#i have a bunch of these thoughts about a lot of the primarchs

[gallifreyianrosearkytiorsusan]

Death? Not Today F*ck You!

Author's Note: Karlsor's debut in Mermay and Poor Unfortante souls.

Warnings: Karlsor swears a lot, some hints of violence. Also NIGHT LORD. Let me know if I need to add more

Summary: Karlsor lands on Terra and finds a Budding Blight Garden, not that he knows what that is. And makes the decision to not go near it.

Tagged: @barn-anon, @bleedingichorhearts, @c-u-c-koo-4-40k, @kit-williams, @sleepyfan-blog, @whorety-k

Tagged Again: @sleepyfan-blog and @whorety-k

Karlsor is a Proud Night Lord, and one of the lucky, or unlucky bastards with enough Psyker abilities that were noticed early enough that he was dragged into training by the Libarius before the Heresy. He'd barely finished his training as a Librarian, their training exacting, harsh, demanded and with each step forward, sacrifice of blood, pain, sweat, tears, and mental health (whatever the fuck that is) was demanded of him. He's no coward, never has been, to have survived the Hell that is Nostramo, and to have been...

Either Lucky or Unlucky enough to have been grabbed by the Night Lords to be flung into a cage with a bunch of other boys around his age, some older, some younger, and then dragged into the Hell that was being an Aspirant of the Night Lords. He had never been the kindest of souls, being born and growing, surviving the fucked up hell that is Nostramo killed the weak, and beat the kindness and every good thing out of a person, until just the pure, raw, naked desire and need for Survival was all that was thought of.

Even when Lord of the Eigth Legion and the Imperium had fully taken over Nostramo, things have still been shit. There was just more technology and shit for the people to fight over. At least that's what he'd heard from the old folks who's complain and hiss about things. Fighting against the uppity Ultramarines as Father had decided to attack the holier-than-thou Primarch of the 13th legion had been a lot of fun, waking up after what had felt like had been a killing blow had been both pleasantly and unpleasantly surprise.

Pleasant, because he still is alive, unpleasant because his ribs really fucking hurt and he's in agony and likely in a cell with uppity Ultramarines ready with snide words and smug bastard-y words to lord over his failure. His tail lashes out in rage as he looks around frowning. Where the fuck his he? He's not on McCragge. Oh fuck shit. As he's dying he's getting a vision. Or something. Goody. Or he's hallucinating a Nicer Thing as he dies? What the fuck is this shit. He slowly starts moving, activating his ability to swim through the air, which is infinitely safer than trying to crawl back to the waters. Seriously.

Which fucking planet is he on? This is planet has pollution, he can smell it, but it's not the worst planet he's been on. It's almost pretty, but pretty things often hide something worse underneath. Finding the ocean took several hours of swimming through the air. At least there's only one sun in the sky, even if the sunlight is way to fucking bright in his opinion. He prefers the darkness and shadows, where the light doesn't burn his skin and eyes. Even with being an Astartes with a tougher body, he burns like a whore in church after a few minutes in the sun.

Which is going to be so delightful to feel once he's back in the water. At least he's alive to recover from his injuries and the sun trying to fuck him over more. He is really glad to get into the ocean waters, which is salinized and he almost bites through his tongue trying not to scream as his skin protests being in the ocean while being sunburnt enough that his regenerative abilities has yet to heal it and he's entirely red from where his armor doesn't protect his scales.

He swims in the ocean, healing and trying to hunt for something to eat, easily hunting a school of fish and eating the wriggling creatures whole. He has some nutri-paste but he needs to supplement it with organic matter, which is a damned pain. He also needs to figure out where the fuck he is and where some of his brothers are, as much as they are a pain in his ass and are more than half likely to try to murder him, either through straight up stabbing him or being more circumspect about it.

Psykers are viewed as being super unstable and mistrusted in the legion. Honestly, he'd commented before that it's like calling water wet, they are all unstable, lunatic murderers. The younger members of his legion are... not kinder, no one is ever really kind in the Eighth legion, but are more stupid, and ignorant, since they are younger and haven't been through as much fucked up shit as the older ones have. Getting older can be hard, especially with how much fighting they do, against the enemies of the Emperium, and at times, each other.

Still, he's glad that he's alive, in general, and its better than not being alive. That damned Ultramarine only nearly killed him. Which reminds him, he's going to find that Ultramarine and make him suffer for his failure. He hears something and slowly starts swim-stalking and he carefully stalks whatever is making noise and tilts his head from one side to another. That is the ugliest and weirdest looking reef system that Karlsor has ever seen in his life. It looks really sick and fucked up.

And there is something about it that screams WRONG at his Psyker senses. He hears demented echoing giggling. Which is. Fucking Fantastic. He's not going anywhere near the fucked up reef system, it looks cursed as fuck. While he's got an Astartes Immune system, he's not going to tempt whatever the fuck is going on with that to go after him. He's no Apothecary or specialist in Environments, but he knows that is Super Fucked and Warp-craft went into fucking it up and continuing to fuck it up. So yeah, as a trained Psyker and since no one has asked for his help, either way, and he doesn't want to go near it any way, he's going avoid that creepy ass dying reef and go somewhere hopefully a lot healthier. It's a shame, the biodiversity of the oceans of this primitive planet are almost beautiful and he's totally not stared at the plethora of vibrant colored fish swim past him in schools of hundreds.

#warhammer 40k #space marine husbandry sentience #space marine husbandry #adeptus astartes #warhammer #mermay #mermay 40k #mermay 2024 #poor unfortunate souls au #poor unfortunate souls #oc: karlsor #night lords #night lords oc

[leareadsheresy]

“The Dark King”

This post contains spoilers for "The Dark King," by Graham McNeill, first published as a short story in the 2007 Games Day exclusive two-story anthology Horus Heresy Chapbook on (as nearly as I can tell) September 23rd, 2007, and later republished in the anthology Shadows of Treachery on September 27th, 2012.

This story is about how Konrad "the Night Haunter" Curze, Primarch of the Night Lords Legion, named after Joseph Conrad and the character Colonel Kurtz from Conrad's story "Heart of Darkness," is a monster and has been for a lot longer than the start of the Heresy. It's told through a series of three scenes, connected disjointedly, because Curze suffers from nightmare visions of the future and seems to experience time out of joint.

In the first scene, Kurze is leading his Space Marines in the execution of a bunch of humans whose world the Night Lords and Imperial Fists are in the process of conquering. Rogal Dorn, Primarch of the Imperial Fists, shows up and is unhappy that Curze is just executing a conquered people, and Curze goes into a speech about how only by demonstrating the consequences of resistance will the rest of the galaxy be convinced to fall in line. They argue a bit and it's better than the usual McNeill arguments. Curze points to the next guy due to be executed and loudly proclaims that whatever he does, he's not to be punished, and then hands him a gun; the guy tries to shoot Curze and Curze turns around and punches him in the head so hard his skull explodiates, then turns to Dorn and goes "See? He wasn't resisting until he thought he wouldn't be punished." Dorn says that when this campaign is done they'll have words, and that Curze's way is not the way of the Imperium, to which Curze says "...you may be right," and then Dorn leaves.

It then cuts very abruptly to Curze imprisoned by Dorn and Fulgrim; Curze is visited by his equerry who says Dorn is recovering from the injuries that Curze inflicted with his bare hands and teeth, so that talk went really bad. Fulgrim signed off on Curze's imprisonment because around the same time, Curze spoke to him in confidence about visions he was having of a dark future of the galaxy embroiled in endless war and how the Emperor was going to try to kill him (Curze), which Fulgrim took as talk of treachery. Anyway there's a big jail escape scene where Curze plays the part of Batman leaping around between rafters in the dark but with more murder, kills all his captors bloodily, and escapes to the Night Lords fleet who were maintaining formation with the Imperial Fists and Emperor's Children, and they run off.

In the third scene, the first two scenes are framed as Curze reminiscing aboard his flagship, having taken his whole fleet back to his homeworld Nostramo (also named after a Joseph Conrad thing). For context, Primarchs were genetically engineered on Earth by the Emperor to serve as super-generals but then the gods of the warp stole their growth pods and scattered them around the galazy; Curze landed on Nostramo, a cyberpunk world of high crime rates, which he murder-batmanned into perfect compliant order before the Emperor found him. Here he's pondering how since he left, the planet has backslid into cyberpunk high crime, so to send a message to the galaxy he Death Stars it, just in time for Imperial fleets sent in pursuit of him to witness the destruction but not in time for them to stop it or to stop him from escaping back into the warp. End of story.

The exact temporal relationships between the three scenes are not clear, like, we don't know how much time passed between them, which I like; I enjoy a tone piece where the reader is given no more information than needed to establish tone. Graham McNeill continues to improve by virtue of structuring his writing so that the things he's weak at (subtle ideological and practical conflicts expressed deftly and intelligently) do not appear. The conflict between Dorn and Curze is not subtle. The story is also very short -- significantly shorter than "The Kaban Project," which helps; it's easier to be punchy when you're working in short form.

It does kind of raise the question of why Dorn thought the Night Lords would be a suitable force to include in the backup force sent to Istvaan V, but I'm not interpreting that as a plot hole; I assume there'll be some narrative later explaining how the Night Lords were brought back into the Imperial fold somewhat following the events of the second scene of the story, and I also believe it later turns out that the third scene of the story takes place significantly after the events in the Istvaan system.

The only thing that really annoys me is that it occasionally calls him Night Haunter, and my personal preference when addressing a fictional character with a name that's a title is that the "the" always get stuck in front of it, so he should be the Night Haunter, not just Night Haunter. But again that's just me being ultra-picky. Good job, Graham McNeill, solid improvement.

#horus heresy #The Dark King #warhammer 30k #lea reads heresy #read along #spoilers

[relax-and-read-on]

I just found your Tumblr and I love your content of W40K

Can I request the primarchs getting tattoos?

Yesssss

Primarch, but they are getting tattoo

Fulgrim: canonically love that shit. He gets normal ones that are "temporary" due to primarch healing, because he just can't CHOOSE just one design!!!

Ferrus: probably get a few small meaningfull tattoo on his chest, all done personally by Fulgrim. Things like name and place, pretty boring to look at.

Lorgar: .... Do I need to say anything lol??

Vulkan: not into tattoo, but LOVE scarifications!! Has some beautiful pattern on his skin! Especially a dragon across his hips.

Magnus: mf can just CHOOSE to have one some days or not. Lucky Asshole. Change idea as much as Fulgrim,

Perturabo: that involve getting out of armour and have someone touch him. Disgusting. He would probably like one to remind him of Calliphone.

Sanguinius: Get a matching one with Horus, because he's a romantic like that, it's probably a dual symbol, like an union of their insignia or a winged wolf. Get it covered during the Heresy with something baal themed, maybe that great leopard.

Horus: matching tattoo with Sanguinius, and a few more that remind him of his sons. Probably even has a bunch of shitty tribal he got as a kid on his arms.

Rogal: crest of the Dorn family, on his back. He also has that infamous Imperial fist brand lol.

Konrad: That involve people touching him. Bad. Would doodle on his arms lil bats and dead things with sharpies. He's a terrible artist.

Corvus: She has quite a few aesthetic tattoo, think goth style and line work, all in black ink, no colors. Very pleasing to look at. Probably has lil black wings on her shoulder blades, because she's a dork.

Angron: he has his own form of ritual scarification. Would not sit still enough to be tattooed.

Mortarion: No one is touching him. Would probably like watercolor tattoo.

Alpharius Omegon: no one is sure what tattoo they have, it always seem to change. They actually apply Fulgrim technique and just go with temporary stuff.

Lion: has rather beautiful tattoo of the beasts of Caliban.

Leman: his tattoo may look like shit and the kind of stuff you find on asshole frat bro, but they are VERY meaningful to him. Has the names of his og wolf family tattooed in runic on himself.

Jaghatai: So. Much. Tattoo. Lot's of geometric forms and patterns, that actually are an elaborate visual language that tell the story of his home and legion. They go up to his knuckles and finger and look very good as he move them around.

Roboute: He got the cliche mom tattoo in a heart. Probably never really thought about him, but got a few after waking up. Things that reminded him of his life, 10 000 years ago, and that he did not want to forget.

#warhammer 40k #warhammer #wh40k #primarch #primarch headcanon #konrad curze #fulgrim #perturabo #magnus the red #horus lupercal #alpharius omegon #angron #lorgar aurelian #mortarion #roboute guilliman #sanguinius #lion el'johnson #vulkan #jaghatai khan #rogal dorn #leman russ #corvus corax #ferrus manus

[luwupercal]

Just read your more Primarchs turn against the Emperor AU idea and I love it!

