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nevesmose · 11 days

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A high-ranking legion serf is murdered on an Ultramarine voidship

To avoid even the appearance of impropriety, the Ultras lock down the scene and ask the closest other Legion to investigate

It's the VIII Legion

The Night Lords wander in 2 hours late with bubble tea and start loudly criticising the killer's poor technique in front of the grieving family

Immediately bickering with each other and going off on wild tangents about how they would have done it far better

The Ultramarine assigned as their liaison feels his soul draining away with every passing moment

Hilarity ensues

Somehow the crime is solved correctly

Afterwards the Ultras discover the ship's treasury is empty and all the relics have been stolen including a sleeping Dreadnought

#night lords... you wasted everyone's time and robbed a brother legion #mission complete. amazing work that right there is why you're the best #nightlordposting #night lords

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wolf-tail · 20 days

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Alright im gettin the wolfymic out for this one.

Thoughts on Konradpie/Aussie Magpie Konrad?

They're very intelligent, they're brutal and they can cause concussions by being swooped and putting a hole in your scalp

I preffer Bat Konrad (Konbat? Batrad?) but if there was a bird alive that fit him it would be These Bastards. I've heard stories about them, plus they just look really scary

#nightlordposting

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nevesmose · 23 days

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Bandages on Broken Souls: A Nostramo Culture/Lore Post

Sometimes I think about the wee lower-deck people that were all covered in bandages in the Night Lords Trilogy. Why so bandagey? (Bandagepilled wrapmaxxers, not beating the bandage allegations, etc)

She glanced at the wretch, who was unhealthily tall and sexless in its overcloak, keeping its face behind stained bandages. Several others lurked close to the door, whispering amongst themselves. It was impossible not to smell their sweat, their stinking, bloodstained bandages, and the rancid oil-blood of their bionics.

Those ones. The attendants providing for Octavia's needs as a Navigator. Octavia's attendants.

It turns out ADB does tell us a bit later on:

The chlorine reek of them offended his senses, the way it rose in a miasma from their antiseptic-soaked bandages, as if such trivial protections could ward against the changes of the warp.

This is very interesting to me for a few reasons since it can lead to various interpretations about Nostraman culture, even though it's important to bear in mind that what we're seeing is the degraded situation after however-many thousand subjective years of dicking about in the Warp, Eye of Terror etc.

They believe, or at least Ruven the POV character here thinks they believe, that warp mutation can be defended against with purely physical items i.e. bandages and disinfectant. While it's easy to point to examples of people from all kinds of cultures in the setting using spiritual or metaphysical ways to protect themselves from the warp, I find it interesting that this doesn't seem to occur to the Nostramans.

In fact, unless I'm remembering it wrong (always a possibility tbh) other than a small mention in one of the Gendor Skraivok short stories about there being a secret Lectitio Divinitatus cult among the serfs, there seems to be very little spiritual/religious belief organic to Nostramo itself.

That makes some sense, I think. It is after all Space Gotham, a world of armoured groundcars and looming starscrapers where everyone is living under some form or another of very high pressure just to survive whether that means getting their next meal or keeping their position in high level gang politics. Whatever beliefs the original settlers brought with them to the Sunless World were, I imagine, ground away over time as generations passed and people had other, more visceral concerns.

There are a few scenes in the 1984 nuclear war TV movie Threads that take place in the period about 10-20 years after the bombs have fallen. It's clear that the by now rapidly deteriorating survivors of the pre-war world are trying as best they can to provide some kind of education for their post-war descendants, but this is extremely limited and relies on what they can gather together from whatever books, VHS tapes etc happened to survive the war:

"The skeleton of a cat! A cat's skeleton!"

And we can see that it simply means nothing to the children and young adults whose entire existence revolves around basic survival - mostly food and the things they have to do in order to get it.

This, in a way, is what I think happened to whatever beliefs in anything beyond the material that may have ever existed on Nostramo by the time we see it in the Crusade/Heresy era. It's a sad, stunted little world and I feel immensely sorry for the nasty, skeevy people it produced.

Another factor affecting this would of course be the Night Haunter. You don't really need to have a spiritual/metaphorical figure or system dispensing rules and justice when Konrad is actually real and inside your home making it brutally clear what his views on law-breaking are.

So, in my usual roundabout way, we come back to the bandages again. My view, as I've expressed before in my ramblings, is that Konrad didn't truly eradicate crime on Nostramo so much as eradicate the appearance of it.

There's a legend from Ancient Greece about a Spartan boy training to be a warrior which I'll post as a screenshot below since I think we could all do with a break from my writing style for a bit:

"He could steal and suffer and die rather than be found out" is the relevant part here I think. Much like the idea that snitches get stitches or the mafia code of omertà where one's value in society and life itself hinge on a mutual keeping of silence against any and all authority figures.

