Roleplay / Embers in the Dusk

It is the 43rd Millennium and the Imperium is on the verge of dying. Necron forces are waking in ever growing numbers and scouring entire sectors clean of all life while the Black Crusades of Abbadon the Despoiler come ever closer to breaking thorough the Cadian Gate. Most ominous of all is that the Holy Light of the Astronomican has started to flicker and recede, giving rise to fears that the Golden Throne is failing and the God-Emperor will soon die. The Ecclesiarchy quickly crushes all who claim the Emperor is dying but many among the higher reaches of the Imperium secretly believe it to be true.

Embers in the Dusk is an ongoing Forum Quest started in 2014 by Durin on Sufficient Velocity.com and beginning during the end of the 43rd millennium in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. It is played from the perspective of Fredrick Rotbart, an Administratum Adept and unexpected military genius who found himself the first Governor of Avernus, the galaxy's most dangerous Deathworld due to an administrative error.

Can be found here.

On April 21st 2020, the first part, Embers in the Dusk, was officially declared complete, and the second part, Sparks at Midnight^note It was to be either Sparks or Ashes depending on how matters were going was started at the same time.

Has a brief (only about thirty thousand words) recap on 1d4chan for those who don't want to read the whole 160k+ posts.

Embers In The Dusk contains examples of:

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• Absurdly Huge Population:
  • In-Universe. While large polities of the galaxy all tend to fit the description, the Imperial Trust's technology level allows for much higher population densities than most humans. As of 625 years after Avernus was settled, the Trust has over 65 trillion citizens spread across just under 200 worlds (it's in the middle of a large expansion now). There are two sizable Chaos polities nearby, one nearly 1,500 world, the other nearly 2,400. And both have lower populations than the Trust.
  • Also, despite being only a fraction of the Imperium's territory, the main Sane human remnants plus the Tau are quite comparable to it in population.
• Alas, Poor Villain: With a nat critfail, Gork and Mork rolled too badly for a proper blaze of glory, instead simply shot down by regular, if very big, guns.
• Alcubierre Drive: Word of God is that the Void Dragon's forces are using it. There is the minor fact that it is impossible in the setting, but somehow, the C'tan manages.
• Angelic Abomination: A good number of Tjapa's daemons. The flaming wheel with eyes all over the place is brought up as an example of what an angyl might look like.
• Animal Stampede: Thundabeasts, large herbivorous lizards native to the Elysium region of Avernus, are prone to destructive stampedes. Since they possess psychokinetic shields, these stampedes can destroy almost any obstacles in their way, including the armoured vehicles of the local PDF and the cities they're protecting.
• Anyone Can Die: Numerous named characters die during the quest. Of the major characters, presently Deacon Markus Aurilian, Captain Adrienne Volkiss, Magos Biologis Tertius Saren, Lady Freya, General Kenneth Drago, Henry Volkiss, Fabricator-General Britton, Archmagos Biologis Quintus Saren, Administrator Caroline, Admiral Parnell, Administrator Edvin, Primaris Zhukov, Major Ajax, Assistant Thaddeus, Lord Marshal-Sigurd, Assistant Antoni, Administrator Signe, Admiral Freyr, General Richards, Knight Baron Sigmund, Saint Lin, Lord-Marshal Hrothgar, Commodore Syr Rotbart, Prince Tormod Rotbart, Chief Administrator Isaac Gros, Inquisitor Marcus Klovis-Ultan, and Vizier Rosalinda Orlov are among the deceased. The list of canon characters who perish during the quest is impressive, too: Bjorn the Fell-Handed, Changeling, Typhus, Arhra, Sanguinor, Kaldor Drago, Tuska Daemonkilla, Omegon, Khaine, Honsou, Fabius Bile, Commander Farsight, Gork, Mork, Celestine, Lion El'Jonson, Ahzek Ahriman, Luis Dante, Erebus, Aetaos'Rau'Keres, Lorgar.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: One sidestory is from the viewpoint of a Jotunheim rebel who joined because his wife was sent to the concentration camps by the old governor, and he was given no news of her. The Avernite questioning him explains that his wife died... a month after giving birth to their daughter, and while the rebel will be shot in any case, cooperation means the child won't be growing up in the crowded facilities of a rebellious planet, but the comparative luxury of an Avernus orphanage.
• Artifact Title: As of the end of 2022, all attempts to rename the New Sector of the Imperial Trust are failing despite its already decent age.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Generally how promotions work for Avernites, with a person's position being decided from their competence. Some other parts of the Trust find this to be unsettlingly meritocratic.
  • Averted with Champions, who have the Asskicking, but not the mindset for Authority. Instead, they are assigned to combat units as elites.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Almost three centuries into the quest, you gain the blueprints for a Deus class superdreadnaught, an experimental capital ship of the Dark Age, along with a defence station built with the same technology. Problem is, even with all the Trust's infrastructure, a forty kilometer ship and an even bigger fort aren't easy to build in less than a century and without being bankrupted. Also, instead of promethium, these pieces run on antimatter, and facilities to produce it in sufficient amounts (save for limited rate onboard systems) aren't part of the blueprints. Three and a half centuries later, in preparation for fighting the Slaugth, the option to build one was given, but it was decided that that's still not quite in the "practical" range.
  • The Avatar of Khorne. It's the most skilled combatant in the galaxy, and a master strategist as well, befitting the direct incarnation of the God of War. But the ritual sacrifices needed to keep it in the materium are hideously expensive, completely shutting down the population growth of the Black Imperium, a galactic power, and the ritual sites themselves are quite vulnerable to disruption.
  • Orichalcum Gear. Power Armours made with the material are durable enough to rival whole starships, but a single suit costs enough to outfit a Chapter in regular Dark Age-level suits, limiting their use to the greatest of heroes exclusively.
  • The Grey Knights seem to have become that. Of course a thousand Astartes with Incorruptible Pure Pureness and psyker powers trained to the best and beyond what Humanity can provide sounds nice. However, thanks to the technological improvements and the World's modifications, Avernus produces a thousand Beta level psykers annually as of eight hundred years since the start of the quest, plus fifty Alphas, two hundred thousand Major Psykers and around twelve million psykers total. And thanks to all the knowledge shared and developed over these centuries, each psyker is already as skilled with his powers as a Grey Knight.
• Badass Bookworm: Anyone with a combination of high Learning and high Martial/Combat.
  • Techpriests, particularly on Avernus, tend to be very capable in personal combat thanks to their augmentations.
  • Saint Lin was a very knowledgeable man on matters of religion. He was also one of the deadliest individuals in the Imperial Trust.
• Badass Bureaucrat: Anyone with high Administration and Martial/Combat.
  • Governor Fredrick Rotbart, a Administratum Adept who turned out not only to be a military genius, but personally killed a Chaos Lord with a Power Knife before he acquired any augmentations or much combat training.
  • Avernites in particular have earned a reputation for making these, helped by the fact that their Governor started off as one. There's even a trait named "Avernite Bureaucrat", which gives bonuses to Administration and Combat.
• Badass Bystander: Avernite civilians are always armed and all of them are members of a militia with a skill level above that of the stormtroopers of most other human forces. Six centuries into the quest, they all get Power Armour, too.
• Badass Normal: All Avernites are this, since they come from a world where a good year is one where "only" around a million soldiers are killed by the native flora and fauna.
• Being Evil Sucks: As of the mid-seventh century of the quest, Abaddon is at a point where he starts sympathizing with the rulers of the old Imperium. When you are running an Evil Versus Oblivion war, with your bosses denying you critical resources for the sake of personal grudges, and the sworn enemies of said bosses being the only allies you can trust thanks to an Enemy Mine situation, frustration is bound to be off the charts.