Out of curiousity what do you think the Emperor would do to try to counter the traitors (Would Dorn be his only remaining loyal Primarch since he wasn't mentioned?) and once Terra falls, what happens to humanity afterward?

oh tysm for the ask!!!! <3 unfortunately i am super unprepared for it lmfaoooooo

like first of all ive posited multiple times ideas of like "what if more primarchs turn against the emperor lol" so im not actually entirely sure which one you mean, i presume you mean this one bc it's the only one that's like, compiled into one listicle post and not just 17 different miscellaneous posts with each one having 1 thought (twitter has given me permanent brain damage), but i also could be wrong TwT

second of all I am not actually sure what i'm doing with dorn, i made that post long enough ago that i forgot the mental thread i was going at with the perturabo thing, and also he's not necessarily the primarch i'm strongest on? there's a lot of interesting possibilities regardless of whether he sticks with the imperium or he goes with chaos, but i'm still unsure of where i should go specifically...

terra i've actually thought a little about and the situation is complex! because i do think that the way i've set things up the primarchs are less... enthusiastic about squeezing it like an orange (there's gonna be significantly less turning people into cocaine, albeit not zero, necessarily). so that's gonna slow the siege down significantly and make them way less oppressive an opponent. also, they have a lot more troops and significantly less infraestructure to support those troops, too... and all of that does give the emperor some advantage, even devoid of most of a significant chunk of his military might and cut off from his resources by the siege.

i do think in this au humanity fragments a bit more? i figure that if the primarchs win the conflict (which is still up in the air mind you) then horus would take over the imperium but there'd be a lot more seceding and generally there'd be a lot of fragmented borders and splinter factions and all kinds of things with tenuous alliances and such. which is kind of fun, geopolitically

and I have a whooooole bunch of thoughts on things the emperor would try to stop the primarchs ranging from regular custodes incursions on traitor territory to purposefully doing subterfuge and sowing discord between the primarchs (occasionally successfully) to sending them guilt slinging text messages through konrads ipad. it would actually probably be easier to ask what the emperor wouldn't try, tbh (and there's a lot of fun ideas here...)

anyway thank you for the questions!! the terra one in particular made me think a whole bunch lololol which is always great

#ask #spikerwolf5896 #all traitor au #drugs cw #cannibalism cw #sorta'. is it cannibalism to make someone into drugs #that is a legit question! Is it cannibalism to take drugs made of people? let me know.

[izzet-always-r-versus-u]

Universes Within theorycrafting: 40K (creature types)

For the bigger Universes Beyond sets, I think I'm going to aim more top-down/broad-strokes - what are the general patterns, what restrictions to those patterns put on adaptations, where larger groups of cards are likely to end up, etc. - rather than going individually card-by-card.

(Individual card posts are still likely, but they'll be in the vein of "best/easiest/most intriguing adaptations" and "most awkward adaptations" - stuff I consider actively worth talking about in particular.)

For 40K, the major mechanics are all fairly generic and broadly applicable (the Miracle creatures are a notable exception, but that's just those three cards, not bunches of them to sort out), so that mostly just leaves the creature types as top-down considerations for UniWit adaptation. The one- or two-off types - Inquisitor, Custodes, C'tan, and Primarch - are effectively still "individual card" adaptations (aside from Primarch, which overlaps with Astartes), but at 27 cards that are or reference the Astartes type, 28 such cards for Necrons, and 38 such cards for Tyranids, there's still a lot to sort through.

Inquisitor

Starting with the small-number types, for general flow-of-the-post reasons. Inquisitor isn't a type that I think WotC would bring back in an intentional way in the future, the way they have for Detective and likely will for Scientist, but it's also not a type that has to be changed when adapting the two cards with the type to Universes Within: the Magic multiverse has inquisitors, with 11 non-40K creature cards having card names that clearly indicate "Inquisitor" is their profession (plus Inquisitor Exarch, which is somewhat fuzzier, and the digital-only Inquisitor Captain).

While those cards stretch across a few different planes, the majority are found on Innistrad. Inquisitor Greyfax translates naturally as Seeta, Lunarch Inquisitor, the boots-on-the-ground leader of the group of inquisitors that clashed with Thalia and Odric in the Shadows Over Innistrad block story. (This would be set before those inquisitors embraced Emrakul's transformations and started calling themselves the "Sinpurged," since Greyfax doesn't exactly have Eldrazi on its typeline.)

The Lunarch Inquisition was a tool of the Lunarch Council, which in Shadows block had been infiltrated and subverted by the Skirsdag, a demonic cult, so an inquisitor with a direct connection to a specific demon would make a natural translation of Inquisitor Eisenhorn's mechanics, even if there isn't a named character that can definitively fill that spot. (I considered making it another Jerren/Ormendahl card, but Eisenhorn's get-into-the-red-zone mechanics seem too active for Jerren, and a simple 4/4 flyer is too generic for Ormendahl.) Perhaps Ulmach, the alluded-to head of the Inquisition who never puts in an on-screen appearance?

Custodes*

The single Custodes card, Vexilus Praetor, is a mono-White Warrior that's all about protecting your commander. The first place my mind went with that was folkloric/mythological guardian figures, beings whose purpose was to protect a person or role that could theoretically function as their own creature type.

While I eventually found a stronger fit for Astartes, my initial thought was to set them on the unnamed Roman plane that's home to Licia and Prava (and possibly Saskia), and tutelary/guardian deities were evidently a pretty significant aspect of Roman religion - an individual such deity being called a Lar or a Tutelar. So [Vexilus Praetor] is a Lar/Tutelar Warrior, a sworn protector of the position of emperor in Licia's empire.

C'tan*

The two C'tan cards are both big, splashy, mono-Black flyers. I'm sure there's some mythological Spooky Thing I failed to think of which Magic hasn't already done and therefore would be open to be a new creature type, but in lieu of that, I wound up with a half-measure I do still like.

In the wake of the Phyrexian invasion, new power players have emerged into Theros's underworld: great, winged reapers known as Thanatons, embodiments of the moment of death. Were they always lurking in the shadows, drawn out by the power vacuum left by Erebos's death, or are they an entirely new nightmare formed from the collective trauma of Theros's mortals through the power of Nyx? None know but Kruphix, and who knows if he's still around to share that information.

(For individual card names, I turned [Shard of the Nightbringer] into Deathgaze Reaper and [Shard of the Void Dragon] into Embodiment of Entropy, if that helps get across the vibe I'm shooting for here.)

Astartes*

This is where things get interesting. Astartes stretch across four colors: primary in White, secondary in Black and Red, tertiary in Blue. They are also very diverse mechanically, with loose trends towards go-wide strategies (for aggression or for sacrifice) and Cascade (or similar effects). The vast majority are Warriors. There are also two Clerics, one each of Knight, Scout, Warlock, Berserker, and Wizard, as well as two artifact Dreadnoughts. They are produced as tokens by a Demon Primarch, a flying Vehicle, and an artifact Human. Through the Primarch type, they are also connected to the Spawn type, specifically the 3/3 red Spawns of [Magnus the Red].

The reason I discarded the Roman plane is that while Warriors work on the plane, on a larger scale the obvious "class" type for that plane, or at least the Roman aspect of it, is Soldier, so introducing a whole bunch of Warriors seemed like a miss.

At some point the whole "there is only war" bit, the connection to Demons, and the "red storm" visuals of the Warp on the cards all clicked together to make me think of the warstorm of Valla: an unending storm of battle on a plane split off from the Kaldheim subplane where all of the Demons live. [Astartes] as the permanent denizens of the warstorm just fits.

(And the part of Valla that split from Kaldheim was the part that also had stuff other than the Immersturm, so the continued inclusion of Humans and whatever's going on with the Dreadnoughts has space to work, too. Why doesn't Immersturm-of-current-Kaldheim have [Astartes]? Maybe the Demons wiped them out without the warstorm sustaining them, maybe they became demons through density of magical exposure, maybe there are still some around but they just didn't show up in the cards or story because they were Over There, like Eldraine's Satyrs or the missing Kappas of Kamigawa. This is a case where I like the core concept enough that I'm willing to find ways to sand over the rough edges.)

From there, there's two possible angles: my first thought was to call them Stormborn, basically elementals of battle endlessly conjured by the warstorm itself. (My actual first thought was "Warborn," as they're born for war...but as mentioned, [Astartes] are primarily Warriors, and "Warborn Warrior" sounds really dumb, so Stormborn it is.)

But also, Valla split off from Kaldheim, the "Norse mythology" plane, and Norse mythology has beings whose existence is endless battle - the Einherjar (singular Einheri, apparently), mortals that fell in battle who were taken to Valhalla to wage daily war with each other in preparation for Ragnarok. The spirits of Istfell do cover this trope already (though Valhalla itself is a separate realm), but there's still space for a different angle with a Magic twist; the Einherjar are instead the most bloodthirsty of fallen warriors, taken by the demons of the Immersturm to forever stoke the warstorm with their fury until the gods cut the demons off from the other realms. Or maybe Istfell's spirits are an adaptation by Kaldheim itself to the warstorm being cut off from the plane, sending the worthy fallen somewhere new with their original destination no longer available. In either interpretation, the Einherjar would be flesh-and-blood pseudo-undead, sustained by the warstorm in a very violent symbiotic relationship.

Valla would still have Demons, like Immersturm does, so [Mortarion] (and [Magnus], who belongs here by extension) is an easy fit. [Thunderhawk Gunship] becomes one of the flying demon longships referenced in the Kaldheim story (and appearing in the art of Invasion of Kaldheim). The Spawn could just translate their same concept from 40K, stormborn/einherjar so warped by the warstorm as to become something altogether more monstrous.

The artifact creatures are...tougher. Perhaps Kaldheim once had, and Valla still has, a magical tradition akin to that of Lorehold, where statues are carved in the image of fallen warriors and brought to life to fight and serve alongside them. (The advantage of using a plane we have very little detail on, and that we'll almost certainly never revisit when Kaldheim exists, is that there's a lot of room to play.) [Belisarius Cawl] would be a statue of a master sculptor who continues their work after their death, [Redemptor Dreadnought] would be a giant war-statue, and [Helbrute] would be a war-statue infused with demonic magic, and thereafter endlessly fueled by the bodies of the fallen.

Primarch*

Both Primarch cards are Demons whose mechanics position them as leaders of armies, so the natural way to adapt them would be as exactly that, demonic leaders of armies within the warstorm. The replacement name would be something that evokes "Viking war leader" - not a subject I have much real knowledge of, so I'm leaning on fictional knowledge and leaving this open as a "to be replaced with a more fitting term by someone more knowledgeable" slot. In the meantime, Jarl sees sufficiently little use outside of this context that it works reasonably cleanly as its own type for this narrow application - at least moreso than Thane, the other name I considered.

Necron*

Necrons are mono-Black artifact creatures with a consistent mechanical connection to the graveyard and/or death, including the specific mechanic Unearth, and to other artifacts. There are five cards that are Wizards and two that are Nobles, with a number lacking "class" subtypes, including all of the legends. The tokens, created by six different cards - including two Vehicles (which both fly), and an enchantment that turns all of your creatures into artifacts - are all Warriors.

The most immediate, obvious place to fit the type is Alara: they're colored artifact creatures with Unearth in a color that falls within the overlap of those two themes' shards. [Necron] becomes, say, Husk, a new strain of undead caused by an interaction between some combination of Dregscape magic, etherium, and Phyrexian wreckage. (In my head they actually look a fair bit like classic Phyrexians, very much both robot and corpse.) The first ones arose and started building more of themselves from the fallen that surrounded them, and Alara is quickly developing an entirely new problem.

The one point of issue with this take is the class types - why is the most common such carded type among them Wizard when they're basically robot zombies? What's the deal with the Nobles, when, at least to my knowledge, neither Esper nor Grixis has a straightforward nobility to pull immediate corpses from? Vithia had monarchs, but it's not like those titles would've survived centuries as just another group of corpses in the Dregscape, aside from Sedris himself. It's certainly still workable, especially compared to some of the stretching I just did to make "Einheri" work, but "army of unearthed artifact creatures" is generic enough to be worth thinking of what other possibilities there might be.

The first place to look would be the four planes with a major density of old, buried stuff: Dominaria, Zendikar, Amonkhet, and Ixalan. (There's also Arcavios, but the colors are an awkward match there, given Lorehold are the ones that deal in old, buried stuff.) Well, maybe three - Zendikar's moving away from old dungeons towards new dungeons these days (thanks, Nahiri), so it's not the best place to throw a new ancient army.

Dominaria has the issue that the ancient armies of artifice are already well-covered on cards, including their types - pretty consistently Constructs. It's one thing to stretch to an existing, narrower type that fits within that umbrella, the way I tried with Robot, but "why are these Thran/Antiquities War artifacts an entirely new creature type?" is a trickier question. With Dominaria, one can always go deeper for an entirely undiscovered, ancient-er artificer civilization - or just a contemporary of the Thran - but there's better fits.

Amonkhet has potential, since it's not exactly a stranger to things rising from the dead, and there are plenty of ruins its modern denizens have left undisturbed, but might now have new cause to dig into. Perhaps before their civilization shrunk to the walls of Naktamun, their predecessors built constructs of pure lazotep to stand watch over their tombs, Eternals without the base corpse? It could work, but "what's going on in the Amonkhetu ruins?" seems like a question to answer more in-depth on a proper return to the plane, rather than stitching a reskin over. Still, the general idea has promise; hold this thought.

Ixalan just put an emphasis on buried artifacts of fallen civilizations in particular, and there are multiple viable angles to work with: a dormant race of Servitors constructed by a sect of the Komon Winaq searching for a silver bullet against the Mycoids? An impossible remnant of the Fourth People? A reawakened cohort of Fomori constructs (thanks, Quint)? All have merit, though the caverns-bound options have issues with the "flying vehicles" question, and the Fomori option has issues with the "Noble" question. Still, like Alara and the Husks, the possible issues with Ixalan and the Servitors are solvable.

