Cutting Room Floor · 1:50am Apr 10th, 2022
Hi all.
As a pseudo reverse belated birthday present, and as a means of getting some creativity flowing so I can keep working, I thought I'd share some bits, pieces, and ideas for Empress Returns that didn't make the cut. Granted, some are good enough I might come back to them, some aren't, but I wanted to share them with you all the same. So if you're into learning a little more about my thought process when it comes to writing, settle in and let me tell you more.
Twilight Accidentally AIs
Way back when I first came up with the plot bunnies that became Empress Returns, I had an idea about giving Twilight a tank. A Land Raider Terminus, for those that were curious.
For Reference.
As a bit of a comedic bent for the story, Twilight was going to be poking around a Mechanicus facility and bump into a dormant Land Raider, accidentally activating its machine spirit. Sensing she wasn't hostile, the Machine spirit did some interaction with Twilight, and Twilight (not really understanding what was going on) would do her best to reach out to this new presence. One burst of errant friendship magic later, and bam! Twilight accidentally made the Land Raider a fully sentient being, probably with a less nerdy but still innocent variation of Twilight's own personality.
For reasons that should become obvious, it was cut. It was a half-baked idea to begin with that I discarded, but given the lore reasons as to why AI don't exist in the Imperium and how Twilight's magic normally works, the whole scenario wouldn't work and probably just drag on into annoyance for the readers. While I won't say Empress is 100% lore friendly, there are some lines that I don't want to jump over for the sake of staying at least somewhat close to the basic tenants of 40k Canon (which is also why Twilight x Corax got the axe around the same time as well).
Cetus attacks Nocturne
This one, I actually kind of regret not doing. I wanted to set up that Hive Fleet Cetus was a craftier adversary than other Tyranid Hive Fleets, excellent at galactic flanking maneuvers and capable of blistering attack speed. I dropped a few hints on that leading up to the Jaws of Cetus arc, which would ultimately culminate in this scenario.
Celestia would lead the attack against the Hive Fleet on Rynn's World, with Twilight planning to come in with the second wave marshalling at Nocturne/Prometheus. There would be action, death, destruction, all that fun stuff, but just when it seemed Celestia was about to achieve victory, the reality of the situation would become apparent:
Rynn's World was just a feint. The full might of Cetus would come crashing down on Nocturne while Celestia's armies were out of position, cutting her off and leaving Twilight at the mercy of the Tyranids.
The end result would still have been the same, with the Dark God arising and driving off the Tyranids, but it may have added tension as Celestia races back to Nocturne and Twilight does her best to not become bug food. I honestly don't know why I didn't go through with it... probably laziness. Admittedly, this was also in the earlier plot bunny stage so it wasn't fully fleshed out, so my youthful excitability probably canned it for being too confusing and slow paced. If I had a chance to go back and rewrite that section I'd probably give it a shot, but I'm still satisfied with how the end product of Jaws of Cetus came out, and I've slipped my schedule enough that rewrites will probably never happen, and not to the extent that would be needed to rework an entire major arc of the story.
The Dark God Revealed
Now, I like to think of myself as clever in hiding the Dark God's true identity. But I'm probably not as clever as I think and you've probably already guessed it, but let me have my fun.
That said, I was going to just say who the Dark God was in Celestia's first encounter with the creature. And yes, it was going to be Malal/Malice, the Dubiously Canon Fifth Chaos God of Destruction and Chaotic infighting. I liked the idea of Malal being a bigger threat than anyone realized, as destruction naturally comes from the actions of the other Four and thus he'd have quite a lot of power to leech off in preparation for his battle with Celestia. As I started fleshing out the Dark God's role, I decided to hold off on that reveal- it might still be Malal (I know who it is, but I'm not going to tell you here), but just name dropping it in the beginning would spoil the fun.
Twilight gets the Skywalker Special
And by that I mean she needs a hand.
