"The Imperium of Man comes to Gensokyo" Discussion thread.

So the sensors can't even see several millon tons of metal heading their way? And when/how do they turn the ships back on so they don't serve as roks' secondary function?

They were hidden in the shadow of Molech's moon. As for how they stopped, Chaos wizardry.

Fair enough.

Why are you surprised Chabal? Tenshi isn't evil. She's really a kid at heart, I feel.

Also, lying next to me is Path of the Outcast, by Gav Thorpe.

edited 23rd Aug '14 8:01:59 AM by joergenjetsam

It's not surprise, far from it, but... if you were the owner of a china shop, would you let what the owner assures you is a very well-behaved bull go inside?

Whereas I am severely disappointed, a store I'd found told me they could get me the GK omnibus, only to get back to me and say the thing can't be found at all.

Well, she wasn't the one doing the rebuilding, but rather the horde of servants she had by virtue of being the Eldest Daughter of the Hinanawi.

edited 23rd Aug '14 9:34:48 AM by joergenjetsam

Even so, she strikes me as the type to go around pestering everyone with the best of intentions, offering sincere advice and tips that make the builders hesitate between using their tools on her or on themselves.

You really ought to get the other two books if you want the full experience, if you ask me.

They didn't sell them.

Bummer.

Well, the space battle is over; now the Traitors are bombarding Molech's surface with scuttled spacecraft and de-orbited gun platforms along with conventional weapons.

The ground assault has begun, and the defenders, as you might expect, are getting their shit comprehensively wrecked.

Mortarion just destroyed a super-heavy tank motor pool. He took a point-blank shot to the chest from a Stormhammer's main gun and remained standing. He then cut the tank and its commander in half with one swing of his scythe.

All 4 of them?

Yes indeed. Quoth the Death Lord himself before he cleaved his attacker in two, "One shot is all you get."

And the ground battle for Molech is not going terribly well for either side. Their initial beachhead was basically the battle of Juno Beach, if it were the Nazis storming the Allies instead of how it actually occurred; dozens of vehicles destroyed on both sides, Sons of Horus mowed down by the thousands. It was quite a while before the Imperials fell.

I have to say, Grael Noctua—the latest Son of Horus to join the elite body that is the Mournival—is a dumbass. After blowing the roof off the Imperial command center to decapitate their resistance, he found the dying commander half-buried in the rubble, still alive and raising her gun to aim at him. Cocky as all hell, he challenged her to take her best shot.

And she did—with the Volkite cannon that the "laspistol" actually was.

Noctua lives, but he got one of his hearts blown out; Abaddon now thinks he's a fucking idiot who ought to have been killed by that stunt.

Also, Raeven Devine met Horus in combat in his Knight and actually managed to wound him. When he tried to finish him off with a megalaser blast, though, Horus' Luperci Possessed somehow absorbed the shot and left both him and themselves completely unharmed. Then the Warmaster went to town on the Knights' asses and forced them to retreat, but not before killing two of Raeven's sons who were fighting alongside him.

In that guy's defense, Abaddon thinks everybody's an idiot. Horus, Eliphas...

It takes a special kind of idiot to just stand there and let someone shoot him, though. Moron is lucky to be alive and Abaddon is never going to let him forget this ever.

So after that, the loyalist forces fell back; six Titans (two Warlords, four Warhounds) from a loyalist legion that was destroyed on Mars stayed behind to engage their traitor counterparts, giving the survivors time to escape. They took down a daemonic Warlord and its four Warhound escorts, and are implied to have at least given the remaining Chaos engines (who outnumbered the surviving two Warlords at least three to one) a good drubbing before they finally went down three hours later.

Elsewhere, Mortarion's Death Guard have control of the biggest promethium refinery on the planet and are currently transporting its vast quantities of the stuff across the continent to fuel the Warmaster's hosts. There's just one thing standing in their way—fifty kilometres of impassible, monster-infested jungle that would not look too out of place on Catachan.

Their solution?

To send in a lone Rhino, with a lone occupant—Ignatius Grulgor, son of Mortarion, slain by Nathaniel Garro and resurrected by the Dark Powers as a Daemon Prince of Nurgle. A Daemon Prince whose body is basically the Life-Eater virus given corporeal form.