My last big idea for the Necrons came from the card Tomb Fortress; it's not actually bound to the [Necron] type mechanically, but just the name itself reminded me of the Terracotta Army, a massive collection of statues built and positioned to guard the grand tomb of an emperor. Where Amonkhet has existing mysteries that would want specific focus, Shenmeng (the home plane of Mu Yanling, formerly known as the Plane of Mountains and Seas) is largely a blank canvas open to being painted in, and a fantasy take on the Terracotta Army where the armies created to guard the emperor's tomb are a very real martial force that have developed designs of their own seems like a great potential fit. A grand imperial army in a world of magic would certainly have wizards, it could easily have representations of minor nobility and specific generals (covering the legendary [Necrons]), and the vehicles could be grand sky chariots, or alternatively more specific pulls from Chinese mythology I'm not well-versed enough to think of off the cuff.

The question here would actually be what to (re)name the type: Terracottan is clunky, Terran has a common usage in SFF that has nothing to do with this concept, Statue is both stiff and overlaps heavily with the existing Sculpture type...perhaps it could use a transliterated Chinese term for the Terracotta Army - again, not something I'm well-versed enough in to know what a transliteration that actually works correctly as a translation would be, so I'll use Statue as a placeholder.

The Statue army of Shenmeng is probably my favorite of these options at this point, but Alara and Ixalan are both very viable adaptation options as well, in my opinion.

Tyranid*

Tyranids are heavily centered in Green and secondary in Blue and Red. They range across a massive range of sizes, including a bunch of individually variable sizes, and share typelines with Humans and Gargoyles (as well as having at least one Tyranid Mutant), with the Tyranid Humans also having the potential for class types - two Wizards, one Artificer, one Advisor, and one Scout. ("Pure" Tyranids can also have class types, as one of their multiple tokens has the Warrior subtype.) Their mechanics emphasize +1/+1 counters and X costs, with ramp to help enable both through the Ravenous mechanic.

The Tyranids, down to the core of their mechanics, are a colossal invading and/or corrupting force. Whereas all of the other types adapted here worked somewhere or another in the established multiverse, albeit sometimes somewhere rather obscure (see: Valla, Shenmeng), there really isn't a place to put this collection of designs that doesn't immediately become about how that place is being overrun by not-Tyranids, which points to creating a loosely-defined new plane for them to have their run of, the same way the Sliver Gravemother got her own plane to have successfully conquered in her precon introduction. With that in mind, this section becomes less about where to put them (the only restrictions are that it has humans with the aforementioned range of class types and somehow incorporates gargoyles, all of which fits within a generic medieval fantasy pastiche), and more about what they are, conceptually and aesthetically.

The extent to which they go tall and wide, combined with their color distribution and their sheer diversity of sizes and shapes, points me personally towards an insectoid vibe - the aesthetic of chitinous armor and myriad limbs, the concept of a great hive colony. Perhaps not the most original take, given the likes of the Slivers or the Zerg that also play in that trope space, but it's the one that feels like it makes the most sense. (The overly narrow Sliver aesthetic works in their favor in this one instance, since it means there's plenty of aesthetic space for [Tyranids] to cover without looking too much like Slivers.)

The [Tyranid] Humans would be humans infested and overtaken by [Tyranid] parasites as the colony extends its reach over the plane's human(oid) civilization, disrupting defenses from within to help clear the way for the greater body of the swarm. The [Tyranid] Gargoyles are fuzzier; maybe a subset of [Tyranids] happen to look enough like the local gargoyles that the name for them caught on, or maybe the local gargoyles are flesh-and-blood and can be infested the same as humans can? Probably the former is cleaner. Gargoyle Flock has enough space for flavor text to get the explanation for the typeline across, in any case. The [Tyranid] Warriors would be recent adaptations that mimic the form of their foes, and the rest are just...vaguely akin to various insects, but alien in a way that it makes sense not to just use the Insect type for them.

I haven't had much success coming up with a fitting (re)name for these: Parasite is used too frequently in Magic in the generic sense to be a new creature type, any "Stormborn"-style word-splices involving "Hive" or "Swarm" read/sound really clunky...Brood is the placeholder term I've been using, though that's also Marvel's name for their take on this concept, so it's probably worth avoiding even if I doubt they could have such a simple term copyrighted. Maybe Exo, from exoskeleton? I'm assuming Destiny doesn't have a copyright on that name, and that's a rather different concept, so the shared names are less of a concern. 40K's "xeno" stuff is kind of dubious, but Exo does evoke a vaguely "alien" feeling in a similar way, I think.

Demon

Realized well into typing this post up that 40K's off-color Demons are worth making note of in a "how to adapt creature types" post. Obviously the type name isn't changing here, but "what to do with the Blue, Red, and Blue/Red Demons" is a question that still falls under the overall premise, so I'm sticking them on the end.

Some of the mono-Red ones slot into Kaldheim or Valla fine - even the Demon Knight, since there's an [Astartes] Knight, which would mean Valla has Knights in some capacity. The mono-Blue ones feel like they make the most sense on Alara; Grixis's demons expanding out of Black and into the shard's other colors as a side effect of the intermingling with the other shards seems plausible, and one of them even has Cascade. The Blue/Red ones (bar [Magnus], which as a [Primarch] goes to Valla in this scenario) feel a little more off there with their spellslinging focus, but not to the extent of being a deal-breaker. It does mean they work just about as well on Valla, though.

The other angle is to take the Arjun the Shifting Flame approach and set them on an unknown plane, but with a distinct enough aesthetic that you get their vibe even if there are no details given: a plane where Demons are focused in Blue and Red as keepers of forbidden knowledge that tempt mages with arcane secrets.

so, tl;dr:

Inquisitor -> Inquisitor (Innistrad) Custodes -> Lar or Tutelar (Roman plane) C'tan -> Thanaton (Theros) Astartes -> Stormborn or Einheri (Valla) Primarch -> Jarl (Valla) Necron -> "Statue" (Shenmeng) Tyranid -> Exo (new plane) (off-color Demons to some combination of Alara, Kaldheim/Valla, and a new plane)

#mtg #universes within #probably the next thing will be an ''individual 40K cards of particular interest'' post #might as well finish off one set (as much as is plausible) before moving on to the next

[flunkyofmalcador]

This is for @relax-and-read-on and @incorrect-primarchs-quotes

I did a "Primarch sexual head canons" about seven years ago. I've had time to rethink some of them, so here we go. (It's not like I could find the original post at this point anyhow.)

Lion El'Jonson: The one true asexual of the bunch. I just cannot see him being interested in anyone. I've tried.

Fulgrim: He's metasexual. He has never met-a-sexuality he didn't like. He's an entire LGBTQ+ pride parade in power armor. In an open relationship with Ferrus Manus, but Ferrus doesn't take advantage of the arrangement except when they have threesomes. And hoo doggy do they have threesomes.

Jaghatai Khan: He's straight, but is kind of having thoughts about Sanguinius in the Siege of Terra. He has a lot of wives and kids back on Chogoris.

Perturabo: Dear Perturabo. He surrounds himself with automata and sleeps in a labyrinth which makes me think that he was sexually abused along the way. I also headcanon him as a deeply closeted trans woman, so closeted that even Pert doesn't know it and sadly, nothing may ever come of it. He is content with his own ministrations, and some fan writers have said he makes his own sex toys, which I think is likely. He could fall in love easily, which is another reason he stays remote from people.

Leman Russ: Speaking of doggy...I don't hate him, okay? and I have a lot of head canons and even some fic about him. He's married to Sigrun the Wolf-Queen. Like Luther and Kor Phaeron, she is one of those half-Astartes the Emperor could fashion. They have four kids together. Russ is open! and friendly! in his physical affections and he and the Queen have an open marriage because they are apart so often. He is absolutely magic in bed because his wolf-nose can sniff out what's turning his partner on or not. He knows what you want before you do.

Rogal Dorn: A typo in another writer's commentary about Dorn sending poetry to his lovers via astropathic choir made me think that he would actually be pretty good at polyamory. He has the 100% honesty required for it. Bisexual, but strongly prefers women. In my Daughters AU he and Perturabo finally break the ice and fall for each other hard.

Konrad Curze: In "Butcher's Nails" and other ADB works about the Night Lords, it's made pretty clear he's a necrophile. In "Butcher's Nails", Lorgar comments to Angron that a corpse-filled Dark Eldar ship "looks like Konrad's bedchamber". My brother in Christ, what were you doing in Konrad's bedchamber?

Sanguinius: GAY. Unfortunately, between being 700% gay and raised in a patriarchal desert society he's also quite the little misogynist. Had very little experience before he met Horus, and the two were inseparable immediately. Read my fic "Wings" for the whole story. After he and Horus break up, he transfers his affections to Jaghatai Khan. Khan's open to the idea.

Ferrus Manus: I have a really different headcanon from most people because I see him as a widower. His wife and kids died on Medusa and he only came back to life himself when Fulgrim walked into his lonely forge. He loves it when Fulgrim wears lingerie and as I said above, they enjoy a good threesome.

Angron: Spent his entire life being abused. He's not asexual at all but I think he knows he's too dangerous to try to have sex because he is NOT a rapist. I like the idea of him being one of Lotara's two husbands, but honestly I think Lotara is lovers with Kharn only.

Guilliman: His libido is sublimated as hell, but it's there. He's attentive to detail and has a plan when it comes to consummating it with a new lady (and his partners are ladies). He knows he has to get married and have kids at some point, but aargh, he's just so BUSY.

Mortarion: I don't know.

Magnus: Prospero is a world where polyamory is the norm and people have family webs, not family trees. He has several wives and husbands and kids. Definitely does the whole psychic sex thing; you know when he's coming home with loving on his mind because you've been having orgasms out of the blue for the past half hour. Magnus is the one primarch I want to marry, but for his intellect and love of the occult, which I share.

Horus Lupercal: Bisexual AF, and has gone through 3/4 of the Custodes and Sisters of Silence in the Palace before he meets Sanguinius. After that, he's monogamous until Davin. Post-Davin, he's fucking Erebus and you cannot convince me he wasn't banging Petronella Vivar either.

Lorgar: This boy is messed up. He covers his sexual dysfunctions in celibacy. It's Kor Phaeron's fault.

Vulkan: Open and friendly like Russ. I don't know him very well because I can't stand Nick Kyle's writing and so my takeaways are all from fanfic! He and Russ compete to be the best huggers.

Corvus Corax: Totally married to Nasturi Ephrenia. Bisexual, but hasn't acted on it yet. Eventually will, probably with Vulcan.

The Twins: I am not ready for that conversation yet.

#primarchs #Horus heresy #primarch headcanons

[2lim3rz]

Hey here’s an interesting idea! Y’know how sometimes the primarchs are regarded as “gene-father” by some people? Well what would it be like if the primarchs were actually dads? (This is a headcanons request, just to clarify). Like how would each of them react to their fem!s/o being pregnant (you can choose the gender of the baby), and for the traitor primarchs (except for Horus), how about headcanons on what kind of father they would be (like after they fell to chaos)

Hey anon

I love you, that's it, I love you so much this is kaksjdfkajsdflkh MmmmmmMMMMM Papa Primarchs I nEEEEDded

I'll do as many as I can, but for some I haven't delved into at all I might give them my best shot

THE PRIMARCHS AS FATHERS [PRIMARCHS X READER] [PRE+POST!HERESY PART 1]

LORGAR AURELIAN

First off, how the fuck do you inform a Primarch he's a father? Especially Lorgar? It's bad enough he's dealing with Kor Phaeron and the general shit he gets from life. Well not bad, because Lorgar is maybe the most blushiest Primarch you've ever seen [nevermind the only one] but..

Oh boy. You have bigger problems now because no one's ever thought of what to do if a Primarch faints. Seriously. Lorgar would faint at the news of him having a child.

Mostly because.. no one exactly knew if a Primarch can have a kid. Seriously, it was rumored that Space Marines could but no one ever gave them much credit because of all of the warring, there was no need to look into it

After the initial scare [mostly Lorgar, all Lorgar] and being in a general fit of what the hell is going to happen with the Primarch's kid growing in you, he would walk on up, confident at first but you can see extreme unease on his face

That is until he kneels down and hugs you. Before picking you up and laughing before setting you down in caution and concern. All logic and science left behind in the fact that, reasonably, he should know there'd be no harm done with a spin-around hug, but nonetheless

Kor Phaeron is unreasonably a piss baby about it, but no one cares about that and hot damn be ready to have Erebus be an annoying bastard as ever

Nonetheless, you have a VERY excited and clingy Primarch to deal with now

ANGRON

First of all, Angron is one of the Primarchs that is a sheer miracle that you managed to wrangle him in enough to sleep with you. Given that despite him being gentle, it's the equivalent of fucking a bull high on bathsalts and rabid as hell sometimes, so honestly maybe it's a mild miracle you're alive instead of literally screwed to death

The moment you reveal you're pregnant, it's very mixed emotions. That's clear enough, the one you [or if there were any witnesses] or anyone else didn't expect was the tears. The gentlest caress over you for his hands to settle on your stomach

Part of it would be guilt. Part of it would be joy. It's both and he's just.. so happy. So sadly happy. How could he dare bring or let you bring a child in the world? Logic demands to get rid of it

But he's so happy. So happy that he got to fight through and be coherent about the whole ordeal

You are going to be one fiercely protected mama. Even if the Emperor himself wanted to get rid of you/the child, he is going to go buckfuck wild

Also I'm not saying he's going to be clingy but there's gonna be a bunch of times you'd have to convince him to give you space

SANGUINIUS

I'm breaking y'all's hearts and saying that Sanguinius will not react good at all

Seriously, Sanguinius.exe gone. And startlingly enough, he'd probably take you to the medicae again just to have you looked over again. He's not going to show he's stressed or nervous, but you know he is. Mostly with how kinda brisk he's acting about all this

Sanguinius would be super worried tbh. He's a primarch, it's hard enough to be so gentle and while he is naturally easygoing, it wears on him sometimes. Overall; this bitch a worrywort. Prepare for lots of convincing him he'd be a good dad

Sike, Horus would slap Sanguinius out of it. Mostly literally but mostly not while maybe one or two of the other primarchs would LITERALLY slap him out of it if given the chance

In the end, it's up to Roboute, Horus, and even Jaghatai to convince his dumbass to chill and STOP MOLTING FEATHERS EVERYWHERE

#im gonna add more sometime eventually dw #angron #sanguinius #lorgar aurelian #warhammer 40k #headcanons #primarchs

[turianrebel-archived]

GARRUS  &  HIS  COMMENTS  ON  TURIAN  EXPECTATIONS  IN  ME3

if  you  bring  garrus  with  you  during  tuchanka:  turian  platoon  and  tuchanka:  bomb  ,  garrus  offers  some  interesting  insight  into  turian  culture  ,  their  high  expectations  for  one  another  ,  as  well  as  his  own  thoughts  on  his  people  and  their  beliefs  .

on  the  way  down  to  rescue  tarquin  victus  ,  the  primarch’s  son  ,  and  his  crashed  platoon  ,  garrus  offhandedly  alludes  to  a  turian  dislike  of  nepotism  .

