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Welcome to the Truth (or the Conclave Archive) OOC

Started by Macabre, June 16, 2013, 11:56:17 PM

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Macabre

Well, my first IC posting since about a year. Its kind of open ended: maybe it'll spark some new RP's, maybe not, but it's done its job....

...which is to link the downloadable zip of the Conclave Archive I had stored on my hard drive.

Hope you enjoy.
++Believe the lie. Trust no one++

TheNephew


Dosdamt

It is never too late! - Mentirius

http://thementalmarine.proboards.com/index.cgi <- The Mind, for all your irreverent nonsense needs

Mentirius

Posted on the Nexus thread before I saw this one, but just to reiterate, count me in...provisionally and sporadically, but with growing enthusiasm.  I probably will use characters at least connected to the old stories, but I firmly agree that anything we do now should be able to stand alone, without requiring a knowledge of the background.  Too early to say when my first real contribution will appear, but judging by the excellent posts already in evidence, just staring at the IC thread could do wonders for my long-dormant muse.  Jolly well done there!

A couple of questions about dates, as I know the official 40k timeline has moved on (skirted over elsewhere, but I don't think we managed to answer them):

1) Does anyone remember the IC year where AD2 left off? (IE, the last time I posted IC)
2) What year is currently "present day" in official fluff?

Koval

I can't answer #1, but officially the answer to #2 is 999.M41 -- GW rewound time to before the 13th Black Crusade, which also means that Medusa V and a lot of the things talked about in the Ciaphas Cain books haven't happened yet.

MarcoSkoll

I would have it that there is no official present day in the WH40K universe. Things are set at whichever point in the time-line GW deems appropriate, although their time-line largely runs out at two minutes to M42. Calling 999.M41 the present day isn't really viable, as it'll just end up being an endless instant.

The current standard around the 'Clave (although not official by GW's standards) is to add 39000 years to the current date, making it  presently 013.M42.
Not perfect, as it sometimes means being a bit creative regarding official events that are all galaxy-ending cliffhangers as of 999.M41*, but it's at least an easily agreed on standard.

*A few of my characters have required me to make some insinuations regarding the outcomes of the 13th Black Crusade, as one of them fought in it, but a lot of that is just NOT pretending the Eye of Terror campaign didn't happen.
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

Dosdamt

#6
Things progressed a-pace on Facebook, so back to here

We are proposing starting... something

Not a great commitment, not something to blast forward. Something leisurely. Something allowing for other commitments we sadly appear to have acquired since deciding to grow older.

Something... NEW

So..

NEW - Characters (though, I'd expect the odd old head to rear up)
NEW - Narrative with new THEMES
NEW - Central Driving Menace
NEW - Timeline

None of which have been firmed up.

So, soon. Hopefully not Blizzard *soon*.

The proposed timeline would be sometime around the beginning of M42 - I'm thinking, approximately 250.M42, give or take a decade. GreenEyes is dead, the Mentirians are scattered and thus the Puritan Council has been disbanded, and many of the characters from that era have retired, grown too old to be useful, or are dead. The mortals, that is. For the immortals and the long lived, they will have moved onto more grandiose schemes, though an old eye or two may be cast this way.

Those who were busy transcending the mortal coil during those events and times are likely fighting their own battles in / around the Eye and would be otherwise engaged.

That would leave us enough hooks and enough leeway to progress, enough links to the past to remain familiar, and enough time to have passed for things to have settled.

****

And so, my character concept

An Istvaanian by philosophy, and a librarian / historian by trade and speciality. He is based nominally out of a world not far away from Cadia, but has recently moved on and is presently ship bound. The Inquisitor has deep and ranging knowledge of Inquisitorial schisms and conflict. He has been taken aback by the publication of the information in the IC thread, and is keen to understand where this might go. He has a wide network of contacts and operatives. He isn't averse to direct action, but it isn't his preferred method of operation.

His operatives are usually known only by codenames.

His vessel is the Black Hand, a heavy set Cruiser.
It is never too late! - Mentirius

http://thementalmarine.proboards.com/index.cgi <- The Mind, for all your irreverent nonsense needs

Macabre

I have taken preprepared liberties, I hope this is okay.
++Believe the lie. Trust no one++

LordXaras

Quote from: Dosdamt on July 03, 2013, 10:59:57 PM
Things progressed a-pace on Facebook, so back to here

We are proposing starting... something

Not a great commitment, not something to blast forward. Something leisurely. Something allowing for other commitments we sadly appear to have acquired since deciding to grow older.

Something... NEW

So..

NEW - Characters (though, I'd expect the odd old head to rear up)
NEW - Narrative with new THEMES
NEW - Central Driving Menace
NEW - Timeline

None of which have been firmed up.

So, soon. Hopefully not Blizzard *soon*.

