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...Actually, much more than a spider can.

-Ls

... to see myself as the spider at the center of the web. {X D

Actually, the whole thing looks a bit spider-shaped at the moment. Funny!

~Neshomeh

I think we've got most of the published RPs now, and all of the big-name character journals. But cowrites? I've mostly just followed chains of cowriters around. The most obvious example of that is Miah - Bryn - Maslab - firemagic, forming a big square on the graph where you can see me just jumping through agent pages to find cowrites.

At a quick look, Astral Void's main agent had five main appearances: three solo written, one cowrite with you, and one the Hallowe'en Cowrite. I'm excluding that because what we actually did was all post separate stories; it's more like an anthology.

Then there's the MSTs, and I don't know about that. Agent Ally did an MST with Laburnum, which is the name of a PPC agent written by the MST co-author Laburnum. It takes place in the PPC MST Theatre. But... Laburnum also talks about her other username, and seems to be implying that she hangs out with canon characters. So is this Agent Laburnum being weird, or Author Laburnum in an OOC RP space?

For the moment, I'm ignoring MSTs wholesale, which means yes, you seem to be Astral Void's only link to the graph.

hS

Seems an odd detention choice for Snape. I wonder if he actually wanted to get the trio near the victims, so they would have a chance to search for clues, since they were the only ones actually making any progress? Or maybe just to redirect their investigation to an area less populated by gigantic spiders?

Wooooooow, I’m generally not a fan of creating censored/dumbed down versions of books for kids, but uh. Wowee wow wow, I think I can see why the school library edition of the Tome of Avalon has some, uh. Redacted content! Children don’t need to be thinking about cutting hands or exchanging blood! I really hope St. Mungo’s has a good way of treating HIV! Wow, this frigging society, man. Oh, I did like the detail that Molly Weasley’s admonishment from Chamber, about not trusting things that shouldn’t be speaking, has wound up inside the Tome in this timeline! It’s definitely the only sensible line we’ve seen from the book so far . . .

Man. Man. It really was Astoria all along . . . and I didn’t suspect her until this previous chapter! You really had me fooled this time. Not that I tend to be good at solving mysteries as I read them . . . I want to feel sympathetic towards Astoria, with how sick she is, so I hope there was a bit more motive behind all this beyond framing Harry and removing Dumbledore. Much as I want to read the next chapter right away, it’s getting close to work time, so I’ll have to hold off until another meal . . . Sorry I fell behind reading these, but last week got very busy towards the end, and I really wasn’t home at all!

—doctorlit hopes Astoria gets to live at least as long as her canon counterpart

Much like with the Fenrykan Heresy, I wanted to post this here so that you specifically got to engage with it and not miss out. You always provide really valuable input. =]

Fun fact about the Kroot morphs: the only one that's original is actually the Greater Knarloc in the Lords Of War section, and that's an adaptation of the old Forge World Great Knarloc that used to be a Heavy Support unit in 8th edition. The Vultures, Stalkers, Headhunters, and suchlike all come from the 3rd edition Kroot army list from an ancient Chapter Approved article in an old issue of White Dwarf. This was shortly after the T'au were first introduced as a faction, back in the year I'm Not Old Shut Up No I'm Not.

The Kroot are mostly adapted from old Geedubs stuff. This is not the case for almost every other client race in the faction, because Games Workshop kind of decided to ignore the T'au Empire's pluralistic approach in favour of designing more big shooty jetpack robots. I've invented basically everything about the units for those races, simply because they never come up! That all said, every alien species that makes an appearance in the army list has appeared somewhere in an official Games Workshop product before, even if they were just a fleeting reference in a bit of wargear backstory. I've expanded on them out of necessity but I have included zero original species. That was a point of principle; I've seen a few fandexes for the Auxiliaries floating around, and rather than explore and fill out the client races that already exist, they just went full Original Character Donut Steel instead, and I was left entirely unfulfilled. =]

Finally, thank you for your kind comment about the wry remarks in the lore snippets. My personal favourite is the name of one of the Warlord Traits, "Coalition of the Mostly Willing". I do intend on adding lore paragraphs to each unit listing and having that as the 1.1 PDF release, so watch this space. =]

The document is here, the Imgur version of the current full file is here. It's a huge daft blob of PPCers!