GARRUS:  for  a  turian  commander  ,  what  happened  here  is  . . .  let’s  just  say  the  turian  code  is  not  forgiving  .  and  that  it’s  his  son  is  bad  for  the  primarch  .  promoting  family  without  merit  can  bite  you  in  the  ass  .  what’s  strange  is  that  the  primarch  knows  this  .

he  then  talks  to  your  second  squadmate  (  i’m  going  to  just  write  vega’s  reply  here  as  an  example  )  about  what  it  means  to  be  the  child  of  a  recognized  turian  leader  ,  and  the  amount  of  pressure  that  comes  with  .

GARRUS:  being  the  son  of  adrien  victus  is  a  lot  to  live  up  to  .  it’s  a  big  military  name  on  palaven  .  war’s  expected  to  run  in  the  victus  blood  . JAMES:  doesn’t  always  work  that  way  .  you  gotta  make  your  own  name  .

then  ,  during  tuchanka:  bomb  ,  after  tarquin  victus  sacrifices  himself  to  stop  the  bomb  from  going  off  ,  garrus  makes  a  few  more  remarks  about  what  an  act  like  that  might  do  for  his  people  ,  how  it  might  impact  their  opinions  .

GARRUS:  he  never  hesitated  .  whatever  he  was  before  ,  he’ll  be  remembered  for  this  . SHEPARD:  what  will  the  turians  think  about  this  ,  garrus  ? GARRUS:  hard  to  say  .  sacrifice  in  war  is  expected  .  he  did  us  proud  ,  but  . . .  we’re  a  hard  bunch  to  please  .  living  your  life  for  the  cause  ,  society  first  ,  platoon  first  ,  it’s  all  just  expected  .  

so  maybe  the  ‘promoting  family  without  merit’  part  will  be  forgotten  and  overshadowed  by  tarquin’s  actions  . . .  or  maybe  it  won’t  .  turians  have  a  very  ruthless  view  of  war  ,  of  sacrifice  ,  of  giving  yourself  for  the  good  of  your  people  and  contributing  to  the  betterment  of  the  turian  race  .  they  have  a  strong  sense  of  public  service  ,  of  discipline  ,  and  putting  the  needs  of  everyone  else  before  their  own  .  what  tarquin  did  to  stop  the  bomb  was  what  all  turians  would  be  expected  to  do  in  that  situation  .  

the  way  garrus  says  these  things  in  a  less  than  enthusiastic  tone  ,  and  considering  his  previous  comments  about  not  believing  he’s  ‘a  good  turian’  make  me  think  that  ,  while  these  beliefs  are  heavily  subscribed  to  within  his  culture  ,  he  doesn’t  always  agree  with  them  .  he  seems  to  state  these  things  both  matter-of-factly  and  with  mild  disdain  .  he’s  far  more  of  an  individual  than  normal  turians  ,  having  displayed  his  own  selfishness  before  (  WHY  GOING  TO  OMEGA  WAS  A  SELFISH  CHOICE  )  ,  so  though  he  might  state  these  things  about  turian  culture  ,  i  don’t  think  garrus  agrees  with  them  wholeheartedly  or  blindly  .  fortunately  a  benefit  of  living  on  a  human  ship  and  working  alongside  shepard  has  broadened  his  mind  to  other  possibilities  .  he’s  learned  so  much  beyond  what  he  was  taught  .

#✶ — convolutions of the stars / headcanon #hc #day 17000 of me loving garrus

[segersgia]

Looking back: Part 2 - Death Guard - Infantry

8th edition needed a big baddie for the new Primaris Marines to combat, and Mortarion was very eager to oblige in this front. The Death Guard are by far my favourite Heretic Astartes faction just by aesthetic alone. Nurgle is my #1 Chaos God. I like his focus on pestilence and decay and the fact he is technically a rather benign god. 

I love the Death Guard because of their doctrines and their design. They make use of chemical warfare and just slowly advance like a poisonous cloud towards their foes.

So it was very exciting to see a full army being made out of them.

This army is very difficult to rate and review, because unlike the Space Marine line, every little model in their range is unique in some way. Every little miniature you get for this army has different weapons, helmets, and different armour patterns. This means that one unit will both have ace looking models and models that look like hot filthy garbage (in a bad way).

Let’s begin...

Plague Marines:

The main boys of the Death Guard army are definitely the much-loved Plague Marines. These are your mainline infantry boys and make up the majority of the Death Guard Army. They are a result of what happens when a Chaos Space Marine starts worshiping Nurgle a little too much. They begin transforming into these bloated and disease ridden humps of rotten flesh and rusted armour. The Plague Marines themselves love this. They feel no pain and see every little malady as another gift from their god. 

The first Plague Marines came into existence during the Horus Heresy. When the Death Guard attempted to join the Siege of Terra, their fleet got lost in the Warp and the legion became infected with Nurgle’s Rot and the Destroyer Plague. Their Primarch Mortarion, in an attempt to save his legion from the torture and suffering, sold his soul and his legion to Nurgle. 

Plague Marines slowly advance on their enemies, bolters firing without mercy. Some carry rusted weapons that are infused with Nurgle’s Rot. One small cut and your infected.  When injured, they won’t even flinch, since they absolutely feel no pain whatsoever.  

Plague Marines are a truly decisive bunch of miniatures. You have four different kits to choose from (three, since Dark Imperium has been discontinued) and each of them has some very good models and some very bad ones. 

I do think that they are very busy and in some parts overdesigned. Some models have like three different Plaguebearers fused to their armour for example. I do like their armour though and the ones wearing the Mark 2 helmet are by far the best looking of the bunch. 

I would say that the best box out of the four would be the basic Multi-kit, since they are the most consistent in quality. However, all of my favourites strangely come from the discontinued Dark Imperium Box Set. 

7/10

Poxwalkers:

The Walking Pox is a very infectious disease that is just awful to have. Your organs start failing one by one and you eventually turn into a zombie, fully conscious of your actions yet without any control over your body.

Poxwalkers shamble like undead in search of flesh to consume. They have these long horns sprouting out of their heads and all of them constantly smile like they’ve been injected with Joker laughing gas. The worst part about them is that their groans and roars can infect those who hear it with the Walking Pox disease. 

The walking Pox spreads auditory. It can spread through the vibrations of sound. 

I love these models. There is nothing really bad to say about them. They completely succeed at what they are supposed to convey and resemble. Some of them hint at their former professions, like the one dressed as a doctor. Some of them also wear clothing similar to that the Genestealer Hybrids, so they stay very consistent. They look creepy and disgusting and I love it.

10/10

Blightlord Terminators:

These fellas are even more diseased than their normal Plague Marine counterparts. Their steps corrode and rust the ground beneath them and even being touched by them could spell your very painful death.

Blightlord Terminators excel at ship-to-ship-combat and boarding actions against enemy spaceships. Since they are Terminators, they can teleport aboard enemy vessels, and they use this tactic to cause mayhem and to spread the gift of Nurgle. 

The Blightlords are surprisingly less busy than I would’ve expected and it makes them a better looking unit for it. These models found a way better balance between clean and diseased. I think that some of their weapons do look a bit oversized. Overall though, the designers aced this unit.

My favourite one out of the bunch is the Insectoid Blightlord with the extra limbs. That is just clever design and a fun way to visualize Nurgle’s corruption.

8/10

Deathshroud:

In the olden days of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy, the Deathshroud were the personal bodyguards of Mortarion. They were his version of an Honour Guard and were chosen out of the sole survivors from destroyed Space Marine squads. They completely forsook their identity, never taking of their masks and conducting a vow of silence. They are considered at that point killed in action. 

They still largely form Mortarion’s personal guard even after his ascension to Daemon Prince. However, Mortarion also sends them to check up on those he favours. They fight alongside Chaos Lords and the like and act like judges. If a Chaos Lord does well, the Deathshroud leave in peace, but if the Chaos Lord failed in the eyes of Mortarion, then he gets executed by these bodyguards. 

Deathshroud carry Power-scythes called Manreapers, which are rumoured to be dipped in the filth of Nurgle’s Throne itself. They also come equipped with custom Hand Flamers that shoot chemical ammunition. 

The Deathshroud have a very good design that is very similar to the Blightlords. There is however some waste in potential. These are Mortarion’s most trusted warriors and they just look like a hooded version of the Blightlords. I kind of wished the designers took some inspiration from this artwork and made them have more ornate features.

It would certainly distinguish them more from their brethren better. 

I also take some offence that in the images, one of them has no helmet on, which kind of ruins the point of a voiceless and faceless warrior. You do have the option of giving the squad leader a helmeted head, so this is kind of a none-issue. 

7/10

Plague Marine Icon Bearer

The Icon bearers of Nurgle carry an Icon of Despair. This banner creates an aura of hopelessness around the area, and the thoughts of surrounding foes become filled with the idea of inevitable death. It basically turns enemies into nihilists who’ve become depressed.

What makes me sad about this unit is that there is no mention of these guys anywhere on the different wiki’s, which is kind of a bummer since he looks like a solid Plague Marine. Yes, it is just a Plague Marine with a Chaos Icon, but he should at least be mentioned somewhere. Don’t be mean to him. He is a good looking Plague Marine. 

I do wish that the Icon he carried didn’t have the weird helmet pressed in it. The fly motive is nice though.

8/10 

———————–

So all in all, outside of some outliers, the Death Guard infantry is a very solid line of miniatures that is very varied in appearance. You could apply the “Goldilocks Effect” to it; some are too busy, some are not busy enough, and some are just just right.

Next up, I’m going to tackle the Craftworld Aeldari Faction, which will be a short one and will probably come a little sooner than normal. After that, I’ll be looking at the Vanguard Primaris infantry units. I want to spread them out somewhat so that everything stays interesting, but I also want to get the Primaris overviewed as quickly as possible. 

Thank you for reading my stuff so far. It is fun to overview the design and lore of these different factions. It also is a learning experience for me. For example; Tumblr has a Max-10 image cap per post and this means that this series will probably list a lot longer than I’d imagine. Still, it will be a fun ride for me.

‘Till next time.

previous posts: Primaris Mainline Infantry

#warhammer 40k #warhammer 40000 #Death Guard #8th edition #Chaos #Nurgle #Plague Marines #Infantry #warhammer #rating #Range overview

[crackinglamb]

Fluff-uary Prompt 6 - Gifts

(ME - Jayne and Garrus)

“What are you up to?” Jayne asked as Garrus expertly drove the groundcar down the shattered streets of Cipritine.  He grinned from the driver's seat, his eyes alight.

“Stuff.”

“Are you going to tell me where we're going yet?”

“Nope, it's a surprise.”

“Ooh, you...” She sighed, not sure if she should be glad or suspicious of the gleeful look on his face.  She knew what day it was, but she didn't think anyone else did, or was going to do anything about it. Turians had different traditions.  And yet, she never underestimated Garrus's thoroughness when it came to details, so she wondered what he'd done.  He pulled the car into a wide parking lot, smoothly parking it in a handicapped spot near the entrance.  Jayne looked up at the familiar building where she put in a few hours a week as the Human Ambassador to the Hierarchy and made a face.  “Garrus, this is my office.”

“Not tonight, it isn't.”  He stepped out from the car and came to her side, opening what amounted to a lead-lined umbrella over her side so she was shaded from the harsh Palaveni sun, still high in the sky.  She leaned heavily on his free arm as she stood up, a stout cane in her other hand.  An ache was already setting up in her right knee.  He saw her twinge and tightened his grip on her automatically, taking more of her weight.  “Tonight, since this is the closest thing we still have that's an Embassy, everyone is here.”

Everyone...she mused.  What tricks did he have up his sleeve?

They walked slowly into the building and Jayne blinked at the sudden gloom inside, trying to adjust after the brightness outside.  “Happy Birthday!” numerous voices shouted, and the lights came back on.

“My God,” she gasped, looking around at the assembled faces.  She spotted the chrome plating of EDI's head and Joker standing next to her, leaning on omni-canes.  Ash and James stood next to them.  On the other side of the room was a contingent from the Primarch's office, including Victus himself, grinning like a cadet.  Castis and Solana were there, Sol holding something wrapped in her hands that was literally dripping coiled ribbons.  Dr. Chakwas was in their midst, arm in arm with Theis, who looked smug.  And there, pushing his way to the front of the crowd...