We know that even before Konrad arrived, Nostraman society functioned on a gang allegiance basis, so already fertile ground for a very insular and secretive type of culture. But then we add the Night Haunter to the mix and the numbers spell disaster for you at Sacrifice the social pressure in this direction ramps up massively.

It's also made very clear pretty much everywhere that Nostramo is a vicious, predatory society. There's a description in one of the Skraivok stories of Phy Orlon, the canonical smallest saddest uwu-iest Night Lord:

It astounded Skraivok how such a vulpine little thing had made it through the selection process. Even bulked by legionary gifts, Orlon still managed to convey the impression of feebleness. Towards the end, Nostramo had been providing only the dregs of the dregs. No wonder Curze had levelled the place.

Weakness was like the scent of blood in the water to the Night Lords. Legionaries like Orlon would always attach themselves to those they deemed powerful, for protection. That explained the ridiculous batwings welded to the top of his helm in emulation of Sevatar, and why he had appointed himself as Skraivok’s adjutant.

It's like prison or high school. Even the transhuman supersoldier Nostramans still function this way. What hope do ordinary people have?

Not much at all, I think. Just in order to survive day to day it'd be necessary to conceal any injury, weakness or deformity at the risk of having it being ruthlessly used against you by just about everyone.

So we come back to the bandages again. Told you I'd get there eventually. We see that the attendants are in fact completely covered in bandages Joshua Graham style:

‘Lord,’ they hissed through slits in their faces that were once lips. Their bloodstained bandages rustled as they shifted and lowered their weapons.

[...]

She raised a bandaged hand, as if she could possibly bar the warrior’s passage with a demand, let alone with her physical presence.

I can imagine the impulse to cover up and conceal any weakness applies very strongly to warp mutations of any sort. Curdled and degraded over millennia roaming the immaterium in the bowels of a ship with the changes becoming worse and worse the longer they go on, it would be plausible for this to develop into a need to cover up and disinfect every inch of oneself in order to maintain some pretence, however flimsy, of being a capable human being.

The saddest part of it for me, though, is that all of the attendants are like this. It's a situation where everyone is quite literally in the same boat, undergoing the same suffering, and yet they still retain this deeply-ingrained need to hide and conceal themselves from each other. It feels like even here, ten thousand years after its destruction, Nostramo's poison is still influencing them, still flowing through their veins to keep them separated, afraid, and deeply alone.

Oh wow, a few paragraphs from ADB somehow led to a great long wall of text. Congratulations if you've made it this far!

PS: This being ADB I feel obliged to consider the possibility of Ruven either lying or being mistaken. I don't think this is likely since he is a) also Nostraman and b) a sorcerer meaning that if there was any spiritual aspect going on he would more than likely have the requisite cultural/magical knowledge or experience to be aware of it or otherwise detect it. Ruven is a conniving goth thot but he has no reason to lie in that particular bit of his own thoughts.

#night lords #lore #nostraman culture #lore post #wh40k #warhammer 40000 #warhammer 40k #horus heresy #nostramo #warhammer lore #in this house we respect Hound who deserved far better than what he got #nightlordposting #is this domestic lore? i feel like it is #domestic lore #this will be the 327th post in which i have mentioned Threads (1984) and i have become exceedingly good at it #neves loreposts

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nevesmose · 11 days

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So there I was being Kubo on Lexicanum when I saw this:

Lmao Kryroptera. But that's a really interesting idea. What's the citation?

Jolly good, at least isn't an audio drama that only exists on a wax phonograph cylinder or something that was revealed to ADB in a dream.

Having read the chapter over a few times and enjoyed a lot of typical Night Lords bickering and doing sarcastic impressions of each other, I think this is the relevant point (some jackass has been seen killing valuable legion serfs):

Aww. I was all excited for Space Detective Sevatar but this reads to me more like Curze wanting his captains to clamp down on the Legion being full of serial unalivers (sorry, couldn't resist) and bring him this one particular bat boy for judgement than it does an order for the Kyroptera to generally investigate murders on Night Lords vessels.

What a shame. I'd enjoy Space Detective Sevatar, it sounds like a 90s anime.