• Beneath the Earth: The Caverns under Dis. Almost as insane to navigate as the Warp, but at least there is a chance to get rewards and loot out of it.
• Blind Seer: High Grandmaster Munstrum Ridcully, The Oracle Of Avernus. He lost his sight after witnessing the birth of Ynnead and her battle against Slaanesh. He is a diviner on par with Eldar Farseers and probably the most skilled human diviner ever.
  • Blind Weaponmaster: Also, despite his blindness, he's a dangerous combatant.
• Blood Iron: One sidestory has Ophelia fashion an iron amulet out of her own blood, colected over the course of a year.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: What the Governor's Own and the Life Guard Regiments are for.
• Broken-System Dogmatist: The Imperium, in spades. The Imperial successor polities still have bits of this, and the Imperial Trust in particular is still rather culturally backwards by modern galactic standards, since the time-accelerating Warp storm and their advanced technology meant that they weren't forced to adapt and improve or have time to move away from the Imperial mindset like the others did.
• Brought Down to Badass: Skarbrand, who after his depowerment and healing by Be'lakor, seems to have taken a position as Abaddon's bodyguard.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Most Primaris Psykers. Since they only get their position after proving they're competent, and almost all psykers have some kind of quirk, Primaris Psykers tend to have various oddities that get tolerated because their usefulness is more than enough to compensate for it. For example, Tamia can be ditzy or absent-minded, while Aria is a bit OCD. Perfectly normal individuals like Xavier are the exception.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: The Eldar have a good chance of destroying both the Black Imperium and Abaddon if they make the effort, but too many apocalypses are held back by them.
• Cassandra Truth: One sidestory during the attack on the Dark Eldar has an Archon flaying his aide alive for reporting a million and a half Power Armoured soldiers among the invaders. The guy survives long enough to say "Told you so" once the reports are confirmed.
• Cavalry Betrayal: In a variant, one of the battles opening the Black Imperium Civil War was when the third wave of forces attacking the Silver Skulls attacked the others, Drop Site Massacre style.
• Charles Atlas Superpower:
  • One (apocryphal) sidestory has the description of all the near-superhuman feats an Avernite is capable of.
  • The Paragon abilities. A blademaster cutting down anything smaller than an Emperor Titan on a crit, a commander sending out a force that turns out to be whatever is needed against the foes encountered once they are, a diplomat so skilled he gets the warring groups he's entreating to make peace to ignore grudges millions of years old...
  • The Transcendent abilities go even further. While only Jane Oakheart has obtained them among the quest's characters (some side characters also have them), it is known that, for starters, merely possessing one is enough to become The Ageless.
• Church Militant: Saint Lin is actually trying to defy this trope in the Imperial Trust. That said, he himself is one of the most dangerous people in the Trust, especially when facing Chaos.
  • The only militant church order that still exists, Avernite Witch Hunters, are used specifically to engage Beta and Alpha psykers and are some of the most elite and deadly combatants in galaxy, with only Khornate forces capable of matching their psyker-killing abilities. It's noted at one point that on other planets, they would be considered an army, but for Avernites, they are merely an elite police force.
• Composite Character: Apparently, servants of Chaos tend to blend Aria and Jane together, sometimes with a touch of Areatha added in. They pass scary stories among each other about an Aria Oakheart, the Witch of Nothing, who can drain and cut through any psychic powers.
• Cool Starship:
  • The Well of Urd, a Dark Age Exploration vessel bigger then a modern Battleship with several strange and powerful technologies arrives in orbit of Avernus.
  • The various Dark Age starships in the rings around Cocceio, the largest of which are even larger and more powerful than the Well of Urd.
  • Later, an expedition brings back the blueprints for the even bigger Deus class starship... unfortunately, the current situation places it firmly in the Awesome, but Impractical area for the next few centuries.
  • Planetary class ships in general. It's not so much a class as a label for anything so large its size breaks the conventional scale used for describing naval vessels. Smaller ones are "merely" moon-sized, while larger ones take their class's name more literally. Examples include Eldar Craftworlds, the Phalanx and Krork Attack Moons for the former category, while Necron World Engines and Krork War Worlds belong in the second.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Space Marines have a mechanic where they are considered to fight as though they are one unit size larger than they actually are. For example, a Space Marine squad fights on the same scale as an Imperial Guard company.
• Conveniently Unverifiable Cover Story: When dealing with infiltration attempts, Jane complains at one point how on a planet like Avernus, "no surviving relatives" is a status unlikely to raise any eyebrows.
• Crossover:
  • one of the biggest human polities is based upon Callamus from Deus Ex Mechanicus Reboot, and the Crimson Crusaders from Glory Or Death also appear.
  • There are apocryphal sidestories crossing over with other fics, like Warhammer High^note a rather lengthy and unfinished omake series, Out of the Dark, and Everqueen.
  • The QM wrote a couple of apocryphal omakes using TLN characters in A Song of Peace... a quest that uses a number of TLN concepts and even has a version of Avernus (though one that's yet to appear onscreen).
• Cultured Badass and Cultured Warrior: Practically every Avernite, thanks to their school system, governor, and military tradition. "The stereotypical Avernite [is] cheerful, friendly, well organized and above all, deadly."
• Cutting Corners: During the first years of the colony, there was an incident with a good portion of one city leveled in an explosion. It turned out someone had skimped on the security measures meant to prevent the uncontrolled spread of the Life-Eater Fungus (read: a somewhat less aggressive analogue of the stuff used in Exterminatus grade bombs). Heads rolled.
• Dead Guy on Display: The city of Itza has corpses of Exalted daemons nailed to the walls. Normally invisible, but when during an incursion the spell falls, it's bad for enemy morale.
• Death by Irony: Overlord Garkill, a Genius Bruiser Ork who had always relied on unpredictable moves when attacking Avernus, is killed after triggering an out-of-the-blue Old One defense system.
• Death Seeker: The Black Irons are primarily composed of soldiers with death wishes.
  • Their commander, Lieutenant-General Viktor Mineyev, stands out in particular. Despite all the crazy shit he has been throwing himself into, he has extremely lousy luck in dying, although he did have to get large chunks of his body replaced with cybernetics. He finally succeeded at the Deathwall Siege during the Incursion of Doom, banishing an Honoured Great Unclean One.
• Death World:
  • Avernus itself is a Deathworld where over a million soldiers a year are killed by the native flora and fauna. On a good year.
  • Muspelheim is a different kind of Deathworld, where the terrain itself is the danger rather than what lives there.
• Demoted to Extra: First, the Church actions become Saint Lin's personal actions and then are gone completely once he is dead (the last action naturally being a decision about what to do with his body). Later, the Fleet actions become extremely rare in term of years spent, and then are gone completely once you hand the Warp capable ships to the Trust (the shipyard output is either sold to the Trust or augments your system's defence forces).
• Denied Food as Punishment: Once an STC is discovered for decently-tasting MRE, General Drago orders that the old ones be reserved for misbehaving soldiers.
• Derelict Graveyard: The wreckage field around the fourth planet. Four thousand capital ships and about ten times that escorts. All Dark Age tech.
• Desk Sweep of Passion: When Freya tells her husband in one of the apocrypha that he "could take a break" from all the paperwork, it is stated that "Frederick was wise to her ways, and cleared a space on his desk just in time for Freya to land."
• Destructive Saviour: The first Alpha Plus Psyker born upon Avernus was eliminated by the local wildlife... along with the city they were in, and the island upon which the city stood.
• Dice Roll Death: Literally, from background survival rolls. More than one highly skilled character has been taken out by a single poorly-placed nat 1.
• Didn't See That Coming: Nearly everyone in the galaxy is blindsided by the Green Awakening. It turns out that Gork and Mork are much more powerful than what people believed them to be. What was seen deep in the Warp prior to their awakening was just their astral projections (compared to a thumb war) rather than their actual selves.
