Fanfic / The New Jedi Order: A Vision of Confluence

Cover on SpaceBattles.com

Veridia seethes and Calth burns.

Obroa-Skai falls and the Inner Rim is breached.

Two galaxies teeter on precipices that grow ever more treacherous. Luke Skywalker leads his New Jedi Order into an uncertain future, facing questions he had never considered and foes more alien than before. The New Republic grapples with the responsibility and the mantle it has taken up. The Imperium is struck alight by the flames of treachery, driven by all-too-human vices and sins.

Translating into the immaterium at the bowshock of the Ruinstorm, the ragged survivors of Calth are cast adrift in the warp to shores unknown. The New Republic braces for the next waves of violence as the Yuuzhan Vong continue their march. The board is set. The pieces begin to move.

— Summary of Book 1: Exigence

The New Jedi Order: A Vision of Confluence is a Star Wars Legends / Warhammer 40,000 crossover fanfic, specifically between the New Jedi Order and the Horus Heresy, written by Ilaquidesh. As of April 2024, the first two books Exigence and Contingence are complete, with the third book Intransigence beginning in May. The story (alongside all the fic's supplementary material) is primarily posted on SpaceBattles.com under the title The New Jedi Order: Exigence. It is also available as a Series Fic here on Archive of Our Own and on Sufficient Velocity.

The premise of this fic is that following the disastrous Battle of Calth during the Horus Heresy, Roboute Guilliman and his fleet carrying Calth's survivors are transported by the Ruinstorm across dimensions into the Galaxy Far, Far Away during the midst of the Yuuzhan Vong War. After conquering a small independent planet called Pirve and getting their bearings, Guilliman establishes the Imperium Exsilius (the Imperium in Exile) and eventually joins the war on the New Republic's side due to recognizing the existential threat that the Vong pose.

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This fanfic contains examples of:

