'MY SON, YOU ARE TRULY THE SPIRITUAL LIEGE-LORD OF MANKIND, YOUR ACTS FAR SURPASS MINE. I MUST GO NOW.'

And then he leaves to take part in the Ultimate Fighter Championship and gets taken out by Goku in the semifinals.

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-17 06:55pm 

When did Evilsoup become a sockpuppet of Matt Ward?

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-17 07:11pm 

Evilsoup, I know you're kidding and everything, but people really shouldn't do that because when you joke about how bad Matt Ward is you just give him ideas.

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-17 10:08pm 

To be fair, bringing Gwilly back from stasis and having him lead the Imperium as Regent is probably going to be very good for the Imperium.

Because, to be blunt - Gwilly is seriously the only responsible adult to ever become a leader in the Imperium in anything other than a "lead from the frontlines and kick ass" capacity. His Primarch brothers are all either insane (even before the heresy), intolerant, incompetent, or house pets. The Emperor is a bonehead who does things like ban Librarians when he knows Chaos is very, very real and the Space Marines need a defense against them; and he immerses himself in stupid secret projects and then delegates running the Imperium to a bunch of tax collectors (which is one of the major reasons why Horus rebels in the first place).

Gwilly by contrast knows how to setup and run an actual empire. Not simply the "shoot and stab" portion of it - but also the economic and political aspect of it. Know No Fear reveals he actually had 500 worlds under his personal fiefdom in the heresy days, and it was probably the best-run portion of the whole Imperium in addition to being the best-defended, as the XIII was originally the biggest of the Legions by an enormous margin (200K Marines) thanks to the fact that Gwilly is apparently the only Primarch to understand the term "Reservist" and the philosophy of "Cycling veteran troops to training roles to raise even MORE troops".

Not to mention that he actually knows how to train underlings so that they can act independently and run their own shops responsibly. When Horus gets wounded and it seems he's about to die, the Luna Wolves essentially run around and circles and panic (and they come up with the brillant idea of handing him over to a Chaos worshipper. Great thinking guys!). The Ultramarines react to Gwilly "dying" in Know No Fear by NOT panicking, and deciding they have to fix the mess themselves whether the Primarch is alive or not. This sense of responsibility is so ingrained in the culture that a Sergeant sums up the Ultramarine's reaction to losing 120,000 marines, 80% of their battlefleet, and their Primarch with the the following words: "There was no command structure, so I decided to build one myself".

If the Emperor and the Primarchs played a multiplayer Civilization game, Gwilly would probably beat them all even if they're all working together against him. His only real problem is that he's aloof and doesn't actually want the Throne for himself, but that ability to put aside petty ambitions and act in a responsible manner (Do what's right and necessary vs what my ego wants) is again what makes him best-qualified to run the whole show.

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-17 10:28pm 

LOL.

Strictly speaking though, given that the Imperium has total orbital superiority over Cadia anyway, Gwilly should really just nuke the planet from orbit until it's a glowing cinder along with all the spikey Marines.

<Failbaddon> We won! We took Cadia!

<Chaos Marine> ... But sir, they have complete orbital superiority. We're STUCK here.

<Failbaddon> Don't worry, we still have the PLANET DESTROYER.

<Chaos Marine> ... Which is used to destroy PLANETS. And we already OWN this Planet.

<Failbaddon> Shut up! No one shall defy me! DEPLOY THE PLANET DESTROYER!

<Black Legion> *facepalms as they are obliterated by their own super weapon*

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-17 10:28pm 

Double post.

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-17 10:37pm 

The Imperium isn't doomed only because of the external reality that this is a major cash cow for Gamer's Workshop and they're not going to mess with the formula.

So what you essentially have is a constant soap opera plot-tease where things are kept simmering right on the brink of a dramatic OMG moment and will never move past it. There will be more wars, more doom and gloom, new armies (gotta sell shit to the fans) but things will never settle down. Not a single army will ever be wiped out. You'll never see the Tau defeated, the Tyranids done away with, the Necrons going back to sleep. That shit sells!

From a storytelling perspective, anything is possible. It would be a goddamn nice change of pace to see an imperium civil war when the Golden Throne fails and everyone struggles for a piece of the action. I know the cruft goes back and forth about what the God-Emperor was. Powerful psyker mutant, reincarnated soul of a zillion dead shamans who killed themselves, etc. I hate the shaman idea. I prefer the idea that he's like a Caesar or Napoleon -- larger than life, writing his will across a galaxy, but just a man. But in the case of the tech and magic of the setting, he pretty much is a physical god, compares favorably to Herbert's tyrant-worm.

If a new Emperor of Man comes about, it would be possible to rediscover all of the old technology. The highwater mark that everything is slipping away from was wrought by man under the God-Emperor's guidance.

None of this will likely happen because it would be tampering with the formula.

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-17 10:48pm 

Probably...nothng? Chaos Warbands that try to use Necron tech seem to end up in deep doo-doo.




Holy Hyperbole Batman!