• Didn't Think This Through: Arhra, who somehow thought it was a good idea to use 888 shards of Khaine in a ritual to try to revive the Eldar war god. In the Eye of Terror. It ends with the thing getting stolen by Khorne, who gets a new avatar with a staggering amount of power. Naturally, all the other Eldar are pissed, to say the least.
• Diminishing Returns for Balance: The Penguins are considered a Game-Breaker faction precisely because their psyker choirs avert this trope, allowing for millions of them to stack their power.
• Distant Finale: One omake in the first thread featured a Jotunheim rebel who, during the first years of the Trust's existence, traded is knowledge about the rebellion to buy his daughter a place in an Avernire orphanage. The second thread has an omake about the daughter, now a Helltrooper colonel.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: The Imperial Trust is a polity with technology half the galaxy would pay anything for and a number of other advantages besides. Unfortunately, it's only sector sized or so, therefore, it must avoid drawing too much attention from the big players. That stage ends alng with the first thread, when the Heist of Isha is conducted by Avernites.
• Dumb Muscle: Warboss Headcrusha is extremely bad at commanding, but makes up for it by being an absolute monster in personal combat.
• Elite Army:
  • Avernite troops are better pound for pound than most of their counterparts, but there generally aren't as many of them.
  • Space Marines are even fewer, but their augmentations make them even better individually.
• Elite Mooks:
  • For the Imperial Guard, Stormtroopers/Grenadiers and their local equivalents, elite troops a cut above the ordinary Guardsman.
  • The Avernites in general compared to most other Imperial forces (for comparison, their militia have a skill modifier higher than the average Grenadier). Up to eleven with their Grenadier equivalents, the Helguard, who are capable of matching Space Marines. And even further with Heljaegers, drawn from the best of the Helguard.
• Energy Weapon: The standard weapon of the Imperial Guard. More advanced Neutron Lasers were the standard for elites in the Dark Age.
• Epic Fail:
  • Natural 1 is this for actions with varying possible degrees of success. The most Epic, in all senses, Fail (or Win depending on point of view) in the quest was when Slaanesh rolled nat 1 twice in a row against Ynnead. Followed by Ynnead rolling a third nat 1 against Slaanesh, netting her a Pyrrhic Victory.
  • A current contender for the title is the climax of the Grand Incursion. After matters get tough, Be'lakor conducts a massive ritual to pull Avernus into the Warp. The Five promptly start raining daemons onto the planet... except two of them pick the same spot, leading to a massive brawl which the other three promptly join, allowing the planet to slip back to the Materium and effectively ending the incursion. The ritual, mind you, cost the existence of five Exalted, one for each god.
  • One of the galaxy's best Seers and one of the galaxy's best Generals lead a fleet of hypertech Eldar ships against a group of sitting ducks. Natural 1. 50% of reroll... failed. The entire fleet - thankfully an expendable ghostfleet, and the Leaders were sitting just inside the closest webway gate - gets scattered over a sector as a subatomic haze.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: Most of the native species (plant and animal) of Avernus can and will kill you, even the grass you walk through.
• Evil Versus Oblivion:
  • Downplayed with the Necrons who muster their full power and go to extragalactic space to eliminate the main Tyranid swarm after awakening in full. The few splinter fleets that do manage to slip through are largely taken out by Abaddon, a straighter example.
  • Another example appears later in the form of a civil war between both Primarchs of the Alpha Legion, with Omegon aligning himself with the Void Dragon in its quest to end all life, and Alpharius still fighting for the forces of Chaos.
  • The Dragon War itself. Enormous resources are thrown by Abaddon and the Chaos Gods to hold back the Void Dragon with his Omnicidal Maniac goals.
• Explosive Overclocking:
  • During the first Ork invasion, a decision is made to hold back the fleet and sacrifice the orbital defenses in a last stand. Naturally there is little point to keep all the safeties which prevent the need for repairs after every battle when this is the last one.
  • Jane's Last Hunters. Without the Emperor's expertise, the only way you can match Astartes augmentations is at the cost of two thirds of one's life expectancy.

F - O

• Fantastic Livestock: Nogs are a type of small Avernite animal which is relatively harmless as far as Deathworld fauna goes, and only survives due to its reproduction being a Beta version of the Ork spores. It was made into livestock that even the Chaos worshippers use extensively, despite the inherent hatred of all Avernus life towards them.
• The Federation: The Imperial Trust, a union of the Nine Worlds of the Asgard subsector created after the fall of the Imperium. They are one of the few Sane polities in the neighborhood, and seem to genuinely care about their people, far more than the Imperium had at least since its earliest days.
• Feed It a Bomb: Warboss Headcrusha was finally killed by a vortex grenade going off in his mouth, courtesy of General Mineyev. A few centuries later, Mineyev pulls the same trick on a Honoured Greater Daemon.
• Festering Fungus: The Life Eater Fungus, the greatest danger in the Everglades region and a weaker analogue of the Life Eater Virus. It can rapidly transform organic matter into an explosive mass before exploding.
• Fictional Geneva Conventions: The Imperium Secundus and the Tau were in a state of near constant war, but they did agree on a set of rules limiting damage. Both are aware, after all, that there is a good chance they will find themselves in an Enemy Mine situation tomorrow.
  • This becomes a full ceasefire and alliance after the Destroyer emerges in the Ultramar region and begins indiscriminately rampaging through both polities' territories, forcing them to join forces to hold back the C'tan and its legions.
• Flanderization: In-Universe, the Abomination societies are effectively a Flanderized Imperium without the occasional Only Sane Man around.
• Friend to All Children: Saint Lin. He says he would've spent his life running an orphanage if he hadn't gotten his job as a Deacon, and even with the demands of his position, still enjoys the times where he's assigned to helping young psykers about to take their trials with improving their wills. He continued to do so even in death, his tomb serving as a location near which psyker kids can have a relative break from the whispers of Chaos.
• Gargle Blaster: One sidestory describes the various types of Avernus-made booze. It includes a wine which, under certain conditions, makes one's arms melt off. Some people do it deliberately, because the resulting liquid can be processed into an even better wine, a black market good fetching more than enough to buy replacement limbs.
• General Failure:
  • Surprisingly, the Necron leader during the Necron Invasion. He seemed to think that slowly marching your troops in the general direction of the enemy is a good tactic. Durin rolled a natural 3 on a 100-faced dice for his skill.
  • Warboss Headcrusha was so impressively stupid that the Trust was actively trying to keep him alive as any replacement would be much smarter.
• General Ripper: Solariel, who is so obsessed with destroying the Void Dragon that he ignored orders from his god to assist with a fight elsewhere. Keep in mind that Solariel is an Exalted daemon of the god of tyranny and obedience.
• Genius Bruiser: The Jotun of Jotunheim are smarter than their regular Ogryn brethren, but just as strong.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: As a variant, when the Ancient One starts believing himself to be in an illusion after his duel with Eternity's End, Jane manages to snap him out of it by fighting him well enough to give him a serious wound. It wasn't a matter of pain, but rather the warrior realizing no illusion can replicate this kind of skill.
• Girly Bruiser: Skarbrand nowadays. As a way to stick it to Khorne, she's become as feminine as possible while avoiding going into Slaaneshi territory, and of course her fighting skills are still as sharp as always.
• Good All Along: Some canon and a lot of fanon hint at how screwed the galaxy will be if the Krork come back, considering what Orks are like. Then, we hear that it happened. Well, it turns out the Orks we know are actually the Krork analogue of Feral Children, and it might have been bad - possibly - had they reached Krork level. However, what actually happened is that an army of Krork was rescued from Trazyn's collection, and these guys are actually what is considered a "good" faction.
