Antediluvian vampires (World of Darkness) in Warhammer 40k

[gamer]

In their fictional world, have these beings taken over the Earth?

Their are alot of other superbeings in existence in the World of Darkness, problem with the vampires is that they really don't want to take over and also all the ancients antediluvian vampires are all asleep, the world ends when they wake up and I believe God himself personally slaps them down.

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm a bit curious how they're supposed to control the Imperium. Control a planet yes I can believe that, but controlling the Imperium is going to be a bit more complicated methinks, even for the Antediluvians.

Also, I'm pretty sure a number of sources aside from 'Week of Nightmares' gave indication that nukes are pretty effective even against the Antes (I think the Gehenna sourcebook did as a way to stop most of the Rampaging Antes, and in the Transylvannia chronicles one Ante tried arranging a nuke launch to take out another one. And the ones that took out Ravnos were (magic) neutron bombs, so I suspect they weren't super high yield nukes used and they actually detonated a fair distance away from Ravnos.)

[Pendragon]

In their fictional world, have these beings taken over the Earth?

Good point. If they can't deal with 20th century earth, they wont be able to deal with 400th century earth. Well, possibly unless they stopped going after each other...

[Napoleon the Clown]

You can't control a planet when you're in torpor, which most of the Antes were in. And just how much control they wanted to have is questionable, too. When the bastards all woke up it was end of the world shit.

Most probably wouldn't be as interested in controlling the Imperium as they would be in scheming against each other. They're rather petty like that.

[Connor MacLeod]

Well they can sort of control a planet. we've heard of a number of Ante's remaining active psychically/spiritually even if their current bodies are in torpor. Morover some of those 'diablerized' actually seem to be up and running perfectly okay because they've basically 'possessed' those who took their blood, so there are ways around that. Given the scope of their powers and their ability to create ghouls and other vampires, I think controlling a planet to SOME degree is not impossible.

The reasons they haven't taken control of Earth in the World of Darkness is because they're not unopposed on that planet. As we saw in the Week of Nightmars there are plenty of factions (technocracy, Kuei-Jin, Werewolves, etc.) who will take a direct role to oppose and destroy any vampiric threats. Mages, Faery, Mummies, Hunters of all stripes... one could go on and on. And the Vampires are hardly unified; they fight amongst themselves as much as they fight with anyone else.

The difficulties come in trying to control beyond a single system. They'll need warp capable ships and access to astro-telepathy of some kind, and even then they're not going to have any better a time exerting control than any other faction within the Imperium does. Taking over the High Lords will not neccesarily solve things or make it easy to control - the Imperium is too vast and cumbersome. and even if they did, I couldn't see how they'd maintain power without someone catching wind and then its the Reign of Blood all over again.

The best case is going to be sending out trusted vampiric 'agents' to do their dirty work, but that's going to be an imperfect process at best. And it's debatable whether they become any more significant a 'subversive' threat than any other enemy the Imperium faces (Chaos, Genestealers, etc.) Aside from being vampires there really isn't anything unique to them.

Direct combat is something of a joke and probably the most retarded way they could go about trying to control things, if for no other reason that blasting the planet from orbit would end whatever threat the Ante posed right quick.

[Lord Revan]

correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't any large scale (read:planet wide or wider) mind control/manipulation have a really high chance of attrating attention from Tzeench (or at least from some of his more powerfull servants) and we also know imperium (well the inquisition) isn't above of nuking a planet from orbit on the off-chance it might cause powerfull chaos force to come out of the warp.

[gamer]

I'm a bit curious how they're supposed to control the Imperium. Control a planet yes I can believe that, but controlling the Imperium is going to be a bit more complicated methinks, even for the Antediluvians.

Also, I'm pretty sure a number of sources aside from 'Week of Nightmares' gave indication that nukes are pretty effective even against the Antes (I think the Gehenna sourcebook did as a way to stop most of the Rampaging Antes, and in the Transylvannia chronicles one Ante tried arranging a nuke launch to take out another one. And the ones that took out Ravnos were (magic) neutron bombs, so I suspect they weren't super high yield nukes used and they actually detonated a fair distance away from Ravnos.)

The smallest nukes the technocracy used against Ravnos were stated to have a yield of 50 Mt and they had some sort of soul-destroying effect which also caused the barrier between the physical and spiritual world to start to collapse making things worse. As for accuracy they essentially carpet-nuked the area Ravnos was located in and at 50 Mt you don't have to drop the nuke directly on his cranium. But all of this really wouldn't matter direct combat is the most retarded way to take out the Imperium the only ante that could probably do well in direct combat would be Tzimisce mainly because he is actually immortal as in nothing you can do can kill him think something like Alucard but wanked even further and he could rape an entire planet by taking over the entire biosphere. Lasombra would be difficult to take out with orbital bombardment mainly because of the mastery of obtenebration with it Lasombra could shadow teleport into the bridge of your ship and mind control everyone there.

As for antediluvians vs daemons I don't think they'll attract to much daemonic attention since none of their powers use the warp plus from the way vampires are portrayed in the World of Darkness they seem to be very similar to blanks, they can't use magic that mages use, they are highly resistant to things like dominate.

[Connor MacLeod]

Where was the yield stated? I want to know that.

[Napoleon the Clown]

I do recall that the Technocracy's nukes fucked up multiple "dimensions" where they were used. The umbra, penumbra, etc also got screwed up to all hell and back. I've never heard anything about weapons yields, though. Magic nukes are hard to compare to what the Imperium does when it glasses a planet's surface. I do find it safe to assume that pretty much any Ante would meet its Final Death if it were targeted by the Imperium.

The powers that they have are too diverse to say how the whole would handle things, too. Obfuscate is outright stated to be able to wipe your existence from history. So anyone who has mastered it isn't getting detected without WANTING it to happen. Anyone with Auspex is gonna be able to know what's going to happen before the people who will do it have even started thinking about it. Presence means they'll like you too damn much to try anything...

Really, the problem with the Antes is that because they are nothing more than plot devices they're exactly as powerful as the drama demanded at that time. This is one of those scenarios that really can't be answered.