Editing Nobledark Imperium Notes (section)

= Xenos Independens and Horridus (non-Chaos) =

== Q'orl ==
They are still a bunch of xenophobic zealots but the Imperium is willing to meet them half way this time and not prod them unnecessarily. They have been offered preliminary deals with the long term intention of bringing them into the fold of true civilization in time.

Every time, the Q'orl have refused.

Unless the Matriarchy of Queens is running the show then they refuse. They are the Master Race and although other peoples have their uses, they would begrudgingly accept, they are not true people. They are trained animals.

Only the Q’orl are may rule Q’orl.

The Imperium leaves them. The Emperor is taking the same view of them as he did Hy Brasil in ancient history. He is an immortal, he can play the waiting game. The offer is always open to them, they are the only ones standing in their own way and eventually they will realize their folly. In time. All things in time.

Every so often one of the Queens will dream of dreams once had by all conquerors but Alexander the Great never had Emperor Oscar to contend with. The Imperium and the Q'orl occasionally get in small-scale wars with each other (from the Imperium's perspective, from the Q'orl perspective it's a major campaign) but the Q'orl never managed to achieve a long-term foothold. They once managed to hold dominance over a multi-sector empire whilst the Imperium was busy fighting Da Bug Boyz of the Octavius Desolation. It fell when the Imperium brought back the pain train.

The  the Imperium doesn't completely bulldoze them because they're currently not a serious long-term threat like the Orks, and they are willing to pitch in when Chaos, Nids or a big Ork WAAGH! come calling but that's mostly out of mutual interest and long term preservation instincts kicking in.

Assholes to the core and on the low end of the EVIL pool. Not a people you would turn your back on but not one of the Big Players either.

== Jokaero ==

The Jokaero are, in many ways, a lot like the Hrud. Not hostile, but at the same time not Imperial citizens because you can't can't get a solid agreement out of them. Hrud because they are flighty, Jokaero because the Imperium can’t get beyond basic communication with them (i.e., what you see modern humans doing with dolphins and great apes). They theoretically should be smart enough to understand some basic communication but don't act like it, to this end the AdBio have never been able to determine if they are animals or sapient people taking the piss.

Jokaero have been known to perform technical expertise in exchange for fruit, but it’s not as if a transaction or agreement was made. They just turn up and do things. Most people see Jokaero as essentially non-sentient animals that are genetically hardwired to make tools. People still don't try to use Jokaero despite being near-sapient test subjects outside Imperial law because multilasers.

Most Imperial citizens know of the Jokaero via a kids’ cartoon featuring a big friendly cuddly Jokaero as a recurring side character. He makes strange and unpredictable devices that generate shenanigans. People encountering them for real drop the cuddly and change friendly to non-hostile. They are big though.

Inqusitor Coteaz has a reputation of being the “Jokaero whisperer”. He knows full well that the Jokaero aren’t sapient in the way that other species like humans and kinebrach are, so in order to get them to do what you want you have to put things in their terms. Treat them like great apes that know how to make guns. You don't get the Jokaero to stay where you want them with cages or build what you want with threats. You get them to do what you want via positive reinforcement (as in, gives best treats in exchange for making stuff).

Coteaz' actual retinue also has a large number of kinebrach, who tend to bring their own raygun gothic style weapons. They get kind of pissed if you compare them to the Jokaero (they were *hired* for one, they'd say, or point out that if you were to call Coteaz' research "a barrel full of monkeys" you'd have to include humans in that count).

Coteaz himself isn’t even sure if the Jokaero are truly non-sapient or just pulling the entire galaxy's leg.

Their movements and migrations seem to him to be far too directed and deliberate to be purely instinct and fruit driven.

There seems to be something that has a vague ability to direct them down certain paths to where they need to be but hasn't enough direct control to dictate what they do when they get there.

Out of all the places in the Galaxy there are richer sources of food and more safety than in Guard regiments being deployed. But a disproportionate number of them end up there, right where they can upgrade shit in strange and unpredictable ways.

His own retinue is a prime example of this. There are far safer places to be and indeed they often leave him after a short time, but others always turn up.

