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Genetic Engineering - Vat Grown - Tau AI - Men of Iron?

Started by Nemesis, April 13, 2012, 03:52:51 AM

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Nemesis

QuoteEither it's a very heavily fortified Mechanicus vault, or it's a very well-hidden heretic stronghold. Nothing else would really do this Iron Man any justice, and in any case the likelihood of your character finding that is very slim indeed.

The Inquisitor/cell might have multiple bases one is focused on Genetics the other is focused on Men of Iron

Men of Iron might of been found then moved to the lab.

Yeah probably the Inquisitor is Gleaming that he finally killed his rival and wanting to get the spoils for him self e.g prize idiot

Nemesis

QuoteI've just read through this thread, and I think the real problem is not with the individual ideas, but with the combination. It's got genetic modification, cloning, reprogrammed xeno-tech, brain transplants, psykers, wyrds, daemon weapons, death-bed promotions, and 20,000 year old robot soldiers. It's far too much. It seems like there's enough ideas there for a whole load of Inquisitor warbands. I would suggest just focussing in on a couple of aspects and save the others for future projects. With them all it's never going to be believable.

Why not build your warband around a tech-priest who has studied Tau drone technology and an Inquisitor who believes that the tech-priests research can be used to create a force of robotic soldiers similar to the Iron Men of legend. So far they have various test subjects - maybe a servitor whose brain has (partially) been replaced by Tau drone tech, or a largely mechanical body that still has a human brain. And as this is the 41st millenium, and you want them to be playable in the game, the experiments should be failures that don't work all that well, but the tech-priest and inquisitor are using them as guards as they search our more knowledge to perfect their creations.

yeah It started with just ideas but now there is no more Tau Xeno Tech, no Daemon Weapon, no more psychic powers and no more death-bed promotions(i was thinking more of the badge being used but if found out she be hunted)

So I'm focusing on Genetic Engineering which involves cloning to get results the Brain transfer is to get the Men of Iron under Control I can't MIU it, No psychic power so no Machine Empathy no reprogramme AI so Organic Brain.

Dolnikan

Trying to engineer someone to better control the Iron Man would be possible, but hard to achieve, after all, they have no idea about the kind of modifications they should make, there are no genes they already know to be responsible so it would be the culmination of many, many years of secret research. The modifications would then only focus on a few things, and nothing like regeneration, only ways to make the brain grow by itself and to grow faster to allow for more tests.
Circles of the wise My attempt at writing something, please comment on it if you have any advise.

Nemesis

sorry I'm on Iphone not good for grammar

There are two paths this Cell is taking the one of Genetics and the other of Machine they not linked. sorry for the confusion

The genetics is focus on producing a force for theses Inquisitor of the best henchmen / soldiers needed for there plans.

The Machine (Men of Iron) is focus on the Dark Ages on how the humans spread across the stars with the help of the Men of Iron, The Cell thinking is with this Relic they can learn form it and prepare when they find a Ancient Dark Ages Stasis bunker holding theses marvel of the Dark Ages and try different things going in the way of Organic brains using servitors in a sense.

The Main character Comes for the Genetics Lab thinking around theses stats (i will focus on number like 62 67 73 and such)

Ws Bs Strength Toughness Initiative Willpower Sagacity Nerve Leadership
45  50     65             60             60            60         60           70       35

But i got to go be back online laters

Kaled

Regarding the idea focusing on genetic engineering, why not have your warband led by a Magos Biologis rather than an Inquisitor?

As for the Iron Man - rather than have someone find an intact Iron Man that is still in a salvageable state after 20,000 years, you could have your character/cell collect bits of archaeotech - some of which are thought to be parts from one of the legendary Iron Men, others are just bits of dark age junk. He/they collect these parts from hundreds of sites across many worlds, buys others from Rogue Traders, get some off the black market etc. Their eventual aim being to gather enough to create their own Iron Men. Something like that just seems more believable, and more fitting for games of Inquisitor, than having someone find a lab full of them.
I like to remember things my own way... Not necessarily the way they happened.

Inquisitor - Blood Bowl - Malifaux - Fairy Meat

Dolnikan

Two separate research lines like that would be hard to manage, one of them is already a big deal, two at the same time is immensely difficult to pull off. It is possible that hundreds of years ago, one of the Iron Men was found, only in a badly damaged state, perhaps in a space hulk or the like, ever since they have been trying to get it to work.
Circles of the wise My attempt at writing something, please comment on it if you have any advise.

Draco Ferox

#36
Quote from: Kaled on April 13, 2012, 02:48:14 PM
You could have your character/cell collect bits of archaeotech - some of which are thought to be parts from one of the legendary Iron Men, others are just bits of dark age junk.

