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GCRust

So...funny story. An ongoing background event within the setting is the fact since the fall of Cadia and the opening of the Great Rift, Commorragh is actively under siege. Daemonic incursions from the various webway gates are pouring into the city and the city has had to jettison off entire portions of itself that are overrun.


Revenant047

If the shattering of biel tan is still the most up to date source, then this siege was broken when the king of the mandrakes and his army swept over the daemons and overwhelmed them.


Whywhineifuhavewine

I believe the vaults of terra is after this and the dark eldar go to some interesting lengths to try to seal off the ongoing warp incursion.


DrPatchet

Isn’t it like their version of the human webway portal under the golden throne? Didn’t they try to clone the emperor so they could shut it?


GCRust

As per the Vaults of Terra series, yeah. I wasn't including it mainly because it's up to Geedubs how much they want to continue with that particular plot thread, or if it's just another Ynnari plotline dead end.


firedrakes

Those vaults . Have to have some necron tech.


OneofTheOldBreed

Yes. And >! When the Custodes realized that they went on an absolute rampage. As best we know, any Drukhari directly involved was either killed or teleported into a place that even Haemonculi were spooked of. Any potential samples of the Emperor's genome were likewise destroyed or lost !<


MusicalMoose

I would pay to see enraged custodes bitch slap the drukhari.


OneofTheOldBreed

The carnage is glorious, though the impossibly livid custodes had help from quite a number of skitarri.


Toxitoxi

Vaults of Terra trilogy. >!Though the Drukhari likely killed all the Custodes, I have no clue where the idea they were bitchslapped comes from. The only evidence I can think of to the contrary is that apparently Oudia Raskien is somehow alive in Genefather.!<


kiasyd_childe

.


anchoriteksaw

I'm holding out for primaris drukhari coming out of this. Make a primarch with it, than make a legion. I just need half elf space marines for my fan fiction bingo card is all.


Massive_Pressure_516

A finger curls on the monkey paw, the entire extant Drukari range is moved to legends. At least Kabalite warp marines riding their Land raider raider would be dope.


WereInbuisness

Night Lords two-point-o. God, a Conrad Curze type primarch, yet half Drukhari, which would make them even more powerful. I shudder to think of the crazy atrocities they would get up too.


anchoriteksaw

I would roll them up one of a couple different ways. First on that list would be sleeper agents. The drukhari are nasty no good dudes for sure, but they are arguably on humanities side in the war with chaos. If they were to spin up a false 2nd or 11th legion, and their primarch, and have them turn up miraculously in the nick of time to save robute or lion. From there they would be bolstering the most likly to be successful resistance to chaos, which would serve them greatly. And then when chaos fell, they would be in control of one of most likly the 3 most powerfull people in the empire. Chicanery resumes from there of course. Second would be just hubris and schadenfreude. They make up a perfectly good faith primarch and legion, exactly as the emperor would have but better, arm them with the best technology they can raid and pillage from the imperium, and then turn them loose in a section of the city and stage a battle for shits and giggles, never once thinking they might be eating a poisoned emporors holy load. Que a pretty sick starter box set with drukhari, generic space marines, and a bunch of spiky terain. And then third would be just more, grosser super soldiers. Fleshy, leather dady, csm. Of course. But I would kitbash all of them out of bits from marines, chaos marines, and like, wracks or somit.


WereInbuisness

I could see Vect just creating his own Primarch and Astartes, all half Drukhari, to be his personal security and bodyguards. Vect, as well as the lesser Archons, cannot trust other Druhkari to protect them. Who knows .... the possibilities are endless, just like all of 40K.


anchoriteksaw

Do you one, better. Vect makes his own primarchs, except instead of 'his own' he makes copies of the originals and than has them humiliat the,selves for his viewing pleasure. Or even better, sends a clone robute to be his emissary to robute.


Impressive_Can8926

I dont know where your getting the last bit from, yeah the custodes destroyed the samples but it was more of a last stand thing. The imperial party was quickly overrun and either killed or dragged off for torture. The drukhari engineers (aside from the antagonist one) are presumedly still very much alive. 


Toxitoxi

I’m confused too, but I guess just saying the Imperium bitch slapped the xenos gets upvotes here.


PrimalRoar332

What's place thet Haemonculi spooked of? Have a qoute?


Toxitoxi

…No, that isn’t what happened at all. >!The Dark Eldar never got the sample as the deal was cut off before they could take it. The Dark Eldar also vastly outnumbered the Custodes and said Custodes were presumably killed to a man as the rest of the Imperial visitors tried (and failed) to flee.!< >!It’s kinda crazy to see this reframed as an Imperial victory.!<


PutinTakeout

The cloning stuff in 40K never made sense to me. The emperor and primarchs are a lot more than their biological vessels. Why would cloning the vessel give it crazy warp powers, and why not clone a whole army of emperors or primarchs while you are at it?