And on rare occasions they have deliberately fought. There is nothing more oddly terrifying that watching a Jokaero fashion bizarre war gear out of scrap and then shredding Necrons and Chaos Eldar with hand held reality violations. It's the surreal terror of watching something harmless become horrifying. Coteaz has only seen this happen two or three times, Jokaero typically run at the first hint of danger. He has only seen it at all because of his extensive contact with them.

The rest of the Inquisition think that Coteaz has gone mildly eccentric with his talk of directed Jokaero behaviors because it contradicts thousands of years of what everyone else has seen. Sometimes Coteaz thinks maybe they are right, maybe he is just seeing shapes in the clouds. But then he sees one of the Jokaero out of the corner of his eye, not hunched over but standing proud, tow big black eyes like bottomless pits and something else looking back at him. He turns to look properly and the Jokaero slumps back into it's usual behavior and the thing behind those eyes flickers away and he can almost believe he imagined it. Almost.

If the Jokaero are sentient, it's not out of the question that they too made their own god, like the Orks, Hrud, and Eldar. Possibly some sort of scrap god or something similar.

== Zoats ==

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, there was an alien race driven to the brink of extinction by the tyranids. The Zoats, the original Zoats, knew that their day was done. Their galaxy was devoured and they the last pocket of meat were soon to be gobbled up. So they took what they could of themselves and turned the mutagenic properties of the Star Locusts against them. They infected themselves with a virus that when they were eaten would spread to the rest of the Hive Fleet and lie dormant until such time as the Hive found a new feeding ground and began to multiply again. When the tyranids got to a new galaxy and the Norn Queens began to grow a new batch of tyranids the Zoats emerged from the tyranids like parasitic wasps out of a host. Kill tyranid biomorphs and Norn Queen before lobotomizing a Hive Ship and taking off into the galaxy. One stays behind to suicide bomb the Hive Ship into another Hive or the nearest star if that's not an option. Other zoats ditch the hive ship, build their own from ceramics and tyranid flesh and then set out to warn the galaxy what's coming and to tool up like there's no tomorrow like the Silver Surfer before Galactus. Then once the galaxy is sufficiently warned the turn around and set out to build an army to sabotage the tyranids as much as they can before dying to the last. They've done this several times.

The Zoats are a sobering reminder that the tyranids are a very real threat and failure against them is not an option. They have eaten whole galaxies before and they have again.

It should be noted that the Zoats the Milky Way knows and loves are not the original Zoats (or are they?). They are tyranid bioforms made in the image of the Zoats. Their original ships were hijacked bio-ships, and even their newer Zoat-made ships are built with stolen tyranid bits. They are capable of interfacing with and using tyranid biotechnology and weapons, though they hate it and ditch tyranid biotech for other weapons as soon as possible. The modern Zoats are an infection made in the image of Zoat to be their final insult to the Great Devourer, living spite, a sad and terrible mockery of what their makers were. They take that and they run with it. Everything the Zoats do is to spite the tyranids in some way. It's the reason they're Xenos Independens. Sabotage a Hive Fleet? Spites the 'nids. Help an Imperial force fight off a splinter fleet? Spites the 'nids. Save civilians? One more life kept out of the jaws of the Great Devourer and therefore a middle finger to the Hive Mind. 

However, they are not part of the Imperial military and they don't listen to Imperial commands. Get across how they can do something to mess up the tyranids and they'll consider it. They cooperate with the Imperium because the Imperium kills tyranids. Not because they like them. Not to mention that a lot of actions that spite the tyranids also harm the Imperium. Wake up a Tomb World to kill a Hive Fleet, despite the fact that it subsequently goes on a ramapage across the sector? Spites the 'nids. Attract a Chaos Warband to attack a planet with a strong Genestealer cult? Spites the 'nids.

They don't know where they came from, not anymore. The new breed of Zoat have murky memories of their progenitors at best, there was a limit on how much knowledge could be programmed via virus. It doesn't matter to them.

The Zoats  present the Imperium with a dilemma. They are 'Nid but not 'Nid. They are sapient and sentient but they have no art, accomplishments of their own and literally exist to do nothing but fight and die and take as many of the 'Nids with them. They are a bizarre cross between pitiable and frightening. There would be dissenting opinion on whether they are people. The Zoat point out that maybe they are or maybe they aren't, but the point is academic so long as the Hive lives.