• Adaptational Seriousness: The B1 battle droids, when they appear during the Battle of Fondor, are noticeably less conversational and bumbling than their canon counterparts with their comic relief aspects non-existent. This is due to the author choosing to portray B1 battle droids from how they were depicted in Legends before The Clone Wars TV series made them into joke characters. One Ultramarine even comments on how the B1 droids are far less chatty than the protocol droids he's encountered in the Galaxy Far, Far Away.
• Always a Bigger Fish:
  • As Viqi Shesh, the New Republic negotiator points out, the Imperial survivors of Calth may have incredibly advanced military technology, including a protective army of Super Soldiers and vessels larger than anything fielded in the Galaxy Far, Far Away, but they are still ultimately Invading Refugees. Their forces are miniscule compared to the potential forces that could be mustered against them by the New Republic or the Vong. They're being permitted to occupy Pirve largely because the war against the Vong means the New Republic has bigger fish to fry... for the moment.
  • When the Vong launch an assault on Macragge's Honour, Guilliman's flagship, the Ultramarines are resigned to considerable casualties amongst the human menials, but are confident in repelling the Vong with comparative ease. They are quite taken aback to discover that the Vong's arsenal of Organic Technology is capable of producing even deadlier arms and armor than seen before, including biological Powered Armor comparable to the Ultramarines' own that can even repel bolt rounds, and gravity-based weapons capable of effortlessly annihilating Terminator-class armor, widely considered the single most impregnable defense a Space Marine has outside of using a Mini-Mecha. By the time the Vong assault is repelled and the butcher's bill tallied, Guilliman grimly notes that the Calth survivors have lost approximately 4% of the Space Marines who made it into the Galaxy Far, Far Away.
• Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder: When Roboute Guilliman finally reveals himself to the New Republic representatives and their Jedi escorts at the end of their negotiations on Pirve, each representative perceives the Primarch differently.
  • Anakin Solo sees him as an Anthropomorphic Personification of the Force.
  • Kyp Durron perceives him as a Humanoid Abomination who is Made of Evil.
  • Mei Taral perceives Guilliman as a shifting Beast Man.
  • Viqi Shesh perceives Guilliman as a god, even though she herself is an atheist.
  • Tresk Im'nel perceives Guilliman as a Brown Note Being and struggles to focus on him at all.
• Armor-Piercing Question: After Guilliman gives Luke his brutally-honest answer for what the Emperor of Mankind would do if he were currently in Guilliman's situation (note: go on a genocidal conquest of the galaxy), Luke asks Guilliman what his adopted father Konor would do. This causes Guilliman to visibly recoil and Luke senses the Force warning him of great danger in that moment before Guilliman calms down. After seeing this, Luke tells him he doesn't have to answer and to just think about what he asked.
• Ban on A.I.: Upon conquering Pirve, Guilliman and his forces immediately round up and destroy every single droid on the planet as well as any computers that use droid brains. The people of Pirve are rather displeased about this since they previously relied on droids to do all their manual labor and hate being forced to do all that physically exhausting work themselves.
• Benevolent Alien Invasion: Zig-Zagged. Guilliman and the other 30K-era Imperials believe they've brought "true civilization" to the Star Wars planet of Pirve by conquering it through military force, destroying all droids, banning religion, and reducing non-humans to second-class citizens. Most of the original people of Pirve (and quite a few of Luke's Jedi Order), however, see the Imperium as being backwards invaders who've turned a peaceful planet into a Police State.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: During the Battle of Fondor, Fondor's workers pull out a bunch of old Clone Wars-era military equipment that was gathering dust in storage to aid in the planet's defense against the Vong invasion. These include B1 and B2 battle droids as well as Juggernaut turbo tanks.
• Brutal Honesty: When Luke asks Guilliman about what the Emperor of Mankind would think of the Star Wars galaxy, Guilliman eventually admits after some prodding that the Emperor would probably try to conquer SW humanity in a violent crusade, wipe out all droids and religions, and enslave all nonhumans.
• Clean Cut: The Vong gravity weapons used against the Ultramarine First Company during the boarding action on Macragge's Honour result in the utter disintegration of everything caught in the sphere of effect, leaving as the only remains limbs severed impossibly neatly, still wrapped in their armor. Not even Terminator armor, which was originally used to perform maintenance inside of running starship reactors, can withstand them.
• Culture Clash:
  • The Imperials generally find the widespread Interspecies Friendship and casual intermingling between humans and non-humans in the Galaxy Far, Far Away to be unnerving and utterly bewildering given how in the 40K galaxy most aliens are extremely hostile towards humanity and even the less hostile ones usually keep to themselves rather than openly integrate with humans.
  • The Imperials think the idea of ruling a galaxy with an elected body like the New Republic Senate is absolutely insane and impractical, while the New Republic and Jedi firmly believe in democracy and oppose the sort of totalitarian government that the Imperium would support due to their past experiences with the Galactic Empire.
  • The Imperium views what they’ve done with Pirve (i.e. get rid of all droids, make non-humans second-class citizens, ban all religions, and forcibly reeducate the planet's human population about Holy Terra being the true homeworld of humanity) as righteous and correct. The people of Pirve and the Jedi disagree with Luke commenting to Guilliman that the SW galaxy rebelled against the Galactic Empire specifically because they hated policies like the ones the Imperium has implemented on Pirve.
