Necroes

Are We the Bad Guys? - A WH40k RP [Mature]

Can we drive an Eldar ship? Why is the Eldar ship not stealthed? Where exactly are we going to go with it? Can we communicate with the other ships? The Imperium? Does anyone read Eldar? Can we please stay out of the warp? I really hate Eldar. This is retarded.

@Wraithblade6

In order:
Eldar technology is controlled directly by the will of the psykers that pilots it. As we have a psyker, yes, we can pilot one.
See previous statement about All non-essential systems being turned off when firing its weapon, and us hitting while the weapon fires.
The same place we'd go in a high-jacked imperial vessel. I.e, somewhere not where we are.
We don't need to talk with other ships.
The Imperium wants 90% of us, including the ship we're currently in, destroyed.
No, but the ork knows a 'guy.'
Eldar craft fly through the webway, not the warp, so yes.
I hate eldar, too. That's half the reason I'm in favor of this.
*redacted by H.R. censorship*

Are We the Bad Guys? - A WH40k RP [Mature]

You don't understand, the hemlock is literally the next best thing to useless. It's a giant gun strapped to an only slightly less giant engine. To fire its weapon, it has to divert power from so many secondary systems that it is skeleton crewed not because it Should be, but because the life support system is drained of power to the point that any more bodies on the ship would turn to corpses by the time they were done firing.
The only reason it will work for Us is because it's 4/9ths engine, thus able to get us away from the battle in record time.

The plan is to hit them while the gun is firing, so the secondary systems will be off. We'll aim for so close to the bridge, they'll see us hit them through the window. After that, it's only a matter of fighting everyone who gets in our way. Plus, unlike orks, space marines, and admech, eldar are one of the few races that suffer quite a lot from poor atmospheric conditions. We'll be at the advantage while the life support comes back on fully, giving us the small window we'll need to kill everyone on the bridge.

Besides, you said it yourself; it's the Less insane plan. Given that we only have the two options, it's only sane to go with the less crazy one.

Are We the Bad Guys? - A WH40k RP [Mature]

Edit 2: Also, before this goes any further; I had no intention of taking the entire ship with nothing but a huge battle spanning the entire ship, leaving nothing but bound survivors behind us. The plan was to have us hit the enemy ship close to the main deck, find and capture the captain, then convince her to direct the rest of the ship to flee the battlefield in exchange for return of the soul stones. We'd end up betraying them along the way, but that's step 2.

@Necroes

@Sophrus In case you missed it, what exactly is wrong with This plan?

Are We the Bad Guys? - A WH40k RP [Mature]

@Sophrus No, they wouldn't, because of the exact same reason. Imperial navy vessels are purpose built on the small scale. None of them are warp capable because warp drives are too massive and require too much power to be on anything smaller than a freighter. And, no, even merchant trader vessels sport crews of the 10k+ variant. That's just how space travel works in 40k.

Small craft made by the imperium are for when you've gotten to the planet or chunk of space you're planning on getting to. Nothing that small will get itself to those places, because they can't. Which makes sense, because the Imperium don't do interplanetary ships. There's no reason to. A warp drive is just as able and just as practical for traveling between planets as it is between solar systems. That's the entire point of warp drives.

Are We the Bad Guys? - A WH40k RP [Mature]

@Sophrus By cargo ship, do you mean something like the Arvus Lighter? Crewed by a single pilot, it has a max speed of 1600 kph (barely breaking mach one) with a maximum travel distance of 22,000 kilometers in atmo. and a capacity of 16 people. You know, the kind that is not only not warp capable, but also wouldn't be able to travel between planets, and is thus useless to our needs?

Or something like a marauder bomber? Also able to be piloted by a single person, its max speed is 1800 kph (hstill less than mach 2) mach range of even less than the Arvus, and equally not capable of warp travel or even interplanetary travel.

The next step up would be things like interceptors, which still have the problem of not being able to move between planets.

The next step up, literally the smallest step you can take, is freighter class. With crew sizes in the 10k+ range, we come back to where we started.

Do you see the running theme of the problem with taking your 'smaller ship' idea? The Firefly universe, this is not. In 40k, you need to hit five digits worth of crew (for HUMAN vessels) before you can go anywhere. That's why the ship Urgrugg showed up in was such an amazing oddity, yet still existed as a failed proof of concept despite doing something that basically can't be done.

Edit: @Wraithblade6 JB Started all of this. He assigned me to do it, because I asked him to. It was his post that sent us towards more NPC interaction fun-times. It was also his idea to go get aboard another craft, despite the fact he made up some random, non-cannon ship that can't exist in 40k, yet decided for whatever reason not to make it at least capable of interplanetary travel.

And, no. The machine spirit would not accept us. It's a computer, they don't do that without being hacked. If anything, If it identified the ship from imperial record, they'd identify us as a, wait for it... Emperor's Children vessel, and blow us the hell up!

Edit 2: Also, before this goes any further; I had no intention of taking the entire ship with nothing but a huge battle spanning the entire ship, leaving nothing but bound survivors behind us. The plan was to have us hit the enemy ship close to the main deck, find and capture the captain, then convince her to direct the rest of the ship to flee the battlefield in exchange for return of the soul stones. We'd end up betraying them along the way, but that's step 2.

Are We the Bad Guys? - A WH40k RP [Mature]

There's one massive, giant problem everyone here arguing 'lore' keeps overlooking; The machine spirit!
Any imperial vessel we board will refuse us access. Unlike every previous encounter our only two tech-adepts have had with the machine spirit, this time, it Will be actively manned. It will fight us.
As for realistic, well... if we're a small enough vessel that a single person can pilot it, then we'd be a smear on the hull of even the smallest imperial craft, which starts with solid adamantium walls something like ten-twenty feet thick. As what we're on isn't a boarding craft, the only thing we could do is ram it, and our own structural integrity was already ruined by the missle that hit us.

