Bay 12 Games Forum

Theocracies: Imperium, Chaos

Semi-Theocracies: Eldar, Tau

Non-Theocracies: Necron, Tyranid, Ork, Dark Eldar

Err...

The orkz are definitely a theocracy, though, or at least so intensely and uniformly religious they have no need for much of a government and simply live every moment of their lives according to their (species-wide) beliefs. Easily both the most committed and most consistent about religious adherence and observance of any faction in the setting, even. Their worship of gork and mork dye every aspect of their existence to the core, and there's bloody close to not a single member of the entire species that isn't devoutly faithful to such a degree even most of the imperial or chaos fanatics are put to shame, for all that their faith is difficult to identify as such to non-adherents. _{which makes sense, really, given that the entire setting is the orkish afterlife >_>}

Pretty sure the necron are more or less theocratic, too... the oldcron definitely were, at least. And... isn't most of the DE's whole shtick doing what they're doing to supplicate a god, or something along those lines? If that's not what amounts to a theocracy I'm not sure what else it could be without getting into annoying semantics. It just happens that their particular religion involves a lot of torture and whatnot.

I think the thing that gets confusing is that religious adherence, and authority and its expression, for some of these folks is... not like it is for some others. They're by and large theocracies, they're just centered around religions that are rather oddly organized and expressed, comparatively.

Nah. Taste can be chill some days, too.

F.lux helps a lot with the reading, heh. Or an equivalent if you've got a tablet... I've actually been doing most of my reading these days on kindle (browser or otherwise net obtained, of course, cause I ain't payin' for books when I've several lifetimes and growing worth of stuff that's free). Decent contrast on the text also helps rather substantially (darkling's a decent example, save the actual typing box). The generally default black on white is complete and utter shit for prolonged reading, tbh.

Though a lot of things try to fix it by just inverting... it's better (significantly so), but ideally there's basically no white on your screen, and few bright colors in general. You want contrast, but not glare. I like a light-ish grey on a dark background myself. Usually something like a dark blue rather than a straight black. Much easier to read, heh.

Sounds porny

Eeehhh... don't think it is any more than most fanfiction. Maybe even a bit less, oddly enough. Still plenty of romance related stuff but the actual full on fornication seemed somewhat less prevalent than usual for written stuff, last I was scrounging through ME fanfics.

What's with the new forum title? I mean, I know who Momiji is, but I don't see how mass murder is a fitting title for the Happy Thread.

The key is inside the [].

I'd make butcher up a picture in paint of the awoo thing tessellated out and spattered with blood, but I'm far too not awake for that.

E: Actually, the ideal version would also have hats littered around it. Other people's hats. Nothing else. Just blood and hats and awoo.

Well, you're basically asking for the UN with teeth and without external oversight or control, so... yeah. Arguably one of the worst manners that could manifest, too, existing only to murder political opponents (maybe even ones that needed murdering, but we'd see how long that lasted :V) and nothing else.

Not sure I'd call it utopian, heh.

And nah, I wouldn't say so Helg. Those usually had to operate very much by the interests of whatever nation(s) they operated in, if perhaps not entirely.

It's the food that gets me more than the upkeep, personally. Salary and the effects on not having it I can deal with a'ight, having a bunch of diseased crazies sans morale (due to starvation) choking up your everything is... less treatable. At least with undead you can just leave stuff sitting around until you need it without much direct consequence... r'yleh, you either move it or worse-than-lose* it.

Though with cultists, they should probably attack or something (form splinter cults, generating those stealthy preacher thing events?) when not paid instead of just leaving. Or much better, do that to provinces neighboring your nation, or perhaps just have a high chance to not be detrimental to r'yleh (instead of causing unrest or lowering dominion or whatev', it would give a small boost to PD** and possibly just flat out act as an H1 priest, with some knock-on  events). That, actually, would be amazing, taking one of the yokes around their neck and turning it into a direct advantage, and I think introducing another mechanic (the other being the insanity) that no other freespawn nation has.

... honestly, having actually spent some time thinking about it, now,  it feels like the cultists really have just a massive amount of potential to be spiced up. Some of it would even make interesting mechanics for other nations -- having some that react differently to disbanding due to lack of pay would be both neat and rather incredibly thematic, particularly if there was a way to induce it that didn't involve deep sixing your economy. Events and magic sites that tailor themselves to the number and type of certain units also has a hell of a lot of potential... I actually want to say there's already a little of the former, but it'd be great if there was both more and more impactful/reliably activated ones.

*Which is half the reason I love BVCs and whatnot so much, the whole "here, have a unit you still have to pay for but now doesn't even work well as chaff" thing, with starvation switching that to "but now cripples anything non-mindless in your army", due to routing considerations. It just sucks to be on the receiving end :V

**Actually... if it's possible to remove magic sites, or have another building sorta' like a castle, it could act like those sites that add new PD types to the province, preferably with some kind of stacking mechanic so the more cults you have established in a single province, the larger and weirder the adds get. With losing PD or having the cults dug out (they'd still presumably be stealth armies loitering around, or something like story events you can search for) causing the PD to reduce... or having it so they stop being extra PD if someone else has control and starts being an overt nuisance.