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[Andres]

I suppose, that something like teleporting 1000000 space marines to Comorragh or ramming gloriana class battleship in it could be part of emperors plans during great crusade.
But current imperium is too busy not falling apart for doing anything grand.

Ok, so one million Space Marines and one Gloriana. What else? Do the guardsmen need to be in the billions or the trillions? How many Emperor titans? How many battleships?

[Grim Portent]

I suppose, that something like teleporting 1000000 space marines to Comorragh or ramming gloriana class battleship in it could be part of emperors plans during great crusade.
But current imperium is too busy not falling apart for doing anything grand.

Ok, so one million Space Marines and one Gloriana. What else? Do the guardsmen need to be in the billions or the trillions? How many Emperor titans? How many battleships?

Commorragh has some nigh unbeatable defenses. For one thing just getting there is very hard since it requires passage through a webway portal, most of which are in Dark Eldar hands, and which few other than the Eldar can activate.

Secondly almost every citizen of the dark city is a soldier on par with Imperial Guard veterans. Not all are well equipped, but this is a city fight in a battlefield most Imperial vehicles can't even enter, let alone move with any speed.

Thirdly the city can be divided by nearly impenetrable walls of energy, all controlled from and (presumably) powered from Vect's fortress. These walls can completely contain Orkish Waaaghs!!! and Daemonic Incursions. Very little among the Imperial arsenal poses a threat to them.

Fourthly Vect can, at will with only a small delay, expose any part of the city he wants to the focused energies of all the stars that are used to light and power the city. This can melt entire shielded fortresses in moments. It could destroy titans, battleships, and pretty much anything else that can't survive point blank contact with the Sun.

Fifthly, a lot of Commorragh is spread out in little pockets and islands in the webway very far from the main city. These subrealms are reached through portals that seamlessly bridge the distance between them and the city. If the Dark Eldar thought they were losing a fight they could just shut them off and hide in the sub realms for a few decades until the Imperials leave. Only a few kabals would survive, but that's all they really need to continue their kind.


The Dark Eldar only number a few tens/hundreds of Billion though, so it's not difficult to wipe them out if you really give it a go. I don't think the Imperium in it's current state could do it at all though. Too many different threats to take on. The amount of military might it takes to fight an Eldar Craftworld and win is generally multiple chapters of marines and a big chunk of a Segmentum fleet, and Commorragh is much better defended and more populous than any Craftworld. Trying to scrape up the manpower to wipe out the DE would lead to so many parts of the Imperium being left undefended that it would be a net loss for mankind.

What force would be needed to raid Commorragh and retrieve Panacea? How many soldiers? How many battleships? How many chapters of Space Marines?

The Panacea STC was probably destroyed by Vect, or by his Haemonculi. It's of no use to the DE themselves, they already have something better. Considering it was taken as a prize by Lady Malys as a way to prove herself to Vect it's possible he even destroyed it as part of casting her out in a display of contempt.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The DE have every reason to keep the Panacea, since so many of their slaves are human. That's part of the horror of it, that something turned from the universal good of humanity is now used as a tool to keep and restore painslaves to even greater heights of suffering. Accidentally nick an artery? Panacea. Finish skinning them and dipping them in grox shit? Panacea. Repeated vacuum exposure? Panacea.

I disagree with the tactical analysis of Commorragh. While all of that is true, given how much damage a single battle barge of Salamanders did it'd still be a slaughter. That's why the DE use the tactics they do, because on an open battlefield they just don't stack up to the other factions. Especially if humanity ever got a real hold on the Webway, since at that point they could just starve the DE out. It wouldn't be too long before they were all feeding off each other's souls, and then their whole society collapses.

[Tack]

True, and I guess the same can be said of the Craftworlders.
Sad all of that strategic genius/clairvoyance never really makes it to the tabletop.

[Rolepgeek]

hoooo boy, history lesson time!

Many chapters has space marines in the hundreds of thousand. The Ultrasmurfs themselves had around 250,000 space marines around their peak.

and yes, nids have come in to contact with Chaos, with Chaos generally coming out on top--I read a thing somewhere once that mentioned tyranids avoiding a chaos-infected worldship.