#THE HEART #someone somewhere gets it #Uchu Tantei Sebata aired for 3 seasons between 1996 and 1999 #its english dub was done by 4Kids #heavy censorship was applied and all the food was edited to be donuts #Curze was deemed too scary so he was replaced with a chibi bat mascot character who said and did the exact same things #there was one beach episode but everybody got sunburned #night lords #konrad curze #jago sevatarion #kyroptera #nightlordposting #if Night Lords being forced to act as severely underqualified space detectives doesn't exist in canon then I'll just have to write it myself

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nevesmose · 1 month

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I've been doing a bit of folklore/urban legend research for another Night Lords lore post since people seemed to like the first one, and apparently I stopped watching Adventure Time just before this particular episode.

Go and be a teacher on Nostramo, they said. Help to bring the light of the Imperial Truth to the kids. It'll be fun, they said.

0845 - 0900 Registration (of the previous night's deaths)

0900 - 1100 We Love the Night Haunter

1100 - 1115 Interval (gang violence to be kept to an appropriate minimum)

1115 - 1245 Nostraman Poetry

1245 - 1345 Lunch (pupils are sent into the underhive to hunt rats and/or each other)

1345 - 1400 Evidence Disposal (pupils who didn't survive lunch are fed to the school crows)

1400 - 1500 We Still Love the Night Haunter

1500 - 1530 Basic Human Anatomy

1530 - 1600 Criminal Accountancy (including Principles of Tax Evasion)

1600 - 1615 Colours (pupils attempt to imagine colours other than black and grey)

1615 - 1645 Beefs (the day's gang feuds are resolved)

1645 - 1700 Expulsions (underperforming pupils without sufficient underworld connections are sent to serve the VIII Legion)

1700 - 2000 Minecraft (in the adamantium mines)

#it's s7e19 “blank eyed girl” btw #my thesis is that Nostramans would be so instinctually offputting to normies that it'd be low level uncanny valley #even ignoring their “delightful” culture and personalities #i like to imagine the second gif is First Claw as kids tbh #that's Uzas rolling in on the lower left #a rubik's cube would blow their minds like in spider verse #wh40k #warhammer 40000 #warhammer 40k #night lords #adventure time #nightlordposting

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nevesmose · 18 days

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Were there any Legions that actually liked the Night Lords before the Heresy? I'm just thinking about it because whenever they come up in other POVs the view just seems to be "urgh, Curze's murderers" or "the barbarians of the Eighth" or similar.

Like, the driving force of The Abyssal Edge is the TSons' report that says:

The Night Lords have already disengaged, leaving us alone. Doubtless they go to take their moronic viciousness elsewhere, parading their ignorance as the ultimate virtue, claiming they did only what had to be done.

Lmao go snuggle a daemon Khayon, Ahriman's never going to take you to space prom. But even the Iron Warriors get in on the action while literally in the middle of destroying their own homeworld just like the Eighth did:

‘By turning its back on us, Olympia shames us. The people of our world must be punished. If we do not do it, where will our honour be? Where our strength? We will be a laughing stock.’

‘Better that than monsters,’ replied Kellephon. ‘What are we, Curze’s murderers?’

So I guess I'm just wondering who could plausibly have formed a positive view of them?

I know there's the period where Fulgrim was getting Curze prepared for leading his legion but to be honest I can't think of anything more awkward than a room full of crusade-era Emperor's Children and Night Lords trying to relate to one another.

#Night Lord Azula isn't real she can't hurt you #night lords #nightlordposting #wh40k #warhammer 40000 #warhammer 40k #horus heresy

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nevesmose · 10 hours

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One day I'd like to write something from the POV of these particular Night Lords during the Crusade era:

Just doing sick donuts and skids in the car park while the non-mechanised elements of the legion sneak into places.

It's important to note here that, per The Abyssal Edge, the canonical behaviour of Night Lords waiting for something is basically what you'd expect from them:

Where the Thousand Sons stood in defiant vigil, as rigid as automatons, the Night Lords were grouped in loose flame-unit teams, speaking amongst themselves and eyeing the tower’s defenders with a naked revulsion that curdled their white faces. The stalemate had stood for three hours so far. Packs of Night Lords occasionally spread apart so pairs of warriors could duel – over abused honour, avenging insults or mere boredom. The Thousand Sons allowed themselves no such laxity in discipline.

On an unidentified tropical world, a vast disciplined column of Imperial Fists and/or Iron Warriors vehicles rolls past into a besieged city after a mighty bombardment has finally brought down its walls

VIII Legion chronicles record it as a solo victory against overwhelming odds

17th Chapter playing Top Gun style shirtless volleyball with a net strung between two elevated tank barrels and having an old fashioned Nostraman summer cookout (roasting rats over a trash fire) or just beating each other up

#night lords #nightlordposting #wh40k #warhammer 40k #warhammer 40000 #horus heresy

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nevesmose · 2 days

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We have the Night Lords legion symbol at home:

#cropped for posterity from my nostraman runes post earlier #aren't you glad I usually write instead?#nightlordposting

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nevesmose · 10 days

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Crunching Bones and Numbers: A Nostramo Mathpost

Stand well back Night Lords fans, I'm attempting to use mathematics.

