Asking for feedback on a WH40K/Star Wars crossover idea

[technomage]

I've been playing with an idea for my first fanfic for several months now, and if anyone thinks this idea is workable or not, I'd like your opinions.

Underlying premise: The Warhammer and Star Wars galaxies are the same. Sometime after the 41st Millennium, the C'tan finally complete the Great Ward, with all of the effects that are discussed in various other threads. Without the constant influx of emotional energy to sustain them, all of the entities in the Warp (Daemons, Chaos, the Emperor, etc.) eventually fade away and disperse.

The place where my thoughts diverge his here. I have two ideas. In one, the Great Ward also ultimately destroys the C'tan. Because of the separation between Matterium and Empyrean, all of the psychic energy generated by living creatures now has no place to go. (I've always envisioned the Warp as a sort of "psychic sink" absorbing all of the mental/life energies generated by living creatures.) Eventually, this energy builds up in the physical universe, and over the course of a few thousand years slowly poisons the C'tan the way you can kill a frog by placing it in a pot of cool water on a stove, and then slowly heat it to a boil. By the time they realize what's going on, it's too late and they're dying, and they can't turn off the Ward because it will render them vulnerable. (The various Warp entities will take millennia to fade, and we know that the Chaos Gods can affect the Matterium directly, if they're willing to expend enough power, the way they stole the infant Primarchs.) The C'tan die, and eventually, after a few hundred thousand years, what's left of the Imperium and other races post-Ward will be well on the road to what will eventually become the Galactic Republic (founded circa 25,000 years before Yavin.)

In the other, the C'tan don't die, they just realize the danger in time and hide themselves away in shielded tombs as they did before.

In case anyone hasn't figured it out, yes, all of that energy trapped in the physical universe eventually becomes the Force.

[Duckie]

The C'Tan and their Necrons locking themselves up again would make an interesting crossover villainry. I don't really like Necrons, but it'd still be cool.

But excepting Stasis Necrons how will it be a crossover if the two universes are the same +/- 30 Bazillion Years? Time Travel?

As far as your Warp idea, it sounds very plausable if you don't mind ripping GW Canon about the warp apart to make it work.

And in the Prologue you need to have a scene where the Adeptus Custodes are standing guard around the Emperor thousands of years after the Great Ward after the Chaos Gods have faded quite a while and he just flat out dies on them. I don't know how they'd notice (him being in the giant machine), but it'd be an awesome chapter (cover it up? run screaming in circles?).

Interesting thought- if Chaos fades faster than the Emperor, the Emperor will return to life. AFAIK the only thing keeping him from getting up and mumbling "Hey, Dorn, how long was I out for?" to his guards is that any expenditure of energy unnescessary to keep himself alive is devoted to resisting the Chaos Gods. NecronLord, I believe, said "If he even twitches a finger they'd anihiliate him" or similar. Emperor alive, only to die again mortally. Odd.

[NecronLord]

The ward would cut the link between his body and spirit (in the warp). He wouldn't be able to get back, and his body would probably just be a brain-dead vegetable. And no, the power is drawn from the warp, supposedly, though one of the comics does imply that pariahs can have telekinetic powers. It doesn't actually come from people, but from their link with the warp.

[Duckie]

But the fact that all Warp Entities in this fic aren't immediately destroyed by the Ward but instead fade shows that in the technomageverse The Great Warding takes time to build up to 100% Warpless. During that time my suppositions about The Emperor would presumably be correct.

[technomage]

Hardly a technomageverse yet.

It's an idea that occurred to me while at work, and the more I think about it, the more I like it.

The problem for me is that Critical Hit and other such sites are my primary info source on 40K, with fanfic my second, so I'm not at all sure on 3rd and 4th ed. revisions of fluff and other background. Going by what I know, it seemed plausible. Especially since the 40Kverse seemed to be an excellent ancient backstory for Star Wars, explaining how humans got scattered over the galaxy, and how the loss of the Warp forced planets to survive in isolation for millennia. Hell, the Necrons could even be the "ancient, believed long-extinct" race that invented hyperdrive.