“Shepard!”

“Wrex!  How on Earth...I mean on Palaven...what are you doing here?”

The hulking krogan hefted her into his arms, hugging her tight.  He set her back down carefully – far more carefully than she thought he knew how – and grinned his shark's grin at her.  “The kid pulled strings with the Primarch.  I like the leg,” he added, giving her a once over. “Very...what do you call it?  Cyberpunk.”

Jayne nodded, unsure where to begin to unpack the idea that her krogan friend knew about human sci-fi genres.  She looked at Garrus instead, who was nearly exploding with happiness at seeing how well his surprise had gone over.  “You did all this?”

“I had some help.”  He scanned the crowd, looking for someone.  A tinge of disappointment colored his subvocals as he evidently didn't find who he was looking for.  When he turned back to her, though, he was smiling again.  “C'mon, you are the guest of honor.  We have a comfortable chair for you.”

He led her to one end of the atrium where the party was being held to a chair that made her laugh.  Built of sturdy, dark Palaveni wood and cushioned with a tasseled monstrosity of a pillow, it looked remarkably like the ancient British royal throne.  He helped her get comfortable, and tucked a low stool under her right leg to support it.  From there, something of a receiving line began as the guests came by to offer their well wishes and presents.  Sol's gift turned out to be several bags of whole bean coffee, imported from Earth and brought with Dr. Chakwas.  There was a feast of food, both chiralities of course, and everyone joined each other at long tables reminiscent of a school lunchroom, various races mingling together in one big happy bunch.

Halfway through the dinner – with Garrus and his family on one side of her and Wrex on the other – a voice called out from the door.  “Sorry I'm late,” Liara announced, beaming.  “I had to make a stop to pick some people up.”

Tali and a geth that looked remarkably like Legion stood on either side of the asari and Jayne nearly lost her plate from her lap she was so suprised. “Shepard-Commander, we offer sincere felicitations upon your successful revolution around the primary.”

“Thank you.” The head flaps waved and she laughed, wondering just how long Tali had coached the geth in saying that.  She knew geth still used mobile platforms, but she hadn't known Legion's had been saved.  She couldn't wait to catch up and see what the Consensus was up to now.

Tali hugged her, her suit now bearing a clear face mask so she could see her friend's dancing silver eyes.  “Took me forever to filter through the runtimes to find enough of him to come back.  Once I had a few they seemed strangely excited by the project.”

“I'm so glad you did.  I've missed him.”

The geth stood by, seemingly at odds with how to react to this, and she caught sight of the platform twisting its fingers the way Tali used to do when she was nervous.  “We represent eight hundred and four of the runtimes that were once uploaded to this platform.  It has been...an interesting experience, reliving these stimuli.”

“That's good to hear.  Can I still call you Legion?”

“Yes, for we are many in this place.”  The head flaps waved again and she smiled, remembering when EDI had named him that.  Evidently, the runtimes did too.

“I'm very happy to see you, Legion.”

“We thank you, Shepard-Commander, on behalf of the Consensus.  We would not exist if not for you and Creator-Tali'Zorah.”

They moved off, mingling and reuniting with the members of the Normandy crew and a sense of peaceful fulfillment filled Jayne.  She took Garrus' hand in hers and grinned at him.  “Thank you, babe.  This was the best gift ever, in the whole of the galaxy.”

“You're welcome, darling.”  He pressed his mouthplates to the back of her hand, a turian equivalent of kissing it, and the gathered guests roared their approval.  Jayne and Garrus laughed along with them.  Finally, there was a sense of rightness coming back to the galaxy, and even if a few faces were missing, she knew where those were and had plans to see them again soon.  

“Happy Birthday, Jayne,” Garrus said softly.

“It is happy.  It is the happiest I've ever been.”

#FLUFF-uary 2020 #mass effect #shakarian #everyone lives

[scars-of-the-hart]

Mass Effect 3: From The Ashes -Chapter 2: Burnout

Chapter Two

Burnout

She knew she looked like shit.  The dreams had come again last night, with a vengeance. She could barely look Garrus in the eye as they ate together in the mess, the rest of her crew cheerfully discussing their options for shore leave when they arrived at Palaven. She had done her best to show the usual “Shepard” bravado. Ordered Ash and Vega to get a room in a different building than hers so she didn’t have to hear any of their “recreation,” asked what the best sushi restaurant was, and made comments about taking in the “native scenery” with a pointed, slow scrutiny of Garrus that she swore had actually made him blush.  If Turians could blush… to her horror, she had learned they could bruise.

Once upon a time, once upon a different “Commander Shepard,” she probably wouldn’t have been so casual with her crew. Would have kept her liasons - no fuck “liasons,” her dating life - more private and encouraged others to do the same. She never would have striven for the uptight (in her opinion), stupid professionalism and lack of… liasing… that she knew other officers expected. These were warriors. All of them. Whether they charged out behind her with a gun or made sure the water-filtration system stayed funcional, they had all faced death day in and day out.  And… it was a bunch of mostly humans stuck together in a tin can flying through a vacuum, with things outside (and sometimes inside) that wanted to kill them - spirits knew they needed to take the edge off somehow.

“Spirits”… she’d started swearing like him… well… like he did when he thought she was asleep and couldn’t hear him.

But trying to keep that “professionalism” in the face of so much death, loss and destruction, to stifle anything that might make someone laugh, feel something other than fear, make someone blush... that pursuit seemed petty now.

She felt exhausted at the thought of trying to keep up that bravado when they reached Palaven.  Garrus had assured her that she would have a place of honor among Turians till the end of time for what she had done to save their planet, not to mention the personal services she had done for the Primarch. He told her that she’d better not worry what they thought. But to be honest, that just felt like more pressure.  She had a feeling she might miss being the rogue, back-from-the-dead Spectre everyone thought was crazy, saying that there were monsters hiding under everyone’s cars, rather than the all-saving “Shepard.”

Maybe she should just spend a few months on Tuchanka. At least if she threw a fit and yelled “GO AWAY I SAVED YOU ALL I’M TIRED STILL” she would get some begrudging respect for her level of aggression. She had a feeling the same behavior on Palaven would have them looking at her with pursed mandibles and thinking her “primitive.”

But she wanted to go back now, for his sake. He tried to play it cool, but she knew he was worried. He never for a moment gave any sign that he wanted to be anywhere but her agonizingly slowly healing side. You would think being “synthesized” and full of these little… strands of… something (it was infuriating that no one could tell her what they were) would make you heal fast or some shit like that, but no. The organic part of her stuck with being very organic and patched up at a snail's pace. But she could tell that he felt he urgently needed to get back to Palaven. His father and sister had made it out when the Reapers attacked, barely, but his sister had a broken leg, and the two of them had been very guarded when discussing the health of his mother.

Waking up in his arms in the engine room that morning had been like taking a punch to the gut. He must have taken a seat on the floor at some point, back resting against the wall of the control panel. She had awoken to find herself folded in his arms, her cheek against his bare torso, a sheet from her (no… their bed) half tangled around her but still showing far too much of her underwear-clad body.  She had no memory of being brought into the engine room, no understanding why he was topless; thank the spirits, at least he was wearing pants. She was mortified. She knew he had found her when she had fallen asleep here earlier this week.  She’d woken briefly as he walked down the hall from the engine room, perhaps when she could no longer feel that gentle thrum that surrounded her now.

After waking she had just sat there. Listening to the slow, strangely soothing beating of his heart. At least he was sleeping. After all these fucking dreams… letting him sleep was the least she could do. He was starting to look like shit too. 

And oh god, did she look like shit, she thought as she passed a painfully reflective wall panel, as she made her way towards the bridge.  An engineer passed her with a respectful nod which she returned with a slight smile. They seemed tense, but thankfully said nothing. Well, maybe that was the upside of dying in universe-saving wars… twice. Your crew were impressed or scared of you enough to avoid commenting when you looked like crap. 

She snorted to herself.  She’d have to tell Anderson to use that strategy the next time he had to deal with all the damn politicians. Maybe they could take some shore leave and she could bring him up to speed over a long night of drinks; although he’d probably drink her under the table, coming from London…

The city's name in her head was like a biotic blast to the chest. London. Anderson. Her steps faltered and she grasped the walkway railing with one hand for a moment. Had she really just….was she that stupid? She cursed herself. No, no. There would be no telling Anderson. No seeing that twinkle in his eye behind his Spartan countenance; no hearing him grumble dryly, “I knew it was a bad idea letting them make you a Spectre.”  The pain at that thought was… heavy, as if his absence left yet another mantle of responsibility on her already straining shoulders. Well, she would just have to settle for giving him something interesting to watch from wherever he was now.

She neared the helm and heard EDI and Joker laughing up ahead. Now that was a sound she would never tire of. Garrus thought EDI’s laugh had become eerily human since the synthesis, but Shepard thought it had become delightfully human. She owed the AI an eternal debt of gratitude for what she’d done - not to mention the fact that it meant that Shepard wasn’t the only one changed in ways that no one could understand.

“Hey Shepard!” called Joker as she drew level with them, “Ash told me you were asking for sushi recommendations on Palaven. I’m really sorry but I have something super important to do at the exact time you’re going, so you’ll have to find someone else to be your decoy this time - I mean date.”

At hearing this, EDI began to - no… really? Yep, Shepard wasn’t seeing things - the AI had just rolled her eyes at their pilot.

“Joker continues to think that any kind of combat training, including simple target practice, is a terrible idea,” she said. “Despite Garrus’ and my recommendations.”

“Look,” chided Joker, “I have lived through all these disasters as a pilot. No way am I messing up my survival streak with this one still around and wreaking havoc.” He grinned at her, “With all due respect Commander, I for one think the galaxy would actually be a whole lot safer and quieter if you would stay dead one of these days.”

Her lip twitched. Things would suck without Joker. It would be a hell of a lot harder to deal with all this without him: someone who knew when she couldn’t take any more gentle voices, respectful nods, or awe-filled stares and instead needed a good old ribbing. Needed to feel human for a few minutes.

“I’ll take your feedback into consideration, Lieutenant Moreau.” Shepard said dryly.

“If you want a quieter galaxy, you should accompany her on a mission, Jeff,” EDI offered. “Your lack of cross training is probably the most efficient way to get her killed.”

“Ha, ha, ha,” he shot back at her.

“Well, Lieutenant,” Shepard asked, “Are we still on schedule for our arrival on Palaven? Or have you drifted several days off-course while griping about your untenable world-saving workload?”

EDI snorted. Now even that one surprised Shepard.

“No, Commander. We are on schedule, Ma’am.” he answered. She cringed despite herself. She was fine with that usually, but it never sounded right coming from Joker. “Although, we’ve had a message from Tali.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, she was wondering if there was any way we could make a stop on Rannoch on our way to Palaven.” Shepard frowned. “She said she had something she wanted to discuss with you and Liara in person about the… Reapers settlement.”  His voice tensed as he mentioned the Reapers. She had shared her full account of what happened on the Crucible with the closer members of her crew after they picked her and Garrus up from Sur'Kesh and began their current journey. It had been a long night and somehow, despite being in a private room of a Salarian bar, there hadn’t seemed to be enough alcohol. Joker, despite being obviously horrified by the option to destroy all higher functioning synthetics and the ramifications that would have had for EDI, still seemed very distrustful of the idea of giving intellectual freedom to the Reapers.  She didn’t blame him. The damage they had wreaked on Earth’s surface had been horrifying, but she heard several people, even Garrus, say that the carnage in the skies, Reapers ripping through dreadnaughts like they were made of paper, was like nothing he had ever seen before. And Joker had been in the heart of that maelstrom the whole time.

“Did it sound urgent?” she asked. She hated the thought of Garrus waiting longer to see his family.

“From her tone… yeah.” he sighed. She wondered if, underneath all his blustering, he was as worn out as she was. Garrus had talked about retiring on a beach. But you needed to be able to breathe on your own, and walk on your own to go to a beach, and that had taken her a while. Then there were questions to answer, and people to check in on and… oh well. She’d never spent much time on beaches. Maybe she’d have hated sand and it would have been a waste of time. 

“Alright,” she said. “I’m going to check in with Garrus, see if he thinks we can spare the time.” She started towards the back of the ship, “Don’t have too much fun you two,” she called back over her shoulder. “Moreau, you have the bridge.”

As her footsteps rang on the walkway she heard poorly restrained laughter and grumbling.

“You got Moreau’d” sniggered EDI.

“Yeah well you-”

“Twice!”

“Shut up!”

*     *     *

“The engine room?” Liara asked incredulously. Garrus rubbed his eyes and squinted at the equations he had been pretending to try and pay attention to. He should really just throw in the towel. He was only kidding himself at this point.

“Yeah…” he sighed. “Two nights in a row now. So I guess that’s progress.”

Liara gave him a long disparaging look. She pushed off the wall of the main battery where she had been leaning and took a step towards him.

“I’ll talk to her about assisting with her sleep,” she said.

“No. We’re not there yet.” He sighed.

“I don’t think that’s your call to make,” she said softly.

He closed his eyes, shook his head to clear it and continued after a deep breath, “I… look that’s not what I meant.  She’s proud.” He fixed his eyes on Liara. “You know she is. Do you really think she wants to be asked that now? When who the hell knows who is going to want to meet with her when we get to Palaven?”

She frowned. “All the more reason for her to actually be getting rest on the way there.”

Garrus felt trapped. “Maybe we put a cot in there...”