Back when I was still working out the ways to break Twilight and have her mature into the less innocent but still optimistic young warrior wizard she has become, this was going to be part 2 in a three set process- getting one of her hands chopped off during the battle against Cetus. Celestia would either build her a cybernetic or use her phenomenal cosmic power to grow her a new one, but the damage would have been done. This was before Mattias existed, and he already had the cybernetic limb thing going, and I decided "eh, Twilight doesn't need multiple breakings to make her (more) badass". Of course, killing Mir'shen would say otherwise, but Twilight wasn't even going to go to Solemnace in those early plot bunny days.
Twilight's breaking arc was also going to be a lot longer, like "one more bad day on Ultramar" longer, and given how long it's taken me to get to Guilliman's neck of the woods you can imagine how hard I'd have to work to try and keep Twilight's naivete going. That'd be a stretch.
Also on the subject of artificial limbs, I was going to reveal that Judith lost her leg on Morya and has a cybernetic as well. But again, Mattias, and also it seemed a bit contrived to have not mentioned it before (like, what, does she just fit it in that slim Sororitas armor without anyone noticing?)
Why is Naomi sad?
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before, but Sister Naomi had a much different backstory than what she ended up getting, which would have been revealed when the company did go to Solemnace (and Twilight didn't find out about this earlier because when that was a plot bunny, Naomi was the only Sister that didn't die on Caesaria). That backstory was that during a mission against the Necrons, Naomi was mind-shackled into turning on and killing her squad, only stopping after she had killed her mentor and mother figure Canoness Diana who snapped her out of it. Ashamed at what she had done, Naomi served as a Repentia for several decades, finally gaining redemption around the time Celestia and Twilight entered the Imperium. This mission was going to be her first since being welcomed back into the Order, which would explain her general unfriendliness and seriousness in what was going on.
As I fleshed out the Sisters and their role in the story, that backstory fell through. Partially because it'd be a long time coming and would require some twisting on my part to justify not talking about it, partially because I hadn't worked out a way to get Dark Eldar into my story and I feel that the various 40k factions need at least some role to play in the story, great or small.
Sadly, since I'm operating on 7th edition lore, I probably won't be able to bring in the Leagues of Votann/Squats in. Which is a shame, because I think they look cool and have felt 40k needs a new "xenos" army (I know they're being addressed as abhumans, but my point still stands).
Attack on Blackstone Fortress
Corax's fight against Perturabo in Part 3, Chapter 10 was not round 1. It was actually round 2 leading into round 3.
Corax would be leading a fleet out in space hunting for the Blackstone Fortress. As a means of getting Lorgar to get off his throne and do something, the Dark God would have pulled that fleet out of the Warp right next to the Fortress, forcing them into a fight while desperately trying to hail Leman Russ' forces. In the process, Corax finds himself aboard the Blackstone Fortress, but he's not alone: Alpharius, who has subverted a few Iron Warriors as he sleeper agents, is waiting for him with the Anathame, planning to kill Corax as it interferes with his own scheming. During this fight, Alpharius would drop hints that he knows exactly who Twilight is, and being as this would be a fight between the two most pragmatic Primarch it would get dirty real quick. Corax escapes without getting stuck with the Anathame, but Alpharius (who actually isn't Alpharius- the real Alpharius was up in the rafters with a sniper rifle and blows out one of Corax's shoulders when Corax drops his guard killing the fake) pursues and forces Corax into a three-on-one fight between himself, Alpharius, Lorgar, and Perturabo inside something that resembles and Eldar prison hold. Russ would arrive and cause enough havoc for Corax to escape, but his injuries would slow him down enough for the next part of his plotline to unfold.
I decided against that and went with the fight we have in canon because the original fight had a lot of things that needed to align and just weren't, and it made the Chaos Primarchs look like incompetent boobs if they couldn't take down two isolated Primarchs in a straight fight. Granted, those two were Corax and Russ, but my point stands.
Fulgrim has a thing for Celestia
I mentioned this in my author's notes, but the original fight between Celestia and Fulgrim was going to have some more... creepy molester vibes coming from Fulgrim. Because Slaanesh is into that sort of thing.
I wasn't. It got the axe.
Sisters in love?