• The Good Guys Always Win: "Good Always Wins" is literally the name of one of the rituals Areatha uses against the forces of Nurgle at Itza during the extra-nasty Green Skies incursion. Sure enough, the daemons are driven off without really accomplishing much of their intended objectives.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: During the attack on Sicarus, Vulkan distracts a Tjapan Exalted Daemon while Irillyth deals with a Slaaneshi one. By the time the Phoenix Avatar finally takes out his opponent, Vullan gets cut down six or seven times.
• Great Offscreen War:
  • The War in the Void, fought between the Necrons under the Silent King and the main Tyranid hive fleet. We don't see much of it due to it taking place outside the galaxy, but the Necrons made use of their most destructive superweapons that they don't dare use inside the galaxy for fear of wrecking the place, and the Tyranid hive fleet was a few dozen times larger than the galaxy at its height.
  • The War in Heaven in the backstory. It lasted thousands of years, and things were crazy enough that according to Word of God, the Primarchs, some of the most powerful individuals in the galaxy present-day, would only be second-tier heroes if they were around back then.
  • The Krork aganst the Eternal Conflagration. As of the third Grand Conclave, it is eight hundred Sectors of Krork against a level 4 WAAAAGH! eleven hundred sectors in size englobing them, featuring the (almost) full might of Gork and Mork clashing against War in Heaven technology and discipline. All we know are that the Krork are building Attack Moons and War Worlds, the Orks are attempting to build Attack Moons but are yet to field one, and the Krork are confident they'll win. Becomes a little less Offscreen when the Twins start running out of Juice, and everyone, Trust included, is forced to clean up the Ork worlds to reduce the impact of their final blaze of glory.
  • The Time War, which was exiled from the main timeline. Nobody who isn't a participant knows what's going on in there, and trying to find out too much will drag them in.
  • To a lesser extent, Tjapa's attack on Solemnace. We know the Chaos God's most elite forces went there, aside from those who outright revolted against their master's Skewed Prioroties . We know they intended to kill the Emperor who resides there as a guest/museum piece. We know the daemons had the shit kicked out of them. We saw one of the Exalted a few decades later, still badly wounded. Basically, that's all.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: As far as the public knows, Seamus Lin's death came from natural (under the circumstances) causes. The Trust can't afford drawing attention by revealing to everyone that he healed Primarch Guilliman at the cost of his own life. At least, until the second thread, when attention is drawn anyway.
• Had to Be Sharp:
  • The reason why the Avernites are so dangerous is that they had to survive Avernus.
  • Any Imperial loyalists that are still alive in the centuries after the fall of the Imperium would have to be tough.
  • The Cavers of Avernus are people exploring the Eldritch Location Beneath the Earth cavern network the planet has. Sometimes, they take a break by serving in the regular Helguard. Word of God is, each of them is an Astartes level fighter.
• Happy Ending Override: Since the events of Glory Or Death are canon in this quest, the creation of the cure of the Black Rage added a new flaw for the sons of Sanguinius to fight against: The Yellow Doom. The sufferers of this defect are more and more likely to get into fights where they are both unlikely to survive and very likely to commit great deeds of heroism. The effect of this flaw is cummulative as well, and it forces those who suffer it to split into smaller and smaller units as the doom grows stronger, lest their collective mistfortune destroy them all.
• Hellgate: Avernus has open Warprifts at the poles, but the wildlife there is so dangerous that any Warp entities that get through tend to get eaten. Literally. Of course, every century or two, a full scale Daemonic Incursion comes through. That's when the planet truly shows what it's like.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Lampshaded in one hilarious sidestory, where Rotbart promises that anyone caught without a helmet on duty will be assigned to venom milking.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: No one noticed Dalv Sepet is Vlad Tepes backwards for years in real life and centuries in-universe.
• Historical Domain Superperson: Champion Surt is actually a Perpetual born as the 19th century explorer Charles Napier Sturt.
• Hollywood Cyborg: Many members of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Sufficiently bad injuries can also require mechanical replacements, with General Mineyev being a particularly extreme case.
• Home Field Advantage: Avernus is filled with terrifying wildlife, which have often inflicted major casualties on invading forces.
• Home Guard: Each individual planet's PDF fills this role, with some also training up civilians to serve as a militia.
• Hover Tank: The Dark Age's Diamondbacks. An Anti-Grav vehicle made in the last years before the civilization collapsed, it's capable of 300 kph. The armor is a bit light for its weight, of course.
• Human Subspecies: There are the Jotun, a more socially adapted type of Ogryns. Then, there is the Vestri League, a sizable polity with surviving Squats in charge. Finally, a few centuries into the quest, it becomes obvious that the Planetary Mind's ongoing modifications put Avernites firmly in the Abhuman range.
• Humongous Mecha:
  • The Imperial Knights of Asgard are on the small side as mecha go in this universe, but are still nasty superheavy-scale combatants.
  • The Forge World of Atlas supplied Avernus with several Titans.
  • The Ork Overlords neighboring the Asgard subsector after the Warp Storm dissipates have quite a few Gargants on hand.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: During the Grand Incursion, it turns out Avernus spent the last sixty million years significantly exaggerating the extent of its restrictions.
• Impeded Messenger: That's how Lion El'Jonson's fall had started. The Emperor sent Saint Celestine to warn him of the Abomination once he awoke, but, as usual, underestimated Chaos... despite being asleep said Abomination already had servants in place to intercept Celestine and deliver a message of their own.
• Indy Ploy: During the Grand Incursion, one of the tricks you pull on the enemy scouts in your area is leaving much of your non-critical patrol and force deployment to kindergarten kids. The leader spends a lot of time trying to make sense of the Confusion Fu before brushing it off and making a quite disastrous direct assault.
• Insistent Terminology: There are no giant spiders among the tame animals used by Avernites. Avernites would never use spiders. The Bolehs used as warbeasts are crabs.
• Irony:
  • The most expensive STC find on Avernus before the Emperor's death was a type of Rejuvenat twice as powerful as the best known. The discussions stated that one of the reasons it is so valuable (twenty times the cost of a cheap Astartes-killing rifle, and enough to nearly buy out the nearby Forge World) is that even the High Lords of Terra will want to live twice as long. Considering the events in the Solar System, it is unlikely this particular group got to enjoy the increased lifespan.
  • The only way Avernites survive their planet is by breeding as fast as possible. However, their Governor only ever had one child, who only had one child as well, and as of the second thread, has no known surviving descendants.
  • Countless omakes written to help one of our heroes (and the Krork commander) turn a success into a Transcendent trait, only to fail. Then Jane makes a scheduled one in a million roll and voila!
  • The World has been stuck sixty million years in an anti-Chaos research mode... and it's very weak (by its standards) when it comes to researching Ka and Primal (a Warp realm fundamentally incompatible with Chaos)..
• It Will Never Catch On: A Turn 26 sidestory features an Inquisitor who used to be opposed to the whole idea of settling Avernus, believing that nothing will come out of people upon such a lethal planet. Now, he's sending a Grey Knight team to investigate the reports of utterly unbelievable success.
• It's All Junk: Turns out the Eldar Gods have left a good amount of their personal gear on Avernus due to painful memories connected to it.
• Kingmaker Scenario: The Necrons, as the only unengaged galactic superpower. They're not strong enough to take on the entire galaxy at once and win, but Durin notes that whoever they decide to side with will probably be the last ones standing.
• Large and in Charge: Exploited. Saar Handerson, a particularly tall Astartes, isn't actually in charge, but is often used as bait for Ork Warbosses who believe he must be.
• Large Runt: That Grot, the god of Grots, is merely a servant and punching bag to Gork and Mork... but is a Major God on his own right.
• Laser Blade: Dark Age Plasma Foils, which come in infantry and Knight-Titan sizes. Advanced Power Armor also has optional Blade Below the Shoulder variants.