Liara snorted. “Oh, so having everyone on the ship knowing-”

“We could hide it and when she’s ready to go to sleep-”

“What? Have her sneak into the engine room? That’s better for her pride than biotic assistance?”

“I don’t know, ok? I’ve had as much time to work on this problem as you have!” he snapped.

“And I’m telling you I have a better solution for her,” she retorted.

Garrus could feel his irritation growing. “And, why exactly do you think you know what is going to be better for her?” he growled.

“Because I actually-” she stopped herself and let out a long, suffering breath.

Garrus raised his brows, leaning forward on the console with his forearms, fingers laced before him to prevent them becoming fists. He forced nonchalance and drawled, “Oh? Because you actually what?”

Liara just stared at him coldly.

“What?” he pressed, his temper getting the better of him. “Come on, what were you about to say?”

“It’s not important.”

“Really?” he stood up, crossing his arms, “Because I’m pretty sure we were just fighting about how to best protect and help the Commander of this ship and the person who just saved the whole damn galaxy... and whatever it was you were about to say seemed to be the crux of your argument for your recommended course of action… so I’m pretty sure it’s at least a little noteworthy.”

“It’s not.”

“Then we go with the cot.” 

“Are you really making jokes about this?” she scowled.

“A little humor can’t hurt.” 

Liara shook her head. “A little humor? She’s having traumatic night terrors and you’re cracking jokes-”

“Don’t you judge me! I’m the one watching her wake up screaming-” he snarled.

“Oh poor you!” she bit back. “If it's so hard on your precious sleep then let me-”

“Liara, that dependance is going to crush her-”

“How do you know until you ask-”

“Because I know her-”

“NO YOU DON’T.”

It was his turn to go silent, to freeze as the anger coiled within him. “Is that what you were going to say? “Because I actually know her?” Better than I do? Is that it.” He could feel his head pounding.

Her jaw was tight. “You two had one fling nearly a year ago and now a few months of-”

“But your fling years ago makes you the expert-”

“It wasn’t a fling,” she hissed. “I was completely invested-”

“But was she?” He cut back. Liara’s face stilled. Damn. He… he knew it had been a low blow… he was just so-

“At least it didn’t take her dying the first time for me to notice her.”

 Cold outrage filled him, but also a whisper of fear, or regret. She seemed to sense it, she laughed bitterly.

“Incredible.” She walked towards the door but stopped before it, not even bothering to look at him, like someone taking a shot there was no way they could miss; someone who knew there was no outcome besides the bullet finding the mark. Quietly, she added, “and I never would have waited to further things with her. Not if there was even one chance that we might not have much time.” 

She tapped the panel on the wall and the doors slid open. Good, he thought. Leave. Leave him to do something useful and distract him from the all-to-real fears she had mocked. But to his frustration she closed the panel and looked at him, this time with the barest trace of pity, which actually pissed him off more.

“She needs sleep, Garrus.” she said, her first words without venom in a while. “And so do you.”

“I sleep fine.” He growled.

“No you don’t.” He opened his mouth to retort but before he could, she added, “And I know you don’t because I’ve been sitting outside her cabin doors at night, and I can feel you lying there watching her,” she sighed. It did nothing to dispel the air of tension in the room. Her pity deepened, “and you said that you're the one who’s ‘watching her wake up screaming.’”

The doors to the battery snapped open and Shepard stared at them.  “Did I miss something about a meeting?” she asked dryly.

“Ah - no we -” stammered Garrus.

“You sure? I’ve been sleeping like shit, it’s totally gonna make me miss something. I need to see Chakwas or someone about it later…”

“No,” Liara said smoothly, stepping past Shepard, “Garrus was having some trouble with his calculations.” She gave him a meaningful look. “...but I was just able to show him he was wrong.” And with that she left, sealing the door behind her. Garrus seathed silently. He’d have to see if the shooting range had a blue practice dummy.

Shepard gazed at the closed portal for a moment, looking perplexed, “Ok,” she said at last, then crossed to him. “Garrus, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Anything for you, Shepard.” he said, forcing the damned Asari from his mind and focusing on the woman before him. Damn, she looked more tired than she had been earlier that morning.

She smiled at him, then grew serious. “I know that we were trying to get back to Palaven as quickly as we could to check on your family. But… we just got a message from Tali. She needs Liara and I for something on Rannoch. I think it has something to do with the Reapers, and Joker said it sounded urgent.”

The Reapers, of course she’d have to deal with them even now. His chest was tight but he purred mischievously. “Commander, you flatter a grunt like me by coming here, but our headings are your call.”

“You’re pretty, but don’t think you’re that important,” she said, smacking his arm lightly, then adding seriously, “I just know you’re worried about them and it's been a while since we had any news.”

His heart warmed at her concern. “They’re Vakarians, Shepard. We’re hard to kill. Haven’t you dragged me through hell enough to learn that yet?”

“Clearly not,” she laughed, “Guess we’ll have to keep getting into trouble till it sinks in. But seriously, you’re sure?”

“Yeah,” he said, squeezing her hand. “It’ll be fine. Besides… Reapers.... who else are they going to call.....”

She groaned and rolled her eyes. Then squinted at the calibrations on the screen. “So you really needed math help from Liara?” 

“No!” He snapped, before he could help himself, “Uh- well- she was exaggerating.” Yeah, he had definitely seen a blue target practice dummy in the back of a locker somewhere….

“Oh my god, you did!” she teased, “Wow, you must be more worn out than I am.” She squinted at him. “You look like shit, Vakarian. I’ve learned by now Turians can blush and bruise but I didn’t know you could get eyebags too.” He growled at her. “You’re lucky I like scars so much.”

That was it. He grabbed her and pinned her to the wall. 

“Really, Shepard?” he breathed. “Well, then let’s take a look everywhere and see who has more….”

The light dancing in her eyes made his mouth dry. He pushed away his worries and the small, self-conscious voice Shepard had just woken up, and focused on her. Although, it was a bit of a struggle. Did she really have to go there? He knew he looked like shit.

#mass effect #mass effect fanfiction #shakarian #garrus vakarian #liara t'soni #synthisis #jokerxedi

[sending-the-message]

The part of the deep web that we aren't supposed to see. by Mr_Outlaw_

I’ll assume you all know about the deep web. Well, what you've heard is true, it's not a great place. While some people are there to score legal weed or firearms, or even out of sheer curiosity, others... well they're obviously not up to anything good. But I'm not here to talk about those sickos. I'm here to talk about what lies beyond that point. The more cryptic and unexplainable part of the internet. The part that nobody’s really supposed to see.

There was an info-graphic that cropped up a while ago. Not sure when. "The 8 levels of the internet". Maybe you've seen it. As interesting as it was, it's complete bunk. I'm sorry, but "Polymeric Falcigohl Derivation" means nothing. And the "Primarch system"? I guess somebody's a fan of Warhammer. No, there's no quantum mechanics involved here. However, that doesn't mean it was an easy place to find.

Now, I'm not going to begin to tell you how to get here. It's unlikely that'd you be able to, even if I did. I'm not tooting my own horn here, I just didn't have a life outside of this. I was warned, of course. Everybody told me I wasn’t going to like what I saw. That I wouldn’t even understand it. Now I’m passing off that warning to you. Don’t try to look for this.

There's no official name for this place, or at least I haven't seen one. There were rumors, however. These ranged from an illuminati chat room to a virtual holding cell for an experimental AI gone rouge. In reality, it’s a lot worse. After a long and painful process of breaking down firewalls, encryptions, solving bizarre philosophical riddles, and following hidden links, I was finally directed to a blank page with one line of text and a text-box underneath. "Quid quaeris?” Latin for "What do you seek?” I remember feeling surprised. But in retrospect, I didn’t know what I was expecting. I'll admit, I was a bit stumped here. Partly because I didn't know the answer to that question. I had no objective, I just wanted to see if I could do it. I tried some generic answers at first. I typed in "the truth" and "enlightenment". You know, matrix shit. Nothing happened. I tried a bunch of answers, but none of them worked. I was getting frustrated at this point. Maybe this was a gag page. Maybe I really hadn’t figured anything out. If only.

I tried something off the wall. Not sure how this came to me or why I thought it would work, but I typed in “what also seeks me”. Now that I think about it, this thing might have been an AI. To my surprise, the page went blank. Like fully blank. I waited. After about five minutes, I was directed to what looked like a forum. No, not even that. It was more basic. Just a list of links over a brownish-yellow background. The links themselves were indecipherable. Just seemingly random sequences of characters, symbols and letters. A lot of them I had never seen before. It almost looked like an alien language. Obviously, just a code I didn’t understand. At this point, expectations were off the wall. Each link was a shot in the dark. I clicked on the first one. It loaded up a live-feed of what seemed to be the Paris catacombs. I watched for a while, but it was ultimately uneventful.

I moved on to the next link. It was a shaky video in a dark setting. But I could make out men in tactical gear. They were in a house, opening doors and sweeping each room. Eventually, they kicked one down to reveal a creature. Tall and humanoid, with scaly skin. It was gnawing on a dismembered arm. They tried shooting at it, but it escaped out the window. The video stopped there. Well, I was floored. What the hell was this? It looked too real to be unreleased film footage. I was officially intrigued. Maybe this was worth the months of headaches and bloodshot eyes after all. I couldn’t stop now. I started working down the list of links. With each click, everything got more and more bizarre. More disturbing. I stumbled upon a document called “The Paragon project”, detailing trials of human experimentation that would lead to superhuman levels of strength and durability. It was an apparent success. Looked official too.

There were essays on space-time anomalies, glitches in reality, and apparent pictures of alternate dimensions. There were detailed explanations regarding Area 51, the Bermuda triangle, assassinations, disappearances, and the true nature of the Holy Grail. One of the more upsetting ones was a document referring to a “world-ending bomb”. A nuke that’s 720,000 times stronger than the one dropped on Hiroshima. I don’t want to know why we would need that. I found contingency plans for different kinds of Apocalypses - nuclear winter, biological weapons, viral outbreak. Some more peculiar ones were called “The Marianas Trench abnormality”, the bluntly labeled “Strange man on the fifteenth floor”, and one simply referred to as “Blackout”. Recovered logs of skin-walker hunting expeditions, 911 transcripts from residents of a town in Texas that went missing in 1977 and even the journals that belonged to the people involved in the Dyatlov pass incident. They didn’t go insane because of the snow.

I spent hours on there, looking through pages and pages of things I felt like I wasn’t supposed to see. I came across a trailer to a silent film made back in 1910. One that apparently made people claw their eyes out after watching that nearly derailed the whole industry. There was a live stream of a hooded man sitting in front of a camera, head crouched down. He eventually lifted his head. Even though he had no mouth, a deep, guttural, “Hello” came through my speakers. Somehow, I knew it came from him. I didn’t stick around for that. There were obscure sets of step-by-step guides that involved things like cutting off your own limbs and sewing on a corpse’s, performing religious incantations in the middle of the Siberian forest and going to coordinates that apparently housed captive fallen angels. It was unclear what any of these were supposed to achieve. There was a 20 second long clip titled “The futility of the living”. I didn’t watch it. That’s when I realized there was no way even the highest form of organized government had full control of this. One of the scariest things about this whole thing was that I didn’t find an end to the list. No matter far I scrolled down.

I think I had a meltdown and passed out eventually, because I woke up on my floor in the middle of the night. I looked at my computer screen to see looped helicopter footage of a massive, crab-like creature tearing apart a coastal island. I clicked off of it. I just sat there for the longest time. I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing, and I don’t think I really wanted to. Now, I’m not really sure why I kept going. My brain was screaming for me to take my computer out to the lawn and smash it into pieces. But I didn’t. I noticed something I hadn’t before. A small message at the bottom left hand corner of the screen. I don’t know if it was always there or not. It was hard to read so I had to squint. More Latin. Translated into “Are you satisfied?” There were two options underneath it, yes and no.

Now, I knew the answer to this question. Hell no I wasn’t satisfied. I was horrified, scarred for life. But I should have clicked on yes. If I just clicked on yes it would have taken me out of that godforsaken place. Back to comfort and sanity. Even right now, I can’t tell you why I clicked on no. But once I did, the page seemed to refresh. It was still the same basic setup, except there were only four links. This time, there were no recognizable numbers or characters. Hell, it didn’t look like anything that could have come from this world. Just a collection of extremely crude symbols that didn’t give off any sense of pattern or direction. I clicked on the first link.

After about 20 seconds, I unplugged the computer. I can’t describe to you what I saw. All I know is that I wasn’t supposed to see it. NOBODY should ever see something like this. It’s not only that it didn’t make any sense, I can’t tell you why it didn’t. I couldn’t begin to grasp the images I was seeing. It wasn’t graphic or anything, not like that. I just couldn’t recognize anything. I could make out things moving, but not in a way any creature on earth has ever moved before. Colors that I’d never seen before. Just thinking about it gives me a splitting headache. This is the best way I can describe it. We have 3 dimensions here on earth. We can move left, right, 72.4 degrees upwards, etc. These things weren’t restricted to that. I can’t explain it any further. All I know is that I didn’t want to watch one more second. I don’t think I would have been able to.

I left my room. For the first time in a while, I was planning to leave my house. I needed fresh air. To take a walk or something. Hell, I was thinking about running a marathon in the middle of the night just to get my mind off of that shit for a few hours. I was putting on my jacket when I heard a knock at the door. I stopped dead in my tracks. Obviously, I wasn’t opening up. About a minute and five more sets of knocks came before somebody spoke up. “Open up. We know what you did, but we’re not here to hurt you. We just want to talk”. The tone wasn’t threatening. Eventually, I obliged. I opened up my door to two tall, slim men in suits. They smiled at me. “Can we come in?” I still don't know how they found me. I thought for sure that I was off the grid.