Just how much time did Nostramo have to endure suffer love the brutal effective redemptive actions of its murderer monster king? How long was Konrad actually there to have an effect on them?

This is all going by GW's timeline of the Heresy which can be found here btw.

Let's intepret this as generously as possible by saying that the 792.M30 date given here refers to the scattering of the primarchs rather than some other point earlier in Big E's fun little project.

So baby Konrad gets yeeted over to Nostramo. Does he toddle out of his little primarch pod and immediately choose violence?

Probably, yeah. We can imply some implications from Perturabo's primarch book which is fairly clear on his growth and capabilities.

So we can interpret this as a """""baby""""" primarch still appearing as an older child and being capable of doing their primarchey tasks either right at the start or very close to it.

So again, in order to be as generous to him as possible, let's assume that Konrad arrived on Nostramo in 792.M30 and immediately started night hauntering.

896 - 792 = 104 years. Hmm. That's quite a long time, but not immensely long by 30 / 40K standards even for normal humans. Turning back to Perty's book we can see that Calliphone who grew up with him in the 790s is still alive, albeit very old and reliant on augmetics, when he destroys Olympia in 004.M31 which puts her at a bit over 200 years old.

During the same scene she also mentions that Andos "refused the medicines of the Emperor" and died 90 years before then, which still means he lived to about 110.

So taking that as a baseline for a minimally-augmented human in a privileged social class with good access to healthcare and so on, Konrad was on Nostramo for about one aristocrat's natural lifetime.

That's not that long when you're trying to single-handedly overturn millennia of entrenched corruption and hopelessness with extreme violence as your only tool.

Even if we use half that lifespan because Nostramo is Nostramo, that's still about 50 years. Putting it in chunks on a timeline, your parents could've been adults when the Night Haunter came and your kids would be adults after he left. Sucks to be that particular generation in the middle though.

Looking at it that way, I feel like it makes some sense for Nostramo to have gone back to its old ways pretty soon after Konrad left. It didn't spend that long being forced out of them to begin with.

I also really enjoyed this part:

STOP CLOWNING ON KONRAD 😤

I just love the idea that Calliphone has been Watching and Judging the primarchs this whole time and has a personal ranking of best to worst. She could've fixed him, 300k word Curziphone fic coming soon.

#I wonder who her favourite was?#neves loreposts #night lords #nostramo #konrad curze #wh40k #warhammer 40000 #warhammer 40k #horus heresy #nightlordposting #wh30k #Konrad as the Baby from Dinosaurs is a delightfully cursed mental image isn't it? you're welcome #“AH HA HA I'M THE NIGHT HAUNTER! GOTTA LOVE ME!”

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nevesmose · 1 month

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When Sevatar invites you to join the new Kyroptera but then you realise he also included his mute Raven Guard boyfriend in order to rig every vote in his favour:

#i like to think even the smallest of interactions between high ranking NLs are like this in their minds at least #an excellent ploy Xarglahrghlach but it is in fact I who am in front of you in the line for the refectorium #curses! but you shall one day suffer my wrath Sadistyon #3000 years later he runs up and slaps him in the back of the head when nobody is looking #just as planned #nightlordposting #night lords #wh40k #warhammer 40000 #jago sevatarion #alastor rushal

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nevesmose · 1 month

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Jago Sevatarion, First Captain of the Night Lords, begins brutally torturing the captive Raven Guard Alastor Rushal (006.M31)

#nightlordposting #night lords #wh40k #raven guard #jago sevatarion #alastor rushal #warhammer 40000

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nevesmose · 30 days

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Nostram-O's Oops! All Serial Killers™

#nightlordposting

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nevesmose · 30 days

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Sometimes I feel like Konrad's actions didn't so much eliminate all crime on Nostramo as they did concentrate it in the hands of the most powerful gangs/nobles who had the resources to organise and conceal it.

Konrad Curze: The Gentrification Haunter

#nightlordposting

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nevesmose · 1 month

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Just a quick one for the Sevatar fans out there - I'm writing a historical AU fic in which it could be plausible for him to have a beard. But should he?

#palpatine voice: i love democracy #audience participation #jago sevatarion #sevatar #nightlordposting #wh40k #but what's it about neves? what new ideas and interesting takes on the characters will it bring?#never mind that we have facial hair to consider

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nevesmose · 1 month

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All Nostraman music from every genre and time period just sounds like this: