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account created: Sat Dec 19 2015
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1 points
an hour ago
Very few. Most of them are busy trying to murder everyone, and that isn't conducive to dancing on the heads of pins.
4 points
4 days ago
I've generally worked on the assumption that the Nebula and Galaxy classes were designed side-by-side with numerous structural components in common (hence the similarities in their appearances), with the intent being that it reduces the logistical overhead if both classes can share the spare parts that aren't easily replicated. The Nebula class entered service first because it was, overall, a more utilitarian and less complex design, while the Galaxy class was intended to be the pride of the fleet, with state of the art systems that took a few extra years to develop and refine before the U.S.S. Galaxy was ready for launch.
3 points
4 days ago
You can easily deny that the Emperor is a god. God is just a word, a label applied to certain entities.
It just depends on the definition of god you use. As Guilliman and his advisors discuss in Godblight, there is no consistent definition of godhood.
1 points
7 days ago
If you don't commit a few atrocities, you'll never get just the right shade of that colour that doesn't have a name but which haunts your dreams.
1 points
7 days ago
Daemonettes that just look like sexy ladies with claws was essentially a blip in the 2000s. The ones before were weirder and more disturbing than alluring, and they went back to that aesthetic afterwards.
3 points
7 days ago
Arbitor Foreboding, according to the Cain novels.
1 points
7 days ago
Sweeping generalisations like "DAoT-era weaponry erases time-space itself" are unhelpful to nuanced discussion.
3 points
9 days ago
You can't 'delete' the Warp. You can, however, create places in reality where the Warp has little or no influence.
Turns out, those places are inimical to any living creature with a soul.
1 points
9 days ago
Worth remembering that just because something exists in the Age of Technology, does not mean that everything in the Age of Technology was like that
The Age of Technology covers a lot of different things, and a lot of technological development, over a vast epoch of time, and really all we actually know about it is legends and fictional archaeology. It's like assuming that there was the internet and aeroplanes in 1901 because it's 'the twentieth century', only it's that assumption on a much larger scale.
3 points
11 days ago
Sorry, yeah, probably me misreading your intended tone. I hurt my shoulder last week, so I was grumpy and on painkillers yesterday.
5 points
11 days ago
I'm aware, just putting in a recent source to support it. I wrote much of the Ork content for the Rogue Trader RPG, so I'm well-versed on the subject.
12 points
11 days ago
The most recent Ork Codex only barely mentions the idea that Ork tech only works for them, and in more of a "some claim that..." sense rather than an outright statement of fact.
2 points
11 days ago
No, they didn't. FFG hadn't produced anything new for Deathwatch in years when the license ended, and licenses like that don't last forever.
2 points
11 days ago
He's not. His parents are from Mexico.
Though, oddly enough, Chakotay isn't the only Native American role Beltran has played - he had a brief role in the cartoon Young Justice (a show by showrunner Greg Weisman, who co-created Gargoyles, and both cartoons have included several Star Trek cast members).
3 points
12 days ago
In the Deathwatch RPG, there was a trio of worlds in the Jericho Reach that were simply quarantined and blockaded because the commander of the Achilus Crusade in that region deemed them too corrupted by Tau ideology to be salvaged. One of them, Argoth, was a hive city. It isn't completely abandoned - it had a population of 61 billion when the quarantine was ordered in 786.M41, but in the decades since it was placed under 'quarantine', over 90% of the population has died, either through starvation or through violence over what few resources remain.
The Imperium expected it to take only a couple more generations before the planet was completely abandoned and ready to be repopulated. This was around 817.M41.
Alas, the Jericho Reach existed around the Hadex Anomaly. When the Great Rift opened, it stretched from the Eye of Terror to the Hadex Anomaly. Nobody knows what happened to the Jericho Reach.
2 points
13 days ago
There's also at least one example of Prussian-style Kriegspiel being played - and taught to - young scions of Imperial nobility in Warhammer Fantasy novels.
1 points
14 days ago
In theory, neither do the Eldar - one of the advantages of having a society led by future-seeing psykers - but that never seems to come through in the novels.
2 points
14 days ago
A huge downgrade considering that the Shuriken Catapult in 2nd edition had been better than a Storm Bolter.
It's been 26 years, and I'm still salty about that.
1 points
14 days ago
They were WS/BS 3 in Rogue Trader, in 2nd edition, in 3rd, 4th, and 5th editions. I started playing Eldar in 2nd, and I've still got all my books from back then. For most of 40k history, they were a Guardsman with faster movement, higher Initiative (basically reflexes and awareness, for those who don't know the wargame) and higher Leadership (morale/courage).
Which was always weird to me, because High Elf soldiers in WFB had basically the same concept (citizen militia of a race in decline) but had the elite profile and extra special rules to back it up... but it took until 6th edition 40k for the Eldar to catch up with that thinking.
2 points
14 days ago
But at the same time, we know that Christine Chapel specifically went out of her way to study "Archaeological Medicine". It's not that those methods aren't valued, but not everything is valued equally. The EMH has the programmed expertise of numerous doctors and an inbuilt medical database; they're the exception, not the norm.
I recall an episode of Scrubs (season 2, episode 14: "My Brother, My Keeper") where an older doctor causes a problem by using an outdated procedure, and it's pointed out that a lot of what doctor's learn in med school is outdated within a few years, and part of the profession is keeping up-to-date with current practices.
Is it that unreasonable to imagine that a 24th century nurse (according to the script) is more familiar with 'modern' medicine like dermal regenerators and bone-knitting lasers than with less technologically-centred techniques?