The Zoats have no idea what they'll do in the unlikely event the Hive Mind is killed. Maybe one day they will be Zoat again, or at least some sort of Zoat. Maybe, the Zoats tell each other, maybe once this is all over they can rebuild somehing in memory of the True Zoat. Maybe they can be real people one day. But not today. Today there is war. And today is a good day to die.

'''Possible Tyranid Origin'''

This was brought up in the threads, and while people liked the idea it was thought that making it canon took too much of the mystery out of the nature of tyranids as an Outside Context Problem. It was decided to leave this as merely one of multiple possible origins for the tyranids, possibly no more than a crazy off-the-wall AdBio hypothesis, hence why it is hidden in a block here. It's not like the Imperium would be able to find out either way. This could be where the tyranids came from, or it could be that tyranids are simply natural galactic predators writ large and the natural state of the galaxy without [[Old Ones|psychic lizard wizards]] to keep the worst of stuff at bay, etc.

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Few who fight the tyranids on the eastern fringe could fail to be aware of the Zoats, the race of six-limbed lizard-like creatures who fight the tyranids, seemingly renegade organisms from the Hive Mind itself, claiming to be the biological simulacra of another race that once opposed the tyranids in another galaxy long ago. However, some Ordo Xenos inquisitors and Adeptus Biologicus have proposed that the link between the Zoats and the tyranids is much more personal than the Zoats would like to admit. It is admittedly not a strong theory, built up from bits and pieces of evidence gathered together over the span of four millennia. Forensic archaeology is rather difficult when all of the pertinent events in question occurred millions of years ago in another galaxy. The Zoats themselves are silent on this theory. Whether it is because they do not know or because it hits uncomfortably close to the truth is a mystery.

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Ages ago in a galaxy quite a ways a way there was once a race. A technologically advanced race, not on par with the Old Ones but maybe equivalent to the Necrontyr. Masters of flesh and biotechnology. As all races do after a certain point, they began to think seriously about the bigger things in life. Mortality. Inequality. Understanding their fellow being.

And so the race came up with what they thought was the solution. Upload everyone’s mind into a single interconnected network, free from the constraints of flesh, from which bodies could be created on demand. On paper it seemed perfect. No one would die unless they chose to. No mind would be forced inhabit a body it did not want to. Everyone would instantly be able to see the perspective of anyone else, creating universal empathy. And the network was ever increasing, ever growing, so not only would the race benefit, but they could bring their gift to everyone in existence. There would be no more death, no more disease, no more hatred. For anyone.

Naturally, something went horribly wrong. What should have been an interlinked network of independent minds collapsed into a single morass, differences between individual thought patterns blurring until only the most universal impulses remained. Eat. Grow. Reproduce. The subroutines designed to bring in fresh matter to power the network and grow forms for resleeving individual minds corrupted into the biotechnological equivalent of gray goo. The race had tried to achieve the singularity, and instead all they had done was go past an event horizon.

The only people to survive this singularity, which had suddenly become one in a very literal sense, were the people who refused to upload their minds to the network in the first place. They suddenly found themselves on the receiving end of a quadrillion gaping maws of what had once been their entire species, mutated into unrecognizability. And so they ran. And when they could not run, they fought. And when they could not run or fight any further, they used their biotechnological talents on themselves, turning themselves into a genetic parasite which would hide within the network that had once been the summed minds of their brothers and sisters. They modified themselves to pop out  and fight the tyranids whenever they tried to feed, in the hopes that some day some race will reach the point that they will be able to finally defeat and kill the tyranids. They fought the tyranids in their home galaxy. They fought them in Andromeda. They fight them here. Everywhere they go, they bring the same message to the same message to every race they encounter, in the hopes that they will heed their warnings and either flee or militarize to the point they can fight the tyranids.

“Run, for in our hubris the gift of our people has come for you.”