All he has to do is take his helmet off and breathe, and everything in his vicinity just dies and rots away into protoplasmic sludge. The Death Guard are following along in his wake, keeping a considerable distance between him and themselves.

His presence has driven the local wildlife into a frantic stampede, causing them to overrun the ancient curtain-wall that has kept them out of civilized lands for generations and doing a number on the Knights stationed there.

That is one damn strong helmet.

Answering the age-old question...

He's wearing a very thick, hermetically-sealed hazmat suit of the kind used to perform internal maintenance in plasma reactors; the book states it was a direct precursor to Terminator armour.

Well, I have to give Raeven Devine credit; I did not expect things to unfold the way they did for him.

In short, he rejected Chaos and shot Fulgrim in the face with his Knight's plasma lance. And lived to walk away.

edited 26th Aug '14 4:09:49 PM by SullenFrog

Huh, impressive.

Well, Fulgrim had it coming anyway.

Anyhow, might I inquire as to who'll be liable to post in the near future?

edited 27th Aug '14 3:26:22 AM by joergenjetsam

And I have finished Vengeful Spirit. To keep a long story short, Horus won; he is now a living god, in the exact same manner as his father.

^^ I'll get a post up this weekend.

I'm surprised nobody asked how Horus managed to do that. Or how the Emprah did it, for that matter.

Gather round then, children, and I shall tell you the tale of the Emperor's great lie.

Long ago, there was a man who could not die. This man had lived more lifetimes than mortal men could fathom, witnessing the birth and death of civilizations and the rise and fall of empires. He was not alone, for there were others like him, men and women possessed of great power and longevity.

The man was powerful, but he knew that his power was not enough. A time would come when he would need more of it, so that he might shepherd humanity in the dark times to come. And all too soon, he learned how to obtain the power he sought.

The immortal man and his immortal companions sailed across the stars on a voyage that would last many years, in a ship that could only take them from earth and never return them to it. They landed upon a world called Molech, a world where the immortal man knew that he could open a door to another realm.

And he did.

In so doing, the immortal man entered a world of madness and ruin, where he met beings of dark and terrible magnificence. Though mere moments passed in the real world, in this realm he spent centuries—bargaining, conniving, deceiving. He offered these beings things that only a would-be god could offer, and pleased with his terms they struck with him a pact, granting him untold power and knowledge.

But when the time came to pay his dues, the immortal man turned and fled, sealing the door behind him.

When he emerged into our world once more, the immortal man had become a being like no other—a force of nature garbed in human form, a living god whose divinity was bought with stolen powers. He returned to Earth without his ship, for he no longer had any need of it; and there, he began to set in motion his grand designs for mankind.

Thus did the Emperor become what He is today—and earn the everlasting hatred of the Ruinous Powers he had robbed.

Well, it's kinda hard to ask or comment when one's asleep.

At any rate, most interesting. It's cool that they have revealed the true method the Emperor became who he is today.

And doublepost! Two things.

One: I'm sorry Lem for seemingly disregarding your post, I made that post when I'd just woken up.

Two: This is really what warrants the post. I just had to crossdress in front of my class... I don't feel well right now.

The tale of the Emperor: Ah, Prometheus and his fire. Appropriate indeed. Their punishments even match, in a way.

You know, it occurs to me (from my poring over more of the Dark Heresy material) that the Xerxesian Conclave likely has factions either emerged or nascent in the wake of Gensokyo. Think I've got a name for one right now: The Nihonates. The Antiquitarians. The New Xanthites. For the already extant factions, I can imagine that the Recongregators must have been dancing a jig at how much the status quo is being upset by the shockwaves, the Isstvanians too (with a even more glee to come, I'm sure). Meanwhile, the Amalathians are sweating but game, while the Monodominants are, as we've seen, gnashing their teeth and pulling their hair out. Xanthites might be about to enter a new age of prominence, given that a much safer type of magic is available, while Xe Hy are having a ball.

Which reminds me, how Radical are our Inquisitors? Besides Thomas, we already know how Radical that one goes (intend to flesh him out more, though). : V

It also occurs to me that the gods of Gensokyo might actually experience some change of their own, if they are syncretised/sold as Imperial saints (or clergy in their own right) to the pilgrims. That is standard Imperial missionary policy, after all, syncretising of saints.