|
Unzip and Attack posted:Thanks for the info. I was confusing astropaths and navigators. I assume navigators are extremely rare and therefore an insanely expensive and/or unavailable commodity? It's more that Navigators strictly control access to their own to keep their families extremely rich and powerful. A Navigator House is likely to be stronger than the Rogue Trader dynasty it is renting its members to.
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2014 20:54
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 11:27 |
|
|
Unzip and Attack posted:Thanks for the info. I was confusing astropaths and navigators. I assume navigators are extremely rare and therefore an insanely expensive and/or unavailable commodity? Technically rare, but in the exact same sense that Space Marines are rare. 40k is a huge setting after all. Every Imperial voidship that has a reason to travel through the Warp will have at least one Navigator, and might have back-ups. Actually, the Into the Storm supplement for Rogue Trader has a sidebar that mentions most ships have shifts for multiple Navigators, so they don't risk burning out their only hope for safe warp travel.
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2014 20:56
|
|
|
If you ever want a hell of a hook for an RT party, have them piss off a Navigator family. Those guys have pull like you wouldn't believe, due to the whole 'absolutely necessary to the running of the Imperium, entire affair will collapse without them and the fortunes of the great rest wholly on access to their members' spiel.
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2014 21:03
|
|
|
Unzip and Attack posted:Thanks for the info. I was confusing astropaths and navigators. I assume navigators are extremely rare and therefore an insanely expensive and/or unavailable commodity? If you wanna read more about Navigator fluff (which is pretty cool), definitely check out the Rogue Trader rulebook and the Navis Primer supplement books, covers them top to bottom. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2014 21:10
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Got a fluff question for my gaming group's Rogue Trader session this week: is there any detail about the Promethean Cult of Nocturne and how it relates to the Ecclesiarchy? One of the PCs in the gaming group is from Nocturne, a veteran of an Imperial Guard auxiliary unit to the Salamanders, and she's going to be involved in a religious ceremony involving both traditional Ecclesiarchal beliefs and the Promethean Cult, and I'm looking around for any existing information on the Promethean Cult before I start making stuff up. Reposting since it got caught at the bottom of the last page.
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2014 21:15
|
|
|
I'm afraid I don't know much about the Promethean Cult aside from it valuing endurance, fire, and building poo poo. Also relentless self improvement.
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2014 21:26
|
|
|
Isolationism, too. And meditation. I might run with, like, Zensufi Zoroastrianism or something, if I go into detail. Man, the Navigator thing is kind of  when the Emperor's last project was a stable human-controlled Webway.
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2014 21:51
|
|
|
Rockopolis posted:Isolationism, too. And meditation. I might run with, like, Zensufi Zoroastrianism or something, if I go into detail. Hmmm. Can't say I know much about Zoroastrianism. Specifically, this week's session is going to involve a wedding ceremony and the characters in question agreed to have both an Imperial priest and a Promethean chaplain present - the Salamanders owed the PCs a big favor, so they agreed to shelter the PCs on Nocturne for a few years while they lie low after doing a smash and grab on the central temple-fortress of the Callidus Shrine. The players are using the chance to do general downtime stuff, but of course what Rogue Trader session would be fun without things going awry?
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2014 22:16
|
|
|
It has fire temples, a cosmology of good and evil, and a lot of its practices pop up in later religions. It was the religion of the Persian Empire and Freddie Mercury. Beyond that... I could sorrta see a syncretized version showing up for the Salamanders, especially with the prophecies surrounding Vulkan. Even without goofy Dune examples, I still say my favorite weird syncretism is Buddhist Herakles, the Swolest Bodhisattva  , and that's probably not nearly as weird as some of the stuff the Ecclesiasticarchy puts up with.Buddhist Herakles probably makes a decent stand in for most esoteric Chapter cults, actually.
|
|
#
?
Jul 23, 2014 22:59
|
|
|
Unzip and Attack posted:Thanks for the info. I was confusing astropaths and navigators. I assume navigators are extremely rare and therefore an insanely expensive and/or unavailable commodity? There has to be enough navigators to go around. Humanity numbers untold billions and millions of ships, and almost every warp-capable ship has one or more navigators. I'd say they are probably very expensive, but not rarer than other stable mutants.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 00:01
|
|
|
Tias posted:There has to be enough navigators to go around. Humanity numbers untold billions and millions of ships, and almost every warp-capable ship has one or more navigators. I'd say they are probably very expensive, but not rarer than other stable mutants. Yes, but unlike ratlings and the like, a regular human would almost never see a Navigator. They are either holed up in the ship, in their enclaves, or just super rich enough to never have to deal with regular people.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 08:53
|
|
|
Navigators are rare enough that the Imperium has to put up with those of them who are more mutated than would be desirable. I wouldn't be surprised if their scarcity was a major contributing factor to the size of the Imperial Navy - more than the dockyards' ability to manufacture new ships.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 09:21
|
|
|
One wonders if you could chain together ships to get around that problem. Andm leave yourself open to a Red Cliffs style fireship attack, haha. I think it's interesting that the Imperium seems to have the really good communications capability, in that they're not limited to the speed of travel, like some of the other races. If there's a problem, you can ring up literally the entire galaxy for help, and faster than any other faction. That not being the case was a huge thing in Traveller, and it's a shame it doesn't really come up very often. I suppose they're more limited more by ships than comms. I think I'm going to have to use this, or at least reference it in a game.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 12:34
|
|
|
I figured for my RT campaign that for the setting to make sense (I know, I know) it must be possible to move formations in convoys through the warp by extremely careful maneuvering and coordination by just having a lead ship with a Navigator on-board. I mean how would naval engagements ever work otherwise - warp travel times vary so hugely that not only would it take weeks for a fleet to arrive at a certain point, they'd probably arrive piecemeal one at a time, easy pickings. Obviously if anything happens to the lead ship or its Navigator, your entire squadron is hosed. Possibly literally.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 12:45
|
|
|
B.B. Rodriguez posted:Yes, but unlike ratlings and the like, a regular human would almost never see a Navigator. They are either holed up in the ship, in their enclaves, or just super rich enough to never have to deal with regular people. Definitely. Keep in mind, however, that Ogryns and Ratlings are a sort of (gravity-provoked) 'evolution' rather than a stable mutation. They are stuck on their own worlds, and if they get off it is only the richer ones or the majority of them that are shunted into the guard. This means they are kinda rarely seen as well.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 13:02
|
|
|
Given the short time the planets Ogryns and Ratlings come from were isolated (in evolutionary terms) it seems more likely to me that they were deliberately genetically modified colonists, back in the Dark Age of Technology when such things were more acceptable.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 14:07
|
|
|
I think the canon explanation is that they developed like that, but perhaps that's just what they WANT you to think E: Also, 40K isn't a hard science fiction setting in any sense of the word.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 16:16
|
|
|
The rate of mutation in 40k is pretty much off the charts, even when chaos isn't lurking in the wings somewhere. I mean, it could be that there was some serious widespread fuckery in the Dark Ages that intentionally increased the mutation rate of colonists to allow them to adapt readily to variations in the worlds, but whatever the reason you get rapid and widespread mutation in 40k populations even when Chaos isn't lurking in the wings. Or maybe Chaos is always lurking in the wings!
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 16:22
|
|
|
There definitely was radical genetic engineering employed during the Dark Age if you go by the Horus Heresy books - it's heavily alluded to that the giant, human-level-intelligent wolves on Fenris are actually the human colonists who settled that planet and deliberately adapted their biology to better survive Fenris' extreme conditions.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 17:16
|
|
|
I've always thought that what happened was Dark Age Humanity hosed around with transhuman genetic engineering and designer genetics quite a bit, before they were getting swamped by Chaos, and then when the Age of Strife and the great shattering of their empire occurred, suddenly you had all these unstable designer mutations scampering around, just waiting for the Dark Gods to put the boot in. Isn't that canonically the origin of much of the Imperial Nobility, too? That they were the genetically enhanced people (similar to Brave New World) assigned as governors and overseers, but over time, and not understanding why they were supposedly superior, they've become a bunch of inbred pricks and crazies who still have all the authority but none of the reason they were given said authority, helping lead to the Imperium's pants on head stupid governance and their legendary incompetence?