We sat down on the couch. I guess I was just waiting for answers at this point. One of them looked at me and said “What were you looking for?” “I don’t know. But I’m not going back”, I responded. He smiled again. Like this is what he wanted to hear. The other one piped up: “Who do you work for?” His tone was a bit more aggressive. I just shook my head. “Look, I didn’t know what I was getting into. I wasn’t looking for anything.” They just stared at me for a while. “I’m not gonna tell anybody. Trust me”. They finally responded: “We’re not worried about that. Doubt anybody’d believe you.” Another smile. Somehow it felt genuine. “We just wanted to know what your priorities were.” In retrospect, that was a very strange question. “Just do us favor and we’ll leave”. I perked up. “Give us the device you used to access it”. I didn’t ask any questions. I ran upstairs and basically tossed them my laptop. They both smirked at me once last time before heading for the door. Just as they were about to leave, one of them turned back. “I don’t think you need to be told, but don’t try this again. And don’t show anybody else how to get there either. We’ll know.” I didn’t ask who they were. I’m not sure I would have wanted to know.

It’s been a week now. I don’t go on the internet so much anymore. After this, I’m going to try and forget. To try and not to think about it anymore. I’ve started having horrific nightmares. Been seeing a therapist for that, but I don’t think it’s helping. Anyways, I’m not going to let this consume the rest of my life. The thing is, I’m afraid this might not be possible. There are some things we aren’t supposed to know about. Probably for our own safety and sanity. Don’t try and seek them out. It’s better that way.

#reddit #nosleep #scary #story

[adhdvane]

i have so much angel halo fodder to farm but its magna fes so now is the best time to do it anyways i’m gunna try and 5* eahta today/tomorrow/at least before 25th is a reasonable goal. i need to max 11 more silver relics so 11 lazuline vessels for that + it takes 745990 exp (approximately ~25 lazuline vessels) to go from lv 1 to 150 (but I might be able to do it in less with journey drop boosts when using them since it seems to say that journey drop boosts and such only have no effect on the exp gain when putting weapons into the reserve and not the act of using the vessel on a item and vessels are also special considering unlike other exp upgrader items they can have a chance of grand success and its double jour drops right now so might as well) then other than that all i need are 6 more silver centrums, 4 of which i can get from just hosting the raid twice today (if i somehow get blessed i can get all six if i can get them to drop from the share chest both times) (otherwise getting 8 more heavenly horns from just joining raids to get 10 to trade for the other 2 centrums will be easy) (i have the two peacemaker stars for the two hosts) (i then proceeded to ramble too long so the rest is under the cut. ii keep writing shit out tat’s too long and then just deleting everything and never posing my rambling anymore but like fuck it at this point im keeping this)

and that’s it, i already did the awakening step on all 10 katanas yesterday which was the most painful step bc need 500 white dragon scales will always be the worst step in my opinions, which is why i spent yesterday getting to like 438 yesterday using the campaign exclusive quest (bc the drop rate for scales on that quest is surprisingly amazing considering the low ap cost even after you’ve done it 30 times) (but i ended up quitting 438 and then proceeded to buy the remaining 62 with cerulean stone bc i have a bunch still and tbh the only thing worth spending cerulean stones on are white dragon scales or shit like translucent silk, broken teacup, coverging rays, etc bc the drop rate for those is stupid, and i guess technically i’m going to need those 50 jumbo best bones when i get to the 5* part of death, but i still have more than enough stones if i wanted to buy all 50 of those drops and i’ll defiantly be getting even more after the roulette starts so i’m not even concerned, bc yeah i got the sunlight stone now for death but i’m still pretty damn far from deal w/death, though maybe not as far as i think if i just remember to host my go and primarch raids for a couple days, wow yeah actually im stupidly closer than i thought bc im only 12 celus fragments from all 30 i need, the only annoying issue in the last step is going to be taking the time to farm the 10 primeval horns bc sometimes they don’t drop when you join proto hl, i know its guaranteed from share i’m just always weary about hosting that raid since it is 18-man elixir limited and i can’t solo it, and have had a time in the past were i was only joined by people leaching and it sucks when only you and like 1 other person contribute. so i always feel better join one bc i can make a decent contribution (and even like sort of mvp race or usually more vice mvp race for like 2nd or 3rd) (okay one time i joined a proto baha hl raid that was between like 70~60% bc it was on earth and 8 ppl already, and upon joining discovered like most of them had jumped ship, and the log was dead and was like well fuck, but started raiding anyways, and trying to send back up requests anyways, ended up getting some momentum, painfully got it always through to 50% dark by my self (kind of annoyed i took my light grid with my spheric harp bc i thought it was going to be an instance were it would get to 50% super fast so the off element wouldn’t matter and not that everyone but host had retreated) and then like around ~45% another person finally joined and me and this one other person destroyed the rest of the boss in like a minute, that was one of like 4 or 5 times i’ve mvp’d proto baha hl upon joining. tbh i kinda wish i knew what the host was doing, like if they were sitting there watching, was afk, or had like left the raid page to do other things. like if they were just hoping someone would come in and beat it for them, or had sorta given up but didnt want to fully end the raid just incase, look okay i just felt fucking good thinking i helped out a lower rank player get through a hl raid that they were abandoned on by several other players who appeared to have either not being strong enough, or joined saw the damage and jumped ship bc it looked like it was going to fail. though if i remember correctly the time limit was pretty far gone so that’s probably also why no one was joining, i was just a dumb fuck who didn’t look at the time before i joined, then realized, and then just fucking felt bad and was like well fuck it lets see how far i can go by myself bc clearly everyone else is dead and i don’t have anything to lose and im not stoping anyone else from potentially saving this bc there’s still like 7 slots open that anyone can join at any time...) anyways the last thing i wanted to say was i remember i was like a little peeved when they announced everyone who finished chapter 4.5 in the demon slayer collab would get kengo for free bc FARMING FOR KENGO AROUND THE TIME IT CAME OUT HURT BC I HADN’T BEEN HL FOR VERY LONG SO IT TOOK A LOT OF EFFORT, esp like bc extra II class suck worse than row iv bc you have to make the ccw element change for every goddamn class. but i was glad they compensated us with materials and i was mostly just glad for the extra silver centrums and steel brick (even tho i just realized i have fucking 50 steel bricks where the fuck did those come from like i don’t remember having so many), but i remember thinking to myself like oh wow thank 40 samurai distinctions, thats so useful, wow, what am i going to do make another murakumo and unsigned kaneshige?? i think im good. guess those will sit there forever... and then a couple days ago when i started thinking about finishing eahta up since i literally finished farming the demon slayer event the day after the second half was unlocked (when u can just auto extreme+ with ur fire team u don’t have to do shit, i got all the items i wanted and after than even played to get the 200 battle trophy for the heck of it. i only wanted the tickets, ring, dama crystals, steel, summon unlock mats just ‘cause those spellbooks, skill jewels, the fire urns bc i know they’re farmable but they’re annoying and i am low on fire urns, and then i was like i guess the summon since it’s a 1 copy only thing and can’t be reduced even though i’ll literally never use it bc i have gabriel and gabriel has a sub aura, i guess maybe it could be potentially useful for prometheus solo’ing because of the 1 turn debuff resistance, but the times i did solo prometheus i never had problems running out of veils or clears and tbh garnet carbuncle has a shorter cooldown and again i’ve got lily and gabriel already (and 5* lucifer now) so like i’d much rather have my four summon slots for that be gabe, moon ssr, luci, garnet carbuncle. (heck i don’t even take extra damage cuts for the wilnas trial vane, lily, gabriel, and 5* feower’s gravity and delaying the everloving shit out of wilnas is enough for me, though i’ve never done the raid so maybe it would be helpful there.) anyways then i just spend the rest of the event drops on half elixers, and back to what i was saying i was thinking about finishing eahta and looking at all the mats i need and then remember oh yeah i need 30 class distinctions don’t i? which ones do i need for eahta??? oH THAT’S RIGHT. SAMURAI DISTINCTIONS. so that fuckin worked out perfect (not that i don’t have the pendents to just buy them anyways). anyways im going to shut up now and probably never re-read any of this ramble i wrote ever again bc adhd brain be like no read only write

#dumb text post #sammy be quiet #sammy liveblogs about granblue #sammy no #imafuckingidiot #sammy rambles #wow look at all this time i spent wasting writing this post like an idiot instead of auto farming angel halo #goddamnit

[redditnosleep]

The Part of The Deep Web That We Aren’t Supposed To See

by Mr_Outlaw_

I’ll assume you all know about the deep web. Well, what you've heard is true, it's not a great place. While some people are there to score legal weed or firearms, or even out of sheer curiosity, others... well they're obviously not up to anything good. But I'm not here to talk about those sickos. I'm here to talk about what lies beyond that point. The more cryptic and unexplainable part of the internet. The part that nobody’s really supposed to see.

There was an info-graphic that cropped up a while ago. Not sure when. "The 8 levels of the internet". Maybe you've seen it. As interesting as it was, it's complete bunk. I'm sorry, but "Polymeric Falcigohl Derivation" means nothing. And the "Primarch system"? I guess somebody's a fan of Warhammer. No, there's no quantum mechanics involved here. However, that doesn't mean it was an easy place to find.

Now, I'm not going to begin to tell you how to get here. It's unlikely that'd you be able to, even if I did. I'm not tooting my own horn here, I just didn't have a life outside of this. I was warned, of course. Everybody told me I wasn’t going to like what I saw. That I wouldn’t even understand it. Now I’m passing off that warning to you. Don’t try to look for this.

There's no official name for this place, or at least I haven't seen one. There were rumors, however. These ranged from an illuminati chat room to a virtual holding cell for an experimental AI gone rouge. In reality, it’s a lot worse. After a long and painful process of breaking down firewalls, encryptions, solving bizarre philosophical riddles, and following hidden links, I was finally directed to a blank page with one line of text and a text-box underneath. "Quid quaeris?” Latin for "What do you seek?” I remember feeling surprised. But in retrospect, I didn’t know what I was expecting. I'll admit, I was a bit stumped here. Partly because I didn't know the answer to that question. I had no objective, I just wanted to see if I could do it. I tried some generic answers at first. I typed in "the truth" and "enlightenment". You know, matrix shit. Nothing happened. I tried a bunch of answers, but none of them worked. I was getting frustrated at this point. Maybe this was a gag page. Maybe I really hadn’t figured anything out. If only.

I tried something off the wall. Not sure how this came to me or why I thought it would work, but I typed in “what also seeks me”. Now that I think about it, this thing might have been an AI. To my surprise, the page went blank. Like fully blank. I waited. After about five minutes, I was directed to what looked like a forum. No, not even that. It was more basic. Just a list of links over a brownish-yellow background. The links themselves were indecipherable. Just seemingly random sequences of characters, symbols and letters. A lot of them I had never seen before. It almost looked like an alien language. Obviously, just a code I didn’t understand. At this point, expectations were off the wall. Each link was a shot in the dark. I clicked on the first one. It loaded up a live-feed of what seemed to be the Paris catacombs. I watched for a while, but it was ultimately uneventful.

I moved on to the next link. It was a shaky video in a dark setting. But I could make out men in tactical gear. They were in a house, opening doors and sweeping each room. Eventually, they kicked one down to reveal a creature. Tall and humanoid, with scaly skin. It was gnawing on a dismembered arm. They tried shooting at it, but it escaped out the window. The video stopped there. Well, I was floored. What the hell was this? It looked too real to be unreleased film footage. I was officially intrigued. Maybe this was worth the months of headaches and bloodshot eyes after all. I couldn’t stop now. I started working down the list of links. With each click, everything got more and more bizarre. More disturbing. I stumbled upon a document called “The Paragon project”, detailing trials of human experimentation that would lead to superhuman levels of strength and durability. It was an apparent success. Looked official too.

There were essays on space-time anomalies, glitches in reality, and apparent pictures of alternate dimensions. There were detailed explanations regarding Area 51, the Bermuda triangle, assassinations, disappearances, and the true nature of the Holy Grail. One of the more upsetting ones was a document referring to a “world-ending bomb”. A nuke that’s 720,000 times stronger than the one dropped on Hiroshima. I don’t want to know why we would need that. I found contingency plans for different kinds of Apocalypses - nuclear winter, biological weapons, viral outbreak. Some more peculiar ones were called “The Marianas Trench abnormality”, the bluntly labeled “Strange man on the fifteenth floor”, and one simply referred to as “Blackout”. Recovered logs of skin-walker hunting expeditions, 911 transcripts from residents of a town in Texas that went missing in 1977 and even the journals that belonged to the people involved in the Dyatlov pass incident. They didn’t go insane because of the snow.

I spent hours on there, looking through pages and pages of things I felt like I wasn’t supposed to see. I came across a trailer to a silent film made back in 1910. One that apparently made people claw their eyes out after watching that nearly derailed the whole industry. There was a live stream of a hooded man sitting in front of a camera, head crouched down. He eventually lifted his head. Even though he had no mouth, a deep, guttural, “Hello” came through my speakers. Somehow, I knew it came from him. I didn’t stick around for that. There were obscure sets of step-by-step guides that involved things like cutting off your own limbs and sewing on a corpse’s, performing religious incantations in the middle of the Siberian forest and going to coordinates that apparently housed captive fallen angels. It was unclear what any of these were supposed to achieve. There was also a 20 second long clip titled “The futility of the living”. I didn’t watch it. That’s when I realized there was no way even the highest form of organized government had full control of this. One of the scariest things about this whole experience was that I didn’t find an end to the list. No matter far I scrolled down.