Now, from My perspective;
No one knows how many eldar actually crew eldar vessels. All that's known is that eldar are prone to using spirit stones in place of A.I., which end up acting much like computers. Also, we are talking about craft-world eldar. While largely warp based, their technology is one of the most advanced in the galaxy, second only to necrons. Necrons, of course, have massive war ships that are unmanned. An eldar 'skeleton crew' could very easily be a couple hundred bodies. Easily something our group, with some warp back up, could take.

In terms of realism, again; we're flying a ship made of something supposedly capable of nullifying the presence of hundreds, if not thousands, of eldar spirit stones. As far as lore is concerned, what we're flying doesn't exist. But, if it did, wraith bone would be disrupted by it, as it's literally solid warp energy. Therefore, we'd actually have a chance in hell of surviving running into it.

As for being based in lore... Everything I've been talking about thus far is proof of concept. Of course we're not going to make literal death-masques. Just something based off a concept that has been proven to work, i.e., making servitors out of chaos spawn. Given a practically unlimited supply of the most versatile material in the galaxy to make whatever parts we need, and access to centuries-old warp knowledge, it's well within the realm of reason (especially by 40k standards) that we could pull everything I've said off.

Most importantly, though... Why are so many of you so infatuated with keeping everything human? Science fiction is about exploring the strange and the unknown. The vast wonders of the universe of the 41st millennium are ours to take hold of and explore in our own way. To a man, each of us decided, at least originally, to play a non-human entity. Not a single character among us could reasonably be called human, let alone have lived a life that could hope to match. So why not take things a little over the top? It may not be the dark, broody, depressing galaxy of the 41st millennium the human race lives in. But it sure as hell is the anything-goes, chaos-infused 41st millennium of the filthy heretics and dirty xenos!

Are We the Bad Guys? - A WH40k RP [Mature]

To answer the questions in the order posted;

@BCTheEntity I'm really glad someone asked.
A death-masque is a type of servitor. It is unique in two ways. Firstly, they are only made by the dark mechanicum. Secondly, the base creature used to create them is not human, but chaos spawn. Making them is difficult, but it can be done, and we just so happen to have the people necessary to pull it off. Though, actually doing it will be tricky. Which brings me to my next answer...

@Klomster Firstly, the hemlock is a bad WAR ship. For our purposes, it's nearly perfect. It sports one of the fastest engines in its size class (which is the class known for fast engines), packs a single weapon with Devastating capability, is purpose-built to be skeleton crewed, and best of all... The ENTIRE SHIP is made of warp-maliable material. Once we get it away from the eldar manning it, we can literally bend it to whatever shape we care to. All we'd need is a crew.

Which brings me to the second point, and this is where the death-masques come in. Urgrugg just so happens to know a spell for converting the bodies of mortals whose souls have been claimed by a single chaos god into chaos spawn-surprisingly, it's not that hard-while also restraining them. Any admech worth his salt would know how to make a servitor. With the chaos apothecary to help with the medical side of things, all we'd need is the materials to do the conversion. Namely, metal for the robot bits, and mortals to turn into chaos spawn.

Now, if only we had an ample supply of mortals whose souls have been claimed by a single chaos god... Oh, right. Space elves!
As for the metal... well, remember all the wraith bone I mentioned?
Before you ask, no, Urgrugg doesn't know how to manipulate it. However, he does know a certain tzeench daemon who just might. Yet another hand to help with the conversion process.
And, once we make our Eldar-flavor, wraith-bone, chaos-spawn servitors, we'll have our crew! With as many elves as we'll have, there should be no end of subjects to test on either.

As for the boarding... Well, our ship IS designed to be cloaked specifically from eldar craft. Add that to the fact hemlocks turn off all non-essential systems when they fire their gun, *cough*radar*cough*, and I think we can pull off getting aboard. Then, we just have to take the boat, and we'll be good to go. Which brings me to my final response;

@Wraithblade6 We're not boarding an imperial ship. We're boarding an eldar ship, which we're going to 'commandeer' the... everything, of. At which point, we'll all be aboard a chaos-dominated ship, crewed by a small slave army of death-masques directed by pink horrors.

And, before anyone asks how we'll take it; hemlocks are specifically NOT fitted to repel boarding action. Six space marines, a plague ogryn (gonna have to pull that one off quick), a magus, and a magic ork by themselves would be enough to give them trouble. When I start summoning daemons for back-up... Well, let's just say that's not gonna be ketchup on those khorn dogs.

So, everyone... are you ready to pilot a ship crewed by the damned and captained by daemons?

All in favor, say "Black Pearl!!!" Who's with me?

Are We the Bad Guys? - A WH40k RP [Mature]

Well, if it's going to be left up to me, I think I've got a plan.

However, for it to work, I'll need some help. @Klomster, my friend; how would you feel about performing a dark-mechanicum ritual on a couple hundred eldar? Of course, we'd need someone to perform some light surgery to get them ready. Someone versed in preparing mortal vessels for subjugation to the ruinous powers.

Anyone here heard of death-masques?

Are We the Bad Guys? - A WH40k RP [Mature]

@Jbcool Are you going depict what happens during the 'boarding action?' From what I can tell, I'm the next in posting order, and I've not really got much to do until that happens.

Are We the Bad Guys? - A WH40k RP [Mature]

@Wraithblade6, you couldn't kill a baby cow with a shotgun and a team of ranch hands.

That said, you should Still feel bad.