There was a really fun Tyranid quest thread I was in on /tg/ during the time I frequented there, and it showed very evidently why 'Nids have difficulty with Chaos. Daemons are fellow predators, ones you can't eat, and they spoil the food for Hive consumption. Oceans turning to blood sounded great. Then the feeders started dying, and we got very annoyed.

Fucking Gray Knights. Let the Daemonic Artifact they were safekeeping or whatever loose once it was evident they weren't gonna survive in that wrecked ship. Attracted the Chaos Fleet we'd been avoiding in order to focus on that world, too. And then the quest died, and all were saddened.

[sprinkled chariot]

Probably half of dark eldar will try to use grand space marine assault as nice moment to asassinate vect/ other rivals.
Necrons have some impenetratable barriers too, but one chapter decided to ram their own battle barge in necron death star. There are no barriers you cant break, there is just lack of battle barges in 41 st millenium.
And mechanicus even in grim darkness of future  has sentient battleships with blackhole firing cannons and ability to teleport eldar ships back in time, so they dont evade shots. During great crusade they had more shit like that probably.

[nenjin]

My night with my players went about as expected:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

They tried to ram past the Dozer blocking the street and the driver blew their Driving roll, got the Chimera stuck up on one tread with the other corner of the Chimera wedged into a building. One guy managed to plant a mining charge on the side of the Chimera blowing a hole through the Hull but not killing anyone. Couple guys ran up to the Chimera and shot in, got shot back. The psyker rammed the dominated driver's vehicle into the flaming wreck of the Dozer and the gunner shot it more or less point blank with a lascannon, exploding it and ramming it out of the way to free up the Chimera.

Then they broke free into the edge of the mining complex and voxed for their Gun Cutter to come down and grab them while on the move. Bunch of buggies and trucks show up. Between the lascannon, twin-linked heavy bolter turret, pintel mounted storm bolters, a boltgun sniper and mind control, they shredded like 5 vehicles in one turn, executed the drivers or forced them to ram into each other. But there were still enough to get a few Mad Max-style rounds of combat in. Guys jumping on to the Chimera, shooting in the firing ports, getting sworded. The Psyker caused a warp phenomena inside the Chimera and the interior started to bleed. I dropped some Chaos-mutated vultures the size of lions on them at the apex for the fight and the psyker promptly made almost all of them go blind. By then the the Gun Cutter arrived, and the driver once again blew their driving roll so the first attempt to board the ship at speed had to be aborted (he didn't crit fail it or he would have maybe rolled the Chimera on its side.) They were delayed another turn but by then my assault had kind of run out of legs so they made the roll the next turn, got on the Gun Cutter, went up to the starship and, as expected, orbitablly bombarded the mining complex. Several people wanted to go back and confront whatever was there but the more veteran players made some educated guesses what that might do to the crew and argued for safety and to just nuke it.

Afterward the Captain threw the Navigator they'd just rescued from the natives into the brig, suspecting that he carried whatever taint the planet was affected by. Then he instructed the Psyker and his Seneschal to convince the Navigator to help decode the charts he'd just given them.

Not sure what's going to happen next, other than I'm going to present them a revised star chart with more warp routes plotted. However I came up with a new plot thread. The Rogue Trader whose colony they wrecked wrote them to say "pay me money, a lot of it." The Captain's response was to instead start writing the guy regular letters, going off about the Orc he's hunting and completely ignoring what the Rogue Trader has to actually say. Sort of like a crazy misguided pen pal. I've seen this player do this before as a way to not really play along with whatever the GM is dangling in front of them. Or to derail it by being really unpredictable. Some players have expressed a desire for this Rogue Trader (who they aren't going to pay) to befriend the Captain and support his cause. I've decided to use that to achieve my own ends. See, he's going to act like he's been impressed by the Captain's frankly lunatic ramblings. He's going to say he'll search far and wide for the location of the system where the Ork, and the Albino Ork in particular, live. But he's going to send them off on a wild goose chasing, hoping the Captain and crew are killed out in the depths of the Expanse so he's free to pillage and take over the dynasty's assets.