But you character doesn't realise that they're just dark-age junk, and tries them anyway, leading to some interesting consequences (read: horrendous failiures). This, combined with a servitor's propensity for not stopping untill completely dismembered, could prove to be a fairly interesting obstacle for all parties involved.

I would think that anyone studying tau technology would be branded a heretek and excommuniacted, as Imperial technology is obviously superior.

EDIT: And it was the asari, Koval, unless the continuity has been changed. They are described as having very robust genetic makeup which allows them to live for long periods of time, the oldest reaching over 1000, whilst not actually being any more resistant to damage.
Be polite. Be efficient. Have a plan to kill everyone you meet.

Koval

QuoteEDIT: And it was the asari, Koval, unless the continuity has been changed. They are described as having very robust genetic makeup which allows them to live for long periods of time, the oldest reaching over 1000, whilst not actually being any more resistant to damage.
Well, you mentioned regeneration, which is why I brought up krogan and vorcha. Granted, there's probably more to it than that, but that's the bit I was getting hung up on. I've never noticed asari being noted for their regenerative capabilties.

InquisitorHeidfeld

This may already have been said - This thread has exploded into being far faster than I can keep up with ATM so if so, my apologies.

Why bother with the Men of Iron?

They were a Dark Age robotic soldier but their Abominable intelligence is what makes them special and it's precisely that which you intend to remove.
The Cortex-based robots of the Legio Cybernetica are almost certainly able to do everything that a lobotomised Man of Iron could, their abaptability to changing battlefield situations is their biggest flaw and one Men of Iron avoid by dint of their very intelligence. Moreover the Cortex-based Robots can be built in innumerable specialised chassis formats, many of the most famous being designed to bring multiple heavy weapons to bear and therefore providing more significant firepower than the (from the descriptions) almost man-sized Men of Iron.

A couple of weeks ago it might have been said that the Legio Cybernetica were outdated fluff and should be ignored but given the appearance of Traitor Legio Cybernetica technology in Forge World's previews I for one welcome the return of our flow chart driven robotic overlords  ;)

krenshar

The two paths could be the result of an alliance between a pair of factions.
For instance, an AdMech cell/cult with an incomplete or damaged man of iron might hope to use/develop it to build a vessel for the Omnissiah.  As part of their method they are growing clones of a princeps, intending to bung one chosen brain case atop the man of iron with an MIU.

An inquisitor finds this secretive cabal but rather than out them to the wider mechanicus, he/she decides that they're far enough from their goal to be containable and sets the price of his/her silence at a unit/platoon/army of gene-crafted soldiers.

Myself I'd go with a planetary governor (or the jealous relative of one) in place of an inquisitor but I don't know what else you have planned for the warband.

The two key things I interpret from the stats you've given us is that the main character is very well educated but pretty ill-disciplined.
The high Sagacity suggests to me that he came out of the vat as an infant and has been educated as normal.  Otherwise he's received a good number of meme-chips, each one of which is probably more valuable to the admech than a dozen clones.
The low Leadership seems odd for the main/lead character of a warband, unless your intention is that the others follow him for back-story reasons in spite of his poor command style.
In your place, I'd be tempted to switch Sg and Ld and consider adding an intellectual character to the band.  I'd also tweak Toughness up a notch or two to represent that accellerated healing you were talking about and offset it with a drop in Willpower - in my view, knowing that you're a clone has got to mess with your sense of self, leaving you more vulnerable to psychic influence.

InquisitorHeidfeld

Beyond the Legio Cybernetica, a few thoughts...

It's very easy to denigrate the technology of the Imperium given the pseudo-monastic shape of much of society but it is unjustified. The Adeptus Mechanicus elite are known as Magi for a reason after all, and they can do things with the technology they understand which would render the most brilliant Tau Earth Caste mute with admiration - If the Magos deems that doing so would bring glory to the Omnissiah he can, for example, build a conversion field, power cells included, into the gemstone of a woman's signet ring, he can, if it glorifies the Omnisiah, take all of the rules we currently apply to the physical world and make them dance, he can forge moonbeams and count the angels which dance on the head of a pin.

To add to that, consider what we call the Dark Ages, it's hardly a time period we'd want to book a little vacation in. The images we have are of people living (and dying) in their own filth, a time of primatives and barbarians, a time where if you were lucky you'd start work as soon as you could walk and die in harness at thirty...
The Dark Age of Technology is not called a Dark Age because it was a time of brilliant advances, of universal illumination, of wonderous technologies which made people's lives better. To go in search of Dark Age Technologies is not something a sane person would do, it's the equivalent of knocking all you own teeth out and building yourself a mud hut in the Scottish Highlands.

So the question becomes:
What or whom led this vat grown creature to determine that a cache of antique tooth pliers and prime building dung were a suitable focus for his life's work?