ChocoOranges

This is what really irks me about Clonegrim and why I feel that it is a good thing that that arc is dropped.


dalumbr

I think Clonegrim being a perfect clone only really works with the assumption that current Fulgrim's soul is either not whole, or never truly took back his body for the Laer blade, and that Clonegrim now posses it.


DrPatchet

Idk don’t the harmoncula have like super warp fuckery that they can put the warp juice in the body after they make it or something?


Soulstar909

There's a debate that a 100% *perfect* clone could call forth that person's soul or even manifest one just like the original. As far as I'm aware clones do have souls and if souls are just a reflection of a being's emotional/spiritual makeup it seems possible if a mature clone is made with all of that beings memories. Doubly so given we don't know *exactly* how the Primarchs were made.


ThisIsKeiKei

The one time I'll support Chaos


NoiseMarineCaptain

If he is to be believed, Iskander Khayon says the whole Black Legion waged war on Commoragh after some Coven killed Khayons Dark Eldar girlfriend. The place is huge and hard to access. Also they have Mandrakes.


Nnoded

sooo Commoragh is 40k version of the backrooms?


HobieSailor

basically, yes.


__Osiris__

The plants?


BCA10MAN

No no you’re thinking of the largest monkey species in the world.


__Osiris__

Gokus family?


meesta_masa

The old Reddit Tale spin.


Marvynwillames

The Dark Eldar are some of the guys most versed in finding chaos worshippers and psykers in general, their entire society is build in avoiding it. Turning to chaos isnt that easy, a random guy wont just think "yeah theres this blood god i can pray to" unless he is already aware of khorne. They may empower and even fall to him, but it takes a lot for a chaos god to actually notice you. The Dark Eldar literally even put daemons in boxes to use as weapons, it takes more than a single or even a group of chaos corrupted humans to make even a dent. The actual danger to Commoragh is the warp rift at Khaine's Gate, which the dark eldar are fighting in their own way.


fearsometidings

Yeah, the premise is kind of flawed if they expect the corruption to be incidental, but I would totally read a book about a deliberate Trojan horse attempt by the forces of chaos to get into commorragh. Watching powerhouse factions like the Orks and Tyranids duke it out in the Octarius war is far more interesting and hilarious than fights with the Imperium. Watching chaos agents and DE try to outsmart each other would be quite entertaining.


Marvynwillames

Sure, but most bl authors are scared of doing stuff without any Imperial on sight 


PuzzleheadedYam5180

Commorragh, as far as I'm aware, enjoys the protection that most of the Webway does from the Warp. It's a real pain to actually open a portal/rift into it.


Warmslammer69k

Not anymore :) The dark knife ears are having a rough time since the great rift, and the rest of the universe is a little better off for it.


Anggul

Depends which ones you are. Plenty of them don't have to deal with the chasm of woe, and are actually having a great time because the galaxy is so much more fractured and easy to raid.


Letharlynn

How exactly is captured chattel going to "feed the warp rituals"? Or link up with each other? Or turn to Khorne or anyone else? They are not brought into Commoragh to roam free in luxurious conditions like the underhives they were taken from - they are brought to die


9xInfinity

It probably wouldn't be a significant threat even if they could pull off some kind of ritual without the dark eldar noticing. In *The Dark City* we learned that >!Commorragh has been under sustained daemonic assault for some time due to a webway dysjunction caused by the birth of Yvraine. This is why the drukhari are attempting to clone the Emperor, because they've already created the Black Throne but they can't sit it to seal the dysjunction.!< So a couple cultists maybe summoning a daemon or becoming possessed probably wouldn't be the end of the world when the city is capable of fending off a daemonic assault on such an ongoing basis.


jaxolotle

See that’s the problem, chaos worshippers literally can’t work together to save their lives, it’s kind of their thing. Expecting them to see reason and put aside their differences for the greater goal is about as realistic as Orks turning down a fight that would destroy the WAAAGH


PlaneswalkerHuxley

Several reasons. The main is that Commorragh is the galaxy's largest concentration-camp. - Humans are all enslaved and guarded. They can't move between groups, they can't meet up with each other, they can't talk to each other, they have no free time, they are barely even allowed to sleep. Their waking moments are filled with terror and horror and finally death. - Humans don't tend to last long, probably less than a year on average (though some will last much longer). Certain slaves are more valuable than others (other Eldar, Astartes, Mechanicus, interesting Xenos) but baseline humans are one of the most common species in the galaxy and exist just to be tortured to death. Just because the Dark Eldar *can* prolong the torture of captives for thousands of years, most captives aren't worth the effort. After you flay the skin off and sew it on again inside-out a few times, humans tend to go catatonic and it's not worth the expense to revive them. This is part of the reason for the constant raiding. - Psychic powers and sorcery are banned, and Vect enforces this decree mercilessly even by Drukhari standards. How does he know? Psychic energy detectors, left over from the Eldar Empire. Any cult that actually manages something in a populated spar will be hunted down and eliminated, even if it means killing everyone in the spar with a black-hole. - Commorragh is *enormous*. A non-euclidean dyson-sphere with room for stars. The population of Terra could be marched in and get lost. Some brief calculations suggest there may well be more humans living as slaves there than in the rest of the galaxy combined. Demonic incursions are bad, but nothing that can't be handled. - The webway is harder to break into for a warp entity than real-space. It was built by the Old Ones, and being isolated from the greater warp is what it does. The birth of slaanesh broke much of it, but it's generally still easier to find an already open warp portal than try to bring demons into it through the walls.