Narratively it's somewhat of a dick move, but they don't have to believe this intentions or follow his directions. But if I know the Captain, he'll take the bait hook, line and sinker. He may even know it's a trap but he'll RP it to the hilt. And when they find out they've been betrayed, they'll want revenge. I'm going to use this as a possible way to delay the party's inevitable march toward the 'Undred Teef system, and hopefully they'll not get bent out of shape about an RP betrayal. But they've totally earned it by thumbing their nose at a Rogue Trader dynasty that warned them flat out they'd take payment if it wasn't rendered to them.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Plot Twist: 'Undred Teeth is actually an Ork mispronunciation of the system's true name: Undead Shereef.

[nenjin]

And then suddenly Necrons. Oh but I'm saving that for later.

[sprinkled chariot]

What is the ork snipers meme?

Ork strapping five shootas together and mounting scope on them for 300 percent accuracy?

[Grim Portent]

The DE have every reason to keep the Panacea, since so many of their slaves are human. That's part of the horror of it, that something turned from the universal good of humanity is now used as a tool to keep and restore painslaves to even greater heights of suffering. Accidentally nick an artery? Panacea. Finish skinning them and dipping them in grox shit? Panacea. Repeated vacuum exposure? Panacea.

A: Panacea isn't literally a panacea. It treats a very large range (millions) of different diseases and ailments, but it doesn't cure literally everything. Being an STC it presumably treats most diseases that humanity had encountered before the Age of Strife.

B: The DE already use their medical tech on their slaves. According to Path of the Renegade every living thing in Commorragh is infected with a version of the Glass Plague that's held in check by an artificial immune system made by the Haemonculi. All the DE and their slaves and the other species that live in Low Commorragh are inoculated against every disease the Haemonculi can cure as a simple part of living in the city. Panacea can't really do anything that they can't already do themselves.

[Kot]

What is the ork snipers meme?

Ork strapping five shootas together and mounting scope on them for 300 percent accuracy?

Spoiler: STORY TIME! (click to show/hide)

Once upon a time there was a Chapter of Emperors own Space Marines. They were called Celestial Lions, overall very cool dudes, protecting civilians, killing xenos and heretics, being all about courage, leagcy and community. They were also extremly respectful fellows, treated everyone in nice way and each other as equals. They were also very disciplined and effective and one of their traditions was sharing stories with people outside of the chapter so they have more stories, so they totally loved their little Guardsmen fellows. They were also apparently black, as in Africans in Space, and we all know that racial diversity is rare in mainstream WH40k. Sadly they aren't very popular because their colour scheme is pain in ass and they also tend to decorate their armour with star charts so you have to THIN YOUR PAINTS a lot. Basically Space Aslans and Simbas.

Basically right now you start to wonder what the fuck such noblebright chapter does in Grim Darkness of Far Future.

Well, once upon a time there was a world called Khattar. It was a shiny shrine world and everyone was faithful until someone of higher ups started to worship Chaos and Inquisiton took notice. Some guy called Inquisitor Lord Apollyon started the usual procedure of LET'S FUCK THIS SHIT UP and called for help from Celestial Lions. Marines came, Marines saw the corruption in higher ups and Marines blammed. Soon the world was under their control and population surrendered and everything seemed liek a perfectly planned and executed operation of returning a world under Imperial rule, until mentioned Apollyfuck decided to do what chucklefuck Inquisitors do best, and that is declaring EXTERMINATUS. Needless to say, Celestial Lions were not fucking amused. Not only they came long way to help the retard and suffered losses from that, they also saw whole world worth of innocent citzens get vaporized. The guy flipped them off when they went "WHAT THE FUCKITTY FUCK" over his ass so they decided to load up some Chaplains and Captains onto a ship and sent them to Terra so they could fill ridiculous amounts of Inquisitorial complaint paperwork.

Obviously the ship became a subtle Cease & Desist letter from Inquisiton, as in it exploded into pieces in Warp.