  • During a conversation an Ultramarine has with Anakin Solo, the Marine is bothered to learn that the New Republic was founded by rebels who defeated the Galactic Empire in a civil war as he is a firm believer of Just Following Orders and My Country, Right or Wrong. Anakin counters by expressing his belief that if a government has become tyrannical and no longer serves the people, then it's only right for the people to rebel against it.
  • The Imperium and the New Republic are shown to have very differing definitions on what humans are. In the Star Wars galaxy, "being human" is essentially a social construct determined primarily through culture and one's physical appearance. In one sidestory, it's shown that the Arkanians and Mirialans are objectively a Human Subspecies, yet they are both treated as and view themselves to be alien races separate from SW humanity. The Imperium, however, determines what is and isn't human through examining actual biology and DNA due to their whole worldview boiling down to "humanity vs. everything else".
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: When Sergeant Ascratus boards a New Republic frigate, he is surprised to find the bridge crew unarmed and thinks it's unwise for a ship captain to not at least have a laspistol on hand to "impress their authority" upon their crew.
• Dramatis Personae: The author posted a dramatis personae of all the relevant characters in the fic right here on SpaceBattles.com.
• Enemy Mine: The New Republic and the Imperium of Man eventually agree to ally together against the common threat that the Yuuzhan Vong pose.
• Evil Will Fail: Discussed. While debating the Jedi and their usefulness to the galaxy, Luke points out to Guilliman that the Sith have historically always failed to rule the galaxy for long and that even the Galactic Empire didn't last for half a century.
• Fantastic Racism: The Imperium of Man, unsurprisingly, though since this is the Heresy-era Imperium under Gulliman's leadership, they are slightly more tolerant about it than they normally would be. When they conquer Pirve, they immediately round up and destroy all droids, and make the non-human inhabitants of the planet into second-class citizens. Even when the Imperium is trying to be reasonable and decides to spare Pirve's non-humans after determining they are harmless, the Imperium is still incapable of viewing those same non-humans as people, let alone people who deserve the same equal rights as humans.
  • Also seen when we're shown Noskaur's perspective when he visits Coruscant and is taken to a busy public square by Danni Quee. Noskaur is unable to look at the non-humans living on Coruscant without mentally dehumanizing them. He internally refers to non-human children as "spawn", shivers at the implication of Interspecies Friendship upon seeing humans and aliens holding hands in public, and becomes nauseated by the sight of Interspecies Romance.
  • During the Battle of Fondor, some Ultramarines are ordered to fight alongside Herglic workers who are using repurposed Separatist battle droids as Cannon Fodder against the Vong invasion. Naturally, quite a few of said Ultramarines are not too pleased about having to work alongside xenos and treat the battle droids with the same contempt as enemies. Just hearing a Herglic humanize one of the droids by nicknaming it "Wobbly" is enough to almost set one of the Marines off.
• Fish out of Water: Iterator Noskaur, Colonel Lurense, and Magos Nalt find themselves in this situation when they are sent to Coruscant to represent the Imperium. The cosmopolitan society of Coruscant and the casual intermingling between humans and aliens is like nothing they’ve ever seen.
• In Medias Res: The fic opens seven months after Guilliman and the survivors of the Battle of Calth were transported into the Star Wars galaxy, came across the independent planet Pirve, and annexed it's human and nonhuman populations into the Imperium.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: From the New Republic's perspective, the Heresy-era Imperium is this when compared to the Yuuzhan Vong. Both are imperialistic Absolute Xenophobes with dogmatic beliefs that come from outside the known galaxy, but the Imperium was at least willing to sit down and negotiate in good faith.
• Not That Kind of Mage: Guilliman initially suspects that the Force is just a fancy term for the Warp and that the Jedi are psykers. However, both Luke and Word of God have stated that this is not the case.
• Outside-Context Problem: The New Republic is one to the Imperium of Man as it flies in the face of everything the Imperium previously believed about the universe while presenting solutions to problems which have plagued the Imperium since its founding. In the SW galaxy, humans and nonhumans have been co-existing in relative peace for tens of thousands of years, proving the Imperial Truth's tenets about all aliens being dangerous to be wrong.^note Such human/alien alliances did exist in the Imperium's galaxy, but were largely "explained away" by the Imperial Truth and the Emperor's cult of personality. The New Republic also has widespread access to safe and reliable FTL travel in the form of hyperdrives that allow ships to perform FTL jumps without the constraints of Mandeville Points, whereas the Imperium is forced to use the Warp — a daemon-infested hell-dimension through which travel time is so unreliable that "time-traveling to arrive at your destination centuries before you were born" is a legitimate possible outcome. The New Republic also has access to the Holonet, which allows near-instantaneous communication across the galaxy, as opposed to the Imperium's slow and often-garbled telepathy-based system of Astropathic communications. Additionally, unlike other human-alien hybrid civilizations that the Imperium has encountered in the past, the New Republic is a Galactic Superpower far too massive and well-entrenched for the Imperium Exsilius to simply ignore or ever hope to conquer through brute force in their current state, forcing the Imperials into the odd situation of actually having to engage in diplomacy for once.
• Please Select New City Name: Upon conquering Pirve and establishing the Imperium Exsilius, Guilliman renames the planet Eboracum.