• The Last Dance: Inquisitor Klovis-Ultan's final project before his death, which involved clearing out all the Alpha Legion in the local region, and then recruiting the loyal ones. It was successful.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Standard doctrine for the Empire of Ashes (and Eldar in general). Massively outnumbered and unable to compensate even with their ludicrously high troop quality, the Ynnari carefully balance various foes against each other to keep themselves and those they are trying to protect away from the worst of the fighting.
• Limb-Sensation Fascination: Newborn Slann tend to spend years in a mindless daze as they process the experience of being alive and sensing everything the universe has to offer.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: While Rotbart never grows insignificant by any measure, Ridcully is a far more important figure on the galactic scale.
• Little Hero, Big War: The entire quest. While Rotbart and the Avernite colony are never too out of the loop thanks to their connection to Ridcully and Avernus itself, the Eldar are the real heavy lifters for the galaxy, while the playerbase mostly interact with major galactic occurrences through having Ridcully divine certain subjects and acting as auxiliaries to the Eldar and their allies on major campaigns. As Durin puts it:

  You were an extra in someone else's story.

• Macross Missile Massacre: One of the technologies brought from the Roskilde expedition (and the only one immediately usable) one-shot torpedo launchers which can be attached to any ship for a massive alpha strike.
• Mad Scientist: The Termites are a whole race of those. How mad are we talking? Every few decades (centuries if lucky), they blow up their civilization and lose a good portion of their success. The most common cause of death for them is internal strife, followed by experiments Gone Horribly Wrong, then the same Gone Horribly Right, then wildlife and daemons, and then the world taking countermeasures against the second and third reason going too far.
• Mage Killer:
  • The Psyker Hunters and Witch Hunters are specialized anti-psyker troops.
  • Jane Oakheart and Grandmaster Aria are particularly adept at fighting psykers.
• Magical Girl: Areatha. Yes, really. She has a claim to that archetype and everything.
• Magic Knight: Battle psykers generally avoid being Squishy Wizards. Named characters, like Gerald Xavier, a powerful pyromancer and expert swordsman, who is one of the strongest combatants in Imperial Trust, deserve special mention.
• Magnetic Weapons: The Dark Age's Impaler series of railguns, which are overall more effective than their bolter counterparts at a fraction of the cost.
• Master Swordsman: Characters with "Master Of The Blade" trait, like Fredrick Rotbart. Some characters, like General Leopold Schwarz, are Grandmaster Swordsmen. Arbitrator Jane Oakheart takes it even further, being a Paragon Swordsman. This level of skill allows her (and anyone else at or above her level) to perform outright physically impossible feats, which in Jane's case is the ability to cut Warp effects. (It even works with things that aren't her sword, like random kitchen knives, as long as they are sharp enough)
• Min-Maxing: Normally avoided with characters, but played perfectly straight with Avernus itself. A world with lots of Dark Age ruins and a super-high Psyker birth rate... at the expense of wildlife that wipes out a million soldiers and several tank regiments on a good year.
• Mini-Mecha:
  • The Imperial Guard has its Sentinels, whilst the Space Marines have Dreadnoughts.
  • The Orks have Deff Dreads and Killa Kans.
  • The Dark Age has the Goliath and Crab walkers.
• Mirror Match: Jane has to fight some Chaos doppleganger (later confirmed to be The Changeling itself) at one point. There are two omakes describing the fight, neither of which is canon, and both are awesome.
• Money Spider: The Black Crystal Jewelry you find on the wildlife leaders. Out of the first four, only two were actually worn by the enemies (due to these being sapient and somewhat humanoid ones). The other two had the artifacts stuck in their teeth.
• The Mourning After: Frederick, with his deceased wife Freya.
• Muggle Born of Mages: Children born of psykers have a higher chance than normal of being psykers themselves, but not by that much. Considering the amount of psykers born on Avernus, this doesn't make the trope uncommon.
• My Defence Need Not Protect Me Forever:
  • The Incursion of Doom. With the full fury of the Chaos Gods against the planet, there is no way the Avernus people will defeat them. However, holding out until the inevitable Enemy Civil War breaks out is entirely possible.
  • The Krork during the Final WAAAAAGH!!! They cannot hold against a Level 5 indefinitely, but so long as enough survive by the time Gork and Mork run out of gas, it's acceptable.
  • The main strategy of the Eldar is to play the enemies against each other until the Krork grow powerful enough.
• No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: One omake describes Abaddon finally grinding through the defenses of Cadia after a thousand years, and extremely disappointed that by then, the soldiers are so ground down and exhausted they cannot even offer a proper Last Stand. He is so disappointed, in fact, that he gathers the survivors and offers them to buy their lives by giving him a proper fight that'll impress him in some way surpassing those of their ancestors. He even swears an unbreakable oath he'll follow his word. They do manage to match the older fights, but not surpass them... until during his final rampage, some teen manages to nick him with her sword. While it's a scratch he barely feels, it is still a feat no Badass Normal had ever managed, only supersoldiers and Xenos, so he is forced to follow his oath - the survivors are given a ship and a Navigator, and are sent to find as safe a place as they can in the galaxy.
• No Honor Among Thieves: A hallmark of Chaos. They just can't help but infight, even at the absolute worst times. This is the reason why they haven't just taken over the galaxy yet, despite their enormous power advantage. The end of the Grand Incursion is a particularly spectacular example of this.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Imbac. He's the Slann equivalent of a teenager who just read his high school textbooks and was nothing special in the late War in Heaven, but after dying and getting revived by Isha in the modern era he's a faction leader looked up to as an unmatched font of knowledge and powerful wielder of forgotten and nigh-impossible-to-counter magics.
• Not Rare Over There: A double case with Orichalcum. For the Trolls, its inventors, it is a material used for the best of their gear, but a relatively common one. For Sane humans, who were given the secret of its manufacture, Orichalcum equipment is used only by the greatest of heroes, since producing it with human technology is a task that can strain a Forge World for a single piece of equipment. In enemy states, however, which do not have the knowledge of its production and can only obtain it is loot, Orichalcum gear has its price measured not even in planets, but in whole sectors.
• Odd Job Gods: Most of the members of the Aetheric Concordat. Such as Zahhak the goddess of the idea that evil is a choice, Zaeed the god of mercenaries, and Faust the goddess of friendship.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Not much is known about the circumstances of the Emperor's death, but presumably it was this.Word Of GM is that the players, due to sheer luck, inadvertently avoided both the devouring of the Emperor by the Abomination and it acquiring power over human souls like Slaanesh had over the Eldar's.
• Off the Rails: There were quite a few player decisions in the quest that Durin didn't see coming which threw off his plan for parts of the story. These include the Grand Conclave, Operation Hecatoncheir, and the idea of having Lin's final act be healing Roboute Guilliman.
• Old Master: Pretty much anybody who survived on Avernus long enough to count as old, most notable example General Schwarz. Over half a thousand years old, he is a military genius and a Grandmaster Swordsman, one of the three most skilled swordsmen in the Imperial Trust. Also Quartok leader First Councilor Aryz and the Ultramarines, though they don't age and only become more experienced with time.
  • The biggest example is the Ancient One, a Saurus old enough to have fought in the War in Heaven (and acted as the Avernites' spearhead against every single daemonic incursion on the since the birth of Chaos). He's perhaps the most skilled combatant in the galaxy outside of the Avatar of Khorne.
• Old Soldier: Many characters are this, some examples are General Aelfric of Midgard and General Schwarz, who both are over 500 years old. Captain Julius and his veteran Ultramarines have survived nine hundred years after the Emperor's death, time spent in near constant battle. Also, First Councilor Aryz who is 1500 years old.
• One-Man Army: Stronger psykers, and to a lesser degree, other characters with a high Combat skill.