Celestial Lions were even less amused but due to not being genre-savvy, they continued to bitch about it and so when they arrived to help during the Third War for Armaggedon, they all got deployed to a Hive Volcanus. Due to spectacularly bad intelligence they suffered huge losses within few months and ended up without support and most of equipment. This is when "Ork Snipers" come into play - one after another Apothecaries and Captains and so on got killed by Turbo-Penetrator round to forehead, something that was later explained as "Ork Snipers" in official documents. At the end of the day, Lions had only 95 marines and no means of retrieving the Gene-Seed of fallen brothers and were basically fucked up for good. Then Black Templars with Chaplain Grimaldus and numerous regiments of Imperial Guard came, wrecked Ork and Inqusition arses and then proceeded to help the Celestials back on their paws, gave them a Strike Cruiser, and a suit of armour and a sword that may or may have not belonged to the Dorn himself. Now they're going around and talking with people about how horrible Inquisition is and how someone should spank their murderboner arses and how it could be a a lot of those someones since Inqusition is fucking annoying to everyone.
AWESOME!
TL;DR
Ork Snipers = Vindicare Assassins taking out fellow Imperial forces for lulz and evilz.

[DJ]

Imperium never really tried to deal with DE. But if they did, what about cloning blanks en masse and just sending a billion or three of blank guardsmen to Commoragh? Mass cloning is a thing, right, because nothing else explains Death Korps of Krieg. And blankness is just a gene.

Alternatively, how's DE technology at restoring territory that got Exterminatused? I figure Imperium could just destroy Commoragh one pocket at a time. Even if some remain hidden, they'll be cut off from supply of fresh slaves and thus just waiting for Slaanesh to find them.

But IMO a more interesting question might be what if Tyranids somehow found their way into Commoragh and consequently Webway as a whole?

[Grim Portent]

Imperium never really tried to deal with DE. But if they did, what about cloning blanks en masse and just sending a billion or three of blank guardsmen to Commoragh? Mass cloning is a thing, right, because nothing else explains Death Korps of Krieg. And blankness is just a gene.

Alternatively, how's DE technology at restoring territory that got Exterminatused? I figure Imperium could just destroy Commoragh one pocket at a time.

Clones in 40k are prone to major defects. Physical mutation, mental degeneracy and early death. Blanks are prone to... oddities. There's very little chance that blanks could be cloned at all, let alone en mass and be in any fit state for combat.

The Death Korps are not clones, they're farmed embryos. The technology is used by a number of factions, including Chaos and the Imperium, to mass produce humans who are of normal quality. They basically surgically remove the ovaries of a few dozen women and collect some sperm samples and they have enough genetic material to create thousands of humans that they then grow to maturity in vats. Or possibly inside horrifically modified women who're basically giant wombs, there's a fan theory that the Vitae Womb technology used by the DKs is a homage to the Dune books, which feature some kind of modified women who serve as broodmothers.



Exterminatus would cause more or less irreparable damage to Commorragh. Cyclonic Torpedoes would shatter any chunk of the city they hit into shards, damage the wraithbone skeleton that maintains the webway's integrity and generally cause everyone in the area to have a bad time. The damage to the webway would allow daemons to surge in from the Warp at will, probably leading to the deaths of every mortal in the area.

The Life Eater Virus would kill most of Commorragh in minutes. The population is very densely packed, and there's a lot of wildlife to serve as carriers into the more remote areas. Probably only the Mandrakes and the more remote Haemonculi covens would survive, and the Life Eater poisons worlds for centuries, so even the Haemonculi that survived would have a hard time adapting themselves to the toxic atmosphere left behind.

Exterminatus with conventional weapons probably wouldn't work. Most of Commorragh is fortified inside and out, protected by energy shields and armed with giant guns. Trying to maintain a sustained bombardment would be difficult if the DE gave up on trying to capture their attackers.

[TempAcc]

Most of the DE's feeling of superiority over the imperium comes from fantastic racism and the fact they have plot stasis immunity. If the imperium really wanted, they could send a couple battle barges in there and smash the shit out of everything in sight. Hell, a single SM chapter decimated an entire region o comorragh using only sub-exterminatus weaponry and infantry to rescue a barge and some space marines. Of course, there's a lot more to commoragh then just the surface, but it was still a huge dent in their general structure from just that conflict.

Though it kinda makes sense no full conflict has erupted yet because 1) the imperium is busy with the 13th black crusade 2) DEldar almost never engage in full conflict, often just sending raid parties to take slaves and other stuff 3) DEldar, apart from having some sadistic fun now and then, some key characters and pain slaves, have no real interest in humanity, like the rest of the eldar;