What I want to write is the story of the Great Ward failing again. If the Necrons have been gone for tens of millennia, and no one even remembers the Warp, the slow but steady collapse of the Ward from lack of maintenance is entirely possible. How would Force-sensitives handle becoming psykers? How would galactic civilization handle the return of the Warp? The rise of psychic powers, and the corresponding attention of Warp-entities, is what brought down the Dark Age of Technology, after all. Would they be able to handle it? Would they be able to establish the training systems and technology to handle widespread psychic powers, warp storms, daemons, and mutation before the vast populations of the GFFA (which I'm sure are much larger than those in the IoM's era) inadvertantly kickstart a whole new batch of Warp Gods? What would happen to the Force? We know it's self-aware on at least some level, so would it avoid returning to the Warp? Flow away like water running down a drain?

I was thinking it might transform into a pair of new Warp Gods, embodying the Light Side and the Dark Side.

[NecronLord]

There aren't enough force sensatives in SW to make a warp god. Only 10,000 at jedi level, and say, a million with some measureable talent. The Imperium of Man alone has more psykers than that. Of course, the common herd, greatly multiplied in numbers would perhaps be useful in creating one.

Though I would be more interested in the efforts of the C'tan to take over the galazy and repair their system, but this time regulate it to work properly. Possibly by first appearing to be the good-guys... Out-manipulating Palpatine perhaps.

What era were you thinking of?

[technomage]

It should tell you how undeveloped this idea is that I haven't really decided.

My first choice is the era 1-2000 years before TPM. The Sith aren't yet limited by their "rule of two" and are a major factor in the galaxy, and the Jedi haven't yet begun their slow descent into stagnant, dogmatic idiocy, the Old Republic still has a military, and everything is well, unsettled. Not to mention that this era is largely... undeveloped is the first term to come to mind. The most information we have on it is from Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2, and the graphic novels of that game, and they only describe the Battle of Ruusan, when this era comes to an end and the GFFA starts becoming what you see in the movies.

Hell, I may never write this. But if I do find the time and motivation...

[technomage]

There aren't enough force sensatives in SW to make a warp god. Only 10,000 at jedi level, and say, a million with some measureable talent. The Imperium of Man alone has more psykers than that. Of course, the common herd, greatly multiplied in numbers would perhaps be useful in creating one.

You don't need psykers to make a god. The Ruinous Powers (and every other form of Warp life) were first created by the emotions of ordinary people of all species. Like attracted to like, and as types of emotional energy contacted each other, they accumulated, eventually becoming daemons, and finally creating Chaos. Presumably, they created other gods as well, but you don't hear gods of Order mentioned often. As far as that goes, psykers stand out in the Warp a lot more than non-psykers, but I don't think they contribute measureably more energy than a non-psyker. According to old fluff, Chaos first arose during the Dark Ages here on Earth, but if I correctly remember something I saw in a copy of Codex: Necrons I was scanning in a store, Khorne, Tzeentch, and Nurgle were created by the war between the Necrontyr and the Slann. Still, a galaxy with a population several orders of magnitude larger than the 40K galaxy's will start having an effect on the Warp pretty fast.

If I'm wrong on this, please tell me. That's why I floated this idea out.

As for the 10,000 Jedi number, that's just the Jedi of the Prequel Era, not the number of Force-sensitives in the galaxy. Keep in mind that the Jedi Order we see in the movies actually bears little resemblence to the Order though most of its history. It's a reaction to that mess on Ruusan, as is the Sith's rule of two. The Jedi were decimated by a thousand years of war with the Sith, capped by the thought-bomb debacle, and the ones who were left were thinking in terms of raising recruits from childhood in order to try and reduce the lure of the Dark Side and set their mental patterns early. They also were thinking in terms of rapid recruitment. Then the Order got caught in the cogs of the Republic's bureaucracy, and they slowly segued into the knights militant/monastic holy order pattern. By Yoda's time, the Jedi had ossified so much they were inflexible.