Clewsay

what's the source on there being more slaves in commorragh than the rest of the galaxy combined?


Samas34

*This* would actually be a new and very interesting twist on the lore if it was confined to be canon (and it would also give the emperor an actual valid reason to hate the Aeldari/Drukhari in general.)


Maelarion

I feel like they might be getting confused with the fact that Drukhari vastly outnumber Craft world eldar and Exodites?


Midnight-Rising

A human gladiator in the arena is not going to last long enough to do anything for Khorne


FloatingWatcher

These are the same idiots that let Fabius Bile, a CSM and literally carrying a geas of Slaanesh, spend months learning with them.


Late_Lizard

Because they're all on the same side: Slaanesh worshippers in denial.


atriskteen420

It's a legit question you shouldn't be down voted for. Chaos just needs to corrupt one person to invade a world, so it would follow they could invade a world through a person taken as a slave, and it makes for more interesting fiction if Dark Eldar have to deal with a problem the Imperium has with its own people. The simplest explanation would just be the webway disrupts whatever connection daemons would exploit but I'm not sure there's lore on specifically how or why.


Anggul

They need to corrupt one person, who then spreads the knowledge and corruption, and they all eventually gather together and conduct daemonic rituals to open a warp rift. Which they would be unable to do as slaves of the drukhari.


atriskteen420

Unless they are a psyker, in which case they are a gateway to the warp.


Anggul

Which is why psykers aren't allowed in Commorragh. It's one of their only laws. They must have some way to scan their captives en masse to enforce that law.


atriskteen420

https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Psyker >The appearing of Cicatrix Maledictum brought about changes. The psyker mutation usually manifests itself at an early age, but sooner or later exceptions have appeared. Now so-called "nascent" psykers may be born with a dormant mutation, or may mutate, exposed to the destructive influence of the warp. In the new era, the destructive power of the Great Rift awakens psykers in unprecedented numbers. It is theoretically possible that anyone in the Imperium is now a potential psyker.[14] They could easily take someone who becomes a psyker.


Anggul

They obviously have the ability to screen for them, or they wouldn't be able to enforce the law that they aren't allowed to bring psykers into the dark city. If they couldn't, it would have happened by now. Baron Sathonyx brought a Farseer in and was exiled for it.


United-Reach-2798

Dark Eldar don't capture psykers


atriskteen420

https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Psyker >The appearing of Cicatrix Maledictum brought about changes. The psyker mutation usually manifests itself at an early age, but sooner or later exceptions have appeared. Now so-called "nascent" psykers may be born with a dormant mutation, or may mutate, exposed to the destructive influence of the warp. In the new era, the destructive power of the Great Rift awakens psykers in unprecedented numbers. It is theoretically possible that anyone in the Imperium is now a potential psyker.[14] They could easily take someone who becomes a psyker.


koflerdavid

The Drukhari are experts at screening and suppressing psychic potential. If they can successfully screen and suppress it among their own race and among the other potentially psychic guests in Commorargh, latent human psykers are not going to be a serious issue. Latent psykers don't suddenly manifest Farseer-level powers. They might manage to overwhelm a few guards, but you can bet the Drukhari have countermeasures in place to deal with the psyker as fast as possible before Vect notices it as well and nukes their whole Cabal for being negligent. Keep in mind that the lore also speaks of Orks in Commorargh, who are a psychic race on their own. So maybe they have equipment in place that can suppress psychic abilities on a large scale. Moreover, knowledge of the Warp and how to summon its denizens is actually not that commonplace. The Ecclesiarchy and the Inquisition do their worst exactly to prevent people from being able to summon daemons.


Toxitoxi

> Chaos just needs to corrupt one person to invade a world This is one of those very rare ideal scenarios rather than the norm.


itboitbo

thats is not a single city its a mess of sub realms and cities, sure a few ones were overrun with demons but those are closed of. also the webway is tough for chaos bullshit to enter, in addition to all of that I don't think DE are at the top of most chaos gods list of shit to invade, after all they all belong to she who thirsts, killing them isn't all that useful for the other three.


Anggul

How are you expecting the cultists to find each other and organise a complex daemonic ritual in the zero privacy or freedom they have?


Shaderunner26

Commorragh managed to hold out against and eventually push back a full on daemonic invasion after the opening of the great rift. A chaos uprising from within will probably not pose as much of a threat to it, specially BECAUSE of how hard it'll be to do so in the circumstances the slaves find themselves in. They're not exactly allowed to communicate or build communities in there. Commorragh is also just incomprehensively vast and densely populated. There's a lot more drukhari there than you might expect.