I've taken some time to draw the Thorntree Number Contours onto the plot, here. Now you can see your own number at a glance! There are only five people with a Thorntree Number greater than 6 - four on 7, and Specs still out by himself on 8. Poor Specs. :(

Apologies for the terrifying shape of the 3-4 boundary: the Journal and RP zones are pretty randomly divided between those who journalled with kippur/RP'd with Leto and those who didn't.

hS

While not a meat pie, I had quiche once. It was delicious.

The Trio confront the culprit in the Chamber of Secrets.

Warning for blood, knives, kids getting injured, and a character using some gross & racially-charged terms to address Hermione. Please read at your own discretion.

That sounds awesome. I think I would like to be in on that, if it happens.

Looks at irl craziness and other stuff going on Drat. At least you can borrow Rebecca, who has expressed interest in joining HQ's thearer group as of this thing from the Mailbox game we did a while ago.

From the reply thread to the original, excerpts from the dress rehearsal, which didn't exactly stay on task.

ANTONY. Friends, Time Lords, Gallifreyans, lend me your ears!

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise her.

I mean, honestly, why would I ever do so?

PINDARUS. Seriously? What's with the burying?

I only regenerated; I'm standing right here.

SECOND CITIZEN. Weren't we going for 'peace'?

PINDARUS. Yes,

But then people started throwing insults around.

ANTONY. It's as I said: no praising here.

The evil that men do lives after them,

And continues ever to annoy their fellows;

The good is oft interred with their bones;

So let it be with Caesar. Particularly

The part about internment.

PINDARUS. Oh, come on!

(I still want to either write more of this, or write A Midsummer Night's Dream in the First Age of Middle-earth. She-nan-i-gans.)

hS

Like Nesh, I don't exactly know the gameplay side of 40K (I have, uh... one Chaos Marine somewhere, or did 20 years ago), but I can see this would be a very easy-to-use codex if I understood it. The layout is great, very tidy and readable. (For purely online purposes, a linked contents list to the major sections would be handy; I know there's one down in the middle but it's only for the one section.)

I mostly read the lore sections, and loved the wry humour speckled through them. The warlord so covered in medals that they're hard to hit stood out, as did the Imperial commentary on "abominable weapons", and the various nudges that maybe the T'au aren't actually sweetness and light that everybody loves - "this doctrine of the Fire Caste is well known among the auxiliaries, sometimes even by choice". (I see there's no mention of telepathic mind control in here. [Ducks])

How much of what you've written about is original? A quick look at Lexicanum shows that the Kroot are relatively well fleshed out in the canon, for instance, but it looks like the detailed variant morphs are mostly yours? How about the other auxiliaries, and things like the artefacts and vehicles?

hS

Yeah, turns out just sending people a link to a Google Doc and going "HERE IS THING! READ THING! DO NOW! DOOOOOO!" is not the best mechanism for acquiring feedback. =]

I'm really glad you're gonna be dipping into it again. I admit to not having written much lore for the Codex, as I was more focused on getting it to be a usable gaming book; I do, however, intend to backfill the lore in later, once I've done some more reading and I've got more time to do it properly. There's a reason this Codex is 1.0, after all.

Which book's Phobos reading, if you don't mind my asking? I don't own very many BL books, because... well, because poor, but I'm eager to find out what he thinks about my sweet blue angel children who have done nothing wrong. =]

It was a ton of work! But the work wasn't just in writing the rules; a surprising amount was in getting the Codex set out so that it was a readable document and not just scraps of rules held together with duct tape. Making it look like an actual Codex would be impossible for me. Graphic design is not my passion. =]

We're still finding more RPs and cowrites. This morning I've finally found something to link Araeph into the cluster, rather than having her way out on the end of a dubious chain; and I'm considering how to deal with character journals, which might need their own colour. The full version of the graph is here; every shortest chain still runs through Deepy, though with a couple of RPs in place you might find your path goes through either Leto or kippur to get there. I think Specs is still the furthest from Jay.

hS

Have a throwback to when HQ's A Troupe by Any Other Name performed Julius Caesar on Gallifrey with the stabbing of Rassilon!Caesar!Morgan.

