Death to the False Emperor
The Road Not Taken is a sci-fi Quest set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe in the same vein as Embers in the Dusk.
It’s the 42nd millennium, and the Imperium is on its last legs. The Thirteenth Black Crusade has successfully broken through Cadia and now rampages freely across hundreds of worlds. The Necrons at last begin their great awakening to reclaim the galaxy for themselves. The Greenskins and the Tyranids are still locked in a seemingly endless stalemate in the Octarius sector as both evolve to be ever more lethal and monstrous. The God-Emperor barely clings to half-life as the Golden Throne nears collapse, and the tech priests have no idea on how to repair its ancient machinery. The Imperium, in desperation to maintain control over trillions of humans, resorts to ever more desperate and brutal measures to little to no effect all in the name of survival. Even now, many sectors have de-facto split from the dying galactic empire as it appears to finally succumb to a death from a thousand wounds.
Run by StarMaker764
on Sufficient Velocity.com, this quest takes place in the last days of the 42nd millennium, and the dawn of the 43rd. You play as Octavia Tesla, an Archmagos of the Adeptus Mechanicus who has barely escaped death for the crime of techno-heresy, and has instead been exiled to the Helios Sub-Sector and onto the Death World of Atlantis as punishment. Through her, you will be a leader of a rebellion against the Imperium in order to drive away its forces from your sector and craft your own way in these cruel stars through the power of innovation, compassion, and space mines.
So many space mines.
The thread for this quest can be found here.
The Road Not Taken contains examples of:
- Achievement In Ignorance: Kryptman's gambit to direct the Orks to fight the Tyranids in the Ouranos Sector resulted in the creation of the New Devourer, which then proceeded to devour entire sectors and stars wholesale. In their ravenous spread, however, the New Devourer had frightened off the Tyranids away from the galaxy, and had dealt a fatal blow to Chaos. Though he never intended it, Kryptman's creation became the most unlikely of heroes.
- Advanced Ancient Humans: The Dark Age of Technology is revered as the Golden Age by the tech priests of Atlantis. In addition, Octavia discovers a population of Golden Age humans in stasis and manages to recover and integrate them into Atlantis's population. They are often a source of advanced human technology and science.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: A common theme in the quest is that enemies that come in with a heavy force end up not only loosing said forces, they also come under the Dominion's control. At least TWO Ark Mecahnicus ships have gone this way (hidden AI consenting) not to mention the various battleships or the other ships. And in the latest attack from the Imperium right before GEOM went Star Tyrant, a bunch of Goliath class forge ships and tenders came under Dominion control. For context, such ships can easily match the industries of a planet. Suffice to say, quite a few Imperial authorities are very annoyed to say the least about such outcomes until the death of the GEOM as is causes greater issues.
- Always a Bigger Fish: Cadia has fallen. The 13th Black Crusade under Abaddon the Despoiler is rampaging through the Imperium of Man, conquering sector after sector. All of the Chaos Primarchs and Legions (with the Exception of Magnus and the Thousand Sons) follow him to finally conquer Terra. The ultimate victory of Chaos over the Imperium is at hand... until they run afoul of the New Devourer, the unholy fusion of the Tyranids and the Orks. Daemons are permanently slain, and even the oldest Chaos Space Marines and the fallen Primarchs are devoured.
- Anti-Climax: Curtesy of the space mines when facing most human factions. Dramatic space battles, daring maneuvers, grueling land campaigns, heroic interventions; none of those happen during the first crusade after Atlantis has declared its independence from the Imperium, thanks to the crusade fleet disintegrating upon crashing into Atlantis's mine fields and walking into an ambush.
- Death World: Atlantis is a land rife with deadly wildlife that kills millions every year, and the local human gene pool has an extremely high occurrence rate for psykers which, while less vulnerable to Chaos, appear in such numbers that a rogue psyker is almost guaranteed to manifest and level a city once every few decades.
- Defector from Decadence: This might as well be Defector From Decadence, the Quest: Warhammer 40,000 Edition.
- Octavia Tesla hates the stagnation and sheer depth of malice and tyranny propagated by the Adeptus Mechanicus of Mars and the Imperium of Man, and has plotted her rebellion since her exile.
- Inquisitor Talios Haradian fought a one-man campaign of reform after witnessing the atrocities of Fyodor Karamazov on Salem Proctor. He then broke ranks with the Imperium after being discovered rerouting crusades from non-hostile xenos, and now works as Octavia's top intelligence officer.
