Awesome / Embers in the Dusk

• Just the years until the Emperor's death (as the author calls it, Tutorial Cleared):
  • Frederick personally killing three hostile fauna Alphas, looting pieces of Ancient Artifact jewelry off them.
  • A Chaos invasion fleet destroyed, with the land force eliminated before it can enter the capital, except for the Chaos Astartes who manage to slip through. Then Frederick kills their leader with a knife (at the cost of An Arm and a Leg, admittedly)
  • A Necron fleet decimated in space despite odds that should make this effectively impossible according to lore, and the ground invasion blasted apart until the casualties and reinforcements make them fold.
  • A Tyranid Splinter Fleet destroyed before it can land a single spore (OK, that part Frederick had little to do with).
  • Enough STC tech and blueprints found and restored to nearly buy out the stock of the nearby Forge World... and that despite gifting a Knight Titan blueprint to a nearby Knight World (and gaining their Undying Loyalty in return).
  • And after all that, maintaining such high living standards on the planet, that they retain ridiculously high morale even after the Emperor dies - despite the penalties of spending thirty-two hours per week training as militia.
• The First Daemonic Incursion had several of these:
  • Frederick permanently killing a Keeper of Secrets in single combat.
  • Fabricator-General Britton pulling a Heroic Sacrifice to save the Mars Pattern Warlord Titan Sanctus Furorem.
  • Xavier incinerating a Daemon Prince so thoroughly it suffered True Death.
• Finding the first Alpha level psyker, Ophelia, on Turn 85
  • Followed by successfully training the Alpha on Turn 89.
    • And then you train the first Alpha Plus, Stephen Irwin, just under six centuries into the quest.
• The Green Awakening, in which Ridcully gets some rather crazy luck (he gets 90 or above on four consecutive rolls, something with a less than 0.01% chance of happening) and barely manages to scrape by on some insanely difficult DCs.
  • This puts him near the level of the galaxy's heavyweight seers. For reference, some of those people were Eldrad, Magnus, and Kairos.
  • Also, there's the matter of Gork and Mork themselves. Ridcully managed to survive exposure to beings more powerful than all the Chaos gods combined (if only slightly more powerful).
• The War on Two Fronts:
  • Magma Wyrms destroying almost 70% of all enemy Titans.
  • Lulanna taking Scratch Damage from an attack by a 3rd circle Archangyl.
  • Jacob permakilling the Archangyl with the Black Crystal Sword, dealing enough damage to kill it 10 times over.
  • Deathstrike missiles killing over a billion enemy soldiers.
  • The normally unbreakable morale of Abomination forces being so badly broken their commanders had to resort to decimation to get their troops in line.
• In Turn 111, Jane manages to kill an alpha-plus psyker.
• The Throne of Decay:
  • The sheer amount of preparations and distraction the Eldar arranged to pull this off, including Ynnead attacking Typhus, the minor Gods raiding demon worlds, and directing a Tier 4 Waaagh to fight Nurglite domains.
  • Ridcully taking part in the scrying attempt on Nurgle's Mansion, reaching Isha, and getting out undetected - with a gift from Isha which is effectively priceless for the Eldar.
• While the Grand Conclave might not seem as impressive as some of the other things on the list, it's still something that is described as being the most influential meeting in a millennium. It results in the three biggest sane human polities in the galaxy - Imperium Secondus, the Forge-Empire of Callamus, and Imperium Quartus - as well as the Imperial Trust gain technology much earlier than they otherwise would've. And it was all Rotbart's (and the player base's) idea.
• The "War, Blood, and Murder" interlude, also called Arhra's Folly in-universe. It sees all the Phoenix Lords put on Avatars of Khaine, becoming the Phoenix Avatars who are basically minor gods. Then they face off against an avatar of Khorne. Not an Exalted daemon, but the god itself. And they manage to defeat it.
  • According to Word of God, beings like the Ancient One and the Emperor of Mankind would be underdogs in a fight against that thing.
• Operation Hecatoncheir, in which the Imperial Trust, a polity that should by all rights be no more than a bit player on the galactic stage, hijacks one of the Black Imperium's fleets. There are a good number of cases where Imperial groups get taken over by Chaotic infiltrators, but considerably less where a Chaos group gets secretly led around by Imperials. Refuge in Audacity at its finest.