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 18:50
|
|
|
I have to say that I've actually never heard that argument before! It sounds cool, but where is this mentioned? In the Heresy series? I've reached Nemesis by now, but gently caress me, they never end 
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 19:02
|
|
|
Tias posted:I have to say that I've actually never heard that argument before! It sounds cool, but where is this mentioned? In the Heresy series? I've reached Nemesis by now, but gently caress me, they never end The wolves of Fenris thing comes up in Prospero Burns and A Thousand Sons. Never heard of the Imperial nobility being genetically engineered, though. In the Horus Heresy books, most planetary nobility are just the pre-existing local rulers who agree to swear fealty to the Imperium, with the planetary governor usually being a career Army officer given rulership of a planet as their sunset job.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 19:15
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Never heard of the Imperial nobility being genetically engineered, though. In the Horus Heresy books, most planetary nobility are just the pre-existing local rulers who agree to swear fealty to the Imperium, with the planetary governor usually being a career Army officer given rulership of a planet as their sunset job. I always got the impression from all the talk of blood superiority and thought it'd be a funny twist. I couldn't remember if it'd ever been mentioned in anything official or it was just something I made up to fill in some gaps and mock the Imperium's worship of Great Men some more.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 19:18
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:I always got the impression from all the talk of blood superiority and thought it'd be a funny twist. I couldn't remember if it'd ever been mentioned in anything official or it was just something I made up to fill in some gaps and mock the Imperium's worship of Great Men some more. I think it's just planetary nobility being smug, though I wouldn't be surprised if it did happen on a few planets.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 20:19
|
|
|
When it comes to mutation people are thinking too much. Most Imperial worlds have had static DNA pools for ten thousand years. With a few notible exceptions most planets have had no injection of fresh human standard DNA for so long that "mutations" will creep in. Add in selective breeding from the nobles and the effects of mutagenic pollutants for everyone else and viola Imperial worlds will be different from each other. Then you have the effects of the warp to create those dog headed mutants
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 20:45
|
|
|
The "nobles being genetically engineered" has some credence when you consider the fact that imperial hot shots get the juvenant treatments that let them live way longer than usual. In a future where people add on mechanical bits for fun, gang members install Bane like combat drug pumps, and worlds have seen extinction level nuclear attacks during the age of strife and still have "human"populations, either directly or indirectly humanity's DNA has got to on a baseline be drastically different than our current DNA.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 21:06
|
|
|
But it seems pretty likely that everyone is genetically engineered, not just the nobles. They're all descendants of starfaring Dark Age populations, and in addition to the things you've mentioned people seem to do things like live quite a lot longer than contemporary humans even in the absence of juvevat treatments, and don't suffer the same sort of deleterious effects real humans would expect to see from prolonged exposure to microgravity. It seems highly likely that the bulk of "humanity" was quite genetically different from contemporary humans even before things like 10,000 years of genetic drift/mutagenic poisons/warp exposure/etc.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 21:35
|
|
|
It's always really interesting to imagine what happened and when during the old Dark Age Federation. I also wouldn't be terribly surprised if the Gellar who developed the Gellar field was an enigmatic middle-eastern man who suddenly withdrew from history/suffered a terrible accident that left no body/whatever after mankind was out in the stars. It seems like the kind of thing the pre-crusade Emperor would do, especially as the setting notes mankind would've eventually died to gaian collapse if we hadn't gained FTL travel.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 21:50
|
|
|
Hey, for Deathwatch, is the Auxiliary Grenade Launcher a useful thing, or is it better to just throw grenades and use the Requisition points on something else? I was looking at some stuff to requisition and I was thinking that some Nova Grenades might be more useful than having the Launcher.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 23:14
|
|
|
Why throw them? Just punch people with them.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 23:21
|
|
|
Rockopolis posted:Hey, for Deathwatch, is the Auxiliary Grenade Launcher a useful thing, or is it better to just throw grenades and use the Requisition points on something else? I was looking at some stuff to requisition and I was thinking that some Nova Grenades might be more useful than having the Launcher. Space Marines are better at throwing grenades than humans, but being able to use grenades at a shooting distance can be useful depending on the campaign.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2014 23:22
|
|
|
Rockopolis posted:I guess I have a hard time seeing it working, what with the nature of the Warp and Psyker powers and burnout and all. YES (re: jump packs) - check the errata (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/deathwatch/news/faq/Deathwatch%20Living%20Errata%20v1-1.pdf). Space Marines of any type can get pilot (personal) at rank 1 for a measly 100XP, it's a pretty pro-take option.