It's a big important Forgeworld, yeah, we got it. But the fighting on Armageddon has already destroyed the industry to the point where there's serious concern on the part of the defenders that the Imperium might cut it's losses. It's acting as a big Ork magnet at this point, that's it.

And I still maintain that if a Ork Warboss can challenge the Emperor when he was in his mortal coil, to the point that Horus has to save him, then that means that particular warboss must have been leading one hell of a WAAAGH to get that big and powerful. So the invasion of Armageddon is very unlikely to be the "biggest Ork Invasion"(except "in living memory").



Inquisitors who probably deal with a lot more esoteric stuff than the "Big Picture" of fighting and killing.



Some thoughts:

(1)Thanks to the navigator gene, the Imperium can move faster than others even in areas where the beacon is dim or not seen. No matter what, the actual travel time of Imperial forces are going to be much faster than most competitors.

(2)Current Imperial reaction speeds are more a reflection of the levels of bureaucracy, not actual transit time. There are ways to mitigate the increase in transit time, and one of them is better crisis management.




Yeah, Maybe. Or, alternatively, the Emperor is now a full-time Warp God no longer shackled by the mortal coil and can close the space-hole himself. Or maybe 10,000 years of him sitting on the throne Has sealed the spacehole anyway.

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-17 11:45pm 

Not if the fan speculation that the pylons are what's holding the Eye of Terror in place.


The navigator gene work by detecting the Astronomican. So, if it isn't there, what advantage would they have?


Except that ship transit times in terms of years and etc has been mentioned before. Sure, transit times can be faster, especially with regards to the Grey Knights, but they all rely on the Astronomican.


So, a prophecy by a Tzeentechian cult is of superior strength to actual events that happened during the Horus Heresy, where the rip in the webway poured Daemons into the palace?

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-18 12:08am 

The Cadian pylons are found only on worlds in the Cadian subsector, so even if they're what's holding back the Eye of Terror locally, there's no reason to believe that destroying the Pylons will do anything other than let the Eye of Terror close around the Cadian Gate and destroy the only reliable passage out of the Eye of Terror.



Not quite true. Navigators sense the flow and structure of the warp. This includes both local warp currents as well as permanent / persistent phenomenon like the Astronomicon and warp storms. The Astronomicon serves as a common point of reference for nearly the entire Imperium, but it's hardly the only usable point of reference, as Navigators in parts of the Ultima Segmentum are far enough out that they can't actually detect the Astronomicon.

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-18 12:42am 

For that matter, the Navigators were bred before the Emperor's reign, during the real peak of human civilization: the "Dark Age of Technology."

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-18 01:13am 

Like Lancer said, the Necron pylons are only on Cadia so it's likely to be only a local phenomena. This assumes that the EoT is peristantly waxing, and we've seen no evidence of this.



They also see the currents that flow in the Warp, not just the Astronomican. The Navigator gene was created before the Astronomicon was or chirssakes.




Yeah, when crossing the galaxy. In one of the Last Chancers novels they cross the galaxy in a a year in less than a year. Since they were heading towards the Astronomicon then when they started off the light was probably dim indeed. Warp speeds flux wildly.



No, it's a declared Tzeentechian cult, big difference. The Inquisition has gone after percieved heretics before, even if they weren't, and in any event as I said the underlying assumption here seems to be that the space hole is still there. It would be an odd thing indeed if a brain-dead Emperor on lifesupport is just as capable of keeping a space-hole closed as a live one.

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-18 01:26am 

I can hardly claim comprehensive knowledge given the sheer volume of stuff I've dealt with but, where is that quote stated? I've never heard of it. The closest I've heard is that Armageddon equips armies severa thosuand LY away. which makes it important on a segmentum scale, militarily. a nd it is a Naval/Military headquarters for the sector so its loss can be a crushing blow but that's different than what you claim. And 'hundreds of worlds' isnt quite that, since that can encompass a single sector.

The ADB novel 'Helsreach' had an interesting perspective on Armageddon's 'importance'


Page 300


If it were so vital that worlds would fall apart compeltely wihout it, the Imperium would not be able to ignore it.

 Post subject: Re: Saving the the Imperium of Man

Posted: 2012-04-18 01:30am 

Funny enough, I am jsut reading Warriors of Ultramar They go from Tarsis Ultra to Posul (homeworld of the Mortifactors) in about a month both ways (with minimal warp/realspace dilation.. basically a two month round trip in realspace and the warp). The distance is easily many tens of thousands of Light years, as Tarsis Ultra is way in Segmentum Ultima and Posul is on the western side of Segmentum Tempestus, IIRC the 5th editon 'Nid codex map right.

The last two Blood Angels novels had similar Transit times, as do a few other novels. Course that's for SM vessels. And its fair to note that the short story 'Consequences' taking place after Warriors of Utlramar had the same ship crossing 'half the galaxy' in 6 months in war, and 1.5 years realspace.

Oh and don't forget the Blood Ravens novels. Across a segmentum in a matter of days