- Thot is an artificial intelligence that pilots a Dominos-class ark mechanicus belonging to the Adeptus Mechanicus of Mars since the Great Crusade. He tolerated the Imperium under the reasoning that they are representing humanity until the Mechanicus forced him and the fleet to destroy an idyllic human world led by artificial intelligences. When the opportunity presented itself, he defected to Octavia, killing his crew and firing on the Mechanicus fleet that was about to arrest Octavia.
- Everyone Is a Super: Downplayed. Atlantis has one of, if not the highest occurrence rates of both psykers and pariahs in the galaxy, it alone being home to dozens of stable alpha level psykers. Nonetheless they remain a very small minority, albeit one that is orders of magnitude larger than other planets. While this makes Atlantis incredibly dangerous, as renegade psykers regularly kill millions of people, they are also incredibly stable compared to the standard psyker, allowing tens of thousands of them to be recruited every decade into Dominion agencies.
- Evil All Along: The Emperor of Mankind. He is directly responsible for causing the Men of Iron to rebel, ruining humanity's Golden Age, and replacing it with the Imperium Of Man, "The cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable".
- The Federation: The Helios Dominion, founded on turn 16 by Archmagos Octavia Tesla. Played With in that unlike most examples, the Dominion is an autocratic dictatorship with Octavia as its Empress. However, its reformist culture and high levels of prosperity and individual freedom make it, if nothing else, the Federation compared to the rest of the galaxy.
- Heel–Face Turn: Happens on and off.
- None of the crusade fleets from both the Imperium of Man nor the Adeptus Mechanicus sent to Atlantis defect to Octavia's side. The ship slaves and ark mechanicus A.I.s, however, all all too happy to overthrow their Imperial overlords.
- Almost occurred with an Astartes chapter whose chapter master has been deeply troubled by the atrocities committed by the crusade fleet he was attached to. Ultimately subverted in that his disgust at Octavia's alliances with mutants and aliens outweighs his grievances with the Imperium.
- During the IC-Dominion War, the Forge World of Alpharred, which happens to be populated by refugees from Callamus II, defects to the Dominion once the Iron Circle is on the ropes.
- Magitek: The prevalence of psykers on Atlantis make it viable for the research and mass production of various forms psychically enhanced technology, including reverse-engineering Eldar technology, such as access to the Webway.
- Random Number God: The Thread is unnaturally lucky and unlucky. Invasions double in strength and get roflstomped at the same time. Technologies are uncovered at an unnatural Pace. Enemies defect in droves while their elites fight to the bitter end. Actions performed on moons seem to be the only consistent weakness. RN Gesus is on the Side of the Dominion... and the SPACE MINES.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The crime Octavia was exiled for. Instead of discovering her real techno-heresies, including a close call with creating an abominable intelligence, the Fabricator General of Mars indicts Octavia for a single page of notes on how to subtly improve the human genome written in her youth. In sheer rage at the absurdity of the situation, she loudly condemned everything wrong about the Imperium and the Mechanicus in a public forum. It took every connection she had just to avoid being killed as a result.
- Space Mines: The Dominion makes judicious use of space mines to defend its holdings. In almost every single space battle of importance where space mines were in use, they have successfully annihilated large amounts of the enemy fleet. Only once did it fail.
- Wham Line: Thot, an AI piloting an Ark Mechanicus, reveals that the Men of Iron rebelled when a human, through means unknown, corrupted the machines and caused them to destroy humanity's Golden Age.Silence fills the room . This man whoever he is may have well caused a catastrophe that makes the Horus Heresy and all the subsequent conflicts of humanity look insignificant in comparison. More worryingly he could still be out there.
Talios finally speaks up and asks if Thot remembers the man’s name.
He replies that the man didn’t have one and merely referred to himself as Revelation. - What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: Some magos in the Dominion comes up with the brilliant idea to colonize the moon Dis above the Planet Atlantis III. Naturally, death and mayhem follow.
- The Xenophile: The Helios Dominion is highly inclusive of psykers, abhumans, and alien species within its borders, and has courteous relationships with the Tau and a resurgent Eldar Empire. This is in comparison to the majority of the Imperial successor states, which continue their predecessor's hatred of xenos, mutants, and psykers.