• The Third Daemonic Incursion sees the Ancient One go up against a First Circle Archangyl in Dis, ending with the Ancient One true deathing the Exalted daemon. While the fight is not shown on-screen, Durin has described it as a confrontation between one of the most skilled and one of the most powerful combatants in the galaxy.
  • During the entirety of the incursion, Marshal Rakes manages to hold the city of Cassarondo without it falling, despite the fact that it's the northernmost city (which means that the daemons coming from the North Pole are most numerous there) and right in the path of a focused flow of daemons heading towards Dis. Not only does Rakes keep Cassarondo from falling, he also manages to harass the daemons passing the walls.
• Lin's Heroic Sacrifice to heal Guilliman.
• The war against Hive Fleet Grábakr. The Hive Fleet was originally the same size as Hive Fleet Leviathan, and its individual bioforms are much deadlier, being capable of psychic shenanigans like invisibility and teleportation on top of the overwhelming numbers and armor penetration normal Tyranids have. Grábakr is a force that, according to Word of God, would've required a Segmentum's worth of forces in the old Imperium to defeat, and not without gutting said Segmentum. The Imperial Trust (a polity that is only a fraction of a Sector in size) and their allies manage to hold these Tyranids off with only a few Sectors' worth of forces.
  • During the groundside battle on Hvergelmir, the Tyranids deploy Broodlord Alphas, which combine the biological prowess of a Tyranid Broodlord with an alpha-level psyker's power, resulting in "a lightning fast, incredibly tough killing machine able to wipe out an Astartes Company in a matter of minutes". Jane takes down the one sent to assasinate her, and then chases down and kills two more of these monstrosities.
• According to Word of God, Frederick post-Grábakr is able to command a simulated battle of a planetary invasion with equivalent forces on both sides (where commanders aren't allowed to take to the field in person) with a 55% chance of winning if he's playing defense and a 30% chance of victory on offense. Against Roboute Guilliman.
• The Grand Ritual
  • The highlight goes to the Coalition vs Tjapa fight. They did so much damage that not only is the Star Father's plan of putting the veil to his dominion ruined, the imprints of their defiant last stand gives the ritual an anti-Tjapa influence as well. Sic Semper Tyrannis indeed.
• The Heist of Isha:
  • Taking advantage of Nurgle being distracted by his part in the Grand Ritual, Ridcully, Areatha, He-Who-Walks-Obliquely, and the Ancient One, four of the galaxy's best, form a team to try to rescue the Eldar goddess Isha from him.
  • They manage to sneak in all to way to Isha's door without being caught. After that, the Ancient One and HWWO hold off two Exalted Greater Daemons and an overwhelming horde of lesser daemons while Areatha tries to unlock the door, with Ridcully generally supporting them by flaring the Blessing of Isha in his aura.
  • After that, the heist team (with Isha and the newly-born Child of Hatred in tow) legs it, with HWWO and his passengers managing to reach the outer reaches of Nurgle's domain before the Border Lion is forced to make an emergency jump to realspace when faced with Nurgle himself coming back to his realm. This is all while pretty much all of the Plaguefather's forces left at the heart of his territory are sounding the alarm and chasing after them.
  • The group lands on Cadia, and absolutely massacres the locals, before getting into orbit and heading for a Webway gate in the system, all while tossing out micro-Exterminatus rounds (as in, fingernail-sized explosives that can wreck a planet, courtesy of the rather crazy Termites back on Avernus) like candy. Abaddon, who is returning to the system with a fleet at the time, can only rage as his coveted capitol gets blown apart and his forces' best efforts fail at stopping the interlopers from reaching the Webway gate and sealing it off behind them, scoring a victory for Team Sanity.
• The Green Skies. After the Heist of Isha, Nurgle naturally grows quite mad, and throws his full force at Avernus. However, Ridcully manages to determine the exact time of the invasion, so the planet has years to prepare, and...
  • Despite Nurgle timing the Invasion to the exact second that would give it the most power, the invaders lose one Exalted (who walked right into the Breath Weapon of the World Serpent) almost straight away while another is crippled.
  • They arrive at Itza, the First City, which had weathered countless thousands of Chaos invasions over tens of millions of years. Both Be'lakor and Mortarion are part of the Invasion, and both are driven back to the Warp (though neither is destroyed).
  • Human cities are the second priority target after Itza, and are assaulted by an army led by seven Honoured Daemons who are famous for achieving feats beyond their rank. Not a single city is breached by the time the Invasion is forced to withdraw.