The proposed timeline would be sometime around the beginning of M42 - I'm thinking, approximately 250.M42, give or take a decade. GreenEyes is dead, the Mentirians are scattered and thus the Puritan Council has been disbanded, and many of the characters from that era have retired, grown too old to be useful, or are dead. The mortals, that is. For the immortals and the long lived, they will have moved onto more grandiose schemes, though an old eye or two may be cast this way.

Those who were busy transcending the mortal coil during those events and times are likely fighting their own battles in / around the Eye and would be otherwise engaged.

That would leave us enough hooks and enough leeway to progress, enough links to the past to remain familiar, and enough time to have passed for things to have settled.

****

And so, my character concept

An Istvaanian by philosophy, and a librarian / historian by trade and speciality. He is based nominally out of a world not far away from Cadia, but has recently moved on and is presently ship bound. The Inquisitor has deep and ranging knowledge of Inquisitorial schisms and conflict. He has been taken aback by the publication of the information in the IC thread, and is keen to understand where this might go. He has a wide network of contacts and operatives. He isn't averse to direct action, but it isn't his preferred method of operation.

His operatives are usually known only by codenames.

His vessel is the Black Hand, a heavy set Cruiser.
Hmmm... maybe I should make a DiValdite... or a Zedkielite.

*goes rummaging through digital drawers*

Mentirius

The timeline moved backwards?  That's just...no, there are no words. >:(  I second Ben's motion to jump forward a couple hundred years anyway, as I was under the mistaken impression GW had already done.  I do like the idea of adding 39000 years to present day dates for general Conclave stuff, but without the plot device of hundreds of years having passed to muddy the waters, I'm not sure this particular story would work. 

As for the taking of liberties, by all means...I still get a warm glow whenever someone mentions one of my characters/locations IC, and the writing so far has been thoroughly enjoyable.  One thing I am loathe to point out but probably should, for the sake of continuity - last we saw Secret's Hold, I'm pretty sure Charax literally destroyed the entire planet.  That said, I did have a fondness for the old place, and the scene currently going on there has a lot of promise...in which spirit, here are some possible explanations for it still existing:




1) Perhaps Charax only appeared to destroy it, instead merely temporarily scouring it of life/hiding it in the warp.

2) Either he, Amon Dull, Escellon or some other demon made an exact copy of the planet for nefarious purposes yet to be revealed (which amounts to "a demon did it", but it's not as if we've never used that one).

3) It is conceivable that I'm not remembering this right and it was a different planet we nuked.

4) There could have been more than one Secret's Hold, all on obscure deathworlds and made with similar materials (Di Valdi having visited Balkoth and Mentirius there hundreds of years before the Amon Dull Saga really kicked off, they might have moved their primary headquarters in the meantime...or maybe the Hold was always spread across multiple planets, its component parts linked by warp gates...I do quite like that idea, though it would need further development...)

5) It's also possible I'm being too much of a purist.  Clearly GW have no qualms about retconning stuff, so maybe we shouldn't be too militant about it ourselves...




As for my own character(s), I'm still at the vague ideas stage, although having a date set in my head now makes things easier.  I think I'm going to focus on members/associates/unknowing agents of the Mentirian organisation, which will by now have been decentralised and become an underground, secret handshake kind of a deal.  I'm sure there will be an Inquisitor or two in there somewhere, but I'd expect most of the members/puppets of members not to be Inquisition personnel...after all, with a few notable exceptions, the bulk of its members in the early days would have been people unofficially employed by Mentirius, rather than his peers.  The Book of Mentirius (which needs a more original name) would have to still exist within their network, acting as a history and manifesto, but officially it would have been listed under "to be burned with extreme prejudice" ever since his death.  Which reminds me of another thought I had...

Ben mentioned forbidden manuscripts, their dissemination and suppression, as as a theme, and we seem to have several such floating around IC.  There's the data bank in the first post, Taren's testament in the second, Mentirius's own book, and potentially Sargoth's Book of Doom or whatever it was called...although I'd imagine the latter ended up in Charax's care, along with its bearer, after the attack on Delan's Point.   What I'm wondering is, are there any others we should consider?  It seems to me that if we aren't careful, we could easily end up with a whole hosts of references to "The Book", with different readers making different assumptions about which book is being referred to in any particular post.  So far I've been assuming that the data bank that contains the most sensitive/comprehensive information and is therefore the primary plot device, but clearly the others will play a part somewhere. 

I've also been pondering the strangeness of Imperial politics...given how totalitarian the state is, you'd expect more straightforward political dissidence to exist, as in dissidence totally unconnected to the influence of Chaos or any particular alien race.  I know there's a strong rationale behind the Imperium being so brutal, what with how many enemies it has, but surely plenty of its citizens would disagree, especially given the lack of information many of them would have about the wider galaxy.  There can't always be a convenient cult to hand for for the discontented to join up with.  Obviously rebellion on a wide scale would be grossly impractical, but some of the more isolated planets must be rife with conspiracies, and they can't ALL be the result of outside influences or malignant religions.  Maybe it's that there are so many demons, aliens and untrained psykers around around that no half-decent conspiracy lasts long without being hijacked, but we're talking about a staggering number of planets, each inhabited by billions.  If Recongregators within the Inquisition - an organisation theoretically dedicated to preserving the Imperium the way it is - can object to the way things are enough to actively try and change them, then why not some of the common people?  Maybe they do, and get so swiftly crushed every time they try without some otherworldly power backing them up that no one bothers to record it...there's probably an obvious answer to all this, but if so, forgive me - it's been a hell of a long time since I read any official fluff.