Kaled

The Dark Age of Technology certainly wasn't all good, especially towards the end as humanity moved into the Age of Strife, but it was still a highpoint of scientific achievement, a time of seemingly unstoppable progress when it seemed there was nothing that mankind could not do. It was an age of expansion and plenty - a golden age for scienfic achievement.
I like to remember things my own way... Not necessarily the way they happened.

Inquisitor - Blood Bowl - Malifaux - Fairy Meat

InquisitorHeidfeld

It would be called the Golden Age of Technology in that case.

What is remembered of the Dark Age of Technology is Humanity enslaved to technology IIRC - yes it was a period of high scientific advance but the simple fact that it is remembered as a Dark Age; an age, not of enlightenment but of suffering is key here.
Perhaps were you or I to live through the DAoT we might wonder at what had occurred, what had been invented, what technology had achieved. But we would similarly marvel at the exploits of the Adeptus Mechanicus, marvel as they took familiar metals and alloyed them into Adamantium in zero-g conditions, marvel as they built devices with no concern for the constraints of the necessary internal components but an eye only to the final aesthetic of the piece. And you or I would of course not be considered sane in the 41st Millenium - perhaps we'd get away with being seen as backwards, more than a touch rural but certainly not normal and sane.

The point is that the entire Imperium views the DAoT as the general populous regards the ancient history of Europe, why would any one part of the Imperium start to think differently?
Certain parts of the Mechanicus want to know how their forebears accomplished their ends and it might make sense for them to go hunting for a Dark Age Stasis chamber in the way Archeologists like to dig up Bronze Age villages but the character in question has no apparent connection to such groups - and they're hardly public knowledge...
Someone however has put into this character's mind a belief that DAoT tech is a proper quest for an individual's lifespan, that such tech is far superior to what is produced by the AdMech (and I wouldn't be so sure given that Thunder Armour seems to have been the best the DAoT came up with in terms of Personal Protection).

Against everything which is "known" by the Imperium there's very little means for developing such a view, particularly not alone; unless he found a cache of old "Star-Trek"-esque recordings and took them for historical documentary...

The rest of the Imperium, after all, have good reason for believing that the Dark Age of Technology was bad, there are many worlds after all which were rediscovered after the Age of Strife and the Isolation of Terra which had survived at least virtually unscathed. If they believe it was a Dark Age then who are those coloured by the Age of Strife to argue?

Kaled

It's not known as a Dark Age because it was a time of suffering for humanity, but because so little is known of it - in much the same way the middle ages in Europe were known as the Dark Ages due to the lack of historical records compared to the earlier and later times.

It seems like you are conflating the Dark Age of Technology with the Age of Strife. All of the things I said about the Dark Age of Technology are pretty much direct quotes from sources ranging from Rogue Trader to the latest 40k rulebook. In some places it is referred to as being a golden age for mankind.

As for how it is viewed by the Imperium, well that may be different - especially due to the decline of humanity that occurred during the Age of Strife. Imperial citizens are taught that the Emperor came and reunited humanity and ushered in a new golden age and saved them from the darkness that had gone before - they will know nothing of what had come before. Of course, the kinds of characters we're talking about will have access to a lot more knowledge and may well know stories of the marvels that of technology possessed by humanity during the DAoT. We already know that the AdMech expend considerable resources to gather scraps of knowledge from that time - for example STC printouts are priceless relics and every rumour of a functioning STC system is followed up by the AdMech as it would be a prize beyond compare.

(As for Thunder Armour - that came long after the Dark Age of Technology, and after the seven millennia of darkness that was the Age of Strife. It may have been the best personal protection that could be produced at the time, but by then human technology had fallen a long way from the peak it reached during the Dark Age of Technology.)
I like to remember things my own way... Not necessarily the way they happened.

Inquisitor - Blood Bowl - Malifaux - Fairy Meat

InquisitorHeidfeld

It was, to all intents and purposes, the same armour as every other barbarian warlord on Terra equipped his troops with, it was (if I'm remembering the history of Power Armour correctly) a relic.

But it isn't what we know about these things but what a character knows which is important.

We primarily see the Imperium through the eyes of the military because "In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war" but Inquisitor generally deals in a more civil realm. The AdMech may send explorator fleets out across former human colonies in search of lost tech but 99.9....9% of the Imperium's citizenry will know nothing about it. The primary references to anyone outside the Mechanicus knowing what they're really looking for seem to be the Tanith - and that's hardly a solid source for fluff. (I recall references in the article which introduced the Razorback which implied that it was "one mars had had all along" - suggesting that the 'party line' was that this type of development was a case of filing rather than discovery).

When the perceptions of a character deviate from the perceptions of society by such a degree it deserves a little explanation. As with all cliches it can work very well if there's a consistency and a believable reason behind it.

Currently there is no reason for it - the Cortex-Robots of the Legio Cybernetica and the technological wizardry of the AdMech have no apparent detractors and therefore the character's goals do not seem sane.