  • Jane slays one of the Honoured... as it is distracted wrecking an Eldar Titan.
  • And all of that, mind you, was achieved with less-than-stellar rolls.
• The unnamed Cadian girl from "The Last Cadians" omake. She, a young girl no older than fourteen, managed to wound Abaddon the Despoiler himself. Yes, it was a small nick that didn't even draw blood, and yes, he was holding back massively and didn't bother to wear his helmet, but she still succeeded where so many champions failed. This impresses Abbadon enough that he lets her and her fellow survivors go, meaning that she effectively saved them.
• In Turn 1 of Sparks, Jane manages to kill a rogue alpha-plus psyker again, without the psyker getting the chance to do any damage, to boot.
• In general, any feat that allows someone to become a paragon, which pushes them past their limits.
  • Jane winning a duel against what was later confirmed to be the Changeling, which involved fighting against a doppelgänger of herself with all her skills while being "faster, stronger, tireless and able to regenerate from fatal wounds".
  • Ridcully earning his paragon traits, from detecting a plot of Tzeentch himself to surviving exposure to the Ork Gods.
  • Jacob surviving for just under two decades (from his perspective) in the deep caverns.
  • The Companions of Varen managing to take down the Honored Bloodthirster Zhuzhran Rageblaze, who Governor Rotbart almost died against, in an incredibly well-coordinated feat of teamwork.
  • Sir Pellinore surviving the Third Daemonic Incursion while caught in the wilderness, far from the safety of city walls.
  • Saint Lin managing to convince the lizardmen to end a feud that has been going on for millions of years.
• This is doubly true for feats that make a person transcendent, which involves doing something that by all rights should be impossible for them to accomplish.
  • The Silent King got his intrigue transcendent trait when he successfully backstabbed the C'Tan at the end of the War in Heaven. This is one of the exceedingly few times mortals got the better of gods (or god-like entities) in the setting.
  • Areatha managing to defeat Heartslayer, an Exalted Greater Daemon of Slaanesh, on her own during the First Daemonic incursion.
  • Bjorn the Fell-Handed's last stand against Abbadon's forces on Garm, in which he fights Abbadon and his honor guard so well that the latter is forced to retreat to his ship and destroy the planet to kill him. While his forces are still on it. And Bjorn managed to inflict a wound on Abbadon that still hasn't fully healed even with the Chaos Gods' assistance, and never will, due to the nature of that transcendent trait.
  • Isha resisting Nurgle for nigh-20,000 years. Especially notable because gods and other Warp entities have it much harder than mortals when it comes to getting transcendence, and she only needed to pass a mere DC 20 to grab that piety transcendent.
• The Iron War:
  • Abaddon, after Cadia was destroyed, sent Primarch Perturabo to destroy the Trust. Pert controls a hundred and eighty sectors, so of course the Trust calls in favors with Eldar to get help, but can only ask for so much without risk to the galaxy in general. A few decades are spent warding off probing attacks... in the ten thousand ship range.
  • The Battle of Vanaheim, the second largest naval battle Segmentum Pacificus has seen in a very long time, surpassed only by the Fall of Hydraphur. Perturabo brings three hundred thousand ships, plus the Phalanx. As expected, he sees the Trust Fleet there, tons of Eldar ships, and the Craftworld of Biel-Tan. Nice, and just what he prepared for. Except once he closes in, it turns out the Eldar have made a deal, and swapped out their fleets with Krork ones, which don't quite have the same Fragile Speedster trait. Plus, the Trust spent a good chunk of its economic power building Vortex and Dark Matter weapons. The result? All of Perturabo's fleet is wiped out, while the Phalanx is rendered helpless and then crippled right before it can limp out of the No Warping Zone of the system. The shipyards? No enemy even gets within weapon range.
  • The Phalanx is stopped by six Eldar Ghostships ramming it... while carrying Cyclonic Torpedoes. It has no weapons left, but Perturabo manages to crush two of them out of the sky through sheer psychic power.
  • Seeing that he failed at Vanaheim, Perturabo changes the orders to the secondary attacks. Instead of trying to take over planets, they are to do as much damage as possible to shipyards. While the damage is indeed severe, he loses one of his best and sanest commanders, and not a single world is invaded. The Trust, meanwhile, gets the Phalanx, which it can trade to Imperium Quartus in return for replacement shipyards.
• Admiral Spire:
  • The man managed to lead a guerilla war against the Black Imperium, during which his fleet size actually grew.
  • At one point he managed to destroy Abaddon's Planet Killer and kill the Despoiler himself with just a sector fleet. Abaddon was resurrected, and did wind up rebuilding it, but it left an impression.
  • By the time of the Third Grand Conclave (for which he was present personally, BTW), he, working with the Silver Skulls, managed to not only take a couple of sectors from Abaddon, but, when the latter sent a force of Dragon War veterans led by Telemachon Lyras personally, ground it to shreds in five years. Telemachon failed to so much as pull a single If I Can't Have You… on the Skulls' worlds. A natural 100 against Abaddon's 20.
• The years leading up to the Grand Incursion:
  • Areatha and the Ancient One killing an Ork Warboss who is on the brink of pushing the Eternal Conflagration into Level 5 (read: not something the galaxy can afford right now). It starts with her ramming a magically accelerated asteroid into his half built Attack Moon and continues on a similar level.
  • Areatha and the Ancient One visiting the Abyss. A prison housing countless failed god-level experiments made by the Planet Mind over the course of millions of years. Areatha spends an unknown amount of time healing these failures and making them into something capable of fighting the Incursion.
  • A combined Eldar and Krork force finally pinning down and taking out the Destroyer, albeit at great cost.
  • In a villainous example, Be'lakor flipping the finger at his masters with regards to Skarbrand in such a manner that not only does he break free from their service (well, almost), but is also instantly elevated to the position of the creature they hate the most. Or rather, he takes both first and second place on the list of beings the Chaos gods hate the most. It's that bad.
• The battle against the Destroyer. Two Krork War Worlds and five Attack Moons brought in along with half a dozen gods, a Blackstone Fortress and all kinds of world-wrecking level fodder... and in the end, the reborn Khaine has to sacrifice himself. to take out the C'tan.
• The Grand Incursion:
  • The whole idea of a single planet holding out against half the Chaos Gods' elites, a force sufficient to end the Dragon War.
  • Before the Incursion itself, Vulkan manages to do that which was never aciheved since the War in Heaven: make a suit of armour for the Ancient One.
  • Tomeno Mai and the Krork banishing an Exalted of Nurgle.
  • Areatha meeting a Honoured Greater Daemon Prince created from a toddler psyker... and convincing them to make a Heel–Face Turn.
  • He-Who-Walks-Obliquely truekilling an Exalted once again.
  • Areatha getting attacked by Be'lakor while channeling a ritual... and finishing it despite him almost ripping her soul to shreds.
  • The humans killing five Honoured Daemons leading the charge on the Deathwall. After deceiving them into a headlong charge through an Indy Ploy.
  • An Eldar host, including three Phoenix Avatars, forcing Vect to flee, leaving an Exalted behind as distraction.
  • Baiting Lorgar with knowledge of an artifact carrying what he sees as truly divine power... he doesn't have time to get trapped, but gets distracted enough to draw ire from his masters.
  • A second attack on the Deathwall ending with the Undivided Honoured leader of the local forces truekilled by Jacob and Jane. While his replacement does force Avernite forces to fall back to the next line, they did hold out enough to match the Avernus-created races, and the enemy needed to prepare a year more before they could blast through the Wall.
  • The World Serpent blasting apart a T4 Ork Attack Moon.
  • A villainous example with Be'lakor. He prepares a grand ritual, using the lifeblood of all the Five, plus sacrificing an Exalted from each of them, to pull the entirety of Avernus into the Warp. Successfully. Of course, the Gods still manage to screw this up, but that's not his fault.
    • He fulfills the letter of his orders, reminds everyone why he's feared, walks out of the Grand Incursion with a well-reinforced reputation, ensures the Incursion will end (in success or failure) very quickly and cleanly, and walks away from it all with a drop of freely-given lifeblood from each Chaos God (which he can retain due to a loophole).
• The Void Dragon manages to nearly double its territory at Abaddon's expense, so the Eldar and Ridcully, in a desperate case of Enemy Mine, manage to help the Despoiler take a good portion of it back.
• And then, Ridcully manages to lead the Avatar of Khorne through a raid into the Sol System itself.
• Jane claiming the Archetype of the Fencer. It involved her going down to the Caverns at the World's summons, and then spending ten years dueling ever stronger opponents summoned from alternate timelines. The final battle was against a sword-specializing variant of Lelith Hesperax (the Badass Normal of canon). Jane needed a crit to win. She rolled a nat100.