4,000 years before, the Jedi were able to gather 10,000 Jedi Masters on quick notice for the conclave on Deneba. There were possibly millions of Jedi in the galaxy, and they considered having at least one Watchman in every system in the Republic an attainable goal. But in the movies, we see an Order that is actively pursuing a self-destructive policy, and is so sublimely self-confident that it can't even see its problems. That's undoubtedly part of the original rationale for the "no children more than a year old" rule. They didn't really want dissenting opinions rocking the boat, and you can see what happened to Qui-gon Jinn, Anakin Skywalker, and Dooku for their pains. Kenobi kept his mouth shut, and got a position on the Council, by comparison. It's actually to Yoda's credit that he was finally beginning to see this problem in RotS, hence his comment about Jedi arrogance becoming more and more pervasive. All the more impressive considering that he was a major part of the problem.

Booting candidates who didn't meet the most stringent of standards, throwing out potential Padawans because there weren't any Masters available (and Force forbid that a Master take more than one apprentice, as in eras gone by), and only accepting the Force-sensitives who they actually found as infants (I presume this is actually a small number, given that Force-sensitives seem to always be popping up in Star Wars, and I've never seen anything to indicate otherwise), is it any wonder that there numbers were so small?

[NecronLord]

You don't need psykers to make a god. The Ruinous Powers (and every other form of Warp life) were first created by the emotions of ordinary people of all species.

Species that had been made supah-psykick by the Old Ones. There were no Warp-Gods before then

Like attracted to like, and as types of emotional energy contacted each other, they accumulated, eventually becoming daemons, and finally creating Chaos. Presumably, they created other gods as well, but you don't hear gods of Order mentioned often. As far as that goes, psykers stand out in the Warp a lot more than non-psykers, but I don't think they contribute measureably more energy than a non-psyker. According to old fluff, Chaos first arose during the Dark Ages here on Earth, but if I correctly remember something I saw in a copy of Codex: Necrons I was scanning in a store, Khorne, Tzeentch, and Nurgle were created by the war between the Necrontyr and the Slann.

No. The Dark Ages fluff still stands uncontested. The Eldar gods were created bck then, not the chaos gods.

As for the 10,000 Jedi number, that's just the Jedi of the Prequel Era, not the number of Force-sensitives in the galaxy. Keep in mind that the Jedi Order we see in the movies actually bears little resemblence to the Order though most of its history. It's a reaction to that mess on Ruusan, as is the Sith's rule of two. The Jedi were decimated by a thousand years of war with the Sith, capped by the thought-bomb debacle, and the ones who were left were thinking in terms of raising recruits from childhood in order to try and reduce the lure of the Dark Side and set their mental patterns early. They also were thinking in terms of rapid recruitment. Then the Order got caught in the cogs of the Republic's bureaucracy, and they slowly segued into the knights militant/monastic holy order pattern. By Yoda's time, the Jedi had ossified so much they were inflexible.

They were never much better, they just used to be more militant.

4,000 years before, the Jedi were able to gather 10,000 Jedi Masters on quick notice for the conclave on Deneba.

Let me hazard a guess, this absurdity comes from a comic?

Typical stuff, really, 'in ancient times, the jedi and sith were so much more uber' bullshit. Yoda himself canonically states that he's the most skilled and powerful Jedi Master the order has ever had. Anything stating that there were once more powerful jedi is non-continuity as it directly contradicts a canon novellisation.

EDIT: O' course, this is just my embittered anti-ancient-uberness-brainbug stance.

[technomage]

That's all right. Everyone who likes Star Wars has a major problem with one part or another of the storyline. For me it's the NJO books. I used to know a few people over on TheForce.net who categorically rejected the prequel movies because they were "nothing but CGI extravaganzas with pitiful stories," and clash a bit with the original trilogy.

In defense of comics like Tales of the Jedi and Dark Empire, I should note that they came out years before the prequel movies officially nerfed the (later era) Jedi. Personally, I think the "ancient=uber, modern=pitiful" concept is a influence/legacy of Tolkien.

Thanks for the clarification on the Eldar Gods/Chaos Gods difference.

[NecronLord]

Personally, I think the "ancient=uber, modern=pitiful" concept is a influence/legacy of Tolkien.

Hell no. No no no no no no no! It's far, far older than that. Try, oh, most western myth (and probably others) for example, the Bible, with its all-round-superior 'Patriarchs' who lived for hundreds of years and could challenge 'god' (Babel).