I think I had a meltdown and passed out eventually, because I woke up on my floor in the middle of the night. I looked at my computer screen to see looped helicopter footage of a massive, crab-like creature tearing apart a coastal island. I clicked off of it. I just sat there for the longest time. I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing, and I don’t think I really wanted to. Now, I’m not really sure why I kept going. My brain was screaming for me to take my computer out to the lawn and smash it into pieces. But I didn’t. I noticed something I hadn’t before. A small message at the bottom left hand corner of the screen. I don’t know if it was always there or not. It was hard to read so I had to squint. More Latin. Translated into “Are you satisfied?” There were two options underneath it, yes and no.

Now, I knew the answer to this question. Hell no I wasn’t satisfied. I was horrified, scarred for life. But I should have clicked on yes. If I just clicked on yes it would have taken me out of that godforsaken place. Back to comfort and sanity. Even right now, I can’t tell you why I clicked on no. But once I did, the page seemed to refresh. It was still the same basic setup, except there were only four links. This time, there were no recognizable numbers or characters. Hell, it didn’t look like anything that could have come from this world. Just a collection of extremely crude symbols that didn’t give off any sense of pattern or direction. I clicked on the first link.

After about 20 seconds, I slammed my computer shut. I can’t describe to you what I saw. All I know is that I wasn’t supposed to see it. NOBODY should ever see something like this. It’s not only that it didn’t make any sense, I can’t tell you why it didn’t. I couldn’t begin to grasp the images I was seeing. It wasn’t graphic or anything, not like that. I just couldn’t recognize anything. I could make out things moving, but not in a way any creature on earth has ever moved before. Colors that I’d never seen before. Just thinking about it gives me a splitting headache. This is my best attempt at visualizing it. We have 3 dimensions here on earth. We can move left, right, 72.4 degrees upwards, etc. These things weren’t restricted to that. I can’t explain it any further. All I know is that I didn’t want to watch one more second. I don’t think I would have been able to.

I left my room. For the first time in a while, I was planning to leave my house. I needed fresh air. To take a walk or something. Hell, I was thinking about running a marathon in the middle of the night just to get my mind off of that shit for a few hours. I was putting on my jacket when I heard a knock at the door. I stopped dead in my tracks. Obviously, I wasn’t opening up. About a minute and five more sets of knocks came before somebody spoke up. “Open up. We know what you did, but we’re not here to hurt you. We just want to talk”. The tone wasn’t threatening. Eventually, I obliged. I opened up my door to two tall, slim men in suits. They smiled at me. “Can we come in?” I still don't know how they found me. I thought for sure that I was off the grid.

We sat down on the couch. I guess I was just waiting for answers at this point. One of them looked at me and said “What were you looking for?” “I don’t know. But I’m not going back”, I responded. He smiled again. Like this is what he wanted to hear. The other one piped up: “Who do you work for?” His tone was a bit more aggressive. I just shook my head. “Look, I didn’t know what I was getting into. I wasn’t looking for anything.” They just stared at me for a while. “I’m not gonna tell anybody. Trust me”. They finally responded: “We’re not worried about that. Doubt anybody’d believe you.” Another smile. Somehow it felt genuine. “We just wanted to know what your priorities were.” In retrospect, that was a very strange question. “Just do us favor and we’ll leave”. I perked up. “Give us the device you used to access it”. I didn’t ask any questions. I ran upstairs and basically tossed them my laptop. They both smirked at me once last time before heading for the door. Just as they were about to leave, one of them turned back. “I don’t think you need to be told, but don’t try this again. And don’t show anybody else how to get there either. We’ll know.” I didn’t ask who they were. I’m not sure I would have wanted to know.

It’s been a week now. I don’t go on the internet so much anymore. After this, I’m going to try and forget. To try and not to think about it anymore. I’ve started having horrific nightmares. Been seeing a therapist for that, but I don’t think it’s helping. Anyways, I’m not going to let this consume the rest of my life. The thing is, I’m afraid this might not be possible. There are some things we aren’t supposed to know about. Probably for our own safety and sanity. Don’t try and seek them out. It’s better that way.

#creepy #horror story #author: Mr_Outlaw_ #computers #internet #deep web

[luwupercal]

i figured out some thoughts recently on vulkan, specifically how i personally would write him, and since i’ve been telling people i thought i’d post it on here and just put it up for public record. this isn’t really based on anything from canon, just Thoughts, so... it might contradict canon, if it does don’t sue me, i’m a dumbass by trade. anyways

i’ve already talked about how i think vulkan isn’t as blindly optimistic as people portray him as, but i wanted to sort of clarify and reiterate. i think vulkan isn’t a diehard optimist as much as he’s horribly scared of losing hope. back in nocturne, many people Lost Their Hope Completely during vulkan’s childhood, as the drukhari raids took their toll. many others were heavily traumatized, including vulkan’s foster father, who’d lost his spouse just before vulkan arrived. so vulkan isn’t, actually, as much cheerful and optimistic as he is trying really hard to keep a flame of hope burning within him-- something that’s hard to do sometimes, in this galaxy.

he’s also very interested, more than any of his brothers, in one specific subject: how people tick. not necessarily in a psychological way, but moreso in an... i can’t describe it other than an almost pratchettian way? he’s interested in how people’s brains swing in their pendulums back and forth on a daily life, finds comfort in the mundane parts of existance, like having an old man who thinks he’s smarter than he actually is have his ego popped like a balloon by a well-placed question, or understanding that despite grumbling the entire way through it, people will come to help each other. he does believe very hardly in the inherent goodness of humankind, so sometimes the conclusions he comes to are biased or skewed, but yanno. he’s human too

(he also has a problem with nuance in terms of morality? he’s willing to accept people who aren’t perfect obviously, but he does divide people in Good People and Bad People (and Eldar, as a subcathegory of Bad People). it’s not... out of anything bad, this is just kind of a natural consequence of trying to believe people are inherently good against evidence)

my headcanon is that primarchs didn’t grow to 10 feet tall in 3 years and that they didn’t reach, like, middle-adulthood in three years but instead they were more like... 16-17? old enough to be independent in a pinch but young enough that they shouldn’t. and at 15ish they were some 7 feet tall or so, and they just kept swelling bigger and bigger afterwards. with that said: anecdotically, a young vulkan took that extra growth especially hard, combined with his regenerative powers (which imhc had first manifested during his childhood). he kept having logicless anxieties and weird nightmares about being some kind of gray goo

(as an addon: he finds horror about immortality sucking particularly tough to digest. it’s a good thing harlan ellison’s been long, long forgotten by the 30th millennium, isn’t it)

he intuited something not just good but almost akin in konrad, before everything went down, and it really genuinely did freak him out. he couldn’t quite name it, since he didn’t have the full context of what rules konrad lived by and why he did what he did, but he could sense that they both, in completely opposite ways, had struggled extremely hard to believe in the inherent goodness of humanity while allowing for “bad” people to not lose said faith (at least before konrad’s legendary freakout / blowing up nostramo). but where vulkan had seeked to reward the good, konrad had instead punished the bad. and vulkan could intuit that, even without all the information, and it made his skin positively crawl

(another parallel is that vulkan’s too afraid of the darkness to stop being optimistic and konrad’s too afraid of the light to stop being cynical. there’s material here and it’s going underused!! it’s really cool material!! come on)

also, vulkan has a really hard time even thinking about his own mental struggles? he thinks a lot of how he thinks that’s due to trauma is just an obvious conclusion everyone’s ought to eventually reach, and so he only realizes too late, sometimes, when he’s doing something unhealthy or irrational

(like torching a planet)

anyways i think about vulkan a lot. i hope these thoughts make you think about him a bit because i think he deserves more people who actually have smarter thoughts than me to think about him. i think that’s all on my thoughts for now

one last thought: it’s really fucking cute that he was friends with ferrus. they played xbox together. vulkan has the oldest xbox knownnnnn to mannnnnnnn

#wh40k #vulkan #headcanons #i have a bunch of these thoughts about a lot of the primarchs #it's mostly just a question of sitting down and analyzing them for long enough

[meggannn]

ive been cranky lately because of work and real life bullshit (i don’t know why i thought the housemate moving out would be any less dramatic than living with her for 6mo), so here’s some ideas i’m kicking around about what my shepard does after the war

what my shep does IMMEDIATELY after the war i am leaving up to covering in my fic and i won’t get into details bc there are some spoilers and shit i haven’t posted yet

so many years in the future, maybe in a decade or two: i dont know if i see shep 'retiring' so much as just choosing to decommission as an active officer. maybe her leg gets too irritating to handle or her migraines get worse or she just gets fucking tired or she realizes that one of garrus’s biggest fears is of him receiving a death notification and her dogtags in the mail, or a combination of all four.

but the alliance prob still keeps her as an advisor or senior member for possibly a few things, the preference of which i have not entire hashed out. she is para-centric in terms of morality and ideals, which doesn’t change as she gets older, but -gade in terms of drive and occasional ruthlessness within her job, which always has the potential to harm both herself and others. i think her attitude gets a little more manageable once she works out a new schedule and healthier job for herself. i’m thinking something like a liason for interspecies cooperation, or overseeing general of certain territories, or senior intel strategist, etc etc., something that keeps her away from active combat but still engaged in it, with her fingers in a lot of pies. so i think she'd be doing is “”deskwork”” but work that mostly requires cooperation and strategical planning at a very high level that she could do from the citadel or wherever.

then also, because she doesn't know how to take a fucking break, i see lyd admitting this with much embarrassment and discomfort but with TOTAL support from garrus: she kinda comes up and says “uhhh, also btw you should know i've been discussing with the university of thessia/oxford/sur'keh/etc about master's/phd programs" and g looks up from his briefings from the primarch like "what? you want to go back to school?” and shep is like, still mortified abt this as an adult but determined to act like it’s nbd, but now that she has Free Time she wants to check something off her list, which is: attend a formal school and gain a diploma. and not the damn remedial studies courses she took back in the alliance just so she could be taken off probation. and g is like “huh, well you know i support you, what are you gonna study?" and she's like "probably law, criminal justice, political theory, turian history and maybe interspecies language theory -- ” and she rattles off a bunch of things that nobody can ever possibly do all together, and garrus is kinda trying to wrap his head around the fact that it now sounds like his gf wants to become a lawyer or dump him to go become a xenoanthropologist with liara. and then she says “well look war cleanup is going to last the rest of our lives, we both know i can’t stay out of it. and because nobody takes me fucking seriously when i give advice on this stuff based on what i’ve observed with my own two eyes of this inefficient government system, i need a degree, or like, ten" and g is like “so ur going into politics" and she's like “FUCK no i would never" but she gets to work anyway.

working a full time job and doing classes w private tutors and profs g is like “ok i give up, you’re not going into politics or law? shit you’re not going to c-sec are u?” and she's like “no.......... but i will be making all of this as publicly accessible as possible” and this is basically just part of her movement to start making galactic govts more accountable for their actions and help inform the ppl of what's going on, in both legal and literal terms as they rebuild, and shep is adamant that the same problems that let saren run around loose and unevaluated, the hand-waving that allowed colonists to go missing for years, prejudice that led to one species threatening to not participate in a galactic total war just because a commander didn’t give into their command to allow an ongoing genocide to continue, yeah, that shit can’t keep going on. not just bc she feels like the govt failed them in the war, but bc of all the ways it failed the marginalized species and forgotten civilians, the blind spots, the corruption, etc, which she damn well knows abt bc she was a victim to this exact system as a kid. so she wants it, she wants it so bad, and it’ll never get done in her life time, but that’s ok, if she’s known for anything let it be for this too

meanwhile when garrus is too old to serve as commander of citadel defense he probably becomes like a military or political correspondent for citadel news network while also training young hierarchy engineers in ballistics and programming, and he’s known for being That eccentric instructor who you’re pretty sure pulls at least half of his “war stories” out of his ass, and he gives a different story to explain why half his face looked like it was eaten by varren every time he’s asked (”a maw got in a good hit of acid before i filled it full of cannon fire” “i overloaded a geth prime so hard its head is still embedded in the station ceiling, and then it dropped the rocket launcher it was holding which fired right into my face”) and for all that he loves to brag about cool shit he did, he still won’t answer if he and general shepard secretly eloped years ago because he still calls her his “girlfriend” but always winks when he does????

other ideas: with all the rebuilding, assuming for this post this is on the citadel but could be wherever, architects come to shep like “hey we have this empty space that used to be a department store, after it was ruined by the blast, now it's totally gutted and we want to put like a museum of your life there” or sth equally obnoxious and shep is like “........why. why on earth would u do that. make it a library you assholes” so they name the library after her instead. which she’s like good, that’s practical and will actually help people, here’s my seal of approval, and she doesn’t admit she's super touched they really did that bc when she was a kid she used to hide out in libraries and read all day till closing. and the librarians were nice and she'd feel normal, like she was learning even tho she dropped out of school at age 13. so i think that would be non-negotiable for her, like “i cant prevent you from making a dumbass statue but if you're asking my opinion on how to use five thousand square ft, you're going to make educational and free-access, or you're not putting my name on it"

more later maybe

#lydia shepard