• The Final WAAAAAGH!. Once the Green Twins realize they are running low on power, they start gathering all the Orks for a final assault against the Krork. Hundreds of thousands of Ork worlds are beaten down by the Eldar, but it was still expected that the Krork will be left with, at best, a half of their Core Regions. Instead, after a desperate war the heroics of which would have taken up several days in the Ceremony of Remembrance, both Gork and Mork are killed after destroying about half of the Inner Regions (the Border and Outer Regions are the ones lost completely). According to Durin, the Krork have consistently rolled about 60 above their enemies, culminating with a Critfail on the Twins' death.
• Jane getting a One In A Million Chance hyper-critical success to gain a Transcendent Trait. Author reaction: "Jane is Jane."
• "The Rise and Fall of Ahzek Ahriman." Aka "yes, a sword can kill a superhuman magical legend."
  • The forces of Nurgle attempted to reach the ritual site... but our heroes had killed Ahriman and destroyed the ritual before Nurgle made it through three layers of defenses. Talk about overkill.
• The Assault on Sicarus. A massive force assembled to prevent Lorgar from tapping into the Primordial Sea (which is a Horrifying the Horror concept several times over in this setting):
  • A duel between a Krork flagship and the Trisagion, with the Daemonship being powerful enough that it only lost once the Attack Moon present fired its Wave-Motion Gun.
  • Dante dueling against Ka'Bandha. A hopeless fight, due to the Daemon's home ground advantage, but he manages to distract it long enough for the rest of the Astartes to carry out their task... at the cost of nearly 95% of their number.
  • Jaghatai Khan taking out the Dark Council, including (finally!) Erebus.
  • The Assault on the Temple of Eight Paths. Two fall out without a fight (including Be'lakor's, who, as the Magnificent Bastard he is, abandoned them at a critical moment.)
  • In the central Temple, the one for worshiping the Undivided, Jane, Lelith Hesperax and the head of the Shadow Wardens fight Aetaos'Rau'Keres. After three days, with her companions having retreated due to the damage, Jane manages to cut him down. A mere human, destroying an Exalted!
  • Vulkan distracting an Exalted Daemon of Tjapa while Irillyth deals with a Slaaneshi one. He is cut down seven times by the time the Phoenix Avatar is free to join the battle.
  • The psykers manage to conduct a ritual purifying the daemonworld and binding the Lorgar to it. In the Eye of Terror.
  • Unsurprisingly, compared to that, Lorgar's death is a bit anticlimactic (although there was the risk of him managing to tap into the Sea). However, the bodyguard he had... Eternity's End, an Exalted of the Well of Eternity (diluted Sea stuff). Apparently, the mere fact he got it was a Paragon roll for Lorgar. A child by the standards of the Exalted, frail-looking, yet powerful enough that Corvus Corax (the loyalist Primarch with the most actual combat experience) decides Screw This, I'm Outta Here just from its presence, while Asurmen barely manages to hold together well enough to slip by and go to engage Lorgar. The Ancient One is forced to fight it alone. It takes almost eight days, by the end of which the Lizardman has half his bones broken and some serious cobwebs in his head from the insanity the opponent radiated. Luckily, it was a True Death... Eternity's End is the one opponent you don't want to become any older.
• Vlad is concentrated Awesome with a healthy dose of Refuge in Audacity:
  • Exploring the whole of Avernus during the Golden Age, eventually gathering the whole Black Crystal Set. Which made him a Transcendent.
  • Then, he survived until the present days, unnoticed by anyone.
  • He manages to make a Catachan regiment into an invincible force of Memetic Badasses.
  • Then, he manages to remain unrecognized by anyone for over a century (and years in real life) with nothing but a Sdrawkcab Alias prptecting his identity.
  • He hijacks a Black Imperium fleet headed toward the Trust by massacring the leadership (with some help) and pretending to be a survivor. Once again with an anagram alias.
  • And then, centuries later, after Alpharius is killed, he hijacks his side of the Black Imperium Civil War by pretending that a decoy was killed, and he is the real Alpharius.
• Soon after Sicarus, the lingering effects in the Ancient One's mind cause him to believe he is in an illusion and go on a rampage. Jane is the closest person available to try snapping him out of it, which she does... by giving him a serious wound. For him, that's enough to realize he is awake, since this kind of skill cannot be replicated by a hallucination.