I made a point early on in the story that Naomi's Battle Sisters were celibate. While it has been explained to me numerous times that there is no mention in 40k canon that this is required of the Sisters of Battle, I wanted to show that the Gracia Convent that they're a part of is more Puritanical than most, believing that romance and such distracts one from their one true love, and that love being the Emperor.
Or to put it more simply, I suck at writing romance and didn't want anything to do with it... or did I?
Back in the early parts of 2020 before Papa Nurgle decided to "bless" us with Covid, I was planning on giving Veronica a sort-of love interest for the Ultramar arc. This was to both develop how the Sisters would confront something that they were not fully prepared for, and provide some character development for Veronica (who, to be perfectly honest, I feel is the least developed of the Sisters) and also Sister Bianca (who, being from a different Order than the others, would have some more insight and could act as a mentor for yet another Sister). This ultimately would have culminated in Veronica getting her Element of Harmony.
Then 2020 happened. I've talked about what happened in 2020 enough, but my marriage disintegrating and my divorce early in 2021 basically killed this plotline dead. I haven't given up on romance in real life (and who knows, in fiction as well), but this particular path will not be.
Well, that's enough for this round. As things progress I'll have more stuff piling up on the cutting room floor that I'd be happy to share, but for now I'll leave you all with these bits and pieces.
I definitely like the idea of Twilight interacting with a machine spirit in some fashion. Just without the 'oops, now it's an AI' bit, maybe?
Thanks for sharing these bits and pieces, the empress returns is probably in my top five favorite stories on this site, so it's always great to see something posted, even if it isn't a new chapter. Again, Interesting read, and thanks for sharing. Can't wait for the the next dead idea brain dump.
It's always fascinating to get a peak behind the curtain, and I know your pain in getting events and characters to align as of late. I've just had to rewrite about 30k words due to one mistake in dates several chapters earlier in an ongoing EaW project that meant that all but one character could not possibly be present for a key event, including the single first person narrator... So yeah, for obvious reasons said event had to be rewritten elsewhere (which was thankfully possible as the place wasn't key, just the people) and worked around secondary day to day job related stuff the characters have to do.
As for AI in 40k... Yeah, that was the right decision I feel (for what my opinion matters as yet another internet plebeian), though Twilight trying to prevent the thing going full on murderbot would admittedly have been quite funny.
I have been hoping for squats to show up in the story. I get why you probably didn't want to include them. At least you avoided a lot of the grimderp that GW is infamous for.
5649820 I mean, it might still happen. Depends on what the lore for the Leagues is like and if I can work out a justifiable reason for them to be in the story.
5649806 Considering how technology and magic generally don't mix in 40k, it could have some potential. There are a lot of aspects of 40k I haven't really explored, the Mechanicus being one of them, so there's always a chance to revisit an idea here or there. Just need to have a good in-story reason for the interactions to happen without coming across as shoehorning
Fuck yeah MALAL! Between that and the Sisters, I'd sign a petition to demand Black Library hire you, no lie.
For the cybernetics parts, your reasoning with Twilight makes sense, and honestly it would have been painful as a reader to see that happen. For most Imperial militants in 40k (now 45k), cybernetics are a relatively-unremarkable occurrence to see. They become exceedingly common the more specialized or higher up the ranks you go, to the point where people at a certain rank (usually the first command ranks like brigadier general and rear admiral) are expected to have visible replacement parts and augmentations, even outside the Mechanicus. Actually going through the process is pretty awful though, especially to repair a battlefield wound. I wouldn't recommend it.
5649988 Thank you for the vote of confidence
I actually submitted a short snippet of Naomi and her squad to GW back in 2018-2019, when they were taking open submissions for a publication they were doing to celebrate... something, I forget what. It was rejected, sadly, but I gave it a shot
5650115
That's a right shame, but I'm glad you gave it a chance. I'll add another tally under GW's entry in my grudgebook for terrible decisions about fan creations.
By the way... what about Warmistress?
5657668 Given how long I've let it sit, that might be the subject of my next cutting room floor blog