|
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2014 00:33
|
|
|
WINNERSH TRIANGLE posted:YES (re: jump packs) - check the errata (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/deathwatch/news/faq/Deathwatch%20Living%20Errata%20v1-1.pdf). Space Marines of any type can get pilot (personal) at rank 1 for a measly 100XP, it's a pretty pro-take option.
|
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2014 00:48
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Got a fluff question for my gaming group's Rogue Trader session this week: is there any detail about the Promethean Cult of Nocturne and how it relates to the Ecclesiarchy? One of the PCs in the gaming group is from Nocturne, a veteran of an Imperial Guard auxiliary unit to the Salamanders, and she's going to be involved in a religious ceremony involving both traditional Ecclesiarchal beliefs and the Promethean Cult, and I'm looking around for any existing information on the Promethean Cult before I start making stuff up. I'd run it like a normal Ecclesiarch ceremony except everyone/thing is on a 40k amount of fire. PC's can sit at the blazing pews while an inferno wreathed Priest preaches to the Edit: Apparently this was ages ago, hello from the past!
|
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2014 11:23
|
|
|
Digihazard posted:Edit: Apparently this was ages ago, hello from the past! If by "forever ago" you mean "two days ago." Our sessions are Friday evenings, and in the absence of any detail about the Promethean Cult being published in some book or other that I'd missed, I'm running with the Promethean Cult being all about the unquenchable fire of the human soul.
|
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2014 13:06
|
|
|
The Salamanders version, from DW, seemed to focus on endurance and self-improvement, in a very Conan the Barbarian/Riddle of Steel kind of way.
|
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2014 14:58
|
|
|
Eh, easy enough to roll with that as the particular Salamanders version, or that they stress different parts than the laiety. This is a ceremony involving the regular people of Nocturne, and I've decided to note that the Promethean Cult is an officially accepted form of the Imperial Cult. Partly because messing with the Salamanders would be considered a dick move even by the Ecclesiarchy.
|
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2014 15:12
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:It's always really interesting to imagine what happened and when during the old Dark Age Federation. I also wouldn't be terribly surprised if the Gellar who developed the Gellar field was an enigmatic middle-eastern man who suddenly withdrew from history/suffered a terrible accident that left no body/whatever after mankind was out in the stars. It seems like the kind of thing the pre-crusade Emperor would do, especially as the setting notes mankind would've eventually died to gaian collapse if we hadn't gained FTL travel. Don't you mean, Al-Gellar ye Mad Mechanic?  LGD posted:But it seems pretty likely that everyone is genetically engineered, not just the nobles. They're all descendants of starfaring Dark Age populations, and in addition to the things you've mentioned people seem to do things like live quite a lot longer than contemporary humans even in the absence of juvevat treatments, and don't suffer the same sort of deleterious effects real humans would expect to see from prolonged exposure to microgravity. It seems highly likely that the bulk of "humanity" was quite genetically different from contemporary humans even before things like 10,000 years of genetic drift/mutagenic poisons/warp exposure/etc. In the Horus Heresy series, we learn that many soldiers, particularly those with Terran origins, were heavily genetically engineered and/or selectively bred for various traits, including psychic abilities for ease of C'n'C in the field. This was around year 30-31.000, so it was pretty common practice at the time. In the current setting, stuff like Gland Warriors and Muscle Grafts are still around (not to mention the continual creation of space marines, officio assasins etc.), so it's definitely not gone wholly away either.
|
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2014 15:39
|
|
|
Don't forget the Magos Biologis.
|
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2014 18:57
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 11:27 |
|
|
I thought they mostly worked with medicae work and disease prevention and stuff like this. Here's what lexicanum had: http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Magos_Biologis#.U9Ku-PmSx1F They mention splinter sects who want to "lengthen the lifespan of vat-grown constructs." and some who believe "forced genetic augmentation is needed to strengthen humanity." so they're definitely up to some hinky business.
|
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2014 20:26
|
|