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== Megarachnids ==

When the Imperium made first contact with the Interex, they found out about the Megarachnids, who the Interex had stripped of space flight capacity and quarantined to their homeworld after being unable to communicate with them and fighting an interstellar war with them. Given they had already proven to be violent and not open to reason the Imperium wanted to kill them, but the Interex stepped in and claimed them as a vassal under Interex protection, much like the Kinebrach. The Imperium wasn't happy about this idea, but given the Megarachnids were contained to a single world they told the Interex they would give them one chance. However, if the megarachnids ever got out, they would no longer be the Interex’s problem, they would be the ''Imperium's'' problem, and the Imperium wasn't going to feel bad about wiping them out.

At some point during the War of the Beast, Urisarach was invaded by Orks, who proceeded to get murdered like everyone else who set foot on the planet and got their ships stolen by the megarachnids. At least some megarachnids discreetly made their way off the planet, helped by the fact that both the Interex and the Imperium were too distracted by the War of the Beast to notice. The spiders are at large in the galaxy again, though they are staying as far away from Interex space as possible because they remembered what happened last time. Nobody has really noticed because it’s a big galaxy and the spiders are such a minor concern compared to orks, necrons, Chaos, tyranids, even groups like Slaugth. The spiders aren't even well-known enough outside Interex space for most commanders to make the connection between any minor xenos species they encounter to a planet on the other end of the galaxy. There may even be a megarachnid section in the xenos district of Null City in Commorragh.

== Sslyth ==

During the Dark Age of Technology, the Sslyth were a proxy/vassal state sponsored by the Old Eldar Empire for when they wanted to start a proxy war to take another power down a peg or two but didn't want to be seen doing it themselves. Unfortunately, when the Old Empire fell, the Sslyth got corrupted by Slaanesh due to their cultural and trade connections to the Old Empire and became the Laer. Some of the Sslyth saw what was happening to their people and decided they didn't want to live on that planet anymore and left for space. The rest of the Laer stayed on their homeworld of Laeran and, among other things, turned the gas giant their moon orbited into a giant fusion candle that they used to travel around and bring the good word of Slaanesh to the stars. It hasn't yet been established whether the original name for the species was Sslyth and then Laer or if they were originally Laer and Slyth means something like "people with common sense". Quite a large number of Sslyth fell in with Commorragh for the simple reason of the arrangement being familiar whereas others became pirates or mercenaries.

Another unusual twist of note is that it's quite likely the Sslyth, of all people, are the founders of the Diasporex. The fall of Laeran to Chaos being their event that made the founders of the Diasporex go "you know, it's kind of peaceful out in the void and all this Warp shit just messes planets up". There are enough of them with the Diasporex fleets that the Sslyth on Cherys were considered to be descended from a lost Diasporex ship. However, whoever the founders of the Diasporex really were is a lesson lost to history, the founders deliberately destroyed the records of who started the religion as a moral decision to not make Diasporex ideals about species or "who's in charge by dint of seniority".

== Rangdan Osseivores ==

The Rangdan Osseivores were immense titan-sized bio-constructs created by the Slaugth to dispose of waste meats. Although the Slaugth could eat just about any flesh, what they really cared about was the delicacy of the brain. Because of their wastefulness, this generally meant that when the Slaugth decided to eat one of their pen-raised sapients they usually just ate the brains and threw the rest of the body away. Some of the excess meat was used to feed the Slaugth’s other bio-constructs, but the majority of it went to the Osseivores. For most of their existence the Osseivores would lie supine, debrained body after debrained body being shoveled into their disgusting, prolapsed, tooth-lined mouths, like pigs being fed leftovers. The practical benefit of the Osseivores is that all that biomass didn’t go to waste, instead of simply decaying it was metabolized and incorporated into the Osseivore’s body. When the Slaugth were attacked all they had to do was tell the Osseivore to stand up on its massive legs and go to war, and all of a sudden they had a biological titan-sized entity ready to do battle with their enemies. The Osseivores were so powerful the titan legions needed the tactical edge granted by the eldar’s psychic titans such as wraithknights and warlock titans to give them an edge, which was one of the reasons why humanity and eldar teamed up to rescue the slaves of their respective species from the Slaugth (this being in the days before the alliance was cemented).