Macabre

I'm reluctant to go against continuity, and it has been a while since I read the fall of Secrets Hold (which I don't think is in the archive), and I mostly remember that Secrets Hold was destroyed and an epic battle between Charax and the Keeper of Secrets.

Perhaps my memory is at fault.
++Believe the lie. Trust no one++

Koval

Quote from: Mentirius on July 04, 2013, 06:24:41 PM
The timeline moved backwards?  That's just...no, there are no words. >:(  I second Ben's motion to jump forward a couple hundred years anyway, as I was under the mistaken impression GW had already done.
To be fair, the Ciaphas Cain series -- though the Cain-related events themselves are set in M41 -- was "archived" and "made available" in M42; among other things, we have references to Jenit Sulla (a minor character that Cain doesn't like) surviving to be a Lady-General and writing her second autobiography in what I think is 101.M42 (keep in mind as well that Amberley's using this as source material to supplement Cain's version of events, so from Amberley's perspective it's even further on in the timeline).

So it's not like everything's been moved back to pre-Eye Of Terror levels.

Dosdamt

On a few points

I imagine there are dissidents who aren't chaotically driven or motivated. How much there is would be debatable but I am certain there would be. For sure, a good portion would be organised and funded by the Inquisition. There would be seeds around, and perhaps some would organize themselves, but I'd be uncertain about the amount of spontaneous dissidence. If you factor in the wall to wall propaganda, the indoctrination of the Imperial cult, you'd end up with a very pliant populace. I wouldn't be surprised if there were chemicals in the water and food as well

/tinfoilhats at the ready...

However, if you removed those chemicals from the water and the food...

I would too assume that the databank is the primary driver, and I think around that you can have periphery ideas and statements that try and reinforce the ideas therein. I'd imagine supplementary information - pictures, written reports, vids, to all be part of the wider databank, perhaps even electronic copies of documents and books.

I don't honestly recall whether Secret's Hold was entirely destroyed as in the entire planet, or not. I don't see there being a break in continuity though, and it's a great twist regardless. I like the idea so much I don't see why we shouldn't just leave it, and to hell with whether Charax went full planetary smashing or not.
It is never too late! - Mentirius

http://thementalmarine.proboards.com/index.cgi <- The Mind, for all your irreverent nonsense needs

Charax

I don't remember anything past the keeper of secrets being smooshed
(No longer} The guy with his name at the bottom of the page

N01H3r3

Quote from: Mentirius on July 04, 2013, 06:24:41 PM
The timeline moved backwards?  That's just...no, there are no words.
In the grand scheme of things, it didn't move forward at all - the 'advancements' (and I use the term with regard to the IMO dubious nature of those developments) at the end of the Eye of Terror campaign are an anomaly, rather than the norm.

The 40k universe, for several editions, has sat at "a minute to midnight". That's a deliberate and conscious design decision. The Eye of Terror campaign was - as far as I'm concerned - an ill-conceived attempt to change that, which ultimately failed.

Per the last two editions' timelines, the 13th Black Crusade begins at 997999.M41. Literally about 16-17 hours before the end of the 41st Millennium - the 40k equivalent of 9am on New Year's Eve. The conflict fits squarely within M42, within the purely hypothetical realm of "Warhammer 41,000". The only other significant element of the campaign - the Third Phase Expansion of the Tau - was moved to an earlier point in the timeline, preceding the 13th Black Crusade by years.

40k is not - and was never intended to be - an advancing metaplot in the vein of the Forgotten Realms, Shadowrun or the World of Darkness. It's a backdrop. More importantly, it's a colossal backdrop, one that dwarfs the sum total of recorded human history. There is - and never has been - a rule saying that you have to set your games and your narratives at the bleeding edge of the timeline. The 40kRPG lines have ably demonstrated this, with their own timelines sitting around 815-820.M41. The iconic Eisenhorn and Ravenor novels are set decades before "present day". From Imperial Armour III onwards, the narratives of each campaign Forge World creates are set at different points in the Dark Millennium. There's a particular tendency over the last decade to stop trying to push forward and instead work on filling in the inconceivably vast gaps in the timeline... because ten thousand years and a million worlds are a vast canvas to create upon, without needing to advance things.

In short - there's nothing wrong with taking a greater interest in the largely-unexplored past of the setting, rather than focussing on the manifold impending dooms that comprise the future.
Contributing Writer for many Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay books, including Black Crusade

Professional Games Designer.