• Poor Communication Kills: Negotiations between the Imperium and New Republic nearly get ruined when a local sector police force suddenly jumps out of hyperspace above Pirve to liberate the planet after receiving word of what had happened. The sector police fleet was being led by one of Luke's Jedi Knights who had been unaware of the negotiations going on. This leads the Imperium to briefly assume treachery from the Republic and nearly attack until Shesh manages to get the sector police commodore to stand down.
• Realpolitik:
  • The New Republic agrees to ally with the Imperium of Man against the Yuuzhan Vong despite the Imperium conquering an independent world, oppressing the populace, and discriminating against non-humans. Shesh even points out that the Republic itself already has treaties with the Hutts and has member worlds which are run by monarchies even though the Republic itself is a democracy.
  • When the Imperium tell the New Republic representatives about their whole backstory including the Cybernetic Revolt and the Age of Strife, Senator Viqi Shesh doesn't have any trouble believing that 40K humanity was betrayed by their alien allies, noting that it's "only natural" for nations to look inwards and put their own self-interests above others during times of great crisis.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Downplayed. Roboute Guilliman is fairly reasonable, but only when compared to the rest of the Heresy-era and 40K-era Imperium of Man. He doesn’t immediately purge Pirve's nonhuman population and decides to keep them around after determining that they posed no threat to the planet's human inhabitants or the Imperium. From the standards of the Star Wars galaxy, however, he is a speciesist Evil Overlord who has forced a despotic regime with backwards beliefs onto an innocent world.
• Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: When Guilliman's fleet was first transported into the Star Wars universe and came across Pirve, they encountered this situation while dealing with the planet's nonhuman inhabitants. They were genuinely caught off guard to realize that Pirve's nonhumans weren't enslaving, exploiting, or trying to exterminate the humans who lived on the planet like so many xenos from their home galaxy/universe.
  Thiel: Your New Republic is not ignorant of the principles of empiricism. We tested the aliens that we found on this world that was called Pirve. We tested them, for we had a thousand years and more of evidence of butchery and cruelty. But the Emperor, beloved by all, teaches us to seek clarity and truth. We have found these aliens to be permissible.
• Sins of the Father: Discussed. Guilliman tells Luke during their meeting that if he and his father had been born in the 40K galaxy, the Imperium would have almost certainly put Luke to death for the crimes of Darth Vader.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Played With. In the 40K universe, the Horus Heresy-era Imperium was a galaxy-spanning Rising Empire with legions of Space Marines and a god-like Emperor Scientist leading them. In the Star Wars universe, however, the Imperium currently consists of Roboute Guilliman and the battered 4911^th Expeditionary Fleet, who only have managed to claim one single world in the entire Galaxy Far, Far Away. This is something that the New Republic points out when the Imperials try to browbeat them during their first contact diplomatic meetings by acting like they're some big powerful empire when they're really not.
  Noskaur: The issue at hand is the unauthorized arrival of warships within our territory-
  Viqi Shesh: Iterator, stop. Your territory? According to who? Some piece of flimsy you forced the governor to sign? You are a pack of warlords scrabbling for a single world. There is one authority in this galaxy, and it's the New Republic. Your territory exists if we decide it does. If the Senate decides you’re another recalcitrant supremacist group? [shrugs] Don’t you dare think the hand we reached out was anything but altruistic.
  Noskaur: Senator, once again, you must recognize the threat posed-
  Viqi Shesh: I recognize that a single Star Destroyer and a few escorts is terrifying to you, sure. I also recognize that you need us more than we need you. In fact, Iterator, Shipmistress, Lieutenant - we don’t need you at all. Would the New Republic appreciate peaceful dialogue? It’s always our goal. But if your Imperium is going to be as unpredictable, trigger-happy and paranoid as you’ve shown, I daresay we have far more reliable friends. Even Hapes would cast you in their shadow. You acted like we would come to shoot your ships down, but all the New Republic needs to do is close its doors. What will you do, when your ships can’t leave this star system? What will you do when we cut off holonet connections? Sit out here and stew in your own bitterness?
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Both the dimensionally-displaced 30K Imperials and the extragalactic Yuuzhan Vong label the Star Wars droids as "abominable intelligences".
• Token Evil Teammate: Viqi Shesh to the New Republic. She is the only one who has no problem allying with the Imperium and is more than happy to turn a blind eye to their Fantastic Racism, viewing it as no different from how the Republic deals with the Hutts. She also isn’t horrified by the Imperium’s use of servitors like Kyp Durron.
• Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: Explicitly defied by Word of God.
  This is not a versus. This is not a 'who would win'. This is intended to be as true and honest to both source materials, taking characters and exploring them as best as possible, enriching both worlds for the interplay of the two, and is expressly character and narrative driven. If you expect a versus style of fic — this is not it, but I encourage you to give it a shot anyway.
• The Xenophile: Danni Quee in contrast to the Imperials. She is excited at the prospect of meeting the Imperium since they are from another galaxy. She also expresses a desire to see other galaxies and meet undiscovered alien species.
• Your Normal Is Our Taboo: Interspecies Romance is fairly common and widely accepted in the Star Wars galaxy, while the 40K characters consider it strictly taboo and no different from bestiality. While on a diplomatic visit to Coruscant on behalf of Guilliman, Iterator Noskaur is nauseated when he witnesses a human kiss a red horned alien on the lips in public and becomes more unsettled upon realizing that none of Coruscant's civilians are batting an eye at this.

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