I'm not acquainted with the crunchy side of 40k, or really much of the lore beyond the Horus Heresy. Anything else I know, it's because I picked it up from from Phobos or the PPC. (And I count TTS as from the PPC, because Thoth got me watching that.)

So, when I had the opportunity to take a look at this a while back, I did. I admit I didn't read it all the way at the time, but I enjoyed the parts I did read, because they're packed full of juicy flavor. I will definitely be going in for another look.

Especially since Phobos is reading a T'au book right now, and it'll be fun to compare notes with him. ^_^

~Neshomeh

Chicago-style pizza-pie! {= D

(But Chicago thin-crust pizza is best, fight me. {; P )

Seriously, though, there are non-chicken meat pies to be found in this country! There's a pie company in my area that does amazing savory pies as well as sweet. I don't think I've even tried their chicken pot pie, because I like the pork-apple-sage and curry-lamb ones so much. And the pot roast pie is good, too.

Shepherd's pie is also a thing here, though it ranges widely in quality.

Plus, if we're including hand pies, there's empanadas!

~Neshomeh will never forget having a laugh about eating Cornish pasties in Bath, Somerset. <3

Then again, it depends on how they're made.

I barely know what this is, but you must have put a whopping amount of work into it. Nerdiness is not a thing to be ashamed of.

• Bookwom

If you've known me for a while, first of all: I'm sorry. I'm just. So sorry to have put you through that.

You'll also know that I'm a huge nerd about Warhammer 40,000, both the game and the lore surrounding it. From the epic collaborative Star Wars crossover Star Warhammer: Everyone Has A Headache to the sweeping alternate history of The Fenrykan Heresy, I've been deeply embedded in the creation of Warhams and Warhams-Adjacent Content hereabouts and I'm proud to have worked with so many people on so many wonderful stories. It's an incredible feeling. But I wanted to do something different. Something longer. Something more... crunchy.

See, I've played and theorycrafted and Math-hammered a bunch of official armies over the years to make cool things. I've got a soft sport for the Guard and the Genestealer Cultists and my first ever painted army was a force of Lost And The Damned from Codex: Eye Of Terror back when that was the Big Mega Campaign. My absolute favourites, though, which will come as no surprise to anyone who's interacted with me in the contents of Warhams at all? T'au. There is no hope in the grim darkness of the far future that compares to the hope of the Youngest. Industrious scientific pioneers who wish to innovate their way out of problems and work with a multicultural pluralistic empire are arrayed against the impenetrable misery of the endless void of the galaxy, in which lies only darkness and silence and the laughter of thirsting gods. I adore the T'au miniatures range. But one thing I would love to see more and more of? The other races in the Empire. I'd love an entire goddamn Codex of T'au Auxiliaries. Games Workshop would never, ever make one of those. I know that rationally. But I want one. I really, really want one.

So I wrote it.

Codex: T'au Auxiliaries version 1.0 is available to read in the above link. It contains:-

Full rules for playing matched play battles with the T'au Auxiliaries in Warhammer 40,000's Ninth Edition.

A list of subfactions for the army that represents the different military ethoses of the commanders under the Auxiliaries' collective banner.

A vast array of units from which to choose

A full suite of Relics and Warlord Traits to customise your force's characters.

Fully realised rules for conducting a Narrative campaign in the Crusade format.

Over one hundred and thirty pages of Lore, Crunch, and Fluff.

Hundreds Of Chompy Birb Mens!

And Much More Tee Em!

Should you not have the time, inclination, or masochistic urges to read it through in one sitting, this Codex is also available for download in delicious and satisfying PDF Flavour.

I've been working on this project for about two years, on and off. And now the 1.0 cut is finally done! It's here! I'd love to hear people's thoughts on it, and I've posted it here as a thank you to all the people in the PPC who have made me feel able to work on a project like this without feeling ashamed of my own nerdiness. I'm so grateful to be a part of this community and I'm so proud to present to you all the fruits of my labours.

Thank you.

>-=]