  • Warboss Headcrusha head-butted a psychic thermonuclear battle tiger out of existence, killed over 30 Regiments of Black Irons on his own and survived multiple Vortex grenades.
• One-Note Cook: Sperge Squore, a minor god member of the Aetheric Concordat, used to be a Supreme Chef, but after an attack from a Slaaneshi daemon, only the power to make sandwiches remained. Since these were still sandwiches providing healing, it made him useful nevertheless.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Tjapa launches a full scale attack on Avernus for the last chance to kill the Last Saint before old age does.
• Only One Name: Aria and Tranth. In Aria's case, it's because her family kicked her out when she was found to be a psyker, and she didn't bother remembering their name, only keeping her own.
• Orichalcum: In this setting, it was made by the Remnant Kingdom, after they studied the Eternal (a not-quite-successful Great One) in an attempt to replicate his shell, which even the Ancient One could barely scratch. It's a bronze-colored metal matching the best the C'tan have, but the humans can only produce at great expense. A single regular Marine suit with Orichalcum costs about fifty times as much an an Advanced Terminator Suit. An Orichalcum Terminator suit is twenty times more expensive than even that.
• Oxymoronic Being: Grandmaster Aria of the Telepathica, a psyker who is also a blank.
  • There's also the Emperor, worshipped as the god and pinnacle of humankind, who's part xeno by virtue of the very small shard of Void Dragon that got accidentally reincarnated alongside the shaman souls that created him.

P - Z

• Parental Sexuality Squick: Syr reacts to the mention with "GROSS" in one of the apocrypha.
• Perspective Flip: The "Negaverse" omakes are hypothetical fragments of quests being run by other factions in the setting. It started with an omake for Valinor after their crusade having been smashed by the Trust (and right before they were wiped out), and currently also includes "threads" for the Eldar, Abaddon's Black Imperium, and the Tyranids.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse:
  • The Imperial Trust has always been smaller than its neighbours, but punching well above its weight due to the tech and troop quality. As of less than six centuries after its formation, the Trust is just under two hundred worlds, but has population and military in excess of nearby 2,000 world Chaos polities. Word of God is, it would have been a serious opponent for the entire Old Imperium.
  • The Silver Skulls' domain is four sectors, but has a population density to rival the Trust and is holding against Abaddon's own Black Imperium. They have even routed a punitive fleet commanded by Telemachon Lyras, albeit with help from Admiral Spire.
• Please Wake Up: As befits two childlike gods like Gork and Mork, they die with the former getting shot by a That's No Moon-sized BFG, and then the latter clinging to him and begging him to wake up.
• Polar Bears and Penguins: Justified, since it's another planet. The penguins are high level psykers, the bears are blanks.
• Power Armour: Many types.
  • The Ignatus Power Armour is not quite as capable as Space Marine armour, but it doesn't require the wearer to be a Super-Soldier.
  • The Power Armour of the Dark Age of Technology comes in 5 variants, which are almost as capable as their (non-Space Marine) Imperial counterparts, but much cheaper and easier to make. Each variant also comes with an Advanced version that are superior to pretty much anything the Imperium had. The Advanced variants are made even better when modified for Space Marine usage.
  • About five centuries later, you start modifying the suits with materials bought from the Troll Remnant Kingdom. The materials are as expensive to produce as it gets, but the armours are actually called "insanely tough".
• Power is Sexy: Combat prowess certainly is in this quest. One omake is about a sexy reporter interviewing an offworld Avernite who describes how he slew an Ork Warboss (because that's what the Governor would have done), and fainting as she begs to have his babies. Another is Rotbart's wife watching on TV as her husband performs a Colossus Climb to deal with an Incendiary Exponent mile-long Sand Worm, and having a major Soaked-Panties-Moment (her visiting friends do too, but she doesn't share).
• The Power of Friendship: Far more concretely than typical, friendship (or, rather, proper cooperation without fear of backstabbing) has been shown to be one of the major advantages of the sane. The ability to work with others is incredibly potent, with many of the greatest defeats of the mad stemming from disparate groups coming together to oppose them.
• Praetorian Guard: Governor Rotbart has the Governor's Own, who are equivalent to Space Marine Veterans in skill.
• Primordial Chaos: The Primordial Sea, from which reality was born and is apparently related to the memetic corruption abilities of Chaos.
• Prophecy Twist: Ausvan Medox, a champion of Tjapa, was the subject of a prophecy at his birth, which included the statement that "Nothing will defeat him". He was killed during Valinor's attack on Avernus by Grandmaster Aria, who is sometimes called "the Witch of Nothing".
• The Punishment Is the Crime: Done unofficially, but Abaddon, lord of the Black Imperium and one of the most powerful beings in the galaxy, is not having a good time. He outlived the Old Imperium and the Emperor he so deeply wanted dead, and managed to conquer a lot of territory across the Segmentums to form the biggest polity in the galaxy in the aftermath... only to then be stuck ruling over a cesspool of incompetent and/or treacherous underlings kept loyal only by fear, dealing with a plethora of weaker foes he theoretically could crush but practically cannot because it'd leave the Black Imperium open to attack from other places, with the whole mess only holding together because Eldar seers are actively working to keep the polity intact to use it as a meat shield. Just like the Old Imperium.
• Punny Name: The first Slann to be revived is named Imbac.
  • The second Slann is Ri'bit (ribbit), and the fourth Ekkeko (echo).
• Reconcile the Bitter Foes: What Saint Lin did with the warring lizardmen empires on Avernus, the Saurus and the Skinks, by creating a peace treaty. Their feud has been going on for longer than humanity has existed, and is said to have started shortly after the War in Heaven.
• Recursive Fanfiction: This is at least in part based on Lord Lucan's The Shape of the Nightmare to Come, a Warhammer 40,000 fanfic. On the other side, there are thousands of sidestories, many of them incorporated into the canon by Durin. Sometimes, one person would write a sequel to another person's sidestory. Plus, a couple of later SV quests (even post - 8th Edition ones) either borrow elements from the setting, make references to Avernus, or both.
• Refuge in Audacity: Operation Hecatoncheir, full stop. A very large Black Imperium task force (six times the size of the Imperial Trust's entire navy) is being sent to the local area to deal with Hive Fleet Grábakr, risking exposure for the already-battered Trust. To make things even worse, due to bad dice rolls, the task force is being sent extra early. So what does Rotbart do in response? Rather than just having HWWO assassinate the fleet's leadership and confusing the survivors with planted orders to delay it, the assassinations were be followed up by Vlad Tepes pretending to be a Khornate Chaos Lord (with a fake brass collar), allowing him to hijack the Chaos fleet and use it to lure Orks into fighting the Black Imperium. This gives the Trust plenty of time to kill off the Tyranids, makes it so that Abbadon will stop paying attention to the region, and nets a favor from the Eldar. Which basically turns a pressing existential threat into a windfall.
• Resurrect the Wreck: A major part of the Trust's fleet power in its first centuries stems from the fact that one of the moons in the Helheim star system has an orbiting Derelict Graveyard with over forty thousand combat wrecks in widely varying condition. The nearby shipyards of Vanaheim get into a massive backlog struggling to fix them all up.
• Revenge Before Reason: After Avernite creatures liberate Isha from Nurgle's mansion, the guy gathers an attack of an all but unprecedented scale against the planet. So much power is invested, in fact, that a failure risked Nurgle outright getting knocked out of the big player league, or at the very least facing the other gods as they intend to redraw the borders of their regions of influence at his expense.
• Riddling Sphinx: Inverted. The local Sphinxes are riddle solvers, and are quite willing to help the humans out with riddles like "what's the access code for this ancient data archive?".
• Rouge Angles of Satin: For some reason, common enough in the GM's posts for "autocorrupt function" to become a local meme on the thread.