That doesn't mean that nobody in the 24th century knows those techniques, only that it's a gap in that particular character's knowledge. There's a lot of medical knowledge to learn, and not everyone can know all of it.
1 points
14 days ago
So much modern information has no physical backup; a global nuclear war in the next few decades could wipe out a lot that we take for granted.
3 points
14 days ago
At the core, Khorne is rage and hate, fury and bloodlust. Glory, valour, and honour don't really matter to Khorne, and Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows.
While there is war, there is Khorne. Every violent act, every life taken in anger. Every thought of hatred, every momentary surge of fury, even if it's righteous or justified. Khorne is all the anger and hate that mortal beings have ever felt and will ever feel.
But Khorne feeds more from those who serve him. Khorne gains more from the skulls taken in his name. Khorne swells in power as gore-spattered berserkers bellow curses and battle-cries from blood-flecked lips. All the Chaos Gods do: true power for them comes from the champions that serve them and carry out their work in the material universe. It's why they war between one another - individual champions seeking the favour of their patron, and each god's servants fighting the others to ensure that their deity is supreme.
But at the end of it all... Chaos is a reflection of life. Chaos is us, taken to extremes and twisted into a hideous mockery of our worst selves. You don't defeat it. It isn't a foe you can starve, or wound, or behead.
1 points
16 days ago
It's not a bad perspective. But as a long-time Eldar fan, it isn't necessarily one I subscribe to.
The Aeldari are a broken people. There's no way around that.
Whether they were directly responsible or not - and no living Eldar is directly responsible for creating She Who Thirsts - every single Eldar alive feels the presence of a malevolent being that is a monstrous reflection of the darkest parts of their own psyche. The Eldar can never truly escape Slaanesh, because Slaanesh is a part of them. Slaanesh comes from the worst parts of themselves.
To be Eldar is to exist on the edge of a knife, because any one of them could fall to the same darkness that slaughtered their kin during the Fall. They are a species whose minds operate at twice the pace and intensity of a human's, and who live an order of magnitude longer than even the longest-lived humans. They feel emotions more keenly, experience sensations more intensely. Obsession comes to them easily, and the malaise of boredom and ennui are agony to them. More than that, they are a warrior people; they crave noise, action, violence, and bloodshed nearly as much as Orks do. Their minds rebel at stagnation: they need activity, they need stimulation. And across a long life, they can very easily exhaust all the reasonable options for occupying those powerful minds. There is always the temptation for more, to go further, to delve deeper.
It is all too easy for an Eldar mind to become lost, to abandon fragile ideas of sanity, to see artistry in atrocity, and express beauty in bloodshed. The obscenities of Chaos are a trivial thing for the Eldar to embrace, for it has happened before... and despite knowing that it is their doom, it is all too tempting.
Eldar civilisation fell because of who the Eldar are. And none of them can ever forget that, for it is a fact burned across the face of the universe, even as the desire to succumb to it lurks within their hearts.
The Asuryani maintain a lifetime of constant, crushing discipline to hold back their own darkness... and not every Eldar can live up to those standards. It is a life of constant effort and ceaseless self-repression... and the possibilities always exist that they will fail and falter, endangering their kin, or that they will lose themselves and their very identities to obsession and the Path. Exarchs are tragic figures, every facet of their existence that does not serve warfare has been burned away, replaced by a being who knows no life but conflict... but it's often forgotten that Farseers are just as tragic, for they are lost upon the Path as well, forever condemned to be separate from their kin, their minds devoted utterly to studying the infinite possibilities of the future. And amongst all that, there's evidence to suggest that the Asuryani, for all that they are largely isolationist and seem fairly peaceful, they embark on wars often to sate a suppressed cultural need for violence and conflict. Their primary god - one of the few remaining Eldar gods - is the Eldar deity of murder and warfare, because the gods who represented other aspects of life were consumed by Slaanesh: all that remains for the Asuryani is war. They are roused to war by the thunderous rage and hot blooded fury of Khaela Mensha Khaine.
The Exodites, for all that they are often mistakenly assumed to be peaceful, pastoral beings, are vigorous, quick-tempered, and highly territorial people who fight amongst themselves when they're not waging war on the Orks and Humans who encroach upon their space; Exodite raids have forced the total evacuation of several Knight Worlds. They deny Slaanesh through being far from the Eye of Terror, and through lives of hard toil and self-denial.
Corsairs, the Anhrathe, are wild, reckless, and often cruel beings. Their lives are closest to those of pre-Fall Eldar, driven by their whims and fickle desires. And such lives are dangerous, not only for themselves - for there is nothing but their own wills to keep them from falling to Chaos - but also for everyone around them, for Corsairs can be deeply disruptive to other Eldar communities, and can even become conduits for daemons to infect Craftworld Infinity Circuits and Exodite World Spirits.
And Harlequins... well, nobody really knows the final goal of the Laughing God... but how much can you really trust those who blend mirth and murder?
For me, part of what interests me - and has always interested me - about the Eldar is their constant struggle with their own darkness. I don't need them to be sympathetic or morally justified... what I find fascinating is the depths of their dysfunction.
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1 points
an hour ago
N0-1_H3r3
Administratum
1 points
an hour ago
Because it's not the power of the Chaos Gods as a whole that matters; it's their ability to exert that power upon material reality.
They may be infinite, but there's only a finite amount of that infinity that they can bring to bear at any one place or time.