• Rule of Cool: Being Warhammer 40,000, this regularly overwrites the laws of physics, especially when things like Orbital Bombardment are mentioned.
  • This is Justified in-universe with Warp modifications done by the Old Ones during the War in Heaven, with the aforementioned Orbital Bombardment example being done to protect the minority of planets that survived the fighting from being destroyed as well. The Law of Narrative also sometimes is responsible for such incidents.
• Sanity Has Advantages: Rationality is a staggering advantage, and is the greatest edge the forces of the sane possess, being the only reason why they're still surviving. The rare few Chaos Lords or Ork Warbosses who are even vaguely sane are staggeringly dangerous, far more than a typical foe of their power.
• Scry vs. Scry: When asked on Discord whether Rotbart's tactical foresight Paragon ability allows him to always win in Rock–Paper–Scissors, Durin stated that it does, but with Ridcully it's a regular fair game and they both end with splitting headaches.
• Sdrawkcab Alias: Commissar Dalv Sepet of the Phase Tigers is actually the famed explorer Vlad Tepes.
• Sea Monster: The oceans of Avernus are full of them. Notable examples are Krakens, Island Turtles, and the Deep Ones.
• Serial Escalation:
  • The first real battle is the fledgling Avernite colony fighting off a Chaos Warband consisting of ten ships, with the ground army being a million soldiers plus about five times that Cultists. Six years of real time and over five centuries of game time later, the Trust trying to survive against a two-hundred-sector polity led by Chaos Primarch Perturabo. That's an enemy with millions of ships, three hundred thousand of those sent to the first truly major battle and a similar number used for simultaneous secondary attacks.
  • During the war of Fjol IV, a million and a half troops in Power Armour is considered such an unrealistic figure, that the Drukhari Archon flays alive the minion who brought him such obviously false intel. Five centuries later, Rotbart decides to equip every single combat-capable Avernite with a suit of Power Armour. Over a hundred billion people. It's considered a bit costly, but worth it.
  • The major conflicts of the current galaxy are such that the Imperial Trust is but a rather minor player, needing help from stronger allies whenever some major enemy is headed their way. That's a polity powerful enough to cripple the old Imperium even in defeat.
  • Forty years into the quest, you start expanding your main Telepathica school to the size of a small town holding five thousand psykers. About seven centuries later, the expansion is into a Hive with the population of a billion, one hundred and fifty million of them psykers.
• Shout-Out:
  • Quite a few of the Dark Age's wargear and vehicles are based on the Terrans from StarCraft, though the integrated dual Plasma Foils on Advanced Power Armor and the "Khalai" fighting style developed to use them are a reference to the Protoss.
  • Ridcully is a reference to the Discworld series. So is the Lancre fleet.
  • The first Beta level Psyker born on Avernus is named Gerald Xavier.
  • The goddess Faust, whose original domain was friendship, is named after the creator of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
  • One omake has a Tzeentchian named Arch Professor Frizzle, running an academy. She has an enchanted escape vehicle, disguised as a common transport for schoolchildren.
  • One omake discussing data on pre-Warp Terra mentions the data networks apparently had seven yottabytes of explicit material.
  • When visiting the Abyss, Areatha discovers a way to make herself immune to anything not yellow.
  • One sidestory has Cegorach augmenting Isha's efforts to resurrect the Slann by singing a modified song from Ilya Muromets.
• Single Line of Descent: The line of Rotbart. It eventually leads to everyone in the family other than Frederick himself dying.
• Snowballing Threat:
  • The galaxy in general went even worse than canon Warhammer 40,000, with all kinds of "minor apocalypses" which must be stomped down before becoming too much of a threat, like degraded descendants of Men of Iron. Thankfully, at least the Tyranids are gone.
  • For a few centuries, this becomes a major issue in the form of The Green Awakening, after Gork and Mork awaken and make the Orks an even worse example than in canon. Not only can Orks grow bigger, more numerous and more advances, there is also the fact that the bigger WAAAAGH!!! receive more power, making the biggest ones a match for the Krork.
  • The Void Dragon becomes stronger by conquering additional territories and converting them into factories to make additional forces. While never ignored, the Eldar spent centuries keeping Abaddon's Black Imperium strong enough to keep it contained in a limited territory until their allies grew strong enough to take over.
• Spiders Are Scary: A very common phobia on Avernus, to the point where "Avernite" might as well be synonymous with "arachnophobe".
• Stable Time Loop:
  • Justicar Alarion's existence as a Grey Knight. While his squad is visiting Avernus to check for Chaotic corruption, they come across a young orphan, Markus Haanoc, who exorcises a daemon from his sister, displaying strong psychic abilities and somehow being able to recite the Grey Knights' litany. Alarion has him sent to Titan as a potential recruit. A few centuries earlier, the Grey Knights at Titan find a ship with a burnt-out Navigator and a young boy in stasis. The boy withstands the trials, and is eventually renamed Alarion to mark his ascension to full Grey Knight.
  • Tzeentch is revealed to yet be born. He is trying to ensure his own birth (and the power boost associated). Apparently, the Great Clock of Avernus is somehow tied to this loop.
• Stealth Expert: Generally, people with high Intrigue if they're not The Spymaster.
  • The Catachan 813th "Phase Tigers" are the masters of stealth in the Imperial Trust. Gerald Xavier has worked with them so often that he's picked up enough of their tricks to be considered an honorary member.
  • Admiral Sarnow is this with starships, even once pulling off an ambush with a 15km-long Command Battleship.
• Super-Soldier:
  • The Avernites, ordinary humans turned into some of the deadliest soldiers in the galaxy from surviving on Avernus.
    • In fact, the latest generation has undergone some many genetic modifications for better performance from the Planet Mind that they're now recognized as an abhuman strain.
  • The Space Marines and their Chaotic counterparts are still the gold standard for superhuman troops.
  • Muspelheim has the Fire Giants, who are second only to the Avernites in pure skill and are equipped with what is effectively Terminator Armor.
  • Svartalheim's Svartalfar Guards aren't the best in the Trust, skill-wise, but they make up for it by having everyone in Power Armor and easy access to relic equipment.
  • Jane's Last Hunters. Babies trained and augmented effectively from birth for thirty-five years, with enhancements making them equals to Space Marines (at the cost of drastic reduction in life expectancy), the best equipment available to humanity and an about 80% washout rate (90% for the first batch).
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: An omake written during the Gilded Skies has a person reviewing the invasion as a video game campaign. Upon seeing the forces and tech available, the reviewer can't understand how one fails it... until the final enemy arrives; TWO First Circle Angyls. Mind you, even one is basically a Level 5-6 Apocalypse that shrugs off all weapon damage in the quest, and a Game Over boss in the game.
• Taking You with Me: The most epic example is the reborn Khaine sacrificing himself to take out the Destroyer. Word of God is he rolled 100 on impact and 1 on survival.
• Tank Goodness: Countless tanks appear, ranging from the simple Leman Russ to the Adjudicator, which is over a hundred meters long and has enough firepower to crush some cities.
• Theory of Narrative Causality: It's discovered in-universe that the Warp has a Law of Narrative, which allows for things that shouldn't actually work to be accomplished if they're thematically and narratively appropriate, such as epic last acts before dying.
• Time Abyss: A good number of charaters, given the setting. These include some of the Primarchs, certain Eldar, a lot of Necrons, Areatha, Vlad Tepes and Charles Napier Sturt. The biggest examples, however, are the Ancient One and the Silent King who are War in Heaven veterans who lived through all the time that followed (they're around 65 million years old).
• Too Dumb to Live: One sidestory has Rotbart looking through papers and finding the amount of suicides suspicious. Turns out they list things like "leaving the city without a gun" as suicides.
• Took a Level in Badass: Pretty much everyone after the fall of the Imperium.
  • The Imperium too, to an extent; according to Durin, an STC discovered a couple thousand years ago had boosted starship construction tenfold (centuries-long shipbuilding projects don't work that well with the campaign's pace).
  • The summary of Turn 11 results in the second thread (just under six centuries' quest time) states that the elite units of Avernus as they are at that point would have been able to crush the entire Astartes force of the old Imperium.
  • Here are Durin's own words on the subject (with some spelling fix):
    Basicaly everything in Long Night is OP. Krork Nameless for example are Orks with better gear, BS 4+ and Guard Orders, and Eldar Wraith legions are basically get an Eldar warhost, make all Eldar have the base Str, T and W of a Wraithguard and better weapons. And both of those are the endless mooks of their faction.
• Touched by Vorlons:
  • Jacob, whose soul was changed by a blessing from the Radiance, which was originally burning him out before Lulana gave him an Alkahestrial masterpiece that stabilized him, gave him increased strength and toughness, and allowed Jacob to take advantage of his blessing.
  • Charles Sturt, who used to be a regular human before stumbling across the place where the shamans held their sacrificial ritual to create the Emperor. Something happened there that turned him into a Perpetual.
• Training from Hell: The Last Hunter program. The first batch was a thousand newborns trained for 35 years, and only eighty-seven made it.
  • Avernite settlements in general could also be considered this.
• Trial Run Crime: In the aftermath of Garkill's final invasion, a Defence Cruiser was destroyed during the cleanup bombardments (crit fail). Later, it turned out Chaos Psykers were working out a way to teleport past ship shields. When you discover them, they're aboard your flagship and have taken control of your fleet commander.
• Turtle Island: A turtle spitting psionic nukes at daemonic invaders, no less.
• Tyke-Bomb: Jane's Last Hunters. A thirty-five year long training program using orphans three months at the oldest.
• Underground City: Stygia. Since it's located in the caverns, things tend to get weird down there.
• Unholy Holy Sword: The main reason behind Turoq's fall to Chaos. He started wearing a helmet that gave him insights into the souls of others, which allegedly once belonged to a saint. By the time he realized that said helmet was actually a Tzeentchian artifact, it was too late as its powers were transferred to Turoq himself and he couldn't stop seeing people's secrets even when he didn't wear the helm. The strain of the power itself and his attempts to not use it eventually drove him to fall.
• Unobtanium: The Troll Remnant Kingdom spends millions of years trying to recreate their extinct War in Heaven ancestors, until it turns out the original process depended too heavily on some extremely advanced C'tan material. Once the Destroyer is killed, its intact corpse turns out to contain enough that, with all the preliminary work done by the Remnant, the True Trolls only take a week to recreate.
• Unperson: Mathlann is this to the Eldar after his betrayal and defection to Slaanesh during the Fall. They use their divination to systematically kill all his worshippers before they even hear of him, and forbid any mention of him. Downplayed in that the Eldar are still willing to let their allies discuss and research Mathlann, as long as it's done away from where they can see.
• Uriah Gambit: During the tourist boom before the Imperium's fall, one of the reviewers for the experiences is a formerly most unhappy woman whose husband went there with his mistress and neither returned. She highly recommends it to everyone suffering like she used to.
• Vestigial Empire: After the Deceiver executes his plan against them, the Ultima Compact (the Tau-Ultramar alliance) is reduced from five hundred sectors to a few dozen badly mauled ones by the time the Krork take out the C'tan's forces.
• We Can Rebuild Him: Some characters had to get their body parts replaced with augments after injuries. Fredrick Rotbart had his left arm, leg and a big part of his chest replaced with artificial ones. General Schwarz has lost most of his body, and became more machine than man. Also, Mineyev, repeatedly, much to his frustration.
• We Have Reserves: Midgard, being a heavily militarized Hive World, provides the Reserves (colonists and soldiers) for the Imperial Trust.
• Weak, but Skilled: The Exemplar Minor Psykers. While their power level is low, their creative application of what they have (and narrow specialization) makes them very impressive fighters.
• Weirdness Magnet: The late Tormod Rotbart, Frederick's grandson. He kept on getting into crazy situations all the time, and had a trait that makes him twice as likely to have an encounter. According to Word of God, he was five times as likely to either die or gain new traits due to this, eventually killing him on an unlucky roll.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The Ever-Child. An Honoured Greater Daemon of the Undivided born from an Alpha Plus toddler who was intended to be sacrificed to Chaos. Instead, they struck back at the Chaosite, wiping out millions of people alongside him and making the Gods like them enough to promote. No matter what, they remained a child, one mad enough to consider everything a game and make countless Achievements in Ignorance. Ultimately, they advanced further than any other daemon during the Grand Incursion (partly by being Too Dumb to Fool), where they were cut off and convinced by Areatha to pull a Heel–Face Turn.
• A World Half Full: The Imperium fell and most of its remnants now are worshipping the Abomination, the fifth god of Chaos, uncorrupted human realms fall like ripe fruits to numerous enemies. But being more progressive and less dogmatic and xenophobic, the Imperial Trust is much more sympathetic than the old Imperium.Also, unlike in The Shape of the Nightmare to Come, the Abomination and the Emperor are different entities.
• World of Badass: The whole galaxy is this since the quest takes place in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. But Avernus is the World Of Badass in a Galaxy Of Badass. Muspelheim too, to a lesser degree.
• Worthy Opponent: The relationship between the Ancient One and Be'lakor. Due to their extreme age and experience, they understand one another better than anyone else in the galaxy. All the taunts and motives they could use have been exhausted over the sheer number of times they've clashed, and they now fight in silence. A typical conversation between the two nowadays involves Be'lakor making various comments and the Ancient One responding with silent expressions. And even that level of talking only happens because Be'lakor is partial to monologuing and enjoys the sound of his own voice, not because he's worried about not getting his point across.
• Xanatos Gambit: A minor example with Abaddon. After Cadia is destroyed by Avernites, he sends Primarch Perturabo to destroy the Trust. If he succeeds, Abaddon gets vengeance. If not, a major rival is weakened at the least, regardless of if that's Perturabo or the Eldar bleeding out in defense of the Trust.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside:
  • Jacob spends twenty years lost in the caverns, but for everyone else, not even a year passes.
  • Imbac puts the Helheim system under a spell to double the time passage inside.
  • The Abyss level of the Caverns is an extreme case, with no one even sure about the exact time passage ratio.
• Year Outside, Hour Inside: When the Emperor died, the Asgard subsector was stuck inside a Warp Storm that caused time to pass more slowly inside. By the time it dissipates, it's been about a century for them, but a millennium for the outside galaxy.
• Yin-Yang Bomb:
  • The Child of Hate is a new deity of the Aeldari pantheon born during the Heist of Isha. She was created from the door that locked the goddess inside her room as it received the energy of both Nurgle and Isha. She takes after her mother more and is tied with Isha for being the most anti-Nurgle being in the galaxy, a specialty she leans into with gusto.
  • Aria, who's both a psyker and a blank, and can freely switch between different levels of the two at will.
• You Shall Not Pass!:
  • During the Tjapa invasion intended to kill Saint Lin, a First Circle Archangyl enters the capital, headed for the vault where the Saint is. The Ancient One, the only warrior on Avernus who can reliably defeat it, is still a few hours away, so a good portion of the Avernite elites are given the order to slow the Eldritch Abomination down until he can arrive. Few survive.
  • The Grand Incursion. Half the elites of Chaos Gods attack Avernus in order to destroy Itza, so the whole planet rearranges into a maze with the daemons trying to find the correct path while being delayed by the locals. There is effectively no way the locals can actually defeat all these hosts, all they can do is delay and bleed them while hoping the inevitable Enemy Civil War breaks out.

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